The Daily Beast Podcast - Republicans Used to Love Outsourcing, Now Blame Unions

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

As President Donald Trump’s flip-flopping on tariffs roils the stock market, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick took to CNBC earlier this week to blame the outsourcing of American manufacturing on labor unions. Plus! TNA spoke with The New York Times’s David Enrich about Murder the Truth, a new book about New York Times Company v. Sullivan, a landmark Supreme Court ruling that guaranteed freedom of the press and has come under attack from oligarchs seeking to silence the media. 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.

Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Author and Business Investigations Editor at the New York Times, David Enrich, joins us to discuss his latest book, Murder the Truth, Fear, the First Amendment, and a secret campaign to protect the powerful. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips.

Clips. All right. So Trump's economy, it's really going well. And so Howard Lutnik went on to defend it on CNBC. And, well, it went as well as you'd expect. T-shirt, T-shirts, sneakers, and you're talking about it today. Are we going to make all those things in the United States? None of them are made here.

TVs, electronics. Why did we stop? Because we entered into an illogical world of low tariffs here. and high tariffs there. So everybody could go find the cheapest place in the world. I mean, think about it. Why would a factory that was making cars in Michigan move to Canada? Because I tell you why.

Because they did it because they weren't unions in these locations. We harmed American workers in exchange for what? The prices of cars didn't come down. Donald Trump understands it. He's going to bring it back. Forgive me, but wasn't it Republican? that gave incentives for factories to go abroad, like you were not penalized for doing that.

And the reason why they did it was because it was cheaper, unregulated labor. So like for him to now come in and say, oh, well, Donald Trump is going to bring it back, Republicans sent it away. How about that? Like, does anybody remember that? I don't think so. And the time that it's going to take to what,

build up these factories again that have, rust it all in the rust belt and train people with skills that they don't have in that time, like, what is going to happen to our economy? It's going to tank. So, like, bravo. I mean, also, and I suppose this should go without saying, he's lying. He blamed this on unions in America. Canada has unions. Canada has an auto workers union. Canada's auto workers union covers the people employed by Chrysler Ford and GM in Canada. So this has nothing to do with unions. Unions is just a nice thing that Republicans like to pretend is the cause of every bad labor thing that happens in this country, which is objectively not true.

So he's absolutely lying. And look, it was nice that CNBC was sort of laughing at him. It wasn't sort of. They were laughing at him. Yeah. And I mean, more of that. But at the same time, like, they're just going to lie and lie and lie over and over again because they know that what they're claiming, the benefits that they're claiming simply are never going to happen.

And so they have to lie in order to try to make all this stuff palatable to Americans. And so every time they say something, you just have to realize that they're lying. Yeah. And one of the things is when we talk about all these job openings in America, these are already what the job openings are, and I know this very firsthand because one of my good friends, though it's one of the largest t-shirt printing companies in America, he cannot keep employees because the gig economies and all these things offer a better deal for people. And what they literally say to them is they're like, well, this isn't the type of job I'm supposed to have.

I have a high school diploma. So good luck with that. Yeah. And this is a problem he's had for years now, and he pays well above, the standard of what these workers are usually paid. Well, thankfully, you know, we're not seeing a huge rise in unemployment due to all these federal workers being fired. Yeah, yeah, good stuff.

So, Congress, they don't bring us their best, especially one Congressman Paul Gosar, who's not one of the greatest minds to ever get there. So he took on Boston Mayor Michelle Wu in a hearing about sanctuary cities, and I think he thought he was a little smarter than he is. Respectfully, Congressman, you could pass bipartisan. legislation and that would be comprehensive immigration law. The false narrative is that immigrants in general are criminals or immigrants in general cause all sorts of danger and harm. That is that is actually what is undermining safety in our communities.

If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms. Stop cutting Medicaid. Stop cutting cancer research. Stop cutting funds for veterans. That is what will make our city safe. I want to move to Boston. I have such mayor envy right now. Michelle Wu brought it at that hearing and it was, I mean, and let me tell you, the symbolic imagery there too of her speaking on behalf of immigrants and undocumented people in Boston with the markings of Ash Wednesday to these people that used the Bible as their justification for discriminating was gorgeous. Like it was gorgeous in its imagery and symbolism.

And I just, yeah, I have mayor envy. Please take us. There's a really interesting thing going on on TikTok where there's a lot of videos going around of white folks in Boston. And they're meant to be, you know, sort of humorous, but also true, basically saying, you know, because Boston does not have the best reputation when it comes to race relations. Really? Yeah, no, I know, I know.

But it's basically this whole series of videos that people from Boston keep posting and then they keep getting reposted of them being anti-ice coming into Boston and trying to deport immigrants. And it's basically a bunch of them saying, you know, yeah, we're racist, but these are our people. We can fight with them, but you don't come in here and try to take them away. Jesus Christ. Yeah, and it's sort of half funny and half really dark. and sad. But it is kind of interesting to see that even people who don't necessarily have the best views of black people and of immigrants and of brown people in general, even they are like,

fuck you, ICE, you are not coming in here and taking away the people that I love. Right, exactly, that I love to yell at, you know? So it is just a really interesting thing going on in Boston right now. my person to abuse that Dunkin' Donuts in the line where they don't have colors. Exactly. That's literally what they're saying. But look, I mean, I guess you take allies where you can lock them at times like this. At this point, I'll take it.

Yeah, and it was quite a different energy compared to AOC questioning our Mayor Eric Adams, who literally was told repeatedly he cannot plea and that he would have to take the fifth. And he seemingly just decided, no, I'm going to play dumb, which he plays well. Yeah, yeah, I don't know that he was playing. Unfortunately.

Overestimating people yet again. Okay. So now, speaking of people, someone I would never overestimate, one James Comer, not the best. Here he is going up against Representative Iona Presley in a recent hearing. Sent request, Mr. Chairman, have unanimous consent request. Proceed. I'd like to seek unanimous consent to enter into the record, this article, and I'll do this as a survivor of sexual violence myself. This is from courts March 2018.

Without objections, so ordered. Data from Texas shows that U.S. Without objections, I ordered. We've put it in the record. I have an internet. Do you have what? Mr. Jerry, can I have several articles. I need to enter them.

Let me just go ahead with the articles are. What's the next article? Let me proceed. Data from Texas shows that U.S. born Americans commit more rape and murder than immigrants. Listen, this trend of you all trying to get thrown out of committee so you can get on MSNBC is going to end. We're not going to put up with it. This is my procedural right as a member of this committee.

You can go, you can go with Mr. Frost and Mr. Green. That's what you want. No, no. Ms. Presley, I've been very, I have been very accommodated to you. Mr. Superjohn. And I take particular umbrage as a survivor of sexual violence. violence. I will enter into the record. This is my

right. Thank you. No, no. It is Mr. Subramyam. Mr. Chair? No, you know the process of unanimous consent. You are not recognized. I have several articles to enter into the record. Mr. Suburiam, if you don't go, we're going to

recognize Mr. Timmons. So things are going well up there. Yeah. That was the same hearing, by the way, with Michelle Okay. Because it was about... Sanctuary cities. Yeah. What she was trying to do was enter into the record articles that have statistics that show that despite what Republicans want everyone to believe that it ain't undocumented immigrants who are committing all the crimes. But look, this is where we're at right now. I mean, she is absolutely doing something that's within her right and that is part of the rules of order.

and Comer didn't want her to say that stuff. So he was like, yeah, just you can put it in the record, which of course, nobody looks at the record. So he wanted to basically silence her. It was sort of a weird sort of silence by allowing her to do the one thing, but not allowing her to do the thing that is the part that gets your point across. And he is just, he's an utter piece of shit. I don't know how else to put it. All right. Well, now we come to a very awkward moment here where recently Pete Hegseth has for some reason stopped cyber operations going against Russia.

And Rep Carlos Jimenez was on Fox business when he seemed to learn of this and yikes. Defense Secretary Pete Haxeth, he's ordered a pause to offensive cyber operations in Russia. Comson, why are we doing this and why are we doing it now? I'm sorry, who did that? Pete Hector. He's ending offensive cyber operations in Russia as of now.

I don't know why he's doing that. The Russians are attacking us every single day. The Chinese are attacking us every single day. I don't think you do, you signal the Russians that, hey, we're going to unilaterally withdraw from this space. If they can keep attacking us and they do every single day, they should be fearful of our, capacity to inflict damage on them.

So I really don't understand where that's coming from. It makes it look like we're moving to Russia's side, doesn't it? Well, I hate to use the word, but tilting towards Russia looks like that. Well, that would be a mistake in my side. Look, I can't wait for his pivot. When did he receive the Russian talking points? I'm certain that following that maybe hours or days later, he'll have a pivot just in the same way. that, you know, Lindsay Graham does every time he takes a step forward.

He takes 17 steps back. So, yeah, why would you do that? Why would you open the candy jar to Russia? I don't know, because you love them. And like, and you're working for them? I don't know. Like, why would that be a thing? Yeah.

Let us ask ourselves. The interesting thing here is he is Cuban. He's of Cuban descent. And most Cubans are not big fans of Russia. You don't say. Yeah. So I'm sure that has something to do with why he is not a fan of this. And yeah, Danielle, it will absolutely be interesting to see if he backtracks from this.

Because what he said to Stuart Varney, who, by the way, I am very surprised, actually seemed to frame the question in a way that made me think, at least, that he thinks this is crazy, too. What he said there is clearly what he actually believes. So if he backtracks, it will be very clear that someone got to him and he is no longer saying what he actually believes. David Enrich is the Business Investigations editor for the New York Times and the author of the book's Dark Towers and Servants of the Damned. His latest book out Tuesday is called Murder the Truth, Fear the First Amendment and a secret campaign to protect the powerful. And he joins me now to discuss it. David, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. Well, let's start at the beginning.

The book is about the secret and not so secret efforts on the right to weaken and possibly overturn the landmark 1964 Supreme Court decision, New York Times v. Sullivan. Can you give our listeners a quick primer as to what that case was and why the decision is so important for freedom of the press? Yeah, I could give the quick version or the 45-minute version. I'll as quick as I can. This case revolves around an ad that ran in the New York Times in 1960 that was basically a fundraising, appeal on behalf of Martin Luther King. And it had a lot of text in the ad accusing Southern officials of violating the Constitution and acting in kind of a Stalinist manner. The gist of the ad was completely true. But there were some details that it got wrong or that were exaggerated.

And so Montgomery Alabama official sued the New York Times. He wasn't even named in the ad, but he thought that the ad kind of by implication defamed him. He sued the New York Times. And this was part of a strategy at the time by Southern officials to kind of use the ad, use lawsuits to deter news outlets like the Times and like national TV broadcasters from writing or covering the civil rights movement. And it was working. And these lawsuits were like potentially ruinous financially for these news outlets. And some of them, including the Times, as a result of these lawsuits, pulled the reporters out of states like Alabama and discouraged people from writing about institutional racism in those states. So L.B. Sullivan files his lawsuit. He wins at trial.

the Times appeals to the state Supreme Court. The Times loses there, so Sullivan wins. And the Times as a last ditch effort appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1964 issues this now famous ruling. And the crux of it is that the Supreme Court found that enforcing laws like Alabama's essentially violated the First Amendment's guarantee of a free press. And the reason was that if you are going to write about public officials, you need to be, if you're a journalist or a member of the public, you need to have some breathing room, basically, to get facts wrong on occasion. And the ruling said that in order to win in a defamation case, a public official would have to prove not only that they were defamed and that information was false, but that the journalist or whoever else made

the incorrect statement had basically knew that what they were saying was false, that they were lying or that they had acted with reckless disregard for his accuracy. And so that's standard, which was later applied to not just government officials, but powerful and really wealthy people all over the country. It basically allowed the media and others to investigate and can scrutinize and criticize powerful people in our society without fear that if you make an innocent mistake, you're going to get sued into oblivion. And so it's come to be regarded as one of, if not the most important Supreme Court rulings that have enshrines the First Amendment guarantees that the press is not going to be cowed into submission just because you have a lot of money or a lot of power.

Okay. So for decades, Sullivan was settled law and as you said, considered one of the most, possibly overall, one of the most important decisions SCOTUS has ever rendered. But then, and obviously I'm simplifying here a little bit, but then a bunch of right-wing rich dudes got angry that they didn't always get glowing media coverage and they decided to team with some high-powered lawyers to chip away at the libel protections granted by Sullivan while waging basically legal warfare against journalists and media organizations in an attempt to sort of go back to what you were saying, a situation where journalists could be intimidated into silence. Is that about right? Yeah, that's about right. I mean, it became clear starting around 2015, 2016, that even with the protections that Sullivan

had established, it was pretty easy for really rich people and really powerful people to use weaponized lawsuits or even the threat of lawsuits to make it financially and sometimes psychologically impractical for journalists to pursue them. And, you know, I work at the New York Times. We have a really amazing in-house legal department. We've got financial resources. So there's less of an issue with places like the Times. So there's much more of an issue at, you know, smaller newspapers around the country.

And also with people who are one of the nice things in the media right now is that is its proliferation of people doing substack newsletters or, I don't know, having their own podcasts, things like that. And these threats have been especially detrimental. and I think really kind of censorious for outlets and journalists like that who just don't have the financial resources and or even kind of wherewithal to find a good lawyer who's going to represent them. And so it's being used systematically to shut down critical coverage, whether it's of the president of the United States or of like a local real estate developer who is, you know, facing controversy in his town or city. And on top of that, a lot of the lawyers who are bringing these cases. and making a lot of money off these cases are trying to make it even easier for lawsuits like this to be filed and for those lawsuits to stand a decent chance of winning. And the way to do that is to either get the Sullivan decision overturned outright or, and I think this is more practical in the short term, at least, to kind of chip away at it around the edges. And so make it a little bit easier on the margins for rich and famous people to intimidate the media.

So I want to ask you, because you write about it extensively in the book, in 2012, Peter Thiel, essentially sued Gawker. He did this sub-Rosa and under the guise of it being a case about Hulk Hogan. And his strategy, in effect, was to find a proxy and then go for a quote-unquote crippling verdict. It can't really be overstated how much this lawsuit damaged the American press, can it? I think that it sent a very clear signal to anyone who is paying attention that if you have a lot of money at your disposal, here is a roadmap for how you can cripple a news outlet, triple if not destroy in New Zealand. And this was, you know, ostensibly, as you said, about Hulk Hogan's right to privacy

being invaded. But really, it was that Peter Thiel detested the fact that Gawker was kind of pioneering this form of coverage. It was really critical of Silicon Valley. And he viewed that, I think, rightly, as a threat to the perception of Silicon Valley guys like him as being these, like, creative geniuses and who just didn't do anything wrong. And so he set out to destroy them, and it worked. It really just put everyone on alert that you could use this type.

of weaponized lawsuit, not only to be compensated if you were defamed or your privacy rates were violated, but that you could use as kind of an offensive weapon to punish those outlets that investigate you or pursue you, but also to really let everyone else know that these are the consequences you might face if you go down this path. And so it became a really effective deterrent message as well. Yeah. And on top of all of that, which is bad enough, there was a little thing in the book that I found astounding. And maybe it was just me because I didn't know this. But basically you write that Teal would never have put money into Trump's 2016 campaign, which was a huge deal at the time if it hadn't been for the Gawker trial. Explain this to our listeners.

Yeah, I found that really surprising as well. I think the starting point I just need to mention quickly, and I'm not going to dwell on this. But the Hulk Hogan lawsuit was the culmination of a years-long effort by Peter Thiel and this kind of army that he had amassed to find weaknesses with Gawker. And again, the Holkogen thing was not really about Holkogen. And this was finally Peter Thiel's army had found a weak point and they were going to attack with all the weapons they had. And one of the weapons they had went as an inch toward trials. They commissioned really extensive public opinion surveys in the St. Petersburg and Tampa area in Florida, which is where the lawsuit was being brought and where the trial was going to take place. And the point of the public opinion service was really to kind of gauge what the jury pool was like, what they thought about the media, what they thought about kind of New York elites.

You can't see me making quotation marks in the air. But basically, they wanted to kind of suss out what the best lines of attack with this kind of Gulf Coast jury would be. And one of them, it turned out, was that there was this really deep-seated, festering irritation with the media, the coastal elites and the media. And so Teal saw that, and that obviously helped them strategically with picking jurors and kind of designing the arguments that they were going to make a trial. But Teal also recognized that this was, he thought they were on to something in terms of the changing views of the American public. And so he saw in Trump someone whose campaign was just kind of taking off at the same time that the trial was getting underway in early 2016. He saw in Trump someone who was making arguments that he thought would basically resonate with the jurors that they were selecting in this trial. And it offered him kind of a glimmer of hope that maybe this undervalued candidate and under-eastern.

an underestimated candidate was someone that he could invest in, essentially, and that that would turn out to be a really profitable investment. So he was one of the first people in the Silicon Valley community that actually publicly aligned with Trump. He spoke at the Republican convention that year. He donated a large amount of money to Trump's campaign. And that was a really important point for Trump, because not only did the campaign need the money, but it also was this rare example of a very well-established, if controversial, business. leader throwing his money and endorsement behind Trump. And it really lent him some establishment credibility at a time where he was really severely lacking in that. Yeah, for sure.

2016 really does seem like a watershed year for these attacks on Sullivan. As you write in the book, until around 2016, conservatives love the Sullivan ruling. And then came, as you titled part two of the book, The Shift. And it really was Donald Trump in large part that started this. And he, his anti- Media Crusade, as you point out, did build on the ones of previous conservatives going back to the Spiro Agnews of the world, the Newt Gingriches of the world. But he took it much further, didn't he? And he embarked on what you call a blitzkrieg that cast journalists as America's enemies. Yeah. And I think this is, I think this started off in Trump's mind as something that was a way to kind of just rev up his base and kind of get people into a kind of an us versus them fury and be angry at the media

elites. And I think he eventually realized that this was something that could be a lot more powerful. And his first administration was predicated often spreading falsehoods and, you know, having a vigorous probing media outlet that is refuting those falsehoods and that is being taken seriously by a great many Americans that posed a real threat to him politically. And so weakening the media became part of his kind of survival strategy. And in effect, and look, we've seen that exponentially more in the early weeks of his second administration. But even back in the 2017-2018 period, this was really a survival strategy, I think, on the Trump White House's part, that if people are going to believe the media, that is really going to impair our ability to push an agenda

that is often just divorced from the truth. And so it was a very deliberate strategy, I think, to discredit and disarm the media as much as possible, not just through rhetoric, but through legal actions as well and through threats and intimidation. And you can see, starting around this period, a lot of his allies and closest supporters began filing a lot of lawsuits against the media, threatening to file even more lawsuits. And of course, that's something that Trump had done throughout his career, but also and really accelerated his use of those threats in that litigation as well. Yeah, for sure. And let's talk about some of his admirers and supporters, particularly let's talk about Clarence Thomas, because as the book makes clear, he is such a key figure in all of this.

In 1991, when he's at his confirmation hearings after being nominated to the Supreme Court, he speaks up very strongly about the importance of New York Times v. Sullivan. And then a few days later, I think it is, the Anita Hill allegations come out. Yeah. Well, and look, what he said at his confirmation hearings was the fifth day of them. And he had spent the previous four days doing what many judicial nominees are trained to do, which is, you know, kind of deflecting senators' questions. about what do you think about this case or what do you think about that case? And finally, by day five,

it seemed like he had kind of gotten a little bit worn down. And I watched all these hearings just fairly recently doing this book research. And I was really surprised by the kind of directness and candor with which he answered the question about New York Times versus Sullivan. And he said his wife was sitting right there behind him. And he turned around and looked at her and basically said, you know, she and I have had this conversation about how terrible it is being in the media spotlight and having reporters kind of digging through my professional and personal history. But even despite that, I believe that it's really important in this country to have a free press. And that is what the Supreme Court was trying to achieve with New York Times versus Sullivan.

And I support it. And again, in his confirmation hearings, this is probably the most direct answer that I heard to a direct question about how he thought about a particular precedent. And so it's pretty unusual. And then, as you said, a few days later, the Anita Hill news breaks. and the media storm around that is obviously very intense. And while Thomas survives that ordeal, his view toward the media, which I think had already been fairly negative, becomes extremely negative.

And he came to view the media as part of that process as just this force for evil. I obviously disagree with that characterization. But I think that it was, that was really like one of the animating moments in his life. I mean, he was on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. And he viewed the media as his persecutor. And that over the ensuing, what, 25 or 30 years from 1991 until 2019, I think he was, this resentment was just bestering and building up inside of him. And he came to view the media in these kind of distorted terms.

And there is, he wrote this memoir in 2007 that recounts some of the injustices that the media has inflicted upon him. And some of them are just made up. And I went and fact-checked this stuff. And it's just not true. a lot of what he was saying. But he had gotten in his head that the media was this rabid dog, essentially, that was relentlessly pursuing him. And so in 2019, he gets this opportunity to, for lack of better word, kind of vent all of that festering anger. And he did it by issuing an

opinion that fakes aim at Sullivan and calls for it to be overturned. Yeah. Is that McKee v. Cosby? Yeah. It's the Mickey case. Yeah. Yeah. Is where he writes, and again, as you said, it's not the majority opinion, but he writes an entire thing about how he's come to believe that New York Times v. Sullivan should be overturned. And then in 2021, there's another case where the Supreme Court actually declined to grant cert on this case, but Thomas and another justice now seems to join in on the anti-Sullivan campaign. Yeah, and the other justice is Neil Gorsuch. And yeah, he jumps on this bandwagon.

And I think it's worth noting that in the intervening year between the McKee case in 2019 and this subsequent case in 2021, there was another, a federal judge on the D.C. Appeals Circuit, which is probably the second most important and powerful court in the country. And a judge there who was Thomas's longtime friend and ally who had been with him back to his days when he was on the EEOC. So going way back. He issued this scathing opinion kind of drawing on and building on Thomas's arguments in the McKee case. So there was Thomas, then there was Judge Silverman, who was Thomas's long-time Alley. And then in 2021, you've got Thomas and Gorsuch, both writing opinions in this case of the court never even hears. Gorsuch, too, is kind of recycling and echoing some of Thomas's

arguments, but building his own kind of case against Sullivan. And as it happened, that case was drawn almost entirely from an obscure law review article written by a professor in Rhode Island. And the article is, I mean, it's just filled with kind of logical gaps that I have kind of done my best to deconstruct, but also it's underlying data that he, that this professor uses to make it seem that it's impossible for public figures to ever win cases against the media. The data he's using, it turns out to be wrong and misinterpreted. And Gorsuch, of course, parrots all this data and this kind of faulty logic from the Larview article. And he gets it wrong tip. So that became one of kind of the most persuasive or most influential opinions calling into question

solving. And it's just it's it is a pocked with holes. Yeah. And look, there's so much more in the book that talks about how we got here and various cases where we saw rich oligarchs, whether Russian or American, trying to use the courts to silence their critics. But I want to ask you about some things that have happened, I guess really since you wrote the book, book. And that is ABC News settled a defamation suit that Trump filed against them and George Stephanopoulos. Paramount is reportedly in talks to settle the suit that Trump has filed against 60 minutes. Trump has filed a suit against the Des Moines Register. Its owner, Gannett, and its longtime poster and Seltzer. All of this is exactly what you're talking about in the book, isn't it?

Yeah, it's a logical extension of what I'm talking about in the book. And there's no question that Trump is using the legal tactics that he and his allies have been honing for years now. He's using them now as president to try to get the media to kind of relent and lighten up on him, which again is a crucial part of his kind of plans to enact his agenda, because if you have a media refuting the lies and conspiracy theories and distortions that this White House is peddling, that poses a real threat to the agenda of the president. And so the strategy, I think, is to not only sue companies and sue news outlets, but also to just send a very loud, clear message to anyone else who might want to investigate the president or his allies, that if you do this, you can expect a

really ferocious response. And that's something that for a lot of news outlets right now that are operating kind of on a financial knife's edge, that's not an attractive prospect. And so I think it's a widespread effort to deter and penalize dissent. And that is not what the First Amendment is supposed to allow. The book is Murder the Truth, Fear the First Amendment, and a secret campaign to protect the powerful. It's out Tuesday. And as you've just heard, it could not be more timely.

David Endrich, thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with. the 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.