The Daily Beast Podcast - NYC Judge Needs to Treat Trump Like the Mafia Boss He Is

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

The New Abnormal co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy have some advice for the judge handling former President Donald Trump’s New York City hush-money trial: Treat it exactly the same as a high-profile mob case. Then, a conversation with Medhi Hasan about his new media venture, Zeteo, which launched on Monday. Plus! Jonathan V. Last, an editor at The Bulwark, joins the program to talk about his recent presidential rankings. 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 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 Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have for you today.

Former MSNBC political analyst Medea San joins us to talk about his new media company, Zateo, and how the media's coverage of Donald Trump may be worse than it was in 2016. Then, Bullwork editor Jonathan V. Last is here to rank presidents and talk about one little old Tom Cotton and his call for violence against protesters. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, we are right at 200 days out from the election, I guess, on the day that this episode drops, as I like to say. As they say in the biz. It's an inside baseball. It's a little term of art I like to use.

It is also the fourth anniversary of the new abnormal. And I have to say, working with you these past four years, Danielle, has been, it's been tremendous. And I feel like I've learned a lot. It doesn't feel like four years, but then, you know, when we were told, hey, this is the fourth anniversary of the podcast. I was like, well, obviously it's been four years since Danielle and I were co-hosting the show. I just have to say thank you for making the time fly. Yeah. It's almost like I can't remember four years ago in being here.

But congrats to the new abnormal. And 200 days until the election. And it's like my nerves would have no idea. It's not like I'm drinking more or not sleeping or like it's like it's not like I my meditation app is the only thing on my phone anymore. So that's good to know. Oh, don't make me laugh. The hangover hurts too bad. Thank God for Zbiotics.

I'll be sure to alert commerce to that. Okay, good. So yeah, so we're 200 days out from this election. And by the way, all jokes aside, shout out to Molly John Fast, who brought me on. I love her for that. As we deal with, I think, in every election that I can remember, one of the candidates is on trial. And this time around, it's Donald Trump. And we are in the midst now of jury selection in the case involving his payments to Stormy Daniels, which a lot of people are referring to as a hush money case. I like to call it the election interference case.

And we're going through jury selection now. And it's been, I guess I'm just using a lot of inside baseball terms today. It's been a shit show. Yeah. We've got jurors who are saying, hey, I'm not doing this because I'm, My identity is becoming public, and it's been a horrible situation. And as many people have pointed out, this is basically, it's like a mob trial. It's like a mafia trial.

It's like a John Gotti trial. It's absolutely insane that this guy is the Republican candidate for the president of the United States, and jurors are literally and legitimately fearful for their lives and for the lives of their families if their identity becomes public. I mean, I just think that it is absolutely horrendous that by following your civic duty, which is being called to jury duty and sitting, that your entire life can be turned upside down, that first off, I just want to say this before I get into the mobster that is Donald Trump, that is the Republican Party cult, is these reporters who are offering up details about, what these jurors look like, their hair color, their stature, where they work. It's like,

what the fuck are you doing? And I know that Judge Merchant has said basically that like, this is ridiculous and you need to not be offering such like deep details about these people. Like it defeats the purpose of having an anonymous jury if in fact you're like, well, the freckled one who works at New York Presbyterian. It's like, what the fuck are you doing? So I think that there needs to be a directive that is punishable to reporters that are covering this, right? Like, you need to say nothing other than juror number one, number two, number three, number four, and like, keep it moving for these people's safety. And so this goes into the fact that every single judge outside of Aileen Cannon, who's just a fucking waste of skin.

But every other judge that is overseeing a case that Donald Trump is involved in needs to treat this with the seriousness and the attention and the directives that they would if they were overseeing a case by John Gotti, if they were overseeing a case by a ringleader of a drug cartel. Because there is no difference. between the actions that Donald Trump and his thug-ass attorneys have been taking that are jeopardizing the safety and the well-being of the judges, of the clerks, of the prospective jurors in these cases. And so if you went in with the mindset of the fact that, no, I'm not going to provide this person with a level of, like, dignity and respect because they're a former president of the United States, but I'm going to provide them with the same energy that I would if it was a Gotti that was on trial. like that's what you need to be doing in order to protect these people that are doing nothing more than their civic duty and who because of an unlucky draw of the deck are now potentially having their lives threatened.

Yeah, for sure. The media takes so much blame here. And it's just every time I want to defend journalists and, you know, the profession of journalism in general, things like this happen. And they just make me go, man, this is, Like, you can't be doing this. And Jonah Bromwich, who is doing part of the New York Times, has been doing like a live thing on the jury selection where, you know, they post little things like a live blog type situation. And he posted today, he said, we are in a remarkable situation covering an unprecedented case of immense public interest and blocked in many ways from reporting on the constitution of the jury. The trial is not televised and we are the public's eyes and ears, but at the moment we are limited in what we can relay. Yeah, he goes on to say the judge's priority is protecting the prospective jurors and his order is bent toward that aim. It remains to be seen whether we will reach a safer way to report on elements of the trial that are not directly on the record. Well, the problem is, Jonah, that the judge is being forced to do this because you and other journalists have been wildly irresponsible.

And there is a safer way to report on this, but you all haven't been doing it. And as you pointed out, they're giving enough identification markers for some of these jurors and prospective jurors that it's easy enough for people to figure out who they are. And there was a nurse who you mentioned and enough information was given out by the news that friends of hers were like they were easily able to identify her and know that it was her. Which is wild. Right. If somebody were to say, oh, these are the last tweets that went out. this is like, you know, this stature and they work at this place. Like, your friends and family should not be able to figure that out.

And if they do, then you know that Trump's goons absolutely will. For sure. And here's what the nurse who has since been excused from serving on the jury. Here's what she said to the judge. She said, I definitely have concerns now about being in public. Yesterday alone, I had friends, colleagues, pushed things to my phone, questioning my identity as a juror. I don't believe at this point that I can be fair and unbiased

and let the outside influences not affect my decision to be in the courtroom. And there's two things here. One is the obvious, as we've been saying, she should never have to be put in this position. But the other thing is this is what Trump wants. And the journalists who are doing this are doing his dirty work for him. And they are out there giving away everything but the name of the person who might serve on the jury, who's a prospective juror. And that's what he wants. He wants to spread fear. He wants to spread fear. He wants to spread terror among the juries, again, exactly as a mob boss does. And there is no difference. There is no daylight between this and a mob trial. That is exactly what this is. And as you said, Danielle,

all all the judges in all of his trials have to approach this in the same way. And they have to take this incredibly seriously. And Judge Merchant appears to be, this is not on him. But journalists have to do this the same way, whether it's, you know, if this was a, like you said, a drug cartel, was El Chapo on trial. You don't want to be giving out information that lets people know who the jurors are. It's the same thing. Again, I know that we say this, so I sound like a broken record all the time, but I really don't know what these judges and the media are waiting for. Are they waiting for people to just start disappearing? Are they waiting for some death and grave harm to come to people to recognize like the stakes at which Donald Trump is playing with right now?

Like, I just want to contextualize it again for folks. Donald Trump has four indictments and 92 charges against him. This all goes away if he becomes president of the United States. Donald Trump is willing to do anything and everything to make these cases go away. And then if he's able to do that, then to punish everyone, right, who even thought that he wasn't above the law. You have to understand the stakes and that when somebody, like Donald Trump, when a mobster has their back up against the wall, they will take down the entire fucking building in order to get out. And that's like the grave situation that we're in in these cases, in this country. And like these people need to stop playing games as if you're dealing with a normal fucking rational human being.

I'm like, how many ways does Donald Trump need to show you that he is dangerous in order for people to start, like, getting it through their fucking heads? Yeah, it's wild. And I don't really blame the judge in this case, Judge Merchant. I think he is kind of pissed off at the journalists, too, for publicly reporting, potentially identifying information. And what he's done is he's now directed journalists to not report on one of the questions from the juror questionnaire, which is their place of employment. because that was one of the main things that was letting people figure out pretty damn quickly who these jurors were. I'm looking here at the Daily Beast, Jose Paglieri, who reported that Judge Merchant said journalists are being irresponsible, and he lamented how, quote,

we've just lost what probably could have been a very big juror in this case and said that she had detailed being, quote, very intimidated by the press. He said, there's a reason this is an anonymous jury. And I'll quote from him again, it kind of of defeats the purpose of that when so much information is put out there that is very, very easy for us to identify who the jurors are. So in this case, at least, I don't put this on the judge. I think he is taking this seriously. And I think he does realize what's going on here. It's these journalists who just, I honestly don't know what's going through their head. You don't have to report every single fact to the public. You don't do that every day.

That's just, that's common sense. And for you to be out there, doing this, it flies in the face of the phrase responsible journalism. And it needs to be stopped. It's already too late for some of the jurors, but going forward, it absolutely needs to be completely gone. I don't even know what responsible journalism looks like anymore. I mean, aside from us, obviously. It's like anything for a click, anything for a post. I just don't know. But again, these are real people with real lives and livelihoods and families. We watched as Shay Moss and Miss Ruby were dragged through the mud. We watched as they had to bring Giuliani to court to receive damages for the pain and the

suffering and the moving that they have had to do. So we've seen this play out. We know what happens. And those, I mean, they're volunteer election workers and their lives and their names are forever ruined because of these people. Imagine you're sitting now on a case that decides. whether the former twice impeached four times indicted, multiply charged criminal ass president, goes to jail.

Like what? Yeah. On top of everything you just said, this is a guy whose followers have already shown that they're willing to commit violence. You know, this is not like, oh, geez, I hope they're not the violent types. We've got January 6th. We've got other, you know, examples of his followers committing acts of violence. And so for this to be allowed, you know, and on top of all this,

We've got, prosecutors are now saying that Trump has violated the gag order that Judge Merchant put on him seven times already since this trial began like three days ago. You know, and he's doing other things like as jurors are being questioned in the court, he's sitting there and muttering about them. And all of this is juror intimidation, plain and simple. And the jurors know that. And Trump knows that. I don't understand why everybody doesn't know that. I'm not a lawyer. I know that comes to a shock to a lot of people listening to this podcast. So I don't know the procedural order here. I don't really understand why Judge Birchon has set a separate little hearing to see if Trump has violated the gag order, but he set that hearing for next week. So that does nothing for the next week. Trump can continue

to do to make his little posts on truth social. He was caught using his cell phone in the court, which is against the judge's orders. Dude has fallen asleep, I think pretty much every day of the trial at this point. Look, at least when he's sleeping, He can't intimidate anyone. So let him sleep, I guess. But this has to be gotten a hold of. And there have to be consequences at some point before somebody innocent pays the price. Okay.

We have done, I think, Andy, a very good job in laying out how Donald Trump is analogous to a mob boss. Well, don't take our word for it. Now let us bring you to exactly how Donald Trump and the RNC, are moving against down-ballot Republicans. So according to Rolling Stone, this shit is just wild. I'll just read you the title, folks. Trump demands cut of donations to down-ballot Republicans who use his name. So I just want you to understand this is what this means.

Mm-mm-mm. You can't make it up. So according to Politico, the Trump campaign sent a letter to vendors informing them that, quote, all candidates and committees who choose to use President Trump's name, image, and likeness split a minimum of 5% of all fundraising solicitations to Trump National Committee, JFC. And also, any split that is higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the R&C and the Trump campaign. So it's not enough to hawk bibles.

It's not enough to try and sell tacky ass sneakers. Now Donald Trump is putting a fee, a 5% finder's fee on down ballot Republican Canada, who by the way, based on what the RNC has voted on are no longer actually receiving any money from the fucking R&C. Right. So let us all be clear about that, that all money and all resources from the Republican National Committee go to Donald Trump and his family. So if you're running for office as a Republican, not only are you not receiving any funds, but now you need to tide 5% to the church of Donald Trump. This is like the scene in the movie or the TV show where the enforcer goes into the establishment to get his share of the president. protection money to be paid to the Don. It's absolutely unreal. And it's just, and then the part where that you read, where any split that's higher than 5% will be seen favorably by the

R&C and President Trump's campaign. And that, I mean, again, this is literally, this is the scene where, you know, someone that, someone says the Don would like you to do him a favor. And you know what that means. It means you do the Don a favor. So, because it's not going to go well for you if you don't. It is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, it's textbook mob behavior. And, you know, I'm actually, I shouldn't compare it to TV and movie shows because the comparison is to real life mob behavior that's portrayed in these shows. But this is plain and simple, cut and dry. This is the mafia. He is running the RNC as a mob, right down to the fact that it's his family. It's a family business. everything about this is it's not even mob adjacent. It's just straight up mob tactics. I mean, as you said, this one's unbelievable, given that the RNC's new thing is, now that it's run by the family, is not to give any money to the down ballot people. And now he wants money from the down ballot people. It is just, it's absolutely unreal. But like you said at the top, you know, you don't need us telling you it's mob behavior because all you have to do is look at exactly what they're doing.

It's a shakedown. You can't call it anything other than that. To be very clear, just put it this way, when small business operators live in districts that have been overrun by gangs, one of the ways that they are able to stay safe or able to continue operating said business is to provide a cut to those gangs for, quote unquote, protection. So if I'm bringing, you know, so if you have a 100% profit, well, now you have 70. because you're given 30% over to the gangs, to the mobs, to whatever, so that you can continue operating your business. And you know what? But the boss would feel really good about 35 or 40%. But you know what, Andy, that's up to you. It's up to you. Wink and a smile. So I'm just wondering, like, do all of Trump's attorneys in their, you know, in their suits in these fucking meathead looking

dudes, are they just now just knocking on the doors of these Republican candidates with a tin, tin out? You know, the boss has his eye on you. Have you offered up your tidings this month? They think that this is good because none of them are going to speak out and be like, this is crazy. You know, it's not the Republican Party is more than trying. They're not going to do that. No, because you don't go against the family. Because you don't go against the family. You don't need to have had real world experience with the mafia. You just need to have watched the godfather once or twice. And you know, You never go against the family.

It is truly unreal. And I just love, I love the phrasing, though, you know, will be seen favorably by the R&C and President Trump's campaign. Oh, and by the way, it is routinely reported to the highest levels of leadership. It's as threatening as it can be. It's as much of a threat as it can be as it's said with a smile. That's how they operate. And it's just, you know, everything he's doing with the jurors, this is the same MO with the

same outcome. It is telling these people, you do what we want or it will not be seen favorably by the family. And you don't want that. Folks, I am so very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. Medi Hassan, who is the editor-in-chief and CEO of New Media Company Zateo News. Medi, so excited and congratulations to you on the launch of this new media company. Tell us, about the name and also the reason behind you launching at this time. Daniel, thanks so much for having me back on the show. It has been a busy week. We launched Zateo on Monday of this week.

It's an ancient Greek word going back to Socrates and Plato, which means to seek out, to inquire, to search for the truth in their words. And I felt, my team and I felt that this was an appropriate name for us. It was an ideal name for us in an age of misinformation. disinformation, fake news, open gaslighting. That is what we're about, trying to find the facts, trying to find the truth, trying to get to a reality-based world that we all want to live in. So what better name to give a new media company than Zateo, the seeking out of the truth. Now, why a media company? Why not just go solo or freelance or start my own personal

substack after leaving MSNBC? I wanted to build something bigger, Danielle. I wanted to build an actual enduring institution, especially for progressives, for people on the left. I feel like the right have colonized all of the online commercial media space, the right conservatives. A lot of the grifters have set up media companies and businesses and platforms in a way that progressives, leftists, even liberals, haven't successfully done. You know, the liberals have, you know, Pod Save America and some of the crooked media empire and others. But I just thought, you know what? If not now when, if not me, who? Why don't we try it? Why don't we see if I can build something?

And actually, you know, to quote Field of Dreams, build it and they will come. And they have. I mean, we've got 160,000 subscribers week one. I mean, we did a soft launch in February. Got a big influx of people. There's clearly a demand for it. This week, we rolled out all of our first round of contributors, people like Greta Toonberg, Naomi Klein, Kamal Bell, Cindy Nicariel, Spencer Ackerman. And a lot of those people are supporting me because they want this to succeed too because all of us believe there is a massive gap in the market and we need something like Zetae. You know, and I couldn't agree more. And I think that that is obviously why you have so many subscribers. You know, I see that people are thirsty. They are thirsty for something

that will give them the truth. I think that we have as a country, as as global citizens, have drank so much of the Kool-Aid over the last several years that we, that up is, you know, we don't know which direction that we're looking in. And I, you know, to that point, there's just been, Medi, and I will say it, just some irresponsible journalism over the last seven years. It's as if we have learned nothing. We don't know how to cover Donald Trump. We don't know how to cover a crumbling democracy.

Talk to us about what you have seen, what you have been through. And frankly, the light that you have tried to shine, is it in a number? intentional, do you think, in the ways in which journalism has gotten it wrong? Is it continued ignorance? Yeah. For the reason, what do you make of where media and journalism is at this moment? It's a great question. And you highlight a lot of important issues. And I was just doing an interview with someone else earlier today. And I said the same thing to them that I'm about to say to you, which is we're in a much worse place today than we were even in

2016. Because in 2016, there was an ignorance argument, right? This is new. We don't know how to cover Trump. We've never done anything like this before. As journalists, we don't know what to do. You know, we made a mistake. You know, you had Jeff Zucker that then head of CNN after the election saying, yeah, maybe we shouldn't have done hours and hours of Trump press conferences. We should have had an empty podium live on TV saying Trump about to come up.

We had, you know, the head of CBS at the time said, you know, Trump may not be good for America, but he's good for our ratings. He's good for our bottom line. That was all 2016. Then in 2020, we saw, I thought, a slight improvement. We saw journalists willing to say the R word racism, willing to talk about Trump's abnormality as a candidate, as a politician, as a president. Obviously, January 6th happened and everyone recoiled for about 48 hours. And now I think we've regressed to a point where we're in a worse position than 2016.

We're in a worse position because Trump is a bigger threat than he was in 2016. And the media has no more excuses left, as they had in 2016. We can't say, oh, we didn't know. Oh, we didn't realize that they were playing us. We didn't realize that this was gaslighting. We didn't realize the effect of the incitement to violence in our real world society. We thought we would give Trump the benefit of the debt. None of that works now.

We know who he is. We know what he's about. We know what he's done. And the idea that you can still treat him like a normal candidate. You can still give him platforms. You saw it with the CNN Town Hall last year with Caitlin Collins, which was the disaster some of us predicted would be. We saw it recently on CNBC where he called in by phone to get softballs from the, is

Joe Kernan, I think it was the host. We mocked that idea in 2016 of meet the press, having Trump allowed to phone in, interview. All of that stuff, we are regressing, Daniel. It's just inexcusable. It's reckless. It's shameless. And the answer to your question is, I think it's a mixture of things. You can't blame ignorance because I say there's no excuse for ignorance.

But it is this sense of wanting to return to business as usual. Yes, two candidates, horse race, who's up and down, Democrat versus Republican. This guy's old and that guy's a little crazy. and that's what journalists love. They love a bit of, can I be able to shift people into pre-existing frames and narratives and horse races,

and they refuse to acknowledge that you cannot put Donald Trump in that framing. And again, one last point on this, journalists are obsessed with this idea of the view from nowhere, of impartiality, of a fake neutrality.

And I say this all the time. Journalists should have a bias, a bias for small D democracy. Trump is a threat to democracy and therefore journalists should be willing to call that out because we have skin in this game. Talk to us about the skin in the game piece, because this is also something that I think that I've tried to highlight here

and in other places, is that we have seen since the end of the Trump administration a revolving door that should have never been opened between those who served in the Trump administration and then those who would be welcomed with open arms into mainstream news, cable news, media outlets to provide commentary when for whether it was a year or the entire four years lied to the American people every single day.

It was their job to lie. Some broke away with Donald Trump only on January 6th, only to return to the bosom of insanity. Kenne McCarthy, Lindsay Graham, Nikki Haley. We can go through the list. I wonder, when we say that we have skin in the game, is it just blatant ignorance or is it craven greed at this point? It's worse than all of that.

If it was just craven greed, I could understand it. It is, you know, it's Charlie and the football. It's this naivete. It's this idiocy. It's this obsession with wanting to normalize everything and not treat, you know, your show is called The New Abnormal, not treat the Abnormal as what it is, our new normal. So, for example, when the Trump administration was in office doing its awful things,

I remember saying at the time to colleagues, I think I may have said it on air as well. You know, these people will all be forgiven and they'll be rehabilitated and they'll be wrong. And it started happening in front of our eyes. Do you remember during the Trump administration, you had Sean Spicer. He left after a discredited first round, first of, I think, four press secretaries. And he went off to be dancing with the stars. And he turned up at Harvard University, if memory says me correctly. You had Corey Lewandowski, if you remember on CNN as a paid contributor.

And I was like, come on. this is what's going to happen. This idea, oh, a few well-intentioned liberals like, oh, these people are beyond the pale. They'll never be forgiven for child separation. They'll never be forgiven for both sides of Nazis. And yet, Jared and Ivanka are back on the party scene. Jared just got an award from the ADL.

You go through the list of former Trump people who went off to corporate boardrooms and got rehabilitated. It's outrageous. And you know, you can count on one hand the number of actual former Trump people who really, really changed, who came out of government and said, we got it wrong, we regret it, we will do everything we can to stop Trump. I had Anthony Scaramucci on the first edition of my new show, Mehdi Unfiltered. We launched on Monday with Dutero.

Scaramucci is someone who, in my view, may be wrong, is genuinely contrite, genuinely, you know, sorry, and genuinely spending all his time trying to stop the re-election of Trump, Olivia Troy, who worked for Mike Pence. There's a few, a handful, who you can say, okay, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. You know, Cassidy Hutchinson and then due a death and everything else to go testify in front of the January 6 committee. Look, I wouldn't have served in the Trump administration.

I think that will weigh on their consciousness for the rest of their lives. But at least they're doing something now to try and atone. The rest of them, though, Daniel, come on. They just immediately just quickly moved to the next slide. Look at Ronna McDaniel and the farce that happened recently with my former employers with NBC. This is a woman who clearly, you know, says some mealy-mouth stuff. Oh, yeah, Biden's the president. She was up to her eyeballs in election denial of involved in the fake electors plot.

And suddenly she's turning up on NBC News as a contributor. Mick Mulvaney at CBS News. Remember when I went to form of chief of staff, but a gig there. And that was, oh, we need access to Republicans. It's awful. The rehabilitation of the worst people who are not contrite, not apologetic. And even if they are apologetic and contrite, they don't deserve to get huge cable news deals off the back of it. I mean, access is a drug.

We rehabilitate everyone in this country. Daniel, Georgia Bush is now this cuddly guy who paints paintings and swath corrupt with Michelle Obama at funerals, right? We've rehabilitated a guy who should be in the Hague for Iraq. I am under no illusions. Here's a great irony, Daniel. If Donald Trump had gone quietly in 2020, if he said I lost Farran Square, see you later, I'm going to go off and promote my vaccine. The only good thing I ever did was get a vaccine to market in time.

I bet you he'd have been rehabilitated with a few years. I mean, back on various party networks and back on TV shows and treated like, Do you remember when Trump was president? I bet you that would happen. Great irony of a man who wishes he was loved. Had he done that, this country is so forgiving. They probably would have rehabilitated Trump. I mean, they're so forgiving if you have the complexion for that forgiveness.

We are roughly 200 or some odd days away from the election with, I believe, roughly 40% of this country absolutely gone under Maga and Trumpism, which leaves a good 60% of, us to wake up to the realities of how quickly a country can change under authoritarianism and fascism. Yes, 100%. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded. It's deluded. How do you with Ziteo, how do others break through the mendacity of horse race coverage to express

very clearly to the 60% where, let's be clear, all six? percent ain't going to vote about how dire the situation is because when they look, Medi, at the last four years of Donald Trump, they say, well, we made it through. All wasn't lost and all didn't fall apart. We survived his first term, is what I hear often. We survived in one time around, which, by the way, is completely false. Half a million Americans died from COVID, many of those preventable deaths. So that's not true that we survive Trump.

That's actually quite offensive to hundreds of thousands of people who died unnecessarily. Look, the answer to your question is we've got to keep trying, Danielle, in our own various ways as journalists, to cut through the noise, to remind people of what's at stake. We at Zateo are making it very clear that that's what we are about on the domestic front, is reminding people about the dangers of authoritarianism and the fascism, not both sides of this stuff. And we just launched today, John Harwood's column. John Harwood is a former CNN, CNBC Wall Street Journal, very mainstream DC correspondent, has interviewed every president since George Bush Sr., and yet he, unlike a lot of his peers, recognizes the threat from Magor and Fascism. Chris Slicked at CNN let him go because he went on air and called Trump in very blunt terms. We've now hired him as a contributor. He's writing a weekly column called The Stakes about what's at stake in this election, not about who's up and down, but what's at

stake. I launched my first show-me-head-the-unfilted on Monday with a very detailed seven-minute segment about what Trump's first hundred days of a second term could look like, and we based it on what Trump has said and what people around them are saying. It's not just based on my imagination. it's based on what they're saying out loud. So for me, yes, I'm very opinionated. Zateo is very opinionated. I don't hide my progressive politics. But this is a factual segment.

We are saying, okay, here's what he said he would do. On day one, he's going to do this. On day three, he's going to do that. On day seven, he's going to do that. He's going to invoke the Interaction Act and put the military on the streets. His word's not mine. He's going to attack Mexico. His words not mine.

He's going to pull out of the Paris Climate Change Treaty. We just went through the whole thing. And it's had 1.6 million views on Twitter in the first few days. I hope it comes. through to swing voters. I'm not trying to cut through to MAGA voters. Trump voters are lost. I agree with you. That's nonsense. Waste of time going to diners, New York Times style to talk to Trump voters who are in some kind of reality-free cocoon watching Fox 24-7. I'm trying to reach out to people in the middle who are persuadable, who are kind of misinformed or under-informed or low-information voters who don't know, Daniel, because our media has failed them, who, when you say to them, do you know that the defense secretary under Trump says he was told to shoot protesters in the legs? Did he say that? Do you know that Trump's who would determine the Constitution. Did he say that? Well, most people don't know this stuff.

So, yeah, we're going to try and spread it far and wide. I think that there is just such considerable danger. I don't want to say that they're oblivious. I don't want to say that people are not intelligent. But what would you call it? When spoofs like don't look up, look more like reality, when we have a film right now called Civil War that is like breaking box office expectations,

and it's supposed to be a sci-fi political thriller, but looks more like a documentary. It is not as if everywhere there isn't this whisper. And so, you know, my last question for you is, is it about trying to, quote unquote, save the 40%, wake up the 60%? What is going to be, you think, if you were to create one,

this special sauce over the next 200 days, that is going to break through the noise and the mendacity? It's the journalistic challenge of our time, of our lifetime in this, as you say, next 200 days or less, to really present to the American people the choice that is an offer. There's not a referendum on Joe Biden is a choice between two candidates. As Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told me on Monday at the Ziteo launch event, she said it's ridiculous that the media is like, oh, this guy's old and this guy's a fascist. Those are not the same thing. I always think of one of my favorite old shows friends when Joey goes and wears all of Chandler's clothes. And China says, that's not the same thing.

Like, this is not the same thing. Whatever you think about Biden, and we could talk about another day about his horrible Gaza policies, but on a domestic front, the idea that we should be able to compare these two men running and equate them in some ways bizarre, the idea that we shouldn't be able to be clear-eyed

about what one side is presenting. This is not, oh, the far-left extreme versus the far-right extreme. The far-left extreme, if it even exists, Joe Biden is not far-left, sadly. Not healthcare for everyone. The far-right wants the great replacement theory, wants Nazis in office, wants to deport people en masse in the biggest deportation campaign

in American history, to quote Donald Trump. So I think we need to be clear what's at stake. We need to be clear about it can happen here. We need to be clear about American fascism. We need to not be afraid about using words like fascism and racism and genocide when it comes to Gaza. That is what Zateo is about, some home truths, plain speaking, avoiding lazy euphemisms. I'm so appreciative, one, that you have.

created this platform, that you've created this space, because to the point that you made at the beginning, there has been a vacuum when it comes to the left and progressives and the array of media outlets that we should have, that we don't, right? When you have the Spotify's and the places of the world paying hundreds of millions of dollars to racist and misogynists and liars and the right has a monopoly on radio, there needs to be a pivot point. I'm hopeful for you with Zateo that this will be that pivot point at such a crucial time in our country. Thank you, Danielle. We are trying hard. All of us need to really be doing everything we can and not relying on everyone else to pick up the slack. This is our contribution. This is what Zateo is about in 2024. In 2025,

we might be about something else, but right now we're kind of a two-issue media company. It's the genocide in Gaza and it's fascism at home. Amazing. Medi, thank you so much, as always, for making time for the new abnormal, for the work that you're doing, for your just brilliant, sharp, analytic mind in these crucial times. We need it more than ever. Daniel, thank you so much. That means so much, Daniel, and your brilliant questions. Always enjoy coming on the show. Thank you. Joining me now is bulwark editor Jonathan V. Last, and believe you, me, I have questions for Jonathan, I don't mean to sandbag you, but I want to talk about politics today, if that's okay. Jeez, okay. I mean, let's, I'll try.

Okay. Let's start with this. I see that over at the Bullwark, you've done a presidential ranking. So I want to say, first of all, how dare you? Yeah. Who do you think you are? I know. I know. This is, I mean, this is too much inside baseball. I did this because on the Bullwark podcast, our host Tim Miller, my friend, probably your friend, had the New York Times is Ross Douthodon. And in an attempt to level set, he asked Ross if he could rank the last four presidents of these United States. And Russia just wouldn't do it. You know, Tim tried over and over and doubt that it was, well, I mean, it's so hard to say. I was like, I don't know.

I think it's pretty easy. It's not hard. Give me your rankings for the last four. Biden, Obama, Bush, Trump. I just don't think it's hard. A true Republican. I mean, here's the thing, right? You can make very nuanced to distinctions.

I could give you Biden's my number one. I would say he's the only one of these four presidents who I'd say has been a good president. Even so, I could tell you half a dozen things he's done wrong. Even with Donald Trump, I think, has been possibly the worst president of American history. I could give you four things that I think his administration did that were good. Like, we don't have to pretend that everybody is an angel or a devil. We can be grownups. And yet also, we can make critical distinctions because ranking them isn't hard.

This isn't like saying who are the top five impressionist painters. You know, like, it's actually okay. It's not hard. You went on to rank all the presidents of your lifetime, which was a horrifying way for me to find out that I'm older than you. Yeah. Sorry. Because you stopped with, I think Ford was your last one. And I was an infant when Ford was in the White House.

So to be clear, and maybe that colors why I think so highly of him. Right. I was actually a conscious, a very, very young, but conscious human being for Nixon. Oh. And I guess technically I was born during LBJ's administration, which is. really depressing when I think about it. But there you dropped Biden to three. Yeah.

And to be sure, like, it's a provisional ranking. I mean, look, if Joe Biden has a 2024, like Donald Trump's 2020, then he isn't going to point up as a good president, right? I mean, Donald Trump's 2020 is one of the worst years than any American president has ever had. He presided over the largest failure of the federal government, possibly since the Civil War. it resulted in hundreds of thousands of excess deaths from the pandemic, like deaths in excess of what we should have had.

You know, so maybe the wheels could fall off the cart for Biden. I'm open to that possibility. My fundamental disagreement with the Dauphatian view of these things is that you don't, you don't do this like it's a tally sheet where you tick down all 7,000 things that the president did and say plus one minus one for the good and the bad, right? This isn't how we judge presidents. It's not how any rational human being with judge presidents. You judge them by the two or three biggest things during their term.

And did they get them right or not? And so, you know, like Ronald Reagan did all sorts of bad things, right? He was horribly late on the AIDS crisis. Lots of people died because of that. Not extra hundreds of thousands, but a lot of gay men died because of that. He ran contra was horrible scandal. He mucked around in Latin America. But on the other hand, he not all.

by himself, but he was one of the larger drivers of the Cold War ending without nuclear Armageddon. And that's a very big deal. Yeah. And he deserves a great amount of credit for that and a fairly large amount of credit for reforming the regulatory state, which over the course of the 60s and 70s really had gotten overburden. Reagan gets blamed a lot by liberals for things that happened under Republican presidents after him. I don't think that's fair.

I think all in all, the Reagan's presidency winds up being pretty successful. And number two for me was George H.W. Bush, which is scary a little bit because seeing that a guy like H.W. can lose reelection, even while he being a fairly successful president and pretty universally acknowledged as a fairly successful president, I think most of the Libs and Dems I talk to now in retrospect thinks that HW did a good job. That's not great in terms of thinking about, well, how well does this democracy machine of ours really work? Is it good at sussing out optimal outcomes? I think that's fair. And the idea of the Republican Party electing anyone or running anyone like HW again seems very far-fetched right now, though, of course, things can change. All right. I want to move on from this because I want to ask you about Tom Cotton, the senator from, I believe, your home state of Arkansas.

Yes. I have, if my research is correct. Natural wonder. This guy, who, again, is somehow a senator, tweeted, I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro homas mobs blocking traffic. Take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way. It's time to put an end to this nonsense. Look, eight years ago, this would have horrified everybody, I think.

And now there is a fairly decently sized segment of America that's like right on. And this kind of terrifies me. Yeah, it's really irresponsible, like absolutely horrifyingly irresponsible. Tom Cotton is one of the very, very few senators who I know personally a tiny bit. He's a smart guy. He is, well, he's your senator. Normally, like, pretty thoughtful. He didn't go along with the people who were trying to overturn the election and he's been

very good on Ukraine and stuff. He's always been a foreign policy hawk, which I kind of like. Art of me just thinks this is him trying to butcher up. because the truth is that he is naturally really on the wrong side of Maga. And he's down there in, you know, Arkansas. And the truth is I am where he is on basically the Hamas protest. I am basically opposed to any form of protest which shuts down like major arteries, like bridges. I think it's a horrible and dangerous.

It inconvenes his people. But B is the absolute worst way to advance your cause in public. Like, if you want to turn people against your cause, go out and shut down a bridge somewhere. We have had over the last six or seven years the beginnings of it being a thing for conservative type counter protesters to go and run over the people they don't like. Heather Hire was killed in Charlottesville with this. It has happened enough times with Black Lives Matter protests and whatnot that you had a bunch of states, including Florida, past laws, trying to shrews. shield people from vehicular manslaughter charges if they ran over protesters. These are, you know, they're framed as anti-riot laws. So this isn't, you know, it's not like Cotton is talking about some imaginary thing that nobody would ever do. It's not like you're saying like, yeah, I wish I could put them on a rocket into the sun, right? I mean, he's, he's talking about a thing that happens and that happens often enough that Republican governors have tried to make laws making it legal. It's ugly and irresponsible. But thankfully, he's been getting a lot of blowback from Republicans. Yeah, they think he didn't go far out.

Yeah. There's never any blowback because you can't be on the side of the libs for anything. This is why it was, you know, I remember having a conversation with some former Republican friends early in the Ukraine saga. You know, and I said, hey, you guys better get ready because the Republicans are going to be four square against Ukraine in five minutes. And they were like, no, you don't understand. They're hawkish.

And I was like, no, no, no, no. The problem is Biden and the Dems are on the side of the Ukrainians, which means that the Republicans of the long run can't be. They just can't be on the side for anything. And you saw this. There was, I think his name is Garrett Graves. He's a congressman from Louisiana. He was one of Kevin McCarthy's top boys. He tweeted or said something on Fox over the weekend that was like, you know, Joe Biden wants aid to Ukraine. Joe Biden wants aid to Israel. Joe Biden wants to aid Taiwan. Why would we vote for any of this? What are Republicans getting out of it? I was like, oh, I guess Republicans don't want to give aid to any of these things because the Democrats do.

Like, what is that? That's insane. Yeah. Yeah, Republicans, Democrats should say they are in favor of where people wearing seatbelts. So Republicans will stop wearing them. Right. So along these lines, you know, it's interesting that you knock Republicans for doing this sort of thing. Yet, on the other hand, you seem to love Chris Sununu. Yeah, I don't like Chris Sununu so much. He's one of, you know, you and I were talking in the green room about this. Like I have some unhealthy obsessions things I really need to talk with my therapist about. And Chris Sununu is one of them. I don't know why.

Like, you know, why should Chris Sununu bother me? He's one of the good Republicans. He's one of the very, very few Republicans who actually endorsed Nikki Haley and tried to beat Donald Trump and good on him for that. I think that was the honorable thing to do. But the extent to which this guy is just always lying and never telling the truth, it bugs the hell out of me. I mean, both as moral matter, but also philosophically because Chris Sununu's view of wanting to get rid of Donald Trump and Trumpism has been he couldn't lie his way around it, that like somehow he could trick and fool Republicans into abandoning Donald Trump. And I've just always thought that was the dumbest fucking thing in the world. You know, so Sununu is one of these guys running around in 2021 and 2022 and saying, yeah, Donald Trump's not going to be the nominee.

It's impossible. Anybody says Donald Trump is going to be the nominee is just crazy. And he did this for, you know, a year and a half, two years. And then one day he, you know, shows up in the pages of the New York Times saying, we got to consolidate the field and rally around a single candidate because otherwise Trump is going to be the nominee. And I'm like, I'm sorry, asshole. Five minutes ago, you were telling those of us who were concerned about the Trump 2024 thing, that we were alarmist idiots.

And the answer is he like, he's just, he's always playing games. Everything to him is like, I'm going to find an angle. And so he shows up on the George Stephanopoulos's ABC show, I don't know, it was this Sunday or the Sunday before. And he's in full, you know, yeah, I got to support, got to support Trump. Got to support Trump. 51% of Americans support him. It's like, no, no, they don't. Yeah.

Trump has not polled over 51% in any polling average ever. And he's run for president three times now. You know, like this is just, it's just false. Sununa's weird rationalizations. I would understand it if he was on the make because he was a rising star. You know, like if he thought like, oh, I got to do this because I got to go get mine. But the truth is, Maga hates him so much. The Tim Scott model.

Yeah, right? Like Sununu's career is over. He can't win a Republican primary in New Hampshire for dog catcher. So the weirdness of sucking up to Maga when A, Maga hates you, but B, your political career is over anyway. Is that like a humiliation fetish or something? Like maybe it's a kink. I don't know. But it doesn't make sense to me.

It doesn't seem like anything that a self-respecting human being would do. In fact, I normally would have thought it would go the opposite way, right? Like, you know, the people who are like laughing and jeering at you, you would say, fuck you and go the other way just to spite them. But not Chris Sununu. It's a weird thing. Yeah, no, it is. And you wrote a really good piece on it with the headline. Chris Sununu is either a mountebank, a coward, or a fool.

and first of all, props for using Manta Bank, which is a word you don't hear that much these days, but one I kind of like. But you made an important point in writing this, and it may have been inadvertent. I don't know, Jonathan. But you quote Sununu as saying that one of the reasons that he'll vote for Trump, I think this was from that interview with Stephanopoulos that you were talking about, is that he wants a pro-business economy and that we need to have, you know, Donald Trump with the Republicans in to have a pro-business economy. And then you say, the economy right now is so pro-business that the stock market is at an all-time high. And the important point that I think that you made here is that, at least for me, Sununu's dumb argument, which, as you point out, is just wrong on its face.

But it's the same dumb argument we're seeing from a lot of rich guys whose attitude appears to be best summed up as fascism, smashism, just give me my tax cuts. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense, right? Like, could the economy be any better? I sound like Chandler from Friends. Yeah, you do. The concern we all have is that like, oh, gosh, are we running too hot? You know, his growth too fast.

I don't know. With Kristen Inu, it's really weird because he just ran for re-election in 2022. And you go back and his entire re-election campaign was based around, we are living in fat times. You know, like everything is amazing. New Hampshire is open for business. Business is booming. You get a car. You get a car.

It's like DeSantis did the same thing in 2020. 22, like, you know, his campaign was things in Florida are the best they've ever been. And then he turned around for president saying, it's American carnage. Nobody can afford to. And see, you had this weird thing where in, in New Hampshire, actually. So you had the guy running for Senate in New Hampshire, Don Boldock, was running ads talking about how things were so bad in New Hampshire, the people, New Hampshireites, God, the saltivir, the granite staters, they were being forced to choose between heating their homes.

and putting food on their table. And he was appearing on the same stage as Chris Sununu, whose campaign pitch was, reelect me because things have never been better. And it's just like, what the fuck are you guys talking about? Yeah. And then this, you know, obviously this doesn't just apply to the economy. And, you know, you wrote another piece on this about how Joe Biden has won the war on crime. It's a very similar situation, it seems to me, in terms of rhetoric, because you get all these people,

by the way, not just Republicans, Democrats as well, you know, running their little fear campaigns about how out of control violent crime is and how we need to elect them to stop it. And then you look at the stats and you're like, well, hang on a minute, fellas. Yeah. It's the craziest thing, isn't it? So I have come in my old age to believe that crime is basically just coded racism. Of course. It doesn't mean anything. Not always, not everywhere. I understand that I just mean in general. Yes. As a fear tactic, that's what it is. We did, in fact, have a spike in violent crime in America, the highest spike in the history of the measurement. It occurred in the year of 2020. When Joe Biden was president. No, wait. Yeah. Right. This is, I mean, this was, this was literally,

we lived through this American carnage moment where violent crime was rampant and it was Donald Trump's America. We just did it. And what we've seen since is steady declines. The last two years where the last year, 2003, was the single largest drop in the murder rate in recorded history. And the preliminary numbers for the first quarter of 2024 suggests an even steeper drop. All crime everywhere in America is down, both rural and metropolitan areas, everything from burglary to larceny to rape to assault to homicide with only one exception. And that is that auto thefts in metropolitan areas are up. And this seems to be due mostly to a security bug in Hyundai. So like if you live in cities and you own a Hyundai and you haven't gotten that patched,

then you're more likely to have your car stolen. And those people vote, Jonathan. I guess. I guess. So I, you know, I just look at this. And on the one hand, I suppose we don't really hear about crime anymore. I don't know if you remember, but leading into the 2022 midterms, it was all we ever heard about was crime. Oh, yeah, for sure.

And now it's just crickets. We don't hear about crime anymore. And so I suppose that that's a tacit admission that the problem has been solved. But nobody takes the step of then saying, well, I guess Joe Biden must have solved it. The truth is, Joe Biden didn't solve it in the same way Donald Trump didn't cause it. That's not how electorates ever look at these things. Right. And the idea that suddenly everybody's going to get incredibly.

sophisticated and start parsing, well, do we really have to give Joe Biden credit for policies which were enacted at the city level? That's not supposedly how these things work. And so I would like to see him get some credit, but no. I don't think you're going to see that. And I also suspect that crime, much like the immigrant caravan, will rear its ugly head again as we get closer to the election. There's always another caravan. There's always enough. There's always money in the caravans. Jonathan, thank you so much, as always for being here. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. I enjoy reading your stuff at the bulwark and encourage everyone to do likewise. Thanks, Andy. Andy Levy.

Danielle Moody. How are you closing out this good, good week, our four-year anniversary week, with your fuck-that-guy. My fuck-that-guy is someone you may have heard of. First name Clarence, last name Thomas. Ah, yes. He is a Supreme Court Justice. There was a case before the court this week that had to do with January 6th and whether or not the prosecutors were too overzealous in charging the participants in January 6th. One of the charges is obstruction of an official proceeding because obviously when they entered the building, entered the Capitol on January 6th, they were trying to disrupt the certification of the Electoral College results. Justice Thomas doesn't seem to think that's all that big of a deal. And he said,

Well, there have been many violent protests that have interfered with proceedings. Has the government applied this provision to other protests in the past? I mean, first of all, this is a guy who should be recused from anything having to do with January 6th, since his wife is one of the bigger proponents of what happened on January 6th. I mean, I know this has become the Republican playbook that started, I guess, not right away after January 6th, because we all remember, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green talking about texting that she was scared, and Kevin McCarthy saying how awful this was, and then, you know, within a month or two, they had completely changed their tune. But downplaying the seriousness or the violence of what happened on that day has, again, become the Republican playbook.

And now here it is for a sitting justice on the Supreme Court to completely downplay what happened that day and to act like the government should not be charging the people who stormed the Capitol with obstructing an official proceeding. When not only did they, that was, if not their main agenda item, you know, and reason for doing it, it was one of them. You always think there's a bottom and then he's gone even lower. And this is a guy, this is one of the most powerful people in America who is doing this. I don't know. I guess I have nothing more to say about this other than just fuck that guy. I fucking hate Clarence Thomas so much. Like there is not a person.

And I'm including Donald Trump. that I despise more because he is so flagrant in his disrespect for this country in his seat. And but of course, oh, there have been other interruptions. Tell me the other time that some group of people stormed the Capitol building and try to overturn an election result. Tell me the other time that that happened. Right. Their fucking ability to downplay what it is that white people do is wild to me. And like I continue to say,

You do not need to be white in order to be a white supremacist. Clarence Thomas, case and fucking point. He shouldn't be anywhere fucking near this case, but he has absolutely no integrity, no values, and no morals. And also, paging Merritt Garland, where the fuck is the investigation into Ginny Thomas, who was one of the funders and hopefully one of the architects of January 6th. But, you know, we just let that slide too. Fuck all of them. Honestly, I've run out of it today.

Yeah, we let a lot of things slide, don't we, in this country? Yep, we do. All right, Danielle, close out this glorious, glorious week with your fuck that guy, who we got. Well, you know what apparently we haven't run out of? Marjorie Taylor Green's fucking stupidity. That seems to be bottomless as well. Marjorie Taylor Green says that America needs to take national security seriously. I mean, first of all, let me just put an ashtrik by that.

because I don't know what the fuck else we spend money on because it pretty much only goes to defense. You can look at our infrastructure, our education system, and our health care and no, we're certainly not investing it. But nonetheless, Marjorie Taylor Green says that how we take it seriously, folks, hold on to your hats because you know the Secretary of Stupidity, she has bars for this. We need to invest in. da-d-da-da-da-da-da space lasers. Unironically, she is saying this again. You know what? We need to invest in education, right?

Because if we did, then she would maybe also have a test to become a run for office. Maybe half of these motherfuckers wouldn't exist in the first place. But she is infamous, you all know, for saying that Jewish space. lasers control America. And now she's saying that, quote, by the funds made available by this act that apparently she wants to offer up, such sums as necessary shall be used for the development of a space laser technology on the southwest border. Yeah, that's Marjorie Taylor Green. That's her insight. The Secretary of Stupidity has spoken. So I'm sure that means the rest of us need to get activated and also, you know, figure out how to build this space later, maybe from the moon,

maybe from Mars. No one knows. She watches too much TV and reads too much Q&ON. I think that her brain is probably spoiled. Like, I think that her brain may be Swiss cheese because the things that this idiot fucking offers. And also, shout out to the people in her district. When you had the opportunity to ensure that you had better representation, you see. said, nope, that's Miguel.

Come collect this woman. I had to stop myself from what I wanted to say, but come collect this fool, please. For that reason, this week, every week, until I no longer have to say her name, Marjorie Taylor Green, is my, fuck that guy, you

fucking idiot. Yeah, I'm trying to figure out if maybe she's trolling by doing this, and then I realize I don't care. Mm-hmm. She's so stupid, and if it's trolling, it's dumb. And by the way, you're a member of Congress. You shouldn't be putting up bills with trolling in them or amendments, whatever the hell

this is. And if you're not trolling, yeah, wow, I think you already said it best. Fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse. Canon and Seamus Calder.

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