The Daily Beast Podcast - Nancy Mace Is Rapidly Becoming One Of The Worst People in the Country

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

In this episode of The New Abnormal, co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moody express concern over recent political developments, including Republican South Carolina congresswoman Nancy Mace and her tirade against the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. House. Then they delve into the intersection of sports and politics with journalist Jemele Hill, who discusses the activism of athletes, and the ongoing fight for equity in women's sports. They also explore the influence of Fox News on Donald Trump's administration with Matt Gertz from Media Matters for America, highlighting the alarming number of Fox personalities being nominated for key positions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

What a great show we have for you today. Journalist Jamil Hill, host of True TVs Above the Fold, and the new podcast, Politics, joins us to talk about the intersection of sports and politics from the activism of athletes like LeBron and the WMBA, the ongoing fight for equity in women's sports. Then, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, Matt Gertz, is here to talk about the growing number of Fox News personalities Donald Trump's is nominating for his cabinet and how much the network affected how he ran his first term. But first, let's have some fun.

So everyone, exciting news. It's raining in New York City. I cannot remember the last time it rained because we are literally living inside of a sci-fi horror novel. Right now where we have had, oh, I don't know, a number of fires, brush fires throughout New York City over the last like month and a half. So today it's raining and I am so happy and also terrified. So here we are. I don't know if I need a rain catcher outside because I need to store water or whatever. But, you know, yay, rain, water.

Something else that I think makes us happy and maybe also terrified is Matt Gates. Just full stop. Yes, has dropped out of the running to be Donald Trump's Attorney General. Big shout out to headline writers who are trying desperately to avoid having to say Matt Gates pulls out. I wish them well. Oh my God. Obviously happy that he's dropping out, but at the same time, maybe a little terrified because who the hell knows who the person is going to be that Trump comes up with next? And you'd like to say, well, it couldn't be worse, but I think we all know it could be worse.

But anyway, Gates has dropped out and he put out a little statement on Twitter. And he said, it is clear that my confirmation was unfurbed. fairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump vance transition. There's no time to waste on a needlessly protracted Washington scuffle, which is like everything he does. Mm-hmm. And then he said, thus I'll be withdrawing my name from consideration to serve as attorney. So, Gates has resigned as a congressman.

Yep. And I raised the question, can he do a takes use backsies on that resignation? I'm pretty sure that he cannot. But I wouldn't be surprised if he pops up in another role in the, you know, administration that doesn't require confirmation, right? Like he has been one of the most loyal sycophants to Donald Trump, one of the most, you know, outspoken. I mean, I don't know who else you could name as like a junior representative from like a small city, town place whose name you know other than Matt Gates. So he has made his stamp on Fox News and on social media. So I'm pretty sure

while I would like to laugh at the unemployment piece, that he will pop up because, you know, evil always rises. But I do think that this is, I really wanted to see the report. We all know that if that report exonerated Matt Gates, it would be on the cover of every paper. It would be the headline story of every cable news outlet. And the fact is, is that it did not, right? He may not have been charged by the DOJ,

But the fact is that like it was the New York Times, I think, Andy, that put together the chart of like all of these payments to, you know, one that we know it was 17 years old at the time. I mean, thousands of dollars. And the stories of these like drug-fueled sex parties, I mean, it's so disgusting and wild. But this is the thread that moves through the theme. of Donald Trump's appointees. All of these people, in some form or fashion, are connected to a sexual crime or violence. And that to me just says so much about this incoming administration

and, of course, the best people that Donald Trump surrounds himself with. Yeah, and we'll get to those other people in a second. I just want to say, and again, I am completely speculating here. It may be that I'm way off base. So, okay, he resigned his seat, effective immediately when he did it. So fine. But he was reelected, and that Congress doesn't get seated until January. So what stops him, I know in his resignation letter to Mike Johnson, he said he would not be taking the oath of office in January.

But I don't know that that's legally binding. So even if he can't take back his resignation, I'm not sure what stops him from refilling the seat. in January since he was elected to it. So who knows? Like I said, it's pure speculation. The last thing I want to say about Gates is part of me feels like him dropping out of the race for Attorney General. With that one move, he did more for the Department of Justice than Merrick Garland has

done in four years. Oh, shit. I know that's right. I would like to say that we may not ever have to utter his name again, but we all know that these people are like Bremblins. And they just keep coming back. Yeah. never stops. So I guess we can move to the next alleged sexual assaulter that Donald Trump has

nominated for his cabinet. And that is Pete Hegseth, who is Trump's choice to head the Defense Department. And Mediaite got their hands on a police report on an allegation of sexual assault by Pete Hegseth back in 2017. He was never charged. So I have to say that for legal reasons. But there is a 22-page report that talks about how a woman alleges that she was sexually assaulted by Hegseth at a Republican women's conference. You know, I don't even know what to say about that. I know. It just seems so fitting. Yeah.

The woman who is unidentified submitted for a rape kit after it happened and everything. So it's not like this is coming out of nowhere. It was in real time. She made these allegations. And she said, look, they had both been driven. drinking, and she at least alleges that he was getting very handsy with a bunch of women at this Republican women's conference, and that basically everything went fuzzy for her, and she ended up in his hotel room. And she alleges that Heggseth took her phone and blocked the door with his

body when she tried to leave, and that she said no repeatedly, and that he did not take no for an answer. So this is a guy who Donald Trump wants to be the head of the defense department. Danielle, I'll throw it to you. The common thread, the common denominator with Donald Trump's appointments is sexual violence, is violence against women. And, you know, while Republicans want to say, as one of them did on CNN recently, that, oh, these, you know, this story is a distraction. Allegations of rape are not a distraction.

It's a crime. And the fact is, is that if he were innocent, someone explained to me why he needed to pay a person off then. Then let it come out and then you tell your side of the story and you're exonerated because you've done nothing wrong. But somehow money changed hands as a way to keep this person quiet. And for folks to say that this has nothing to do with his appointment, like we need to understand the very character of the people that are going to be leading, the person that's

going to be leading the most powerful military in the world. We have listened to things that he has said about women in combat, having no place and no role. So we know what these people think about women and their actions show you what it is that they do to women. Women to them are disposable. And so it's just, you know, it's really sick. And it's like out of all of the Republicans, again, that you could possibly choose, what does it say? that Donald Trump consistently picks people that have rap sheets or are being investigated for crimes against women. Yeah.

And in addition to everything, you said, it's important to remember that sexual assaults take place in our military. It's unfortunate. But they absolutely do. And to have someone heading the Department of Defense who has the views in general about women that Pete Heg-Seth does is already bad enough. But to have someone there who has been credibly alleged to be a sexual assaulter himself, to have that person overseeing a department that is, you know, inevitably is going to have to deal with sexual assaults over the next four years within its ranks.

That's untenable or should be in a normal world, which of course we don't live in because, Danielle, we are aware. The new abnormal. Thank you. To say that it's a distraction as you've rightfully. noted that some people are doing, and they tried the same bullshit with Gates, obviously. It's not a distraction because the heinousness of what he did by itself is bad enough. But it also, I think, directly goes to how he will run the defense department. So it's not a distraction.

It's incredibly relevant, even above the fact that any time there are allegations of sexual assault, it's relevant. But what I'm saying is this is directly relevant to the job that he is going to suppose. have to do. It speaks volumes that out of all of the people that you could be choosing for these roles, that these are the men that he is putting up. And, oh, it isn't just men that are caught up in sexual abuse allegations and scandals in Trump camp. There is also a woman as well. And that would be Donald Trump's nomination of Linda McMahon. Andy, would you like to run us a woman? through Linda McMahon's indecency.

I don't even know what you call it. I don't know what you call what she is alleged to have done on behalf of her husband. I don't think the actual allegations here have anything to do with anything Vince McMahon is accused of doing what she's been alleged to have done. And when I say alleged to have done, she's been alleged to have done this in a lawsuit. She's been alleged to have knowingly enabled the sexual exploitation of children by a, a world wrestling entertainment, or WWE, as it's better known, by a W.W.E. employee back in, I think, the 1980s. Basically, there was an employee of the WWE named Milven Phillips Jr. He was a ringside

announcer, and he recruited what are called ringboys to help him put up and break down the wrestling rings at WWE matches. And he would, ostensibly hire them to do that. And then it turns out, at least according to this lawsuit, he would exploit the children, which included filming his sexual abuse of them. It's absolutely a horrific story. But basically, the lawsuit says that both Linda and Vince McMahon were completely negligent and basically turned a blind eye to what was going on and failed to do anything about it. And I'll quote from part of the lawsuit, as reported by CNN, Phillips lured and manipulated the young boys with promises of meeting famous wrestlers and attending the highly

popular wrestling shows, experiences that were otherwise unattainable for these kids. The McMahon's WWE and TKO Holdings allowed Phillips and others to engage in and foster the WWE's rampant culture of sexual abuse. So that's what the charge is here. So it seems that she, really cares about children. And then being the head of the Department of Education seems like a perfect role for somebody like Linda McMahon. You know, some days I don't understand what kind of world we are living in. Like these things 10 years ago, one of them would have been enough to ruin somebody's career. I miss shame. I miss people like having shame and people being able to be shamed for behaviors like this.

I mean, I can recall that I think it was Anna Navarro said recently, like Bill Clinton had appointees that had to withdraw because of a legal hiring of nannies back in the 90s. Big deal, right? And now we have people that are enthralled in sexual abuse allegations, cases and investigations and lawsuits. And an entire Republican Party just kind of shrugs their shoulders and looks the other way. It's truly sick. Like the decaying of morals here from a party that has lied to the American public for generations

telling us that they are the party of family values and morality. And this is what they are okay, stomaking. Like, you cannot take these people at their word. Just look at what they do. Sick. Yeah. completely sick. I'll just end the Linda McMahon portion of our show by saying that, according to the lawsuit, Vince McMahon admitted that he and Linda were aware as early as the mid-80s that this guy, Phillips, had a, quote, peculiar and unnatural interest, unquote, in young boys. So, yeah. And speaking of having no shame, she's rapidly becoming one of the worst people in the country. And I'm talking of Congresswoman Nancy Mace. She and Mike Johnson, another candidate for worst person in the

country, have gone after newly elected representative Sarah McBride from Delaware, who is the first openly transgender member of Congress. They have introduced a resolution that would prevent McBride from accessing women's restrooms or other gender-based facilities. I can't even get to how disgusting this is. It is clearly being done for clout. And when I say clout, I mean, as AOC said, she said, they're doing this so that Nancy Mace can make a buck and send a text and fundraise off an email. They're not doing this to protect people, which, yes, 100% that. It is so disgusting. And Nancy Mace went on, I think it was Fox News. And basically, I can't remember the exact quote, but she said that she refuses to believe that a man

who dresses in a skirt, her words to describe Sarah McBride, is my equal. And my first thought in hearing that was Sarah McBride is not your equal. She's your better. Yeah. Yep. It is just as strong a case of just bigotry and bullying that I can imagine. And it's absolutely disgusting. And I, you know, my heart goes out to trans people because they are really going through it right now. And it's just awful to see it happening. Here's something that I shared on blue sky yesterday, which was... I'm sorry, where? Blue sky. Oh, interesting.

The place that you tried to bully me into getting on a year ago. But now I'm here, Andy, all because of you. But I posted and I said, here's what I want people to understand, is that the same people who are setting up segregationist policies in the Capitol are the same people who spit on black children trying to integrate schools. They're the same people that are calling for mass deportations and the dehumanizations of undocumented people in this country, migrants, immigrants, all of them. They're the same people. What we need to understand is that there is no hierarchy in terms of bigotry. And so when you see it, it should not matter whether or not you know somebody that is trans.

It should not matter whether or not you even understand what it means to be trans. What you can see very clearly is that if you remove the word trans and put in the word black, right? Or put in the word Jew or put in the word Muslim. What Nancy Mace is doing is steeped in nothing other than discrimination. She is the same person that would basically, why doesn't she just put up a policy that says all the black women in Congress right now have to use a separate bathroom and that it's whites only? And so, you know, people get very upset with me when I equate these things. But the fact is, is that as a black queer woman, I see very little daylight between the type of transphobia that is allowed to fester because people don't understand. You don't have to understand anything other than the fact that telling people where, when, and how, they can use a restroom, where when, and how, they can enter a restaurant.

what schools they can go to is segregation and it is discrimination. And it should not stand. And what makes me so angry is that Representative McBride agreed to the terms because she does not want to become a distraction for the people of her state that she was sent to Capitol Hill to represent. And that broke my heart for a number of reasons because to me by saying that I will just follow the rules that are set forth here, even though that you know that they are on just, is then basically sending a message to other folks who have been through the same type of trauma,

young trans kids, girls in sports, and the other is that like, thems are the rules. And you have to just follow them. It's not okay. And what I would have liked to see more of is more, I guess, camaraderie and words coming out of all of the Democratic members of Congress in the House and in a sense not just the select few. AOC being one of them. Representative Pocan being another one. But I'm like there should have been a loud, resounding chorus calling these people bigots and segregationists because that is what they are.

Yeah. You know, as you were saying that, I was thinking exactly to that Nancy Mace quote, which was that it's offensive that a man in a skirt could ever think they're my equal. And you're right. Replace man in a skirt with a black person. And that is literally the segregationist, the anti-civil rights amendment, civil rights act, rather, thing that we heard for a very, very, very, very long time in this country, that white people saying it's offensive that a black person could ever think they are my equal. And so I'm with you. I see no daylight between it either. And I've been saying for a long time that that's, aside from the fact that it's just, again, my heart breaks for trans folks. It is also, unfortunately, it's a canary in the coal mine

for doing this to a lot of other people. Because as you said, it's all of a piece. And bigotry against one group is bigotry against all groups. And it's absolutely disgusting to me. As far as Sarah McBride's sort of acquiescence to this, my feeling on that is I, I shouldn't have an opinion on that as a, you know, cis-head man. I know a lot of trans folks are very mad at her. I'm not judging them. I'm just saying that I saw some cis people, particularly cis men, yelling at Sarah McBride, and I was like, yeah, maybe not your place to do that.

You know, if you want to quote something a trans person said about it, fine. I don't know. It rubbed me the wrong way. So, you know, I'm not going to take an opinion on that. And I do, I feel really badly for her. And it sucks that she has to go through this and deal with this outright bigotry before she's even been sworn in. The thing for me is that what I want, though, is for people to just call this what it is. And for corporate mainstream media to call this what it is.

And for the Democrats in the House of Representatives and in the Senate, for Democrats in Congress to call this what it is. It is a segregationist tactic. It is a Jim Crow tactic. You can interchange who the person is, who the target is, but the tactic is the same. Yep. So this is not a debate about who should use what bathroom because guess what? The bathroom, right? The restaurant, the swimming pool, the school, it's always been weaponized by people who don't

want to acknowledge the humanity and dignity of people who are not like them. And so the fact that we even get into debates about, well, maybe this shouldn't be, fuck that. You know, and so I'm not coming at Representative McBride. I'm not coming at Sarah for like, for trying to go to work to do what it is the people of her district sent her to go do. But the fact of the matter is, is that you cannot obey in advance. It is what is said about autocracy. Like you cannot just acquiesce in advance to these people because it will never be enough. Because now Nancy Mace has offered up another piece of legislation to ban trans people in bathrooms at the airports in Washington, D.C.

It will never stop until you stop it in its tracks. And I wish that Democrats would actually do fucking better. But that's a constant refrain in my life. Yeah, they're too busy blaming trans people for Kamala Harris losing. the election, which is among the dumbest fucking things. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to The New Abnormal, I believe for the first time, journalist Jamel Hill, who is the host, True TV Show Above the Fold, is also the host of a new podcast entitled Spolitics, an author of Uphill, which is our memoir and contributing

writer at the Atlantic. You are a busy, busy person. So I thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. I want to start out today with getting your reflections on what role sports played in this latest presidential election. From seeing players in the WMBA in particular, you know, with T-shirts that were showing support for Kamala Harris to those that just said vote very plainly. we've seen an increasing role, I guess, in mainstream media of sports figures being a lot more vocal beyond just commentating on their own sports and fields. What do you make of all of that?

And what do you think about the role that sports has in politics? There's a couple different ways to answer this. And they actually require a couple different answers. Of course, there certainly were a lot of athletes who are very vocal in this election about where they stood, who they supported. LeBron James came out with an endorsement of Kamala Harris, as you, mentioned there were several WMBA players who also followed suit with their endorsement or just just generally supporting people to vote the leagues. They had voting PSAs that ran. The NFL certainly

did PSAs as in public service announcements to remind people about their civic duty. The biggest role that sports played in this election, frankly had to deal with transgender athletes. And a lot of people, of course, are very familiar with the ad that ran. And I took note of when that ad ran, as in during which times. That ad ran, I think, most heavily during college football games. And we know that college football games have massive audiences. Political ads on both sides did. But that ad in particular, where it shows that Kamala Harris supports incarcerated folks receiving gender affirming care, but they also in the ad showed a picture of a San Jose State volleyball player who is a trans woman. And right now there's a huge amount of controversy around this.

And in fact, I think several teams or a few teams in the league in which she plays are suing because San Jose State has a transgender athlete. The issue overall of transgender women playing in sports was a huge campaign issue for Donald Trump. So that was the most significant way that sports played in this election. But I would say that leads to something that you also surfaced about the role of sports and politics, period. And this has been a longstanding relationship. I mean, we can even take it back to George Washington because George Washington, when he was president, to get people to vote and to specifically vote for him, he used to hold these parties where he would ply people with liquor and they would play sports games. And so Andrew Jackson was a big gambler and he loved to bet on horses. So there was a history to a point of a lot of white politicians using sports as a way to connect with their elect.

or just as a way to kind of get them to care about certain issues. And then what we see what changed in the role of sports and politics, or I should say not that the role changed, but how people perceive when and how and who could examine that relationship between sports and politics is when black athletes, of course, began to use their platforms to bring attention to wider issues in this country, especially to the conditions of themselves and their own people. That's when you start hearing stick to sports. That's when you start hearing sports and politics don't mix. And that's why it's so inconsistent because right now we have a lot of athletes at the college level and at the professional level who are doing the Trump dance. And those same people

who were yelling that politics and sports don't belong, they're suddenly not saying anything. So as always has been the case, it's not that sports and politics have a mix. They always have. they always will because the moment that you decide to go buy a ticket to see a team playing in an arena or a stadium, that is politics because those stadiums and arenas are funded by taxpayer dollars. So it was never about these whether or not they should mix. It was always about who has a right to say something about it and who has a right to use their platform to draw attention to politics. It's always about whether or not the people disagree or agree. It's never about the fact that these two things have been married together from the start.

You know, and I appreciate you bringing the attention, especially around those that have been actively using their platforms to align with Donald Trump, whether it is the dance, whether it is the football player who put on the MAGA hat after a game, whether it was the, I think it was a player with the chiefs that was talking about the role of women and speaking very vocally and what some would say, myself included, with deep misogyny. It always does seem that when the purpose, the person, that is speaking is black, is a person of color, is from a marginalized community, whether they be queer, then all of a sudden it is a problem. And I think specifically I want to talk to you about too, in the WMBA, you have a lot of black women players, queer players that are there with so much more to lose in terms of how vocal they have been over the last several years, in particular, you know, working to get one of the owners of the Atlanta Dream who was running for Senate, endorsing a different candidate from their ownership. And they make the least amount of money. And so I wanted to get your thoughts on like women in particular and how they have vocalized their political

beliefs, even though they're the ones that with the most to lose at a time when there is more attention being paid to women's sports. For your listeners who may not be as familiar, you're referring to WMBA players getting behind Reverend Raphael Warnock to help him become George's first black senator. You know, this happened in 2020. Kelly Leffler was an owner of the Atlanta Dream. And when the protests began for George Floyd, she wrote a letter to the WMBA commissioner. She also went on Fox News talking about how disrespectful it was for athletes in the WMBA

to begin to take on the call of calling again. police brutality. Many of them were wearing Black Lives Matters. T-shirts. They were speaking very vocally about an outrage after what happened after George Floyd was murdered. And she didn't like it. And she went on Fox. She said a whole lot of disparaging things about the WMBA players and their stance and the Black Lives Matter. She put the battery in their backs. At that point, when she did that, Raphael Warnock was polling at 9%. Kelly Leffler was considered the overwhelming favorite to win to win that seat. And the WMBA players, they had a meeting with him. They talked to him about his positions because, you know, they weren't just going to blindly support him. They wanted

to know if he was in alignment with what they were in line alignment with. And he was. And they got behind them. They talked about his platform, his campaign, his policies. They wore his t-shirts. And he won the seat. Kelly Leffler messed around and found out why you don't mess with WNBA players. And that was one of the bravest political acts I've ever seen because, you know, people have to understand, as you just said, like, these women have a lot to lose. They don't make the same amount of money that NBA players make. And they decided to throw their full support as a league behind a WNBA owner, including the players on her own team. They were the ones who made the rallying call. They basically went after their own boss. And I think the reason

why you saw that is because, especially in sports, but I think every woman can relate to this. Women are often in spaces where they have to fight for their dignity and respect, where they have to advocate strongly for themselves. These women have been playing sports their whole life. They've been playing despite the fact that they are underinvested in, despite the fact that they often do not receive the same amount of media attention. They certainly don't receive the same amount of money. So they understand that everything they get will only happen with a fight. So they are the most prepared for the battle. It will be interesting to see, as this was a banner year for the WMBA,

the arrival in the presence and the explosion of Caitlin Clark had a ripple effect that brought the league more eyeballs than probably they'd seen since the first season of the WNBA. And now you have the valuations of WMBA teams rising. You have more people who want to watch, more people who want to invest. There is some question as to whether that spirit of activism will remain the same as there's more money that's invested into what they do. But overall, I would just say that it is because of their own lived experience. as you pointed out, and the WNBA, I mean, over 70% of the women are black. We have 30% that

identify as queer. So when you have the makeup of that kind of league, their existence is just political for people. And they are going to constantly have to fight for respect, dignity, agency, and just the right to exist. When I look at sports in particular, and then I'm speaking specifically around women and the ways in which they have had to fight not only for viewership, but for equal pay, for pay caps to be lifted and what have you, is that it is a microcosm, it does mirror what happens with women in this country that still do not have equal pay, that we still see that black women make half of what a white man makes. And I think that, you know, I want to ask you, like when you see, particularly in sports,

where you're looking at, okay, these basketball players, they're playing the same positions and the same roles and their pay is so astronomically different that do you think that it also helps people understand the need for equity, like on a larger scale outside of that particular industry, because you're actually seeing the play-for-play role-for-roll? Unfortunately, I don't. And the reason I don't is because we've been conditioned to just automatically value men more. And I think what people don't understand when we try to have these conversation about pay equity in sports is that a lot of times the women are not asking to be paid the same as the men. The WMBA players last month, they opted out of their collective bargaining agreement, which is their agreement with the league over salary structure.

Whenever the issue of their pay has come up, the first thing that somebody in the public will say is that, well, you guys don't have the same eyeballs as the NBA. You know, the NBA is a billion dollar business, like a billion dollar business. It's like, why should you make the same much as LeBron James when your league doesn't make as much money as the NBA? What they don't understand is that the women have never asked to be paid that way. They've asked for a bigger percentage of what they bring in. Because right now, WNBA salaries are only, only account for 9% of total WMBA revenue. So that means with all, whatever money the WNBA is making, the player salaries, they only get 9%. Whereas in the NBA, the players, I believe, get 50%.

50% of what the league is bringing in. That's a very big difference. And so what I want people to get from this is that we have too many conversations about what women are worth as opposed to what's fair. And also, by the way, the WNBA has only existed, it hasn't even existed 30 years. The NBA has existed over 70 years. Okay. So they had a hell of a head start. And let's not also lose sight of the fact that for a long time, the NBA was not profitable. And if you look at where the WNBA is after nearly 30 years versus where the NBA was, the WMBA is doing astoundingly well. But it gets back to those structural barriers that they and other women have always had to face, which is, you know, they've always had to face the lack of worth and lack of investment.

You know, we've had women's sports that have proven over and over again that people will watch, that people, you know, do fall in love with these athletes and these players and the storylines and the drama. And typically what happens is that the media corporate investors treat it like an anomaly. And so they wind up having to prove themselves every single time. Yeah. And it's the same conclusion all the time. So I'm very happy that this year, and this is why I feel like this conversation about pay equity for women's sports is moving in the right direction. This is the first year in history that women's sports would generate over a billion dollars in revenue.

They could have been at this point, trust me. But because this is the first year, that is the case. And because now people understand that women, invested in women is not charity is actually a really good business idea. I think that's why you're seeing these conversations will be handled a lot differently as we move forward. Yeah. And I think that, again, I think that it's incredibly exciting. And I also believe that the more attention that women's sports get the larger conversation around the treatment of women in our society, which we saw on full display, the misogyny and the racism in this last presidential election can open up larger conversations. like sports allows for there to be bigger and deeper conversations, I think, for people who are not traditionally consider themselves to be political. And in that vein, Jamel, I want to talk to you about your new podcast, Politics. And what made you decide to launch this at this time last month?

So I think the biggest impetus was the election. You know, we had a pretty important election coming up. And even though sports is what I do by trade being a sports journalist now for almost 30 years, I'm somebody who's been deeply, uh, invested in politics. But more often than not, or at least a lot over the last 10 years in my career, the fusion, I found myself more often writing and discussing the fusion between sports and politics a little bit more. And so I wanted to create a space where those issues were discussed because, you know, the great thing about sports is that it's the ultimate unifier. You could be from different backgrounds, different social and economic backgrounds, different cities, different genders,

different sexual orientations, but if you all are Laker fans, you're all Laker fans. And so sports gives you the ability to have a lot of people under one umbrella and you can maybe have a conversation actually about politics through the vessel and through the lens of sports that would be so much different than what might happen if it was just a straight-up politics conversation. For example, you know, obviously the president-elect has talked very openly about ending the Department of Education. Well, you know, it's under the Department of Education. It's a very important law that is enforced by the Department of Education. It's called Title IX.

And Title IX was what prohibits sex discrimination at federally funded educational institutions and activities. Now, when Title IX was created, nobody knew that it would become the access point, the most significant access point for women to gain entry and equality in sports. And that's what it's been for 50 years. And so if you're talking about dismantling the Department of Education, what then becomes of Title IX? So again, in every corner of our lives, we see this sports and politics bumping up against each other and ramming into one another. I felt like there was a space needed to examine what that relationship is through a critical lens. So each week, every Thursday on IHeart or wherever you get your podcast, I dive into that relationship. Like this week's episode is a tie immigration to what we're seeing in terms of the influx of international players in the NBA.

I mean, on the opening night of the NBA, there was a record, 125 international players on NBA rosters. And so how this is changing the face of American basketball. And it's also changing how players are developed, where now I think there's a lot of people who feel like international players are being developed better than American players. So that's how I hope to use politics is to take these situations in politics, examine them through the lens of sports, and, you know, hopefully give some people. some things to think about. Yeah, I just want to say it's fantastic. I think that it is so needed because as I have spent a majority of my career trying to educate and inform people of their power as citizens in this country, to engage them, you know, being able to see you using sports as that tool and as that on-ramp, I think will go a tremendously long way. Jamel, thank you so

much for your work and for making the time today for the new abnormal. Really appreciate you. Yeah, thank you for having me. You may have lost track of how many Fox Media personalities Donald Trump is nominating or appointing for his administration, but Matt Gertz hasn't. He's a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, not, I should point out, the guy who just withdrew as Trump's nominee for Attorney General, at least as far as I know. And he joins me now. Matt, thanks for coming back on. Always good to be back, Andy. And we've never been in the same place at the same time. So who's to say, really? It's true. And I know you were saying before that Gates withdrawing is very good for. your social media mentions where you are frequently confused with him. Yeah, good for the menchies,

good for America. All things said, good news. So you wrote a piece a few days ago called how Fox powered Trump's first term and what that means for his second. And it's about more than just picking people for jobs, but let's start with that. How many are we up to now? People who have current or former affiliation with Fox News or have been frequent guests that Trump has either nominated or appointed for his administration. We are currently at six. I'll just run through him fast. We've got Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation,

who is a co-host of a Fox business show. We have Tulsi Gabbard, the pick for Director of National Intelligence, who is a Fox contributor. We've got Pete Hegg-Seth, who would be sixth in line for the presidency as Secretary of Defense, and whose current job is co-host of Fox

and Friends's Weekend Edition. We've got a Borderzar, Homan, who was a Fox contributor. We have Mike Huckabee, the ambassador to Israel, who is a former Fox host, and Michael Waltz, I didn't know this actually before I started looking into it. Before he was a Republican member of Congress, he was briefly a Fox News contributor as well, and now he is going to be tapped for National Security Advisor. So that's six so far. There will almost assuredly be more to come. There are several who are being discussed as possible picks for everything from high-ranking health policy, jobs to other White House aides. So we'll see what horrors the future brings.

During Trump's first term, the number got up to 20. So we'll see if he can beat that in his second. I have three words for you, Matt. Attorney General Tyrus. Attorney General Tyrus could be. We have definitely reached the C and D level of Fox personalities. Like when you're at, you know, Sean Duffy, they're not sending their best. This is not like a Laura Ingraham level talent even coming through the revolving door. So I think Tyrus, yeah, I mean, there could be something for him in this administration. You never know.

Yeah, I mean, even Hegstaff is a weekend host. Like that was my first thought when he not made it in besides how awful it is, is, man, he's reduced to the weekend lineup. Yeah, I mean, I guess Kilmead and Ducey have other stuff to do and they're not interested in a DC-based job. That's where we're at right now. It's a lot of B&C level talent, though that is kind of, you know, what sticks out over the last several years of Fox News is there really does seem like There's a talent deficit over there. They've had trouble finding talented people since Roger Ailes died. And so that might be sort of reflecting in the people that are now going to be, you know,

overseeing the huge sprawling federal bureaucracy and law enforcement powers and all the rest. You mentioned that in the first term, it was the number of former Fox employees in the Trump administration was around 20. since we now live in a gambling-based economy, what would you set the over-under at for total number of Fox people in the second Trump administration? I've got it at 34, Matt. I would stick the over under at plenty on the dot and see where it goes. I would probably take the over on that, but I think that that would be a decent guess. Though, I don't know. I mean, we're in the early stages. He's coming out of the gate hot. I don't know. We could get to a pretty high number, but it's hard to say. It's depressing. to say, but it's hard to say. And of course, all of this is not counting the quote-unquote unofficial advisors. People like, I mean, Sean Hannity could definitely be counted as one of those in the first administration, right? Yeah, I mean, I think just stepping back for a second, but I think a lot of folks sort of forgot from the first Trump term is just how much of U.S. policymaking really came to revolve around Fox News. I mean, the reality is that the president of the president of the United States was spending hours each day watching Fox News from the White House residence and tweeting in response to what he was seeing in real time. This was a real thing that happened

constantly. I ended up tracing about 1,300 Fox live tweets, as I call them, through this process. And he not only watched a lot of Fox News, but it shaped his worldview and his responses to major events over the course of his four years in office. One big piece of it was he was effectively casting his administration from Fox's greed room, picking out different people that he liked on TV and giving them high-ranking jobs in this administration. But he was also privately communicating with a lot of these Fox News hosts and asking them for advice on a whole range of different subjects. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, were some of the most powerful people in Washington simply because Donald Trump was watching their TV shows and then calling them up to ask about particular things that he saw,

and then taking action based on their babble. It was a pretty unnerving time in a lot of ways, and we do seem to be headed for round two of that. So, yes, people like Sean Hannity, like Jesse Waters, like Greg Gutfeld, these are going to be major movers and shakers over the next four years because Donald Trump likes their TV hits. So what you're saying is I should have stayed there. Yeah, you could have been something. You could have been a contender.

for some high-ranking job. Yeah. You know, you mentioned all the 1,300 tweets that he put out during his first administration that were based on what he was watching on Fox News at the time, which is obviously an insane amount. Let me clarify that. That was 1,300 from September 2018 when I got back from maternity leave for the first time through the end of his term. So not about 27 months.

Yeah. Around half the term, a little more than half the term. I mean, obviously, that's even more insane. And you mentioned that, like, in the piece you wrote, some of the things he was tweeting, if you weren't watching Fox News, you were like, what the hell is he talking about? There was one about Mars and the moon? Yeah, it was pretty bizarre stuff. I mean, he was literally just responding to whatever he saw in the moment. And... Well, that doesn't sound like Donald Trump. No, it could just... That could go in a lot of different ways. Right. Sometimes it was just kind of bizarre. You know, he's wishing Lee Greenwood a happy birthday on his Twitter feed and people like, why is this happening? And it's because Fox News was doing like their, you know, regular here the birthdays of the day on Fox and Friends. And he saw that one. There was a weird tweet about the moon that confused everybody. A lot of kind of bizarre stuff. Then there's the more consequential presidential missives like, you know, the time. that he threatened nuclear war with North Korea after seeing a Fox segment. There was some saber rattling directed it at Iran from a different Fox segment.

You know, he promoted hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug that does not work as a cure for the coronavirus. You know, because he was watching an episode of Laura Ingraham's show at the time, just a lot of, really unhinged, a lot of dangerous content coming out of his Twitter feed, was happening because he was just showing the world his reaction to what he was seeing on his television.

And it's fair to say, I would assume, that the people on Fox, the hosts, they know that he's their audience. And so they are more than likely, they're tailoring a lot of things, knowing that he is going to watch them and hoping that he will act based on what they're saying. Absolutely. And they had very good reason to think that. I mean, I remember one incident from, I think this was January 2018, where there was a big vote that morning on a surveillance bill in the House. And the administration supported it until Donald Trump randomly tweeted criticism of that bill early in the morning, and no one understood why, and people in Congress were totally flummoxed. The then White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, ended up going down

to the Capitol and then trying to cob everybody down, and Trump tweeted something that kind of walked back what he had said in the initial tweet. People didn't understand what was going on. People were very confused, except for me, because I knew that immediately before Trump sent that tweet, Andrew Napolitano, the Fox legal analyst, had criticized the bill and turned directly to the camera and said, Mr. President, don't do this. And Trump listened to him. Like, it just threw his administration's policy up in the air because someone on his television was talking to him. It's just, it's a very, very bizarre way to run an administration. Yeah, to say the least. My God. One of the things you get into in the piece you wrote is actual policies, sort of along the lines of supporting a bill and then not supporting a bill, but I guess even deeper because we're talking about actual presidential policies here. You talk about things that after he talks to someone from Fox or sees a segment where he, for the moment, changes things. And you mentioned like a potential immigration deal and something about trade policy with China, where he actually reversed himself.

because of what he saw on Fox News? Yeah, I mean, the way this works is the people that Donald Trump really trusts are the people that he sees on Fox News saying nice things about him. He always is a little bit wary of people who work for him in his White House, in his administration. He's worried about the deep state. He's worried about getting undercut. But the people that he sees saying nice things about him on Fox are the ones who can be trusted. And so you have all of these instances where you have power struggles breaking out

between particular Fox figures and the actual people working for the Trump administration. And the people that are working for the Trump administration kept losing. You had Trump's Department of Homeland Security Secretary get canned because she lost a fight with Lou Dobbs. You had Jeff Sessions getting tossed out because Janine Piro didn't like him. Pete Hegseth, who now could be the defense secretary, won a fight with the Secretary of the Navy over how an alleged war criminal should be treated. Hexeth was pro the alleged war criminal, obviously, because that's just how all of this works. People understood that the best way to reach Donald Trump was through his television.

you had a wide range of different people who were seeking pardons, either trying to go through Fox hosts like Hegseth and get positive coverage about their client, their family member, whatever, or going on the network in some way to try to reach him directly. You know, the hosts are always asking, what would you say to Donald Trump about this? And they get to make their pitch directly to the sitting president. It's not just pardons, obviously. You've got federal contracts. Federal contracts, very big deal, tons of money in the government. And if you want to get a contract to build part of the southern border wall, one effective way to do so was to go on Fox and Friends and talk about how you have this great technique for building wall that definitely works. It's definitely not a total grift nonsense.

And like huge amounts of money got sold out. because Trump liked how someone was pitching themselves on Fox News. It was a really broken way of doing policy, but one that all sorts of people were able to be entrepreneurial about and use to the benefit of themselves and their clients. Yeah, and one of the things, the last thing I want to talk about is at the end of your piece, you briefly talk about or you briefly mention law enforcement investigations, and you say that Trump would see coverage of people on Fox, people like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton,

or even companies like Google, and then he would demand law enforcement action against these people or groups that he viewed as his enemies. Yeah. So one of the main functions of Fox News is providing grievances and villains for their audience. They're very, very good at pointing at somebody and saying, who you should be mad at. These are the people that are in some way, you know, criminally undermining Donald Trump and they must be stopped. And, you know, Sean Hannity had a whole list of people who he claimed had done a whole list of crimes. He would have Greg Jarrett, this former Fox anchor turned legal analyst, apparently just for Hannity, as far as I could tell, who would

explain how all of these different Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Kerry and an array of different figures from the FBI and the DOJ who were involved in the Russia probe had committed all sorts of horrendous crimes. And Donald Trump would be watching. And he would take to Twitter and say, so-and-so person has just committed these crimes, which I've just seen on my television. Law enforcement should step in. And then sometimes law enforcement did step in. There was a real federal criminal investigation into John Kerry that happened because Donald Trump got pissed off at some Fox coverage that he was seeing. There were real federal criminal investigations of Hillary Clinton that happened because he got pissed at what he was seeing on his television.

And, you know, part of what is unnerving about a second Trump term is that by all accounts, what he learned from his first term is that he needs to be. less bound by people who will say, actually, it's a bad idea to do these criminal investigations of your various political enemies, people who would try to sideline these investigations, or, you know, in some way get them tossed out, and that he will avoid being surrounded by such people. I think Matt Gates was very specifically picked because Donald Trump thought that he would be that force of retribution that he said so many times on the campaign trail that he wanted for his second term. Now it won't be Gates. It'll be somebody else. But I think the assignment is pretty clear. Donald Trump wants an attorney general who will prosecute his political enemies,

and he identifies who those enemies are based on what he sees on this television screen. It couldn't be more frightening. Matt, thanks so much for coming on. I'm sorry the Attorney General thing didn't work out, but I'm glad it means that you can keep coming back on the show because we love to have you. Thanks again, Matt. Thank you, and there's always the Florida gubernatorial, so we'll see. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you closing out this week in America Hellscape? I am closing out by talking about someone. I really thought we could get through life without having to talk about once this election was over. That was, you know, back when I was Silly enough to think that Kamala Harris was going to win.

And that person is RFK Jr., who we are now forced to talk about because he is Donald Trump's choice to head health and human services. He is, and I'm going to read some reporting from the bulwark, Andrew Eger. Back in February of last year, he had a guy on his podcast who was a true believer in the Kemp Trails conspiracy. For people who don't know, the Kemp Trial's conspiracy is, you know, if you look up and you see airplane, and you see the trail of white that's left behind by an airplane, which is a con trail.

They think these are chem trails, and they are the government spreading chemicals across America to keep people docile and things like that. Yeah, that's the chem trails conspiracy. It's been around for a really, really long time. And it's one of those, as someone who used to be really into conspiracy theories, not believing them, but finding them really fun and fascinating to talk about. Trails has been around for forever. And unfortunately, none of this shit is fun anymore because the believers in this stuff are now not just some wacky fringe. They are people in power.

So Kennedy had a Kemp Trails guy on his podcast. And this guy, Dane Wigington, I think his name is, gave a long presentation on these chemicals that are being sprayed into our atmosphere. And by the end, here's what RFK Jr. had to say. I am persuaded by what you're saying. I am persuaded by what you're saying. I think one of the other parts of your story that's important to understand is the military programs to weaponize climate because of course they're doing that. Of course we know we're doing that because they do it with everything else. They do it with chemicals. They do it with biology. Anything that they can weaponize they're going to. So this is this guy in addition to his other insane conspiracy theories about vaccines and COVID and about AIDS, I think, not being a real thing.

Not enough people talking about his AIDS denialism, by the way. But he, he's, He is so credulous that he will have a guest on to talk about chemtrails and the guy convinces him. And this is a pattern with these guys because Elon Musk is the same way. You know, you see the stuff that he retweets on Twitter and the stuff that he thinks is true. That is not true at all. These people are so credulous and they pride themselves. They think they're so smart and they're doing their own research when in fact they're not smart and they're not doing their own research at all.

they're listening to people who are making shit up and they are believing it. Here we have RFK going into full tinfoil hat territory and I guess not really a surprise based on all these other things that he believes. But again, this is the guy that Donald Trump wants to run the Department of Health and Human Services. And I just cannot emphasize how fucked we are for four years if he gets confirmed. So fuck that guy. I miss the days when these tinfoil hat types were.

just on the front page of the inquirer. Right. And not in positions of power to put the rest of us, 330 plus million Americans in danger because of their conspiracy ideations. I don't know. Like every day, I just, is this black mirror? I don't. I don't know.

I don't know. But like chem trails? I know. Oh, God. Fuck those guys. All right. I'll close out this rainy week with your fuck that guy. So I did a video earlier this week where I labeled it America Girl, you in Danger.

And I'm just going to say it again as I go into my fuck that guy. 15 Democrats, okay, this week voted to pass HR 9495, which just passed out of the house. and let me tell you what this bill will do. It would allow a presidentially appointed Treasury Secretary to unilaterally strip a nonprofit of its status if deemed a, quote, terrorism supporting organization. The bill passed 219 to 184, mostly along partisan lines, according to nonprofit quarterly, with Republican support and Democrats opposing,

except 15 fucking Democrats broke with the caucus to support the bill. Folks, like, is there something higher than a five alarm fire? Because that is where we are when you are providing the Treasury Secretary who is next up to be appointed by Donald Trump, who wants to shut down every organization,

and basically has referred to everyone from journalists to activists as enemies of the state. So you tell me what would preclude Donald Trump from using this very legislation to shut down Planned Parenthood, to shut down ACLU, to shut down a number of 501C3 organizations that work on advancing civil liberties and marginalized communities. because you don't like them. And the fact that 15 Democrats saw fit, like it would have passed, obviously, because the House is controlled by Republicans, but why the fuck are you giving them help?

I swear to God, this is the reason why you had so many people sit home during this last presidential cycle because you see shit like this and you're like, which party actually gives a damn about anything? I don't understand after learning what we've learned, after seeing day in and day out who this Republican Party is, why you would vote with them on a goddamn thing, let alone to give this president the power to call whatever organization he does not like a terrorist organization.

You know, so to those 15 Democrats, that is where I said. Because you know what, as I keep saying, You cannot blame a pig for rolling around in shit. That is their nature. So do I blame Republicans for trying to upend democracy in every which way that they can? No, because they've told you that they're going to do that. But then when you have a group of Democrats that want to go along with the party and help them, I draw the fucking line. So to those 15 Democrats, you are my fuck that guy.

Fuck all of you. Yeah. And it brings me no pleasure to. to say that it is APAC that wanted this bill passed and is probably the reason that those 15 Democrats voted for it because APAC basically thinks that any Arab organization is a tool of Hamas or is providing aid in comfort to Hamas or whatever. So they wanted this bill passed and 15 Democrats fell for this. And it's absolutely disgusting.

I know the ACLU led a huge coalition. I think they had over 300 nonprofit organizations signed a letter explaining why this bill is so bad and basically saying everything that you just said, Danielle. But APAC wanted this bill passed and 15 Democrats decided that they didn't want to piss off APAC. That includes Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ritchie Torres, Tom Swazzy, who is in office because George Santos resigned and is basically, he's a Democrat from Long Island, which is a longer way of saying Republican. So I guess not too much of a surprise there. And Henry Quayar, I'm not going to read through the whole list, but it's absolutely disgusting. And like you said, they just gave the keys to the kingdom to Donald Trump's Treasury Department. And the fact that they don't understand this.

Oh, they understand, Andy. But that's what I don't like, like, if they understood this and did it, then there's, I don't even know where to go with that. Like, I'd like to think they're just too stupid to understand. it, except it's not even that hard to understand that you don't give Donald Trump's Treasury Department the key to unilaterally decide that a nonprofit is, quote-unquote, supporting terrorism. I just, yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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