The Daily Beast Podcast - ‘Not a Prayer in Hell’ Trump Will Appear at Jan. 6 Committee

Episode Date: October 14, 2022

The odds of Donald Trump actually showing up to testify under oath at the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attacks are not great, according to Andy Levy on this week’s episode of political podcast The New Abnormal. “Less than zero,” says cohost Kali Holloway, a columnist at The Daily Beast and The Nation. “I think that the panel’s probably aware that he’s not gonna show up, but I think this is the kind of thing that they have to do just to sort of, for lack of a better phrase, show they mean business.” Matt Fuller, senior politics editor at The Daily Beast echoes concerns Trump won’t show up.“He probably won’t do anything with [the subpoena], and I can’t imagine he’s going to sit down for the January 6th committee,” he said. “It could be a court fight, but more likely than not, it’ll just be a nothing burger.” Also on the podcast, Justin Baragona, media reporter at The Daily Beast, reveals how Fox News management and Tucker Carlson are very interested in finding out who leaked the deleted Kanye West interview footage to Vice. “They definitely want to know who it is and, and there will be repercussions, is what I would assume,” Baragona said. 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. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan, 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 great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

First, we're going to be joined by Justin Barragona, who's a media reporter at The Daily Beast, and he's going to talk to us about what he's been seeing as he watches the cursed Fox News channel. Then we'll have Matt Fuller, who's the senior politics center at the Daily Beast on to talk about what he saw at the January 6th committee today. But first, we have columnist at the Daily Beast

and the nation, Callie Holloway, here to join us to discuss what she saw today. Callie Holloway. And do you leave. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for co-hosting with me today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me.

So the big news that's going on sort of as we are recording is the House January 6th committee is just wrapping up their latest hearing. And they just announced that they are subpoenaing former president Donald Trump. Callie, the odds of him actually showing up, I think we would probably agree are not great. Less than zero. Yeah. But still, like, I guess you could argue what's a symbolic move. but I don't know, it feels like maybe more than that? I mean, I think that the panel's probably aware that he's not going to show up,

but I think this is the kind of thing that they have to do just to sort of, for lack of a better phrase, show they mean business. Exactly, yeah. But there's no chance that we will see Donald Trump in the hot seat. Yeah, no, not a prayer in hell. All right, so let's talk about the hearing itself. So to me, like watching this hearing, the main thrust was sort of like it was, Trump lost the 2020 election.

Trump knew he lost the 2020 election. Everyone around him, for the most part, told him he, lost. So that therefore, he knew that every scheme he tried to use, every speech he gave railing about fraud, everything he egged on his supporters to do on January 6th, it was all based on what he knew was a lie. Yeah, absolutely. And there's even evidence of that because he spoke to his inner circle and admitted that he had lost, right? I think there was Brad Parzcal who said that even as far back as July of 2020, Trump was saying that he was going to contest the election. And something I thought of when I was watching the hearing is that people forget that in 2016,

Donald Trump, before voting happened, started setting up this idea that the election rigging, that election rigging was going to happen, right? And he actually even filed a lawsuit just this March against Hillary Clinton and her team saying that they tried to rig the election. So this is something that he was going to do before. It's kind of his go-to MO whenever he's in any kind of a political contest. Yeah, I mean, he expressed it to folks in his inner circle. there's that video of Roger Stone, who the Dirty Trick's Master, who because of that documentary

we now know told folks that the plan was just to say, we won't fuck you. And then he said, cut straight to the violence, which also gives some insight into what the plan looked like, right? And the thing that struck me is really interesting, though, but kind of works with everything that we already know about Donald Trump is that Cassidy Hutchinson testified that he knew he had lost that he had said to her, and he said this to a few other people, that he didn't want it to get out that he had lost, right? He found this embarrassing, which I just thought was such a sort of perfect summation of who Donald Trump is.

He is willing to incite a riot, basically, allegedly, just to save face, right? I mean, he's so insecure. He's such a small petty man. He is so worried about how he looks, and he's so concerned about the potential that he actually is a loser, that he would destroy democracy rather than look like a loser. It just, it says so much about who Donald Trump is, what is important to him, and how little he actually cares for this country or politics. Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more. What Hutchinson testified was that Trump said to Meadows, to Mark Meadows, he said, I don't want people to know we lost.

This is embarrassing. Figure it out. I don't want people to know we lost. Figure it out, right. It was an unbelievable quote. And when I heard it, I thought the same thing as you is that gets to the essence of Donald Trump. It distills this whole thing, this entire fucking thing, including everything that happened on January. January 6th and people's lives being put in danger was because he is such a small man that he

couldn't deal with the fact that he got fewer votes than someone else. It's just absolutely unbelievable. And everything he did was in that service. We had Elaine Luria, Congresswoman and Luria, said that basically his entire staff, his campaign staff, you had people from the Justice Department telling him he lost, telling him that there was nothing wrong with the Dominion voting systems and stuff like that or that there was no, we heard a lot about this phantom suitcase that supposedly had a bunch of votes that was removed by unscrupulous vote counters. All his people told him that all that stuff wasn't true. There was no evidence of any of it. And after they told him that, he would go out and publicly repeat those lies. And as Congresswoman

Luria put it, his intent was to deceive. He knew all of this wasn't true. But like he said, it all boils down to I don't want to be, I'm embarrassed by the fact that I lost this election. And I think he was really savvy about the kind of incitement that he offered. I mean, there is a reason why he publicly, very specifically focused on Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta, and Milwaukee, right? Those are places with sizable black electorate. I think of Trumpism basically as a political philosophy that is rooted in vengeance and in the idea that someone is taking something from you. So this is something that he knew would jive with the beliefs of his supporters. He knew that it was something that would really stoke their anger, the idea that these are people that

already believe that they are on the cusp of demographic erasure, that they are facing status loss. And so the idea that black folks were taking their boats, right, or engaging in any kind of theft of what is rightfully theirs, I mean, that is Trumpism in a nutshell. Of course it worked in terms of sort of spreading a stop the steel lie. Yeah. And again, there is not a single thing. thing that you said that is even arguable. It's inarguable that he did exactly what you said he did

for the exact reasons he did and that all of Trumpism is stoking white resentment and he just continued down that path. And to another point you made about how he just doesn't care about the country, it's Congressman Kingingh brought up that on November 11th, this was, so this was, I guess, less than a week after election day or right around a week after election day, Trump issued an order or put out a memo calling for troops to be immediately withdrawn from Afghanistan and Somalia. Now, regardless of whether or not you think we needed to bring the troops home, the way he went about it, it was so clear that he knew he lost and he was like, fuck all of this. I'm going to burn this place down. Yeah, literally, it's a court's earth strategy, right? I mean,

it's very, if I can't have it, no one will. I mean, the entire way that he operates, I feel like is a combination of kind of Kosa Nostra and Roy Cohn, right, who was his mentor. It's lie, lie, lie, deny, deny, threaten, threaten. And that is the way that he navigates every single thing that is thrown at him, including pulling troops out at a moment when he felt like he was going to lose power. He operates from a place of spite consistent. Absolutely. And again, I think the point of today's hearing was to show that Trump was trying to remember the phrase from the godfather the capo de two de copy, the boss of all bosses, like that he was the godfather. And that this was his plan and he was behind all of this. He wasn't some kind of passive observer watching January 6th happen,

watching all this other stuff happened, that it was all done under his direction and with his knowledge and it was exactly what he wanted. And in my mind anyway, they proved their case. I know it's not, it wasn't a trial. But to my mind, I don't know how you watch this and come out with any other thought other than, yeah, Trump was the guy. He was the guy behind all of this. He ordered the code red. I think the way you watch it and you come up with something different is that you are a Republican voter who is so steeped in Trumpism that you are completely uninterested in facts and reality is not the same that you and I share, right? I mean, we know that just to double check the numbers I was looking today to see how many Republicans are still buying

the big lie story. And still, in pretty much every single survey or poll that I've seen, there's either close to a majority or a majority. So I don't think that Trump voters are being moved. I think overall, I am pessimistic about the idea that they can be moved at all. I just don't think that these hearings will change anything because I think we're at the point where just even a shared reality doesn't exist. I just want to make it clear that I completely agree with you. And when I said, I don't know how you could watch this and think otherwise. I know that there are people who do, and most of the people who think otherwise aren't going to watch this, because to them it's fake news and it's whatever other pejoratives they want to attach to it. And it's probably the blacks and the Jews fault anyway.

It always is. It always is. And so they don't care. But what I meant was, I don't know how any rational person can watch this. So I just want to make it clear that I'm not some wide-eyed optimist about stuff like this. And I think you're absolutely right. I don't know that these committee hearings are going to move the needle in any way. But I think they were important regardless. And we need to have a historical record of this. And there was Liz Cheney said something right off the top in her sort of, I guess it was in her opening remarks. She said any future president inclined to attempt what Donald Trump did in 2020 has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way. And to me, that's the fear is that if nothing is done about this,

will be the lesson that's learned. The lesson won't be, hey, you can't do this and get away with it because you will get away with it. Not obviously he didn't get away with remaining president, but if no charges are brought against him and other people and if they just sort of skate free from all of this, the lesson will be not don't do this again. The lesson will be you got to do it again, but with all your own people there who will back you up. Right. Just be smarter the next time you just started to start stage a coup d'etat. Well, I think that what's really frightening about that is that we have seen a slew of bills that have been passed, right, to suppress voting. We've seen Republican partisans at the local level who are now being appointed

and the idea is that they're going to overturn elections or that they will contest free and fair elections. I mean, I think it's really frightening in states like Arizona and Wisconsin that there are these folks that they are either trying to put in office or have succeeded in putting in office who are there basically just to be partisans and decide what happens with the ballots that are cast in 2024. I mean, I find that really frightening. The lesson that they have taken away is that they will be a leaner, meter ceiling machine. And they are already, they are already working on building an apparatus that will not allow for any sort of losses in the future. And I think that we talk a lot about the slide into fascism that we're sort of seeing, but I'm not sure if a lot of

people are aware of just how meticulous they are being right now in building that apparatus. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, what's going on with the Secretary of State with the election and stuff like that is, I agree with you. It's absolutely terrifying. And I just, the hope is that it doesn't work, but it's almost hard to see it not working in certain states. And some of those certain states are going to play a key role in any future presidential election. So it's just, it's horrifying. I want to move on to another aspect of this that I know you are keen to talk about, and that's the Secret Service. I'll just start off by reading a quote from Adam Schiff in the hearing today. He said that previously Secret Service witnesses had testified that there was no intelligence indicating there was violence

that threatened its protectes on January 6th. And then he said, evidence strongly suggests that this testimony is not credible. In other words, he is saying that the Secret Service did have evidence that bad shit was going to happen on January 6th, including bad shit to some of the people it's supposed to protect, like Vice President of the United States. And not only that, then they lied about it under oath. Am I wrong? No, that's absolutely right. And it's, this was another thing that I found really chilling, particularly when they showed some of the actual correspondence, there was a tip that they were given. The proud boys were planning. We're planning to be armed when they marched to D.C., that they were planning to hope that their numbers

gave them an advantage over the police. I think one of the quotes was their plan is to literally kill people. And yet, this intel wasn't passed to the Capitol Police. I mean, it's just really frightening to me that there was this sort of standing down. I'm not saying that every Secret Service person was complicit, but that they had an awareness of the threat that was before them and did nothing about it. So I know that there was a lot of discussion about this right after January 6th, but were this any sort of a different group of people? If it had been anti-racist protesters, if it had been anti-fascist, what I can sort of assume just based on lived experience and observation and demonstrable history, is that there absolutely would have been a reaction.

They would have been prepared. So in tandem with this idea that, we might have a more competent fascist come into office. It's very frightening to see that these forces that are supposed to be protecting folks weren't. Yeah. And in fact, Congressman Pete Aguilar, again at the hearing said the White House had more than enough warning to stop any ellipse rally and certainly more than enough evidence to stop a march on the Capitol. What he's referring to about the ellipse, I believe, is the number of people, which was in the thousands, I think, who chose not to come through the magnetometers to get closer to where Trump was speaking. And obviously the reason they didn't want to do that is because they were, at least for many of them, they were carrying weapons that would have set off the magnetometers.

And Trump's response to this was he wanted them to take away the magnetometers. He said, quote, they're not here to hurt me or they're not here to hurt me. That's where the emphasis should go, which is exactly your point. Had these protesters been anti-racist or anti-fascist, none of this would have gone down because the Secret Service wouldn't have. let it get to anywhere near where it got to. And then just again, in that quote, we did sort of cover this, but I just want to revisit. Just every time I've heard this quote from Trump, they're not here to hurt me. It just speaks such volumes about who he is as a person and how little he cares for other people. Yeah. I have nothing to add to that whatsoever because it couldn't be more right. We could probably talk about this for another six hours, but we don't have that kind of time.

So I want to jump to another issue that was sort of going on this week, and this concerns Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Federman. He, as people are probably aware, had a stroke back in May, and he's now been doing interviews. And one of the reporters who interviewed him, Dasha Burns from NBC News, tweeted out the fact that in small talk before the actual interview began, Federman did not really seem like he was understanding what she was saying. And her point was kind of that Federman, since his stroke, has been using a closed caption system because of some auditory issues. And that system wasn't on yet during the small talk. And whatever she was trying to get at, it quickly sort of spun out of control and was seized on by right-wing media. And now there's this whole discussion over whether he is mentally fit to be in the Senate. Yeah. Not only did it inspire a bunch of folks to... journalists who have spoken to Federman to say, well, I spoke to him and he seemed fine. It also brought up this question of ableism, right, in politics. And also, I just want to point

out that just because he's having difficulty with speech processing or hearing, there's hearing loss, that is not the same as cognitive loss. And that felt like that was kind of, I mean, she later, I think, backtracked a bit, but that's what it felt like was kind of implied by that initial quote that she put out. And then I think part of what annoys me so much about the way that the right wing has seized upon this is surely this is not the same right wing that is pushing Herschel Walker to be a senator and not the same media that spent four years cleaning up every single rambling response that Donald Trump gave a reporter to make him sound coherent. I can't believe that this is the same press corp that we're talking about. And it just

brings back bad memories. Kelly, I have to interrupt you to tell you that it is in fact the same people. It's astounding. I don't know if it does this for you, but for me, it sort of immediately reminded me of the lead up to the 2016 election when Hillary fainted and what all that we heard for it felt like forever was questions about her health and whether she was fit to me. Yeah, no, I agree. and the mental fitness aspect of this is ridiculous. And again, nobody is what I don't want to say nobody because the people you mentioned certainly are. But Dasha Burns was not saying that.

I think what she did wrong was I think her tweet lacked context. And as you said, she sort of cleaned it up afterwards and said, look, first of all, he was fine during the actual interview once the closed captioning was available. and second of all that this has nothing to do with his mental processes or anything like that. It's an auditory thing. He couldn't really hear what she was saying. But that's, unfortunately, she, I think, should have known better than to just, I think, sending the tweet out the way she did was, I don't know if reckless is the right word, but it was, it was a bad idea. And she should have known that it would be sort of seized on. And even if she didn't intend it

to be used a certain way. It's 2022. You have to know what's going to happen these days. And so I think that's, if there's a problem here, that's where it lies to me. I don't have a real problem with her reporting the fact that, hey, without the closed captioning, it's a simple fact that he was having trouble understanding me. But that's fine. And again, that's an auditory issue, not a mental process issue. So there was no way that this wasn't going to become like a huge Fox News right-wing thing and that it was going to get completely blown out of proportion. And it was basically they were now going to be talking about John Federman as if his, I don't even know how to put it, but basically as if like his brain didn't work anymore. Right. Like his brain was broken. And as you said,

like we've got Herschel Walker out there who clearly is suffering from CTE. And the things he says are just out of control and they can't wait to try to elect him. And here's a guy, John Fetterman, who literally is recovering from a stroke and by all accounts will be close to completely fine and is fine 100% now from a mental perspective. And they're trying to make it seem like it would be irresponsible to elect this guy. And the other thing is I think that he has, he sort of said this, but it's true. I think that he has been pretty transparent in terms of offering up notes from his doctor or letting people know where he is in terms of his recovery. There was that letter that came out from his doctor where his doctor basically said he's

known that he had these issues since 2017. And to his credit, he basically said, yeah, I'm a dude. I kind of didn't do what I needed to do and turned it into like a discourse on like men have to allow themselves to feel like they're fallible and vulnerable, which was kind of smart on his part. But I think that he's kind of done as much as he can do on this front. And of course, they were chomping at the bit for something to roast him over. I mean, these are the same people that said that he runs with Crips. So you kind of have to take everything they say with a grain of salt. And he also did an entire Q&A session on Wednesday that was live and was clearly mentally all there

and competent and lucid. So there's just not a lot for them to stand on in terms of making this argument. So they will absolutely continue to make it. I mean, just to put a sort of a bow on this, there comes a point in every guy's life when he hopefully realizes that Gatorade doesn't cure things. Because this happens to me every time. And obviously, this is nothing like having a stroke. But anytime I'm sick, I'm like, I'll try drinking Gatorade for a week before it's like,

ah, you know what? I guess I should probably go see a doctor. And like at some point in every guy's life, you have to reach the point. And unfortunately, for Fetterman, he understands that now. And I don't mean to make light of what happened to him, obviously. He's right when he says it's a guy thing to a large extent, because I know myself and I know a lot of other guys who are just like, oh, just give me some Gatorade or some insurer or whatever.

And now the, I guess the big thing now is IVs people are doing it at home. And I'll be fine. And it's like, no, you won't. Like if you're sick, you're sick. And go see a doctor. Joining me now is Daily Beast media correspondent, Justin Barragona. Justin, thanks so much for being here. Glad to be here.

So we sort of chatted the other. day, and we kind of joked that all the stuff I brought up would probably feel ancient by the time we recorded. And I think we were probably right. In particular, I want to talk about the John Federman NBC News interview and sort of the news that came out of that quickly for our listeners, if they don't know. Fetterman, who is, of course, running against Mehmet Oz for Senate in Pennsylvania, had a stroke back in May. And he's now been doing a bunch of interviews. And NBC news reporter Dasha Burns tweeted out that right before her actual interview with him, he seemed sort of unable to understand some of the small talk she was making.

This kind of blew up. It was, I think it's fair to say, gleefully seized on by conservative media. What's your take on this, Justin? Well, yeah, I mean, what you just said gleefully seized upon by conservative media, I mean, that's 100% true. They were all over it. And all you need to do was just watch Tucker Carlson last night. If you're an uninterested observer and you watch that interview,

I mean, there could maybe be some things that would make you, concerned a little bit. But for the most part, what you really just see is that Federman, who had a stroke a few months ago, that when you're asking him questions, you know, he kind of needs closed captioning to be able to understand the entire question. Right. He's able to, it seems like he's able to speak fairly regularly and he's made great progress. According to Tucker, though, he's basically the Terminator now. He's like Apple. He's now part of Skynet. But, you know, and it's all bad faith. You know, because he's not getting the answers put into his closed captioning and then he's reading them off.

That's not part of it. He's not speaking through a computer. He's doing what basically half of Americans do when they watch TV, which is put on to closed captioning so they can understand everything that's coming across that's being said. I was literally going to say that that's, you know, particularly with streaming services, the volume's just so all over the place that I always have closed captioning on. But yeah, and I think it was you that tweeted that the ironic thing, was sort of that Tucker was reading his thing about Federman off of teleprompter? Yeah, it is more than just a little ironic that guys like Tucker or Maria Bartaromo, they're going off on John Federman for having to use closed captioning on a screen to get the full

question while they're reading their screens off of teleprompters and getting their information through their earpieces. But at the same time, Tucker's out there calling John Federman basically a robot. Yeah. And they're also kind of implying that he's like got the answers on that screen. Yeah. And that's the other thing is they're conflating a lot here about what's actually going on. Here's what Tucker is saying at the beginning of his whole thing last night, which was, and this is verbatim what he says.

Because of that stroke, Betterman now needs electronic assistance in order to communicate with other people. He can't talk on his own. it's not a right-wing conspiracy theory. It's not QAnon. It's real. He's telling his audience that's exactly what's happening. And that is not what's happening. Yeah, I just want to be clear by conflating, you mean lying.

Yes, I'm sorry. Yeah, I should just say. Let's just be honest. You know, he's just straight up lying. Interesting in that quote that he is sort of saying, he's not sort of saying, he's saying that QAnon is not true. Yeah. I wonder if he'll get any crap for that.

So look, yes, I think the conservative reaction has been, the conservative media reaction has been, you know, both gleeful and gross and, you know, in a large sense, dishonest. That's what they do. But my question is, like, the NBC reporter Dasha Burns has, she's taken a lot of heat for the fact that she tweeted that during the small talk, that Federman was, seemed unable to understand her. She did say that once the interview started and the closed captioning was used so that he could read her questions, that he was 100% fine. So does she deserve heat for what she did or was she doing her job, which is to report, hey, this guy's running for Senate and, you know, this should be public knowledge. Yeah, I think

she's getting quite a bit of undeserved heat here. It was the characterization of her comments and how they blew up online right away. That's the issue here. She wasn't trying to be ableist here. It is one of the accusations against her. Right. And also, you know, you had others like say Carrey Swisher who pointed out that she'd also interviewed Federman and had no issue with that. But of course, the entirety of her interview was, you know, via Zoom and close captioning of the questions. We've seen that Federman doesn't seem to have any issue with that, right? Right. And I think that's what Dasha Byrds was trying to get at, but also trying to point out that, yes, he's still in this kind of recovery mode. But the way that, you know, she put that out there, it just went wild. It was like wildfire, right?

Then you also had sort of a bad faith interpretation of it. And the main one I'm going to point to here is Josh Kroshauer, otherwise known as Hotline Josh. Yes. He's like a right winged polster kind of guy, now works with Axios. But the way he put it out there, he also omitted information that she had already put out there. And that omission that, you know, he was fine using closed captioning. you know, he doesn't actually have any issues speaking. You know, he understands clearly once he's able to get to question, all that stuff,

he just omits there. And then that's where people go wild with it. And then once the interview goes out there, you know, the video of the actual interview that she conducts, people get to read whatever they want into that. But really, it was all just about her comments at the beginning there. That's what made people run wild with it. And I do think that she's gotten an unfair, you know, bit of huge. heat off of that, especially because, you know, in follow-up reporting, she's pointed out that,

you know, medical experts have told her that there shouldn't be any cognitive impairment that he's suffering through or anything of that nature, that this is really just an auditory, sensory thing. Right. And yeah, and she's been clear on that. I think, look, I think the thing she's the most, quote-unquote, guilty of is not realizing that in this day and age that what she said was going to be seized upon and used in bad faith. And she probably should have known better and thought about that before she just tweeted out without the rest of the context, you know, her comment about the small talk. But but I don't have a problem with her reporting it, you know, in general. I think that that's something the voters should know, honestly. No, and I agree with that. You know, just to piggyback

off that. Yeah, I think now she realizes how something like this can be quickly weaponized. Right. And how you have to be a bit careful with how you relay this kind of information. 100%, especially in the heat of a Senate race that is the fate of whether the Democrats or Republicans run it hinges on this race, basically. Absolutely, yep. Let's move on. Let's talk about we have the leak of video that was cut from the aired version of Tucker Carlson's interview with Kanye West. So it was motherboard, which is part of Vice, that got the video. It was their reporter Anna Merlin who did the write-up. I don't know if she's the one. who got the leak or if it was someone else at motherboard. Any guesses as to how Vice got hold of this stuff?

I mean, there's a lot of guesses. We're kind of working on sourcing on that right now, so I don't want to go too much into that. And also, you don't want to kind of point a finger to specific somebody, because I will tell you this, you know, that, you know, Fox News management and Tucker Carlson himself are

very interested in finding out who leaked this over to Vice, you know? So, they definitely want to know who it is. and there will be repercussions is what I would assume. You know, are you keeping an eye on whether anyone at Fox is mysteriously and suddenly fired like an editor or producer or something like that? Yeah, I'm not going to like, you know, kind of put where any targets would be,

but there's only going to be a finite number of people that could have had access. Exactly. Yeah, I actually was thinking that, look, I always have to say as I worked at Fox for over 10 years, I feel like at least publicly, they've been kind of muted on this. Like I would have expected more outrage from them condemning the leak and stuff like that. And I haven't, unless I've just missed it, I haven't really seen anything like that. Yeah, they're not commenting. Yeah, okay. And it's not being talked about on air.

Okay. I was actually expecting this to be something that was discussed last night on Tucker's show because he was bringing Tand to someone's back. Right. But, you know, we just kind of let that go. You know, he's just going to not address it. But internally, yeah, there's freak out internally. But the way that Fox, you know, sometimes on the situation like this, they're just going to hope to not address it and hope it just kind of goes away.

Right. Because eventually, like, you know, we will move on to other things. Oh, of course. Look, obviously what we saw from the parts that they cut out, which were pretty bad. I mean, they were horrific. They were anti-Semitic. They were a whole bunch of things. So, look, what clearly what's happening here is Tucker Carlson and his staff, minus whoever, leaked the stuff.

What they're doing is they're running interference for, you. I was trying to figure out, you know, why exactly they're doing this. Is it just, are they that desperate for some kind of, I guess maybe the phrase is cultural relevance? And by that, what I mean is, you know, after years of basically Fox, what Fox does is pump up C and D-List entertainment people. Yeah. And, you know, they pretend that kid rock is good and that they like his music. And they're just so, they're so blown away that there's like a legit, incredibly huge star that that appears to share their, agenda that they have to protect him at all costs?

You pretty much nailed it right there. Regardless of what anyone would think of Kanye's views or music or whatever, he's one of the most famous people in the world. Right. He is a huge star. And the fact that he's expressing beliefs that align with Tucker Carlson or his viewers or many of the other Fox News stars or just the right wing media echo sphere in general. I mean, that's a coup, right?

You know, that's like, all right, we're going to, we're going to be able to get a lot of traction here. But then, you know, Kanye is also kind of out there, right? I mean, we know about like his battles, you know, his well-documented struggles with bipolar disorder. And he goes through manic phases and he's even talked about that in the past. And, you know, it's possible he's going through one of those right now. And the way that Tucker edited that, it's to try to, you know, he specifically is saying in that interview that he's not crazy, right? that he comes across as very thoughtful,

independent free thinker, you know, provocative all this, but, you know, he's putting out some real thoughtful stuff, right? And then you see the stuff that he left on the cutting room floor and you're like, oh, okay. You know, so he's protecting him. But also, you know, hoping that

this kind of anti-Semitic trash doesn't get out there. You know, unfortunately for them, you know, is it twofold here, is that Kanye couldn't help himself. He went online, but it out there. And then, you know, somebody was like, that's obviously the impetus for the leaks, you know, was, hey, you know, here's what Tucker was hoping wasn't going to get out there, you know. So now, you know, we're in a situation like a Roseanne Barr where, you know,

they've gotten themselves a big time celebrity that they can embrace, but then that big time celebrity blows up in a very public manner. And nobody wants to touch that celebrity right now. Yeah. And it's just, I mean, there's a couple of things here. One is that they, like, their whole thing is, you know, it's not just that they want to present him as not crazy. But it's like they want to, they want to say things like they'll, they'll say he's crazy because he's a free thinker. And then, of course, it's like, well, no, nobody's saying he's crazy because he's a free thinker.

they're saying he's crazy. And I am a little uncomfortable using the word crazy because he does have, you know, a mental illness. But I'm saying this is what they will say. They say he's crazy. But they'll try to make it that they say he's quote unquote crazy because he's wearing a White Lives Matter shirt. And it's like, no, nobody is saying that that's what makes him mentally ill.

He's mentally ill because he has bipolar disorder, which is a legitimate disease. Obviously, when people get upset with Kanye, it's because. he says anti-Semitic things or stuff like that, not because he's expressing, you know, that he thinks the highest tax rate should be lower. Yeah, it's not for his heterodox views, you know. Right, exactly. It's for saying blatantly bigoted stuff and tossing around hateful rhetoric and embracing probably some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes that are out there and just, you know,

laughing it off, you know. The one thing that really stands out in those cuts is where Kanye says, at one point that he wants that edited it out. Right. And we see that Tucker obliged. He said, okay, I will take that out. So it's not there. So they'll do all of this to make him look good, but they'll go

nuts because John Federman needs to read question. Exactly. So more again, it just shows how full of it Tucker is. You know, it's like example 1,0960. I know. Well, you're being generous there. But Sean Hannity the other night, I guess he thought he was really onto something.

He, because he had gotten hold of a, uh, what had been a private voice message from, from Joe Biden to his son Hunter back in 2018. And he played this message. And, and he played it. And it's Joe Biden sounding just, you know, emotional and heartbroken saying, uh, it's dad. I'm calling to tell you. I love you.

I love you more than the whole world, pal. You got to get some help. I don't know what to do. I know you don't either. Now, a normal person hears that and thinks, this is such a sad situation. Hunter, of course, very famously has addiction issues. And this is a loving father who is just broken up over these addiction issues, but still obviously loves his son. And, you know, I saw the reaction online instantly was basically what I just said. But was Hannity not expecting that? Or is it just that, you know, are Fox viewers that far gone that they actually would hear that and think, oh, look at these evil people. No, it said Hannity has brain worms. That's the issue there. It said he does it. Yeah. He sees it as just another example. You know, this is another example of the big guy getting involved in the big huge Hunter Biden scandal of him working with the Chinese and the Russians to make billions of dollars, right? Right. And what you're actually just seeing is a worried

father, hoping for the best for his son and just expressing his love while he's didn't. like the darkest of times, right? And the thing is, we'd known about this voicemail before, you know, that it had been written about, but he got a hold of the audio and he's like, okay, I'm going to put it out there. And this makes Joe look really bad. And everyone else is just like, huh? I mean, I think, you know, you're actually like, that's a good father right there, right? You know, trying to pull his son up, you know, during this really trying time of drug addiction. But that's just, that's just Sean. Yeah. I mean, the thing is Sean has a history of this too, not just for like Biden, but he'll post like what some policy positions are for

some Democrat and it looks very good, you know? And but he'll put it out there like it's some like crazy socialist wig nut plan. You know, you posted online and everyone's like, oh, sounds great. Thanks, Sean. Right. But even with stuff like that, I can kind of see it's like, yeah, we all sit there and say, hey, that sounds great, but we're not the intended audience. Exactly. So, you know, that to me is a little different than this. I just can't imagine anybody, no matter how far gone you are down the rabbit hole of the Biden crime family and the other, you know, insane stuff like that.

I can't imagine hearing this and feeling anything but sort of, you know, unless you're completely incapable of feeling empathy for another human being, I don't know how you hear this and don't feel empathy for Joe Biden. And so it just kind of blows my mind. Like, I get what you're saying that Hannity has a history of this, but what I'm saying is I can't believe nobody in the chain there

kind of pulled him aside and said, hey, Sean, I know what you're trying to do here, but you're doing the opposite. Yeah, this is not the thing to use to highlight the whole Biden crime family saga that you're trying to do. What you're actually showing is, you know, you're showing a dad,

have an empathy for his son, you know, being heartbroken about what's going on. And that relates to a lot of people that would be actually watching that show at the time, too, you know? Well, exactly, particularly a country in the, you know, we hear every day about the opioid crisis and stuff like that. And so, you know, there are a lot of people who have a family member or a close friend or whatever who is suffering from addiction and probably heard themselves in Joe Biden there. So it's just even, you know, even if you don't have empathy, like, just make the cold calculation that this is bad for you politically. Yeah. The other thing, though, is Sean kind of just calls a shots on a show. Yeah, I guess. So there's not really anyone that's going to be saying,

you know, Sean, maybe this is bad. He's like, no, it's not. I know my audience. But yeah, it does come across as, you know, I don't know if tone deaf is the right way. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean, tone deaf is probably right. But, you know, the other thing that gets me is it just seems like is he just unaware, blissfully unaware? And he's a father himself, right? How would he think of that? I mean, obviously it backfired, but, you know, how would he feel about somebody posting those voice bells and then trying to portray it in a negative manner or in an unsympathetic manner? Exactly. Sean is supposed to be this kind of like kind of good guy, you know, off screen and all that. But I think, you know, he's a true believer too. And all of that just meshes in to.

his show and he can't separate reality or, you know, something that just shouldn't be part of this narrative building anywhere. He can't get out of it, you know, everything is part of it. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. Justin, thanks so much. I really appreciate you being here. Thanks a lot, guys. Joining me now to talk more about Thursday's January 6th committee hearing is Daily Beast Politics editor Matt Fuller. Matt, Matt, thanks so much for coming on to help us break this down today. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So the way I looked at it, and I don't think this is any super intellectual takeaway,

but it seemed like today's hearing was laying out the case for what happened at the end, which was subpoenaing Trump. Yeah, I think, you know, look, a lot of this was territory. We sort of covered, but we got a little bit more details on the extent to which Trump knew he had lost and still persisted with his sort of bullshit claims of election fraud. and whatnot. We have to overturn this election. So, you know, they kind of expertly laid that out, I thought. And then at the very end, it was supposed to be this huge surprise, but they kind of stepped on their, you know, shock and off treatment here by the news leaking out. But yeah, then they went ahead and subpoenaed

Trump, which, again, he probably won't do anything with. I can't imagine he's going to sit down for the January 6th committee. So it could be a court fight, but more likely than not, it'll just sort of be a nothing burger. But yeah, I think they pretty well laid out. why Donald Trump's testimony is kind of a necessary thing to have here. Yeah, I totally agree. And I think it, you know, subpoenaing it was necessary. I agree. I mean, he's never going to show up. The only thing he's going to do with this is fundraise off it, right? Yeah, I mean, and look, I think Democrats are sort of thinking the same thing here too. But a lot of these members are, I think, motivated mostly by a real sense of duty, right?

Liz Cheney, Adam Kisinger. They're leaving Congress here sort of going down in flames, but they're trying to fulfill, I think, what they, really see as an actual duty to get to the truth of this. The January 6th committee, likely, more likely than not, is never going to really get down to the bottom of everything. We're really never going to know exactly what Donald Trump was doing, exactly what he knew, all the ways in which he was degrading the presidency at the time. But we've got a pretty good picture. And frankly, if you haven't seen enough already, then you're probably never going to see enough. Yeah, absolutely, especially given, you know, what we saw today. And again, the way they laid it out. I think you're right. A lot of it, you know, particularly early on, it felt like, oh, this is stuff they've covered already.

But I did feel like the focus was much more on Trump. I wrote down there were a bunch of quotes. I'll just read a couple of them. Congressman Murphy said, all of this demonstrates Trump's personal involvement in overturning the election. He was intimately involved. He was the central player. Adam Schiff, January 6th was the last most desperate and dangerous prong in his plan. Liz Cheney, the vast weight of evidence presented so far, has shown us that the central cause of January 6th was one man, Donald Trump, et cetera, like at infinitum, every single member of the committee who spoke today, kind of a special point of saying this all goes back to Donald Trump. He was not some kind of passive observer. He was the... As a participant. As I said earlier, he was the godfather.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, Donald Trump was, we know this for certain. Donald Trump was uniquely situated to sort of stop this. His staffers clearly knew that. There's this freak out at the White House that he's not getting on air. There's a freak out with Kevin McCarthy that he's not, you know, going on TV or tweeting out. You've got to stop this. More than the, you know, go home, we love you all, you know, that message, which took hours, right?

I think it's more than that. They've really laid out today how Trump knew there was real danger here. These people were armed and he just didn't care, right? He's saying, you know, stop wanding them with the mags and let them in, right? I know they have weapons. I don't care. They're not going to use them on me. Right.

They're not here for me. Right. Exactly. So this is a man who knew the real threats here. He knew exactly what he was doing. And also, you know, it's clear, I think, clear than ever today, Trump had the option of trying to win this legitimately. He knew that he could try to stress the importance of voting early, that this is something

that there was gains to be made for Republicans if Trump was like, go, vote early, use it. Instead, he decided to go, no, let's preserve my ability to say this election was stolen from me. It was always sort of part of the plan. And if that's part of your plan, I mean, you know, at what point do we hold someone accountable for exactly what followed through? I mean, it was all sort of a part of the plan. And it's clear that Trump knew exactly what he was doing. Yeah. And it's also clear, again, they sort of laid this out.

It was almost like, you know, it was almost like a trial in absentia is what it felt like sometimes. and, you know, they were, they were not only proving that he was behind it, but that there was, like, you know, malice of forethought. Like, this was, they used the word premeditated a whole bunch of times, like that this was, you know, and they brought up. And again, it's stuff, some of it was, maybe a lot of it was stuff we knew before that as early as July, they were talking about ways to, you know, to mess with the count and stuff like that. It was just incredibly interesting to me the way they did it and the way they kept stressing that it was him and then various people saying the premeditated plan. to declare victory no matter what the outcome, I think, was Congresswoman. I think Lofgren said it that way. I mean, I think clearly they've arrived that this is sort of their closing argument, right? I mean, they've built a pretty good case here, and they're saying, okay, in closing, how is this uniquely Donald Trump's fault? He knew every step of the way, you know, from we're starting planning in July, but there's plans in October, there's plans of November, there's plans in December, every step of the way. He's making active choices to go this route. And I think they've laid out how

that is a pretty damning choice and how this insurrection in so many ways is Donald Trump's fault. It's not just that he, you know, as Liz Cheney said when she voted for impeachment, that he sort of lit the flame and poured gasoline on him and then didn't stop it, right? Right. It's all those things, right?

It's the whole combination, but Donald Trump was a very active participant in this entire plan, and when he had the chance to stop it, he chose not to. But it's just, it's more than that. It's not just him, you know, a dereliction of duty. It's really him, the whole way, seeing the whole plan, knowing exactly what's going to happen and choosing to go down that path.

Yeah. And they also, you know, they were very clear that he was told time and time again by his own campaign staffers, members of the White House staff, members of the Justice Department, that all these things he kept bringing up the Dominion voting systems, the Phantom suitcase, all that stuff, that there was no truth to any of it. And he didn't, like, it didn't matter to him. He would then go out and say that the same shit anyway. And I thought, you know, it was like, they laid out it not being a case of, like, he's not going to be able to claim, well, I got bad advice. Right.

I mean, I thought actually one of more damning parts today was when, you know, they're laying out, no, we've looked into this whole suitcase thing in Georgia. If you look at the tape, you watch the tape, there is no suitcase. That is how they're transferring ballots around in like a sort of a, like a mail roller, basically. That's totally standard operating procedure. There's nothing damning about it. And then days later, he goes out and says, look, they're wheeling around a suitcase.

He knows, he knows this is a bull. shit and he's choosing to propagate it further. Yeah, and he goes out there and he says, you know, the suitcase and he says, we all saw it. If you watched it, you saw it. And it's just amazing, like to see that he was literally told by his own people, hey, there was no suitcase. Yeah, yeah, I think this goes beyond if he didn't know he should have known. It's, we know he knew and he still chose to go down that path. Yeah, absolutely. I want to say there was something you tweeted, I just want to pull it up. You tweeted, fellas, I just need 11,000 votes. me a break, which is a quote that Trump said to, I guess it was the Georgia Secretary of State.

Yeah, Brad Raffinsberger. Yeah. So you said that quote, he said that would be an all-time presidential scandal quote if it were delivered by any other president in the 50 years preceding Donald Trump. Yeah, I mean, look, I always return back to this idea that, you know, when I was learning about politics, you're learning about Watergate and how Richard Nixon lost the presidency because he was sweating in a debate with JFK and how, you know, Dukakis riding around in a tank. And like, these are considered scandals, right? Willie Horton, and that's beyond the pale.

Well, Donald Trump blew up all of that. Like, there's 100 years of history and political norms that are just completely eviscerated by Donald Trump. And when you hear that, when you take that quote, just any other politician, anyone's saying that, you know, it doesn't matter who you are. That is a massive scandal. It's right there in front of your eyes. He's putting it right there out through. Find me the votes, right? And again, if you're not convinced by that, I'm not sure you're ever going to be convinced.

I mean, one of the truest things Donald Trump has ever said is he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. And, you know, these people would still vote for him. That's spot on. I mean, he's openly admitting to crimes. It's right there on tape for you. It doesn't require any real mental gymnastics to understand what he's saying. It's plain as day. Like, this is going to sound like a pompous quote or whatever. And I don't mean it that way. But he, you know, he basically shot democracy in the middle of Washington, D.C. And there were people who don't care. Yeah. I mean, I will say, like, we have that quote because Brad Raffensberger knew. it was damning and released it, right? But after that, there was this expectation probably from Brad Raffensberger that, oh my God, there's me a huge freak out. And there was, you know, there was there was blowback.

There was a freak out, but nothing ever amounted from it. Nothing ever came of it. And it's, you know, if you just take that piece of evidence in isolation, I think that is damning enough to say exactly what Donald Trump was trying to do. And it's pretty clear to us all. Yeah. And in fact, a lot of the blowback was directed at him. Right, right.

This is Brad Rappensberg's fault. He's so disloyal. to Donald Trump. Yeah, which is just unbelievable. And, you know, I think you're absolutely right. But it also, you know, when you say that, you know, in the last 50 years, this would have been disqualifying and we all would have been like, you know, can you believe this? And now it's just something that happens.

And what scares me is that, you know, two years from now, four years from now, we might be looking back at this and going, man, those were simpler times. Yeah, so quaint when he just openly said, find me a lot of votes. Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, Donald Trump has survived. by so much just having this torrent of scandals, and you can never really pinpoint one thing. So this is just part of the playbook. His supporters just don't care about it.

They've shown that time and time again, and there really isn't a scandal that's going to make them turn on him. It's a question of, is there enough independence, does it motivate enough Democrats to come out? We've seen, yeah, that they kind of do. But, you know, when we're talking about winning elections

and Joe Biden barely won this election, it's a very close race, and that in itself is. is sort of stunning. Yeah, I mean, look, don't get me started on the Electoral College, because we'll be here all day. I do want to say, part of Liz Cheney's closing, she said, we have more than enough information to recommend criminal referrals, which I thought was interesting. And obviously, for those who don't know, and I think I understand this, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, this committee can make referrals to the Justice Department. The Justice Department is in free to take them and act on them or to say, thanks for that. but no thanks. Yeah, and the troubling part here is, particularly just take the, say Donald Trump,

you know, takes a subpoena and wipes his ass with it, right, which is basically what I expect him to do. We have precedent on that. Now, they, the DOJ said, okay, Steve Bannon,

you were supposed to testify, you should have testified, you had no executive privilege here, clearly, but they chose not to go after Mark Meadows, right? Mark Meadows did the same exact thing. So it's really tough for me

to envision a Merrick Garland-led DOJ right that says, okay, you know, let's go after a former president. And every, you know, that should be a high bar, right? That should be something that people have reservations about. But at some level, it's like if someone's doing open crimes and this seems pretty clear cut, there has to be ramifications for that. And just because you're a former president, maybe doesn't mean that you should just get off scot-free. Yeah. I mean, a couple of things. There was another quote from Lee Cheney that I talked about in another section of this podcast. She said, any future president inclined to attempt what Trump did in 2020, has now learned not to install people who could stand in the way. And like, as I said, if that's the lesson that we get from this, that's really, really bad. And if there are no criminal charges and Trump basically skates free and not just Trump, but a lot of people under him, then that is going to be the lesson they learned. Yeah, I mean, I think overall, January 6th, a big thing here, one of my big takeaways, and I was in the building is how close all this came to being successful,

not just from, you know, a violent insurrection standpoint, but from, uh, the legal standpoint, from say they kicked it to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court said, you know, yep, sounds good. Or, you know, or, you know, or Mike Pence decided that, oh, you know, you're right, I can kick this back to the states. This was a very close call. And they've learned from some of their mistakes. They know that you have to appoint Jeff Clark's, right, to be your AG, to make this happen. But a second Trump administration probably would be full of Jeff Clark's. It's not going to be full of Bill Barr's. It's not going to be full of people who have shown that, you know, when push comes to shove. And I'm not praising Bill Barr here. Let's be clear. But I will say it's worth

noting that even for Bill Barr, a massive partisan, he said, this is beyond the pale. But there were people who were willing to not only go along with it, but to stoke the flame and lead Trump down this path. So it may not be Trump. It may be someone else. But if Congress doesn't act and reform this, then this is a real threat. This is, we've laid out exactly how to sort of subvert democracy and say, there was election fraud and we have to act on this. And we'll kick it back to the states. And I don't think it takes much more than that to overthrow a democratic election. Yeah, I mean, look, I've taken shit from people for saying that it's not that far-fetched to say that Mike Pence kind of saved democracy on that day. I mean, yeah, again, like, let's not

give people too much credit here for doing the baseline. But, but yeah, I know, I agree. I mean, Mike Pence very clearly could have gone the other direction on it. And that's all I'm saying. And I have no love. I have no like for Mike Pence whatsoever. But the fact is it would have been. And yes, all he did was quote unquote what he was supposed to do. But when so many people around you are not doing what they're supposed to do, it can be very easy to join them.

So it's not nothing that, yes, it's the bare minimum in the sense that he fulfilled his duty. But he was one of the few that was fulfilling his duty. And as you pointed out, had he not, who the hell knows what would. have happened. Yeah. I mean, and it's, I guess we could, we can be fair to Mike Pence. It wasn't the bare minimum, right? He's literally risking his life to do this. Yes. He knew what was right, and it took at least some courage to actually act on that, which is more than you can say about a lot of people in the administration. So, you know, he probably ruined his political career by making this decision, but he, he saw the higher purpose here and democracy held, but it wasn't by much.

It was a close call, and I think that everyone should be looking at this with some degree. of concern and saying, okay, how do we fix this? Absolutely. And look, I say the same thing about Liz Cheney and, you know, and Adam Kinsinger, nothing Liz Cheney believes for the most part is what I believe. Yeah. But that does not take away from the fact that she has consistently done the right thing on this one issue. Yeah. And it's cost her and the same for Kinsinger. Totally. I mean, you know, say what you will about her political future, but she went from the number three House Republican with a clear path to something, potentially the vice presidency, potentially

the presidency. I mean, who knows, to this sort of outcast with a bunch of money who might be able to, you know, be like a gadfly in Republican primaries for the most egregious election deniers. So she deserves some credit. I mean, say what you will, both any of her positions. She was really good on this. And she stood up and said no when everyone else was saying, no, okay, well, let's just go along with it. I was about to take credit for something, but now I think it's something you tweeted. Is she the one that actually read out that they needed to subpoena Trump? Yeah, it was her motion in the end, which is, you know, again, what I treat was it was a nice little

chef's kiss to the whole moment that it was actually Republican Liz Cheney saying, you know, let's subpoena this guy. Yeah, and she also called for a voice vote, I believe. Yeah, the recorded vote, right. They could have done it just, you know, it was clearly, he was unanimous by voice, but they wanted it right on the record. So everyone knows for posterity. It was a nine to nothing vote.

Yeah, and also it gave each one of them stared into the. camera and said yes or said i whatever yeah yeah it was it was a great it was a great you know made for tv moment exactly and and look i that's important these days so you know i don't i don't begrudge them that at all i think it was it was a great tv moment but it was also again i think these hearings regardless of if any long-term good comes out of them i don't know i think they're important for the historical record i think it's really good that they did them and if it changes nobody's minds, then so be it. But at least it's, at least it's part of history now. Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, I've looked at my job in the last few years differently

because of that fact too, right? I mean, a lot of what I've done in my career over the last, I guess, now, what, six, seven years has been asking Republicans to react to whatever daily Donald Trump outrage there is. And I know it won't matter with them. I know that they don't care what he said on a phone call with President Zelensky, or they don't care what he said during a Helsinki press conference. But you are actually recording this for history and for posterity and for future generations ago. Oh yeah, my random Republican in Texas, Randy Weber, he said, you know, it was a perfect phone call or Jody Arrington. He said this was great and this is all, you know, Donald Trump's being vilified for no reason. I mean, those are important things to remember because, frankly, Republicans

all went along with this and they very actively went along with this. I think there's responsibility on the part of the press and Congress themselves too. Lawmakers putting people on the record about Donald Trump and his actions and preserving this for future generations. Absolutely. Matt, thanks so much for joining us and helping us walk through this. And please come back anytime. I really appreciate it. All right. Thank you guys. Callie Holloway. So who is your fuck that guy for today? So I had a difficult time whittling it down to just one guy had a few people that I wanted to mention. And just quick disclaimer,

I'm not actually suggesting that anyone should fuck any of these guys. I think you should actually stay away from these guys because they're horrible. The first is Dennis and Deanna Mola of Minnesota, who you might remember back in September 2020, they claim that militant leftists set fire to their RV, and they spray painted Biden 2020 and BLM and what I think was supposed to pass for, an anarchy symbol on their garage door.

And they really sold them. it to local media. They said that they had to get their very small kids out of the house. There were puppies. They threw puppies in. And as it turns out, that was a complete lie. And I think that anyone who was paying attention at the time would have known that it was a lie. There are no anarchists spraying Biden 2020 on garage doors. That's not a thing. But he apparently went through the process of applying for $300,000 in insurance claims. And when some of them were labeled fraudulent by his insurance company, he actually threatened them with a letter saying he was going to report them to the Department of Commerce and the Attorney General, which is, I mean, just the balls,

the gall. So he did manage to get $61,000 out of his insurance company. He also got $17,000, I think, for more than one go-fund me. And he's probably going to face some jail time for wire fraud. But one of my favorite things in reading the most recent news about his admission is that he quote, sobbed through much of the court hearing. And that story for me, just metaphorically, was just such a perfect kind of symbol of the self-victimization of Trump supporters. You know, here's someone that targeted themselves and then told the world that they had been victimized.

It's kind of exactly what Trumpism is all about writ large. The second, fuck you, goes out to Nouri Martinez, was the president of the Los Angeles City Council. She stepped down on Monday from the presidency. and then stepped down completely on Wednesday. But she was on a call in 2021 with a group of her colleagues. They were talking about redrawing districts in L.A. to give greater representation to Latino voters.

And she basically set a bunch of racist things about black folks and also Wahakins, who she called dark and ugly and short. It was just a really gross display. She also said some really awful things about the two-year-old black son of one of her colleagues. And if, I don't know if any of you saw the speech that Mike Bonnan gave, who is also a city council member who's, you know, who's the father of this kid that she insulted. He sort of gave this tearful speech about how hurtful it was that it's just, you know, super heartbreaking. So just to fuck you to her and everyone that was on that call laughing along. And I do just have to add this post note is that in her resignation letter, which did not include an apology.

She ended with, and last, to all the little Latina girls across the city, I hope I've inspired you to dream beyond that, which you can see, which I found astounding. To encourage little Latino girls to be the absolute worst people in the world and follow in her footsteps is the kind of lack of self-reflection that it exhibited was pretty amazing to me. I'm glad that she's gone, and I hope that we don't hear from her anytime soon. And then finally, Halloween's coming up and my sort of proactive, fuck you to anyone who decides they're going to dress is Jeffrey Dahmer. No sexy Jeffrey Dahmer's for you? No, no, absolutely not. Although there is definitely someone working on that costume right now. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah, I can't argue with any of the three of those. Martinez in particular, that resignation letter was one of the worst things I've ever read from a politician, I think. When you're on a local city council and the United States president is calling on you to step down. Yeah, not a good book. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is?

Yes, please. So my fuck that guy is a gal, a woman. It is former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard. I probably should put Democrat in scare quotes there who decided to announce earlier this week that she is leaving the Democratic Party, surprising absolutely no one who hasn't been in a medically induced coma. for the past, I don't know, four years. And she wrote, I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers, driven by cowardly wokeness who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism, actively worked to undermine our God-given freedoms. And she just went on from there,

but I won't bore you with the rest of it. Completely coincidentally, the day after she made this announcement, she launched a new podcast. She also headed to New Havanaugh. Hampshire to hit the campaign trail for a Republican Senate candidate up there, Don Baldick, who is just absolutely awful and to the point where like even Republicans are upset that he won his primary because they know he has no, pretty much no chance of winning the election. So she's gone straight from I was a Democrat to I am now stumping for the worst of the Republican party. For those reasons, Tulsi Gabbard is by five. that guy for today. And just want to add that Newsmax, pretty much the instant that she announced that

she was leaving the Democratic Party, was promoting the idea that she might be on a ticket with Donald Trump in 2024. True story. She's going to have to fight off Marjorie Taylor Green for that, I think. But who knows. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. See you next time. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support

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