The Daily Beast Podcast - People May Finally Be Getting Tired of Trump’s Shenanigans

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

An exploration of why people have started leaving the former president’s rallies early. Then, a conversation with Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires author Douglas Rushkoff about Elon Musk and the increasingly weird obsessions of the ultra wealthy. Plus! Katherine Stewart, author of The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism, joins the program to discuss the rise of the Christian right and its wholehearted embrace of Trump. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Author and documentarian Douglas Rushkoff is here to tell us about his book, Survival of the Richest, Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, and how it plays into our election. Then we'll talk to author Catherine Stewart about how white Christian nationalists have become the bread and butter of the Republican Party's efforts to dismantle democracy. But first, let's have some fun. I cannot believe the countdown clocks are finally on zero. Well, we have reached the final day to cast a ballot, a final day to cast a ballot. It is election day in the United States of America. And I feel nauseous and anxious. And I had a friend who said the other night at dinner that she kind of wished that she

she could just get on a flight that was going around the world with like no internet, just movies, and like just a steady stream of like, you know, tequila or mezcal, wake me when it's over. And I said, actually, this sounds glorious. Why didn't we think about this? That's essentially my mood board. At the moment. What about you?

Yeah, I had planned to be on the internet. National Space Station, but then, you know, fucking Boeing. So, so I'm stuck down here with all of you. Look, this is coming out on Tuesday, and everyone is amped up, and everyone is nervous and anxious and sweating, and I am not. So how about that? Really? Yeah.

I mean, I mean, look, I am a little. It's impossible to not be a little. As I've been saying for the last couple weeks now, I feel pretty good that Kamala Harris is going to win. I did my little election map, electoral map. I have her with 285, and I will post this map on blue sky to lay down a marker. But look, I do think she's going to win that I am much more concerned with, I guess, what we can euphemistically call shenanigans. Mm-hmm.

I think there's going to be plenty of that, as we all know. I'm not saying anything that is remarkable there. I think everybody, look, I should also say I have a full bottle of Xanax. Like in you right now? Not in me, no, no, no, no, no. You've ingested it already, Andy? Yeah, and, you know, look, maybe that's why I'm so calm, man. You're saying Xanax stand down and stand by?

Exactly, exactly. You know, it's on call, if needed. But we've seen how these last few days have played out. We've seen Donald Trump turning the microphone into a sex object, I guess would be the nicest way to say it. We've seen him not know what state he's in when he's doing his rallies. And the guy is just washed. I just think he's washed. For those who haven't seen it, Danielle, talk about the video, this amazing camera man.

Why must I? Oh, not that video. Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah. Because I was like, my eyes, my eyes. We don't need to talk about how he simulated a blowjob with the microphone anymore. We're done with that.

Great. So glad that you just got that last part in. Yeah, sure. No. So Donald Trump doing what he does on stage talking about the fact that there is not, what state was he in? Because I forget what state he was in. Denial. That was good.

We'll be right back, folks. That was good. He's at a rally and he's talking directly, you know, to the people and into the camera saying that there is not an empty seat in the place. The place is jam packed, never seen anything like it. And literally, while he is saying this, the camera person goes all around, pans out and goes all around the stadium, which is more than halfway empty, that they had done a camera trick. where they have all of the people in front of Donald Trump and in back of him,

but panning out ain't nobody there. And it goes to say one of my favorite sayings, not all superheroes wear capes. Like the camera person was sick of Donald Trump shit and was just like, I'm not going to go along with this lie that this place is jam-packed and people are hanging from the rafters. And what we've seen, as the weeks have droned on, are less and less people turning out for Donald Trump's rallies. I think that also over the weekend,

there was a rally. J.D. Vance and Jr. were headlining. And they thought tens of thousands of people were going to show up and they had more like tens of people that showed up for that. I don't know what that says. Like, I want to believe it is saying that people are sick of his shit and over it. But this could be like, look, these folks have already voted.

They don't need to watch Donald Trump sway on stage for 39 minutes. So they're opting out. I don't know. Yeah. And shout out to, I guess the cameraman was from something called NTD.com, which oddly is an organization that works with the Epoch Times, which if you know what the Epoch Times is, it's a super right wing and often filled with very, very bad miss slash disinformation. And it's actually, I believe Epoch Times is presently.

being charged by the Justice Department. So it's a little wild that this network or this website, whatever they are, did this. You know, I hope the cameraman didn't lose his job. But, man, it would be nice to not have to talk about him anymore. And just watching him over this past week in particular or week plus, starting with the MSG rally. And then all the stuff he has said this last week, you know, fantasizing about Liz Cheney being, I guess, depending on how you want to read it, put before a firing squad. or dropped into a combat zone, but either way, having rifles pointed at her,

talking about killing members of the press. It's a lot. And then he went on some rant about how he has beautiful white skin. It's just, it's all deeply, deeply weird. Even by Trump levels of weird, which are off the charts, this is even weirder and more disconcerting and just more disgusting. I think she's going to win, but my God, let's hope that the majority of people in this country are as sick of his shit as we are.

I don't know if we never stop talking about Donald Trump, to be honest. But the idea that we could talk about him and not have such existential charge to it is kind of where I would love to be. I would love to be in that place, as I know that millions of other people would love to be in that place, Because here's the thing. I believe that this, in terms of Donald Trump and how the next several days play out, is that he's going to do exactly what he did in 2020. He's going to claim victory. He's going to say before the votes are even in, before precents have even closed their polling stations,

he's going to get on television, say that he has a big announcement and claim victory. That's what I foresee. I foresee fox covering it wall to wall, and I wonder if other folks will follow suit. I don't know what that does like this time around. Like we know the game, but he continues to play it. He's been sowing the seeds. You have the Republicans in Georgia now trying to sue for people handing in their ballots, like physically handing in their ballots and they're suing over seven precincts, districts that are doing that.

funny, all democratically leaning, Republican districts are doing the same, but they're not suing those. You know, so I think there's going to be obvious mayhem that he's going to try and really till the ground for. I will be interested to see how the media follows along. First of all, I agree. And I would just say that they are literally doing everything that a campaign that knows it's losing would do. I take that back, that a campaign with. no ethics, morals, scruples, et cetera, that knows its losing would do, which is they basically know that literally the only way I think they can win this election is to cheat, is to suppress the vote of Democrats, is to suppress the votes of non-white people.

They're really ramping that up these last two weeks. And I think it's, first of all, it's because they're all awful people, but it's also because I think they know that in a fair election, they lose. So the question is going to be whether they get away with it. And I agree with you that part of this is more than likely them and Donald Trump himself declaring at a podium that he has won the election on Tuesday night at some point. Look, the Harris campaign says they are ready to deal with all of this. And look, I think unlike in 2020, because we have been through this once before, I kind of trust that they are ready for it to the extent that you can be ready for it. And I don't think, with the exception of the Fox Newses and the newsmaxes and the OANs or whatever of the world, I don't think media is going to go along with this. I really don't. As bad as they've been in a lot of regards, this election season, I don't think they're going to go along with that.

And the question is, so again, will he get away with it? Does it matter that nobody goes along with it? If he just does it and act like he's won, where does that leave us? And look, it leaves us probably with a lot of legal challenges and a lot of attempted shenanigans in Congress. So we're down to hoping that the bulwarks of democracy hold, which sucks. It sucks to be in this position. I am hopeful that it will be so obvious that he's lost that outside of his, you know, most full-throated supporters who will never believe that. But that most of the country will be like, come on, man.

And some of them might be like, you know what? I thought maybe you had a case in 2020, but no, not this time. And look, a lot of this is pure hope on my part. And I don't know what's going to happen with all that stuff. But I do think I agree with you. Everyone needs to be prepared for him to announce victory Tuesday night, or even if not outright victory, just saying that, you know, everything looks very, very good regardless of whether it does or not,

which, again, I suspect it won't. But we know who he is. And we know what he's going to do, at least to some extent. And hopefully the Harris campaign is as ready for it as it says it is. I don't know how you prepare for crazy. This has been the question on my mind for a long time. I really don't. I don't know how you prepare for crazy.

I could have never imagined January 6th, even though Donald Trump had tweeted and said things were going to be wild and all of those things, I couldn't have prepared for what happened. I mean, I know what you're saying in terms of like preparing that the legal team is ready to go and ready to rebuff the challenges that will come through. Folks also need to remember that 2020, even in the midst of a global health pandemic, was one of the most secure elections that this country has ever had. Right? So, like, that's always the thing to remember is that it was the noisiest in terms of the lies that took hold and spread like wildfire.

but the reality on the ground in the midst of a health pandemic was that it was a free and fair election. So I have no concern over the integrity of this election, even given what Republicans have tried to pull and are continuing in the 11th hour to try and do. But, you know, you said something, Andy, well, you said a lot of things, but you said something that stuck out to me, which was, we've been in this moment before and that this is not what people who are winning or believe that they're winning do. And I wonder, to be honest, that wouldn't he do the same, like, is there anything inside of Donald Trump that if he was winning? I guess I can't remember back to 2016 at this moment. I kind of have a blank spot. Did he do the same thing, like saying that the election was going to

be rigged in 2016? Or was that something that he started his reelection cycle? He cast the dispersions on it. Yes. Let me clarify what I meant. I agree that even if they were up by 10 points, they would be trying to pull shenanigans. But to me, there's a whiff of desperation around all of this this time. And just everything that they've ramped up in the last few weeks just says to me that they really know this time that they ain't going to win. And when I said we've been through this before, I think what I'm trying to say is, like you said, you could never have imagined you a January 6th. Of course not. Who the hell could? Now we don't have to imagine it. Right. We've lived through it. And which is not to say that whatever happens this year is going to, you know, necessarily look exactly the same. But we know what they're capable of now. And that's why I say that, you know, I sort of trust the Harris team when they say they're ready because I have to think that they have gamed everything out. and really nothing is off the table in terms of, well, but well, they would never do this. There's nothing they would never do.

We know that now because of what we all lived through four years ago. So I do think that they are going to be much better prepared for all of this, you know, than the Biden team was, which is not even casting aspersions at the Biden team, because like you said, who the hell imagined any of this really? So that's really where I feel, again, if they're not prepared, if it turns out they're not prepared, I think we may be in deep shit. But that's where my hope comes from that they have thought this all out because it would be unbelievable malpractice. If they didn't, let me just end on, you know, you say, how do you prepare for crazy? She did a good job preparing for crazy at the

debate. Yeah. And I think they overall have done a good job going after the crazy in this election. And they have shown themselves willing. And they have shown themselves whether it was, you know, the weird stuff early on. They have shown themselves as a campaign willing to get down in the mud and say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done. So that's where I sort of feel like they do know, you know, they're like, all right, we're fighting crazy. So we're going to fight crazy.

Like they know. So that's where my sort of at least glimmer of hope comes from. I'll take it. I mean, I'm going to hold on to any spark, glimmer, bolt of, lightning that comes our way because the alternative is something that I am not going to allow to creep into my mind today. But just a little peek for some folks, I can't imagine that anybody that listens to us, A, hasn't voted already, or is on the fence and doesn't know quite what to do. But how comfortable would you feel with RFK Jr. being in control of your medical well-being?

because that was what would happen in a Trump administration, a Trump regime 2.0, is that whether or not people want to take a vaccine has been left up to them, has been left up to us, has been left up to us to decide whether or not we believe in science and the advancements of science so that we don't get sick. But in a RFK Jr. Cabinet position or role inside of a Trump administration, that choice wouldn't be yours anymore.

It'd be left up to him. And correct me if I'm wrong, but that motherfucker does not have doctor or MD in front of or after his name. So I don't need somebody who has no medical training who

believes in conspiracy theories being the one that is in charge of America's health and well-being. And that is what Donald Trump has doubled down on over the last couple of weeks that he has said, not just signaled. I don't know about all you, but COVID still sits pretty front of mind for me and how it was handled and what Donald Trump did and what he suggested and said. And the last person that I want standing up in the press room addressing the American public is fucking RFK Jr. So let that sit with you. Yeah. And I'll just close by saying,

I think all of this, it's an absolutely losing message. And I said this, I think on the last episode, when we talked about Mike Johnson saying they were going to, you know, pretty much get rid of Obamacare. And this stuff is all of a piece with that. We've got RFK out there saying it's going to take all the fluoride out of the water. This is, you know, straight up 1950s communist conspiracy theories. It's straight up general Jack D. Ripper. in Dr. Strange Love. It's straight up John Birch society stuff. It is right-wing conspiracy wacko talk.

And again, it may play well to the base that is so pilled at this point that they just, you know, they've gone past the COVID vaccines are bad to all vaccines are bad. I don't think that shit flies with the majority of the country. And I don't think talking about putting RFK Jr. in charge of health care. and getting rid of all vaccines, like I think most parents in particular want not just their kids vaccinated, but they want other kids vaccinated because they know that we have eliminated a ton of diseases, you know, for the most part, that will come back, including things like polio. I think all of this is a losing message. And I think it plays to the wildest impulses of the

MAGA base, which is where I think they have focused all of their attention. in these last couple weeks with everything they're saying. And I think that is an absolute losing strategy. And I think they have decided they don't care if they turn off moderate voters, independent voters, whatever you want to call them. And I think that's just, that's a loss for them. Well, all I can say is hold tight. Hold tight, dear friends.

And we'll see you on the other side of this, whatever the other side is. And pray I don't have to come back next episode and say, well, I was wrong about everything. Root for me, people. The biggest election of our lifetimes is less than a month away, and the news is only going to get crazier and more important as the countdown continues. As each day brings new headlines and critical campaign updates, the future of the country may be decided by the stories that cut through the noise

and capture our attention during the next few weeks. If you want to stay informed through all of the twists and turns, the Daily Beast's new daily newsletter, October Surprise, is the reliable resource you're looking for. It will keep you in the know on everything that's happening as we race toward Election Day. Sign up now at beast. pub slash October Surprise. Beast.pub slash October surprise.

Last week, the New York Times ran an article about Elon Musk's attempt to establish a compound in Texas that he envisions will house his 11 children and counting, I assume, along with their various mothers. My next guest is a renowned writer, documentarian, and media theorist. And the author of the book, Survival of the Richest, Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires, now available in paperback.

And he says what Musk is doing here is part of what he calls the mindset. Douglas Raskoff joins me now. Douglas, thank you so much for being here. Oh, thanks for having me. Let's just start at the beginning, I guess. What exactly is the mindset? It occurred to me, actually, after I met these billionaires who were asking me for advice on their escape strategies, you know, where they should upload their minds or go to, you

you know, New Zealand or Alaska or a C-stead somewhere. And I kind of realized that although they were super rich, they felt just utterly powerless to influence the future. The best they could do is somehow, you know, hang on and escape the inevitable event. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, oh, no, they're not just looking to escape the event. They want the event. They want to escape. They suffer from this mindset. It's kind of a combination of capitalism and digital thinking, where the object of the game is to kind of level up, to go one level meta on the last one. So in capitalism, it's easy. There's people creating value. So you either, you hire the people, your own the company, you own the company that owns that company,

or you own stock in the meta company, or you own derivatives in the stock, or derivatives of the derivatives. So the more abstracted you get, the more leverage you have, the more exponential growth you can have. And then digital technology came along and kind of did the same thing, where digital is a symbol system of the real. You have your Web 1, and then you have Web 2 that goes meta on Web 1 and Web 3 that goes meta on Web 2. You've got crypto, you've got second level crypto, you've got third layer crypto. It's always, you keep going out or leveling up. And that's the way these guys think about the world itself. You know, originally I was thinking of the mindset really simply, that it's just how do you escape the fumes of your own exhaust, right? How do you,

earn enough money to insulate yourself from the reality you've created by earning money in that way, like you're running in fear. But then I realized, no, no, these guys, they want to get there. They want to level up. They see us humans as just the larval stage of evolution, that we're just living on this big piece of shit that's eventually going to die. And they are the ones, they are the super beings who are going to sprout wings and get off the planet to Mars or upload their consciousness to the cloud and somehow, you know, transcend the mere mortal humans like us. So in the intro to the book, you talk about this meeting and how it led you to this and that, you know, you were in a room with the five guys, I think it was. And you don't name the guys

in the book, but will you now as a favor to me? No. I mean, the problem with these guys is they're not the guys that we know. It wasn't like, you know, Musk and Zuckerberg. These guys, I even asked them when they were talking about getting off the escape in New Zealand and I like, don't you guys have rocket ships? And then one of them said, no, we're low-level billionaires. The best we could do is get a seat on Branson's, but we can't make our own. Right. So I don't want to get too jargony, but one of the things you say is a big part of the mindset is something you call the insulation equation. Explain that. The insulation equation, it's really, I thought of it when I was thinking about Thomas Jefferson's dumbwaiter and that

we're taught in school, oh, look at the great Thomas Jefferson. He made this thing, this dumbwaiter, this kind of hand-pullied elevator to save his servants the work of climbing up that last flight of stairs to bring the food into the dining room. But that's not what the dumb waiter is for, that the servants that enslaved people were working plenty hard. It was really to spare Thomas Jefferson and his guests the indignity of watching some enslaved person huffing and puffin and sweating and bringing them the food. You wanted to just kind of appear automagically. And that is the way we use a ton of our technologies is really about insulating ourselves from the reality of what we're doing. So you look at even modern, you know, muskian technologies like

AI. You know, AI does not really replace labor. It just shoves labor further down the food chain. We have, you know, thousands of kids mining for the rare earth metals or the cobalt and underwater. And there's tons and tons of people sitting in basements tagging, data for the AIs. There's just as much, there's more labor going on. It's just lower level labor. And we don't interact with it because we think we're just interacting with some chat GPT thing. Yeah, there was a thing you mentioned in the book that struck me because I did not know it. And it has to do with getting the fingerprints off of all these amazing devices that we buy. Yeah, it was really sad. We don't have to name the companies because maybe some of them have

changed some of this, although I doubt it. But, yep, you know, when you get a brand new, smartphone in the box. It's supposed to look like perfect as if somehow robots just stuck it in there. But no, it's just assembled by human beings. Usually, you know, very low-paid laborers in China, ones who jump out windows because they go crazy from doing this all day. And in order to create the illusion that people have in touch it, you've got to get the fingerprints of the person who assembled it off the device. And the solvent that they used to take the human, the trace of human fingerprints off the device, turns out it's like really talking. It's like really talking. It leads to, you know, miscarriages and fetal abnormalities and illness and cancer and all.

So it's like, okay, in order to remove the evidence of me participating in the production of this device, I'm also going to do something that shortens my own light. It just seemed absurd. Yeah, it's absolutely unreal. And as you say, that is so far removed from us that we don't think of it at all. And like I said, I had no idea that this was done until I read it in your book. And that's the intent. And you need that kind of sociopathic mindset of a musk to implement these kinds of things and still believe you're helping humanity at the same time. Now, he would say that his 11 plus kids, right, and it's more than 11. These are just the 11 he wants to take care of in the $35 million compound.

That's part of a strategy of a person who thinks like this to get their information out into the world. But basically, it's all about information dominance. there's two kinds of information. There's memes, which you buy Twitter to spread your memes, and there's genes where you get women to spread your genes. You know, it's really to spread, you know, they're sperm people. And they would justify it as, well, you know, information wants to be free. So spread my sperm and spread my ideas. I mean, you look at the way he dominates Twitter X now. That's, you know, that's his same approach to the gene pool. And it wasn't always like this.

it with the ultra-rich and the tech guys? Like, as you note in the book, back in the early 90s, the tech world, it was much more of a hippie vibe, right? I mean, you were there. You were one of the OG cyberpunks. What changed? It feels like they went from sort of Robert Anton Wilson to Iron RAND. I know. And it was some overlap there. I was sort of surprised. I mean, those of us who were involved, many of us, in those early 90s internet days, yeah, it was a very psychedelic-driven technology and culture, both because of where it was, you know, it was the era of, you know, Mondo 2000 and Boing Boing and terrific sort of psychedelic inspired science fictiony tech thinking, guys like Jaron Lanier were, you know, building crazy things. And Timothy Leary and Terrence

McKenna were all, where they were net people. I even remember, I was with Leary the first time he went on the web and he said, oh my God, Doug, this is going to be more powerful than acid. And what we didn't realize was that the kind of the set and setting we had around the net, which is, you know, set and setting is the term you use for how you approach a strong psychedelic drug. The set and setting we had around the net was, you know, the infinite potential of the collective human imagination. But we just kind of took that as a given. And we didn't realize it's something that we had to really bring consciously and forcefully,

that it was a political thing. We were just so happy for any business or anybody to notice what we were doing. for our parents, not to think we were just, you know, Dungeons and Dragons players, you know, going off to failed careers, that we didn't realize that, you know, Wired Magazine came along and really recontextualized the net as this business opportunity. So then instead of giving creative people tools to build whatever they want, we started using tools on people to make their behaviors more predictable and to grow markets. So the whole polarity, really, the whole dynamic of the net shifted from a tool for human people.

potential to a tool to use on people. And there was a repeating sort of motif in the book that really struck me. It was the need and desire that these guys all have not to improve current existing situations or communities, but to start with a blank slate and create their little utopian slash dystopian worlds tabular rasa. And this seems to apply to whether it's Peter Teal at his sea-steading, Elon Musk wanting to get to Mars, Mark Zucker's Metaverse, any of the other project you talk about. They're all aimed not at helping to fix sort of the problems that exist in our communities and the things that affect the people who live in them, but to evade all of that. Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, and that's the thing. I mean, obviously, they're afraid of people

and women and nature and all the stuff that makes real life. They're trying to level up or, you know, Peter, Theo, would call it, you know, go from zero to one, you know, to exist one order of magnitude above and beyond the rest of us. Partly, yeah, for domination, but partly because, yeah, I mean, everything is like, if it's not original IP, then it kind of doesn't count. You know, you're not going to continue this human project

in the incremental continuous way. They want to be a break, a moment of discontinuity. Otherwise, you're not really God. You're just, you know, you're just keeping this going. But yeah, they were, you know, they wanted to do, I think it's canceled finally. Neum. They were going to build this new city in Saudi Arabia to, you know, somehow be a new,

totally renewable cyclical city and using all the new agriculture, permaculture things. They just had to get rid of like 10 or 20,000 Bedouins who'd been living sustainably on this land for 5,000 years. Or they wanted to do one in California near the Bay Area. They were going to build their new super city. But yeah, it's this strange thing because they all quote Jane Jacobs and how she talked about cities. as being all mixed use and multi-use, but they don't want to let it happen

the way Jane Jacobs described it, which was over a hundred years Greenwich Village emerged. They just want to clean, exactly. Let's clear-cut this forest and build the sustainable, layered, perfect city. That's why they want to go to Mars. Yeah, and like you said, they don't seem to see the disconnect

between, like, clear-cutting a forest or forcibly relocating a bunch of people and what they claim are their noble goals. And there was another thing in the, book that really struck me, you wrote, proponents of seesteading, in this case, seem to start every conversation with the promise of sustainability, environmentalism, or insulation from risks like COVID or climate chaos. And it feels like that's how they start all these conversations, whether it's Elon Musk talking about Mars, whether it's, I don't know, Ray Kurzweil talking about

uploading his consciousness into a computer. They talk a good game a lot of times about this sort of being, you know, at least in the vicinity of altruism. But this is dead. definitely not what's driving all these escape plans, is it? No. I mean, they're certainly not taking us along with them. I mean, that's the thing. You know, a few of them might have some giant geoengineering plan, but that's usually just to keep the world going long enough for them to get off. You know, it's like, uh-oh, I'm going to need, you know, 40 more years.

So let me throw some sulfur in the, in the atmosphere and get some short-term benefit until my rockets are ready or my servers are ready. There's ultimately, I think there's a disdain. for nature and life as human beings live it. I kind of traced this mindset thing all the way back to Francis Bacon. When he was arguing for empirical science, he said that science will let us take nature by the forelock, hold her down, and submit her to our will. It's a rape fantasy that science will let us hold nature down and she will submit. That is like a guy with a dozen wives in an Austin compound, right? They're going to hold them down. But there's almost

this little boy urge to like burn worms or something. You know, the horrible things that little kids do. There's that sadistic thing as if you feel your power when you're not subject to nature anymore. The ironic thing is for all the disruption, all the discontinuity that these guys think they're doing, they're actually deeply reactionary people. They are defending the traditional marketplace. They're defending a 13th century economic operating. system, right? They're happy to disrupt taxis, I'll disrupt music, or they'll disrupt hotels, but they don't disrupt Goldman Sachs in Morgan Stanley, right? They go straight to the IPO, the most traditional thing, which is why most of them are moving to this kind of very right-wing

reactionary side of politics as well. I have to ask you about this because they jumped out at me from the book, and you said that Jeffrey Epstein was truly the model, self-sovereign, transhumanist billionaire prepper. Listening to you talk now, that all makes sense because basically, you know, he had his own island and he was really trying to have his own little escape plan and be above humanity. Right. With, you know, legions of young women serving him and this giant kind of temple complex and all. And it's really interesting that that's when you look back, that's why he was befriending a certain kind of scientist and technologists back in the 90s, you know, when he was, you know, funding the billionaire dinners, you know, of the edge organization. It was because he wanted to

meet these MIT guys. He wanted to meet guys like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, these kind of staunch atheist scientist people that could really confirm his view that there's really nothing going on here. There is no soul. There's only materialist science. So the extent to which you can spread your genes, your information is really the only thing that matters. And you don't have to worry about anyone else as being like real people because they're not. They're just media for your message. Yeah, it's truly wild. So how do we fight back against the mindset? One of the things you write is that the greatest danger to them, to the people that hold this mindset, would be for us to really listen to what they're telling us and react accordingly.

So explain why that would be the biggest danger to them. And also explain why we don't do this. Well, it's interesting. I mean, the main thing that they're saying, there are most of them, I mean, the easiest philosophy that kind of described them now is effective altruism. This idea that the eight or nine billion people on the planet now don't matter because one day, thousands of years from now, there will be trillions of post-human intelligences somewhere else in the universe, that we will spawn. And if eight or nine billion people have to suffer a lot today, in order for that to happen, mathematically it works out. The numbers are insignificant compared to what will be. But they're living so far in the future that what happens now doesn't matter. It's the same way when they talk about the threat of AI.

They don't talk about the pollution or the nuclear power plants that we're building or the enslaved people or the lakes that were emptying and the jobs that were killing, the people that were deskilling, the minds that were numbing, the people that were really controlling with these technology. They don't see the damage happening now. they're more concerned about the super AI that's going to turn on them, right? Which is a weird, nothing fantasy in the future. That's just because they're afraid that AIs are going to do to them what they've been doing to us, right? Because they think whoever's the smartest person in the room wins. The smartest person in the room is the superior being. You know, that's the, Dr. Evil model of human society. And it's actually just not, not even. not even true. So how do we fight back? So the way we fight back is first we see the

ludicrousness of their model, right, which is nothing now matters. It's about me and the other demigods who are going to get off the planet later. They're living in this, this childlike, science fiction meets walking dead universe. And it's really silly. You just spend five minutes on Twitter. And of course, you can't avoid this man's tweets. And you can't avoid this man's tweets. And you go, oh, these guys are nuts. I mean, my point was not that we fear these people, but that we are able to laugh at them. You know, one of the heads of one of the social networks, one of the founders, came up to me at this gathering. He was like, oh, Doug, I'm really worried for you. You know, you've been writing some negative pieces about AI. And aren't you concerned, you know, what the AI is

going to do once they're in charge? And he explained to me that he doesn't post anything at all online about AI because he doesn't want the AIs to know how he thinks about them. And I said, dude, The AIs are so smart. Aren't they going to be able to infer from what you're not writing, how you actually feel about them? And he goes, oh, fuck. Right. So that's who we're talking about, right? We're talking about, you know, children who make Rick and Morty look, you know, like the geniuses that they are.

You know, they're the superior. So then what do we do? I mean, I think what we do is not fall for it. The most important thing, I think, to realize is that when we live on platforms that these guys have created, and that these guys own, we succumb, we have to succumb to their rules. You know, so the rules of Twitter, the rules of Facebook are not the rules of real society. They're the rules set up by sociopaths who mean to leave us behind. Do you really want to spend your time on a platform using a language, right?

Engaging with other people through an interface that was designed by people who think you're not going to make it, who don't care about you making it, who think of you as larva, who are more than willing to extract value from you the way Jeffrey Epstein extracts sex from a 14-year-old. Or do you want to move on? And it's as simple then as, I mean, and people just laugh at this stuff because it's been made so outrageous, I guess, by our digital society, but, you know, spend a moment with another person, knock on a neighbor's door and borrow a tool, make eye contact with someone else, breathe, take one day off a week, what we used to call Sabbath, you know, where you don't consume or produce and you don't have any screen time, you know, get some real life,

you know, real air, real sex, real touch, real, even just voices. It's, I think it's part of why people have migrated to podcasts over this other stuff, at least with a podcast, there's some vibration, you know, you're experiencing another human being's vibration, not just not just their text. That's such a good point. And I now feel kind of bad because I always say thank you to Alexa after I ask a question for the very same reason. It's a good habit. It's good for you. Doug, thank you so much for being here. I literally could talk to you for another six hours about this. Oh, thank you. I'm glad you read the book. No one reads books, you know. It's so funny. I sometimes leave Easter eggs at the end of the book saying, if you made it this far, hey, I'm Doug.

What's in it? That's my schick. I read the book. Wow. Survival of the richest escaped fantasies of the tech billionaires out now in paperback. It's such a fascinating read. Doug, you are just one of the most fascinating people on the planet. Thanks so much for being here. Oh, thanks.

Thank you. Let's hang out sometime, okay? Folks, I am so very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. Author, Catherine Stewart. Catherine is the author of the book, The Power Worshippers, inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism, and she will have a new book that will be out in 2025 entitled Money, Lies, and God, which I can't wait to talk to you about that, Catherine. I will say that this election cycle has been extraordinary in so, so many ways.

But I think that what has stood out to me most is how white evangelical, Christianity, how white nationalism has played such a central role in the Republicans' desire to overthrow democracy, to usher in an era of not only religious fundamentalism, but authoritarianism. And I wanted to get your thoughts, Catherine, on, as this election cycle, I don't even know if I can say that it's winding down. I really don't. But as we enter the next phase, I shall say, what do you make of the role that white evangelical Christianity and religion have played in the rise of Donald Trump and Maga ideology?

A rough look at the polling data suggests that Trump has not lost much, if any, support at all from his Christian nationalist base. to the extent that he's losing support, it's really coming from the more moderate religious sectors or more secular sectors of the Trump base. I mean, that's what the Selzer poll in Iowa suggests. Anne Selzer, who is known as the Iowa polling queen. She made a verbal comment to the extent that she did an interview with bulwark. She said that white evangelical voters are unchanged. They're totally in support of Trump. It's the other voters, the sort of non-religious right voters who are shifting. And that really tracks with what I've seen over the last year of attending religious right conferences and strategy gatherings and summits that I've attended. You know, I've been

writing about the religious right and Christian nationalist movement for 15 years. And a lot of the way I do my research as I go to events like Ralph Reed's Road to Majority Conference or Prevote Stand, which is a big conference sponsored by one of the major religious right organizations, the Family Research Council, I went to that a few weeks ago or a month ago, and Trump is just still their savior. He's their hero. He's God's guy. They refer to him as a biblical king, like a Cyrus or a David, sort of, you know, imperfect ruler that God chose to enact his will. And here's this idea. He acts like an authoritarian. You know, by calling him a king, you know, kings aren't the kings of democracies, that really reflects the authoritarian impulses of his supporters. There's also just so much

talk, more talk about how we're in a spiritual war, but this has this really big impact in our politics. And they're no longer seeing this as sort of a political battle. They're really seeing it says, if God says Trump wants to win and the other person wins, well, that must go against God's will. And then if that's the case, if somebody's going against God's will, then any, action is justified, no matter how corrupt or disgraceful or anti-democratic. So the movement is sort of, you know, digging in to this sort of extreme hostility to democracy itself. Catherine, I get so confused with how this type of anti-democratic sentiment has taken such a strong hold inside of these white Christian nationalist movements. And,

And it is this belief that their God is a vindictive, petty, small, and violent God. Can you speak to that and some of the things that you hear in these places that you go to and what is conveyed? Yeah, you know, there's been a really interesting shift, I would say, over the past 50 years of the movement. In an earlier time, a lot of the claims of the religious right were still framed, whether sincerely or not, But they were framed in the language of pluralism. They said they just wanted to see the table. They want their views, particularly on cultural issues like abortion to be respected and listen to and protected.

But the thought leaders of the movement, people like Leonard Leo, or if you look at the sort of rise of this sort of charismatic forms of religion that are very intensely political people like Lance Ball now, those thought leaders are really very explicitly aiming to use the power of the state to legislate what they know is an unpopular set of views, because they believe that if they can impose it from on high, eventually the population will be forced to conform. And that's why they're doing it. And they really don't believe in pluralism and equality and justice, which are the principles that represent the best of the American promise. They believe that an elect group, Christians of a certain type, and not all Christians. I think about all the

Christians groups now that are very active in opposing Christian nationalism, like vote common good, which just put out a couple of really fantastic ads or groups like Faithful America or groups like the Baptist Joint Committee, the New Evangelicals. There are so many others. But this is a group that believes Christians of a certain type should dominate over everybody else. And they fused it with a kind of partisan identity. So, you know, this is a movement that always accuses the left, as they call it from playing identity politics, but they play identity politics a whole lot harder. I was going to say they play it at such a level of intensity. And I think that the other thing that has become part of the mainstream conversation is their relationship to gender roles

and this deep abiding belief in misogyny and the role of men. I've listened to right-wing, toxic male podcasters discuss that they want the 19th Amendment repealed, the amendment that gave women the right to vote, that Jesse Waters, who just recently was on Fox, talking about the fact that, you know, the problem is that women are able to vote and that it's women's fault if this election, if Trump loses this election, talk to us about this kind of, this kind of deep-seeded misogyny and blatant disrespect of women and how that factors into these, quote-unquote, gender norms and stereotypes that are being celebrated in these spaces at a time when women are occupying more spaces of power than they have before.

The misogyny is the rocket fuel of this movement. and we see a lot of it directed toward Vice President Connell Harris. They refer to her sometimes as a Jezebel. We saw Ellen Musk really put out this really disgraceful post where he referred to her as a C word, this kind of horrible weaponization of some of it's so disgraceful, I can't even repeat here. Yeah, this is a movement that when they're talking about repealing the 19th

and taking away women's right to vote, we need to listen and take them at their word, you know, some of the contributors to Project 2025, which is that 900 plus page document that's preparing a blueprint for the next supposedly conservative administration. Some of the contributors to that document are people who have posted elsewhere about how they don't think women should have the right to vote, or they prefer something they call head of household voting, which is the idea that the supposed head of the household, who is, you know, without saying a man is going to control the votes of his partner or wife. So, you know, it reminds me when they've been talking about repealing, not just repealing

Roe v. Wade, but ending abortion nationwide for ages. And for so long, we heard people say, well, they're not really going to do that. They don't really want that. They're just, you know, using that. Well, yeah, they really do want to do that. We need to listen to these people and actually take them at their word. The Project 2025 is a really interesting document because it reflects a marriage between the religious right, right, right, aims and claims, and the new right, which is a movement that is less sort of theocratic in its orientation, but more explicitly anti-democratic. And if Trump wins the election, you know, we can absolutely expect parts of that blueprint to be enacted. So there's really a lot at stake and everybody needs

to get out and vote. If you value your rights, your right to vote, your right to bodily autonomy, if you value your pluralism and justice and equality in this country, you really need to turn out and vote. Talk to us about why Donald Trump. Why is he the useful idiot, the useful tool here? Why is he the one that white evangelicals have gathered round and can make a series of excuses about this man's behavior, about being married three times, five children by three different women, accused of an adjudicated rapist. How is it that they're able to make all of these excuses and inroads in terms of lifting up Donald Trump? Why was he the one versus Republicans have passed?

So there's two features. I think part of it is transactional. Of course, he gave movement leaders everything. They wanted access to public money, justices that they wanted. not just on the Supreme Court, but on lower courts as well. He gave them policies that privilege certain types of religious beliefs and certain populations over others. But there's more to it than that. I mean, even had they chosen, say, Ted Cruz or something like that, he still would have put in place federal society approved, you know, justices on the Supreme Court who were going to end abortion

and all that. He is a bully. And frankly, this is a movement that is very bullying. It's a It's a reactionary form of nationalism. It's about who gets to properly belong in this country and who doesn't. You're in or you're out. You're with us or you're against us. You're the pure versus the impure. And if you don't believe and vote correctly, then you're on the outs. This is a movement that wants the right to sort of give special privileges to those with

the supposedly correct beliefs. And it wants the right to humiliate or exert power over those of whom it does not approve for who they think are lesser. He represents the authoritarian impulses of the supporters. And, you know, a lot of people have said, oh, they're, you know, he's now starting to equivocate his messaging on abortion, for instance, because I think Trump is smart enough to recognize that most Americans, including most Republicans, actually support abortion rights, certainly in some form. So he's doing this. But meanwhile, the movement, they know very well that he's going to do exactly as they want on those issues if he should get into office again. So they've really turned out their ground operations in support

of him. You know, there's a lot of reporting that the ground operation for the Democratic Party is better than it is for the RNC, the Republican Party. And that's certainly true. But it leaves out a really big part of the story, which is that for, I would say, Christian nationalist voters, especially church-based Christian nationalist voters, but also for those who get a lot of their information on Facebook or Telegram, wherever, the churches themselves and those religious platforms themselves serve as get out the vote operations. Historically, they've proven to be extremely effective, and they're going into overdrive this year as well. And then those supposedly nonpartisan groups like Faith and Freedom Coalition, the American Family Association, Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA,

these groups, which are incredibly well-funded, are themselves engaged in voter turnout operations supposedly in a nonpartisan way, like they'll say it's about values and not candidates. But when you look at their voter guides and their messaging materials, it's absolutely clear who they want you to vote for, not just on the top of the ticket, but all the way down. You know, the money devoted to those efforts tends to be overlooked by a lot of the political analysts. So people do need to understand that that part of the Trump base is going to turn out in full force. And those of us who oppose that agenda need to, you know, know, get our butts out there and vote as well. Let me ask you this with just a couple of minutes

that we have left, Catherine. How concerned are you? You talked earlier about this feeling, this justification that is meant around something being God's will. Donald Trump's ascension to the presidency again would be God's will according to these people. And whatever blocks that, then you can do whatever is necessary. What is your thought around them resorting one again to violence, as they did on January 6th? Well, to start, religion has been shifting. And the religion, you know, there's a very, you know, rise of Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity is very diverse. But there's a sector of charismatic religion that is very, I would say, easily given over to sort of far-right politics. And there's a lot of talk of spiritual warfare. There are movements like

one called the New Apostolic Reformation that are very political, exceedingly political. They're always casting these political battles is taking place not just in the political realm, but also a reflection of what's in the spiritual realm. And they refer to Democrats as demonic and satanic. And we're seeing the language of this sort of spirit warriors bleed into sectors of the movement that are not themselves remotely charismatic. We're seeing groups like, for instance, the Zichlan group, which brings together very, very high net worth individuals with religious right strategists and politicians. and they have the Seven Mountains breakout sessions. Seven Mountains is a sort of NAR idea that people, you know, the right kind of Christians need to dominate the seven mountains of culture, which they

include, you know, finance, government, education, and the like. So this talk of spiritual warfare that's sort of bleeding into all these different areas of the movement and into other sectors of, I would say, conservative Christianity is really unsettling and it could get dangerous. could bleed into instances of physical violence. We know that some of those folks are working with militia groups. And it's something that, frankly, we need to be up front and say that, you know, these are really just political exercises dressed up as spiritual talk, but we still take them very significantly because they move significant numbers of people and motivate them in often very harmful ways. So, yeah, that is something to keep in mind going forward. Oh, God. We just

You know, we won't know, Catherine, until we know. Well, don't forget to breathe and don't forget to vote. Yes, same. You know, I think that how people ground themselves in this moment and how they carry themselves through these difficult times ahead, because I just, I personally believe that regardless of what America decides, that the times ahead are going to be tumultuous. If it's Kamala rebuilding this nation is going to be a Herkulean. effort. If it's Trump, you know, God help us. I just, I appreciate your work so much and this

conversation today. And I think that we need to continue talking about this movement because if we do away with Trump in this election, we're not doing away with the movement. And I think that that is something that people really need to, to understand. So we will absolutely have you back again to continue the conversation. I would love that. And I always appreciate that. And I always appreciate what you have to say. You're so insightful. And I really appreciate, you know, the way you've tried to help us prepare ourselves, spiritually, mentally, our heads, our hearts for what's coming and understand that we're all hoping for a really positive outcome. But, you know, there's a lot of work to be done and we can do it. We can do it. Catherine Stewart, thank you so much for making time

for the new abnormal. And we will see you on the other side. Okay. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Danielle, who's your fuck that guy for the last segment before the big election? My anxiety. That's the fuck that guy. So here's the thing. I actually don't know whether or not this individual has ever been on fuck that guy, which we would have to pull up our records to see.

But Jeffrey Epstein, who has been dead now for a couple of years, is making a comeback, thanks to investigative reporting at The Daily Beast, on tapes. Like, I guess it was like a hundred hours of tapes that are being combed through that Michael Wolf had were serving a dual purpose. It was research for his bestselling book, Fire and Fury, and then, a Epstein book that he was working on. And in these tapes, in this audio that has been released on The Beast, Jeffrey Epstein says that he was Donald Trump's closest friend, best friend for 10 years. And he talks about the fact that the first time that Donald Trump and Melania got together was on Epstein's plane, known as the, quote, Lolita Express.

Jeffrey Epstein has talked about the fact when asked about Donald Trump's intelligence, long, pregnant pause there where he said he knows real estate. He's a good salesman, but anything outside of that, he doesn't know history. He doesn't know facts. He doesn't know a fucking thing. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want any of my long-term friends to talk about me the way that Epstein spoke about Donald Trump. But the fact is that we all know Jeffrey Epstein, or maybe we actually don't, the depths of his depravity and his sex trafficking

and all of the high-level powerful men and people that had his business booming, including Donald Trump. But I got to tell you that listening to this, you already know Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist, You already have had over 20 some odd women come out and talk about being sexually assaulted or sexually harassed by Donald Trump. He hooks up with his now fourth wife for the first time on Epstein's plane. It's just such fucking trash. Just absolute trash.

But the fact that you have so many outlets that have had this information, that have sat on this information for fear of, being sued or what have you, to me is just problematic and again, journalistic like malpractice. And so I'm happy that it was released here. But my God. So my fuck that guy is Jeffrey Epstein. And the fact is, is that this wasn't a friendship that ended when Donald Trump became president.

He was continuing his deep relationship with Jeffrey Epstein while he was president of the United States and everything that we know just as like, did Biden fumigate enough is really the question. But I mean, Donald Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, you can't make a better two peas and a fucking dirty, nasty pod than that. Fuck those guys. I don't think Biden could have fumigated enough. This is a demolition job, not a renovation. I read the piece of the beast. I listened to a couple of the excerpts and then I took a shower and was like, I can't listen to anymore. I cannot even imagine having to go through 100 hours of all of this. I have to think that the psychic damage that would do to someone is probably irreparable. The whole thing is so gross and so disgusting

and there's occasionally stuff that I guess you could say is funny. Like he talks about Trump having a scalp reduction to hide his male pattern baldness and whatever. But there's so much other stuff that's just absolutely grotesque. And Epstein talks about how Trump would go after his friend's wives for sex and the various different methods he would use to sort of get them to agree to that. And just there's so much disgusting stuff in there that it's just, fuck that guy. And fuck Donald Trump. I mean, I can't let this last fuck that guy before the election to go without saying fuck that guy to Donald Trump. So, Andy, how are you starting out this week? This, we don't know what to expect week with your fuck that guy. Yeah, this is a, I guess maybe a

smaller story, but, you know, I heard about it over the weekend and I thought, man, this is just so emblematic of everything that's going on right now. A lieutenant in a sheriff's office in Ohio posted on Facebook, quote, I am sorry, if you support the the Democratic Party, I will not help you. He also posted, the problem is I know which of you supports the Democratic Party, and I will not help you survive the end of days. He said in another post that people would need to provide proof of who they voted for before he would do his job, supposedly, and help them. So I know what you're saying. You're saying, well, okay, I mean, he said all this stuff. He's horrible. He's fired. And that would be yes, yes, and no. He is not

fired. He got a written reprimand, Danielle. He got a written reprimand for violating the department's social media policy. That's his punishment. That's his punishment from the sheriff's office in Clark County, Ohio. That to me is such a bigger problem than what this one idiot said. It's just absolutely beyond anything that is normal, that should be allowed, that is reasonable. This guy should have straight up lost his job. He is now claiming that he has been prescribed sleeping medication and that he doesn't remember writing these posts. Of course he doesn't.

And that they are completely out of character. Okay, if that's the case, you should not be walking around with a gun. Ha! Oh, there's a thought. If you need any reason to, at the very least, suspend the hell out of this guy, if not outright fire him, I would think that a guy who's basically saying, yeah, I'm taking sleeping pills and I don't know what I'm doing when I take them, is not the kind of guy you want walking around with a gun and a badge. All of this is unbelievable to me.

He has, he got a written reprimand. He remains on duty. And it is just unbelievable. Well, you know, I had Jessica Pishko on sometime in the last month who wrote a book about sheriffs called The Highest Law in the Land that is an excellent book and also truly frightening. And it shows how much of a problem sheriffs are in this country nation, you know, all across this country. And this is just so emblematic of it that someone could do this and say straight up, I am not going to help you if you voted Democrat. And they don't immediately lose their job. It's just absolutely wild.

And so fuck that guy. Fuck his bosses in the Clark County Sheriff Department. And yeah, I guess that's it. I'm just exhausted by the fuckery. Because you made such a valid point. Oh, I don't remember anything. I have no recollection. It's like selective amnesia,

but you're walking around with a loaded weapon and a badge to do whatever you want. Got it. And the immunity to do so? Sure. That's exactly how our law enforcement should be proceeding. Everybody gets a fuck that guy over there. All right.

Today is the final day. Today is it to cast your ballots to make sure that everyone in your lives, friends, family, colleagues, strangers on the street have voted. Do your due diligence, and vote. Unless you think they're going to vote for Trump. No one that listens. Unless you love hate listening to us. then awesome for you. Thank you for the ratings. Obviously, none of our listeners, but they may know people who they suspect might be voting for Trump and they shouldn't. You know, Andy, I believe in

democracy all the way around. All right. Fair enough. So vote. Speaking of democracy, we here at the New Abnormal have voted and we are probably going to have some extra episodes this week. We don't really have a schedule for it because a lot of it's going to depend on what we know when we know it. So if you're subscribed, just look into your app and if extra episodes pop up, you're welcome people. 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 Cannon and

Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the Beast and support 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.