The Daily Beast Podcast - Republicans Should Love The Senate’s Latest Immigration Bill

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie discuss the Senate’s proposed immigration border bill that has sparked widespread criticism from Republicans. Then, Where's Your Ed At newsletter writer Ed Zitron stops by to talk to us about Elon Musk's latest tantrum. Plus! Jessica Garrison and Ken Besinger, the host of true crime podcast, Chameleon: the Michigan Plot, gives us the inside scoop on the attempted kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and all the strange details surrounding it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

We have such an excellent show for you today. Where's your Ed Adad newsletter writer, Ed Zitrin, who also hosts the new podcast from My Heart Radio, Better Offline, stops by to talk to us about Elon Musk's latest fit after a Delaware judge voided his 56 million Tesla pay package. Then we'll talk to Jessica Garrison and Ken Benzinger, the host of Camelian, the Michigan plot and they'll give us the inside scoop of the attempted kidnapping of Governor Gretchen Whitmer and all the strange details surrounding it. But first, let's have some fun. So guess who made a surprise appearance over the weekend on SNL, which was not a surprise appearance that people were

happy about? You know, usually people like, they're like, surprise and everyone's like, yay. And this was surprise and everybody's like, why the fuck is she here? And it was the one and only Nimrata who made a surprise appearance on Saturday Night Live and the people were outraged. One was because I don't want to fucking see Nikki Haley as a surprise anywhere. Do you know what I'm saying? She's like a jack in the box that I would want to throw away. I don't want to see her pop up and particularly when she's like making light of this election. Like I don't know. Maybe I'm just too cynical to say I don't care if she's going on there to say, oh, well, Trump, you know, she was talking to the actor that is playing Donald Trump. You know, why won't you debate Nikki Haley? Are you afraid to debate Nikki Haley?

Like, it was just stupid. I don't think anything is funny about this election. And I think that for SNL, again, you're trying to, are you trying to paint her as less dangerous than Donald Trump as like the likable Republican? Like, I just, all of this charade around there being some sense of normalness or normalcy, I should say, inside of the Republican Party is a lie. And I hate the way that the media is continuing to give these people a pass, whom I think are absolutely extraordinarily dangerous and should have no airtime outside of, you know, their enormous reach on that lying-ass channel called Fox. Yeah, this feels like this is what, not just S&L, but this is sort of like in a bigger picture. This is what liberals do is they glom onto someone who's less bad on the right and then try to

elevate them, forgetting the fact that less bad still means bad. This is a pattern that we see and it's continuing and SNL infamously had Trump host and has taken all sorts of shit for that. So the question is raised, will the other candidates also get their little SNL time. And I kind of doubt that Trump would be invited back. I kind of doubt that the Democrats would let Biden do it since they seem to feel that keeping him out of sight is the way to go, which is an interesting strategy, I guess. But I'm a little torn on this in the sense that it's a comedy show, and I don't know how big of a deal it is to have a Republican candidate on. I know we all go nuts about it. And I'm with you. I don't want to see her on SNL. And I don't. I don't want to see her on SNL. And I

didn't. So problem solved there. But it just, you know, it kind of sucks. And then the host of the show was Io Edibiri, who is like almost universally liked. I mean, look, I'm sure there are people on the right who don't like her for, I mean, she's a black woman. So, I mean, just, you could just stop there. Clear. She's a black woman. Don't, don't forget queer as well. Right. Yeah. Oh, look, we're cistern. Right. Exactly. Put a period after it. True. But I sort of hate that she gets tarnished. with this because she doesn't deserve it. The germ of the sketch was that Nikki Halley was just playing a concerned South Carolina voter and was asking questions, like you said, of James Austin Johnson's Trump. But then at the end, IEO came on and asked the question of Nikki Haley and said,

what would you say was the main cause of the Civil War? And do you think it starts with S and ends with a lavery? And Haley said, yeah, I probably should have said that the first time. I don't know. There's a couple of things here. It's like, okay, yes. It's good that they took a shot at her for this. On the other hand, it kind of sucks that she's able to play it off with a joke and go directly from, I probably should have said that the first time to end live from New York at Saturday night. And it's like, oh, well, problem solved there, I guess. She handled that.

So I don't know. Like I said, I get a little torn on this because it's a comedy show and I think they should go ahead and do shit. That's funny. But on the other hand, to sort of help her whitewash things like that is kind of gross, I think. That's the thing that I can't stand is exactly the whitewashing, is the normalization, is the we haven't learned anything. And then we just continue on like business as usual. One of the things that is continuing on as business as usual is doing absolutely fucking nothing on immigration whatsoever.

And why is that? Oh, because Donald Trump said a couple of weeks ago to his hostages, I mean his constituency, that he, he doesn't want anything done on immigration. He doesn't want the bipartisan bill that has been worked on for the last several months coming out of the Senate to move anywhere because guess what? He won't get to use it as a talking point. He won't get to use real people and their lives as a political football and something that he can play to his base with. And so it just goes to show you, it doesn't matter like whether or not the bill is good, good enough, whether or not, apparently, Republicans got every single thing that they want in there. No new protections for

undocumented people, no more money so that money can go to Kiev. I mean, they literally check, check, check down all of the boxes of the things that they've wanted. But Donald Trump said it's dead in the water. So House Republicans parrot, it's dead in the water. And I'm just like, at this point, is it just fodder for the rest of us to just keep talking when we know that nothing's going to get done because we don't have a political party that wants to get anything done, even if that piece of legislation included, and you can lock every undocumented person up and throw away the key, they would still call it an amnesty bill. Do you know what I'm saying? Because that's what Donald Trump told them to say. So what's the fucking point? This bill sucks. I mean,

there are so many things in this bill that are so bad. And there was one in particular that caught my eye and I was reading a New York Times piece about what exactly is in the bill. Part of this bill, raises the bar, according to the Times. You know, one of the reasons migrants can come over here and claim asylum is that they have a credible fear of persecution if they're in their home country and if they're sent back to their home country. And I absolutely cannot believe this. This bill now requires them to show that they couldn't just move to a different part of

their home country to evade the threat. And I'm like, I'm reading this. And I'm like, do you think they didn't think of that? Mm-hmm. Do you think before starting? on this, you know, incredibly long trek to the United States, long and dangerous trek on which they could legitimately die, do you think that it never entered their mind to be like, oh, well, if I move to this town, I'd be okay.

Like, it's unreal. Oh, my God. Like, the idea that you would put this in the bill, and this is the bill that I'm supposed to want past, I mean, there's so many other things in this. Ken Clippenstein from The Intercept. had a good write-up. This bill provides $170 million for autonomous surveillance towers equipped with artificial intelligence. That sounds absolutely great and certainly doesn't sound like anything could go horribly, horribly wrong there. It gives the Department of Homeland Security the sole

discretion to deport undocumented immigrants, and this cannot be reviewed by a court or by any other agency or body. It is a horrible bill. I bring all of this up to get to your point that Republicans should fucking love this bill because they get pretty much everything. And instead, they have to make up shit. There's a provision in the bill that if 5,000 people cross the border on a given day, the border will be completely shut down. And somehow, Republicans spun that as we're going to allow 5,000 undocumented immigrants to spill into the country every day, which is not what it says. It sets a number at which it's like, okay, you know, according to this bill, this is a bad day. We got to shut everything down. It's not saying,

oh yes, we're now allowing $5,000 a day to come through. It's not even close to that. But Republicans go out there and they say that before the bill comes out and then the bill comes out and you read it and it's like, well, it clearly doesn't say that. In a very, very different world, they would feel shame for being wrong. But instead, they just ignore the fact that they're wrong and double down on it. And this is why I just, I am so sick of this reach across the aisle shit. It's like we do not live in that world anymore. We did at one point and Joe Biden needs to realize we do not live in that world anymore. Democrats need to realize we do not live in that world anymore. And reaching across the aisle basically just means, you know, is not supposed to mean giving them everything they want

and they still tell you to fuck off. And that's the fucking point here is that it is the desire to lay down and say, no, here, take everything. I'll give you everything. I'll give you every All I want in return is to say that we quote unquote pass the bipartisan bill and they don't give you that. You are negotiating with fucking domestic terrorists. That is who the Republican Party is. They are people that are hell bent on destruction that want absolute chaos and mayhem so that they can usher in an authoritarian dictator and say, see, democracy doesn't work. That's why we have to make Trump our king. This is what they want.

And so it's just, I don't know. No one Democrats are going to give up on the fucking negotiations because it's not a negotiation, because they lie. All you have to do is open up the bill and point to the part where you just read out very clearly, Andy, it says if more than 5,000 people cross, then we will shut down the border. But it doesn't matter because they say, ah, it's an amnesty bill. Ah, what did Elise Stefani call it? The Biden-Schumer Open Border Bill.

What the fuck are you talking about? But like we're trying to negotiate with people whose brains no longer function in the way that the rest of us do. And I mean that wholeheartedly. They do not. Like, you give them a fact, they spin it into some type of bullshit conspiracy and then drop it into their base, the red meat, and everyone just seizes on it. And then it's one more conspiracy theory spun off of each other.

Like, there's just no point. I wish that Democrats would just say, we would love to make. change. We would love and put up a bill that is actually worth voting on. Not the Republicans' anti-immigrant plan. And you give them the green light and they still give you the fucking finger. Yeah. And I want to correct something that I said earlier. I misspoke. The actual bill says that if there are 5,000 apprehensions in a week, they can shut down the border. Okay. Not in a day. Not in a day. But the point is that Republicans are spinning this. And I was just reading in the Washington Post, Steve Scalise, who again, this is the House Majority Leader. This is not some

backbencher. This is a big shot. He is claiming that the bill, quote, accepts 5,000 illegal immigrants a day. So he's conflating a week with a day, and it's not true regardless, because that's not the point of the number. But I just wanted to correct that. Look, and then don't even get me started on the fact that this bill also includes funding for Ukraine and funding for Israel. And my point here is, regardless of what you think of either of those things, what the fuck are they doing in a border bill? I am so sick of this. I honestly think there are times, like, if I could wave my hands and make one thing different about Congress, it would be that you can't bundle shit like this together. Bills need to be clean.

Like, if you're going to have a border bill, it should just be about the border. If you're going to have a bill about funding Ukraine, it should be just about funding Ukraine. Because they do this all the time, and they do it to get votes. But it's so cynical and dishonest to put stuff like that in a border bill. It drives me absolutely nuts. And they do this every day. Like, you know, this is a common practice in Congress. And I think it's absolutely terrible.

And it leads to horrible, horrible laws because you get people who are like, well, I really want to give Ukraine this money. So the only way I can do that is to vote for this border bill that I hate. And it's just, it's a horrible way of doing business. It makes absolutely no sense. And it needs to get gone. It makes as much sense as the electoral college. Exactly. Like one vote, one voice.

That's it. The person with the most votes wins. Here, you want to have clean legislation so that people, the representatives that we elect, know what they're voting on and are not making a bunch of like nonsensical compromises. Then let's all just have clean bills. It's the same way that they would attach on, Republicans would attach on their anti-abortion agenda. They would attach on their anti-public school agenda. And then it's just like, and then, what? What do we get?

We get the, well, it's the best that we can do. Well, we have to work with the devil we know. And it's just like, no one else works like this. No other country works like this. And so it's just like we continue to be force fed these lies that because things have always been done this way, that they always must continue to be done this way. That because Republicans were at one time a normal political party with fucked up ideology, but I didn't think that they were all terrorists and right supremac.

like, so now we must imagine that they are still those quote unquote good Republicans. They're not. Things have got to change with the new information we receive. And I feel like we've received so much new information about this government, about this country over the last 10 years, and we're still operating in the same way. Yeah. I mean, this vaguely ties in to even the first topic that we were talking about, which is Nikki Haley being on SNL.

It's like, why are we rewarding these people who lie? to our faces. Yes. Again, with this number, this 5,000 number, Donald Trump posted on truth social, only a fool or a radical left Democrat would vote for this horrendous border bill, which only gives shutdown authority after 5,000 encounters a day. Again, that's just simply not true. None of that is true. But he can say that. Nobody on the right will call him on it, and that's the problem. You and I can sit here and yell about this all day long. Our listeners There's already no Trump lies until people on the right start calling out the obvious and blatant lies. We're stuck with this.

And this is what American politics is like in, you know, the Year of Our Lord 2024. And I don't know how we get out of it. If people can't call out lies on their side, we are doomed. We just really are. I think that we were doomed when we allowed for alternative facts to become a thing. When post-truth became a thing, when we just. again, just shrugged at all of it. Oh, you know, it's funny. Oh, yeah, we know it's crazy, but we don't call it out and we don't hold any integrity or moral center. This is what we've become.

Yeah, I think part of that is a lot of people in the media and a lot of people on the left in general, and I'll include myself in this. I'm not looking to get out of this one. I think a lot of people thought like Kellyanne Conway's alternative facts with something as stupid as the number of people at an inauguration. I think a lot of us thought, well, they're so obviously lying, and most people can see that, and most people think this is really silly. And I think we were very wrong about that. The only people that could see it, honestly, Andy, were the people that weren't watching Fox, because everybody else was told, no, his crowd size was really big. January 6th was a bunch of tourists. Joe Biden is a part of a crime family. When other non-right-wing outlets decided to shrug it off,

decided to still give real estate in their prestigious outlets to the Kellyanne Conways, to the Sean Spicer's of the world. Like, this is what we got. It's like it's just the runaway train now of shit that has long since left the station and we can't call it back now. Yeah. And the train is moving so fast that it's just going to keep plowing through everything. And I don't want to get overblown with this analogy, but it's like it's plowing through

democracy, Danielle. It is, and that is the new abnormal. Last week, a Delaware judge voided Elon Musk's $56 million dollar Tesla pay package, a move that was received calmly by Musk and his sycophants. I'm kidding, of course. In between tweeting great replacement theory nonsense, Musk said of the judge that, quote, she has done more to damage Delaware than any judge in modern history, and some of his acolytes somehow managed to conspiracy board the judge's decision all the way up to the top. President Joe. Here to discuss this and other tech CEO weirness is Ed Zittron, the CEO of EZPR, writer of the tremendous newsletter, Where's Your Ed at, which you can find at www.w. Where's Your Ed?

At. And the occasional business insider column and host of the upcoming IHeartRadio podcast, better offline that many people are saying will do for tech what the Daily Show did for politics. And by many people, I of course mean Ed. Ed, thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. And thank you for reading that nice promo stuff. Absolutely. It was a little much. That's some good stuff. We'll cut that for time.

That's fine. The Elon Musk thing is so fascinating, though, because... Can I even ask a question, Ed? No, I'm just fascinated by this. My God. Yes, go ahead. Fine. Jesus Christ. No, you know what? Whatever. All the hard work I put into crafting an interview

and ordering questions and making one flow into the other, just out the fucking window. And we haven't even started yet. Yep. Go ahead, Ed. No, no. You ask your questions. This is not my podcast. All right. So what's the deal with Judge Kathleen McCormick's decision here?

Do I need to call her a chancellor? What the hell is a Chancery Court? Who am I? What am I doing here? This verdict was very strange and also very unusual because usually these types of shareholder lawsuits do not work. These class action things saying an executive messed up or a board messed up to an extent that we actually need to change what they did.

The last one I can really think of is Block, falling out of it's square. Jack Dorsey got sued, shareholder. lawsuit saying you shouldn't have bought title, which is a hi-fi Spotify, insane idea. And it was bought for an unfathomable amount of money. And the judge actually ended up ruling that, no, it's fine. This happened because the board is stupid and so is Jack Dorsey, but they acted technically right. In this case, the judge, and a great deal of this came from some really genuinely impressive discovery and interrogatories on the part of the plaintiff's counsel. And they ripped through Musley, interviewed Musk for quite some time, while also going back to previous lawsuits

with Solar City, which Musk's like cousin ran Solar City and then Tesla bought it. And somehow that was fine, but I think the damn just kind of broke on Musk bullshit. And he doesn't have to give back anything, but he had a $56 billion pay package made up of stock and options to buy stock at Tesla. I think it's like $23 a share. But now what this has said is that he has to, like that plan, entire compensation package decided in 2018 is gone. That is no longer relevant. It's no longer applicable. Also, the board basically has to start being independent of Musk. And if you know anything about how Tesla is run, that will be a complete change to how this company's run, because mostly Musk just kind of weighs into stuff when he feels like it, which is either way too much

or not enough, while intimidating board members who are his cronies and very clearly profit off of him. And it's actually an incredible verdict because this is, first of all, I think, think the largest compensation package ever given to any CEO ever, but also it's Elon Musk. No one messes with this guy generally. It rocks. I think you're right about that. I think actually it was, I think the second highest compensation package was Elon Musk's $23 billion. Oh, so I think that's right. This was the largest. I want to get into something that you mentioned beyond the money. And that was that a lot of these judges or chancellor's decision was that the members of the Tesla board were, absolutely beholden to him.

And we saw over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal had a story that, among other things, noted that a lot of these board members did drugs with Elon Musk because they felt they had to. Right. This whole thing is so weird. And in a just society, this man would not have any relationship with SpaceX, for example. It's insane that we have, like, a very real, very important vendor to the U.S. government run partially by a guy who is basically schoolyard. bullying several other rich guys who were not as rich as him, according to Wall Street General

reports, I've not personally seen this, into doing all manner of drugs. And it's crazy. And it's funny, because on one hand, it's completely new and this never happens. But it also, this is like fuel lord shit. This is just, you will do what I want. I am the neurodivergent king of Tesla. He's the techno king of Tesla. Now, actually, I'd forgotten he actually changed his title at Tesla to that, to Techno I forgot that. And the plaintiff counsel was ripping him about it. But it's so weird because these are all adults. They're all unfathomably rich already.

But they're not billionaires. They're 100 millionaires. Again, no real problems past that point other than things like this, I guess. And they're being bullied by this boring asshole who's nevertheless rich, but boring is sheer. Perhaps they're afraid of the things he'll do to them. He'll go on Twitter and then 10,000 guys with Greek statue avatars called a Hitler-like, 42 are going to attack here. I get it. It's just also, at some point this was going to happen on some level. And actually, part of the ruling, according to Reuters, is that they will have to

replace three directors with new independent board members before they can even plan the new pay package. This thing is going to rip through Tesla like a bad curry. And Musk can appeal it. He's going to appeal it. He's going to claim he can leave the Chancellor record. He can leave Delaware, but you can't just leave. It's not that easy. And also, appealing is not going to work. It's a well-founded legal opinion. And one, it's, what, 200-page response?

It's, they are coming for him. And he's claiming that, of course, that this is Joe Biden coming for him. But it isn't this. It's just eventually when you fuck around 100 million times, you will occasionally very lightly find out. Right. On social media, you said that this could genuinely be an existential threat to Musk. Is it the money or is it the idea that Tesla may have to, you know, shake up the board and make it more independent?

Or is it both? It's a combination of things. So he doesn't have to, to my knowledge, give back any money. The pay packet was largely made up of stock options and he hit these, I believe, 12 milestones. And because he hit them, he was able to get these options. How many he's exercised, I don't know. And indeed, we don't know whether he's able to take loans on unexercised options. But that's the big thing.

Musk himself is not particularly liquid. A lot of his wealth comes from, well, most of it comes from Tesla and his options in Tesla, options being being able to buy those stocks in the future. And then there's the stock in SpaceX, which is illiquid, stock in the boring company, a broadcast company that barely finishes any of their products, like $3 billion in stock there. And a lot of money he has got, including the funds he used to buy Twitter, but not remote. That's only part of it, is based on his wealth in Tesla, and it's based on loans leveraging his Tesla stock.

Now, this is bad on a very obvious level that his money is, it's mostly tied up in Tesla, and it's mostly reliant on Tesla. But also, Tesla's valuation is the thing that spikes the valuation of everything else he does. Every other enterprise is based on the fact that Musk controls Tesla. If these independent board members come in and they say, I don't know, they notice literally everything and anything he's said and done at the moment. In the last few years, they'll say, this guy is a dangerous option to have at the helm of this company. Musk will fight this, Musk will cry and weep and all that, but boards of directors have a great

deal of discretion. And so Musk could simply be told to pound sand, but also if he's even seen as losing control of Tesla, this could affect the stock, because the whole thing with Tesla is Tesla has a bullshit valuation as a stock is barely better than a cryptocurrency as far as how just disconnected from reality it is, though I don't think it's market manipulated. If the legend of Musk begins to corrode, so will the price of Tesla and so will his share. If he starts having to dump shares in Tesla, as he claimed he wouldn't again, I believe, for years, which he may have to do if he needs money, that will tank the value of Tesla. Everything is destabilized because everything is remarkably reliant on his position and ownership of Tesla. And in fact, this all happened

while Musk was fighting to get a larger controlling share of the company. Yeah, it's sort of unreal. And I want to ask you as sort of a side note, this was something that was noted in the Wall Street Journal article, a bunch of Tesla's directors, Larry Ellison, Ira, Aaron Price, James Murdoch, Musk's own brother, Kimball. It's not only that they're buddies with Musk, but all these guys invest tens of millions of dollars in each other's companies. And I feel like we don't talk enough about the incestuous nature of Silicon Valley and what this does. And it's funny because, again, in a just society, there'd be no way it would be legal to have. Your board member, invest in a thing you're related to and vice versa. I just don't understand how that is legal. It

probably is. Otherwise, Musk wouldn't have done it. Well, then again. But nevertheless, they're all investing each other's thing. They're all partying. They're all doing drugs. Musk had sex with like one of the Google guys' wives. It's very weird. It's so strange. And it isn't producing any innovation. These aren't weirdos who are creating the future. They're kind of rutting. They're turning on the screw while getting insanely rich. The Tesla you look at today looks very goddamn similar to the Tesla from 10 years ago. The Model S has unquestionably got worse. The Model X, kind of yeah. Every time Musk gets his filthy little paws in there, it seems to make the car look stupider and run worse. And that's before you get to the whole running over people with the autonomous driving, quote

unquote. But you're in the situation now where this guy, everyone kind of wants to be involved with Musk. They all want to get in there because he's wealthy. It really is like the rich kid in a high school who nobody likes, but he's so rich. Everyone can party with him. But I actually think that if he loses his position at Tesla, either literally by not being CEO anymore or, sorry, Techno King, fucking hell, or by kind of theoretically he just can't really exert his will upon them anymore, he will lose his ability to spin up tons of money and in turn, he will become less interested. for people to work with and talk to. And also, where's the goddamn innovation, Elon? Yeah. This man hasn't come up with anything in forever. And even then when you look at the quote-unquote

innovations, it's mostly him saying, this person has a good idea. Let's throw a bunch of money on it, which is fine if you don't claim you invented it. Right. Along these lines, you mentioned earlier that one of the reasons that Musk was able to get all this money, exercise all these options, was because Tesla hit these various milestones. One of the things that the judge said, I believe, is that these milestones were set ridiculously low. I was reading it and I was sort of like, it's as if a team told Lamar Jackson he was able to negotiate, if I throw one touchdown pass this year, I get an extra $10 million. And that, of course, goes back to the board being his cronies.

Right. The thing with something like that is, theoretically speaking, board set targets like that to have the appearance of fairness and impartiality. They are there to say, okay, you want to make a bunch of money. Let's incentivize you to do things with the business to make a bunch of money. Theoretically fine. But in this case, I don't have the milestones in front of me, but they were the judge and indeed the plaintiff's counsel very much hinted that these were things that they would have hit with one of those ducks that you hit. And it leans forward and hits something, kind of episode of the Simpsons, you may remember. Anyone could have been the CEO. You could have had anyone within reason.

They need to be semi-competent. again, look at Musk. And indeed, part of the argument that they made about Musk and these situations and these milestones were that Musk works like three different companies or four or five, who even knows at this point? And they were saying that surely the fact that he's got his attention so splear means that Tesla got there without Musk that these were milestones he could have heard anyway like he suggested. And it's so funny because this trial really crept up on me and I know it crept up on a lot of people. And I think it may have been that no one thought that this would actually happen. But this really is the comeuppance for everything Musk has been doing these last

10 years. If he doesn't wriggle out of this jam as he is want to do, this is genuinely interesting because it's coming back to the fact that he runs allegedly three, four, five, 100 companies. There was a great bit in the deposition actually, the cross-examination, I mean, there were a guy said to him, see run the boring company, right? And he goes, no, I would not describe it in that manner. And it goes, okay, I'm just going to run, just can you look at this page here and read what it says? And it's just, on Musk on a call saying, yeah, I run the ball wearing company. And it's just so, it's so good because also this, this plaintiffs counsel had the time in their life. It was awesome. But all of this is, yeah, this is what happens. And I think he may have just thought that this would never change.

That the party would never stop, literally and figuratively speaking. And I think it might. That's the thing is like, when I heard this verdict at first, I was like, wow, that's a lot of money, whatever. And then I just, you know, the classic, ah well, nevertheless tweet, you know, that somehow, Now, you know, I'd hate to see old Elon wriggle his way out of this one, but it feels like he always does. And not just him, but people like him in our society always do. I saw your posts about how this could be an existential threat. I started reading some other stuff. And I was like, oh, maybe this is a much bigger deal than a lot of us think it is.

And that's because not that anyone came for anyone here. This was a class action suit by shareholders suggesting that Elon Musk's pay package was too much and was not to the benefit of the stockholders, and it was right. But the way it went about it and the direction they took is, yeah, going directly Elon Musk will not work. There is, I do not think that there is a lawsuit you could bring against Elon Musk that would actually break his back, without some insane evidence that we just don't know about. The drug stories have been around for a while. There's been two major ones in the last, what, six to eight months.

You'd think that would be disqualifying? Absolutely, God damn not. destabilizing the Tesla board, that is actually dangerous to him. He can do many things and money can do many things. You can't really unring this bell. There is no way to argue that they're not biased. I mean, they tried. It didn't work.

And there's tons of depositions. There's tons of information. There's hours and hours of investor calls and tons of emails that came out during discovery. And it's just remarkable because Musk really did not see this. coming and now he's trying to do his funny Twitter thing. It's like, uh, they're Delaware courts there. They're the worst courts. There's never been a worst court that's ever ran. And actually Joe, Joe Biden just has the ultimate power in Delaware anyway. The first time anyone has really connected Joe, like Joe Biden talks about

Delaware all the time, but no one's, no one's sitting there thinking, can you imagine Joe Biden and be like, yeah, okay, Jack, let's go and get Elon Musk on this insanely technical level. It's much easier for him to see it that way because he knows the truth is just, yes, he had a completely corrupt board. One built specifically to serve him and his goals, despite the fact that those goals were shit. Tesla sucks. Tesla is getting worse as a company. The stock is going up, but the product is getting worse. There is more competition. And on top of that, huge amount of competition coming. EV sales are down. And Tesla has a huge market share, but guess what? Eventually the market will be saturated. What's Tesla going to do in five years? The goddamn cyber

The cyber truck looks like that game, what is it, flashback, another world. It looks like the first attempts to do 3D pixels. And it sucks and it doesn't have enough range on it. It's not a good truck. You can't fit enough stuff in the back. These are all things that without this lawsuit might have been survivable through the ephemeral bullshit of Musk. But now the board is probably going to have to reorganize

and it's going to be independent of him. And if he's particularly unlucky, he may get someone who really goddamn dislikes him. And even if he doesn't get ousted, this board can start just saying, no, we're not going to make this the Musk show. Yeah, it really does seem like, as you said, this, who knows? I mean, again, he's wriggled his way out of other stuff, but I hope you're right. But it's not him that has to wriggle here. Right. It's the board.

No, absolutely. They are all scared of the courts. They're more scared of the courts than Musk. Right. Ed, thanks so much. It's always a pleasure talking to you about stuff like this. Folks, check out the newsletter, which has just migrated from some. substack to ghost, so it is Nazi free. And Ed, always a pleasure. The only thing I would suggest

is next time maybe drop the fake British accent. That's it. I will try and do it, but the concussion was quite severe. Okay, fair enough. Thanks again, Ed. Thanks so much. I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal, a co-host of Chameleon, the Michigan plot, the seventh season of Chameleon, which focuses on the plot, or maybe not, to, kidnap the governor of Michigan. Jessica Garrison and Ken Bessinger, I'm excited to have the both of you on. I'm going to go to Jessica first. Give us the 50,000 foot view on, because, you know, we saw the headlines. It was 2020. Bring us back into what was happening and why you guys decided to do this pod. Okay, that's a great question. So, I mean, what was happening was that in October of 2020,

You may remember that October of 2020 was a banana's time. It was about a month before the presidential election. It had just gotten COVID. Everyone was locked down. There were all kinds of protests. And right in the middle of that, the federal government announced that they had arrested a bunch of people who were part of a militia who had been engaged in a conspiracy to kidnap and maybe kill Gretchen Whitner, the governor of Michigan. The plot, like the details of that first press release were just sort of. of insane. I mean, the plan called for kidnapping her and putting her on a boat and maybe

abandoned her in the middle of Lake Michigan and they'd been arrested. The government said, as they were about to like buy materials for a bomb. And, you know, we were both working at BuzzFeed News at the time and we thought, this is amazing. And then, you know, we may also just to recap all the crazy things that have happened in our country, shortly after that, you know, several months later, we had January 6th. And after, you know, we made January 6th. And after January 6th, we all got kind of very interested in, you know, who are these extremists and what do they want. And so Ken and I thought, wow, this Michigan plot might be super interesting to look at to sort of get a kind of a window into, you know, violent extremism in this country. So we started

digging into the case. And as we dug into the case, we were sort of struck by something that we had expected to find, which was how deeply involved the FBI had been in this case. So that is what the podcast is about, sort of like, you know, how did the FBI get in there and what did they do? Yeah. And I think that can, when I remember the headlines and it's very, very hazy to go back to October 2020, it was a hazy and crazy time. But I know that for quite some time, there had been reports and reporting done on the rise

of white violent extremism and domestic terrorism in this country. There had been a report that was done at some point in the 2000s that kind of the FBI had put on the back burner. So when I saw the headlines about this attempted kidnapping, I'm like, oh, looky, looky. And then a couple of months later, we would have January 6th. So talk to us about the FBI and kind of where their eyes and ears were at this time. Yeah, it's a good question. So I think I remember the report you're talking about as well. There was a DHS report that came out. And when it came out, there was a big scandal because the right reacted by saying this is outrageous. It's sort of like you're profiling people like American conservatives and launching us Gestapo against the right, that kind of thing. And they more or less suppressed the report. I mean, the DHS backpedal to as fast as it possibly could and didn't want to, you know, even talk about that anymore. And so the FBI, meanwhile, you know, which is much more of the point of the spear when it comes to actually investigating domestic terrorism had been

wrapped up for, well, basically since 2001 with thinking about Muslim terrorism in the country. And that was where a lot of their energy was going to. But with the fall of ISIS and sort of the slowdown of that kind of fear, there was this huge kind of infrastructure built around chasing down domestic terrorists without like a real place to put that energies. And so you get Charlottesville, the all right protests there. You get increasing numbers of kind of charged incidents around the country in different cities where there's shootings and pointedly domestic terrorism feeling events. A couple not very well publicized bus of people wanting to do really nasty things. Like there was a group of people in Kansas who wanted to blow up

a housing development that was occupied by Somalis outside of Kansas City. And so you start to see this kind of stuff happening. And the FBI has this giant apparatus that's really well designed to infiltrate and investigate perceived terrorism groups. So in a sense, sense, you kind of had all this sort of pent-up energy waiting to burst out on something, looking for the big thing. And I think that in some ways, this Michigan case became sort of the outlet for a lot of that feeling that something had to be done, that the levy was going to break and that the FBI had to do it. I mean, the case that developed ultimately in Michigan was really a tiny piece of what that investigation could have been. There were like four or five at least

different FBI offices in different states working on this one case. There were people in Wisconsin. and there are people as far away as Missouri and in Baltimore area. And sort of like the whole kind of, you drew a map of the U.S. and cut off, you know, the entire upper right hand corner of the country. It was all part of this giant sprawling investigation. And I think this was the culmination of a desire to do something about this fear. And, you know, the way it came out ultimately was in this particular case. But it really could have ended up in a lot of other ways, including there was a lot of work in this case on Virginia and,

and an alleged plot to do similarly horrible things to the governor there. What really is so disturbing, and you both tell me, this is one of the first times that I can remember that there was this kind of what we believe to be some type of intricate setup around kidnapping, killing, harming, an elected official in this country. Am I wrong about that? Or have I missed a different part of history and time? when we have experienced something similar before. There have been several presidents who have been assassinated.

So that's one context. The presidents have been assassinated. We look at Lincoln. You look at JFK. You look at the assassinations that happened in the late 60s of civil rights leaders and of folks in that time. That's 60 years ago. And so I'm asking in our modern time when we thought that we have gotten

kind of a hold on the country and hadn't had that kind of inflection in that 60 year time frame had there been other instances? I think, you know, one that springs to mind would be Gabby Giffords, which wasn't a plot. I mean, I don't know. It wasn't a plot like there wasn't, you know, a conspiracy of many people as far as I know over months who planned it, right? But there are two things that are interesting about this. The first is that it was portrayed in multiple, you know, And there was lots of evidence that the government introduced in court that this was sort of an elaborate and sustained plot. And I'm not aware of like many other things like that that have been charged that have gone to trial. I think the other thing that sort of, you know, and that we were kind of exploring in the podcast about this was the degree to which a lot of people, including in some cases, you know, some of these folks were acquitted.

So some juries were like, this wasn't a plot. Like, what are you talking about? And so even, you know, what's sort of fascinating, I think, to us about it in this current moment is that like there is even a great deal of contentiousness around the question of was this even a plot? I mean, I guess that's the question. Like you had, I remember Fox, Tucker Carlson and others at that time saying that this is just a group of friends. Like this is just a group of friends with a different political ideology. Why are they being targeted? You had that side, which is, you know, this said a couple of months later, they would tell us that

there was much to do about nothing with regard to January 6th and the insurrection. That was just a group of tourists. And so to what extent is it that the right is going to say, oh, don't look and target our people. You know, they just love their guns, but they love America and they wouldn't harm anybody versus like an intricate plot to kidnap and potentially kill a governor. Yeah, I think you put your finger up with one of the things that we thought about. And FBI agents that were not involved in the case, talk to us. about as well, which is there's this incredibly thin line between free speech and, you know, dangerous speech. And I don't envy what the FBI is supposed to do, which is sort of to protect public

safety and try to figure out exactly where that line is drawn. And so what the right gravitates to is this idea of this narrative that these are people who just sit around and are just like having chit chat with their buddies. And, you know, to be clear, I don't think either I or Jessica would ever say that these, the people involved in this case for the sort of people you'd want to have a beer with or what they said nice things. This is not the. the narrative you hear that maybe the Tucker Carlson's the World's Day, which is that January 6th was just like actually tourism and just like a really fun time. This is not like a fun time. These are people saying pretty horrible things, pretty scary things. And, you know, if you listen to the tapes,

we've got, we play in there, they say some to kind of peel your eyes back sort of things that really are not polite conversation. And so the FBI has to make that determination or their charge will make that determination of one that passes the line. You know, I think the right has spent a lot of time and effort trying to connect to these two cases, January 6th and the Whitmer plot. Those two things have been have been sort of tied together by what I personally regard as some pretty tenuous ideas that are verging on conspiracy theories, frankly, to tie them together and to suggest there's a continuum between the two cases. And to draw that out a little further, that narrative, what it accomplishes is it makes it seem like both of them were all part of a master plot by the deep state to hurt

President Trump or something. And the Michigan plot was a dress rehearsal and that it was about inserting FBI agents into things into making them up from whole cloth. And then January 6 itself would have been completely a false flag operation that was invented by the FBI and that there was somehow connected tition between the two. I personally discard those things. I don't believe that's even remotely true. But it is a narrative. And by the same token, you know, while I'm not convinced that there was a credible threat posed to Governor Whitmer by these people in Michigan mostly, but other states as well, I do think that it would have been correct and appropriate for the FBI to keeping an eye on these people. The kind of things they were saying and the kind of things

they were doing absolutely merited attention. And the question we really wanted to ask is, where does attention become sort of overaggressive intervention? Where is the control of the narrative move from the individuals who are saying these things to the FBI agents who are encouraging them to say certain more things and do take certain actions? I would be remiss. And Jessica, I want to point this question to you and then you can follow up on what Ken just said. But how much and I say this very much tongue and cheek as like a black queer woman in America, does race and the fact that these people were white play into the, well, let's kind of wait and see how this kind of plays out because I sure as hell know.

And every black person in this country knows that if January 6 looked anything other than like it did, all of those people would have been dead. And I could care less about the amount of pushback that people would love to say because I can point to so many other things that have happened. with least amount look like that and there's been considerable harm done to black people. So I'm just curious. I think that's a really good question. And, you know, I mean, I think how much does race play into this?

Let's just look at some of the interesting pieces of it, right? One of the interesting things about this case is that a lot of the people who are charged in this case ultimately are the same people who barge into the Michigan State Capitol in April of 2020, armed to the teeth, screaming and yell. And I kind of all remember that. I mean, you know, in my memory, it's like, oh, my God, like, what is happening? Right. But so many other, you know, you were locked in your house in April of 2020. If you were like me, you were still like chloroxing all of your grocery. It was like, you feel like the world's gone mad. And then you're like, oh my gosh. And so these are some of these same people. No one was charged with a crime for

that, but those people later wind up charged in this. And I think that's kind of one interesting fact. Another interesting fact is that one of the people who's charged in the case eventually picks up a black public defender in Michigan who kind of looks at the kind of goes to meet his client and expects that his client is going to be kind of a raving, right-wing, white supremacist. And instead is like, he's not. And he's like, but you know, the second I saw those people walking into the capital, I thought of the Black Panthers occupying the California State Capitol. And I thought some of these people are going to jail. So I think that, you know, he's making a commentary not about race in that case, but about power

and what happens when you kind of contest government power. I think it's interesting that, you know, I do think the outrage, you know, the playbook that the FBI uses in building this case has incredible similarities to the playbook that is used for decades against many, many, many Muslim people who the FBI system terrorism. And I think it's very interesting that you see this playbook used against white people and suddenly the right goes absolutely reacts with fury. And, you know, similar kinds of cases were brought quite successfully and without any attention against many, many, many Muslim defendants. And there was no outrage. And I, you know, I think that is

notable. I think that, you know, a lot of people kind of looking at this case from afar think that these people were kind of white supremacists. There's no, I should just point out that like, you know, there was no, there was no rhetoric like that on the tapes. I mean, were they conservative? Yes. Were they far right? Yes. I think the racial question is interesting, in part because of the outrage on the right when a playbook that has been used very successfully, and without controversy against people of color for decades, suddenly gets used against white defendants and people go crazy. The beginnings of this playbook really start back with like the Black Panthers.

I mean, the FBI was infiltrating them as well. And we're certainly a lot of evidence to suggest that the FBI played a very direct hand in the death of Fred Hampton using these kind of techniques. And when you come full circle now to now, it's a bunch of white guys in the boonies of Michigan are on the wrong end of that kind of investigation. And as Jessica said, people in the right lose their mind about it. But, you know, just a few weeks ago, a federal judge in New York State released the last of these four African-American Muslim men called the Newberg Four on compassionate grounds and completely ripped a new one to the FBI about the way it ran that case. And it was run using the exact same kind of techniques. So putting the people in the midst of, you know, sort of high qualified actors in the midst of people who are the least qualified people in society, people who tend to not have jobs, people who tend to have to be oppressed, either economically, culturally, socially, or in different ways, and to go to them and push them into doing things that they had maybe sort of idly thought about, but hadn't really taken any action on. And

the judge was really nasty about it and said, this is exactly what the FBI should not be doing. But I would argue, but that's exactly what they did in this case. And it is really a, it's notable, as you pointed out, that there was a lot more attention drawn to it when it was, you know, 14 white dudes as opposed to people of color. Yeah, I mean, as opposed to people of color that are fighting because of oppression, abject racism, violence, and, you know, destruction of their community. I really appreciate the both of you coming on. I think that what is most interesting to me about your pot, and I just want to give you guys a quick second to close out, are all of the audio tapes that were not released that you all have access to? And I guess the closing question that I'll have

is, what are you hoping that folks take away from season seven, the Michigan plot? My really quick answer is that I think this is not unique, but an unusual case in that it's a deeply polarizing case. Both sides of the political aisle or on the many sides have, they're very strong opinions about this, right? People on the left tend to, and their takeaway from the case was, you know, there for the grace of God, Richard Whitmer could be a dead person right now and that these horriblesters were put away properly by the FBI and thank God for them. And then the people on the right say this is an example of political persecution and these are innocent lambs who are taken to slaughter for some other purpose that's nefarious. And I honestly can't say I believe that either

of those sides are right. And I think that my hope anyway is that people by hearing these tapes, which have never been heard by the public at all, these were not played to the jury, these were not played in any public form whatsoever. And we were very fortunate to be able to get these hundreds of hours of tapes, paint a very different and more nuanced picture of it and perhaps show an FBI that isn't a malevolent actor, but is an institutionally designed actor to basically find bad guys wherever they look, like the expression about when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And I think, you know, I hope that people walk away with less of a belief in crazy conspiracy theories and also maybe less through this belief, which I personally find so odd at how a lot in the left

have embraced the FBI as some kind of great defender of progressive values. It's something I find kind of odd and ironic given the history of how the left felt of the FBI. That's all gone topsy-turvy in the last few years. So like my answer is, as usual, way less intellectual. I mean, I think two things. I think the sort of big question for me and for the juries and anybody kind of grappling with this case is the question of if they hadn't been arrested on their way to Buffalo Wild Wings in October of 2020, would they have taken action or not? And I don't know the answer to that. They say they definitely wouldn't have, but like, you know, they probably would say that, right? I still don't know. So I think that is just an interesting thing to grapple with in a true crime question, right? Because a lot of true crime is like, there's 17 dead bodies, right? Like, there are no dead bodies. Right. Thank God. And so I think that's the sort of first takeaway that you kind of, I think really grapple with this question of like, how are you supposed to police things like this?

Because I don't think anyone who listens to this would be like, oh my God, no problem here. Stop paying attention to this, right? I mean, the stuff that people are saying, you would really be angry at the FBI if they were like, well, there's nothing we can do. So there's that. question. And then I think, you know, as someone who has been a journalist for a long, long time and is often kind of, you know, picking up things about, you know, about crimes after they've been committed, what is fascinating about this is you just get to kind of go into the, you know, key fob in the pocket of this informant and hear it for yourself, many minutes of it. And it is, to me, just utterly fascinating to kind of hear this world. Well, I appreciate the both of you for making

time for the new abnormal. It's fascinating. Folks, the pod is chameleon. The Michigan plot. It is the seventh season and it is absolutely intriguing and everyone should check it out. Thank you, Jessica and Ken for making the time. Appreciate you. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. Amazing questions. Thank you so much. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are we kicking off this week with your fuck that guy? All right. So I'm kicking it off. with he's one of the worst people in the world. This particular thing, there are things that are far worse that are going on in this country. I want to acknowledge that. This is just too, I don't even know what the word is. Like, I'd like to say funny. It is kind of funny in a way. Anyway, let me get

into it and then you all can decide. Ted Cruz, who we might remember from getting caught in an airport heading to Cancun while people were dying in Texas, I believe it was without heat in their homes. He is now proposing a bill that would give members of Congress and their family increased security while traveling through airports and would allow for them to be screened not in view of the public. And he couches this in terms of, well, it's people in Congress. It is federal judges. It's cabinet members. And it's really it's for security reasons. And he says there are serious security threats facing public officials. And we need to take reasonable measures to keep everyone's. safe. You know, I could almost buy that if he hadn't been given the name Cancun Ted for a very good reason. And if this weren't so clearly a way of trying to make sure that that doesn't happen again. And by that, I don't mean him traveling to Cancun while his constituents are dying. I mean him getting caught traveling to Cancun while his constituents are dying. It is so cynical and just so

self-serving. And that's, I was like, I got to do this for fuck that guy, even though there are worst things in the world going on and worse things in the country going on. But he is just such a ball of crap. And I had to make it my fuck that guy simply for that reason. So fuck that guy. Cancun Cruz. That's all you need to know. Constituents freezing to death. And he said, well, my vacation was pre-planned. And just fucking went anyway. Couldn't miss out on that all-inclusive. You know? Just amazing. Fuck that guy. Yeah. I'm going to guess your fuck that guy is probably more important. Probably not. You know, it's just the state of Florida doing what the state of Florida does.

Here's something new, but it's just new in the range of it doesn't really matter. They won't be able to enforce it. What does this actually even look like? But the state of Florida, the house, has passed a bill that would ban children under 16 from social media. And here's what is being reported out of. The Republican-backed bill, which hones in on social media's addictive features, would be one of the strictest social media restrictions in the country if passed by the Senate and signed into law by DeSantis. Here's some just valid points. One, unclear how the legislation would be enforced. One would think that when you are writing legislation, you would then also have to provide how it would be enforced.

So how does one stop a 16 and under from being on social media? Are the sites going to be blocked? Who's blocking them? Right? Because when I, for instance, go into, let's say, a site for alcohol, all they're asking me for is my birthday. Is there going to be a hologram that comes up from the phone that scans them? Like, what are we doing here? And also, what's the purpose?

Yes, social media is absolutely a problem. And for the parental control folks, you would think that this would be a point where parents would figure that shit out without government intervention. It's just amazing to me that when Republicans decide to intervene, it's on shit like this that is not enforceable, but somehow, I don't know, maybe they think they'll be, you know, getting one over on the Singaporean government or as Cotton likes to think of them as China. I don't know. But like, it's, it's, it's so stupid. It says that it would, the bill would require social media companies to prohibit minors. Again, how do you do that? And it would also require reasonable verification.

Let me tell you something. Young people these days really informed, really tech savvy. I think that this legislation is stupid. I think that when we are actually looking for parental control, this is what this would look like. limit your child's ability to be on social media. You've seen all the reports. You've seen the datelines. You don't need the Republican Party restricting your child's access.

Or is it really that this generation is just a little too woke and you don't want them to have access to information and critical thoughts? So you deny them the ability to connect and create community on social media. You also take all of the books off of the bookshelves in the libraries and then you pass legislation that says that they can also work 30 hours a week while they're in school. Does everybody see the direction that all of this is moving in? Because I fucking do. And it seems really clear. They don't give a fuck about your kids. What they want is your kids back to work, which is why they have rolled back a whole bunch of work permits and laws that would keep kids

safe and have for generations. But this is what the Republican Party walks. So don't think for a second, that they're actually concerned about what your kids see. They don't care if they're working in a meat packing plant and they lose an arm so long as they're working. So for that reason, fuck those guys. Yeah, there's so many things wrong with this. The first one is, aren't conservatives on this parental rights kick? Yeah. You know, and that's the whole point. That's the whole point. But that's supposed to be the whole point of like not letting kids use different pronouns in schools and stuff like that because it's usurping parents' rights. What the hell is this bill doing, but usurping parents' rights? So if a parent wants their 14-year-old to be allowed to go on social media,

they can't? How is that parents' rights? How is that parental rights? The other thing is, not only do they not care about the kids, what this bill does is basically not that it would ever work, and a similar bill in Utah is already being pushed back from like March to October because there are lawsuits against it because it's blatantly unconstitutional, as is the Florida bill. So you let me get this straight. You don't want kids to, I don't know, maybe be able to talk to people on social media if they're feeling suicidal. You can say what you want about social media. Yes, it generally sucks. And I agree that there are cases when it can be harmful for kids. And I am very happy that I grew up in an age when I was a teenager when social media didn't exist.

to just put a blanket ban on this for everyone under 16 is in addition to being unconstitutional is just irrevocably stupid. There's a decent chance. It will lead to death because kids won't be able to get the help they need. And yeah, so just fuck these guys. 100%. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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