The Daily Beast Podcast - Merrick Garland Is Just Helping Trump Run Out the Clock

Episode Date: November 22, 2022

Merrick Garland is wasting our time. That’s the sentiment of New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy and the show’s brand new permanent co-host, Danielle Moodie. This is Danielle’s first show as official host and she wasted absolutely no time going in on Republicans, Trump, and even Merrick Garland. The two also talk about Garland’s new appointment and their frustrations with the lack of action on gun control on the heels of another shooting, this time against more LGBTQ people in Colorado. Then Maxwell Frost, who will be the first Gen Z member of Congress, joined the podcast and shares his “morbid” but real take on gun violence in this country, what almost made his quit his campaign, and how he truly feels about his state’s governor “dictator” Ron DeSantis. Plus! Ryan Cooper, the managing editor of the American Prospect, tells Andy why Trump running for president again is the “worst case scenario” for Republicans. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today. First, we're joined by Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who's the U.S. Representative-elect for Florida's 10th Congressional District in the first Gen Z year to be elected to Congress.

That will be joined by Ryan Cooper, who's the managing editor of the American prospect and co-host of the Left Anchor podcast. And he's going to talk to us about all the interesting power struggles going on with Kevin McCarthy's Republican Congress. But first, let's have some fun. Hey, it's Andy Levy. Welcome to the new Abnormal. And please welcome our brand new permanent co-host, Danielle, how are you? Oh my God, I'm so good and so excited to be here permanently. Yes, we're excited to have you.

For people who know Danielle, you probably already love her. And if you don't know her, you will quickly love her. I mean, here's hoping. That's my guess. Yeah, Danielle, absolutely thrilled to have you here. and to kick off the next phase of the new abnormal. Let's jump right into it. I guess let's talk about the former guy,

the disgraced former president, Donald Trump. On Friday, our Attorney General Merrick Garland took a break from, I don't know, not doing a hell of a lot. It feels like to decide he needed to name a special counsel to oversee the probe of former President Trump and his mishandling of, or thievery, criming of classified documents that were recovered from his Mar-a-Lago hotels slash home. So Merrick Garland decided to appoint a guy named Jack Smith, who has been a federal prosecutor for a long

time, has worked at the Hague, at the International Criminal Court, where they wear funky purple robes while not being prints, which is a big mistake, in my opinion. And Garland says, look, I got to do this. I got to keep this as apolitical as possible. and my feeling is good luck with that. It ain't going to work. It doesn't matter. But I'm just cynical about that, Daniel.

I can't begin to say the ways in which I am just beyond disappointed in Merritt Garland. Like, first of all, you've had 22 months. Do you know what can get done in 22 months? A whole fucking lot. But do you know what Merritt Garland has done? He's given us bumper sticker slogans. Like, no one is above the law. except, of course, if you're really wealthy, white, and well-connected, like Donald Trump,

then maybe we'll give you a pass because it seems like too heavy of a lift for the American people to put down an episode of law and order and actually look at the law and disorder that's happening across our country. Look, everyone wants to applaud Jack Smith and his credentials, and I'm certain that much in the same way that was spoken about Robert Mueller, that he is a career prosecutor, that he's dedicated his life to law and justice, that he has brought down some of the biggest criminals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This just seems to be a waste of our fucking time.

You do not need a law degree to know how many crimes Donald Trump has committed before he was president of the United States, when he was president of the United States, and the crime he continues to do with the mountain of document that he took to his home in Mar-a-Lago. So I'm just confused why we need someone else to have eyes. on what every American's eyes have been on since we saw our capital building under siege at the direction of Donald Trump. So I don't feel good about this decision, Andy. I feel like deja vu of Robert Mueller and his 10 ways of telling us all ways in which Donald Trump should be held accountable. But if only we had backbones. Well, that's the thing. And I agree 100%

with everything you said. And there's two things here that really annoy me. one is this feels like all this does is help Trump run out the clock even more because every time somebody wants to do something about this, they say, well, we have this unwritten 60 day rule. We can't do it now. And, you know, well, he's running for president now. And so that makes things more difficult. I don't fucking care. If he broke the law, which as you said, I feel like you don't have to be a legal eagle to figure out that he did. then he should be held accountable. And we need to stop giving him this kid glove treatment. And the second part of that is, again, like, they're bending over backwards so that this won't be seen as political. This is the same shit that we see where the Democrats say they can't nominate someone like a Bernie Sanders because, oh, then they'll call us socialists.

And then they nominate Joe Biden, the most like anodyne middle of the road guy in the world. And what did the people on the right do? They call him socialist. And it's just, to me, it's the same exact thing. It's, you know, oh, we can't do this or the right wing will be, you know, there'll be violent response to it. Guess what? We already had the violent response. They're going to do what they're going to do regardless. And all they're going to do here with Jack Smith, if he does end up finding reasons to prosecute and whatever,

they're going to say it was political. They're going to say it was trumped up, no pun intended. You know, they'll dig up some email he sent 15 years ago or, you know, back when he was a college student, and say, see, he's biased, or they'll find out that his wife's third cousin's son went to school with someone who knew Jill Biden, and they'll use that as evidence. And it's just you can't play their game and you can't bend over backwards for them because, A, they're not bound by reality. So they're going to claim what they're going to claim regardless.

And also, fuck them. Like, I'm tired of having to care what those people think. again, they're going to do what they're going to do regardless. They're going to storm the Capitol. They're going to commit other acts of violence and threaten other acts of violence, regardless of what you do. So I just feel like don't play their games. And so between that and the fact that all this does is, at best, all it does is delay justice.

And I'm just tired of justice being delayed. Yeah. And I'm tired of also people telling me that we just need to give things more time, that we don't understand how precarious of a situation this is. This is not even about being a legal eagle, like you said. This is like the fraggle rock of fucking understanding criminality. Like it's like this does not, you know, this does not take like, you know, deep investigative and analysis in order to understand what's going on here.

And so I wish that Merrick Garland wasn't the kind of institutionalist that he's been reported to be where he believes that we need to preserve the integrity. Our integrity is in the toilet as a country, right? Like Donald Trump brought us to the sewer and that's where we're bubbling up from. So let it stop like moving in reaction to people who live on Earth too and actually just move. There's an idea. But, you know, I realized that when Biden decided to appoint Merrick Garland, I thought initially it was like the biggest show of shade I'd ever seen.

Like here, Mitch McConnell, we're going to throw this man in your face. But then turn around and it was just like here, milk toast, here, let me like dip you in some actual fucking lactate, like not even real milk. So I just, I'm beside myself at this point. Okay. First of all, lactate is real milk. Is it? I'm going to ask you to retract that. We are off on a bad foot already here. And this is going to fester and it's going to get worse. If we don't nip it in the bud right now, lactate is real milk. Say it. Please. I mean, it's in a real milk container. It's in a real milk container. God. Oh my God.

I think that that's right. Look, I just want to point out that, going back to what I said, within like, you know, a couple hours, I think, of Jack Smith being appointed, Trump referred to him as a super radical left prosecutor. Yes. And like you said, I'm sick of giving these people more time. They don't need more time. We don't need more time. It's been a long time. It doesn't need to be any longer. It's not like the shit he did. He did yesterday or a month ago. This was years ago already. So just do something about it.

If he had sold a dime bag of marijuana to someone, he would have been through the criminal system already and in prison. Right. Just so folks understand, too, every time that they say to people that we need to, we need to, like, give Merrick Garland all the time that he needs to cross his teas and dot his eyes. The reality is that you couldn't run,

you couldn't apply for a federal government job if you are under investigation in any type of way. You couldn't apply to work in any federal agency, even at the lowest rung, if you have any infractions whatsoever behind you. So how is it that then we would allow somebody to go for the highest office in the land with 22 women accusing you of sexual assault, with multiple investigations over multiple states happening, but a regular low-level person couldn't get a basic federal job with the same distinctions? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. No sense at all. All right, let's move on.

On to a horrific story from over the weekend. A shooting, five people dead, I think 24 injured at a place called Club Q in Colorado Springs. This is an LGBTQ plus club. And it really just feels like here we go again, doesn't it, Daniel? What I have said is that folks, we're like six months, six months outside of the Buffalo shooting. The shooting that took place at a grocery store where a white supremac armed with an AR-15 went in and shot black shoppers on a Saturday morning because they were black and shopping. And so after that, we've had a classroom of children be mowed down by an AR-15. We've had people be picked off at a parade. We've had now, this is yet another instance of violence directed at the LGBTQ community and pretty much giving us flashbacks to the pulse

shooting that happened in Florida where 49 queer people were killed by a shooter. And so the thing that I'm so fucking tired of is every politician's thoughts and prayers. Miss me with it. I am just, I'm so tired at this place that it's been only six months. It feels like six years ago that the Buffalo shooting happened. It was six months ago. Right? And we moved on because then it was 19 children. It's always something because we refuse in this country. Our politicians refuse to do anything sensible around gun violence. And it's just like, well, if you're from a marginalized community, you know, leaving your house is pretty much like rolling the dice. I will point out for the record that, you know, they have a suspect in custody. We don't have a quote unquote official motive yet.

This happened the night before the transgender day of remembrance, which is meant to honor the people whose lives were lost to anti-trans violence. And I'm laughing not in a funny way, but in a Jesus Christ, like, of all the things. And it's hard to believe that there's not a connection there. Again, we don't know for sure. What we do know for sure is that people like Lauren Bober, Colorado Congresswoman, who sent out her thoughts and prayers, has been out there stoking, you know, hatred against gay and trans people.

We do know that there are tons of people online, fairly famous Twitter accounts like libs of TikTok, that stoke violence against trans and gay people. And they, of course, immediately go to the, how dare you when you point out that this is what they're doing and this is what happens. And they go immediately to, you know, how dare you? And I have never called for violence against anyone. No, you've never said, go out and kill these people. You've just marginalized these people and called them things like groomers and talked about how, evil they are and say that they're mutilating children, but no, of course, you're not stoking violence against them. How dare anyone suggest that? I mean, and that is absolutely right, Andy. And when you think

about the things that they have said, the pedophiles, the groomers, when you have the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world that they're saying that Democrats are trying to kill you, what do we think that people are going to take from their language? And I'm so tired of the mainstream media pretending that they don't understand the intent behind the things that are said when Lauren Bobert tweets and says, when we take back the house, Florida's education system is the model for the nation. The model for the nation in terms of making sure that LGBTQ people and their kids are completely and totally erased, right? That we're not allowed to say the word gay. We're not allowed to utter it because of how uncomfortable what. The reality that queer people exist will make straight people. I just,

you know, as a black queer woman, I can't express how much words matter, how much the ability to use language that dehumanizes, the queer community turns into active violence against us. And I'm tired of people pretending that those words don't matter coming from the same people that are banning 2,000 books in school because they don't want white kids to feel uncomfortable about the truth about the founding of this nation. So like, let's understand what they are doing and that these are the consequences. These are just logical dots to connect. It's not rocket science. No, not at all. And the fact of the matter is the ones who have at least half a brain know exactly what they're doing. And they know exactly how their words are being perceived by many of their followers. And they know that among their followers are going to be a percentage, it may even be a large percentage in their case, of people who are going to take physical action because of their words. They simply, at best, they don't care and at worst, it's what they want. And they need to be. called out for it and we need to not puff pieces in the New York Times about people like Christopher

Rufo. We need to not have people reviewing movies by people like The Daily Wires Matt Walsh. We need to just put a stop to it and just it's absolutely sickening. Don't even get me started with Elon Musk and what he's doing with enabling these people on Twitter, but these people need to be the opposite of enabled. And by that, I obviously, I can say with the clear conscience that I don't mean violence, but they need to be shunned and they need to be, you know, whatever we're doing, we're not doing it well. No. And it's, and it's, and look, and, you know, it's, as you said, you're a black queer woman.

I'm a white, straight, cis guy and I'm frustrated by this. I won't even pretend to imagine what it's like for you, but even for me, it's frustrating as hell. And like I said, whatever we're doing, it's not enough and it's not working. No, it's not. And when you look at, you know, this, this bullshit, you know, free speech idea that Elon Musk is putting out like, oh, I'm going to run a poll with my 100, you know, million followers who believe and think the same way that I do to see if Donald Trump should be allowed back on this platform after the man incited, right, an insurrection with his tweets, right? Incited violence with his tweets. And we know the ways that he has used it to weaponize words against people who have caught. out against him who have testified against him that he has used Twitter in this way. But Elon Musk is like, oh, no, let him come back on the platform, right? Because the people want to hear from him. And I'm like, this is not a game, right? These are people's lives. Like the people

who were working the polls in Georgia, their lives were completely and totally turned over, which we saw in the January 6th committee hearings. Right. Right. Because of Donald Trump tweeting out using social media, weaponizing social media against people who were trying to do their civic duty. And we told young queer kids in the early 2000s, it gets better. That's what we told them. And we're looking at what's happening now. We're looking at, you know, Pulse a couple of years ago. You're looking at what just happened in Colorado, what happened in Buffalo, what's happening to synagogues and mosques around this country. And we're telling people that it gets better. Does it really? I'm not so sure, particularly when you're going to allow voices.

like Donald Trump back on Twitter to spread as much hate as possible. Yeah, no, you're exactly right. And that's what I was clumsily trying to get at is we keep allowing these people to have a voice. And we keep, you know, one of the people we didn't mention a couple of minutes ago in terms of inciting folks is Tucker Carlson, who has the top rated show on cable news and who spends a hell of a lot of time on that show going after trans people. I do not believe for a second that he doesn't know exactly what he's doing. I believe he knows exactly what he's doing and that what is happening is exactly what he wants.

And I agree with you. I think, you know, letting Donald Trump back on Twitter, which so far he has declined to do so. But giving him the option and his old tweets are back out there now, including the one about January 6th, we're not doing this right. And, you know, I don't expect Elon Musk to do the right thing and you look at the people that he is listening to on that platform. And for those of you who are not on Twitter, you won't understand this. but one of the people in his ears is a guy with the screen named CatTurd. And it sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. It's fucking ridiculous.

But Cat Tirt is somehow an influential guy in this sort of alt-right neo-Nazi, white supremacist, racist community. And these are the people, he is emblematic and indicative of the people that Elon Musk is listening to and the people that Elon Musk is empowering and emboldening on Twitter. And that's not an act. That's what Elon Musk wants to do. I suppose there's not much we can do about that. He bought the damn platform. And I am torn. There's a large part of me that wants to get off that platform simply because I don't want to be involved with anything that Elon Musk is part of. And unfortunately, I haven't worked up the nerve to do it yet. But I am, you know, I'm seriously considering it. And every day, it's more and more in the Trump thing. And he comes in and he says, oh, I'm going to set up a board that's going to look at people who have been. banned for life and the board is going to look at reinstating his people. And then he runs some bullshit Twitter poll, which he knows very well how easily those things are gamed and how not real life they are. And surprise, surprise, he gets more votes to let Trump back on. Although I have to say it was closer than I thought. So he lets Trump back on. I don't know what we can do,

but we're not doing enough. Yeah. And I just want to say to folks, don't leave the platform yet, right? Like, because we just continue, as folks have been saying, to seed ground. to the far right and just turn Twitter into their white supremacist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynist playground. And I don't want to do that, right? Like I, there are parts of me that, of course, want to walk away and just throw my hands up. And frankly, you know, the fact that this thing is running as well as his self-guided cars right now off of a fucking cliff, it could pull the plug anyway. But I just don't want us to up and do it ourselves and actually put up some type of fight before we just walk away. But, Tanya, let me ask you this. What the hell

is the point of my white privilege if I can't just throw my hands up in the air and say, I'm out. I don't know, Andy. We are joined now by Maxwell Alejando Frost. He was previously the National Organizing Director for March for Our Lives, and is now the U.S. Representative elect for Florida's 10th Congressional District and the first Gen Z are to be elected to Congress. So first off, congratulations on an amazing. showing in Florida's 10th congressional district. How are you feeling? Doing well. Thank you so much for

having me on. Feeling great. A little overwhelmed. There's just so much going on, so much to do. But, you know, we're really excited about it. And I'm just looking forward to getting sworn in and doing the job. So one of my first questions really for you is that Gen Z, as we were headed in and listening to all of the polls for midterm elections, people were berating, generating. Generations. Z, saying that folks weren't going to show up and weren't going to take this election seriously. And then the numbers proved everyone wrong. What do you think that folks got wrong about Generation Z? And what do you, as a new representative for this generation think that we need to be prepared for? Yeah, well, you know, I think the thing that people always get wrong is they always assume that Gen Z has no

interest in being involved in our politics, you know, the amount of comments I get under every post saying, go out and get young people to vote, go out and get young people to vote. Let's take a step back and look at the numbers here, right? Youth voter turnout has always been the lowest part of the puzzle here, right? The smallest part of the pie per se. And that has been true throughout the history of our country. But if we look at the youth voter turnout now, Gen Z and young Americans right now at our current age, are voting at record high numbers, the highest rates we've ever seen. So not to pit generations against each other, but we're voting at higher numbers than Gen X and older millennials and baby boomers did at this current age. And that's for many different reasons, right?

There's a lot of barriers to young people voting. Voting is not an institutionalized thing for young voters. And a lot of campaigns don't even reach out to them. And when the campaigns do reach out, they're not saying the right stuff and it's not exciting young people. So we have record high turnout. the most youth voter engagement we've ever seen in the history of our country happening right now. There's always room to improve,

but people should feel good about that and really look at what's going on. I mean, we saw that young voters prevented this red wave. We saw that young voters voted overwhelmingly over, you know, 63, 64% for Democrats. Why? Because they want a livable world to raise their kids in, because they want to live free of gun violence,

because they want an economy that works for everyone. That's why they're voting for Democrats. And so that's what I'd say to people, You know, don't give up on the youth vote. Half of Gen Z can't even vote yet. The youngest Gen Z is 13. So there's a lot of room for improvement. You know, one of the things that I've been saying as, you know,

the numbers were coming in for Gen Z too was that this was the first generation, truly, that has spent their entire lives, your entire lives, dealing with gun violence, dealing with active shooter drills being a normal part of what it means to, to go through the K-12 public school system in this country. So I wanted to give you an opportunity because your background, you know, has been steeped in working to prevent gun violence. And unfortunately, we're having this conversation

on the heels of yet another mass shooting. This time in Colorado Springs directed towards the LGBTQ community. And so talk to us about what you believe is the difference between this generation, your generation and their understanding of mass shootings and gun violence as opposed to the older generations. And then if I can't, and if I can also get your reactions to yet again, another mass shooting tragedy. Yeah, I mean, look, yesterday was very difficult for so many people in this country, especially for folks here in Orlando, folks, obviously in Colorado Springs and in Colorado,

you know, people here woke up and saw headlines that reminded to them of what happened in 2016 when armed bigotry, armed hate, armed homophobia, claimed the lives of 49 angels here at Pulse Nightclub, a place where just like the Q in Colorado Springs is one of the only safe places for our queer community, brothers, sisters, and siblings here. Unfortunately, hopefully another wake-up call that involves the lives of people being taken

that will hopefully continue to push people to have action in this country. But, you know, what we know to be true is this. Number one, the vast majority of Americans are forced. common sense gun reform, Republicans and NRA members included. So you ask yourself, why are things like universal background checks not law yet when the majority of NRA members are for background checks? Well, it's because what is bipartisan in reality is not what bipartisan means in the United States Congress. What bipartisan means, once you get into the capital, is, oh, does it have the NRA support? Does it have special interest support? Bipartisanship should mean what the majority of Americans are for.

That's common sense gun reform. But our politicians and leaders are not reflecting the will of the people. And that's why we're going to continue to have these shootings. And it's morbid to say, my friend David says it all the time. The next shooter is planning their shooting as we speak. It's morbid to say, but we lose 100 lives a day due to gun violence. There will be another mass shooting. There will be more carnage.

This is a fact. And we have to come to terms with this because we need people to understand the urgency of this issue. This is why just last week I was out in front of the Capitol with survivors of the Uvaldi shooting, March for Our Lives, and Newtown Action Alliance asking Senator Schumer to put the assault weapons ban to a vote in the Senate. We also need a vast universal background checks as well. So there's just a lot that we need to work on. And it's unfortunate that every day we wait, we lose 100 people. And we can't let that number become normalized. It's 100 lives.

It's 100 humans. Behind every number there's a story. There's a family and there's love. We're losing that every day. You know, I'll tell you that for me, as a black queer woman, when I see headlines that are directed at marginalized communities and the violence that we're facing on a day-to-day basis, right, and seeing how it's stoked on the right by politicians

who are using rhetoric that turns into direct actions like we are seeing taken, whether it was with Representative Pelosi, you know, Speaker Pelosi's husband being attacked, whether we're seeing it at Club Q in Colorado Springs or Pulse in Florida or the supermarket in Buffalo or the Walmart in El Paso. What do you make of the lack of connection we seem to make in the media between the rhetoric that is coming out, right from the right, from politicians with microphones and to direct violence? I mean, I think we see a direct connection between the direct violence and what we're seeing from these far right Maga Trump extremists that are scapegoating the most vulnerable communities because they have no

solutions to the problems we have. I mean, just look at what the House GOP, one of the first announcements they made as now coming in as the majority party in the House of Representatives, it's not about, oh, it's not about inflation like they talked about all campaign. It's not about crime, like they talk about the entire campaign cycle. It's not about education. Like, they talked about the entire campaign cycle. It's about Hunter Biden, right? Right. And this is what we're up against.

We have a party here that is stoking the flame and throwing marginalized communities under the bus because they have no solutions and they have not been effective. Just look at my governor, Ron DeSantis. We have a horrible, affordable housing crisis. The worst crisis in the country per capita is in central Florida in my district. We have rising gun violence, rising anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, white supremacy, homophobia, every, you know, many problems here in Florida. And our governor decided to champion the don't say gay bill, don't say LGBTQ plus bill that seeks to erase the existence of queer people in our schools. The Stop Loaked Act, which was just blocked by a judge, and hopefully it'll remain a block,

that essentially says you cannot teach about slavery in our classrooms because it makes people uncomfortable. And on top of that, a gerrymandered congressional map that his goal was to eliminate two black districts. And they eliminated one black person from Congress. Obviously, I'm going in as a black person, but we still lost a lot of that representation and numbers for a lot of people who were gerrymandered. This is the game they play. This is what they do. And we got to be honest and blunt about it. I don't mince my words with Governor DeSantis. He's a fascist, acts like a dictator, and it's very dangerous to our country. That's not patriotism. Patriotism isn't about a flag. It's about the people in the country and loving the people in the country. The far right has

really taken this perverted version of patriotism and is claiming a mantle for it, but I don't think it's patriotic to be okay with 100 people dying a day due to something that's preventable. You are coming from a tough state that at one time, we in the political culture, we're saying it's purple. You know, Florida is purple and we can make inroads there. And aside from you and a handful of others, Florida is fully red now. And many are saying that we should kind of let it go, right? Let Florida go with God and we'll concentrate on the other states. What do you say to that when people in the Democratic establishment are not putting the investment in and are just willing to let an entire state go? We had a bad night.

110 percent. I will not argue with that. It was a very bad night for Democrats in Florida and for Florida Democrats. But I would not say that it's so far gone. I would not say that, oh, it's completely red. Don't worry about it. This is still a state that we can take back. This is still a state where over 60 percent of voters just four years ago went and said yes to.

Amendment 4 to get people of previous felonies the right to vote, said yes, two years before that for medical marijuana, said yes, two years ago for $15 minimum wage. And just four years ago, Andrew Gillum lost by just 30,000 votes. If you look at the numbers, it's not that Republicans had wild turnout, right? It's not that Democrats became Republicans. It's that Democrats just didn't show up. Democrats cast it almost a million less ballots than Republicans this year. There was just really bad voter enthusiasm with Democrats in Florida and people didn't show up. And so there's a lot of work that needs to be done. I think year-round organizing is key to this, which is something we're going to do in January. We're going to keep knocking doors year-round. Our campaign is still going to have staff

and still going to be building those relationships because when election time comes around, you don't want to just be, you don't want to be like persuading your own people to go vote. You just want to be reminding them that it's time to go vote. That's what get out the vote is all about, and not persuasion of reminding. And I think what we found, is a lot of Florida Democrats and these campaigns saw the horrible early vote numbers and got into more of a persuasion tactic there and obviously it didn't work out. So we have a lot of work to do and I think it has to do with our message and the way our message gets across.

But people should not give up on Florida because even though we had a bad night, Florida is also sending a 25-year-old black Cuban organizer to the United States Congress. And so I think there's a lot of good stuff going on here. We just got to lean into that. You can't see the smile on my face right now. but as you were saying that, I was just like, yes, God, that's absolutely right. We have a black Cuban Gen Z are going to Congress to give a face and a name to so many issues and to entire communities that are overlooked.

Another question that I have for you is, at least for me, I will say that I have been in politics for, you know, a better half of my life, right? It said that people become shockingly numb after, you know, six months. And I can imagine that in this kind of political climate, going into a Congress, you know, that is bitterly divided, that we have seen the far right turn their opposition into their full-on enemy, right, with literal targets on their backs. Was there anything that you saw during your campaign or even before that has shocked you? That is really like taking you back and said, maybe not this. In terms of the campaign? Yeah, in terms of the campaign. Yeah, in terms of the

campaign and really learning about, you know, your constituents and what it, like, has there been anything that shocked you or at this point, are we just beyond shock? I mean, there's a lot of things that, you know, shocked me throughout the campaign. I think the main things don't necessarily have to do with the constituents, to be honest, or anything related to the electorate and more of just how inaccessible campaigning itself actually is. I've been working on campaigns since I was 18, full time as my job, and understand the work associated with it and what that grind means, which is the grind on campaign world is pretty

toxic, but that's a whole other conversation. But I recognize that it would take my all, and that's why I quit my job to run. But I mean, you don't get paid to be a candidate. You can't really pay yourself until you qualify. And even at that, it's frowned upon for some reason. And for me, I got to a place to where my finances were very tight. I didn't have any money. I ran out of money like three months after. I still don't really have money. For me, like, I obviously had to Uber to pay my bills. If I had kids, I would have had to drop out probably in January because that's when I got hard. I just think we need more accessible elections. We need publicly funded elections. We need, there's just so much that needs to happen to make this process more accessible.

But that's something I didn't really know that what became a big shock to me is just how hard it is to run for office in the first place from a personal point of view. I'm not even talking finances like fundraising, which is a whole other thing. I'm talking about being able to pay your own bills. And, you know, I think people who put their best, you know, foot forward to serve their community should have to go through so much personal hardship to run. So that was a big surprise for me during the campaign. Yeah, it shouldn't cost tens of millions of dollars to run for office. And you shouldn't need to be wealthy because that is what bars regular people from being able to give voice to issues that we need to lift up. Maxwell, Alejandro Frost,

Thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. And I'm just, I'm really excited to see what you will do in this next new Congress as part of the progressive wing. I'm very excited to see you. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me. It was a great conversation and I can't wait to talk again. And thanks for having me on. Absolutely. Joining us now is the managing editor of the American prospect and co-host of the Left Anchor podcast, Ryan Cooper.

Ryan, thanks so much for being here. Happy to do it. So I want to talk to you about a piece you wrote for the prospect called Republicans are in for two years of hell. And you point to two main reasons why you think this. The first is the House GOP's Freedom Caucus and the second is the return of disgraced former President Donald Trump, or as I like to call him, Drump. Let's start with the Freedom Caucus. The GOP is going to have a very slim majority in the House. This is what leads to the problem, right?

Yeah, exactly. You don't have the 20 or 40-seat majority that they were in. anticipating, which would allow you to write off the craziest people, you know, the Lauren Bovers, the Marjorie Taylor Greens. And so Kevin McCarthy, who's the most plausible candidate to be Speaker of the House, is going to need every single vote or just about, you know, have maybe a margin of error of like four or five. There's already, there's about 50 of them. We're still sorting the races out. They're already making demands. A couple of them have already said they're not going to support Kevin McCarthy for speaker. This is the type of thing they've been doing for years now.

They want McCarthy to give up all of his powers as speaker and give him to the committee chairs, like how we used to work in the 19th century, which he's not going to do. And it's just going to be a total clown show. It feels like McCarthy's been basically salivating about becoming speaker for the last couple years. Is this going to be, you think, a total monkey's paw situation for him? And how does he, can he even navigate it? Is there a way through this? Yeah, he has. his staffers call him speaker already. He's been measuring the drapes for years. And I think absolutely, because this is what happened with the previous two Republican speakers. Paul Ryan, you know, he took it for a while. He didn't

get his Obamacare repeal pass and he quit to sit on the boards of corporations. Before that, you had John Boehner just constantly quarreling with the lunatics over the debt ceiling and shutting the government down, just basic function of government type stuff. And he quit in 2015 after five years to become a marijuana lobbyist and write, you know, profane books about how all the crazy people made it impossible to govern. The party now is much, much crazier than it was in 2015. I mean, the freedom caucus, there would have been like, you know, two or three people that crazy in 2015.

Now it's that and several others aren't even members, you know. The far right people in 2010 would be about in the middle of the party. Yeah, and as you point out, the two former, most recent former GOP speakers, Bainer and Ryan, not only did they went through their own versions of this, both of them ended up not just leaving the speaker position, but leaving Congress completely. And I was just thinking it'd be a real shame if that happened to McCarthy. Yeah, well, and that kind of is the thing that makes me question any kind of real prediction about how he's going to be able to manage us, because you can't think of any other more plausible candidate. Because if you're like Andy Biggs or Paul Gosar or

one of the other part of the basically fascist wing of the party, you're going to need the votes of all of these moderates. You know, there are five Republicans in New York that won in Biden districts. A couple of them in New York and some others in California were Biden double-digit margin districts. And these people are toast in 2024 if they can't distance themselves from the psychos. And so are they going to vote for Andy Biggs to be Speaker of the House? It seems pretty implausible to me. And the Democrats potentially could sweep in, you know, and go for some dark horse outsider or something, get like someone who's not even in Congress, which is actually possible. That would be very funny.

Yeah. I mean, the odds of that are, I think, pretty slim. Impossible to say, but I also wouldn't rule it out because, you know, it's going to be total chaos. And I, you know, I'm keeping my popcorn ready. So I'm assuming you don't think the people like the Freedom Caucus members and their. fellow travelers, we'll look at the midterm results and conclude that things like their campaigns basically against gay and trans people existing are bad for the party. Like they're not going to make that connection, are they?

I think that they're congenitally incapable of any kind of tactical behavior whatsoever. I mean, we're already seeing this. The official House GOP Twitter account is making references to really obscure Q&on propaganda or conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden. It's going to be a total red meat culture war festival for the next few years in the Republican caucus. Because that's all they know how to do. Right. They are unshakably convinced that conservatism cannot fail that all real Americans believe in their lunatic Fox News expanded universe dogma.

And I don't think anything short of cult debunked. programming seminar could convince them otherwise. Yeah, and we're already seeing reports that, for example, things that Marjorie Taylor Green wants, like investigating the sentencing of January 6th conspirators, that McCarthy is agreeing to do that. I guess the question is, and you sort of alluded to this, but just how fucking bad is this going to get, do you think? Well, it all depends on, you know, the sort of balance of forces between McCarthy and the Freedom Caucus. I would guess, because this is what happened before, that he's going to pander to them to their design. desire for like bread and circuses, basically. Everyone wants to be an influencer on the right. You know,

they want to get like a social media career going out of this type of thing. And so I think that there will be a lot of lunatics, spectacle and endless hearings. They're going to try to impeach President Biden for sure, probably like over and over again. They might not get the votes, but it'll be an attempt and it'll be an attempt on the craziest stuff you could imagine. Yeah, it's going to be a wild two years and not in a good way. So let's talk about Trump. Just how big a nightmare do you think it is for the GOP that he's running again? It's almost a worst case scenario for them politically. It could go a few different ways, but he's already running. He's not going to accept defeat, almost certainly. I would be very

surprised if he lost the primary, then just sort of calmly endorsing the person who did win. You know, he already didn't do that. He said there was election fraud in the election. election he won in 2016. He might run third party if he loses to run DeSantis, which would mean Democrats get like 500 electoral votes. But if he does win, now you're running this washed up has been, who is very unpopular, already lost, and you're two more years down of the aging conservative base dying off of normal causes and a coronavirus infection. I would guess, you know, in a vacuum, you'd want to run someone, doesn't have the baggage of Trump like DeSantis or Possibly, you know, I would run one of their blue state governors who are super popular in those states, you know.

But those guys are too moderate, of course, for the Republican base. But it's also the case that Trump brings a certain special sauce, you know, like he turns out voters that nobody can turn out. I mean, if they don't put him on the ballot, it's not obvious to me that DeSantis would automatically do better than him necessarily. He is also into this culture war freak show stuff on social insurance questions like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. He's to the right of Trump, far to the right. He's a conservative zealot. And so, you know, you're just sort of picking between all these terrible options and the party base is too crazy to be able to make tactical decisions about who's our best bet. Yeah.

And also, I mean, I feel like it's possible, even if Trump doesn't launch a third party candidacy, if he's not the nominee, it feels like we're looking at the possibility where he's not the GOP nominee, but he has bruised whoever the GOP nominee. is so much in the primary season that it really hurts them? Or is this a pipe dream of mine? Oh, yeah. He is going to sit down like a nice party guy and refrain from criticizing the person who beat him, who made him mad. He's capable of that sort of impulse control.

No way. He's going to be making catty, vindictive little comments about whoever does win if it's not him, at the very least, for sure. It would have to be a personality revolution unprecedented in the history of Trump, unless he dies, which could happen. Like, you're talking, you know, post-nomination. I'm talking about even during the primary season.

Yeah. I mean, as we know, his attacks tend to be very personal, and he tends to raise speculation about people that is not necessarily true, but it works its way into the public consciousness. For instance, like we all know Ted Cruz's dad was the Zodiac killer. So I'm just talking about even stuff like that, even if he somehow has this person transplant after he loses the nomination, or as you point out, he is, you know, no longer with us. He may have done the damage already is what I'm thinking slash hoping. Absolutely.

I mean, he does kind of seem to be off his insult comic game a little bit. Yeah. Ronda Sanctimonious is not his best work. Horrible. But, you know, he's got a lot of time. There's still two years to get back into his groove of going up before these red state rallies and just sort of rambling incoherently for two hours. So one of the things I remember best for 2016 was when he absolutely devastated Jeff Bush over the Iraq war.

I mean, it was brutal. One of the best critiques of the entire thing that anyone has ever said on both parties. And there's lots to work with with Ronda Santis. He's a creepy evangelical psycho. And he's going to take your Medicare and Social Security. That's it. People forget this too. When he was running in the primary, not even in the general election in 2015 and 2016, Trump's promised that he

wasn't going to make any changes to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. He broke that promise because he just did whatever the party told him to do as far as policy. But he can sense when things are popular. He's got a better nose for public opinion than a lot of Republican politicians, especially the true believers like DeSantis. So do you think that the Trump cult is weakening in all, either among GOP electeds or among GOP voters or both or neither? It's kind of an open question. I think it's weaker than it was. You didn't see, I was very surprised by this. You didn't see most of the people who lost his personal candidates, that is, who lost in 2022. They didn't do big lie stuff except for Kerry Lake. But like Doug Mostriano, who was at January 6th, he conceded for the governor's race in Pennsylvania. And it's just, it seems like the wind kind of went out of the sales. Then Trump gave his announcement address, which was very low energy, just kind of babbling without even the sort of energetic gesticulation that he usually does. But that also wasn't his type of crowd. He likes these big rallies

full of his personal voters out there in the hinterland. Right. You know, maybe once he gets his stride back, then there'll be a better, you know, sort of turnout. We'll kind of get back into the groove a little bit. But clearly a lot of the party wants to ditch him. But they did that. There was a big movement to get rid of Trump in 2015, 2016. Do you remember National Review had that big issue against Trump? And then eventually they just gave up and threw in behind him because, you know, at the end of the day, they don't really care that much. They thought he was going to lose.

But hold up. Now, they're against him again. Yeah, they are. I mean, that was sort of the end of the line for National Review as far as, like, influencing the conservative base in any sort of meaningful sense. It still exists. You know, all the voters are reading, Q&N on Facebook groups and Gateway Pundit and Fox News. Nobody cares about these, you know, hoity-toity

intellectual types anymore. Hitherto, you just couldn't go wrong betting on Republican elites and the base doing the most depraved thing in every single occasion. That would indicate that they're going to go for Trump again. But, you know, things, people can surprise you sometimes. And if Trump really has lost a step and he doesn't have that charismatic demagogue energy to really inspire that fervent devotion. It's possible that this could be the end of it and they'll just move on to somebody else. But I would, I would not predict that happening at this point. That's sort of where I am too. I mean, there seems to be a lot of, you know, people are already sort of writing Trump off and saying that, you know, oh, the party's moved on. You know, and they point to the fact that nobody showed up at

Mar-a-Lago for his big announcement speech. I don't really buy it either. And I think even if they're maybe hedging their bets a little bit, they'll be right back on the train. if it gains even the slightest bit of momentum. And I do think that whoever had Trump read his thing right off the teleprompter for his announcement made a huge mistake because, you know, we all talked about how boring the announcement it was in low energy, but that's always been Trump off the prompter. And as you say, you know, if he gets back in the, you know, demagogue cult leader mode once he's out among his people, things are going to look a lot different, I think. And I think a lot of people who are writing him off are going to be sorry that they did.

People are talking their book in this question, I think, a lot. They really want the Republican Party to move past Trump. They're sick of Trump. They don't like Trump. And they want there to be a responsible, conservative party again, or one that sort of seems responsible. It was plausibly deniable. And I remember when Trump lost Iowa, there was just this origin of celebration from the

Ross Douthits of the world who was like, yeah, see, I told you he had a top. And then that turned out not to matter at all. He still crushed the opposition. He created a sort of quasi-fascist conservative party. People want that to go away very badly. And I think that it's going to take more work than just hoping Trump loses among Republican-based voters, just not something I would hang my hopes on. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true.

And look, I think even if Trump is not the nominee, if it's someone like DeSantis, I don't think that that really moves the needle on that aspect of it at all. No, he's just like Trump. except he doesn't have the sort of charisma or, you know, flexibility on ideological matters, you know, like people kind of forget, like one thing that did happen during the pandemic was that Trump signed all this massively egalitarian economic policy coming out of the Democratic House. Right. I think if this antecedent, that would have been a much harder lift, you know, because this was,

as the Republican senators were saying after a pass, they were horrified at this. We're cutting checks to all the people. people, you know, but Trump knew. Trump knew that that's popular. He just wanted to have his name on. He's got a nose for this sort of thing. And yeah, if you're just all the election suppression and culture war stuff without any of the sort of flexibility of Trump, that's arguably worse. Yeah, I would agree with that. Ryan, thanks so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. This was really interesting. My pleasure. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. So Danielle, who is your fuck that guy for your inaugural episode as permanent co-host.

My fuck that guy is a person who I consistently say fuck that guy to on a regular basis, which is the biggest Trump simp ever, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy is getting ready to get the gavel returned to him. I have no idea why. But has decided that as part of his vow to also, you know, do nothing for the American people, that he is going to make sure that Congress people, Eric Swalwell, Adam Schiff, and Ilhan Omar do not get committee seats on Intel. And here's the thing. When Nancy Pelosi stripped Marjorie Taylor Green of her committee assignments, it was probably because of the innumerable,

anti-Semitic, racist, white nationalist rhetoric that she was spewing every time she had a microphone in front of her. That's why Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Goser and other people were stripped of their committee assignments because they add absolutely no value. you. What Kevin McCarthy is doing here with Swalwell Schiff and Omar is just a childish kind of school yard game where because you take away toys for my friends, I'm going to do that with yours. He has no grounding and no basis. Adam Schiff has shown himself to be a brilliant representative, not only of California, but of democracy as well as Swalwell. And we know that the only reason why he's going after Omar is because the very presence of a Muslim, young,

brilliant woman is just too much for his white nationalist base to really take in. So he's decided that he's going to get rid of them. And to that, I say, fuck that guy, today and always. Yeah, nothing for me to argue with there, sadly. He's not the worst, but in a way he sort of is, because like you said, he's just such a simp. Like, he's just a mass of jelly. There is no spine.

There's no vertebrae. He's just like a walking jelly creature. He's like, I don't know if anyone remembers the old X-Men movie when the senator got turned into like a huge... Yes, that's exactly what I was thinking of. Right? That's, he got turned as like a basically a human jellyfish and he squeezes out through the cell bars. And that's Kevin McCarthy. He's like a jellyfish.

He's 99% water. He's just so gross. So yeah, I'm with you, fuck that guy. Yes. And from now on, I'm referring to Kevin McCarthy as a human jellyfish. Except without the sting. You sting no one. Okay.

So, Andy, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a Supreme Court justice, and I know that really only narrows it down to five people. But I'll go a little further. It's Justice Samuel Alito. There was an article in New York Times that had a very seemingly credible source, basically saying that years ago, this guy, the source and his wife, were very big into the Christian political.

movement and they had dinner with Justice Alito and Alito gave them a heads up in advance on what the Hobby Lobby decision was going to be. And I will point out that Alito denies this, but having pointed that out, I don't care. And I'm just going to assume it's true because it's more interesting. So that obviously raises the question of, hmm, I feel like there was another leak earlier this year in another decision that Alito wrote because he wrote the Hobby Lobby decision. And a lot of people were very quick to say it got leaked by someone from the liberal side of the court. And I remember I and others saying, eh, not so fast. I'm not so sure that's true.

And this sort of gives some credence to that in that if you did it once, why wouldn't you do it again? So my fuck that guy for today is Justice Alito. And if this turns out to be true, I don't know how it can be proven. but if it turns out to be true, I'll be curious if any of the conservatives calling for the heads of the people on the liberal side who they claim leaked the Dobbs decision. I wonder if they will be so quick to call for Justice Alito's metaphorical head as well. So fuck that guy. Oh, my goodness. I have nothing to add other than the fact that Alito just stays a fuck that guy.

I can't stand that man. The fact is, is that there should be an impeachment inquiry into him. into Justice Thomas and their actions that they have taken over the last couple of sessions of the Supreme Court that we just all continue

to grin and bear. Lifetime appointments, doesn't matter if you're a leaker. It doesn't matter if your wife's an insurrectionist. We'll just keep rolling along to preserve the institution. Yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode

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