The Daily Beast Podcast - Nancy Mace Completes Her MAGA ‘Monster’ Transformation

Episode Date: December 15, 2024

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace seems to be on a mission to be the most “disgusting human being” on Capitol Hill with her latest round of transphobic attacks, argue The New Abnormal co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie. Plus! Slate politics writer Alex Sammon discusses his new piece, “Democrats Have a ‘Pod Save America’ Problem,” and the biggest shadow hanging over the party post-election. 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.

Welcome back to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Politics writer at Slate, Alex Salmon, joins us to talk about his new piece. Democrats have a Pawsave America problem. The biggest shadow hanging over the party after the election boils down to one man's singular legacy. But first, let's have some fun. Are y'all already to listen to some clips? Not really, but I know that it's our job.

Clips. Clips. Yay. This is our second, last one of the year, so, you know, let's see some of that holiday cheer. Come on. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. Are the clips going to be in that holiday spirit, Chessie? Exactly.

Yeah. Well, here we have one Betty Johnson with one representative of Nancy Mace. You may remember Nancy from earlier in this week using a slur to describe transgender people. and she has some more thoughts to discuss with Benny. Wait a second. These people are pagans. Like they are truly fascistic in their politics. It's evil.

It's demonic. I mean, this is a fight. This is a battle between good and evil. And, you know, I said yesterday, it's like LGBBs need to divorce the T's. It has nothing to do with one another. We need to bring them into the Republican Party. And we say we're going to protect women and kids because this is ridiculous. It's outrageous.

and my rights don't end where their feelings begin. These guys need to be put in a mental health hospital on a mental health institution and get the health that they truly need. It is a mental illness and nothing less. I mean, she's just a bad person. And the interesting thing is she's now framing this as a battle between good and evil

with people who are not transphobic as the evil side. That literally describes her like a couple years ago. You know, we've talked about that on the show before. She at one point, styled herself. as a champion of trans rights. And I guess she must have been evil when she did it by her own sort of admission. So the whole thing is just weird and she's weird and Benny Johnson is weird and bad people. Yeah, they're terrible people.

And you know, what is an illness? Bigotry and hatred. And it's literally eating them from the inside out. And everything that she continues to say about trans people just reveals. what an absolute horrific monster disgusting human being that she is. So, bravo. If this is indicative of your holiday cheer, I'm giving you coal. Like, and I'm just going to put it out there.

Listen, I am a self-described Gridge, so you know what you got yourself into. Do I? Danielle, what he wanted was for us to show holiday cheers, so then he could destroy it. Joy it. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. That's what a Grudge does. I know.

That's what you are. I mean, Yep. Paint me green, me and Cynthia Rorivo. Okay, here we get to another lovely person, Laura Ingram, and she's here with two NPCs who I couldn't identify wrapping a segment. And I'm going to say this one, few of the most hilariously, unintentionally ironic moments I've seen in broadcasting in 2024.

Into it later, the Instagram posts from Nutbag people, which I was sent in the commercial break earlier, crazy. Like, he's cute. He's that, and people celebrating this, this is a sickness. Honestly, it's so disappointing, but I guess we shouldn't be surprised. Gentlemen, thank you so much. And up next, the other big news out of New York, Daniel Penny, a lot of people think he's a hero, and tonight he's not guilty. My take next. They just don't care. They don't care anymore. They know that they can say things like that, and their audience will just, you know, nod along approvingly.

Ingram is not, she's an awful person, she's not a stupid person. Oh my God, that is something a stupid person would say not realizing what they were doing. She knows what she's doing is what I'm trying to say here. She just doesn't care. Yeah, none of them care because they're rewarded. They stream higher numbers. They make more money. So why would you stop? The more that we sit around and say, oh, they're horrible. They see it as a badge of honor. Yeah. And at this point, I'm at the place So I'm just like I feel like we should just ignore them because what they crave is the attention and they feed off of it. Yeah, but what Jesse craves is playing their clips for us. I know.

It's what the people crave. Is it? People, I want you to speak up. At Jesse Kennedy. I was going to say, my email is Danielle Moody. All right. Now we're going to take a full left turn. By left turn, I mean a centrist turn.

Oh, shit. We have Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal. Here he'll be talking about the Kids Online Safety Act. That this bill fully supports free expression and the First Amendment. Elon Musk is the champion among big tech executives of First Amendment values and principles. And what we have done in some of our changes is to make clear. that there's no effect of censorship and the opposition from big tech spending millions of dollars on lobbyists and lawyers is simply the result of their desire to continue to profit by driving toxic content at kids. Your concern as a parent, my concern is mirrored by countless parents across the country, a diverse coalition that enabled us to win in the United States Senate 91 to 3.

I hope we'll give it a vote in the house. It'll pass overwhelmingly. Yeah, I mean, it's got to... Fuck off. Yeah, like, I stopped listening after Elon Musk is a champion of free speech and the biggest one of it all. Go to hell. I don't even know where to start with this.

Longtime listeners of this podcast know I've had a bunch of guests on talking about the Kids Online Safety Act. It's an absolutely horrible bill that will hurt the LGBTQ community, Republican attorneys generals in the state. have already said they're going to use it to shut down content that they don't like that is aimed at queer people, et cetera. It's an absolutely horrible bill. Richard Blumenthal, I know he's a Democrat. I don't care. He sucks. He has no shame. And this bill is god-awful. And on top of that, to add the Elon Musk thing in there and pretend that Elon Musk is in any way a free speech champion,

please, I say this with all due respect, Senator, go fuck yourself. I'm going to tell you what I did after I heard this as I googled how close he lived to Joe Lieberman because they're both Connecticut senators. And I was like, is there something in the water there that makes you this type of stupid? Hey, do you think we can get him on the show? Oh, that'd be so good. I mean, maybe we should just send that sound bite that you just did. Yeah. And I'm certain that he will take your deep respect that you have for him as an open invitation.

Absolutely. All right. The sad thing is we haven't gotten to the bottom of the barrel of senators. And now I'm going to just go there with my scraper and lift them up. Here we have Ted Cruz, a man who, one could guess, only stays in the Senate because he has an embarrassment kink, since he'd clearly rather be podcasting. But for some reason, he's still here. Here, he's going to talk about the Senate's due process when approving Trump's appointments. ICE and consent is part of the Constitution. It's an important role. but at the end of the day, and by the way, when Joe Biden was president, that's the same way Democrats approached it,

which is they voted to confirm whoever he put up. Yeah, well, and I know, you know, with that, when we hear some Republicans saying, you know, the president's entitled to his nominees, I've heard some people push back and say, well, we've seen Republicans vote against all of Biden's picks. You know, you voted for against everyone except Lloyd Austin. Yeah, but look, I mean, a lot of Biden's picks, I think, were extreme.

You look at someone like Mary Garland. I think Merrick Garland has been the most partisan and political attorney general the country's ever seen. You look at someone like Alejandro Mayorkas who opened up the border and caused an invasion at our southern border. It actually, I was surprised Biden did not nominate more moderate candidates. You look at Trump. Trump's nominated several people who were Democrats until like 12 minutes ago. Tulsa Gabbard and RFK. The only reason I'm not still laughing after the Mayor Carlin's thing.

is I've already watched this once before. Like what Merrick Garland is he talking about? Yeah. Because that's not the one that we've seen over the last four years. The most partisan, the most like, really? Okay. I mean, look, this is the game they play. Oh, Trump's nominees are moderate.

Biden's nominees were extreme. Obviously, in any reality-based world, you would know that it's the exact opposite of that. But this is what they do and they get away with it. And so I don't even know what to say about it anymore. I mean, the idea that Cash Patel is not an extremist. This is a guy who is as close to full Q&ON as it gets. The idea that Pete Hankseth is some kind of moderate on top of the fact that with all the sexual assault claims and the clear issues with alcohol and on down the line, Carrie Lake now, the head of voice of America.

I mean, it's so stupid. and the idea that people have to sit here and say, well, that's just not true and here's why. Like, you've already lost when you have to start saying that shit. 100%. So it's just, thanks for that one, Jesse. Oh, you're welcome. Alex Salmon has written for publications including Harper's,

the New Republic, N-plus one, and Wired. And he is a politics writer at Slate, where he penned a piece with the possibly provocative headline, Democrats have a Pod Save America problem. He joins me now to explain himself. Alex, thanks for being here. Yeah, thanks so much for the invite. So the subhead for this piece is

the biggest shadow hanging over the party after the election boils down to one man's singular legacy. I assume this refers to Tim Cain. Yeah, Tim Cain's beating the rap. It's not a Tim Cain. But, okay, seriously, we're talking here about Barack Obama,

and really what we're talking about and what you're talking about in the piece is the fact that there are a sizable number of Democratic consulting class folks who want the party to go back to the politics of that era or of that man, right? Yeah, absolutely. And that distinction is critical, right? That's sort of what the piece is all about is the fact that those two things are are not synonymous

is sort of where I think a lot of Democrats are getting hung up. So it's exactly the right sort of framing for this particular issue. So talk about what you mean by that, though. The idea is, I think, you know, as you say in the piece, Obama really was a singular individual. And the Democratic Party is not going to go back to someone to him specifically because he was sort of unique and a talented speaker, et cetera. So really what you're talking about is that they want to keep the same sort of politics of that era but with somebody else. So what do you mean by the politics of that era? Yeah, yeah. So it's a really interesting dynamic.

It's sort of in the aftermath of the loss of the Kamala Harris campaign, you've seen a lot of these former Obama staffers, former Obama strategists, former Obama media. personalities. It was sort of resoundingly saying, all right, we've aired, we need to go back to what was working before. And what was working before was the Obama era. And like, when you say that, it's like, well, sure, it sounds great. Like Obama won twice. They're both sort of laughers, right? It definitely was like a less stressful time. They weren't losing to Trump consistently. But what that actually means, I think, is really thorny. And like, yes, the era of Obama as a politician, you know, obviously a singular political talent and incredible order. It's very different than like the politics and the policy of the Obama era, which really Joe Biden broke with,

I think, in a pretty substantial way. And so when we're talking about this on like a policy level, what it means is like being friendlier with Silicon Valley, right? Being friendly with Wall Street, like being more comfortable with big business. And like a lot of the Obama people were upset, I think, with President Biden's decision to be more antagonistic towards those people. And that meant putting Lena Khan at the FTC and going after large corporations. And that meant sort of demonizing some of these people on the stump when Biden spoke, which wasn't that often. But there was a shift in the orientation towards big money. There was a shift in the way we talked about Republicans in the sort of the willingness to embrace

like moderation in the big middle. It was different under Obama than it was under Biden. And you're hearing a lot of people saying, all right, it's time to go back. It's time to bring Roman Emmanuel back as DNC chair. It's, you know, it's time to do these things where it was like. And in this era, it was like, okay, Democrats. under Obama were much more inclined to fight with the left flank of their own party than were to fight with Republicans.

And that was a meaningful shift that happened under Biden, that that was not really the case. And so it's sort of caught up in all of this. You have, you know, you have aesthetic differences, right? You're talking about individual politicians in Obama and Biden. You're talking about kind of broad political and policy directives. There's a lot to sort of tease out. But that, I think, is sort of generally what we're talking about when we, this sort of ongoing squabble about which direction to head in after another resounding defeat to Trump.

So one of the reasons you titled your piece, the piece was titled for you, I don't know which one it is, that Democrats have a Pod Save America problem. Let's talk about that a minute. Basically, a few weeks ago, Pod Save America, which is the Uber popular show hosted by former Obama White House staffers, John Lovett, John Fevereaux, and Tommy Veter, they hosted a conversation with some of Kamala Harris's very senior campaign officials. And the theme of the show is, was why the Democrats lost in November and how the party should respond to those losses. I haven't listened to it, but I gather they did not decide that what the Democratic Party needs going forward is not them.

Right. It's sort of an amazing episode, right? I think that the reason it's so salient is because, right, as you say, here's this media property that's run by these former Obama staffers, famously, you know, these guys who came from the Obama White House. And they're really like the greatest expositors of Obama's style politics, right? That's like they are by far the, you know, in terms of like, we talk about like democratic media properties.

Like this is the one. This is the thing. And it's like very Obama specific. It's like relatively young guys. And when they had this interview with with these with these Harris staffers, critically, it's like it's David Pluff and it's Stephanie Cutter, both of whom were core members of the Obama campaigns in 08 and 12. It's like Obama world talking to itself.

It's like them talking to their friends. And for 90 minutes, they go on and on about what went wrong. And of course, I mean, maybe. this is not surprising. I think it was surprising to some people, and it was sort of outrageous to some people as well. Is it what they found? Is it like, well, they didn't do anything wrong, actually. What went wrong? Nothing we did. What went wrong? We took a long, hard look at ourselves and decided that we did everything right and that the race was unwinnable. And there was nothing we could do. And like, we tacked to the middle as hard as we could. And that didn't work. But that doesn't mean we

shouldn't have done that. That means let's do it even more in the future. So like the thing that failed the great interventions that we made that didn't work, all we can know for sure is that we need to do them even more going forward. And that was sort of the resounding tone of this episode. It's sort of like worth listening to it sometimes because you're like, well, surely there's a little more introspection than that. Like, surely that's not the best we can do. And they're saying, like, yeah, it's 100% the best we can do. And then everyone goes home happy. You know, it's a very interesting, you know, it created enough uproar that like John Favro had to go do media afterwards and be like, well, I don't think it was that self-congratulatory. Like, I think these guys know it wasn't

the best outcome. When you're like in the replies on Twitter being like, well, I don't think that's exactly what they were saying. You sort of lost, right? So interesting, you know, sort of aftermath of that interview, but very telling, I think. I get the sense that the word headwinds came up a lot. Yeah, right, right. It's just the, yeah, exactly. It's a gale force. Nothing can be done. It's like, I'm sure there were words in headwinds, right? Like, I don't disagree that they're headwinds. I think we're all apprised of the political environment globally that incumbent parties post-COVID have suffered that like the way everything went down with Biden at the end didn't look great. I mean, no one says the word challenges, but I think if you light a billion and a half dollars on fire and

have like really, I mean, if you look at the numbers, like one of the worst campaign performances in 30 to 40 years easily, but maybe even since like the 1930s. And to come out of that being like, well, you know, we did the best we could do. I think it was like sort of unacceptable. So You know, it's an interesting conversation. Yeah, for sure. You know, one of the things that boggles my mind, and you talked about this in your piece, that list of things that they sort of want going forward and they keep talking about, you know, more moderation, more embracing of Wall Street and Silicon Valley being less combative

toward Republicans. I am really hard pressed as you are to see which of those things the Harris campaign didn't do. Like, that's everything she did. Right, right, exactly. And that's what I think it's so interesting, too, about this moment, is it like, you know, you would have to say, like, they just tried this stuff, right? Is that not the campaign that we just saw? It sure looks like it to me. The complaints that, you know, we need to put these

Obama people back in positions of powers, like, they just ran the thing. And they just tried that stuff. And like, the Harris people ran that campaign. That was not a Biden campaign, right? It was just, it just wasn't the same thing. It was sure there was continuity and sure she struggled to differentiate herself. And there were all these things. But like, they also did differentiate themselves on some things, like the economic message went away. The talk about union jobs, that went away. Like, there were points of difference and they were very obvious, I think, and it just so happens to those, like, they were probably worse, right? You know, looking at the numbers, looking at the outcome, you'd have to say, like, I mean, they didn't get things going in the right

direction. It's a very funny conversation, right? Where it's like, okay, you have to sort of like rub your eyes and be like, well, wait, do we just see this? Right. No, it's. Exactly. Look, it was a short campaign for Harris, obviously, but it felt like early on, they sort of knew the direction to go in. And that was when you had all, you know, all the quote unquote weird talk about MAGA. And then it really feels to me like all the people that were involved in this podcast, the David Plus, the Stephanie Cutters, et cetera, sort of said, oh, no, no, no, we have to stop that. And instead, we need you to go on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney. Right. And that's what's so funny about this, I think there are a handful of copouts that I find to be. very unpersuasive or you should say explanations maybe cop out is uh is poisoning the well here but yeah the idea it was a short campaign right it's like to me it seems like the longer this went on the worse it got right at the very beginning it was like okay great they have this incredibly effective attack line on republicans that they're you know that they're weird

their concerns are are just out of bounds and strange they don't care about you and and kitchen table issues and the economy and inequality all these things what they care about is like birth rates and like stuff that's just like what? And that seemed like really effective. And there was super high enthusiasm. You have a younger candidate. And then it was like, all right, after the DNC, they shelved all of that stuff. And then it was like these sort of abstract notions about democracy and like, and right. That was the influence of these people, right? I mean, it's exactly these guys who came up with that stuff. And cutter and Pluff joining the campaign. They did not work for Biden, right? They came off off the bench from, you know, their time with Obama to do this stuff. And that was their

influence and like, you know, I think another hundred days in that direction, probably outcome is even worse. It didn't seem like it was working. And so I definitely don't think that it was, to me, like the idea that it was, oh, it was only a hundred days. It's like, if you give these people another hundred days, you know, how many, what are we looking like? What are we looking at in terms of the deficit there? It's going to be probably much, much more dramatic. Yeah, no, for sure, because it just would have been Kamala Harris flanked by Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney and Mike Pence, I guess, or something like that. You make the exactly the right point, right? Is that they set aside any sort of combativeness towards Republicans, towards anyone, right?

Towards Uber, towards Wall Street. There are no enemies anymore. And all of a sudden, we're on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney and a bunch of Republicans. And it's like, well, you know, we're moderating. I guess that's what moderation looks like to them. And it just was so unpersuasive. It just didn't work. And yeah, right.

However many more weeks of that. Exactly. So you point out in your piece that this episode was met with a, quote, firestorm of criticism online from commenters and journalists who bristled at the self-satisfied tone and lack of soul-searching. Perry Bacon wrote in The Washington Post, he said, blaming everything on factors outside of their control and taking no real responsibility is disappointing, which actually seems like a bit of an understatement to me. Yeah, right. Right, exactly. It's like you're not asking for that much. It's interesting too because,

right, the sort of one of the factors that's out of their control that they love to point to was like the contemporary media environment, like this fragmented media space, it's like hard to know where to compete. Like, you know, it's talking about not going on Rogan, but then, you know, I don't know about Rogan, but, but there was sort of this idea that like they were felled by this sort of loose agglomeration of like right wing podcasts that had, you know, have, have sort of valorized this, this, you know, Trump's political ethos for, for Americans in non-traditional ways or whatever. And it's like, the funny thing about that contention, which may not be true. I'm, I'm sure it plays a.

is that like Pod Save America specifically is supposed to be the answer to that, right? I mean, here's your left wing podcast or whatever, your sort of centrist democratic podcast, and it's got massive production value and supposedly has huge reach. And like, you're telling you that they got outfoxed by a bunch of like gambling podcast that people like put on YouTube for free. You know, it's like a bunch of 19 year olds with draft kings accounts who were like, you know, talking about like parlays and stuff. And it's like, you know, I think you have to, right, it's not just like, oh, you know,

that it wasn't their fault or whatever. It's like a tough environment, the media environment. It's not what it used to be. It's like, well, they're part of this media environment. And so it's like if they were unable to overcome that, then like, then Pod Save America itself is like really implicated in that failure. Like why did that not reach anybody? And I think that like there's almost like a meta level to this conversation where it's like

they weren't reaching people, period. And the specific podcast has a lot to say about that, I think, actually. Yeah, 100% agree with that. I'm going to go ahead and assume none of the people involved in this episode. entertained for even a moment that actually the Democratic Party might need more people along the lines of, say, Bernie Sanders or AOC, that they might need to talk more about how corporate greed is the real reason you're paying more for eggs in the grocery store, etc. Did any of that happen?

Well, I mean, it's funny, too, because this is another one of those contentions they make. They're like, oh, we need to be more into, you know, the responsive to the data, response to the polling. Like, there's a lack of cohesion and strategy with the super PACs and the campaign and all this stuff. And it's like, for what we know, like, the reporting in the, in the New York Times, like, the stuff that was polling the best, according to their super PAC, was, like, the Bernie Sanders line about corporate greed and about, like, exactly the stuff. And they chose not to use it. And so it's like, they actually knew that was out there and they chose to go a different direction despite even having the polling on that stuff. So again, it's like, when they said, oh,

we need more data. It's like, well, they were choosing not to use the data that they had because they obviously had some ideological investment in something else. And like in the non-Bernie Sanders thing and the non-AOC thing. It doesn't need to seem. It just is or isn't, and it didn't win. So it's exactly that, the choice to shelve both those people as messengers and also their message in general was a good purposeful decision that was made. And again, no real atonement for that. Like the fact that they were like, oh, we see these numbers and we're just going to ride to something else. Never a satisfying explanation for why that was either. Yeah. You know, it reminds me that back in, I think it was October, Harris put out a proposal that would

expand Medicare to provide home care for helping to help families who were having cost issues with long-term care. And everyone, you know, the left is like, this is fantastic. Finally, you know, this is great. I don't think she ever talked about that again. Like if she did, I certainly do not recall it. Right. That's what's so interesting, too, is that like she's not a great messenger, right? Ultimately not a great speaker. And some of the stuff, you know, it takes a little dexterity to message on some of those things, right? That's like, I think is a really persuasive and important policy, it's not like $15 minimum wage. You know what I mean? It's like it takes like two clauses to get that out. And it's like that's a great policy. Policy is important. It's like someone has to be able to

message, you have to be able to message on the policy. They didn't even really try on that stuff. And I think it's such a funny disconnect too is it, you know, you're talking to people who did policy, you know, people in D.C. who do policy and were, and worked with the Biden administration, they were like excited about what they saw on the website, what they understood to be part of the policy platform and all the stuff. But it's like, but if you listen to her talk, Like, how would you know that? Like, I barely knew that. And it's my job to know about it.

And I'm, like, combing through the website and, like, did she say something about minimum wage? Like, I honestly have no idea. Is there, like, you know, was the, was the, were they lowering the age for Medicare enrollment? I honestly don't even remember. It's like, it's exactly right. It's like, they pointed these policies and say, well, we had these policies and they didn't win for us. But it's like, what did she actually talk about?

It was like the most lethal fighting force on, you know, in America. Like, the slug lines off this campaign had nothing to do with that. stuff. And, you know, it's like at a certain level, American voters can only, you know, work with what you tell them that you care about. Like, you can't blame the electorate for that. So. Yeah, for sure. And look, Donald Trump is, you know, I was going to say singularly loathsome, but I don't know if that's actually true because there are so many other loathsome people all around him. But my point is he's a loathsome individual, but he also was able to convince people that he was looking out for their interests. And it really feels like the Harris campaign,

didn't even try to do that the way it should have. And instead was obsessed with this moderation thing and with trying to get disaffected Republicans, which, as you said, in retrospect, maybe not the best choice. Yeah, I mean, it's just funny too because this is something I wrote about like a couple of weeks ago that the lesson that Democrats learned in 2022 and 2020

was it like, you should run something that is immediately going to make voters lives better. Right? So in 2020, they were like, you're getting checks, right? They were like, you're going to get $2,000, especially with those Senate runoffs in January of 21. They're like, all right, you know, if you vote for us, everyone's getting checks and they're, whatever, they're means tested. But, you know, it's like, it's very obvious the case. You know, it's like, you get money.

That's the easiest sell in the world. And then in 22, they announced the student loan debt cancellation like 10 weeks before election day in the midterms. And it's like, okay, it's needs tested, whatever. It's 10 grand that you don't have to worry about anymore. And, you know, like, and they overperformed both times. I mean, you know, they were really successful. And that, like, that lesson somehow got immediately unlearned. And it was like there was just no immediate benefit for voting for Democrats,

according to the Harris campaign itself. And, like, it's a different sell job at that point. And I was shocked how fast that went away. Like, I feel like that lesson they'd learned it after two pretty good cycles. And then it was gone. Yeah. And it's almost like it was gone because all the Obama people came back. But, you know.

Right. But what do we know? Right. Alex, thank you so much. This was just such an interesting conversation. And I think obviously it's going to be so important going forward. And especially with like the specter of Rahm Emanuel getting his absolutely disgusting fingers back on the hands of the Democratic National Committee. So yeah, thanks again for coming on, man. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production. by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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