The Daily Beast Podcast - Pam and Tommy Would Have Broken the Internet w/ Nick Offerman

Episode Date: November 19, 2021

Nick Offerman talks with Molly about what playing Ron Swanson taught him about libertarianism, and about Pam and Tommy’s sex tape and what things were like before the internet. Plus, The Intercept���s Ken Klipperstein explains how the murder of Jamal Khashoggi helps account for rising gas prices now, and the Washington Post’s Dan Diamond breaks down what we’re just learning now about how the Trump administration tampered with the CDC. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kenon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have an excellent show. Ken Clippinstein, an investigative reporter at The Intercept, will join us to talk about some of the hidden details in our economy, as well as his recent reporting. Then we'll talk to Dan Diamond from the Washington Post, who covers health policy there, and he's going to tell us about the latest COVID policy cover-up. But first, you may know him from his iconic roles

in shows like Parks and Rec, devs, and the unbelievably astounding-looking new show, Pam and Tommy, as well as his roles in movies like Colin and Black and White and hearts beat loud, Nick Offerman. Welcome to New Abnorm on that. Thank you for having me. We want to talk about your book, but we also want to talk about the Tommy Lee and Pam Anderson movie because we just saw the trailer, Chessie and I, and it looks incredible.

Well, I'm very excited about it. You play one of the guys who steals the tape. Yeah, Seth Rogen, who is. kind of the lead of the whole thing with obviously Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee, played by Lily James and Sebastian Stan. Here's the crazy thing about this series is that this scandal took place just as the internet was beginning to happen. Yes. And so the reason, like when I got the script and read it and said, holy shit, how do we not know all of this? because every single thing that's happened since,

we know every time Monica Lewinsky, like, changed her fingernail polish, because all of those scandals were picked apart in such a granular fashion. But this was right before that. And so Seth plays the guy who, you know, stole the tape inadvertently. He didn't know he was stealing the tape. He thought he was just stealing some stuff and was like, oh, what's this tape?

Amazing. And he just so happened, he was a carpenter at Tommy Lee's house, and it just so happened that he also had done some work in the porn biz, and he had a friend who was a porn empressario, and that's who I play. And so, you know, I'm sort of his pal, and I have the equipment necessary to play the tape. And that's when we say, oh, we have a little commodity on our hands. It's just, it's such an incredible story, and I live through it because I'm incredibly old, too, and so did Jesse, because he's also incredibly old. It's such an important and strange moment in all of our lives when that tape got sold and like just celebrity and it's just a lot of interesting things. Will you talk to us about this book? I sure will. I'm overjoyed to get to talk to you about this book. My main sort of knowledge of your podcast is through, Considering you one of the smart people with a sense of humor who I've curated into my social media feed, like you're one of the voices I turn to. And so the fact that I'm getting to talk to you is pretty jazzy. Oh, well, the feeling is more than mutual. Big fans. I'll try and keep it that way. Okay, good. I mean, I'm always interested in how these books come about. This is my fifth book, and my books generally, they've been a little all over the place.

The first one is memoir-ish. The second one is sort of historical, heroic muckrakers that I admire. And then a full-on woodworking textbook. And then my fourth book I wrote with my wife, Megan Malalley, and it's called The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. And it's kind of a humorous memoir of our marriage. I joke with my amazing editor, Jill Schwartzman, at Duffington. button books. It really doesn't matter. I could write a book of like a compendium of basketball shoes. It doesn't matter what the subject is because I'm still going to just bitch about the same human foibles and like people with bad manners in one way or another. And so this idea sort of communicating to myself and my readers, the degraded relationship that we've come to have with nature and understanding our place in nature with a specific focus on knowing about our food,

like where it comes from, what's in it, who raises it, how's it sourced, is it good for us, you know, who's profiting and who's not, like our health, for example, is not, and all that kind of thing. So I had that idea to write a book in that sort of Baileywick, and it just kind of finally came together where my publisher said, hey, you owe us a book. book. This is how all books get written, by the way. And my friend Jeff Tweedy said, hey, let's go hiking with George, our other friend, George Saunders. And I said, oh, you know what, this is time to cook up book number five. So then, you know, I sort of like strategize my life then around the book. So I knew going to meet James Rebanks, the Shepherd in England, for example,

was something I very much wanted to do anyway, but I also knew at the time like, oh, this is going to be great for my book. Yeah, that's the origin story of all books. It's like the publisher said, where is the book? You've talked about this with Parks and Rec. You are not a libertarian, but you are a nature person. Absolutely. I mean, I didn't know a lot about libertarianism when I got cast as Ron Swanson, and so I did a bunch of reading. Nick, are you the one man with a beard who didn't know much about libertarianism? Apparently so, yeah. I mean, what I learned was that the sort of core principles of libertarianism are pretty great. Just the sensibility of you don't get to mess with me or my stuff.

If what you're doing doesn't harm anybody else or anybody else's stuff, then everyone should get to do whatever they want, basically. and, you know, in a sort of human rights sensibility that there's a lot of advancement in that, and that's what I often have to point out to people about Ron Swanson when they want him to be, certain fans want him to ally more with traditional right-wing, leaning libertarians where they want him to be like misogynist or homophobic or xenophobic. And I say, no, man, if you're a real libertarian, everyone's totally downed. Like, you, you shouldn't have a problem with any people. I love it on paper, but obviously, in practice, it's not working out too great. But you do love nature. You're connected to nature, even though you live in L.A. I am, and I mean, one of the great things about L.A. is that you can go hiking. on a mountain literally in the middle of town. We're surrounded by mountains, we're on the ocean,

and we're within a couple hours, you can go skiing on a mountaintop and then be swimming in the ocean by lunchtime. So what is next trio? I'm taking some of my own advice, and for the first time in several years, I have some months of silence, which is pretty exciting, because I happily often have a lot of plates spinning, usually in the form of acting jobs, and then I tour as a humorist. I write books, and then I have my wood shop where I make things out of wood. Oh, that's right. Yeah, so the wood shop has been suffering for dad time in recent years, because things have been going well with acting jobs. I literally have a batch of 12 ukuleleys that are a beautiful little pile of bodies and necks waiting to be attached. So I'm going to do a lot of high

housekeeping over at the wood shop, and I'm going to do a lot of hiking around Southern California, and mainly smoke some meats. That's good. Always good. On the grill for myself and my bride and read some books. Nick, I have a question for you about what of your roles. One of my favorite things you ever did is Alex Garland's devs, where you played the type of character that we're all thinking about a lot these days, these very powerful people doing

very futuristic stuff. I was curious if watching all this Facebook meta stuff, if you had any thoughts about where this is all going after playing that role. A, thank you for saying that. B, I think Alex Garland's work is so beautiful. His movies Ex Machina and Annihilation, among others. Yeah, some of my favorites. I just, I couldn't believe that somehow he fell on me to play this role in his beautiful series,

which came out at the top of the pandemic. It's FX on Hulu. And it somehow was just kind of lost in the shuffle. Like, there's nothing about it that's not like crazy, must watch, binge, beautiful sci-fi material. I'm thrilled when anybody saw it and enjoyed it. And specifically, the fascinating question Alex was asking with my character, who's sort of a tech genius, my character, Forrest basically invents a quantum computer that works. So it gets into the sort of many worlds theory and quantum physics. And he's sort of exploring that question that we're that we're grappling with, which is like, in what way do we not afford these tech leaders, these billionaires in charge of, you name it? What's the difference between them and royalty? Or how are they not being treated like emperors where they're not being held to account? They're controlling specifically the information of the planet. And they're not being held to account legally or in a monopoly sense of.

There's no body formed at the moment who is making sure that morality is a part of their equation. And we're all, you know, paying the price. Our governments, like, it's crazy. The news is insane right now. It's all deep, shitty, asshole behavior. And all of our mechanisms in the media and the government are saying, is this bad? Are these people okay? Like, are they, do they love America? Do we love these murderers? Are these victims victims? You know, it's all part of the same question, which is like, when are we going to re-inject simple human decency? You know, should we, if masks present the spread of a deadly virus, should we wear masks?

It's a good question. Yeah. You put it, you put it really well. It also makes it all the more sad when it boils down to that thing that really is. that really is true is that I think the biggest split in people right now is the empathy and the kindness and just human decency. Would you consider running for office ever? I don't think that I probably would. It's been, you know, it's like humorously suggested here and there by people around me. I don't know that I would do more good. I feel like I've got a pretty good audience at the moment.

And I just don't know, despite how cute I might find myself, I'm not sure that I have what it takes to truly be an admirable leader. Can you talk to us about the Colin Kaepernick movie? I don't know about the rest of the Thespians, but I got into this whole racket. I went to theater school as an idealist teenager. I want to work and do great theater and be part of the mirror held up to society to help us heal our ills. And my body of work over the last few decades has had, you know, ups and downs in regard to that idealism. But a lot of ups. I mean, I've had the good fortune of running into people like Mike Scher where we're actually creating storytelling and entertainment that is full of ethical lessons or, you know, messages of civility or friendship or empathy.

But, I mean, like nothing else in our lifetime when Megan and I watch anything from Ava DuVernay and the credits roll and we're wiping our tears away. And I say, holy cow, like, how can we ever get to work with someone like Ava who's just like delivering medicine to the people with the biggest spoon I've ever seen? And so when she got a hold of me to play Colin Kaepernick's dad, I just was absolutely flabbergasted. I did not know that he was adopted by a white couple in Wisconsin, and then they subsequently moved to Central California, which is where the series takes place, but to get to collaborate with one of our greatest activists, you know, in Colin these days,

I mean, the closest thing we have to a civil rights superhero at the moment. And Ava, I mean, Ava just never ceases to amaze me, I can't believe. Besides what her incredibly prolific her workload, she's producing and directing and writing, she's created this company called Array, which is devoted to staffing crews with people of color, which is something that's been talked about forever. But finally, Ava has been like, okay, here. I'll make the company, here's the catalog. Whoever you need, we have, we will staff your project. But then on top of that, she's like crazily doing tons of her own social media, much of which is her looking like a million bucks at like the premiere of this or the opening of that. And I'm just like, what are you injecting yourself with every night?

I mean, I'm just so grateful to, you know, be a small part of that show. I look up to them obviously powerfully. That's so interesting. Thank you so much, Nick. this was totally fascinating. I hope you'll come back. Thanks for being gentle with me. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien.

Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal. That's new abnormal. t the daily beast.com. Ken Clippenstein is an investigative reporter at The Intercept. Welcome to the new abnormal Ken Clippersstein.

Thank you for having me. Very excited to have you. First, let's talk about the gas crisis, because you wrote a really interesting, piece about the gas crisis. Is there a gas crisis and why is it happening? So there definitely is one and there are a number of different factors. Economics, of course, is complicated. But one major one that's hardly getting any attention is the fact that the Saudi Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia, the leading member of OPEC, the oil producing and exporting countries, have colluded to hold down production, which has the effect of driving up prices. Now, the reason why they're doing that, President Biden

hinted at in a recent talk that he gave at a CNN town hall. He alluded to one of his foreign policy measures kind of referenced his refusal to meet with the Saudi crown prince owing to his human rights atrocities, his role in the gruesome murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Biden said that has angered MBS, and he hinted at that that has caused him not to increase production. Now, you know, maybe that's Biden just saying something to try to, you know, protect his interest in his administration, a couple of an explanation for why the guest prices are here's why I think it's credible because President Trump coming to the midterms of 2018 and then again in 2020 made requests to MBS to change production levels and MBS obliged in both cases. Now Biden has done the same thing. MBS has not obliged. So the question is why. And I think that's a plausible explanation that it's a diplomatic conflict. This is how OPEC does it. They work very hard to keep the price of oil at a certain rate and when and they turn off production to make it go higher and they turn on production to make it go lower. I mean, it's it's a, it's a manipulation that is known and has been since it started. So this is not a hugely controversial idea.

There certainly is an anxiety among oil and gas providers, I think, and I don't think it's enough of an anxiety personally. But this climate conference, well, it didn't get enough, I think, American television coverage. It was actually quite, and it didn't get the kind of concrete goals we wanted. It was really a big deal. Yeah, definitely. And, you know, that's another factor. I mean, that's the problem when you have a cartel like this that can set prices. They can wield that in a political way to try to hurt parties they don't favor, try to move the needle.

I mean, this is a very acute lever that they have to pull. Gas prices, oil prices, are factored into everything that consumers buy because oil is used to ship it overseas, ship it in the form of trucks to build the consumer goods that we buy. So that really is a very powerful tool they have to try to show. shape public opinion. And I think there's a case to be made for that Biden's approval rating. I would imagine it has something to do with the fact that this thing that's factored in the cost of everything is suddenly shooting up in price.

Oil and gas are a problem because of this monopoly, but they're also a problem because they're destroying the planet. So the correct hot take from this should be we need to be more reliant on solar. Solar is like really cheap now. I mean, you can get solar panels made in China quite cheaply, solar and wind and, you know, there's geothermal. I mean, there are a lot of, even nuclear power, which, again, has a lot of problems, there are a lot of power sources that are much less manipulative and much less bad for the environment than oil and gas. Definitely. And that's what Biden said in the CNN town hall that I mentioned before. We kind of alluded to MBS's role in all this. He said ultimately, you know, we have near and midterm solutions,

but the long-term solution has to be getting off oil. There's no way to get around that. And that is not just environmental imperative. That is a national security imperative, too. Because the less dependent we are on foreign sources of energy, the more freedom and the more leverage we have to pursue the policies that we want. Yeah. So I do think we are at this inflection point where media can cover this as an inflationary problem,

which it is. And people are hurting at the tanks, yes. And, honestly, if Democrats ever want to get reelected, they need to think about what, you know, the person going to the gas tank is feeling and thinking. That said, there's an incredible opportunity here to say we don't need to be relying on foreign oil at all. Yeah, it's striking to me how when you look at the gas price, that's the end result of a bunch of different factors. And I'm talking about a major one here, but this one isn't discussed. I quote in the story I wrote on this, a senior Senate aide who compared the Saudis leverage on oil and what they're doing here to effective sanctions that they're putting on the Biden administration.

for our administration, admirably in this case, standing up to MBS and refusing to meet with him, I'd like to see more sort of diplomatic costs imposed on them. But certainly this is much more than the Trump administration, perhaps more than we've seen from any administration in decades, not just with that, but also changing policy with respect to the amount of support that cutting off support for offensive operations in Yemen. So these are costs that are being imposed on Saudi Arabia that represent a departure from past policy. To not talk about that, it's interesting because you talk to the insiders, the people in government, they understand and appreciate these things. It's the sort of mainstream discourse that doesn't touch on it. And I don't know if it's that it's a complex sort of geopolitical issue that is a little bit more difficult to talk about than just glancing at the gas prices or whatever.

But it's something that we're going to need to, is going to need to enter the discourse, I think, if we want to come up with a solution to this. Yeah, I think that's a really good point and important. There is credit to be given to the Biden administration here. Sure. So Pennsylvania said it. We have Conner Lamb and John Federman, who are running. But you've uncovered something interesting about Conor Lamb's funding. Yeah, so Lamb's father is a registered lobbyist and has been for decades now at both the state. And I don't know if it's still the federal level, but both of those at one point for PNC Bank, a big bank based in Pittsburgh. In fairness, it is based in Pittsburgh. So I probably have a lot of employees there.

And what I found was that the senior executives, including the CEO, vice president down, gave maximum contributions to this company that Lamb's father is a registered lobbyist for. to Lamb for a number of years. And the question then, I'm trying to sketch out when you look at these respective candidates. What are their constituencies? Because every candidate has different constituencies, often including business constituencies. And so what I found looking back was that his first vote cast actually went against the Democrats and with the majority of Republicans to gut from the Dodd-Frank bill that imposed new regulations on banks to prevent something like the 2008 crash from happening again. He actually voted with the majority of Republicans to remove from that a section of it that would have prevented certain types of risky speculative trades. And what was unusual about that was that particular bill. Pelosi issued a statement saying that, you know, this is a dangerous move by Republicans. We shouldn't vote for it.

And Lamb was one of several dozen other Democrats did vote with him on that, but the majority of Democrats did not. And so I thought that was interesting and a sort of way to look at, you know, where does he come from? what sorts of interest groups does he represent? And in fairness, Fetterman, his father, too, gave him substantial sums of money. Both rich. That's right. He owns a small insurance company. I couldn't find the degree of sort of institutional support from him, from insurance that I was able to find for lamb in the form of, not just this bank, but commercial banks more generally, but it was an interesting sort of, I feel like, dynamic to look at that's going on in this race. Do we know who the Republicans are with the primary? No, they haven't nominated someone yet. Oh, God, but it's all going to be

and saying, where is the Biden administration on student debt and where do you think this is going to end up? Yeah, so there's a big debate about whether or not the president has the authority to cancel student debt. I, you know, talk to Louris about this. I talk to legal experts about it. The impression I get is that there is a debate there, but I think generally the president does have some kind of authority, at least to cancel federally funded student debt. And so that has become a sort of fault line because the debate is, well, you know, if you're forgiving student debt, students tend to represent sort of more of the upper middle class. Is this, what is this? But I think that there are ways that you can mitigate against the advantages going to the richest by, you know, applying these things like community college, things like trade schools, things like that. So I don't

think it necessarily has to be that binary of, you know, are you going to be benefiting rich people or not. I think it's sort of, I think there's a lot of sort of bad faith efforts to try to turn it into that debate because there are people that don't want debt cancellation. I always wonder why community college isn't free. It's crazy, right? It's completely crazy. And it's like community college really is one of those things that has just been incredibly good for equalizing all of us and providing a way to get into it. You know, if you want to get into a four-year college. I mean, it's just a very useful thing. And it's strange to me. Yeah, what is the worst case scenario? People are, people become educated and wanting to and understand vaccine theory for instance.

Well, I don't think Republicans want that. Do you think that things are getting increasingly hot, the rhetoric? I thought you meant like climate change. Like, yes, things are getting very hot. But rhetoric is well, I guess in general, yeah. You follow the right. And so I feel like you see a lot of stuff. And I'm curious if you feel like, are you worrying things are getting hotter.

Definitely. I mean, I was talking to someone in the Colorado political scene who was talking, who is describing how many local, not just activists, but parts of the state legislature, still think the election was stolen and are trying to reorient the electoral apparatus such that next time when the votes are counted, they're going to be able to exert more power

and more influence on the people counting of the votes. This is all very, you know, it's easy to laugh at because clearly Biden is in the White House and everything. But the question is, if they're able to stand up this apparatus to try to manipulate the outcome more, what is that going to look like in subsequent elections? So I think that's very worrying. Yeah.

And we've seen, I feel like we've seen increasing rhetoric from the sort of Q&on caucus in the Congress about a national divorce, which I think should scare all of us a lot. Definitely. Just looking at the limited tools that the Biden administration has to sort of make an example of the people that engaged in criminal activity on January 6th, it just does not bode well. for, you know, being able to disincentivize that kind of behavior going forward. I mean, if Trump is going to, you know, run again and doesn't face any major consequence for this, what message does that send to every other candidate? At that point, what incentive is there to ever concede an election if there are no consequences when you don't? Yeah.

Oh, that's really depressing. Okay, well, now I'm depressed. So we know that this was a good interview. Thank you so much, Ken Clippersstein. I hope you'll come back soon. My pleasure. Good talking to you guys. Dan Diamond is a health policy reporter at the Washington Post.

Welcome back to the new abnormal Dan Diamond. Thank you for having me back. We're very excited to have you back because, A, I'm a big, big fan of your work, and I'm always following what you're doing, but you had a humongous scoop, and I feel like it didn't get enough traction, and it's getting me completely crazy, I have to say. And I want to talk about it, but I want you to explain to us, really the entire scoop, okay, about these COVID, what exactly what's happening with this? There was an investigation that I started back at Politico where I worked last year about interference

into the health care agencies in the earliest days of the pandemic. And this was political interference around what the CDC officials could say. There were attempts to change what the CDC was reporting in its famous morbidity and mortality weekly reports. And that investigation helped spark Congress, which was already probing the pandemic handling by the Trump administration, to really zero in on a couple officials and their roles in last year's efforts. That congressional panel has continued to unearth more emails, more documents, showing how Trump appointees were putting their hands on the scientific levers last year. And that brings us up to today, Molly, where the new evidence that was released last week, and I may have been the first one to report about it, but credit we're due, the congressional committee was the one that's been digging in. They found more evidence of how officials at the highest levels of the CDC felt muzzled, how they felt punished for trying to speak the truth about the spread of coronavirus, because that conflicted with what President Trump was trying to say in playing down the virus. So let's talk about Nancy Messier because she was the one in February who, was she on a television show when she said that or she being interviewed, I think? Good memory. She was doing a public briefing on February 25th, 2020, which CDC sometimes does.

That was highly anticipated because of how coronavirus was spreading. So I don't think she was on TV. If memory serves, she was doing a teleconference. I mean, I remember this so clearly because I thought, oh, my God, this is real. And she said, you have to realize that now it's possible that your entire life will change. Yes. It was something that folks like you realized. It was something that the Wall Street markets realized because Wall Street fell. And it was something that Donald Trump heard too and got mad about because he said that Americans weren't ready to hear this message, even though it turned out to be true. So talk about the blowback because in your piece you talk about what happened next to her. Well, what happened next to her was Nancy Messonier basically disappeared. The day of that event, and I remember it's so well, Molly. This tele-briefing happened in the morning. Later that day, the Trump administration got together another briefing. And we were asking at the time, why are there two briefings in a day? And HHS insisted, oh, no, this was always planned. But now it comes out, yes, they were just scrambling to try and paper over Nancy Messonier's warning was something that was a little bit more palatable. But in the days and weeks that followed that CDC warning from Messonnier, the agency was increasingly shoved to the side. The Trump administration, Donald Trump, White House political officials thought the CDC was being

too pessimistic and that it was going to really step on Donald Trump's re-election message, which was that the economy was booming. And that was why he needed to stay in power. Yeah, I mean, it was pretty amazing thing to witness. So was Jared Kushner implicated in any of this? Just curious. I don't have a horse in this race, obviously. I know you're fixated on the Jared Kushner piece. The latest, the latest document released didn't really have much to do with Kushner other than it was more about how Scott Atlas, who was handpicked by Kushner and others, how Scott Atlas was pushing for less testing last year. So kind of an indirect Kushner connection. Scott Atlas, remember Scott Atlas? Now what happens next? Well, that's the question I have too. So there's a

piece of me that just thinks we should keep uncovering as many bits of information about what happened last year as we can. One, it's important to understand how we got here. Two, it's important to understand as we head into another election cycle. Who handled the coronavirus better, I think, is going to be a big political question. And President Biden has had mistakes. Not everything the CDC has done this year has been right. But to my understanding, no one at the White House this year is trying to to change CDC reports the way that they were during the Trump administration. So I think there are important lines to be drawn. Can you go back to changing CDC reports again?

Can you explain that to us? There was an appointee named Michael Caputo, who had been a close ally of Donald Trump. Donald Trump put him in as the top spokesperson in charge of the health department message during the pandemic fairly early on. Michael Caputo brought along a friend of his, a guy named Paul Alexander, who he then unleashed as an attack dog, essentially, on people like Tony Fauci, on CDC officials. And Paul Alexander made it a mission to try and rest control of these CDC reports, the morbidity and mortality weekly reports, and take them under his wing. Molly, you and your listeners may not be

overly familiar with these reports. Now, can you tell us what they are? These are weekly updates from the CDC that might say, we've learned how coronavirus is spreading. among young Americans, or we've realized that these masking interventions are protective. They're essentially guidance that comes out every week telling health officials what to do with the latest evidence that the CDC has compiled. And these reports are famous too because they changed Tony Fauci's career. 40 years ago, the CDC put out these reports, these morbidity and mortality weekly reports about the first evidence of HIV AIDS. And young Tony Fauci read those reports and said, okay, this is what I'm going to do. So these are vaunted reports in my line of work and the fact that the Trump

administration was trying to change them to make them align with a political message that was seen as just a line. I mean, the red line was a long time before getting there. Will there be accountability for any of these people? Define accountability. I mean, will there be hearings? Will there be, I mean, hundreds of thousands of Americans died, right? Maybe fewer could have died had there been more honesty about what? was going on and less obfuscation? I mean, is there any kind of legal accountability for any of this? I don't know about legal accountability. I do know about accountability in Congress. Congress is moving to subpoena, some of the Trump officials who have not been cooperative. I expect this to continue to be a going concern in the months ahead. I'll keep writing about it. I mean, I want to just say, Molly, I always try and be fair and hear every side of the argument, whether it was the Trump administration, the Biden administration. And there are Trump officials who would argue that what they were doing

was trying to save lives because they thought the CDC was incompetent or they thought the CDC was too slow. I'm not sure the evidence bears all of that out, but the CDC did mess up times last year too. There is a big difference, though, between saying that government officials messed up and saying, as Michael Caputo accused the CDC of, being seditious and wanting Americans to die, which I think there's no evidence of that. Just what other stuff have you found, that has really surprised you. Surprise is probably not the right word just because I've been in this so long. But confirmed a theory you had.

I have a big question about cover-up efforts. So I reported September 2020 that Paul Alexander was trying to take control of the CDC's reports. I later published an email that Paul Alexander had sent people. Now two officials have told Congress that Robert Redfield, the CDC director, apparently instructed staff to delete that email. Congress is saying that that would be a cover-up. I don't know if that's exactly true. I want to hear from Dr. Redfield directly, and so far he has not responded to Congress on this. But the idea that these officials who last year could have been speaking with a megaphone about these problems and instead muzzle themselves as times,

that too, I don't think it's surprising, but it is disappointing. I mean, I wish that people like Nancy Messonier, where Deborah Birx, who are now speaking to Congress on these issues, had said as much to a reporter like me last year would have been helpful as we were trying to shine a light on problems in the government. Right. Interesting. That's really important and valuable. Do you think Congress will hold hearings, though? I think it's probable to certain. As long as Democrats control, one, if not both chambers of Congress, we're heading into an election year. More evidence is still coming out. They want to get people in front of them, like, like Robert Redfield, like some other Trump advisors, Peter Navarro, is someone who's been in there crosshairs for a while and he hasn't been cooperating with the committee.

So I do think there's a chance we will see hearings. And I'd say it's nearly certain. It would surprise me if we didn't. I mean, are you seeing like in the administration now things being put in place to sort of fix what went wrong with the last pandemic? I mean, obviously what wrong with Trump world was a lot of things, but certainly things like the testing. There were also mistakes made, like the rapid testing. Yeah. It's a great question. I mean, I think the Biden administration at times is corrected for the Trump era problems and at times overcorrected.

They've sometimes been too differential to CDC on things like masking guidance. The CDC abruptly rolled back masking recommendations this spring in Trump world. That never would have happened. It would have taken forever. It would have been stopped at the White House. This White House just kind of let it happen. And maybe they shouldn't have. Maybe there should have been more consultation because C.E.

had to reverse itself. But I think this administration is trying to do a few things clearly differently. One, there is generally more transparency. There could always be more, but the CDC director speaks regularly with the public. We have Tony Fauci speaking constantly with the public. He was muzzled for parts of last year or two. They may not always be right, but at least they're able to get their messages out, and that's a big difference. And then you mentioned the testing piece. The White House, I think it has been borne out in our reporting and others could have done more on rapid testing. It's been hard to get rapid tests in the United States. But there's a difference in how this administration has spoken to some of those issues versus Donald Trump misleading on the state of readiness.

I think this administration has admitted more of its problems when they've been confronted, though. As a reporter, I still think they could be more transparent and acknowledge more setbacks when they have them. I mean, we've had a bunch of different pandemics, right? SARS didn't get to us, but SARS and MERS and Ebola. I mean, do you think, like, we're clearly in more of a pandemic age than we were, you know, in previous decades. Are we starting to change the way we look at pandemics? Yes, but we might not be changing enough. I think anyone who's lived through this is never going to ignore the next warning of some mystery virus that's emerging in, like, South America.

But there isn't all the funding that some folks want in the congressional packages. for pandemic readiness. There still is real concern about data. I don't know about you, Molly. I know plenty of people anecdotally, some of my friends who have had breakthrough cases of COVID. There's still no national roll up number. The numbers that we have are months old. So we are still dropping the ball in some very important ways. Thank you so much, Dan Diamond. This was fantastic. I really appreciate having you. Please come back. Molly, thanks for following my work so closely. I appreciate you asking good questions about it, too. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz?

The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Tsubisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the Dailybeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite. podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse Cannon. Molly Jung Fast. Another day. It's been a week. Thankfully, next week, you know, I'm sure things will calm down. Everybody's

going to observe Thanksgiving, right? Is next week Thanksgiving? It is. And you know, the politicians love to try to give journalists space and not do lots of things that make us have to talk about them. They're really into that. Yeah, I'm sure things will just... Yeah, I mean, why would things go completely crazy this Thanksgiving? It's a mystery. It always reminds me of when Sarah Palin quit on Fourth of July weekend, and she said it was to piss off the journalists.

Ah, Sarah Palin. Yeah, you know. Part of our dissented to hell, a very big chapter. Yeah, that's right, a big chapter. So anyway, we're on to the fuckery. That we are. Today we are focused on a member of Congress, not the only dentist in Congress, but the only dentist in Congress who's been disavowed by other dentists.

Censured. Well, he's been censured, but he's also been other dentists wrote a letter saying they didn't want to. Have their good name disparage, because we all know how much people love the dentist. That's right. Well, and also dentists just don't like Paul Gosar. So Paul Gosar, he tweeted out an anime video of him killing his co-worker and threatening the life of the president. Wouldn't you think like if that were a normal person that making death threats on the president?

Isn't that like not something that's legal? The clear point, the only thing I was disappointed in all the speeches yesterday was that they didn't make clear that there is no workforce, not even the most like barstool sports wouldn't tolerate this type of threat. I think barstool sports might. But everywhere else wouldn't. Yeah, like the worst work environments do not tolerate this. Yes, pretty crazy. But the Congress does. And so numerous Republicans voted to allow Representative Gossar to go on unpunished.

All but two. All but two. And you're going to guess the two. I'm sure you can guess them. Representative Kinsiger and Liz Cheney. They voted against their. party to do the right thing, which is becoming increasingly what they have to do. And so Gossar then immediately after being censured, went back to his office and re-treated, did the death threat anime again,

as one does. So, and so I, which I say, Paul Gossar, fuck you. Yeah, very well deserved and truly, like, it shows how demented this man really is. He also, like, really looks unwell, too. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to speculate about somebody who's house. the way that Republicans did on Hillary Clinton for years and years and years, but doesn't look great. It's looking like it's wilting away his soul. Yeah. So who is your fuck that guy?

My fuck that guy is a man we are all too familiar with. One, Matthew Gates, who went on Newsmax last night and said he'd like to hire Kyle Rittenhouse as a congressional intern. Now, one would think, like, you know, like just about every other member of Congress, if they said this, you're like, you're a fucking asshole. when Mr. Gates has this weird history of hanging out with people just on the brink of being of age and a lot of accusations, you're wondering why he's always just paling around with teenagers. And I don't think it's just because his mental state is eternally in that. Yesterday, there was also a business insider report that, and I'm sorry, dear listeners, for saying this to you if you hadn't heard, that he had a Harry Potter themed sex game that he was doing.

Wait, what? I just want to point out, like, most members of Congress, most people, if they were under FBI investigation, would be a little bit careful about not saying things like insane stuff about people who are on trial for murder, but not Mac Gates. Yeah, literally, what came out in these allegation business insider yesterday was that you got extra points for sleeping in sorority houses. So these little jokes about paled out around with teenagers, I know you're just trying to own the libs, but for Christ's sake, man, get a fucking clue. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast

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