The Daily Beast Podcast - MTG’s ‘Sickening’ L.A. Wildfire Attack Comes Back to Bite Her

Episode Date: February 9, 2025

On this episode of The New Abnormal, Vermont Rep. Becca Balint hammers Georgia Rep. Marjorie Talor Greene over her “sickening” use of DEI to attack L.A. wildfire victims. “It's become crystal clear that the phrase DEI is used in place of much more offensive terms,” said Balint. Plus! Journalist Lois Parshley discusses her latest article, “Trump’s Tech Donors Have Big Plans For Greenland.” 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. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal.

We're so happy to have you here. Today we have an extra special guest with investigative journalist Lois Partially. We'll join us to talk about her recent piece at the lever. Trump's tech donors have big plans for Greenland. A Trump takeover of Greenland could open the door to tech moguls mineral interests and their utopian aspirations. And let me tell you, it gets pretty wild. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips?

Sure. Clips. You can't possibly get any worse. Just kidding. All right, well, here we have Amy Klobuchar, Senator Amy Klobuchar, at the Washington Press Club Foundation dinner. And I think she's going to kind of show

what the vibe of the Dems have been lately. Speaking of Greenland, there's a question for you that I want to pose. What is the difference between Greenland and Donald Trump? Greenland is not for sale. For any Republican Trump administration person out there that want to throw eggs at me as a result of that joke, you can't because they're too expensive. So she's given up her role as a senator

to try and be a stand-up comedian because she thinks that we're in a laughing fucking mood right now. She thinks that these jokes are somehow going to save us. Oh my God. Vibe check. Like, it ain't. It's not, this is not the vibe. This is not it.

I hate this. Absolutely 100%. I don't need your jokes, just like I didn't need fucking Schumer singing kumbaya. Like, I don't need this. No one does. God damn. She is, I don't know what the word is here, but she's not good. Mm-mm.

And it's funny when she talked about for Republicans who wanted to throw eggs. at her, all I kept thinking about is how she threw a binder at one of her staff. Uh-oh, oh shit. And how she has, like, the worst turnover rate of anyone in the Senate. And how she talked to the New York Times, I think it was last week, and said that the Democratic Party needed to work more with Republicans, because that's the solution that we're getting from way too many people in elected office in the Democratic Party in Washington, D.C. She's bad and she's almost as bad at comedy as Elon Musk.

Yeah, I think, you know, the phrase meeting the moment has been thrown around a lot and the story of her riding to the inauguration with Biden and Trump and all things like this, it's just not. not with the people on the ground are feeling. No, it's not, it's not a vibe. It's not a vibe. No. All right, well, the nice thing is we do have a good vibe here. Rep, Becca Ballant is going to give a lesson on DEI to Marjorie Taylor Green. While fires, want to remind everyone that while fires raged through Main Street and Palestinians, Elon Musk said that DEI means people die in reference to the Los Angeles

Fire Department's response. And my house colleagues seem to agree. This here is a tweet from Representative Margie Taylor Green posted on her official social media. It says, how is your DEI mayor of Los Angeles working out for you? So it's become crystal clear that the phrase DEI is used in place of much more offensive terms to talk about people of color, to talk about women, queer people in this country. It's sickening and they're literally saying this while people were dying. So obviously, this has nothing to do with the families who lost everything. It does not do anything for the communities that were destroyed. It's an absolutely wrong way to deal when you have a natural disaster.

And I know. Yeah. I mean, let's just say what their use of diversity, equity, and inclusion is. You can't say the N-word yet. I'm pretty sure that's coming within the next, you know, Trump's first 100 days. I'm certain there's an executive order that is going to come out. Let me not give them any ideas, but I'm pretty sure. Diana, take that out.

Right. That that is, you know, that that is coming. But they can't say that right now. So everything is just that. So, you know, like make it clear. But I wish that Democrats would make this clear from the beginning. Yeah. Right?

Like you wait until things reach their apex until you unveil for the American people, what is it that they're actually attacking here? What is it that they're actually going after? What are they really saying? And just to remind folks that the biggest beneficiaries of diversity, equity, and inclusion are white women. So like, it's, you know, bless them. Yeah.

The thing here that gives the game away, I hate, I keep saying that, but it really, like, it doesn't need to be given away. But the fact that Marjorie Taylor Green would say that Karen Bass is DEI, Karen Bass was elected. Like she wasn't appointed by anybody. She wasn't hired by anybody other than the people of Los Angeles. So to say that she is DEI is, it couldn't be more obvious that what she means by that is black and what she means by black is the N-word. So, so yeah. I don't know how they keep getting a pass on shit like this.

Mm-hmm. All right. So here we have Senator Mark Warner on Doge's buyout offers to public officials. And I think he puts a really fine point on it. Every scam artist is the same. They want to, you know, rush, take this offer right now, expires at midnight. How many times do we see that when you've got people who are traumatized already? And that was what Trump's OMB director, Russell Vote, who we've been trying to.

to stop right now, said he wanted out of the federal workforce. But the idea that these buyouts where there's no money, there's not legal authority, the government potentially shuts down March 14th, my fear is these folks are going to get scammed and then be the first to be fired because they've raised their hands. And when we go to national security, my God, the idea that we are offering everybody at the CIA, do we really think, do the Doge bros who are, you know, 25-year-old coders think if we lose our best spies, it's some coders going to come and take that job tomorrow, or at the NSA, where we have the world's best cyber hackers.

If they take this unauthorized offer or put themselves in harm's way, we are making our country less weak. And I say to my Republican friends, on national security, we've at least been bipartisan. We've got to hear your voices as well. Mm-hmm. Andy? Yes. None of this feels like enough. None. Like, who are you calling on to ask? I just don't, like, who are you calling? You're calling on Republicans. He used to be a bipartisan issue. They're in a fucking cult. Who are you calling on? Yeah. I mean, look, yes, he's right that these buy out offers are, you know, probably not even real. Uh, and... Or legal. Or legal. But, like, do something. Mm-hmm.

This is like, I mean, Chuck Schumer has been all over social media saying Congress must act. Like he's not in Congress. Who are you? I mean, like, you're the Senate minority leader. Like, you are the number one Democrat in the Senate. And you're sitting there and, you know, nominee after nominee is being confirmed. And you told, I don't know if it was a, I can't remember, I think it was semaphore. You told Semaphore that your strategy was not to focus on the small stuff and to, like, save your guns for the important nominees like Pete Hegsteth and Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. Well, one of those three has already been confirmed now.

At this point, I am guessing the other two will be. So you're doing nothing. And look, I don't want to go after Mark Warner here because what he's saying is right. But Mark Warner is also—he's voting to confirm—to confirm. a lot of these nominees. And it's just, I don't know, you're sitting there, like you said, Danielle, you're sitting there and saying, this needs to be done. This needs to be done. Do it. I know you're in the minority in the Senate and in Congress in general, but there are things you can do. You can gum up the works. People keep pointing out how many nominees, Tommy Tuberville, who is literally one of the

ten dumbest people on the planet. He was able to hold up countless hundreds of nominees, I believe it was. all by his lonesome. If he can figure out how to do that and you can't, boy, that doesn't make you look good. No, I mean, the reality is that every time Democrats are in the minority, it's like, oh, we don't know what to do. We don't know how to utilize any means of power. And then when Republicans are, you don't see any difference between when they're in power and when they're not. Right, right. Chuck Schumer needs to go.

Like, I cannot express that enough. The man needs to go. We do not need him as the minority leader in the Senate. You lost the fucking set. Like, go. When you do a bad job anywhere else, you were fucking fired. Like, I don't want to hear from Chuck Schumer anymore. No one should.

Okay, now we have another Democrat. You see how much, I'm really trying to give you guys some clips that keep you calm today. I'm just playing all the time. It's working so well. So calm. So calm. See, honestly, I'm so good at my job. Where's my loom?

Where's my iny? Here's Congressman Ted Liu discussing one of Trump's first arrogant blunders of this term. Wrong problem. I just want to explain. When you solve for the wrong problem, not only do you not get the solution, you can cause harm. So Donald Trump has it in his mind that somehow there's a speaker in Northern California and he's an open and valve and dump water to Southern California. Here are the facts.

Southern California's reservoirs are at near record levels when this fire happened. It didn't matter because Donald Trump then ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to release over 2 billion gallons of water that almost flooded farmland, if not for the local water districts that pushed back. But guess what? This water was saved for the farmers for the summer season when they needed the water. And so the president wasted all this water that isn't even reaching Southern California. It's going to evaporate for a PR stunt.

So this is a harmful, ludicrous action to solve for the wrong problem. Yeah, this is a thing that has been severely undercovered. And, you know, I guess I'll have to include us in that because this is the first time we've mentioned it because there's so much other shit going on. But this is absolutely insane what happened here. And everything Ted Lee said there was completely correct. And the long-term ramifications for this for California and for the farmers in California is not going to be good. And this was all, you know, like he said, this was a stunt.

This was nothing more than a stunt. And it's just like there's not a jail cell small enough for Trump. Mm-mm-mm. Maybe for his hands, though. Yeah. I mean, sometimes you always say there's not or something big enough. No, he should be in the tiniest jail cell possible. Right.

And, you know, when we talk about like this being terrible for the farmers, it's terrible for us for the people. Like I just, I, you know, it is the creation of chaos and manufactured like scarcity. And I want a jail cell that you're, you know, he can stand up in or lay down in. Yeah, I will tell you, these are the things that really keep me up at night is the dumb whims that he indulges. And I keep just thinking about that when he does this and then all of his sycophants keep thinking, oh, maybe I could please him by doing things like this. I really just worry about the environment that it creates of let me just do the dumbest solution that's going to cause a very bad problem in the future. Yeah?

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your business will your business will be a FIntyreau peri peri peri per centi for a euro a month in shopify.es bar records. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. The author of an incredibly eye-opening piece at the lever,

Lois Partially, whose recent piece entitled, Trump's tech donors have big plans for Greenland. A Trump takeover of Greenland could open the door to tech moguls mineral interests and their utopian aspirations. Lois, when we first heard Donald Trump say that he wanted to buy Greenland, we saw it on all late night talk shows as a joke, as pure comedy. But what your piece unearths for us and kind of connects the dots of why all of these

tech billionaires were sitting up on the dais at inauguration day and why they have all decided to line up behind Donald Trump. Help us make sense of moving beyond the joke to the very serious nature of the plans that these people have for Greenland, a sovereign country. Yeah. Thank you so much for your interest in my reporting. One of the things I think it's really important to ask as we head into a new Trump administration is who is benefiting from this administration's decisions. And so I wanted to better understand. and what might be driving the president's interest in Greenland. And I started asking questions about the wealthy donors in his orbit and their personal financial interests.

We likely still don't have the full picture. But I found that shortly before Trump expressed interest in Greenland the first time back in 2019, which as you mentioned, everyone treated as a joke, his ambassador to Denmark and Greenland visited a major rare earth mining project on the island. and opposition to that particular mine ushered in a new party, Inuit attack a catechate, into power two years later. And once they came into power, they halted that mine and banned all future oil development. So Trump, with his own natural resources policy being more along the lines of drill, baby drill, would likely approach Greenland's natural resources and their development quite differently from Greenland's current government.

So first off, a couple of things have actually been unfolding in Greenland in this space where notably talk to us about the military buildup that is happening because Donald Trump also in his remarks about quote unquote buying Greenland said that he's not opposed to an invasion of Greenland, a military invasion of Greenland. So can you talk to us about the response that we are now seeing? So to start, the United States has had a military presence in Greenland for a very long time. What Trump was initially suggesting were tariffs if he didn't get his way. And then in early January, he also refused to rule out the use of military force. It appears like Denmark is taking that threat seriously. They have announced a $2 billion military expansion in the Arctic. I will just say that's kind of crazy that we would consider a military action against a fellow

member of NATO. But who knows what might happen? Control over natural resources has long been a major form of soft power. So mining regulations in Greenland have become a geopolitical chess move. It's wild to believe that we are here at this space. And like, I think one of the other things is what Donald Trump has been doing with these remarks, whether it's Greenland, it's Canada. It is about going after our allies. These countries are our allies. And so can you just express like what it means to say these things out loud for the American president to say these things out loud and what kind of signal and message that sends to the rest of the world? Our allies have weathered chaos and uncertainty before, but it will be an interesting few years.

We've already seen some of what the president has said he hopes to do paused or rolled back, but it's difficult to assess currently the reputational and soft power repercussions that some of this rhetoric might have. So I want to read part of your piece and then give you an opportunity to, to respond. Tech moguls in the front row of his inauguration, like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, are also investors in a startup aiming to mine Western Greenland for materials crucial to the artificial intelligence AI boom. That company, cobald metals, uses artificial intelligence to locate and extract rare earth minerals. Their proprietary algorithm parses government-funded geological surveys, and other data to locate significant deposits.

The program pinpointed Southwest Greenland's rugged coastline, where the company now has a 51% stake in the Disco Newsagic project searching for minerals like copper. Tell us about cobald metals and again, what this tech oligarch takeover, this tech oligarch manifest destiny is looking like. and why these folks have now aligned behind Donald Trump? I think cobald metals is an excellent example of why it's important to understand the ways that these Silicon Valley connections might be influencing a Trump administration.

So just two weeks before Trump came into office, cobald medals raised $537 million in its latest funding round. It's valued now at almost $3 billion. And they have exploration licenses through joint venture in Greenland for minerals like nickel, copper, cobal, and other rare earth minerals. These are materials that are important for green energy, but also for data centers rapid growth, which is what many of their large venture capital investors have a financial interest in. The AI boom is expected to nearly double the demand for copper, for example, by 2050. And so open AI.

Chief Executive Officer, Sam Altman, is one of the people who've invested in cobald metals. Open AI just received its largest contract ever from the federal government last week in the last few weeks, including using CHAP GPT products designed for federal agencies. So you see there that there's a lot of overlap and back and forth in between how the Trump administration is granting contracts to some of these companies that also have financial interests in looking for minerals in places like Greenlands. It's extraordinary. I mean, all of this has to do with increased money

for people that already have an exorbitant amount of wealth. So in doing your research, how does this continue? What path are we down now, Lois, with you uncovering this and understanding that this isn't a joke, that the tech oligarchs have their eyes on this part of the world, the only way that they're able to have the ends meet here is for Donald Trump to take it over because otherwise they're not going to get, be able to extract out what it is that they want. Well, one thing I think that's really important not to lose sight of here is what people in Greenland also think about all of this.

Greenland has long sought additional independence from Denmark. We are dropping our chaos on them in their own political conversations. about their own vision for the future of their country. Some of the Greenlanders I spoke to, you know, were very concerned that their quality of life currently, which includes things like free education and healthcare would drop. How nice. They joined the U.S.

I do think it's important to note that our political chaos is rippling out to affect other countries' domestic conversations and politics as well. I want to lift up to one of the quotes that you have. have in your piece from Mark Anderson, who is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. And just again, to the point that you just made about the actual people that live there, his quote is, we believe in adventure. Anderson wrote in a lengthy 2023 manifesto that outlined his criticisms of centralized government advocating for technologists to take control, quote, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering, drag,

and bringing home the spoils for our community. Like, they see themselves as some type of, what, new explorers that once again ignore the reality and existence of people on the land that they see only for its benefits to them and their extraction, but not acknowledge once again the people that are actually there. So it, to me, it is as if nothing has been learned over the last several centuries. They see themselves as, I guess what, Columbus without the liquor? Like just going around and planting a flag on nations that are already inhabited and just going after them for what it is that they want. This mindset to me and this quote from his quote unquote manifesto is wild.

Anne Merrill Panson, a professor of social science and Arctic oil and gas studies at the University of Greenland, wrote a very interesting academic paper that speaks to what you were just bringing up. She called Trump and his donors' eagerness to take over sovereign countries, quote, representative of a particular colonial and extractive worldview. So it's this idea of treating land and resources as commodities that can be claimed. regardless of the human rights or interests of the people who live there. And I will say that my reporting suggests that some of this is driven not just by a desire for additional resources, but also by ideology. There's been a lot of Silicon Valley interest in funding startups hoping to build independent enclaves outside of countries' regulatory systems.

These are sometimes called network states, sometimes called crypto states. They usually involve the promise of freedom from the constraints of normal government. And we've seen proposals for these spring up in places like Honduras, Nigeria, the Marshall Islands, Panama, which Trump has also recently proposed taking over by military force. Each one looks a little bit different. Many are still in hypothetical stage, but they're raising hundreds of millions of dollars. For example, one of these startups called Praxis that raised $525 million, even though it's found. dropped out of New York University and was fired from his last hedge fund job. So what does it mean then if Greenland doesn't want this, the people of Greenland don't want it? Donald Trump is going to threaten tariffs on them. And if like you said at the beginning,

and if he doesn't get his way, he's not unopposed to military action. Like again, I ask like, where does this go? Because the desires of the broligarchs, their greed, is insatiable. They cannot be satiated. Nothing is ever going to be enough until they destroy the planet and every democracy that stands as of right now in order to have their way. And so do you see other countries coming out against what is being done and led by the United States and Donald Trump? Well, history would suggest that the fight to control natural resources it often leads to bloodshed and heartache. You can see that Denmark is taking all of these threats very seriously.

I don't have a crystal ball to look into the future to see how fast our descent into fascism will be, but it's quite alarming. I think that the most important point of your piece is the fact that we, for too long, I would argue for nearly a decade, have taken Donald Trump as some type of question, court jester, right? Like, we laugh. Oh, look at what he said. Oh, he's, he's an articulate. This doesn't make any sense. It's outlandish. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And yet continue to give this man outsized power. And now the reality is, is that he wasn't joking about anything. And I think that Americans within the first three weeks of this second regime now recognize that, that everything was

literal and should have been taken at face value. So as you continue to do this incredible work and an investigation, what else do you think that will come, you don't have a crystal ball, but what else do you think will come of the eyes that this president has on Greenland and other places that he deems as part of a larger monopoly board for the United States? I'm going to continue to report on how the financial interests of people around Donald Trump might be influencing his administration's policies. So if you have any tips for me, I'm on Signal at lowest partially. I will say that I think a really important question for journalists to be asking going into this administration is whether the Trump administration has the legal ability to do what they say

they're going to do. And for journalists to note when that is not the case. And then I think the secondary question to that is how long the norms and existing institutions continue to act as checks. Yeah. I think that it is important, even though clearly the rule of law is dead in this country, that I think that it is really critical for journalists like yourself to ask these questions, to point it out. because the repercussions are going to be enormous in this country and around the world.

I really thank you so much, Lois, for this piece and for your time today, folks. It is up now. And the title is Trump's tech donors have big plans for Greenland. A Trump takeover of Greenland could open the door to tech moguls, mineral interests, and their utopian aspirations. It is at the lever. It is worth the read. and it's important that we continue to connect the dots.

So we thank you so much for doing that for us today on the new abnormal. Thank you for having me. And if I could add just one more thing about that last point, I should have said earlier that Donald Trump cannot legally purchase or militarily takeover preland. That is not currently legal. And so I just coming back to my last point, I do think that that's an important addition to me here.

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Thank you. Hope you enjoyed 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?

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