The Daily Beast Podcast - My Twitter War With the Congresswoman from QAnon

Episode Date: November 17, 2020

Molly Jong-Fast explains to Rick Wilson why she got into a brouhaha with the Congresswoman from the First District of QAnon in the latest episode of The New Abnormal, which features presidential transition veteran Neera Tanden of The Center For American Progress and Carl Zimmer of The New York Times, who gets us up to speed on the latest vaccine breakthroughs.   Molly and Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, an avowed QAnon supporter, fell out on Twitter over different interpretations of government interference in a woman’s health.   “I did make fun of her because she used the phrase ‘My body, my choice,’ when referring to not wanting to wear a mask, which is of course an expression that is used by the pro-choice community,” Molly said. “So, I may have suggested that she might also be pro-choice, which got her just enraged because while she won’t wear a mask, she does not want anyone to have control over their own uterus.”   Rick said Greene will continue to court the vote of conspiracy theorists who believed President Trump went to Washington to fight a cabal of elite pedophiles even though he was now on the way out. “She’s a weaponized money suck for crazy people. And so that’s why she’s going to flirt with Q and all this other bullshit.”   Rick said he had been following one other Twitterstorm this week, over the blossoming friendship between forgotten Trump child Tiffany and another fringe Republican congressman Matt Gaetz. “It's someday going to grace, the pages of TMZ, and perhaps even be the subject of a Netflix show called ‘The Orange Crown.’”   Molly agreed this one has legs: “I feel like it's so stupid. They're probably going to get married.”   Neera Tanden, who worked on the 2008 Obama transition, said Trump’s “temper tantrum” over the election, which he lost, would have real terms consequences. “You may face unnecessary deaths because of their slow walking transition, which has nothing to do with anything other than feeding the defeated president’s ego,” she said.   In most departments, Tanden says the challenge for Biden is not understanding how the agencies work as they have ample experience of that, it’s trying to work out just how much damage has been done. “I imagine there’s a fair amount of trying to bury the bodies,” she said. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Hi, Rick Wilson. Hi, Molly John's asked.

What's going on? You know, prison break, that sort of thing. That's good. Yeah, swam through a tunnel covered in human feces to escape from a hellish prison we called Trumpism. And here we are. Free at last, reveling the Shawshank Redemption. So I have to ask you, because speaking of shanking, I noticed that you and the congressman from the first district of QAnon had a little.

brew ha ha this weekend. I mean, I wouldn't call it that, but I did have... A set two? Yeah, she's come to D.C. This would be Marjorie Taylor Green, Congresswoman from First District of Kewanon. Right. I wonder who she replaced if she replaced someone equally as awful.

I mean, I did make fun of her because she said she used the phrase, my body, my choice, when referring to not wanting to wear a mask, which is, of course, a expression that is used by the pro-choice community. So I may have suggested that she might also be pro-choice, which got her just enraged.

Because while she won't wear a mask, she does not want anyone to have control over their own uteruses. I think that that was probably a red line that she should not have crossed with you because that type of Trumpian fuckery is not welcome in your... But you know what's interesting to me about Marjorie Taylor Green is she's Georgia's 14th district. She wrote this Q&ONW wave.

She was sort of fancy and had money. Because I read a piece, The Democratic Challenger, who dropped out, wrote about all the abuse he got from the Q&N people. And that's why he dropped out. He dropped out from illness, but he also, he mentioned that he got quite a bit of abuse from the Q&A. And also, you know, it's an R plus, whatever. I don't. Gigillion. Yeah.

So it's not exactly a district where Democrats love to run. I'm sorry, it's 27, R plus 27. R plus 27. As I mentioned, a gigillion. Yeah, an R plus 27. But it is interesting to me, I feel like since the election Q&O hasn't, they have like a new character. Yes, it's called, it's called your friendly E. Right.

But there hasn't been many Q-drops lately, right? No, here's the thing. The pig farmer and his various cohorts, like any miracle cult that claims doomsday is coming, the meteor will soon strike, etc. Unless they actually convince you to drink the Kool-Aid and actually convince you to join them on the comet, and the comet never comes. At some point, they're like, well, yeah,

our faith saved us. Yeah, that's the ticket when it is, in fact, just one more endless twist in the scam. So the E character is apparently emerging now. It's a larp. The whole thing is just a bullshit larp. And the fact that members of Congress who are going to sit on,

committees are actually going to believe that shit. And look, I don't even blame Marjor Taylor Green. She is a opportunistic fuckwit from Deliverance, Georgia. And God bless her. But that woman has played this thing to the hilt. Just like a Jim Jordan or a Matt Gates, she's decided she's going to be, or, you know, somebody said today, don't tweet at her. She's going to be the next Michelle Bachman. And I'm thinking, of course she's going to be the next Michelle Bachman. That's what she wants. She's a weaponized money suck for crazy. people. And so that's why she's going to flirt with Q and all this other bullshit. I told Antipa to stay out of Northwest Georgia. Yeah. This is the Republican Congress. Like, there are a lot of dumb-dums. I mean,

Louis Gomert, right, Devin Nunes, right, Clay Higgins. I mean, it is a virtual cornucopia of stupid. Clay Higgins. Now, there is a particular rocket scientist right there. So I'm just, so I don't know I mean, a lot of them are from Texas, but a lot of them are from the South. And I'm not sure that Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, she's a certain flavor of sort of deranged. But I'm not convinced she's actually stupider than a Louis Gomerd. Well, I mean, Molly, let's be fair. If I went out somewhere in like this edge of my swamp and found a slime mold growing on a log or something, it could probably outthink Louis Gomer. Right.

But, yeah, look, I suspect I have. I have a sense of this woman that she doesn't believe any of this shit. She's just playing the role and trying to, like, run the thing out as long as she can sustain the scam and keep up the grift. But who knows? It's a bad look, obviously, for a member of Congress to even pretend to believe in Q&ON. But there are so many of them now that do. Are there? Well, I'm sorry, that do pretend to believe in it.

Really? Yeah. Lauren Bobert in Colorado. Lauren Bobert, this, Marjorie Taylor Green. and I'm still trying to run it down, but I was told that a certain congressman from Florida, not named Matt Gates, I'm still trying to run this one down.

In a small group recently was caught on camera saying, well, I follow Q. I don't know what to make of it, but it's got to mean something. And the guy's clearly playing these frickin' rube. I'm like, oh, for God's sake. I mean, yeah, I think when you've sort of weaponized your base to that level of stupid,

it's not hard to see how this happens. I would just like to once again, tell our viewers, and for those of you monitoring, I don't think the Trump campaign's monitoring every word we say anymore because there's no Trump campaign, but I'd just like to remind our listeners

that I am Q. I've always been Q. So what's happening with the Trump campaign? Well, far, far away, in the before time, there was a land when the Trump campaign raised $1.19 billion, and they proceeded using the resources of Space Force

to build Brad Parscale's Death Star. Now, the phase of the movie that we're in is I'm dancing around with a bunch of fucking Ewoks, and the Death Star is a smoldering wreck in orbit. So, no, this is, the Trump campaign is no more. I mean, it's a ghost town now. These kids are all gone. Are they all gone? Well, they're mostly gone now. One of my sources inside the campaign, I wrote this person a very nice grad school recommendation letter. Good luck. Wish you well. And did this source say that it's still going? The source said on their last day, not Friday, that essentially right now, it's Jason Miller and Bill Steppian trying to convince reporters there's a miracle in the wings.

Right. And everyone else is like, oh, fuck, what am I going to do now? So you think there are still people there, though, or now? I think there are probably a handful of people still there. And their rapid response Twitter people are still going or now? I'm sure they have nothing else they can do. I mean, Matt Wolking's out of luck. You think he still has a job?

Oh, I know a lot of them were gone on Friday. Okay. Because it was the 15th, which is the traditional campaign end date. But I am quite convinced that the skeleton crew that's left is not going to pull off a legal miracle, especially because, as we well know, now the legal team is either de facto or de jure headed by a very famous free lawyer you may be familiar with. One Rudolph Giuliani. A lot of people think that Trump may just go to Mar-Largo and never come back. Do you think that?

I think they're going to just have to drag him out. Well, I still think they're going to have to basically drag him out. I think they're going to leave the place a mess. I mean... That's the goal. He's not going to give us a final flush on the golden toilet. Let's put it that way. And I think he's going to be as cranky and bitchy and small and shitty as he can possibly be.

Right. No doubt in my mind. that this is not a guy who's going to go gracefully. Do you think at some point this week now that all of these Republican governors have said they are not planning on overturning the election results and it's really over? Georgia's going to certify on Friday. Do you think that Mitch says like it's enough now? No, he never says it's enough.

Mitch is going to keep pretending until the 6th of January after the election is over, win or lose, on that day, he will suddenly say that everything's done and we're, and we're, we finished and the world is over. You know, I must now move on to either, either block Joe Biden completely or cooperate with our new president. You never know which way it's going to go. The really interesting question, like the, like the billion dollar question here for Georgia is this. By November 5th, even the most diehard Trump supporters in the great state of Georgia are all going to realize that Donald Trump will not be putting his hand on that Bible. Right. January 5th. On January 5th. It's not happening. Everybody will know it by then.

They will all be aware that it is done. Well, how will they know it? Because a lot of Republicans right now think that the electoral college will have declared it. They'll say, oh, he was treated out of it. But it will not change the fact that he's not going to put his hand on the liable on the 20th and swear the oath. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if he has, like, his own alternative swearing in ceremony somewhere. That's really terrifying. Yeah.

Yeah. It kind of is a horrifying prospect. So, Molly, did you, uh, did you watch the festivities this weekend in D.C.? No, I did not. You didn't, you didn't watch with, with the, uh, the hundred hillbilly hike. It's the million MAGA March. And there were about seven MAGAs. No, there were, there were a couple thousand MAGAs, right?

The Thousand Toothless Travail. I'm such a dick. The Million Maga March. I'm sure it will now be a breathless, bright part article. Rosen insults everyday Americans, elitist. During the Million Mega March, they led a chant of Fox News sucks. Well, you know, Fox is the bloom is off the rose with Fox. There's a sad and mournful moment in time where Fox is no longer, no longer given the love they once had.

It feels like they're addicts, and Fox News cannot deliver the same high. Yeah, they're chasing the Geraldo Dragon, and it's not working. I mean, even though Fox is still playing with the not accepting the election results, and they're hardly good actors in this in any way, they do seem to be slightly more tethered to the truth than in OAN or newsbacks who are not accepting the election results at all. I've certainly seen a lot more, I think, in the last, 48 hours of Fox slowly, you know, slipping in commentators who would say things like,

no, there's absolutely nothing to these accusations of voter fraud. The evening opinion hosts are still going strong. And Judge Box of Wine was allowed to return on Saturday. I didn't know that. Yes, she was on on Saturday. And it was a lineup of some of the worst people you've ever, you know, I mean, just the worst. Uncle Bad Touch, Lou Dobbs. It wasn't Lou Dobbs, but it was like Jim Jordan.

You know, it was all the president's dumb Republican congressman. By the way, since our last show, I've been obsessing about one thing and one thing and one thing. You know what it is, right? No, I don't. It's someday going to grace the pages of TMZ. And perhaps even be the subject of a Netflix show called The Orange Crown. I am fascinated by whatever the fuck Matt Gates and Tiffany Trump are doing. Oh, yeah.

No, I have also been really obsessed with that. You saw that they tweeted out a picture of them having dinner together. I feel like it's so stupid they're probably going to get married. And they are going to have the dumbest children. I'm excited because their children are going to be so stupid. They're going to definitely be president. A Republican, that stupid, has to be president. Do you feel like the really good bargain too here is that since Trump gives Matt Gates attention

that this is how Tiffany finally gets attention from her dad? Probably. Except he did call Matt Gates Rick Gates. So he's not that much attention. But yes, I think that's true. It's better than the alternative of him calling him Bill Gates. And then there's a whole conspiracy theory about his birthing and provenance. And God knows where things would go at that point.

The Matt Gates, Tiffany Trump saga is horrendous. It's horrendous. It's horrendifying. There were some interesting articles this weekend, too, about. a source familiar with Ivanka's thinking used that perhaps Avonka. You mean Ivanka? Right. I mean, a source familiar with Jared Kushner's thinking.

Called Jared Kushner. Right. Oh, his two PR agencies he uses. Right. Said that maybe they'll go to Florida or maybe they'll stay in New Jersey. Okay. I think that the idea of them staying in New Jersey is so delicious that it could never happen. New Jersey is nice.

God does not love us enough for that. A source familiar with the thinking of Ivanka Trump said that it would be good for Ivanka to be in Florida because of her political career. Get the fuck out of here. Governor Ivanka. Let me tell you something. She comes to Florida. All hell breaks loose.

Well, he's going to Florida. And also in this article, a source familiar with Ivanka Trump's thinking said that she will not live in Mara Lago because she has a frosty relationship with her stepmother. Oh, isn't that sweet? It's like that she thinks Melania's going to live in Mara Lago. Oh, maybe for a little. I suspect there's a part of Melania's thinking, I will not the door hit on ass. I'm out.

Hey, Molly. Yeah. So I know you were very pleased last week. You were at a great piece about your. vaccine experience with the Pfizer vaccine. But it looks like now there is another ray of sunshine on our horizon with the Moderna vaccine. It's interesting because they both have about the same efficacy rate. Moderna, you know, Pfizer said it's 90%, but it's really 94. So it's about the same, but the Moderna has this huge advantage of not being, not needing to be stored at negative 80 degrees.

Right, you're going to have it in like liquid helium transport it, right? So I think that's good. I mean, I think we're going to see now, we're talking to Carl Zimmer from the Times, and we were just talking about now they all have to file for these emergency youth authorizations. And he said the files are like, they're 100,000 pages. Get the fuck out of here. That's crazy. They're going to have to file for the emergency use and then get approved. And then from there, it's still going to be weeks and weeks.

Wow. Well, look, it's better that it's out there than it's not. Right. No, and it's amazing. It's better than there's this possibility than any possible alternative. And it's good that the Moderna thing can be transported without heroic measures. That makes it more practicable in every way. Yeah. No, I mean, it's great, but it's still like we're looking at a mid-December for frontline workers and January and then February, March for everyone else. So it's not, I mean, you know, we still have months and months of uncontrolled spread. Yeah, for sure. Which is really scary. Well, it could be controlled if people weren't assholes. Well, it could be controlled if we had a federal government.

I don't understand what is Trump doing in the White House all day? Because he's not legislating and he's not, I mean, what is he doing in there? I have a theory and it's very simple. It's very straightforward. I think the guy is in mental collapse. I think he's basically cycling between. outright depression and delusion. I think he's got 27 different people in his ear now.

I think he's got Jared Navakka, who, from what we're hearing, they have told him, wrap it up, it's done. He's got the boys who are telling him, no, we could still win. So you're saying there's a chance? And he's got Rudy and that fucking clack of lunatics around him saying, you could still pull this out. We're going to, we'll sue. And now Sidney Powell is on board, because she's not a hot bag.

fucking crazy. Can you explain who Sidney Powell is? Sydney Powell is a fringe attorney in D.C., who, before this new claim to fame, represented the extremely crimey, traitory, treasony, Putin-filic, and Turcophilic Michael J. Flynn, former national security advisor to the United States of America, and also a man who perjured himself to the FBI repeatedly. She's completely, Wacky. She's an edge case. She's a cook. The law firm of Powell and Gorka is only a matter of time.

Except Gorka's not a lawyer, which makes it even... How do you know that? Do you know he's not a lawyer? He could have been given a law degree by the Honorable Order of the Hungarian dragon. Yeah, that makes sense. Neuratan is the president of the Center for American Progress, as well as a veteran of a few different presidential transitions. One of the many things I want to talk to you about today is you've, you've

been in or involved in many, many Democratic administrations. And how many transitions have you actually been in? Oh, I worked in the 2008 transition and I worked in the 2016 transition before the election, obviously. It didn't work out so well post-election, but I definitely participated in two transitions. So what's happening right now seems unusual. Well, there's many unusual aspects of it. I mean, usually when the president has lost, he concedes. And so that part is pretty unusual. It definitely seems to slow down the process a little bit. And, you know, I think that's kind of deeply challenging in the fact that we have the General Services Administration, you know, flouting the very basic norm that they should have already turned over services to the Biden administration

or to the incoming Biden transition. That's outrageous and abnormal. I would say on the other hand, Joe Biden has more experience with government and the people who worked with him on the campaign. Most of them have governing experience as well. And so these transition teams know the agencies inside and out. And I think really the challenge is just to know how much damage has been done. It's not that the Biden transition doesn't understand what has, you know, how the agencies should work. It's what they don't understand is how the agencies have worked under Trump. And I imagine there's a fair amount of trying to bury the bodies. Yeah. I wondered about that too. They've moved all of these Trump loyalists into the Pentagon and NSA.

And I'm curious to know what are you, like, what are your, are you concerned about that? And how much? I'm concerned about it. I guess I'd say it this way. I think the defense department, they've been the most sort of oppositional to Trump in a sense. Like they don't just bow down to him. Now, the truth is that the Pentagon has a lot of general. who have to implement things.

So I think that's more about trying to bury information or just be punitive. I'm less worried about launching a war or something because I just think there's so much opposition to that. And also, the truth is, like, everyone in these agencies who's not a Trump loyalist knows exactly what's going up, which is that, you know, soon Trump will no longer be president and these apparatchiks will not be in the government. They will be fired. And so they know that it's just a matter of time.

And the people in the agencies can definitely make things move slower if they see damaging things coming down the pike. There's been a lot of attention paid to this Emily Murphy from GSA, who's like a mid-level bureaucrat who refuses to sign off on the transition. Is this really this one woman? I mean, or is there a middle? Is this a larger situation? Well, I mean, it's up to, she does have the authority to make this decision.

I mean, the big problem is that what's striking about the situation we're in is how little anyone seems to care about the fact that we're in a pandemic. And I mean, like, it's just accepted that you'd act in an incredibly gross political way, which will have no real impact other than to slow the bias. administration's ability to address the pandemic. I mean, I obviously can't speak to what's happening in the NASCAR realm. But now that we have vaccines, you know, the central issue for the Biden transition is to ensure that they can move the vaccine out to mass distribution as soon as possible. So it's actually helpful for them to understand who has already contacted, how are they dealing with the

pharmaceutical companies and all the infrastructure that needs to. to get built up and created to distribute a vaccine like this. These are very basic technical issues that you need to, you know, that you sort of need to get into the agency to understand. I mean, really what they're doing is for their own political narrative. I mean, it's not going to have any actual impact. It's just for a political narrative. Right.

They are ensuring that it will take longer to mass distribute a vaccine. Right. That's what I keep thinking about. Yeah, which will mean that it will take longer to save a vaccine. people's lives. And during a global pandemic, that just literally means we may face unnecessary deaths because of their slow walking a transition, which is nothing to do with anything other than feeding the defeated president's ego. I'm correct, too, that when you were a part of that transition with Obama since we were going through another crisis, then that Bush kind of handed

the keys to Obama on some of the economic levers during that. Is that correct? You know, I have to just say the Bush administration was a thousand percent, you know, welcoming of the Obama transition. They were supportive. They signed all the paperwork immediately to ensure that Obama could have a transition that started properly and quickly. All the agencies were already, you know, the agency review teams were already in the agencies by now. Barack Obama actually, obviously, competed against John McCain for the presidency, but, you know, he'd been pretty critical of George Bush, but he didn't have, you know, a temper tantrum about what happened in the election. Right. It's sort of amazing. A lot of Republicans are saying they're sort of

humoring Trump in order not, they're sort of behind closed doors saying they're humoring Trump in order not to alienate his base so that they can win Georgia. Is that what you're seeing? Do you think that's what's going on or do you think this is sort of more nefarious even than that? I think what seems to be happening is that Republicans are petrified of the base of the party, which, you know, does seem to me to be more beholden to Donald Trump than, you know, than Republicans in the senator in the House. And I think that they like to tell themselves they're humoring Donald Trump, but really what they're doing is exceeding to him. And now there's a reality in the world. And I think, you know, actually most Americans, understand that Joe Biden will be president and the kind of death grip that is the incredible hold Trump has on the Republican base is not the incredible hold he has on the country, hence he was defeated and will likely to be defeated by 7 million votes in a very high turnout election. But I, you know, I just think they like to tell themselves that they have the dog, but they're like,

actually, you know, the dog has them. So I don't know how they're. resolves itself. I don't actually know if Donald Trump wants a Democratic Senate. Maybe he wants a Republican Senate. Maybe he wants a Democratic Senate. You know, I just think it's a very complicated scenario. I do think the vice president, Vice President Biden, President Elect Biden is handling this well, which is this will be resolved. He will be president. He will do. He is focused on solving people's problems and being a good president. And I think ultimately that will come through. She do a lot of interviews with people, especially like,

people like mashagess and where they talk about just how close we've kind of gotten to autocracy and how scary that is. And, you know, if Trump does concede American democracy will have survived this. But do you think at all about like how we come back from this and what are the things we can do so America never gets into this kind of thing again? You know, I think the most important thing to do is to do. to try to govern effectively to solve people's problems. I think Biden has an actual unique opportunity, which is that the virus can be an effective proof point for people in governing.

And this is obviously a very different time, but you could have, you know, in a year or two, people see this as the kind of large scale break we saw in 1932, right? So in 1932, you know, there's a big repudiation, but really also happened in the midterms, why FDR did so well in the midterms and in the future, was that Hoover had an attitude towards government, right? He had a governing philosophy that exacerbated the Great Depression.

A little bit Rand Paul, perhaps. Right, exactly. And FDR had almost an invert, you know, almost the opposite view, and his view did seem to have results. So here the question is, Donald Trump sort of ignored the virus. It kind of went out of control. Joe Biden could come into president, into his presidency,

and essentially, you know, he has a lot of executive power to distribute the vaccine effectively and therefore really prove to people that an effective government could actually address this problem. And, you know, whether you're a republic, you know, even the Republican base, while they don't accept the virus in the same way that other people do,

they will benefit from an economy that is actually truly over. opened up. So I guess what I'd say is that I think that the country has real problems with misinformation and disinformation. And I think the platforms are a central component of undermining faith and democracy, which I think, you know, we have to think through how we sell for over the next several years. But I also think Biden has some assets going forward to actually not only deliver on the results of this election, but, you know, really improve people's lives in ways that they can sort of feel tangibly.

I mean, I worked on the Affordable Care Act, and it took years for people to actually feel that. Here's a situation where people can sort of see a government acting like a rational government. He's not going to have press. He's not going to have daily press conferences where he talks about, like, injecting yourself with bleach. So that's like that's a bar, he'll clear.

I have a question for you about the political calculus. A lot of people, there seem to be two camps in Washington. One camp is saying, Biden has worked with Mitch McConnell before. He's going to be able to get Mitch McConnell not to, you know, not to be obstructionist the way that Mitch McConnell was clearly with Obama. And the other camp is like Mitch McConnell is so incredibly evil that you won't be able to work with him. Do you have a hot take on this?

Because I feel like ultimately this is going to be a big part of, I mean, unless Democrats win Georgia would. Yeah, I see. I don't know, honestly, what the calculus is here. I mean, the one thing that I would say to people is the shifting coalitions, you know, there's been a lot written about the shifting coalitions. And one thing to keep in mind is that one of the reasons why Democrats did so well in the 2018 midterm is that, you know, they tend to skew a little bit more towards college educated voters. And that is, you know, so I do think in the midterms, you know, there are challenges for both sides. But I wouldn't say that it's the same calculus it was before. for McConnell. I don't know. I mean, I honestly don't have a good sense. My instinct is like he'll obstruct again. On the other hand, you know, just because he's done that before, I mean, there are a bunch of, there are Republicans who are talking about how, you know, you could see kind of grand negotiations around at least an expansive COVID package and infrastructure. I mean, one thing

that Republicans have to deal with is that no Republican has ever done as well with white non-college voters. I mean, those voters, a lot of people who came out, they're Trump voters. They're not McConnell voters. And so, you know, is he going to obstruct a $15 minimum wage or a big infrastructure package that has a focus on jobs? He can do that, but that does create some cross-pressure for him in this coalition that has came together under Trump. Nira, so since you've actually been a part of these transitions, I know during the Roosevelt era they shortened how long the transition was by two months. Do you think you need this much time, or should we be kicking these lame ducks out faster?

You know, generally, I think you actually, you know, I think the transition is an important time to really get a handle on it. I mean, usually you're not worried about like existential threats to democracy in the interim period. So that adds like sort of a hurry to it. But I guess I would say that with a normal functioning transition, it is helpful to actually, you know, understand what's happening. You know, the president usually has to develop a budget. It's really important to get a sense of where things are to understand where you have to go. again, I would say one of the good things about President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris is they have a, you know, they have governing experience. Joe Biden actually knows his way around the White House pretty well.

He doesn't, you know, Juan Clayne knows his way around the House of the White House really well. They don't actually need to, like, figure out where things are. On the other hand, there's a lot of work to do in these agencies. I mean, there's a lot to reverse in these agencies. There's a lot of things to root out in these agencies. And I think an element of all of this is just, you know, putting off the inevitable accountability. And so, you know, I think that might be a key element of what's happening here. My criticism, and I feel like you may have this criticism too, is that Democrats often feel that because they're the good guys they should win, will Biden be merciless in removing some of these really scary political appointees that Trump has put in? And, you know, some of those, as Jesse and I just did an interview about this last week, where they, he put in political appointees and have made them now. Career officials?

Yeah. And do you think that Biden will really be merciless in removing those people because they are, you know, sort of set up to obfuscate and continue Trumpism? So I like to deny, I don't think it's merciless. I think it's just good government. No, I mean, I hope so. I'm just. No, no, I know. I'm just saying, I think it's good government to ensure that people in these agencies are public servants. I think that should be the issue across the board. So if there are people who've come in who've been placed in career positions to sort of hunker down, I think that is a challenge, you know, assuming they're not willing to actually do the job of these agencies. And we remember, I mean, if you stand back like at a 60,000 foot level, a lot of these political pointies have been basically battling the agency's air part of.

You know, the political, the Trump political pointies have been fighting the climate scientists at EPA for four years. So, you know, my take on this is really you should just look at the mission of the agency and see if the person is working on that mission. And if they're not, you know, that person should be removed as much as anyone else who's not functioning towards a mission. And so, you know, I think there's a lot of cleanup that has to happen here and that it will take a fair amount of time. And I think that's a little bit what's happening with this transition, which is that they just want to obfuscate that as long as possible. Yeah, that makes sense. You know, the issue is, like, you know, apparently when you're fighting for the soul of the country, it doesn't end. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat.

There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com to become a Beast inside member now.

That's New Abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com. Carl Zimmer is a columnist with the New York Times. Hi, Carl. I'm very excited to have you. Welcome to the new abnormal. Thanks for having me. You also do this amazing

vaccine dashboard, which is like one of the most useful public services that the Times has. I'm curious to know how do you get started with that and how complicated is that because it actually seems really quite complicated. Well, it actually sort of came about

because I was having a hard time keeping the vaccine straight in my head. My editor would come to me every now and then and say like, so wait, so what's AstraZeneca doing? I mean, this is like back in May, you know, and this is so weird because like, you know, we're not used to like, you know, dozens of teams getting into the vaccine race all at once. So I was, after a while, I was like, I can't, I don't remember, hold it, I have to make a spreadsheet. You know, whenever I have memory problems, I make a spreadsheet. And so I made a spreadsheet and I shared with my editor and she was like, oh, well, we should just put this out as like a tracker. And I was like, oh, yeah, great idea.

So we teamed up with our graphics guru, Jonathan Corum, who makes everything look beautiful. And then we were off to the races. And yeah, it's been incredibly successful in terms of the audience because people just want to know. They want to get a sense of where are we with these things or what's the latest, you know? And even stuff not in the United States, like when Vladimir Putin suddenly announced in August, like, our vaccine, it's registered, it works. So people are like, what? So we got that news right on the tracker as fast as we could, just to fill people in.

Yeah, I'm obsessed with the China vaccine stuff because there's really, I mean, they vaccinated like a large percentage of their army. Yeah, I mean, it's, I mean, there are cities that are just like handing out the vaccine like candy. And I mean, they haven't gotten that phase three clinical. trial data that actually shows you if it works or not. It's safe or not. It's just like barging ahead. I'm, I mean, I hope it works for their take, but we just don't know. Yeah, you know what's so funny is I think I wrote to you before, did I write to you

before I went to Pfizer? I think you were, yeah, you were letting me know that you were going to be doing that. Yeah, I was in an absolute state before I did it. And I wrote to Eric Topal and to you and to my friend Howard Foreman at Yale. And because I wanted to make sure I wasn't, you know, I have all the these children and I don't want to die. And it ended up being totally fine and actually great. But it was, it's so interesting because for normal people, medical trials are not a normal phenomenon. And all of a sudden, like, are these the largest medical trials in history? No, no, no. Can you put it in contact?

Let's put it in perspective. So you're in the Pfizer trial. That's 44,000 people. That's a lot of people. That's great. But there have been childhood vaccine trials that have had 70,000 people. I mean, it's not a, you know, it's standard. It's what you have to do to know if these things work and that are safe and they're effective. But, you know, these things have always gone under the radar. I mean, people have not paid so much attention. So, I mean, it hasn't been news, you know. Like I was interviewing, you know, the chief scientific officer of Johnson Johnson about a pause.

They had to pause their trial. That's right. I remember. It was like, it's back going now, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, like in about a week or a week and a half, it was back up again. And I was like, I was like, so everybody wants to know about this pause. And he's like, well, we had this one report and we're looking into it. And I was like, so is this, you know, how unusual is this?

And he's like, if we sent out a press release every time we had a pause in a trial, I mean, it would be so boring. Things get paused all the time because you want to be careful. It's standard, but no one is aware of it until we're, you know, in a pandemic. Yeah, it's interesting because my study doctor, Dr. O at Yale, who is now against his will, my new best friend, was telling me that we were talking about the AstraZeneca and I was like, oh, it's paused. And he was like, one case of transverse myelitis and she's home. He was like, it shouldn't be paup. You know, the infectious disease doctors who run these trials are kind of incredible. Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, they're keeping track of all. all sorts of things all at once and all these different people. And then trying, you know, trying to figure out, like, well, was, you know, is this problem, and can we rule out the vaccine or should we look closer? I mean, it's super complex. What do you think about these mRNA vaccines? Because it looks like that's going to be our first wave of vaccines. A lot of the experts I talked to were we were thinking like, well, you know, maybe they'll work. I mean, they've never been used, you know, as a licensed vaccine before. So they're like, you know, they might, you know, they might, they might. might be a good stopgap measure. And then, you know, and then we'll get better vaccines later. You know, so people were coming in with low expectations. You know, the FDA said, if you're 50%

effective, that's good enough. That'll make a difference. And then here they just come waltzing in with like 94% effective, over 90% effective. And it's like, whoa, okay. This is, this is a different game. Do you think that mRNA vaccines are the future of vaccines? I've heard this anecdotally, but, You know, I don't know. I mean, I think they will be a part of the future of vaccines. It's going to be fascinating to see what happens once we get past this pandemic. Because they do have the, certainly have a big advantage in that, like, you, to create a new vaccine, you just need to just put the letters of a gene on your computer and then just order yourself up some RNA and you're off to the races. It's a lot easier than growing viruses and then it,

activating them with chemicals, which is the traditional way of doing it. So, you know, they've got speed. There are traditional vaccines in the pipe line. When do you think those will come online? Well, you know, in China, they've got the inactivated vaccines that they do. Who knows? Yeah, yeah, no. I mean, and Russia too, right? Well, Russia, no, Russia's is actually the same. It's closer to the Astrosanica, right? Astrozenica, Johnson Johnson. So what they do is, they use another virus called an adenavirus, and they load it with a gene from the coronavirus. And so basically the adenavirus gets into your cell. It doesn't make you sick. Can't replicate. But now the gene is in your cell, and you start making this protein from the virus.

They should, I mean, you know, chances are they're going to work too because they're making the same protein. This spike protein seems to be, you know, just a really good target. People were telling me that in July. I mean, they're just like, you know, You know, as vaccines go, this is not going to be that hard. It's just that we're in the middle of a pandemic, which makes it crazy. I also heard that same thing, that it doesn't mutate very much. And the spike protec teens are easy to target. You know, it's funny because my husband, I just got my husband to get in the Astor Zanica trial.

So we're a two-trial marriage now. You're not secretly hoping that he gets sick, right? Yeah, I hope it. It's interesting, though, because you, you. was so psyched. They gave him 50 bucks. And he was like, they gave me cash. But I'm curious to know, why do you think that the vaccines have had a really pretty amazing trajectory? And the treatments have not. Yeah, I've been puzzling over this. I think that the sort of the vaccine world was really primed for this because they have had repeatedly suddenly been faced with epidemics, you know,

whether it's SARS, the flu in 2009, Ebola, and they're like, oh, like, whoa, we need, it would be great to have a vaccine now rather than in years from now. And so they've been trying to figure out, like, how do we do this faster? And people have been developing RNA vaccines as a way to do it faster. People have said, like, okay, we need to, like, de-risk the finances of this by just, you know, telling people like, go build a factory. It's okay. Like, we're going to cover these costs. You know, we're going to guarantee that we're going to buy. lots of vaccines if it's safe and effective. So they were ready. Yeah, with antivirals, you know, I mean, we've got remdesivir, which is okay. It doesn't actually reduce mortality. Monoclon antibodies are look like they could be really promising. They're not in big supply. They're hard to make at scale. They're going to be scarce and expensive. And they have to be given early to really be effective. And you've got to give them as an IV, like in a clinic or a hospital. So that's a really challenging thing. It would be, if there was like a Tamiflu for COVID, it would be so great.

You combine home testing with a Tamiflu-like pill. You pick up at the drugstore, we could just save so many lives. But that doesn't exist yet. There are a few things in the pipeline that might be that, but they're not here yet, unfortunately. But the vaccines are going to be here yet either. They're not going to be here until spring. Right. It is to me kind of amazing, though, that we didn't, because I was sure, I mean, from what I knew,

from the doctors I knew that what I was hearing was that we would have some kind of really pretty good antiviral or the monoclomals by July. And that just never happened, even though the monocomals are in some ways related to the vaccine, right? Yes, yeah. I mean, the monoclidies are basically like you're just pumping yourself full of really effective antibodies. Whereas with the vaccine, you're basically teaching your own immune system to make them and have them on ready supply. took longer than people thought. I mean, part of it was, you know, part of it is it's like it's, I mean, for a vaccine to test a vaccine, I mean, doctors can test it on you, a healthy person. Whereas like in order to see if an antiviral is going to, you know, actually save someone's life,

you got to find somebody who is sick with it. You got to line up all the consent and everything. I mean, that's, that's a challenge. And, you know, and people, like, when people are already sick, and you tell them like, well, we want to test this drug. So we'll either give you the drug or give you a placebo and then you're on your own. Like that's a hard sell. People would much rather say like, oh, I heard about this hydroxychloroquine. I want that. Give me that.

And so these trials have really struggled. I mean, I've heard about, you know, we had, you know, the big burst of cases like in places like New York. And then like people wanted to like work on a trial like in July and they were just. They were gone. Yeah. Yeah. there weren't enough people to test it on. Sadly, that's not a problem now. So I hope that people

jump on it right now and run a lot of trials at once. It's funny because, I mean, it's not funny. It's quite tragic that Trump talked up hydroxychloroquine again and again and again and had his life saved by monoclomals. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, Hydroxychloroquine saga was just a total, it was a total disaster for science. I mean, all sorts of trials got started on it. I mean, and there's still trials running on it, even though there's just overwhelming evidence from the biggest, most effective trials. This just doesn't work. It doesn't work in animals. It doesn't work, you know, it doesn't work in real randomized clinical trials.

It does work if you're a cell in a dish, but, you know, a lot of drugs work if you're a cell in a dish. But we're not cells in a dish. I'm curious to know how many people got sick from taking the hydroxychloroquine, but we don't know that because of the, there hasn't been really, I think. think accurate reporting from the states on how people are dying, I think. Well, yeah, well, I don't think we'll know. And how many people suffered because they had lupus or something where they couldn't get the hydroxychloric when they needed because the market was so scarce. It's nuts.

The thing with these MRNA vaccines is they are complicated. Can you talk to me about vaccine rollout? Yeah. So these MRNA vaccines, what you do is you come up with that genetic sequence you need, for your RNA, and then you make that RNA molecule. You sort of piece together the building blocks, and then you have to wrap up that RNA molecule in a little oily bubble. And you put lots of these oily bubbles in syringes, and then they have to be kept really cold because RNA is very delicate. And they don't have preservatives in them, right? Yeah, and it's just, you know, the nature of RNA is that

these molecules fall apart easily. And so they have to be kept in a deep, deep freeze. Now we have have these two MRNA vaccines that have really promising results, really the only big difference I can tell is that just because of the recipe for them, Pfizer has to be kept a lot colder than Moderna's. Yeah, can you talk about that for a minute? Because I am very curious to know why that is. It has to do, as I understand it, with that bubble, that oily bubble that the RNA is kept in, that Pfizer's is just more sensitive to warmth than modernas for whatever reason. So for Pfizer, you have to keep their vaccine at minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit just from as soon as it comes out of the factory. It's got to be frozen, deep frozen. And then all through transportation has got to be kept that cold. And it's got to be basically kept that cold until almost you're ready to put it in someone's arm.

So whereas with Moderna, it's got to be cold, but it's only negative four Fahrenheit, which is a lot balmier than than Pfizer's. And they've also found that, like, you know, once that's for transportation, and then once you get it someplace, you can keep it in a regular fridge for 30 days and it's still okay. Yeah, I was very surprised by that. When I had my Pfizer vaccine, I don't know. Again, we don't know if I got the placebo or not, but they have it thaw for half an hour, which is time-consuming, especially considering you have two doses. So you had to wait there for half an hour while it thawed. Yeah, actually, you have to wait half an hour. Well, it's a whole complicated thing, but basically, and this is true at Yale, I'm sure this isn't true at other hospitals, but they have to go to where the experimental drugs are kept in a car, and then they put medicine in dry ice.

They drive the car, even though it's like, you know, 20 feet away or something. They drive the car back. They get the vaccine. They let it's off for half an hour. They shoot it in your arm, and then you have to wait around a half an hour to make sure you don't have anaphylaxis. which nobody has had, but is typical, you know, is sort of standard for these things. Yeah, well, I mean, that's a trial. That's a clinical trial. Like, and it better not be that time-consuming, you know, like, for if we want millions of people to be getting that. You know, you want to be doing this assembly line fashion. So Pfizer is trying to, you know, make the best of this situation by actually designing freezer boxes.

Right, that are like 900 doses, right? Yeah. So they just, they just load up these boxes. They're packed with dry ice and insulated and whatnot. And the idea is like that you just, they get shipped and then you can just keep them, you know, in a doctor's office, I guess, and just, you know, take them out as needed from your Pfizer box. So we'll see. Yeah. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Now, there were some questions about the Moderna trial not being as responsive.

They weren't releasing data quite as much. as Pfizer. Have you seen that or has that been reconciled? You know, there have been, you know, points in time where people have been asking Moderna and other companies like what's going on, where are you, and so on. I mean, I think that honestly, I think all of these companies are getting used to what it's like to do vaccine research. In the public eye. Yeah, just, you know, like this stuff usually just happens without people really paying much attention. So, you know, for example, like to do these trials, you know, actually these companies have to come up with very long protocols that the FDA allows them to follow. And then they have to follow those rules. But no one

ever looks at these protocols before. And now everyone's asking, like, we're asking, like, okay, so when do you get to look early? Like, how many cases do you need? And are you going to look at severe cases versus mild cases, blah, blah, blah. And then we know it's all written down someplace. So basically, like, I think we reporters really forced them to just, you know, cough up their protocols. So we have all the protocols now, which is great. That is great. From Moderna and these other outlets. So yeah, I mean, actually, you know, this, with this latest dump of news from Moderna, they've actually been a little more detailed than Pfizer was. I mean, they told us, they told us exactly how many patients, how many subjects who got sick had

the placebo versus the vaccine. There were 95 people in total. 90 people got the placebo. We don't know that breakdown with Pfizer. Right. And with the Moderna that was hopeful was that of the people got sick who had the vaccine, and none of them got very sick. Pfizer hasn't told us that yet either. Fingers crossed, they saw a similar thing. Because what you want is not only for the vaccine to prevent most disease, but if you do get sick, it would be nice for it to keep it mild. by just reducing the amount of viruses that grow inside of you.

From the initial look, that seems to be what's happening with Moderna. I mean, there was even a vague possibility that everyone was really dreading that, you know, maybe the vaccine would actually enhance the disease. Right. That just doesn't seem to be happening. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. Yeah.

So we're at fuck that guy. And who is your fuck that guy? Well, he's responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He's the president's only medical advisor at this point. And he recently lost his blue checkmark on Twitter. Dr. Scott Atlas. Hey, is Scott Atlas a noted virologist or immunologist? He's a radiologist. But some of our favorite, very smart people are radiologists, so we can't pick on. I got no hate on radiologists. I'm just saying if you're going to commit to killing a couple million Americans through herd immunity.

Right. I would like to at least hope kind of sort of that you might know some fucking thing about. Yeah, about the virus. Or biology or immunology. But his most recent excitement is that he threatened Governor Wimbeer. That was yesterday. I saw that. What a dipshit.

Governor Gretchen O'atmere, who is a friend of the show. A friend of the show and a favorite of our show. It had recently been the subject of a terrible. kidnapping and murder plot. By terrorists, allied with the president of the United States. That's right. Trump supporters. But I repeat myself.

Exactly. Rick, you often get what these Republicans' endgame is, like what maybe the Choshkis of this career would be. What the hell does this guy think he's getting out of this? This is a true mystery, Jesse. This guy has no discernible, sort of ideological priors that I've been able to find. other than he's, you know, it was Stanford guy, conservative guy. I think there's some libertarian bullshit going on here that he doesn't want to admit to, but it sure smells like there's some kind of let them all die.

God will know his own philosophy going on here. It's really grim. If the poor wanted to survive, they learn to eat one another. Right. I mean, so grim. Horrible. And who's your fuck that guy? I have a number of fuck this guys, as I tend to do lately. During the Million Maga mumble this weekend where it was about 10,000 people, according to Park Police and others.

Just like a million. It's just like a million. Tell your bank that if you want to borrow money for something. Hey, I have a million dollars in the bank is collateral. Sir, you have $10,000 in the bank. No, it's like a million, for sure, for sure. It has ones and zeros in it. Hello.

Anyway, there was a sort of cottage industry this weekend of taking these videos by these adjut prop types like Andy No and others and carefully alighting the things that happened. There's one guy with a shirt on it. It says Roma on the shirt. Everyone's seen this clip by now. And the clip they've seen is this white-haired gentleman walking down the street. And someone in a hood carrying a sign comes up and just cold cocks the shit out of him from behind. So Ivanka Trump.

Very offended. Yes. How dare they? When will the news media report what happens to conservatives? Well, if you had played the whole tape, the guy was running into a crowd, pushing people, hitting people, yelling at people, abusing people. And he played a game we call fuck around and find out. And he thought he was going to be able to go and slap people and jump into this crowd and yell people and abuse them. And he got knocked the fuck out.

But this is so typical of the bad faith horseshit of the Trump Republican world. It's horrible look with these antifa dead to this poor old man. Well, you know, there's a lesson here. And it's a lesson called fucking a rattlesnake. What? Oh, God. Now, a fucking a rattlesnake is not for me. Just as like going into a crowd and trying to hit people and yell at them, make the get in a fight with me, it's not for me.

But some people in this world may want to fuck a rattlesnake. I don't know why. I don't know how. I don't even know the logistics of it, okay? All right. Continue. But why are you surprised when you're trying to fuck a rattlesnake and it turns around and bites you? Because this guy was fucking the rattlesnake.

Okay? He got out there and brought this shit down on himself. And this whole cottage industry of Breitbart and the Federalist and OAN and every other goddamn outlet. Breathlessly and diva terrorist attack an old man. Oh no. Go fuck yourself. Fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. 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.

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