The Daily Beast Podcast - Mehdi Hasan Thinks Republicans Couldn’t Define Critical Race Theory ‘If Their Lives Depended on It’

Episode Date: June 25, 2021

Would you be willing to be arrested for something if you didn’t know what it was? Would you vote against it? Would you stake your party’s chances in the 2022 midterms on it? This week in Loudoun County, Virginia, a furious man was arrested for trespassing following a raucous school board meeting that erupted into protests against critical race theory and a policy on transgender students. “These people are willing to get arrested, to protest something that isn’t being taught to their kids and that they couldn’t define if their lives depended on it,” Medhi Hasan tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast and producer Jesse Cannon on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Then, The Washington Post’s economics reporter Jeff Stein joins the episode to talk about the new bipartisan infrastructure bill that actually looks like it just might pass. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have such an awesome episode. First, we have Jeff Stein, who writes for the Washington Post about economics. And he's going to talk to us about the state of play of what's going on in those hallowed halls of Congress. But first, I'm very excited to welcome my favorite cable news host, the host of the Medi Hassan show on MSNBC and Peacock, Medi Hassan. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Maddie. Thanks so much for having me, Molly. Very exciting. I want to talk to you about something we actually talked about on your show last night,

but is so amazingly preposterous and absurd that I feel like there's still more to say about it. Yes, I think I know where you're going. Critical race theory. Wow. Wow, indeed, the three words that send a chill down Republican spines, or so we're told. Three words that are having people get arrested, Molly. This week we saw white conservative Republicans in Loudoun County, Virginia get dragged out of a hall by police, get arrested. You know, back in the day, people were arrested protesting the Vietnam War, protesting the Iraq War, protesting climate change.

But no, these people are willing to get arrested to protest something that isn't being taught to their kids and that they couldn't define if their lives depended on. It reminds me of the Common Core and the Tea Party, right? Things that nobody sort of understand. People don't, on the right anyway, don't totally understand, but know that it's very dangerous and they must stop it at all costs. I mean, the one that gets me, and I know where Jahat Ali has written this for The Daily Beast, but it's something I raised with Kimberly Crencher, who is one of the co-founders of Critical Race Day.

What reminds me the current moral panic over CRT is the Republican moral panic over Sharia law. Remember that in the wake of 9-11? It was Sharia law, creeping Sharia, they called it. Hashtag Creeping Sharia. And it was the same playbook, scared of bejesers out of white folks about brown or black folks, use a term they have no idea what it is. They then pretend they know what it is. You know, they could never have defined Sharia if their life depended on it.

And then you actually, and this is where it becomes unfunny and actually very serious, they actually pass laws to actually crack down on it. So multiple states pass laws banning Sharia. These were copy and paste laws, just like the critical race theory laws are copy and paste. Same wordings used for that campus is. and schools. In Oklahoma, I believe they amended the state constitution to say Sharia could never be used in Oklahoma law. By my count, there are fewer Muslims in Oklahoma than people who say they are Jedi Knights, right? But that's what the census show. But that's what Republicans did

with Sharia. That was brown people. That was people who look like me. And now it's critical race to. Let's be clear. It's the race part of it that they have an issue with. And that is what they are so scared of right now and why they're trying to scare everyone with discussions about CRT because it's black people talking about slavery, talking about things we don't want to talk about. They can't define it. I mean, we all know this. Right. Exactly. The Alabama State Legislature who sponsored the law there was asked by a local columnist to define it. He couldn't define it. He was asked which books he had read on critical race theory. He hadn't read it. Yes, I'm surprised. It's quite shocking. Shocking. Shocking. He hasn't read any books on it. It's interesting to me,

as a granddaughter of a communist who was blacklisted and jailed, it feels very familiar, right? The idea is that there are ideas that are so dangerous that if they're taught, they're going to create this group of people who know things. And of course, that's been part of the Republican playbook, as I mentioned on my show on Peacock the other night, that this has been around for decades, right? This idea that if we send our young people to these liberal colleges, they will find out things we don't want them to find out. They will be taught things about history.

we don't want them to know. And there's always been that scare on the right. There's always been that fear. This is all about fear. And it's interesting you say familiar. I interviewed Kimberly Crencher on my show, who is one of the co-founders of critical race theory, someone who actually knows what it is.

And she made the point that, you know, it would be laughable, this entire hysteria, if it weren't so dangerous and so familiar, she said to me. She said it's a mob mentality. And the analogy she used trying to willie hortenize racial justice, going back to the 1980s in Bush Senior, supposedly the good Bush, who of course ran the racist ads about Willie Horton.

And this is what they've always done. Pick an issue about black or brown people, Muslims or black people, and go after it. And that's what they're doing. And you're seeing the reporting now from Politico that the Trump team think this is going to win them the midterms. And you know what? I don't think they're necessarily wrong. They're actually good at weaponizing this stuff. Right.

Well, that's the thing that's sort of amazing is that this works for them because they're so good at messaging. And Democrats don't even – I mean, I think the things that things, that is the most problematic in my mind is that a lot of these Democrats, they don't want to lower themselves to responding to this, but when they don't respond, they lose. That is, it's always that classic problem. The problem with Trump, like, do you amplify the message by rebutting it, or do you actually leave space for people to spread this crap everywhere? I mean, they have their own media, you know, silo environment, echo chamber, propaganda, whatever you want to call it. You look at their study done by media matters, 1,300

references to critical race to me in the last two and a half months alone. Like, you cannot beat that kind of message discipline that they have on the right. There is no equivalent of it on the left among liberals in kind of mainstream media. There's nothing close to this. Look at the way they did Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss. It was two weeks of nonstop back-to-back coverage on Fox, hour after hour, to the point where if you poll people, everyone had heard the story, and they are masters of that. Now, look, silver lining, it does backfire on them sometimes.

They did the caravan in the same way in 2018. They pushed the caravan every day, every hour. And they didn't win the midterms. They lost pretty badly. And then they stopped talking about the caravan the day after the midterms. Weird that. It's weird how the caravan just disappeared from the headlines. I just want to get back to this for a second because Vice President Harris is now going to the border, right?

Which conservatives consider to be a huge win. Go to the border. Right. Now, and I do think it is, you know, they won with this. talking point because now, you know, the idea is that something is going to happen at the border. And we all know that conservatives use the border for photo ops. Photo ops nowadays with them in camo on gunboats. Like they've registered it up even beyond what they used to do in the past.

There was a time when no respectable Republican would have done that. And now that's where we are now. That's the era we live in. Look, when it comes to immigration, the Democrats have been their own worst enemies for so many years. They've allowed the framing of it to be a security issue, to be. about control, about who you let in. Even this whole debate when Biden came to office in the first few months where they made a big thing out of,

you know, child detention and kids coming across unaccompanied, even there, you know, there were very few Democrats who were willing to come out and say, you know what, people seeking asylum is not illegal. And by the way, this whole crisis began on Donald Trump's watch. And also, what's your alternative? Like, no one ever asked Republicans. I never hear Republicans being asked, okay, so how are people supposed to get asylum?

Oh, wait, you don't support any asylum. Fine. Say that, then. Own it. You know, children, you know, you don't want children in detention centers while we find their family. Remember, the big difference between kids in detention now and then, and I'm not a fan of kids in detention under any party. But the difference is, Democrats are trying to get them to their families or to foster care. Republicans were using child detention as a deterrent specifically. That's how it was advertised, pulling children from literally breastfeeding babies from the breasts of their mothers. So the answer is, do you want to keep them in? detention forever. Oh, no, you want to kick them out to Mexico. This is the argument I had with Dan Crencher on my show. Like, okay, what happens in Mexico? You just dump them there and you never talk about it again. Like, out of, that's the Republican policy on immigration, right? Yeah. Out of sight, out of mind. As long as we don't see them on our camo wearing visits to the border, there is no problem. Yeah, I mean, the border has been amazing. And it is, I feel like the thing Democrats should be messaging is that our population is not growing in the way it needs to for our economy to boom. Good luck with that, Molly. Good luck getting anyone to message that.

I mean, Democrats should be messaging. Could be the name of a podcast where we talk for hours and hours and hours about all the missed opportunities, own goals, self-contradictions that we get from this Democratic Party. I mean, look at the S-1 debacle last week. Where was Joe Biden's messaging on that? Where was the president? Where was the leadership? We had so much about how it was such an important bill. Right. And it just crumbled on the first. day. Well, and why use the House bill at all? Why not craft your own? I mean, you're the Senate. You can do whatever you want. I mean, to be honest, that wouldn't have made a difference because Joe Manchin said. I mean, if Joe Manchin hadn't voted for it, that's a different argument.

Joe Manchin comes on board and says, you know what? I have my issues with this House bill, with S-1, with H.R.1. But I've been told that we're going to, when we do the debate, my suggestions are going to be included. Republicans, of course, shot down the debate. That's the whole point of the filibuster. And I think that is where you have to say, well, hold on, what next? It's just like we just moved on quietly from S1 being defeated. This is why I don't get about Democrats. On the one hand, apparently democracy is at stake, which I do believe it is, but I hear Democrats telling me it's at stake.

And then the next minute, oh, but wait a minute, we can't do anything about it. We've got to go, you got Joe Biden, you know, we're just, we're speaking now, what, moments after Joe Biden's coming out of the White House with his pals in the Senate announcing an infrastructure bill. And all I can think about is, yay, we're going to lose our democracy. But at least the bridges won't fall down. Well, some of the bridges. I mean, it's not that big good infrastructure bill.

It's poultry to quote Senator Richard Blumenthal. That's right. I mean, and he's hardly some far leftist. Richard Blumenthal. Bill, I just want to get back to the panic in the schools for a minute, critical race theory. So DeSantis' bill, which we talked about yesterday, is amazingly vague, but it does threaten funding. It does. And this is what, I mean, there's so many ironies here.

There's an irony of a party that claims to hate state power. using state power in this way, that claims to hate using the power of the purse for these things, using it in this way. There's a party that claims to be the party of free speech, trying to restrict free speech on campus in our schools. There's the party that claims to be all about the right to offend and against political correctness and against snowflakes, saying, oh, no, I can't hear anything about the history of slavery in this country. That will make us all turn on each other. So it's like the hypocrisy, level after level of hypocrisy. And they're so unself-aware. Sometimes I think maybe they're just all cynical.

liars. And sometimes I just think, no, maybe they really are just that's unself away. You had Laura Ingram on Fox News the other night saying, if Critical Race Theory is going to be accepted by General Millie and the military, we should not fund the military. And it's kind of like, really, you're for defund the military? I'm with you, Laura Ingram. Wow. Like, you don't see any irony in calling for the defunding of the military having spent the last 18 months on another panic about defunding the police? That Millie interview was fascinating to have Matt Gates, who is still under investigation, sort of pushing General Millie and General Millie saying, like, you know, I've actually read things. And I mean, that was so interesting and strange. Do you think, and I can't

believe I was like taking General Millie's side. I was like, maybe the army is good. I know. I was like, Millie should have resigned over Lafayette Square. And yesterday I was like, ah, okay, forget about it. That was, that was worth it. Just that intervention. I mean, he made such obvious points. Again, Molly, we live in such a low bar America, right? The bar is so low. I think that might be redundant, but yes. But when General Millie comes out and says, I read Marx and Mao Zedong doesn't make me a comment. It's like, uh, stating the obvious.

But you're like, but we're all like cheery. We're like, yes. Millions of people go viral, General Millie for stating the freaking obvious. Like, that's how desperate we are for some common sense from normal people in our politics. And as for Matt Gates, again, sorry, sorry, this is all on the Democrats. Why is he sitting on any of these committees? Yeah, why is he sitting on any of these committees?

Democrats could kick him out. Ilhan Omar is. threatened with expulsion from committees for every tweet she sends, she gets threatened with expulsion from a committee. This guy is accused of one of the most serious crimes known to man. He denies it, to be clear. And yet he's sitting on a committee. He's sitting on the judiciary committee getting to ask questions to the FBI director, which is investigating him. If you saw this in Venezuela, you would say, wow, what a failed state that is, that members of the governing or, you know, opposition party can quiz the head of the security forces. I mean, just bizarre.

It's investigating them. No, that is amazing. And it is, I don't quite understand why Democrats haven't taken more. I mean, they did Marjorie Taylor Green, but all of the other people like Mo Brooks. Yeah. Gossar? Paul Gossar is the one that should have been. I mean, Paul Gossar attended a white nationalist conference, attended by a Holocaust deniers. He then went online and tweeted out white nationalist memes. Right. And then he referred to a dead insurrectionist as having been executed by the police. I mean, at what point do you say Paul, his own family have disowned him, right? His siblings. I interviewed them on my show. His siblings have disowned him, but the Democratic Party

won't strip him of any committee assignment. No, and Mo Brooks is, you know, spoke at the stop the steal and is running, it's going to be a senator. Mo Brooks is going to be a senator. If you just look at some of these state races, you just want to tear your hair out. What's his name the guy in Ohio,

Josh Mandel, who is leading the pack in the Republican vacant Ohio seat? This is the guy who said, Ilhan Omar. should be deported. I mean, literally, five, ten years ago, you would have lost your job in any walk of life. That would be KKK propaganda telling an American citizen that they should be deported, a black American citizen. Now it's like, not a single Republican was asked to answer for it, not a single Democrat went in front of a camera and made it into a story to go back to my point

earlier about Fox and critical race story. There is nothing on the left or liberal side that allows them to actually take advantage of the outrages. And I don't want to say the word gaff. It's an understatement of what the Republicans offer on a daily basis. Yeah, it is amazing to me. And I do think with Ilhan Omar, you see so much anti-Muslim sentiment and racism focused on her. And you definitely feel like there are still venues where it's not being called out at all. It's not being called out by our own colleagues. I mean, this is where, you know, I've said this before and I'll say it again.

If, God forbid, one of the many nut cases who have threatened Ilhan, Omar's life. One of them was prosecuted after being found with hundreds of bullets and weapons in his house. The number of people that she'd threatened with death by, if God forbid one of them were to succeed in killing her, I would say that the blood is not just on Republican Party's hands who incited this stuff, but the Democratic Party who never really have had her back and have always been immediately bullied into, pressured into spun into, like, you must condemn Ilhan Omar. It's both sides. If we're going to condemn Steve King, you must condemn Ilan Omar. And it's kind of like they, even when she's misquoted, like recently, where she was literally talking about an international criminal court investigation into Afghanistan, America, the Taliban, Hamas, Israel.

And she simply pointed out, all of those should be right. It was immediately spun by the right and media. And then you had all the Democrats come out and say, yes, yes, she should apologize. You know what the group of Jewish Democrats who came out to condemn her for anti-Sembourg? You know what they said in their statement? They said that she was giving cover, potentially giving cover to terrorist groups. That is the definition of Islamophobia to tell a Muslim that they are supporting terrorism when they're not. I mean, that is the equivalent to me telling a Jewish person that, you know, you like money. It's a classic Islamophobic. I know we're sadly in this country, we're very familiar, rightly so, with anti-Semitic tropes. We're not as familiar with Islamophobic

tropes. When you keep telling a Muslim member of Congress who has never said anything in defense of Hamas, that you are pro-Hamas or pro-terrorist, that is Islamophobic. And I would just love one time for Pelosi Schumer Biden to come out and say, you know what, we're fed up of all the racist attacks on the non-white members of our party. Just one time. Do it. Yeah, it is just completely shocking. But another thing that I'm curious to know, which I've actually been thinking a lot about because I wrote about Vice President Harris and the kind of criticism she gets. And I was thinking, can you think of a woman politician who is not ultimately kind of destroyed by the media? That's a great question. I've been thinking about this because I was thinking, well, you know, I was thinking about all the kind of attacks that the vice president gets and how. they sort of don't, you know, Biden kind of escapes them. Oh, 100%.

I mean, the reason Biden is president is the irony is the left gets accused. Liberals get accused of identity politics. But the irony is that the reason Donald Trump is president and the reason Joe Biden is president is heavily to do with identity politics in different ways, of course. But, you know, Donald Trump was the greatest practitioner of white identity policies we've seen in this country for decades. And Joe Biden, while he's not a practitioner of it, it's definitely a beneficiary of it. We know for a fact that people said, okay, we like the comfortable, non-eastern, scary old white dude who looks like my grandpa rather than the scary Jewish Marxist or the woman who wants to put, you know, the woman who wants to put taxes on everyone. You know, Warren,

Sanders, Kamala Harris. It was easy to reject them in the primaries, whereas Joe Biden was like the familiar guy. And we all know that Barack Obama picked him as his vice president for that specific role to play the safe white older dude, flanking the first black president. And, you know, that is the reality. And Joe Biden did the reverse, putting a black woman, a mixed race woman on his ticket, good for him for doing that. But, you know, she got a lot of the, as you say, she got a lot of the attacks that he didn't. I keep thinking of that Dave Wigel reporter that are all the conservative conferences, they can't sell anti-Biden merch.

Yes. Like, so true. Because it's like, I wonder, why is that? Why is that? Why can't they sell it? What is it about the old white Christian dude that they can't, that they can't sell anything about it? Why is it that they're able to sell stuff about Hillary and Barack and Kamala?

Yeah, it's odd. But do you think this means that we're just never going to have a woman in executive branch who gets elected on her own. I mean, I just can't see. I mean, I keep trying to look for a woman who can. I don't know, to be honest. I would like to say yes, but the realities, you know, do you remember when Bernie Sanders Elizabeth Warren had their fallout during the election and I like both of them? I thought Warren handled it badly because from my understanding of what Bernie said and none of us were in that room, Bernie Sander was pointing out what you're pointing at. He wasn't endorsing the view. He was pointing out that sadly there's enough people to, you know,

cynically either push this line that we can't have a woman president or that believe it's not possible. And those of us who say it's not possible, we're falling into the trap, right? It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we say, oh, well, America will never vote for a woman president. Well, they won't if we keep saying stuff like that. So the first point is we need to say, put aside whatever doubts we have in our minds about our fellow citizens and say, I'll vote for a woman president. I don't see why everyone else won't or shouldn't. I mean, it's embarrassing, right? Most countries, most of our peers have had women leaders, right? You know, developing countries, Muslim majority countries. For those in America who like to lecture Muslims on misogyny, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia,

have all had elected female heads of government or state. You go to Europe, you know, Margaret Thatcher, 1979 in the UK, Theresa May since then. I mean, it's ridiculous that the United States America, which talks such a good game on rights, on freedom, on progress, on feminism. You know, Hillary Clinton had to run twice second time round. She was the most qualified person running for president in a generation and lost to the Carnival Barker ex-reality TV star man accused of multiple sexual assaults. I don't think America will ever live down 2016. Yeah, no, it's true. So, Betty, you added this really great thing on the show last night, I believe it was about that all the conservatives will always say that this is a republic and not a democracy.

Did you talk to us about that? So if anyone spent any time arguing about any of these issues that we've talked about today, especially democracy voting rights, the idea of undemocratic Senate, the idea of an undemocratic electoral college, the filibuster, why does it support, you know, why do 60 people get to beat 50? The response you will invariably get from someone on the internet or from a member of the Senate, like a Mike Lee or a libertarian pal of his like Rand Paul is, we're a republicic, not a democracy. In fact, Senator Mike Lee declared this on Twitter. They said, we are not a democracy.

And there's this weird thing. They say it, not just as a kind of fact, but they say it as if it's a mic drop moment. It's like, ha, ha, ha, we have defeated you in this debate over political theory. Look at you, foolish you. Don't you know, the founders were against democracy? And you can find lots of memes online from Hamilton and co saying democracy is bad. And it's true. Right.

Turning point USA. Yeah, and the founders did say democracy is bad. But they weren't talking about the democracy that we're talking about. they were very clearly explicitly talking about the kind of ancient direct Athenian democracy, where people turn up in yogas at arenas to kind of decide governance together. Like the only place I can think of in the Western Wall that does that in any variation is Switzerland, right? But nobody, no, everyone else is representative government.

And what the founders wanted was represented as democracy. That shouldn't sound so shocking. We all know the stories. We all know the checks and balances. And I just went through some of the quotes on my show last night from James Madison, from Alexander Hamilton, talking about. what is the sovereignty of a country, the way a government should be set up, is through representative government based on the people's views. In fact, you know, Madison talked about a republic being about

majority rule. This idea today that a minority is what they wanted. They wanted to protect a minority, but not empower one. They didn't come up with the filibuster. It was an important point. So many politicians, including members of the Senate, including Democrats, sorry to say, and you know the two Democrats I'm thinking of always imply that the filibuster is some ancient founding principle of this country. No, the founders wanted a majority ruled Senate. Now, did they set up a system which, you know, pushed back against majority rule that set all sorts of blocks and checks like the electoral college, like two senators, but they're, yes, of course they did. And we could talk about that. But the idea that a majority should not govern because we're a republic, not a democracy,

makes no sense. It's ridiculous. It's like saying, somebody said on Twitter to me, it's like saying, I'm a trout, I'm not a fish. Well, look, a republic is a type of democracy, representative government. So it fundamentally comes back to the idea that they simply do not want majority rule because they know they are the minority. Look at the voting. A Republican last won the White House at the first attempt with a majority of the popular vote in 1988.

You have to go back to 1988. That is a long time ago. It's been 33 years since the Republican Party won the White House first time round, with a popular vote ring. That tells you everything you need to know about the fact that they are a minority party. They are the party of a dwindling, overly rural, conservative white minority. It explains everything about our politics right now in terms of their backlash over race and the browning of America, and in terms of their defense of a fundamentally undemocratic system.

The Senate, 50-50 Senate, a lot of people don't realize this is we have a 50-50 Senate, but the 50 Republicans in the Senate, they represent 43 million fewer Americans than the 50. Democrats in the Senate. That's an astonishing. That's not what the founders wanted. That is not how America was built. And we have to reform our system to reflect that. The idea, and you know, I quoted Lincoln at the end of my clip last night, you know, the greatest Republican president of all time, who says, you cannot have a permanent state of minority rule. That is unacceptable. And that is what we have right now across the country, from state to federal level. It is minority rule all the way down in terms of the Republican Party's control of our governance. And there's no way to fix it, because

Democrats are never going to do anything. So that's a two-part statement by you. There is a way to fix it, but as you say, that requires the Democrats to get off their back sides and take it seriously. The problem is, as I said at the start of our conversation, these guys talk a good game on democracy. I mean, Joe Biden, you can find some great rousing lines about defending democracy and Jim Crow on steroids.

But has he come out strongly for D.C. statehood? I haven't heard it. I know he does support it, but he hasn't come out vocally for it. Does he support getting rid of the filibuster? No. Does he support getting rid of the Electoral College? Of course not. How about Supreme Court reform? He gave it to a committee, a commission, and kicked the can down the road. Can you imagine if the Republicans were in this position right now?

The Republicans had just won the House, the Senate, the White House, and they looked around and saw that they were in trouble? You think they wouldn't pass D.C. statehood, get rid of the filibuster and justices to the Supreme Court in a flash? There'd be 76 justices on the Supreme Court in a minute. And D.C. Puerto Rico, if they were Republican majority, would be, they would have been states back on January 22nd. Yes, exactly. I mean, that is the thing that just gets me so agitated. Is it that Mitch McConnell is better at his job than Chuck Schumer or is it this terrible thing that Democrats feel that

because they're the good guys, they will win? So if better at your job, you define as ruthlessly acquiring and exercising power, which is what I do. Yes, he is definitely better than a job than anybody, not just Chuck Schumer. But look, it is just what Democrats do, sadly. And let me apologize here. Not all Democrats. Let's be clear. There are different types of this. Elizabeth Warren takes this stuff seriously. She's been going on about it for a while. But, you know, does Kirsten Cinema no? Does John Tester know? Does, you know, does Mark Warner know? Look at the Democrats who are huddled outside the White House today. Look at that image, Molly. They're just smite. They're so happy to be standing near Republicans. They almost want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya. It is the greatest moment. They don't

give a shit. They don't give a crap what's in that bill. Let's be honest. They care about the process. for a lot of Democrats, it is the process, not the outcome. Whether it's $559 billion of new money, or $420 billion or $717 billion, as long as they can stand next to their friends, Lisa and Susan and Mitt, and say, hey, the Senate works, as Mitt Romney ridiculously claimed,

then yet, unfortunately, that group of Democrats, yeah, they'll be singing bipartisan shift as the Republicans overturned the next 17 elections. Yeah. Oh, I'm so depressed. Sorry for depressing you, but we need to get depressed and then get angry and do stuff about it. Hell yeah. Yeah. Thank you for joining us.

Please come back soon. Thanks so much for having me. It was fun. Every week, the New Abnormal has a bonus episode. And this week, we're so excited to have historian Kevin Cruz talk to us about critical race theory and what's really going on from a historical lens. To hear this along with all of our past bonus episodes, head to new abnormal. That's New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.

dot the Daily Beast.com. Jeff Stein is the White House economics reporter for the Washington Post. Welcome to the new abnormal, Jeff Stein. It's good to be here. Thanks for having this. We're excited to have you. I'm like a big fan of yours. I read you all the time.

And what I feel like you hit the sweet spot of being very focused on the economy in a really thoughtful way. So I'm curious to note, there's like a lot of economic stuff going on behind the scenes, right? And so I was hoping you could talk to us a little bit about this bipartisan, theoretically bipartisan infrastructure bill that looks like it might actually pass. Yeah, it's the thing of the hour right now. You know, the thing in Washington is, you know, there's always this back and forth with these kinds of negotiations. I can't say that I've covered that many.

But a lot of people, when they first start following this, they see this two sides incredibly far apart and them keep on saying things, you know, we disagree about. this, we disagree about that, and it creates this impression, I think, for, you know, people who are just tuning in that it's not serious, that there's no real potential deal. And I think, you know, really, to my credit, which is the most important thing we should focus on in this podcast. Yes, exactly. I've been trying to tell people that this is a real thing and that the assurances that a lot of the people on the left, hill staffers on the left, thought they were getting from the White House about this deal, appear to not have been.

the case and that I think a lot of people underestimated how serious the White House was getting a bipartisan infrastructure deal. I think it's worth remembering that for a lot of political strategists, Trump's failure in his early presidency to cement a bipartisan infrastructure deal that Democrats were eager to give him was viewed as a tremendous act of political malpractice and that there's tremendous political incentive to do this. And so to me, it's not been surprising that the White House has really been willing to jettison huge and key parts of its domestic policy agenda to get this deal. Of course, the White House and senior Democrats would say that a lot of the important stuff that they are leaving out of this deal will come in the second

package that they'll try to pass with only Democratic votes. Right now, the White House and senior Democrats are trying to do this sort of difficult act where they're trying to say and give assurances that the second bipartisan reconciliation bill will include critical, critical policy measures that are going to fall out of the bipartisan deal. The biggest among them include measures to combat climate change, which is a pretty important issue, and social spending programs, child care, paid family medical leave, universal pre-K, and taxing the rich. I think those are maybe the three biggest buckets that are almost certainly, not almost certainly, that are not going to be in a deal with Republicans. And so the senior Democrats are trying to assure their left

flank that if you guys give us this bipartisan deal don't make too much of a stink, we will get that other deal just wait your turn. And I think there's a lot of trepidation about that. Although some people I talk to today are confident that Senator Mansion will be there on maybe not the full suite of things, maybe not the $6 trillion that Bernie Sanders initially envisioned, but really important parts of it, maybe even expanding Medicaid. maybe even a clean energy standard or other really important climate measures. And Manchin has said publicly that he thinks the 2017 Republican tax law was unfair and that he wants to revisit and repeal parts of it.

So maybe I'm being too cynical when I say, you know, the White House assuring people that there is a second deal with a lot of their priorities in the off thing is maybe a dangerous gamble for Democrats to take. Right. But there are other choices just to get nothing. There are other choices to get nothing right now, but there's a thought, and maybe it's not accurate, but that, you know, what the centrist Democrats and what a lot of the business lobby, which drives so much of what happens in Washington, they are really adamant on a lot of this new infrastructure spending. There's a lot of political muscle behind it, and if you allow sort of the momentum behind the infrastructure package to be sucked out through these bipartisan negotiations,

you make it maybe harder to build that momentum when you're trying to do the partisan package. That's, I guess, the cynical counterargument. It's so interesting because it really hits to a, like, Twitter is not real life, which is every pundit. I mean, there's like a whole school of punditry, which is like Twitter is not real life. I happen to think Twitter is real life,

but I am much more to the left of a lot of this, and I think, you know, some of the centerism is just like switching, you know, seats on the Titanic, But there certainly is this like broad appeal in the rest of the country for bipartisanship still, which is so bizarre to me, considering what Republicans have done for the last five years. Yeah, I mean, I think on the like D.C. versus real world implications question. I think this is one of the reasons I'm trying to be very focused on, you know, what exactly does this bipartisan deal do about climate change? Right. Right. Democrats famously squandered their majorities in the Obama administration. They had legislation that was written and had the support of most of the caucus, the Waxman-Markey bill that would have done a ton and really made the current allegations climate change a lot easier. And the idea that we're going to head into the 2022 midterms without serious climate action is, I think, for a lot of climate experts, a very frightening one.

given what we're facing in terms of ecological disaster, humanitarian catastrophe. And, you know, even with everything that the White House proposed, passing tomorrow, a lot of the climate experts say that's still not enough to avoid these horrible consequences that we're already seeing playing out of... In California. In California, they have no water. And they are having, you know, it's the beginning of fire season, which is something that just started in the last five years that we are now completely normalized.

So, no, I mean, I feel like the fundamental problem is just continually, like, we're headed towards this climate disaster, and then we have, you know, a bipartisan world, which doesn't even see it. Yeah. I mean, I think the White House response would be that they're pushing as hard as they can. They're going to get, I mean, the really optimistic view on this, which I'm a little skeptical of, frankly, is that this is some of the spin I've been hearing today and yesterday, which is that if the White House gets a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that includes a lot of what they

wanted to pass anyway in a partisan reconciliation package, that allows them to dramatically lower the amount of spending that they need a proposed for the next plan. So insofar as moderates are concerned about the sticker shock of another big package, they can say, oh, look, we don't have to do all that spending because we got the bipartisan cover for it. I'm a little skeptical because you're already hearing people saying, look, we just passed a $2 trillion dollar economic stimulus relief package. That seems to

be fueling concerns, not sort of sublimating them. So, I mean, I think it's going to be quite a fight and what we're really, I mean, I think this bipartisan deal is going to pass. They still have details to work out. There's still very important questions, but the momentum

is there. Both sides want to do this. And I think quite tellingly, This, I think, was published. Politico had a good story sort of laying this out, which adhered with my reporting, which is basically that Mitch McConnell and senior Republicans are interested in an infrastructure package. You know, it's not clear how they'll vote, but they've allowed their caucus to engage and push this forward, not just because it might help run out the clock, you know, in the amount of time the White House has to pass bills, but also because they think that the centrist, in their mind,

will be less interested in doing this partisan bill once they get the bipartisan infrastructure deal. Senator Manchin came out yesterday and was talking about how he's on board with all these different things in the reconciliation package, but he is trying to signal to Republicans that they have to be serious about the bipartisan deal or he's comfortable going that route. Maybe that's just kind of a bit of posturing on his part, although, you know, I'm like everyone else trying to figure out exactly what he thinks and what's in his head.

Yeah. I wrote about cinema earlier in the week, and it feels like Manchin, at least, there is no, there will be no other Democratic senator from West Virginia besides Joe Manchin for the next 20 years, right? Like, you don't primary that, like, you just, you know, primaring that guy is giving the seat to a Republican. So he is pretty, like, stable in his place in the Democratic Party. though I wonder about cinema, especially when you have Mark Kelly up for re-election in a year. I think there's like a tremendous amount of frustration from the White House, which I'm actually somewhat sympathetic towards about, you know, they think that, you know, they see all these pieces sort of on like the liberal Twitter sphere that you were alluding to about, you know, why don't they just bully Mansion?

Why don't they just sort of like, I don't know, like run more ads in West Virginia, attacking him. And you can't do that. And, you know, they had Kamala Harris. I mean, I don't know who was responsible for it, but Kamala Harris went down there and Mansion freaked out. And it certainly did not seem to be an effective, smart strategy. And I think it's very easy for people who are not in the White House's position to say, you know, why don't you just try to strip funding for West Virginia?

I mean, there's a real possibility that Mansion could go independent or switch parties or, you know, just say I'm not cooperating with anything. I think it, you know, Manchin voted against the Republican tax law. You know, he voted for the stimulus plan. Obviously, he trunked a little bit, but it was quite, you know, quite a big bill, and he gave it his, his blessing. And I think when I talked to people sort of on the left, like the Justice Democrats types, where they focused and had quite an impact is by, and I think this is in line with your point, you know, people who are in very blue states who vote like mansion is like the big question mark. You know, like the Delaware senators are from like extremely safe seats, but vote very, very centrist and almost like Republicans in a lot of ways.

That seems like the lower hanging fruit for the left. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of good energy there, especially when it comes to some of these people who, you know, it's not the Supreme Court. You shouldn't be able to be there forever. One of the Justice Dems has a tweet I sent printed out at his desk because I had no recollection of sending this tweet, which is always a great sign. There were all these groups after 2016 that were kind of like popping up and being like, we're going to like transform politics. You know, like exciting thing. Like people got excited by Bernie.

And I tweeted something like, to be honest, like I didn't think justice Democrats were going to survive more than like a few weeks. And I guess they have that tweet like from like Washington Post, Schill, Jeff Stein. on the desk somewhere as motivation. He never thought we'd make it. It's funny because I think of you as, I mean, not obviously you're not partisan, but I do think of you as more open to sort of a modern monetary theory kind of thing than some others who write an equal. Yeah, you should tell the MMT folks that in my inbox.

I, like, have not been able to find a neutral, like, descriptive, like non-supported, but also like non-pejorative way to describe MMT that like MMTers will not get mad at me about. I try to like each time I try to encapsulate it and put it in a sentence that is possible by the Washington Post standards, like it gets more and more vague, you know, like the way I describe it. Like please don't get mad at me. I just need to explain this for the listeners who are not us. MMT is modern monetary theory, which is a very kind of exciting to people. on the left theory, which is basically you can print as much money as you want and it doesn't matter.

See, that phrase, like, is totally... I know they get mad. They will hate that. You know, but it doesn't matter because I'm a partisan. But, like, I also can't be like in, like, a story that is not about them, like, in a passing reference to be like, they have a different, like, theory of how, like, sovereign currency works. And, like, it's like, you know, like, I don't have space for, like, 13 chapters on... in a brief clause to describe them. So I apologize to the M&T folks,

but I have not been able to figure out exactly how to describe them. I'm kind of obsessed with it because it's like MMT is now, like Paul Krugman is now MMT. So like, you know. Is he? Well, he isn't. I got him to get very into it, but I don't know that ultimately that's a theory he gets behind.

But I think he's somewhat open to it. I could come back and we should do a whole separate MMT episode. just on MMT and Paul Krugman. Just to make people as angry as possible. But I do think it is, you know, we do find ourselves in this interesting time. And the thing I wanted to just get back to Twitter is not real life for a minute. There definitely is a large branch of punditry that is always trying to like get the, you know, trying to pull that from the news. So, for example, we have this insane mayor's race in New York where we have just a leg.

a cop who lives in New Jersey, and, or not quite yet, but it's coming. And he maybe doesn't live in New Jersey, but he may live in New Jersey. You know, there's a lot of, like, information gleaned from this that this was Twitter is not real life. But I actually think this was actually a sort of a case against some of the stuff that's in that Senate Bill 1 that didn't pass. Hmm. Can you elaborate? Yeah. I want you to tell me if I'm in. saying here. This is like, well, yeah, I need to know more about. In SB one, which didn't pass, which was really this House bill. You mean the voting rights one? The voting rights, yeah.

Yeah. There was a lot of stuff in there that we actually have in New York City, federalized elections, a lot of match, you know, five to one matching. And some of this stuff is really, I think, why we ended up with this, this totally wacky mayor, which is, right, because when you have this five to one matching, nobody ever drops out. So we had a full sleight of candidates. We had two really impressive women neither dropped out. We had like three or four other progressives and it all split the vote. Yeah, I'm not an expert in the New York City political scene, but I do think like whether, I mean, obviously extrapolating meetings from elections is so, I don't know, it's just seems so meaningless, like, the elections are so complicated, like the personalities can drive so much.

Trump had such idiosyncratic beliefs and saying that one part of those beliefs was, you know, it can lead to such misleading punditry, you know, like, I don't know, Biden changed his, you know, the child tax credit proposal from where Clinton was. Biden won, Hillary didn't. Is that because he changed the refundability of the CTC and his campaign document on page 43. Like, I think it's very hard to figure out how to infer longer-term meetings from politics, which is maybe a dodge. I will say, though, I do think it's like not a great sign in that the left, which is, you know, this is their backyard. Like, this is, if the left can't control New York City

politics, like, where is it, like, I'm in Buffalo, I guess, but like, where, you know, where is the New York City core? I mean, it's, it's like, you know, if, if the Tea Party has, you know, if the Tea Party have lost in 2011 and, you know, in the deep red Texas. I mean, it's not an exact but it's, yeah, there's certainly something there. It's like an organizational question. Like, did they not find the right candidate? Did they not? But I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's pretty clear that Adams did very well in the outer boroughs and, you know, Garcia did well in Manhattan, I guess, but, but when you look at the outer boroughs, like, those are obviously the less affluent ones and a guy who a lot of people on Twitter would tell you is at odds with, you know,

the black and brown parts of the city actually did quite well there. And what that means for the left, I mean, it doesn't mean that all the things we've seen in American politics, you know, building towards progressive movements is necessarily invalid, but I do think it's not an encouraging sign at a minimum. In my mind, do you think this bipartisan infrastructure bill is Biden's push towards the midterms? I think they're very excited. I think they're very excited. to talk about it. You know, there's a lot that will get done, you know, there are tremendous problems in this country. Like, you know, there was that terrible story the other day about the bridge collapse and the impact on productivity is huge and we'll have to see what the details are,

but there will be some money for climate change, I think, in particular, to improve the nation's electrical grid. I believe there will be some money for EV charges. charging stations, that could be a really big deal to make those more accessible and to help with a transition away from dirty cars. And I think it's not crazy for the Biden administration to think that there will be tangible material benefits that will be delivered from this. I think it's also worth wondering. I mean, I reported this morning that they're planning on reappropriating some of the unemployment benefits that are not being spent from the relief package to pay for the infrastructure plan. Are there a lot of people on unemployment,

who are seeing their benefits stripped away, who will, even if it's technically the fault of the Republican governor, will those people be mad at Biden or Democrats and sit out the next election, even if they see the roads getting fixed? Like, I think that's a totally fair question. Right. Impossible to know, though. But again, if Democrats messaged better, who knows, right? I mean, Democrats need to say, like, these are the Republican governors taking away your unemployment benefits because they think it'll make you work. I mean, it's like one of the sort of cruelest things I've ever read. But I have one last question for you. As someone who, like, thinks a lot about what happened during Obama.

It strikes me, and I'm curious to know if you think I'm crazy, that Biden is good at working Congress and the Senate, or at least if this passes, he will go down as that in a way that Obama wasn't. I think that's really true. And I think that's something the White House is clearly proud of. And, you know, I think they really feel proud of the infrastructure deal and they feel proud of the stimulus. And I think the skeptic would say, like, Washington is so inherently corrupt and so broken that being able to work within it is maybe a good thing, but maybe also a sign of sort of a dangerous willing to compromise and raises questions about efficacy. and, you know, like if, you know, the pragmatic side of Biden has gotten him in trouble in the past,

you know, his centriism has led to a lot of votes that I think a lot of people have said has had tremendous negative consequences from the Iraq war to, you know, I mean, the list goes on and the bankruptcy bill. And like working within Washington is not always a good thing. I think they would say that it certainly is on this for their priorities now, But we'll have to see what's in the package and be diligent about tracking its real world impact and not just saying a bipartisan deal is good on its own terms. Right. Yeah, that's so true.

Well, thank you so much. I hope you'll come back soon. Yeah, I'm excited for our MMT. Yeah, we'll do an entire hour, a special hour on modern monetary theory. It's what the people want. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next.

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That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcast. Jesse Cannon. Mali Jong Fast. What's going on? It's time to talk about people who suck. That's the time. I see it on my watch. That's the time. You know. You have an Apple Watch. Could you program that so that when we do this segment for it? Okay. Okay.

Are you kidding me? I can barely write my own name. Like, I'm just trying to stay out of jail, man. But today is a big day because today is the day that I can, get to have Ron DeSantis as my fuck that guy. And I've had him before. I do see his constant stream of fuckery. But today, I get to have him because of his amazing legislation, which is almost completely crafted for him to get on Fox News. He has seen critical race theory. He is very excited because he thinks that critical race theory will lead him to re-elect. and eventually the presidency.

And so he has legislated, his state that has ranked 37th in COVID recovery. That's out of 50 for those playing at home. That asshole made a new legislation which says that if colleges are involved in indoctrination, whatever that means, that they will have funding withheld. So this is in the hopes that Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson, Swanson, Frozen Fish, Air, will have him on the air and congratulate him for his ability to stop the moral panic and keep kids in Florida just as dumb and uneducated as the Republican Party needs them to be. And so for this bill, which encourages patriotic education, I say,

Ron DeSantis, knowledge is not your worst enemy. Yeah, reality, unfortunately, is his worst enemy. He really has been at war with it. You've got to come to a man who sticks. Yes, yes. That's actually true. He's looking a little orange. I mean, you just, there's only so much sun you can take before you start to age.

This is why I keep the hat on and stay inside. Yes, exactly. So who is your fuck that guy, Jesse Cannon? You know, it's almost comical. when your name is Pearson sharp and you look like he does and you say really fascist things, it's like, dude, come on, playing the part a little hard. Pearson is, of course, a OAN cable host, and yesterday he went on Iran about how he might have to execute tens of thousands of people for stealing the election from his man, Donald Trump,

that he loves so much. OAN, those who can't. I will tell you, like, while we joke about this, like, it really, I don't know if it's like what I've been reading lately, but I just keep connecting the dots that these people scaring the shit out of everyday people is what's driving the Republican Party to go so crazy. And hearing this fascist-looking freak get so riled up and try to rile people up and just say totally demented things that you know are going to go on to make people do totally demented things, it really is just so depressing.

Yeah. No, they're hoping for violence. They are hoping for violence. And it seems like an inevitability. and it's really quite scary. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks

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