The Daily Beast Podcast - Michael Ian Black Has Never Heard Trump Be Funny

Episode Date: June 25, 2023

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. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello, and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today, we have an extra special guest with comedian Michael Ian Black from Stella the State, and of course, wet hot American summer, and he joins us to talk about a piece he wrote for his substack called No Joke, all about how modern conservatives might be the least funny people in the world. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips?

Yeah, man. Clips. Yeah, clip it. Click me. Okay. Rod DeSantis, who up to Chris Christie, is clearly America's most prominent sadist looking to be punished daily. Well, Meatball Ron is getting his lashes from Trump this week and getting the record corrected about his glorious job handling COVID that the right loves to discuss for him. Let's listen. Florida was the third worst date in deaths by COVID. That's your scorecard.

It's a sad scorecard. So why do they keep saying that the sanctimonious did a good job? New York had fewer deaths. And again, that's the way you have to, I guess, evaluate a job. This is coming from the man that said this was all a hoax. Like, this is coming from the guy. Like, Donald Trump loves to have it multiple ways, right? Like on one hand, it was all a hoax.

On the other hand, it was my administration that came up the vaccine. On one hand, it was something that was, you know, created in China. On the other hand, it was created by Democrats. It's like, shut the fuck up. Like, honestly, more than a million people died because of your stupidity, because of your ignorance. So to point fingers, even though I hate Ron DeSantis, to point fingers and say like, oh, that's your record. I'm like, check your scoreboard. Jesse, I know it's bad for him to correct the producer, but I just want to Say, no, you said Meatball Ron and it's Meatball Rob. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

I need to get that on the record. It's because I really like calling him weird Ron. He couldn't even say hello properly when he was on with Kaylee McAnneedy on Fox for last night. He is really intensely weird. Danielle, I get what you're saying about Trump pointing fingers. And yeah, he's the last person that should be. But DeSantis is sort of running on this, I did a great job with COVID thing. And I think it's, you know, I don't care.

Really, who points out that you do not under any circumstances have to say that Rob did a great job with COVID. So I'm okay with whether it's Trump or anyone else pointing out that DeSantis actually sucked on COVID and caused a lot of needless deaths. I'm fine with it. I have to say neither of these people should ever be pointing figures because both of them should not be bringing attention their fingers when it comes to putting this. Come on. All right. Well, speaking of Mr. Trump, we now have Nancy Polack. saying exactly what is clear to everyone about the nearly sole agenda of the Republican Congress these days.

Because I thank the general for yielding in for his great presentation today. Today we are on the floor of the house where the other side has turned this chamber where slavery was abolished, where Medicare and Social Security and everything were instituted. They've turned it into a puppet show, a puppet show. And you know what? The puppeteer, Donald Trump, is, shining a light on the strings. You look miserable. You look miserable. The only advantage to all of this is that instead of reversing what we did on the IRA to save the planet or reversing what we did to reduce the cost

of prescription drugs, you're wasting time. Adam Schiff is one of the greatest. The gentleman's time has expired. That was good. That was good. That was good. Yeah. Not the hugest Pelosi fan in the world, but bless her

for that. That was really good. You look miserable. That was literally the best part. Yep. And she's right. We talked the other day about Bolbert and MTG fighting on the floor and whatever. They all just seem miserable. I would pay into a Patreon where it was a TikTok where people just walked up to Congress people and said, you look miserable. Maybe it'd teach some of these people they don't want this job and we could actually get decent people.

Yeah, you can't hold on to that much hate. Like you can't hold on to that much vitriol and think that you're going to live like a happy, productive life. Like they do. They look. I mean, whenever I see Marjorie, and I don't care, I don't care what, how this sounds, whenever I see the fact how old Marjorie Taylor Green is, I'm like, mm-mm, God don't like ugly. God don't like ugly. It really is something to look at her age and look at. that face.

That's why I still look 25. At 34, wow. Yeah, exactly. So speaking of this horrible body and how bad it is to govern it, we're now going to hear Kevin McCarthy. I thought you were talking about me.

Come on. Come on, I know better than to say that on tape and get reported to HR. Kevin McCarthy here is going to get booed and fully lose control of his caucus as a vote to censure Congress, I mean, Adam Schiff fails. On this

vote, the A's are 213 and the nays are 209 with six answering present. The resolution adopted without objection, the motion to consider is laid on the table. House will be in order. The House will be in order.

That was something. So they were saying disgrace. I thought it was shame. Oh yeah. They were saying shanning shame and then disgrace. Okay. Which it's really, really feel like I'm in England all of a sudden. I was going to say, we're turning into Britain.

That's exactly what I was going to say. It's amazing. Yeah. But it's not as like at least there they have, you know, they have the accent. It sounds better for some reason. It's true. It does make them sound smarter even if I'm going to be honest with you. We may have some scary dumb people in America,

but going to a Northern England soccer match, I'm still humbled by the fear I was brought by interacting with some people. Yeah, I mean, look, they're not smarter. I mean, they're not dumber. They're the same. But there is something about the accent that just, at least for me,

makes it more palatable. And I don't know. But this was just insane. I'd say things are going about what we thought they would for Kevin McCarthy, but I didn't have that. my bingo card. Kevin McCarthy, man. Just wow. Bravo. I mean, he will go down in history. I know. And he will, you know. We won't be able to read those books. No. Because they'll be banned.

But he will definitely go down in history as something. Yeah. We won't be able to read those waterproof books as we're living underwater. Listen, Aquaman can see underwater. He can read to us. Well, I can see underwater, Jesse. Oh, yes. That's true. You really want to get into. get into comic books here. I don't think being able to see underwater is one of Aquaman's superpowers, Jesse. Thank you for all these helpful clarifications today. I'm glad we have your expertise here yet again. Yet again.

Man. All right. So this fellow John Durham for folks who weren't paying attention for the past few years, he was someone in the Department of Justice that all the concerns. Fox News would always say he's going to save them. He's going to bring down Hillary, Biden, Obama. They basically cuff every Democrat, even Carter, you know, on his hospice bed. Well, yesterday the Republicans marched him up and decided that they would put him on the stand

and talk about his work to try to clear President Trump's name and dot. To say it went spectacularly bad as a real understatement. Some Dems landed some amazing punches on him, but the unexpected one was one Matt Gates. I think that's beyond the scope of what's in the report. It's literally the scope of what your charging order is. Who put it in motion? We get after it was put in motion, the FBI did a bunch of wrong and corrupt things.

Totally understand. We're trying to deal with that. But when you are part of the cover-up, Mr. Durham, then it makes our job harder. Yeah, well, if that's your thought, I mean, there's no way of dissuading you from that. I can tell you that it's offensive and that the people who worked on this investigation

have spent their lives trying to protect the people in this country and pursue within the law. You went over to do. You went over to, Mr. Durham. You tried two cases, lost both of them, and then the one plea, guilty plea you got, Klein Smith, Klein Smith is back to practicing law in Washington, D.C. today. That's beyond my control. Right, but the fact that you allowed that plea to occur, right?

And then the punishment was insufficient. The fact that you didn't charge Andrew McCabe, you didn't convict the Lion Democrats or the Lion Russians, You didn't investigate Mifshud or the Mueller probe, even though, as we sit here today in Black Letter, that was your charge. Have you ever heard of the Washington Generals? The Washington Generals, yes. Yeah.

And they're the team that basically gets paid to show up and lose, right? Well, you know, I'm sure that the players who exert blood, sweat, and tears don't view it that way, but you might. I think they do. I think they do, because the job of the Washington generals is to show up every night and to play the players. the Harlem Globetrotters. And their job is to lose.

I'm sorry, I was thinking of a different thing. Yeah, yeah. So their job is to lose. And I'm kind of wondering, and it just seems so facially obvious that it's not what's in your report that's telling. It's the omission. It's the lack of work you did. And for the people like the chairman who put trust in you, I think you let them down.

I think you let the country down. And you are one of the barriers to the true accountability that we need. Do I get to respond to that or comment on that? Yeah. Well, I don't know if you've ever investigated it across. Oh, my God. Circus. I mean, so what Matt Gates, to be, I want to be clear on this, what Matt Gates is mad about is that the investigation didn't turn up what he wanted it to turn up.

Correct. That is correct. Yeah. It didn't take down Democrats. It didn't take down their political enemies. And for that basic reason, apparently these people are being paid to fail. or, I mean, long shot, but or there was nothing there. Or that, or there was nothing there.

Yeah, I mean, they were set up to fail by people like Matt Gates. Yeah, and also remember what Republicans were really wetting their bed over, over Adam Schiff yesterday, was because his line of questioning really showed that, I mean, put it on the record, that Russia helped Trump in the 2016 election. Yeah, with which Durham kind of sort of. a cop to. Yep. Although he tried very hard to say that he didn't read the news.

He didn't know. He doesn't watch the news and he doesn't read the paper. And apparently he lives in a little little hole underneath a rock somewhere. I'm so jealous. Oh. Maybe that's a good side business. Like you know how all these conservatives have like the gold lines that they get commissions on? We should start finding real estate where you could live under a run.

and say we can be away from all of this now. That's what we can do for our listeners. Look, bunkers are where it's at. Bunkers are not just a right-wing nut job thing, and I'm tired of them being sort of defamed in that manner. I was jealous with the one on the righteous gemstones this week. I've never seen that show. I've heard it's great, though.

You may know my next guest from the state, Stella, Wet Hot American Summer, Ed, the 50 years he spent doing VH1's I Love the Decade series, one of the dozens of books he's written, or some of the hundreds of things I, didn't mention. He's also an incredibly handsome man and he's here today to talk about a piece he wrote on his substack a few days ago entitled No Joke about, as he puts it, the utter lack of humor in the New American Conservatism. Michael Ian Black, welcome to the new abnormal. I'm a little concerned

that your audience is going to have to take you at your word that I'm very handsome as opposed to having some video evidence of it. So I encourage all of them to just Google images of me. Maybe Google images of you and I together, if any, exist in which you can compare and contrast. First of all, my audience trusts me implicitly because they know I would never lie to them. So if I say you're an incredibly handsome man, they know you are an incredibly handsome man. All right, good. I'm glad you have developed that level of trust with your audience. I support that entirely. Okay.

All right. So let's start with the thesis of your piece and then we'll drill down, as they say in the biz. You write, today's conservative thinkers are the least funny people in the history of a nation founded by actual Puritans. Show your work, sir. I mean, you could go down the list of any leader, whether it's political or a thought leader or an influencer. And I would defy you to find any of them who are. actually funny. And by funny, I don't mean that they make or don't make jokes. But I would use funny as a description of a joke involving some wit, some self-pitation, some levity that isn't

directed at the misfortunes of others, something that isn't definitionally cruel and cutting, some kind of actual humor and warmth. Now, for example, I got on you talked about how handsome I am. If you Google image me, you will see I'm at best a five and a half or six. It's self-deprecating. Right. Is it hilarious? No. Because in fact, I am handsome. I want to talk about the self-deprecation thing because that's a big thing for me. But before we get there, you're not at this complete lack of funniness among conservatives, maybe not always being the case. You point out William F. Buckley was funny. Reagan could be funny or, you know, at least knew how to deliver a joke.

PJ O'Rourke, fantastic political writer, was very funny. So I guess there are two possible questions here. Were those people simply outliers and conservative lack of humor has generally been a constant? Or what do you think change to make the new conservative

so painfully unfunny, which they are? I think there's two things. To answer the second part of your question, but I'll answer the first part first. I guess I don't know enough about conservatives in the past to know whether there was a panoply of hilarious conservatives. My gut tells me no, but I could be mistaken.

But Reagan, O'Rourke, Buckley, like, those are the three guys that immediately came to mind. So, you know, I was immediately able to draw those names from the ether. So there must have been some humor in these people. But then again, you know, as I said in the article, like, you think of like the birchers of the past, not necessarily known for being hilarious. Joe McCarthy, not known for being hilarious. So, like, the paranoid right has always existed, and those people in my mind have always been mirthless.

I could be wrong about that. But what's different about the conservative movement now, as the paranoid right has become mainstream, is the twofold thing that I will now talk about. The first is cruelty has become the point. And cruelty almost cannot be funny, because humor for it really to work, has to be punching against the status quo. It has to be punching up. Like you can laugh at somebody

getting kicked in the balls. That can be funny in a kind of great school bully sort of way. Or if you like America's funniest tone videos and that is the extent of your sense of humor, then yes, that is funny. But when cruelty is your animating force, the humor that is going to come out is of the cruel variety. For example, Trump making fun of that reporter during his campaign, the guy who had, I don't know what his neurological condition was. And he was using that to be funny. Like he was, he was mocking the man and his mockery was meant to be funny. The other element that I think precludes humor in the new conservative movement is a rigidity and a doubling down of kind of hyper-masculinity for which humor is actually

a form of weakness. Like if you're self-deprecating, if you're saying something cutting about yourself, that's admitting a weakness and a vulnerability that I think is sort of the opposite of the image that they want to project for themselves. And so it becomes very, very difficult, I think, to have a lot of humor when humor a lot of times is about revealing yourself, is about revealing vulnerability. And if you won't allow for vulnerability, you won't allow for humor. No, I think that's exactly right. You wrote, you said humor might be seen as a form of weakness, and now you just said it. So I have to assume you believe it because that's twice now. But to me, I think that kind of nails it. All the people that you mentioned throughout the piece,

Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh, Jordan Peterson, etc. To me, what they all have in common, none of them is capable of the slightest, even hint of self-deprecation. I think that just seals their fate. I don't think you can be funny if you cannot be self-deprecation. Yeah. So much of humor has to do with not only recognizing the weaknesses in others, and by weakness, I don't mean like they're weak. I mean like your position could be weak. You're, you know, I don't mean like you're physically weak, weakness and others, but almost as a corollary to that, a necessary corollary, I think to be humorous, like you have to also recognize the weakness in yourself. You have to recognize, I think, your own hypocrisies, your own foibles,

your own shortcomings to have a leg to stand on when you're pointing out all of those things in other people. You have to admit your own vulnerabilities, I think, if you're effectively able to deploy humor. The guy to me who was the bridge sort of between what I'm going to call old conservative humor and new is Rush Limbaugh, who in my piece, I say he had a sense of humor in the general sense of the word. I listen to a lot of Rush. And I know that his listeners found him funny. But one of the things about Rush and that made him such a good broadcaster was there was the pomposity and grandiosity of him. While I think it was true to a certain extent, there was also a smidgen of self-deprecation in it when he said with talent on loan from God.

there was, I think, a sense of the absurd in it. When he talked about the golden EIB microphone, which was real, he recognized the absurdity of it. He loved it. He loved like luxuriating in that, but there was some self-deprecation in it. But over the years, and maybe, well, I shouldn't even say over the years, because I think it was true from the beginning of his career, there was also an inherent cruelty in his humor. So, for example, that whole Sandra Fluck kerfuffle when he was making fun of a woman who was testifying about access to birth control, and he immediately turned that around to call her all kinds of names involving sluttiness and whatever. I remember he did a song parody called Barack the Magic Negro. Yeah.

Like, all of that is like there is a sousal of humor in there. But it's so outweighed, so grievously outweighed by the cruelty of it. And I think the modern conservative movement took all of the cruelty and none of the humor. They've amputated whatever frivolity or there may have been at some point. And there was never a lot, but there was some. One person who I think, who I despise and I went on red eye. specifically once so I could meet her, was Anne Coulter. In A Coulter, I feel like, has sort of, she's sort of in a weird place where her balance of

cruelty and humor is maybe the best balanced of anybody, because she is funny in her own way. She's so acidic. She's also horrendous, a horrendous person in her political opinions, but she can be at times funny. And the reason I think she's able to be funny is because so much of her humor when it's not directed at, let's say, 9-11 widows, is at puncturing at times her own people and putting a needle into her own echo chamber. And that allows her to be funny. All right. Let's talk about Trump for a minute, because a lot of people maintain and or on the left, you might even say they admit that he can be funny. And I do think he sometimes has like a Borschbelt-esque delivery that can be humorous.

But I get the sense you don't agree with that. I don't think he's ever deliberate. I don't think he's ever made a joke. I really don't. I'd never heard him say anything actually funny. I've never heard him construct what I would call a joke or say any. He's mean. He's only mean. And sometimes when he says mean things, people laugh. And I think he expects that response. but I don't think he really understands in any intellectual way what is humor, what makes a joke, why something might be funny, or why it might not be funny.

That's evidenced by like his appearance on like SNL where he didn't do anything funny. They stick him in skits. But I don't think he has any understanding really of what's funny and what's not. There was that thing that he did with Rudy Giuliani where Giuliani was in drag and like that I guess was supposed to be a comedic sketch. It's like he understands that there are funny things, but he can't get inside of it to inhabit humor. He just relies on sort of quick stereotypes or cultural tropes to make quote

unquote jokes. And people laugh sometimes because they agree with his cruelty or they recognize that what he's saying is supposed to be funny, like it has the idea of humor. But I've never heard him say anything that I thought was actually clever or funny. I don't disagree. I don't disagree. agree with that. Just for me, there is something about the way he delivers some lines that is so absurd. But also, I really do think there's like a borsh belt flavor to it. It just reminds me of old comedians. And it's not that he's making jokes. I 100% agree with you. I cannot picture him actually telling a joke. And again, maybe it's not intentional, but there is something that I occasionally can say, okay, that to me, the way he did that was funny. Yeah, I can see that. I mean,

He has a kind of pattern that occasionally will curl up the corners of your mouth into something approaching a smile. But what is that exactly? Is it deliberatively humorous or is that just sort of pattern recognition? I don't know. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that. That's fair. And I think that contrast with someone like Reagan who, for some reason, I think maybe it was on TikTok. I saw a little clip of him at a, it was a Dean Martin Roast for Bob Hope. And he said there was a, there was a line he said, which 100% was not written by him, he said, you performed for 12 presidents. You entertained six of them. Right. And he delivered it perfectly. Again, Reagan may not have been a funny person to have a conversation with, but he at least from his acting background or whatever, he understood humor. He

understood how to deliver a joke. And that is what so many of these guys compare that to Ted Cruz, who can quote Simpson's references all day and say things that he means as jokes. And they're just not funny because he has no concept of how to deliver it. Yeah, he really doesn't. And keep in mind, Reagan was the co-star of Bedtime for Bonzo. Right. It's a man who understands funny. Yes. Bonzo, of course, the chimpanzee. Yes. Reagan also had a warmth about him, you know? Like, I don't think Reagan was inherently cruel. I think his policies had the effect of being cruel, but I don't think it was his intention. I mean, it doesn't matter what his political intentions, where I do think Reagan had a sense of humor, and a lot of that came out of warmth and genuine

affection for people. No, I think that's true, although I think a lot of gay people would probably argue with you that the way he handled AIDS was actually very cruel. Oh, questionably. Yeah. I would not deny that. But Ted Cruz, as you say, I don't think even really recognizes humor. I don't think he has a sense of humor.

And I did post on my substack, the link to his interview on Good Morning America, where his wife Heidi is trying to humanize him and make him warm and she's talking about a sense of humor. And like it's it's clearly painting her to say that he has a sense of humor. And in fact, she can't do it. She says he makes jokes all the time with our eight year old daughter. Of course, they're the only ones who think he's funny. Like she can't even bring yourself to say he has a sense of humor. And then they roll the clip of him doing Simpsons impressions.

And it's just awful. Yeah. It's so, you know, I hate the word, but cringy. Like you're, it's just. your skin crawls. It's just so upsetting. He's so unfunny. You almost feel sorry for him because you can tell there's like a yearning to be funny.

Yes. And that other aspect of conservative culture that I think is kind of apparent. You see it in somebody like Elon Musk who desperately funny. You see it in somebody like Stephen Miller who I don't know if you ever saw that clip of him from high school where he's like making fun of the janitor. And he's just. being mean. He's just being cool. But you can tell, like, in his perception of it is, there's something funny in what he's doing. And there just isn't. Yeah, there was a thing I always said back in the red-eyed days, which is that if you put ideology first and funny second, the funny doesn't

work. Meaning not that you can't make jokes with the point of view, obviously, because you can and you should, but that the comedy has to come first. Otherwise, you're just trying to shoehorn it in to fit the ideology, and more often than not, you fail. And to me, I think that describes, a lot of what you see on the right these days, like from Elon Musk, or you end up getting a lot of the, you know, my pronouns are jokes that a place like the Babylon B can't get enough of, because they're more concerned about the ideology than the funny. I know that that's also true from a policy perspective. If you put your ideology above the policy, then you're going to come out with bad policy more times than not. Like, there has to be a larger aim than just fulfilling

an ein-randian wish list. Like there has to be something there. There has to be something human at its core. And, you know, that's true for both sides, I think. If you're governed by a capital I ideology, rather than letting a sort of small-eye ideology guide you, you're bound to fuck up because life isn't an ideology. Life is a messy, contrary business. And the same is true with humor.

Yeah, I think I need to be fair here. There are a lot of people on the left who fall into that trap, too. Absolutely. To use the word you can't stop using, it's cringy. And you see it a lot, particularly like on Twitter, you see these, there are these certain accounts who have gotten big by making basically, you know, Orange Man bad jokes, as we like to call them in the biz. And it's just painful because, again, they just want to make an ideological point.

And then they're shoehorning in what they think is humor. And it's horrible. But at least on the left, there are people who recognize how awful. that is and don't do that on the right, it seems like pretty much the standard. It's giving a standing oh when you do it on the right. Exactly. In my piece, Bernie Sanders is the least funniest Jew ever created. He doesn't try, though. He doesn't try, which is what's redeeming about him. Yes, absolutely. Yes. He recognizes that he is not a funny person and doesn't make the, I wish Elon Musk would do that, you know? Look, before I let you go, I want to talk about a guy I worked with on Red Eye, a show that you appeared on.

who now has his own show on Fox News, and you sort of drop this as the kicker to your article on a substack, which is why I'm bringing it up. Your thoughts on Greg Gutfeld then and now. So when I was on Red Eye and I was on it several times, my take on it was that you guys were sort of having fun at everybody's expense, that Greg was sort of the mischievous libertarian, and the rest of you guys were sort of, you know, prancing around and making dumb jokes and doing dumb things. And you were equally willing to take pot shots at the right and the left. And I was fine with that. Like, that made sense to me.

That seemed like a totally legitimate place to live. And I was happy to appear on the show. What has since transpired is that Greg has, look, I don't know where his head is. I even talked to him in years. But it seems like he just. jumped on the grift motorcycle and went roaring off into the night because the Greg that I see now isn't particularly recognizable, at least the voice, or what he's saying. Yes.

The voice is the same. The cadence is the same. The smirk is the same. All of that is the same. But it's become increasingly strident and trite. So he's just recycling the sort of right-wing tropes without really offering any new insight and just sort of putting on the Starkey spin to them. The show itself, his new late-night show, which I have watched enough of that I can stand, is atrocious. I mean, Greg was never a comedian

in any traditional sense of the word. He was a writer and editor who, you know, could come up with funny lines and seeing him try to deliver as a comedian is really painful. And it's not just painful in the sense of like Rosie O'Donnell doing a monologue at the beginning of her talk show, which she quickly abandoned because she wasn't good at it, it's painful because there's no there there. It doesn't seem to be coming from any kind of thoughtful or even true point of view. It just seems like it's coming from the sugar high of getting kudos from the right. And it's, you know, and that's incredibly renumerative.

Yes, it is. The one thing I will say is when back on Red Eye, we used to make fun of the people who wanted to get clobes. as the term is. And I don't see the same guy who made fun of those people anymore. No, I want to say shame, but I guess I don't really care enough to call it a shame. It's just interesting to me. Yeah, I think it's a shame. Unfortunately, I have to leave it there. Michael, thank you so much for being here. Check out Michael Substack, which has the very creative name, Michael Ian Black. That somehow feels like a dig to me. No, no, no. I was being you deprecating.

Michael, thanks so much for being here. It was nice to catch up with you. Yeah, thanks, Andy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.