The Daily Beast Podcast - Mitch McConnell Proved He’s Even More Craven Than Ted Cruz

Episode Date: February 16, 2021

That impeachment vote in the Senate was tough to swallow, with 43 Republicans voting to acquit Trump for the insurrection done in his name, by people waving his flag. Even more gag-worthy was Sen. Mitch McConnell’s speech afterwards—blaming Trump for the wannabe coup minutes after voting to let him off. “The most galling statements for me were the ones from the Mitch McConnells and the Rob Portmans and the Marco Rubios after they voted to acquit Donald Trump, basically saying, ‘Well, you know, the whole coup thing was kind of bad and I wish you wouldn't have tried to do it. And I wish a cop wouldn't have died. And you know, he made some bad choices. But you know, I had no choice,’” Bulwark writer-at-large Tim Miller tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest edition of The New Abnormal.  But of course, McConnell and his crew did have a choice. The House impeached Trump on January 13. The Senate decided to take a vacation, rather than take up the case right away. And once the vacations were over and Biden was sworn in, they decided against all reason and precedent that an ex-official like Trump somehow couldn’t be convicted. “For Mitch McConnell to be like, ‘I really wanted to do it, but…’ Bullshit. The only reason that you didn't do it was because of you. It is galling. Give me a hundred [militia-friendly Rep.] Lauren Boberts—who are too stupid to know that it was bad, or Ted Cruzes—who are sociopaths—over Mitch McConnell, trying to try to tell me that he has some feelings about this. Give me a break,” Tim says. Also on the show: Rep. Andy Kim tells Molly what it’s like to be the rare Democrat representing a Trumpy district. Molly gives an update on the Lincoln Project situation. And Tim keeps going in on McConnell. “I know that many listeners will think that Mitch McConnell doesn't have a soul at all, and that's understandable. But he actually does have a flicker of one. He does love the Senate, you know,” Tim adds. “And he wanted to be able to emote about that in his weird Mitch McConnell way. And that's what actually makes it worse… Don't try to memorialize to me. You had an opportunity to do something you didn't. You made the craven move. You sided with the insurrectionists.”   Miller says, “Basically what we saw on Saturday was a Republican party that had an opportunity—after five years of being craven cowards that rolled over for Donald Trump at every chance—finally was able to put the stake in his heart and say, ‘We don't need you anymore. We don't tolerate this. And we want to move forward, even it takes a little pain.’ And 43 of them said... ‘nah.’” 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 it's 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

Hi, everyone. I want to keep this brief. There have been a series of scandals swirling around the Lincoln Project. The most serious involve accusations that a Lincoln Project co-founder harassed young men, including one person who went on to be a Lincoln Project contractor and separately one person who was a minor at the time. Reporters from The Daily Beast and others have not uncovered any direct evidence so far that our podcast host Rick Wilson was aware of such actions. I want to say that Jesse and I both love Rick as a friend and podcast host and have only had good experiences working with him. I personally was an unpaid advisor for the Lincoln Project and have since resigned from that position. As of tonight, the Lincoln Project has released everyone from their NDAs, which should help get to the bottom of this. That said, there have been so many controversies around the Lincoln Project, we mutually agreed with Rick to pause his podcast appearances until at least the internal investigation is resolved. On this episode, Jesse and I will talk to Republican voters against Trump's Tim Miller,

as well as Representative Andy Kim. Hello, Tim Miller. Hello, Emily Jong-Fast. Welcome to the new abnormal. Are we a new normal now, kind of? Old stories of new normal, Christine. I should have said welcome back to the new abnormal because you've been here before. I have. I'm an old pro. You're a, you're a favorite. So the president got impeached, but not convicted. Yeah, sad, huh? You know, just that he has to have some joy in his life. Don't we want to just take away every little bit of joy out of his life? Wouldn't that make us all feel better? Yeah, look, basically what we saw on Saturday was Republican Party that had an opportunity after five years of being craven cowards that rolled over for Donald Trump at every chance, finally was able to put the stake in his heart and say,

you know, we don't need you anymore. We don't tolerate this. And we want to move forward, even it takes a little pain. And 43 of them said, nah, actually, we like being your little bitch. So that's what it comes down to. The most galling statement. for me were the ones from the Mitch McConnell's and the Rob Portmans and the Marco Rubio's after they voted to acquit Donald Trump, you know, that was basically saying, well, you know, the whole coup thing was kind of bad. And I wish you wouldn't have tried to do it. And I wish a cop wouldn't have died. And, you know, he made some bad choices. But, you know, that constituted, you know, I had no choice but to acquit him because of the Constitution. I mean, it was just

such bullshit. It was just the same BS that we've had to deal with ever since 2015 when they're all on the debate stage together, hiding from him and not challenging him back then. It's the same story. It's sort of he got off on a technicality. That they created. Right. I mean, this is the thing with the technicality for the, for the listeners who don't, who aren't, haven't filed this as closely like. The House impeached Donald Trump on January the 13th. He was president until January 20th. We all lived those seven days, one second. into the time. So we should be able to remember that that happened. What was the Senate doing those seven days? They were on vacation. Mitch McConnell decided not to bring them back. He didn't think that

it was urgent. He said, you know, we'll deal with anything that happens after January 20th. And then January 20th comes and Jonathan Turley like somewhere out of the depths of his frontal cortex farts out some sort of constitutional technicality that you can't, they can't conduct somebody after January 20th. But they just had seven days. And so now Mitch McConnell and Marco say, well, if Jonathan Turley says so, then I guess we can't, I guess we can't convict them. And it's like, but you had a chance. They could have done it. So now for Mitch McConnell to be like, I really wanted to do it.

Like bullshit. The only reason that you didn't do it was because of you. You know, it is, it is galling. Give me a hundred Lauren Boberts who are too stupid to know that it was bad or Ted Cruz's who are sociopaths over Mitch McConnell trying to, like, tell me that he has a, you know, has some feelings about this. Give me a break. This was fresh off Mitch having pushed in one last Supreme Court justice in like four days. Yeah. Yeah, if you could get a Supreme Court justice through in two weeks, I think you could have done

the conviction in a week. And I mean, if you listen to McConnell's speech, it was open and shut. Like the idea that he needed to hear witnesses and go through the blah, blah, blah, and McConnell said himself just based on the words in his speech, he said himself that he knew that Trump was guilty, just based on the, you know, facts of what he saw and front of his mind. The fact that people, you know, that people carrying Trump flags siege to his office. Yeah. You know, Mitch knew he could have done it, but what it comes down to is, and this gets to the Republican Party question, he recognized that you couldn't keep the Republican

Party together and convict him. So he's tried to have it both ways where, you know, he still gets to get on this moral high horse while absolutely doing nothing about it and begging Cy Vance or somebody else to do the dirty work that he's too scared to do. So it's not his problem. But I wonder with Mitch, was that speech just to keep corporate donors because they don't like insurrection? I think there's two things that are happening at the same time. One is calculation, the donors, and just keeping his caucus together. I mean, Mitch McConnell always lands where his caucus lands. You know, and he's never as the guy that's, you know, putting himself out there on either side, you know, either on wanting to cut deals with Democrats, obviously, but even on the

conservative, you know, he's never on the far conservative edge either. Like, he lands where people wanted to keep everybody together. That's him. The donors is another part of it. Here's the saddest part, though, is I know that many listeners will think that Mitch McConnell doesn't have a soul at all. And you can, that's understandable, but he actually does have a flicker of one. And he does love that Senate. You know, if he loves anything, he loves the Senate. And to watch these goons just minterate on the Senate floor and try to interfere with their constitutional duty did actually deep down in the depths of his dark heart hurt his feelings somewhere and he wanted to be able to emote about that in his weird Mitch McConnell way.

And that's what actually makes it worse. Like, don't try to have this. You know, don't try to moralize to me. Like, you had an opportunity to do something. You didn't. You made the Craven move. You sided with the insurrectionists. You did.

And, you know, like the thing I said on Saturday was like, what if five cops had died, right? What if 20 had died? Like how many people had to die? What if Mitt Romney had died? What if Mitt Romney had died? How many people had to die for Mitch to be like, well, I guess we should bring people back to do our job on the 13th instead of come up with this constitutional hooey-fooly. Well, also, Elaine Chow resigned. So obviously there was a certain amount of feeling in the McConnell household.

But do we not feel like that that was also just so that she didn't have the pressure for the 25th Amendment? Nobody was ever doing that 25th Amendment. There were like five people in the cabinet at that point. Mike Pompeo was in there. I never bought the 25th Amendment thing either. Maybe. Mike Pompeo was in the Middle East, like tying up loose ends, whatever that means.

But I feel like, do you think that it was career rehab so that she wouldn't have to face questions of why she didn't try to do that? She doesn't care. She's got millions of dollars. They're going to go retire. I mean, I don't think there's any,

I mean, I don't see a career rehab for her. I don't know. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I think a little bit of both, right? I think there's a little bit of face saving in your kind of elite. social circles, right? Where, you know, it's not exactly in vogue to be pro-cop killing coup. You know? Like, so I think there's a little bit of that face saving. But I do, I just, I do genuinely

think that like they were sad. Mitch McConnell's top aide, Josh Holmes, who is just a, you know, political operator, Blackheart too. Like, he tweeted, I think two or three days after the instruction. Like, if you are not white, hot, raging mad over this, then I don't, you're not paying attention. That's the kind of tweet that you said. If he was mad, like, there was a genuine anger in addition to the calculation. And for me, that makes them worse than the Marjorie Taylor Greens because they did see it. They were clear-eyed and they still said, eh, no thanks. I'm going to do anything about it. I mean, I feel like Republicans have this posture of sort of hiding and waiting for the scandal to pass, and, like, we didn't see the tweets.

Right. So they hoped that would happen with insurrection. Yeah, I mean, so, yeah, so this is the other thing that you go. Go back to the two months leading up, right? I mean, you know, there's the famous Washington Post quote that I don't have in front of me the background quote about, like, oh, how bad could it get, you know? Right. We're going to let him play this out.

Of course, it could happen. Right. And this happened with on that Georgia runoff. I think the Georgia runoff foot. in a really tough position. Not that I have no sympathy for him, but, right? He's like, I kind of have to play along with this whole charade up until the fifth. So hopefully, like, the MAGA, you know, rudes go out and vote, right?

And then, and then, like, so then finally on January 5th, he loses and he gets to be mad because he's not majority leader anymore, and he can finally say what he thinks, which is this is stupid and it's bad politics and you've cost me. And then, like, eight hours later, you know, the Senate is invaded by, you know, kind of a raging Confederate mob. Like, he finally said the right thing, like way, way, way too late. And so, and look, again,

this goes all the way back to me in 2015. I sat there and I was working for Jeb and all these other guys. Nobody took shots at him, right? I mean, nobody took shot. Everybody was, everybody's like, this isn't my problem. Let's stall. Let's stall. Maybe the voters will take care of it.

Maybe Chris Christie will take care of it. Let Jeff take the, just let someone say take the, right? Never, and then nothing. Did you ever wonder why, Jeb didn't attack him? I mean, Jeb did before the other guys. And we talked about it. I mean, you know, Jeb kind of had no choice, right, because Trump was coming at him the hardest. And but Jeb was like the weakest person on the stage to do it for two reasons. Like, one, he was a Bush, getting in a fight with Jeb, like, helped Trump with the voters, right, who

wanted to move on from Bushism. And then two, just Jeb's demeanor, you know, he was always more of his dad, you know? I mean, he was like a, a guy that like, you know, liked policy talks. who wanted to be won't be won't have arguments on the issues. And, you know, he was soft. Like, he was softer in his Mien, like his father. You know, his brother, W. was more like his mother, like, you know, a kind of fighter, a spitfire, a fighter. So, like, he wasn't constitutionally that suited to it.

So for two reasons, he was like the, honestly, the worst option on stage. And he was the only one. And then so he didn't for a while. And then finally he did. And then he was the only one. and then, you know, nobody, and then finally, by the time anyone else did, it was like Marco, you know, making fun of his penis size, but it was like too late. Like, the race was over, right?

Oh, man, the good old days. And so it's been a replay of all of that for five years now, right? Like, people wait until it's to the last possible second. It's like they didn't see the danger coming until it was too late, which is what happened with Mitch, too. Exactly. Which opens the door to our important question about that the most people, people want a third party. There's polling that was just released that showed that I don't know. There's some crazy number, 50-something.

62%. You know, there's some percentage of Americans who would be open to a third party. What do you think? Are the wigs coming back? I've got really bad news for everybody. So I hope you got your good, your laughs in with the markup penis thrown back up. This big increase in the third party, I saw the poll you're talking about. I haven't seen the cross tabs. And so this is just based on my instinct, not on not on the data, but this huge spike happens in January, right when the coup failed, right? Like, it happens in January of 20 of this year. I think the big spike is for people who want a Trump cult, a full Trump cult. Like, it's people that are looking at the Republican Party and they're like,

eh, not MAGA enough for me. You know, I want to uncut Colombian MAGA. And so, so I think when people see that poll, they're like, oh, this is good news. Like, there might be a third party that's like this, you know, nice, centrist, moderate. I think that the people that want a third party are mostly, you know, on the right are mostly people that want a full nationalist party. I think if you don't want a third party on the left are kind of split, some are somewhat a socialist party, others sort of want a more centrist party. And I worry that a third party started, like a middle third party that would appeal to me would actually attract more

Democrats that are like worried about the you know DSA and the AOC wing kind of this older neoliberal white or Democratic group than it would attract that Republican I think it attracts some Republicans I think that within that 61%

there's a you know three four five six percent or something yeah the Bill crystals my the dispatch more than a few listen to like these David French like David French is a as a Christian, conservative, just can't get there on the Trump stuff, and would love to have a center-right third party, I think. But I just think that's only about 5% of the country. And I think that, like, the big spike, this 25% is from the people who want, you know,

Victor Orban, Bolsonaro, nationalism. Yeah, I'm sorry to bring everybody down, but that's what I thinks what's happening. That's going to be, should we talk about Marco Rubio's penis quote again? I feel like that might be safer. Yeah, let's hope there's no third party, but there were seven Republicans who did the right thing. Can we talk about the calculus there? Sure. And I mean, I think that the person that I'm the most proud is maybe too nice. The person that surprised me pleasantly the most was Bill Cassidy out of Louisiana.

Now, he's not up for six years. So, you know, that I think explains part of it. And the primary system in Louisiana is a little wrong. You've got the top two situation. So he, you know, he could get into a situation where it's like him and a maga person. rather than him in a day. So I think that explains part of it. But just day-to-day life,

a lot of these guys are literally scared for their lives. Remember that video of Lindsay Graham? He said an thing for like one minute, the night of the six, and then the next day's at the airport. He's getting shouted down. That's going to happen to Bill Cassidy. I mean, so I'm an LSU Tigers fan.

My best friend dad played there, so I go down every year for a game. And Trump went to the game last year, and when he came out there, you know, it was rabbit, the crowd cheering for him. You know, and my little section was booing, and, I mean, the people around us were worried that we were going to get beat up. I mean, there was like a black family in front of us that was, like, looking at us, like, who are the crazy white boys that are booing right now?

Like, just like, shut up, okay? Like, you know, we're getting screamed at and people are throwing beers at us. Like, Bill Cassidy is going to get that treatment. Bill Cassidy's going to get screamed at and hollered at. and harassed. Good on him for doing the right thing. It came pretty late in the whole process, but quite late, rather. I think that's him. Romney's been solid the whole way. Murkowski, you know, has the top two situation in Alaska. And she won as a right-in. So she's got, she's pretty safe. Yeah.

Collins just won. So, you know, so then that takes you to Burr, who's retiring, right? And Sass, who, you know, I think after he won his primary, you know, found his spine again. I mean, Ben Sass had the one, was really the only person I thought that had a chance to kind of balance this conservative anti-Trump posture throughout his whole time. And then, you know, his poll number started to sink and he like went into hiding for a few years. But like old Ben Sass came back now. So I think that was good. I mean, but here's the thing. There's other people retiring. I mean, Rob Portman's retiring. And he still didn't have the courage to do it. Richard Shelby. Portman was a surprise to me. Yeah. So, I mean, I just, that part is, you know, there was nobody besides, I mean, and Cassidy's courage. was real, I mean, in the most literal sense is like human safety courage rather than political courage since he's got six years. Nobody really, you know, put themselves on the line over this. No. And Marco, he was the vote that tipped the numbers to, and I felt that was so Marco because you know he's going to get primaried by a Trump or probably Ivanka in two years.

Maybe, I mean, yeah, I don't, I think that he thinks that he can survive that and that maybe Ivanka would rather, you know, jet set, you know, Ivanka in Abu Dhabi or maybe, I don't know, Vodka and probably maybe better, but I think it would then actually work for a primary, but who knows? Let's talk about that because there's this Ron Brownstein piece. Did you read it yesterday? I did it, but I follow Ron on Twitter and me and Ron talk. So I think I probably know what his general thoughts. He's like one of my favorite. He's so good. Writers and thinkers. I think he's a genius. But basically he said the Republican Party is the party of Trump and there's no coming back. And it's Marjorie Taylor Green and Trump.

And that's it. What do you think? Yeah. It's because it's what the voters want, right? And Ron is exactly right about this. And I talked to him for this Rolling Stone article I wrote, which was projecting like even had Trump lost in a landslide. This was back in October. It was still going to be his party until the voters changed.

And there's been this big turnover in the parties over the last 10 years where, you know, five to 10 percent of the country. is these suburban college-educated folks used to be swing voters or soft Republicans. They're Joe Biden Democrats now. Then another 5% to 10% are these kind of working-class white folks that used to be union Democrats. They're Trump Republicans now.

And they just switched, right? And so now the parties have changed, you know, but who is in them. So the people that liked Trump stayed in the Republican Party, then they added new Trumpers. And then there's like this tiny little remnant of the David Frenches, you know, who are trying to fight the internal battle.

And it's just, you know, until something else changes the dynamics, like, I just, I'm with Ron on that. And here's the thing. The Republicans aren't motivated to change because of the undemocratic breakdown of the Senate and the electoral college. Like the Republicans like this are like, well, hell, we lost, you know, we had this damn pandemic and Trump was being crazy. And we lost by seven million votes. And we still almost won everything. You know, had 90,000 votes changed in the right states, they would have had all three, you know, offices. So I just think that they're not motivated to change. The voters don't want them to change. So they ain't going to change. I think Ron's totally right on on that. They've sort of tried to anti-democracy it up, right? Like they're going into the state level in Ohio in different states and

they're trying to change it so they don't have to count as many votes or they don't have to, you know, they can sort of gerrymander. They can sort of cheat away. Yeah. And I think that's where they're happy with their coalition, you know, like back in 2012, I was part of the ill-fated autopsy that was like, Republican should be nicer to women and minorities. Wouldn't that be smart? So I have to write that. What was that like? We wrote it in early 2013 and like Donald Trump then like used it for toilet paper.

And the co-authors like were like Reince and me and Sean Spicer and Ari Fleischer. There's like all of the rest of them just were like, I don't want to pretend what I wrote. Like that wasn't that I'm just going to pretend that never happened. And it was like me and a couple of them and like Sally Bradshaw, who was Jeb's advisor who were like, wait a second. We actually believed what we were writing in this thing. Anyway, I think they actually are now, now look back on that and thought we were wrong to do that autopsy. Like the right thing is to double down on the working class white voters because they are, you know, disproportionately influential in the Senate and the Electoral College. And so, yeah, if you can change the voting laws in certain states,

you know, prevent the Democrats from abing. you know, D.C. or Puerto Rico, we can still win. You know, we have this, I think it made silver, I forget, it had something like a four to six percent advantage, right? Like Biden needed to win by four points to win, right? So the Republicans are happy about that. I think the state law stuff will be very important to watch, you know, what exactly gets through. I think we're early in that process, but they're not even trying to be a majority party anymore. The Republicans see their path as using the levers of power. to maintain control while being a minority.

They're all in on that strategy. It's amazing. I mean, it's really, but I do think also whoever the nominee is will lead the party. Yeah, but how can you get a nominee that doesn't believe that, you know, if all the incentives to become nominee are to play into that, right? Like, look at what Fox is doing right now. Like, this might have been a moment for Fox to get more normal.

They've gone even crazier. I mean, Tucker's and like Laura Ingram and they fired, you know, they heard of Martha McCallum, who wasn't exactly a moderate, but, you know, she was at least no Tucker, and like they were replacing her with Maria Barrett Romo. Like crazy hour, I mean, like the, what the voters want, what the small dollar donors want, what the, you know, crazy conservative media wants. So, yeah, I mean, I guess like a nominee could tilt things back the other way, but all of the incentives are pushing the other direction. This is unprecedented, right? Like, there has never been a time where, at least in the modern,

you know, American political history where one of the parties is like, you know, we're not going to try to get 51% of the votes. Like, you know, we're just going to change the rules so that we can actually maintain power with 46 or 45. Like, that's crazy. But the one thing, and that's what's scary, too, because Biden does not feel like the kind of person who fights dirty. He doesn't. And, and boy, thank God for Joe Biden, honestly. I mean, he put together a pretty fragile coalition. Like I mentioned earlier, you know, like, oh, you've got quasi-socialists and, like, like, you've got quasi-socialists. and like, you know, Bill Crystal and military, like, conservatives on the same boat. You know, so can another person do that? You know, not only does he not like to fight dirty, but he also, you know, he's old. And so, like, who would there would somebody who replaced him be able to keep that coalition together?

That's really concerning. But, yeah, I mean, on the fight dirty thing, I do, I would like to just give him a little credit here on one thing. Joe Biden was invisible last week at a time when he really could have been Tomahawk dunking on the Republicans. I mean, these domestic terrorists were carrying Trump flags into the Capitol, and Biden hasn't even said one thing about it to make them feel like, you know, to try to make suburban voters scared of the terrorists in their own country. I mean, that's a strategy that some people might have used. Right. Is that politically smart? I mean, it's tasteful to us, but is it politically smart? I think it remains to be seen, but it is certainly living up to his promise. The problem why it might not be politically smart is that, like, he's not getting any credit for it, right? I feel like I've said this a couple times and I'm like, I'm the only one, you know, Ron

Claim re-tweeted me when I tweeted that the other thing. Right. Okay. I think that this is a good idea. Hi, Ron. And I also think Republicans have Fox News, which is like this incredible messaging arm for them, which Democrats don't have anything like that. They don't.

Republicans would say, well, you know, you'll have the mainstream media. But, I mean, the mainstream media is being tough on Biden. You know, I mean, like, look at this, you know, I mean, I think rightly, on the schools issue. They're kind of bobbling that a little bit. You know, you saw the controversy with T.J. Ducklow, which I thought was kind of maybe overplayed.

But, you know, I guess my point is just that the media has been tough on them. You know, this whole, like, notion that they're treating Biden like Fox treats Trump is crazy. Like, Fox never did anything to challenge Trump for five freaking years. So I agree with that that, like, because of Fox, because of the right-wing messaging infrastructure,

like the hopes and dreams that some Democrats have, that like the Republican Party is totally just going to self-immolate and collapse and like the Democrats are going to get 60 Senate seats and, you know, rain for a thousand years is like not. Yeah, that's not happening. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening

behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soledadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. 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 fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com.

And now we have Andy Kim, who represents New Jersey's third congressional district. Hi, Andy Kim. Hi, Molly. How are you? Good. Welcome to the new up normal. Thanks for having me. I'm so thrilled. And I'm so excited to have you because you have just an amazing story. And I've been following your career since you came to Congress. So I'm very excited of you cleaning up after the Capitol riots.

It's hard to think about that day still. It's been over a month. It's still so raw. And I don't think me and I don't think a lot of my colleagues would be been able to process it. I remember during that impeachment trial, just seeing all that new footage of that day, you know, kind of showed us just how, you know, even worse it was than many of us understood. You know, for me, that photograph captures a really raw moment for me that day where, you know, I left the House chamber after we had reconvened and I was just walking around the Capitol for the first time since, since the insurrection. And it just, Molly, it just broke my heart. to see the building like that. You know, it's just like, I actually remember thinking about it,

like, you know, that rotunda, the way I saw the rotunda, that was probably the worst condition that that rotunda has been in for hundreds of years. Yeah. Just seeing this iconic room that my, you know, my immigrant mom took me to, you know, so I just, I just felt like doing something. And it was just, it was very instinctual. I saw a trash bag. I started picking things up off the floor and certainly didn't think I was being photographed. And, didn't expect it to have the impact. But, you know, what I will say is that the response that I've gotten has been overwhelming. Literally now over thousands of cards into the office.

And it shows that I think people wanted to know coming out from that day that there were still people working in government that were focused on public service. Yeah. And then that, you know, that decency and character still matters. You ran for office because of Obamacare. You're in your second or third term? Second term, right? Second term. That's right. So I was I was one of the people that helped foot the house in 2018. My district is a is a deep Republican district. You know, Trump won my district twice. He won it again this past November. I'm one of only I think seven Democrats left in the country that represents a district that Trump won twice. I run because I'm a dad. You know, I'm a dad of two kids. And in 2018, leaning up to 2018, you know, I was with my wife and I were expecting our second child. And we had this. difficult situation where before he was even born, we were told very late, you know, like a month

before due date, that he was dramatically underweight. And there was a good chance he wasn't going to make it. And we were scared out of our minds. And we were at the hospital every single day, trying to figure out, like, what test we can do, figure out what's going on. And they told us, even if he's, if he makes it through childbirth, he might have problems that could persist for the rest of his life. And at that exact moment is when that whole debate in health care in 2017 was happening about preexisting conditions and about the future of our health care. And it was, I realized my own congressman from this, you know, my district in New Jersey, this district where I went to kindergarten, where my whole family is, it was this congressman there that was the one that was

literally pushing and leading that effort to go preexistent condition production. So, you know, for me, this was just like another way for me to protect my kid. And thankfully, he was born. And he's been, And he's getting better and better. He does have issues that we're working through. It just kind of redoubles my effort to just make sure I'm looking out for him. And that's what I do in Congress every single day. We've had a president who has worked real hard to stoke anti-Asian racism. And it feels like this story we're not talking about and that we need to be.

Yeah. No, we really do need to be talking about this. It's something that I felt personally over the last year, you know, there were was, you know, a couple instances that I've had just over the last year where I felt that kind of discrimination and that racism up front and close in a way that it has persisted over my life, but like I'm not felt it this strongly where, you know, I would have people, you know, yell at me when I sat next to them on a train. This was before the lockdown over a year ago. You know, they were just so fearful that they were going to get the virus from me simply because

of the fact that I'm Asian American, you know, people moving away from. from me when I sit down on the subway. You know, my mom gets it, thought it when she was at the grocery store, and it made her fearful to go to the grocery store. And recently, I mean, you know, we've seen just these unbelievably painful images and videos of elderly Asian Americans getting attacked and abused and assaulted on the street. And I just look at that and I'm just looking at these images. And I'm like, that could be my, you know, that could be my dad.

You know, that could be anybody. They're just walking down the street, just going about their business, and then they're just brutally assaulted. It's sad, it is. And if I could share just one more story here, I just, you know, recently, you know, I've, one of my, my oldest son's five years old. And he came back one day and he was talking to me. And he was telling me how, like, another kid was calling him Chinese boy. And it just, you know, my son, you know, he doesn't understand what's going on. And he was just like, he's like, oh, that's funny.

Like, I'm not from China. Like, I told him I'm a New Jersey boy. And like, you know, he did, and it was just, it was tough to see because it was as far as I know, sort of his first encounter, you know, with that kind of bias and that discrimination. And it's sad because I know that he's going to get it a lot more. You know, I know that that's going to, you know, I just, and it just, it's sad to know that it's going to happen to him. And as a dad, I want to protect him from it. I don't want any of that stuff to happen to him, especially now that it's. manifesting violently, you know, especially to our elders. You know, this was something just the other

day. We celebrate Lunar New Year and just, you're thinking about this. You're just like, what is happening right now? Like, how do we get this into a better place? It's really scary. How can we sort of stop this? I mean, I think not having Trump in the White House has certainly solved a lot of problems because the explosive rhetoric has stopped. But do you have other thoughts on what we can do? Well, look, there's a couple of layers of this. First and foremost, we need to be making sure that, like, local officials, mayors and law enforcement, not do they have everything that they need to be able to investigate these cases, follow through with it? And that's something I've been trying to figure out. These localities where this is happening or where there are large Asian American populations, like, do they have resources that they can dedicate this towards? I know that President Biden has moved forward with, you know, executive memorandum, highlighting the importance of, of fighting back against this kind of violence. But again, like, what is the Department of Justice doing? What is the FBI doing to enact that?

You know, how does this actually change their posture going forward? There are a lot of reported cases all over the country. But we know is that's probably only a fraction of what's actually being reported. And a lot of people that I talk to Asian Americans here in New Jersey, they don't know who to call. They don't know who, you know, where to centralize this information so that we can have a scope. of it. So that's one aspect, just in terms of resources. But you're right, Molly. I mean, a lot of this comes down to just this broader issue of division and hatred and xenophobia that exists here about what does it mean to be American? What does it mean to to be a person

of color? And even within there, just obviously very different experiences, even amongst, you know, different communities of color. I hope that we can really build a coalition here. But, you know, just some of that coalition that we saw come about after the murder of George Floyd, recognizing that, you know, this is something that affects all of us. And it manifests in different ways. I'm not going to claim to know what it's like, you know, for my, you know, black brothers and sisters in my community, what they go through or, you know, others.

But we recognize that these are different forms of some of that same hatred and division and xenophobia. So, you know, I'm hoping that we can keep that broad coalition going and really, really work at it. You know, this is not just, you know, what we're seeing with this violence against Asian Americans. This is not just a problem for Asian Americans in our country. And I hope that that's something that we can really, really reinforce broadly. Hi, Eddie.

So I'm originally from New Jersey and I know and love the state, but your district particularly has been hit really hard by the opioid crisis. I feel like it's something that has really. gotten pushed to the side a little as COVID's went on, yet people are still being hit really hard by it. Do you have any hopes for what the Biden administration can do about this? You're right. You know, this has been a devastating issue about the opio crisis and addiction in my district. You know, there was a, there was a period, my first year in Congress were tracking the numbers. I remember we were saying that it's close to a person a day that we lost

in our district. Wow. You know, we had, I did a town hall once on this and just like the family members of the loved ones lost, just talking about how extraordinarily painful this has been for them. I mean, there are a couple of things that I've been pressing the Biden team to prioritize. I'm hoping we can have that go forward. But, you know, first and foremost, we just need real leadership on this. You know, we need, you know, we really need, you know, this administration to have someone driving this policy in the same way that they have, like, you know, Zion's driving on the coronavirus crisis. Like, you know, like who's going to be spearheaded this?

Because under the last administration, it was Kelly Ann Conway. And it just was not a place where, you know, we're just, we need someone with, you know, medical expertise and social services background. A couple of things. I mean, like, for instance, why is this so much easier to actually get the opioid substance than it is for the medically assisted drug treatments that have proven ways to be able to reduce this. We're still struggling to be able

to have these types of medicines that can help them, help people be able to get off of these addictions. We're having trouble getting these accessible to people. It's a very expensive regime for a lot of folks. And then the other aspect of it is just, it's about setting goals.

In the same way they were setting goals of like how many vaccines we want to be able to deliver every single day to Americans. We should be setting these goals when it comes to addiction. For instance, like a lot of people that I talked to, there's one gentleman I remember talking to. He wanted to go get medically assisted treatment in New Jersey. And he was told, you know, it's about a 30-day wait, check back in a couple weeks. And, you know, like, what is he supposed to do now? You know,

this is someone who, like, finally got to the place and said, like, I need help and went and, like, courageously moved forward and sought help and was told like, sorry, we're full. Like, we should as a state, we should as a country, be setting a goal saying there should be a zero-day wait for those that need treatment. You know, that we should just, whatever the resources needed to have enough beds to be able to do that, enough detox facilities, enough, you know, medicine to be able to do that. But we should just set that kind of goal, just saying, like, anyone who needs treatment should be able to get it immediately.

And, like, I'd like to see us back that up with real resources and real engagement. So, you know, that is something I'm pressing the Biden team on. And hopefully we can set that kind of strategic vision and have those objectives that we can follow them. Right. That makes sense. You have this very narrow majority in the house. Are you optimistic still, though, that you guys can get stuff done? I am optimistic that we get stuff done. And look, I'm hopeful about it, but it's also just, in some ways, it's not even a matter of whether I'm hopeful about it or not. It just has to happen. Like, we just have to get things done. We need to deliver. This is the most dire situation in modern history for, our country, and we're very much still on the precipice. Yes, it feels like we're starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccines moving forward. But, you know, we are in such a dangerous

place. And even beyond what happens with the pandemic, you know, we're emerging back into this new global order. You know, this is kind of a, you know, we're moving past the post-9-11 world. This is a, you know, fall of the Berlin wall type of moment where we don't know what happens that, whether that's about our relationship to China or about, you know, any number of other issues, you know, especially around our economy. So we have to get things done and we have to be able to move forward. And, you know, yes, you're right. I think our House majority right now is four or five votes. You know, like I said, you know, there's seven of us Democrats that represent Trump districts. Like I feel it every day. I'm at the very front of the front lines here. And I feel it.

But I do take some some lessons learned from my district, a district that is. very divided, but it's a district where if you engage with the people, like I did 30 town halls in my first two years in Congress, when you engage with the people, you get a lot of amazing dialogue coming back. You know, we can, in my district, even though we're often portrayed as, you know, sort of an example of the division in our country, we can talk to each other with much more civility and dialogue in our district. And the conversations we have really don't sound like the conversations that are happening on cable TV or on Twitter. So, you know, it's interesting on that front.

So I'm hoping that nationally we can follow through. I'd like to see us move forward on infrastructure finally and stop making that, you know, a joke of D.C. about, you know, about infrastructure week. I'd like to see us, you know, actually move forward on these types of big visions that shows where are we going? Like, we've yet to explain to people like, what? what will America, what should America look like coming out from this pandemic? It can't just be just about survival. But, you know, what do we want small businesses to look like? How, you know,

what is that going to look like? So I'm hopeful. I am optimistic, but it's going to take a lot of work. We can't assume that we're going to be able to, you know, get this done. It's going to take a lot of, a lot of grit. Oh, this was fantastic. Thank you so much, Andy. Yeah, absolutely. No, thank you. Tim Miller, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a fellow named Ali Alexander, knee Ali Akbar. He changed his name after he got arrested. People might not know him that well. He was one of the main stop the steel organizers.

He fancied himself a strategist for Kanye. He was behind the whole, oh, Kamala Harris isn't really black because her mom was Indian argument that was going around last year. He has a very big underbite. And he's influential in the MAGARIS. world. He did a he did a telegram the other day on a lot of the of the mega alt-right nuts have moved over to these kind of private messaging services where they have groups now instead of on since he could get in being banned from social networks. Here's this telegram. There are three outcomes before us. One civil war, two civil war, three concession and we ain't getting a concession. Pray for a miracle and prepare for hell. Honestly, these guys can go fuck themselves forever. And I just do I hope to the FBI. is following Ali Akbar.

He suggested, created a MAGA community somewhere, a MAGA village. He's preached for Civil War before. This is like kind of his thing. Yes, and they were all preaching for Civil War before January 6th. So I just, you know, these people, they are grifters. He knows better.

And it is, he really has, in the most literal sense, blood on his hands over what happened in January 6th. And for him to be back doing this, man, I just really hope the feds are up that guy. I think it's important to just remind people that there were three elected members of the House that helped him with this. Stop the Steel. Andy Biggs. Mo Brooks, who actually spoke at the rally and Congressman Dentist, Paul Gosar. He was also hated by his simply. I'll have to come back for Paul Gosar. Fuck that guy. I've been to write an article on him. He is like, he doesn't get

enough credit. He's like MTG, but with, you know, with male anatomy. He's just, he's there indistinguishable. But like, MTV gets all the love. But he's, he's, he gets all the love. But he's, He is just as insane as her. Oh, yeah, no question. Representative Dentist and also hated by all his siblings. He do got to love that. Yeah. Those siblings, any time, they can, they're happy to be trotted out.

CNN ads, anything. They're like, we really hate him. So love those siblings. My fuck that guy this week is the Republican Party of Texas. I don't know if you've heard of them. And one, Alan West, who is, do you have some backstory on Alan West that you'd like to tell our listeners. I never had any personal encounters of him. He was a congressman from Florida, you know, kind of fancied himself a rising star within the party. He was, uh, I did, there was a

consulting firm that was like an establishment consulting firm that was helping him that I always thought was really weird. But, you know, he has sort of evolved from Tea Party, you know, warrior to like full MAGA to now. Yeah, to pro secession. His new thing is that he's pro secession, which, Texas is a very big state. So, but Texas just had a recently had an enormous snowstorm and got federal money. So perhaps they want to reconsider the secession move. Things are not going well in Texas right now. Like they closed all the grocery stores, I heard.

Oh, wait. Why did they close the grocery stores? Just because Texas isn't ready for this kind of snow and ice storm. I mean, like, I think, I think things are getting real in Texas right now. I'm looking at a picture where they're holding a, who he's holding a sign that says, Texit now. Who's the president of Texas? Is it Louis Gomer?

Which parts of Texas are going to succeed, succeed, by the way. Because Austin and Houston aren't going anywhere. Yeah, they're not going to want any part of that. The seat of Texas would be the Lubbock. Yeah, that's what I think. I think it's Louis Gomer is president. Alan West is vice president.

Mexico is going to build a wall. Let me tell you. They're not going to want any part of this. On that note, we'll wrap the president. this episode of The New Abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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