The Daily Beast Podcast - Parkland Dad Fred Guttenberg on the Day His Life ‘Shattered’

Episode Date: June 5, 2022

Parkland dad Fred Guttenberg details the day his daughter Jaime was killed at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School as well as what he thinks needs to change to get solid gun reform policy. Plus, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy unpack GOP clips, including one of Lauren Boebert calling Trump a ‘family man’ because he shared popcorn with her son. Plus! Andy shares a very interesting metaphor in which he compares Hunter Biden’s name to cat nip. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello, and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an excellent guest with Fred Gutenberg, who of course was a father of two children who were victims in the Parkland school shooting. He's going to talk to us about fighting to save lives with gun safety in America.

But first, let's have some fun. All right. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Sure. One of our dumbest Congress members, one Warren Bobert, she wants to tell you some lessons she's learned about raising children. I want to tell you a story about his generosity,

about how kind he is, about how welcoming he is. The things that these folks right here in the back never let anyone see. Making germs, President Trump shared a bowl of. of popcorn with my 14-year-old son. Listen, Wyoming, I know where he's been. I don't share food with my son. But President Trump welcomed him and engaged with him and showed him love and respect,

just like I've seen him do with hundreds and thousands of other people all throughout America because he's not a politician. He's a family man, he's a businessman, and he loves you. I mean, I wonder what when he's she was writing that speech or whoever is tasked with writing those. I don't even want to call it a speech. When the people who write those, whatever that was, think, like, he's a great father.

He's a family man. He has many of them. Right. Let's ask his kids from his first marriage. No, let's ask his daughter from a second. No, no. Let's get the son. When you're a family man, you want to have as many families as possible.

That's how you show you are a family man. He's a business base, setting up franchises. Exactly. Fight Club reference from Jesse. Yes, yes, yes, thank you. I'm also not convinced that sharing food. I mean, I don't know. Okay.

I mean, clearly what I think is a little bit interesting about that clip is he clearly is crazy about germs. Because the fact that she is admitting it, like, There's clearly a real issue there. Yeah. Well, and let's not shy away from the fact that she said she does not share food with her children, which is just weird. Like, are you kidding me? You would not share your popcorn with your 14-year-old son.

I don't even know how that's a choice. I mean, as someone who has two 14-year-olds, I'm not sure that you can even get a choice. If you have popcorn. You don't, like, I mean, maybe they're much more sophisticated over in the Bopert household. But, you know, if I go to the movies with my kids, like, I'm not going to be like you can't have any of my popcorn. Have President Trump's instead. Do you go to a lot of movies with President Trump? Yeah, all the time.

What struck me here, though, speaking of stealing someone's food, is she really drank Sarah Palin's milkshake. Like, we were talking about how, you know, Thomas Massey. really took over Ryan Paul's place with the bad hair and bad libertarian takes. She really, she took the Palin thing and just drank her milkshake. Yeah, she's Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, right down to the glasses.

I mean, the problem is now what we're going to see is that Sarah Palin is not Sarah Palin enough to be Sarah Palin in 2022. Yeah, that's probably true. I do have a question that do you think, President. and Trump would share his popcorn with woke teenage son? I think they would have bigger problems than popcorn sharing. Yeah. You don't think they could set aside their differences long enough to share a bowl of popcorn.

I don't see them as a similar crowd that would mix. Okay. Okay. Speaking of bad crowds, Jesse Waters had on Bill Barr to talk about the failed John Durham investigation. You want to hear what they said? I'm sorry, I thought you said Jesse Waters had on Bill Maher. Exactly. The only way to make this worse is if it was Bill Maher instead of Barr. Attorney General, do you feel any way responsible for how this Durham situation's unfolding?

And are you disappointed in John Durham? No, I'm very proud of John Durham. And I do take responsibility for his appointment. And I think he and his team did an exceptionally able job, both digging out very important facts. and presenting a compelling case to the jury. And the fact that he, well, while he did not succeed in getting a conviction from the D.C. jury, I think he accomplished something far more important,

which is he brought out the truth in two important areas. First, I think he crystallized the central role, played by the Hillary campaign, in launching as a dirty trick, the whole Russia gate collusion narrative and fanning the flames of it. And second, I think he exposed really dreadful behavior by the supervisors in the FBI, the senior ranks of the FBI, who knowingly use this information to start an investigation of Trump and then duped their own agents by lying to them and refusing to tell them what the real source of that information was.

I love this quote, you know he did a great job because nobody got charged. And that's how you know somebody's done a great case is when everybody walks away. Yeah. And, you know, on top of that, basically, I don't think a word of what he said was true. Never is. He did not crystallize the central role that Hillary Clinton's campaign played. and he did not expose really dreadful behavior by the FBI. But I did notice he got in, this is the talking point now, that Fox News was on, like within minutes of the jury's decision, is calling it a D.C. jury.

Yes. And I noticed that Barr managed to get that little phrase in and basically trying to say that the jury's decision was ridiculous. But what do you expect from a D.C. jury? That's right. Again, this was the Fox News talking point within minutes of this verdict was that, you know, this was a D.C. jury going off the rails. Kudos to Bill Barr for managing to slip that in there. Yeah, I'm going to go out of a limb here and say Bill Barr is not a great person.

Also, he sucks. He does look like Huckleberry Hound, which makes me like him. It's been a while since he's been out of the show. It's nice to have the Huckleberry back. Yeah. His big sad eyes looking at me. As I've always said, he is one of many of the Trump administration people who is a John Goodman character. Yes.

It's because Trump loves big goombie energy. Where is the movie about these people? Where the fuck is the movie about these people? Oliver Stone's working, Molly. Just relax. I just, I want John Goodman doing Peter Sellers from Dr. strange love and playing multiple roles. Yes.

It's a Coen Brothers movie, if it's anything. A Coen Brothers movie starring John Goodman would be amazing. Starring John Goodman. Yes. All the Oscars. Okay, we have one more piece of dumb. Representative Tom McClintock has some thoughts on. Who's the real problem with these guns out there?

Secondly, gun criminals often escape prosecution at the hands of woke district attorneys. We give you just one example. Hunter Biden. Illegally acquired a hand. despite being an admitted drug addict, a handgun that ended up being taken out of a public trash can 500 feet from a school. He also lied on his firearms application. Nobody's prosecuting him despite there being no disputes to the facts. Why not?

Because being a known drug addict does not make you not eligible for a gun, does it? I mean, being a known drug addict, whatever the hell that means. How many people did Hunter Biden kill? Well, the thing about Hunter Biden is fine. Like, okay, you don't like him. You know, don't vote for him. Oh, wait. You can't vote for him because he doesn't run for anything.

But somehow just, as always, the wokes are to blame for gun violence. Yes. But, again, Hunter Biden, you know, there's a lot of this reflexiveness in conservative circles. Well, what about Hunter Biden? What about Hunter Biden? What about, I mean, like, I have no love for Hunter Biden, just like I have no love for Don Jr. Like, they're the same. I mean, except that Hunter Biden doesn't do these absolutely unhinged videos every night.

I'm happy to not defend either one. Yeah, I mean, as far as drug-addicted sons of presidents go, take your pick, I guess. I don't know. But I think this is the, you know, Hunter Biden has, he's the new Hillary. Yes. So anytime they can drop his name in, that's where they're going to go. And I guess it must play incredibly well with, again, with the base, with the Fox News crowd, etc. It's like when I go to my kitchen and I grab the little tube of creamy cat treats.

Wait, creamy cat treats? Of course. She knows instantly what I'm doing. And she comes running into the kitchen and starts meowing. And I think that's the Fox News, you know, Republican news. base reaction to hearing Hunter Biden's name. Right. It's their version of a pet tree.

Well, guys, I have really bad news. He's got more thoughts. I think thoughts needs to be in quotes. After every tragedy, politicians will have passed more gun control laws as we're doing today. We've been doing this now for 50 years. If these laws actually worked, wouldn't things be getting better by now rather than worse? The proportion of households with firearms has dropped significantly in the last 40 years. Shouldn't things be getting better and not worse?

It's like being in hell. It really is. I mean, they're clearly like sitting around going, oh, what about this? Let's try this. Let's try this. Doors. No, no. It's gotten worse.

Let's do that. Sometimes they're ignoring facts intentionally that sometimes they're just totally fucking clueless. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can look at the stats from when we had when the assault weapons ban was in place. and you can see how mass shootings went up after that was no longer in place, and you could maybe take something from that.

But it's just easier to say, you know, oh, we have so much more gun control now than we did. It's just people like that are just, he is a pointless human being. There is no point to him. They just want to win and they don't care if it's true or not. I mean, the thing that I just never understand is like, so what happens when you win? happens when you get it so there are just guns everywhere and there's shootings all the time.

Like what, what? I mean, like, that's the thing with Trump. Like, you know, when I thought, well, these people will get Trump in office and then they'll see what a mistake it was. But I was completely wrong. What happened was Trump came into office and they were like, this is great and none of this is their, is his fault. But to that point, though, they didn't repeal Obamacare, which they were running on for all those years. When the dog catches the car or the fire truck, Nothing happens. Right. Sometimes the dog gets hit by the fire truck.

Sometimes the dog eats the fire truck because the fire truck is made of kids. Fred Gutenberg is the father of two victims of the Parkland school shooting, as well as the author of Find the Helpers, what 9-11 and Parkland taught me about recovery, purpose, and hope. Welcome to the new abnormal, Fred. Thank you for having me because even though we've never really spoken one-on-one, I'm like a huge fan of yours. Oh, I'm literally always shocked when people say that

And then I want to explain to them why they shouldn't be But I will just say thank you You're welcome I am a huge fan of yours Thank you I read an interview with you And I was saying Jesse I was like We have to have him on

And you have written a lot About your lived experience In a way that I really I tried to myself Though I have a different Obviously a different lived experience And so I was hoping you could just give us a little bit of background. Yeah. I'm just this guy that's a dad of two

kids that had the perfectly stable, normal life that people would dream about until February 14th, 2018. Actually, let me take a little step back. Before February 14th, 2018, four months before that, my brother died of cancer related to his service in 9-11. My brother ran the triage at the World Trade Center. I am one of five kids. My parents are still alive. My family just never, ever experienced loss up until that. So our first experience with loss was related to an American tragedy.

Yeah. It was an act of foreign terrorism. My brother died years later, but that's what caused it. I never in a million years could have thought my family would be part of another American tragedy, but we were. February 14, 2018, I sent my two children to school. It is all that I did. I sent my kids to school to be safe and to learn. And my children that day were both involved in that shooting.

My daughter, Jamie, died, and my son, Jesse, was on the phone with me. telling me every detail of what was happening and telling me how they all wanted all the kids to keep running off the campus, but all he was doing was crying to me that he couldn't find Jamie. He couldn't find his sister. And he looked after her like a hawk. And as he was on the phone with me, he and I listened together as we heard the gunshots on the third floor

that were killing my daughter, killing his sister. And my perfectly normal average everyday American life became broken. And it became shattered. And I became one of those families in America to be affected by gun violence. And I have not been able to shut up since because it's not okay. It's not normal. every act of gun violence that happens right now is preventable. It's also predictable.

And the next one that will happen sometime within the hour that we're on this interview is also predictable because we haven't done anything to change that dynamic. And so you and I have got to know each other at least via social media because I spend my life fighting against what is now normal. So powerful, you know, I texted Jesse, I'm like to have chills. One of the things I read in that interview was that you have two children. Can you talk a little bit about that? I have two children.

Listen, after Jamie was killed, one of the things I struggled with so deeply was how to refer to my daughter. And I found myself for a while referring to her in the past tense. And every time I did, it just was, it was such a hard thing for me to do. it really would just break me to pieces. People would ask me about my kids. And I would talk about my son, Jesse, and I would then say, and I had a daughter, but she was killed. And that whole word had, I couldn't do it.

Until one day I decided I'm not going to anymore. And I stopped talking about my daughter in the past tense. I'm a father of two kids, Jesse and Jamie. Jesse, I get to experience every minute of every day as he grows older and lives out his life. And Jamie, I visit at the cemetery. But I'm a dad who will forever be reacting to what happens to his kids. And gun violence happened to my kids. And I'm going to always react to it.

I strangely, I did actually a TED talk on this about two years ago, how rather than looking at Jamie's in the past, past tense, I view it is our relationship having changed. I don't have a future of memories with her, but I have memories that existed that are always going to be with me. I don't have a future of new experiences with her, but I have a future of experiences that are going to happen because of what happened to her. But whatever I do, I'll never be able to look at her in the past tense. And that's just so powerful and I just am so profoundly moved by that too. I feel like you've been a very effective activist and advocate. How have you done it?

I've never really thought about the how. I've just gone out there and I've been me. I think part of for me what's worked is that I truly don't have a desire to be political. So I don't sit there and think through the things I say or how. I say them, I just do it. I don't think through, will this work or will this look good or will this not look good if it just feels to me like I need to do what I do. And I try to be authentic. I try to answer every single question that people ask me. I try to not really hold my emotions in check because I want people to see what this did to me. Because I don't want it to happen to them. And so, listen,

I get asked all the time or told all the time that I should run for politics. But your question is the exact reason why I don't want to. I don't want to have to become a person who can't say what he thinks or feels in the moment. I'm hoping people are paying attention and listening. Not because I want any accolades. It's because I want them to fight for the people they love so that they don't. end up feeling this way. For me, the ultimate outcome is I actually get to walk away from all of this because something got done. What are you seeing that is hopeful? I actually could not be more

hopeful in this way. I do go across this country and meet the American people everywhere. And I don't just mean the big democratic cities. I mean everywhere. And everywhere I go, I meet American people who say, for example, if I go to Texas, I know you're in Texas, so you probably think we don't agree with you, but we do. No matter where I go, people agree with what I'm trying to do. They support it. And as long as I keep getting that sense, I will have hope that we can fix this. And here's why. After my daughter was killed, if you would have told me back then, four years ago, that we would have a House of Representatives that flipped on this issue, a president that was elected who will sign legislation on this issue,

and a Senate that has been moved to 50-50 and under the control of Democrats who want this issue solved, I would have told you four years ago there's no chance we'll ever have all of that success. But we did. The problem is the world changed at the same time. And so here's why I am hopeful, but I am also genuinely concerned. We are only two votes away from being able to get something done.

Two more votes in the Senate and we can break the filibuster. That's all we need. And so if people show up and vote in this next election as if it is the most important election of their lifetime, which in fact it is, I think we're going to be okay. If people don't show up and vote because of efforts to restrict their ability to do so or because they become so disenfranchised and burnt out, then we won't be okay. We're two votes away from being able to do something. And that's not just true of this. It's true of all sorts of issues that matter to the majority of people, whether it's voting rights, a woman's choice, climate.

it, we're two votes away. That's all we are. But we're also only seven votes away from going in the other direction. And that's the problem. So if people show up and vote, I have sincere hope that they will. We will be okay, but they need to get out and vote. Like, have you seen Florida has passed some gun laws. It did. Because of Marjorie Stone Douglas High. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah. Listen, three weeks after the shooting, we passed. gun safety legislation in Florida. So anybody who says it can't happen in a red state and Republicans can't do it and gun safety is in our front to the Second Amendment, I will redirect them to Florida where we did it bipartisan with not only Democrats but Republican leadership as well.

We passed red flag laws. We raised the age to 21 for all purchases. We instituted a waiting period. We did really good, important stuff here that is saving lives. And here's the thing. It would never have happened without the leadership of then Governor Rick Scott, who got completely moved by what happened and was a part of getting that legislation passed. That's the good news. The not so good news is Senator Rick Scott wants to forget that Governor Rick Scott ever existed. Yeah, it's so weird. Because he has political. political ambitions that have kind of moved him into a place with this party that doesn't want to acknowledge previous reality. And, you know, so he goes out of his way to avoid talking about

what he did in Florida, which is why I know this current Senate effort to do something is doomed for failure and why it's going to be a political solution. But the fact is it got done in Florida. It's working in Florida. And there's not a single legal lawful gun owner, Second Amendment activist or anyone else who pays any attention to what we did in Florida or thinks about it because it has no effect on them. But it is stopping people who shouldn't have guns due to a threat to themselves or someone else from having the ability to get them.

It's so interesting because I was listening to the daily. You're not supposed to plug other people's podcasts on your podcast. But I was listening this morning to The Daily, and they were talking about California and how California has really positive gun laws, even though they do have shootings. They've raised the ages. They've done a lot of things to cut back on,

and they're much lower, you know, death by gun rate per capita than other places. I am curious, why do you think that blue states don't do for guns, what red states have done for abortion. Oh, well, listen, I still think that may be the next phase of this because of the failure on a federal level. I think Gavin Newsom has been clear. That's the direction he wants to go with California. I suspect other blue state governors are looking at that and waiting to see what the Supreme Court does, possibly next week on their Second Amendment arguments.

Because if that's what it comes to, if that's the America we're going to, then I think that's inevitable. Yeah, it seems like it. What is sort of what you would like are listeners to, if it sort of do? What do you think that they can do on this issue that would be useful? Listen, I think of all of the listeners need to not think about 22 as a midterm election. they need to think about 22 is the most important election of the lifetime. While we all thought that in the last election because of the need to get rid of the last guy, this is the election where you actually need to get rid of the legacy he left us with.

And that's an even taller order. And so I'm going to ask anyone who hears this podcast, stop thinking about 24. Because honestly, it doesn't even matter depending on how things go in 22. just get through 22. And that means this. It doesn't just mean, okay, we're six, seven months away, so I have time to figure out what I'm going to do to see if anyone upsets me or to decide if I'm going to vote. What it means to me is you decide right now after you listen to this that you are definitely going to vote and you are going to put in place right now your voting plan. That means making sure you're registered, now. That means making sure you have any identification requirements now. That means everything is in place now so that when you get closer to that election, there won't be any problems or issues for you. But if you wait to the last minute, you may end up as one of those people in certain states that will have a hard time voting. Don't let that happen. Get that plan in place now. Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me. 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 and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studied the Derby.

Daily Beast podcast at the DailyBeest.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.