The Daily Beast Podcast - Rev. Mariann Budde Rattles Trump With Plea for ‘Mercy’

Episode Date: January 26, 2025

Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde rattles President Donald Trump during his big inauguration week by asking for “mercy.” During an inaugural prayer service on Wednesday at Washington National Cathedral, Budde addressed Trump in her sermon. “Mr. President, millions have put their trust in you, and as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God in the name of our God. I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We're scared.” The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie called the address to the president Trump an “absolute profile in courage.” She added, “I know that MAGA loves to feed off people's fear and that's what gets them excited, but it is people like her that are modeling how you stand up to these people.” Plus! Political scientist Jules Boykoff, author of What Are the Olympics For?, explores the intersection between sports and politics. 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.

Welcome back to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Let me thank you so much for being here. Political scientist Jules Boycuff, author of What Are the Olympics for, explores the intersection of sports and politics with us today, and his latest piece, Donald Trump's return to power lays bare the lie that sports don't matter. That's going to give us a big inside look on how Trump used sports to boost his campaign while Democrats overlooked their influence. But first, let's have some fun.

Hey guys. Would you like to listen to some clips today? Is this the Mr. Rogers version of the new abnormal? Jesse, what big ears you have. Yeah, it's Seamus today, and I don't feel like doing my Jesse impression. Well, you guys want to have some clips? Clips. Clips.

There we go. Okay. So this first clip, well, this should be a troubling sentence. First off, Jesse picked these clips. Elon Musk's father. Father. Oh, God. Yeah, no sentence in the news has ever begun that says Elon Musk's father is presenting

with good news. It's what weird insult to his son does he have today. Well, we all saw what Elon Musk did at the inauguration and we can debate what it was. But that doesn't really matter. The world's richest man went on stage and possibly did a Nazi salute. Elon Musk's father decided to go on a, I assume a podcast here and educate us about Elon Musk's maternal grandparents. The heaven was, we broke up with. She was in final year and, no, wait a bit, when we were going out, she still going out, I didn't get, her parents, by the way, were very fanatical in favor of apartheid.

This is quite interesting. Her parents came to South Africa from Canada because they sympathized with the Afrikaner government. They used to support Hitler and all that sort of stuff. But they didn't know, obviously, I don't think they knew what the Germans were, the Nazis were doing. But they, in Canada, they were in the Nazi, they were in the German party in Canada. And they sympathized with the Germans. Yeah. So when the Afrikaners government came into power here in 1948, then May's father,

who was quite an interesting guy, he was a very good pilot, he said he wants to be with Afrikaners, because he agrees with apartheid, you see. You see what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And he came out here with his family. Didn't that cause tension with you? Yeah, that caused a lot of tension with me. And because I was a member, I was a director of Nusas, which was a national union of South African students, which is a very anti-aporte body, you know.

And, and, and, and, and, um, I argued with them a lot. And they used to tell me, it used to be, like, rude to me, you know, and, um, the parents. and then when I was when May was in her final year around about that time I said look I'm not doing the cinema I don't want to come to our cinema I don't like your parents you see really so then she cried she said but don't worry about them I said no I'm finished I'm not interested in this nonsense and and and her parents even said they're going to get somebody else to go out with her they don't even want me to go

out with them things like that you know typical yeah yeah yeah It's quite normal. You're getting that everywhere. Anyway, so then May cry. She cried for three weeks, she told me. I was told she didn't stop crying for three weeks. But then she lost all her weight. And she became very thin from crying.

Didn't eat. Okay, what is going on here? Well, May Musk was a heavy set girl with Nazi sympathizing parents who moved to South Africa because they were very interested in apartheid. And he was upset about it. And that made her cry. And then she lost a lot of weight from crying. No, I, I understood that.

Mm-hmm. I just... But why? Yeah. Why do we care? Right. As more of an existential why than, you know, anything else. I don't particularly care what Elon Musk's father's politics were.

I don't particularly care what Elon Musk's grandparents' politics were because that doesn't matter. Plenty of people are different than their parents. Plenty more people are different from their grandparents. And the whole point of Errol Musk telling the story was to say that there's no way Elon through a Nazi salute. And that's simply not true. Again, I don't care. I don't care whether May Musk was upset at her parents. None of this matters.

And I really, this is not me. ragging on this clip. It's just in general, I don't like seeing, like, people try to get into this. And they're like, well, it's no accident that Elon Musk feels this way because his grandfather's, no, it doesn't, things don't work that way. Mm-hmm. Like, they do sometimes. Sometimes you're, you know, sometimes you happen to agree with a grandparent. Sometimes you are indoctrinated to agree with a grandparent. But oftentimes, you look at it. your grandparents and you're like, man, they were fucked up. And so it's just, I, I've never, I've never seen the point in, in, in arguing that we need to look at what Musk's parents or

grandparents or whatever believed to get a sense of who he is and what he believes. He's showing us who he is and what he believes. We don't need this. I just, I'm, I'm like, can we just believe, can we believe our own eyes? Can we believe our own ears? Elon Musk for years. now has been telling us where his ideology is, what his ideology is, what he is proud of, what he believes in. So just fucking believe him. I don't need his lineage, right? It is a waste of time and it is a fucking distraction. The richest man in the world is a white supremacist. He is anti-trans. He is anti-freedom of speech. He is anti-democracy. And he's been using his money and his influence to meddle in elections, not just in this country, but around the world.

So let's stick with what we know for sure because of what he is doing on a regular basis. Fuck that guy. And I know it ain't the segment, but I don't feel of fuck. The dude is supporting the AFP in Germany. Even if you knew nothing else about him, that's enough. His daughter actually came out and said, when asked about it, said, call a spade a spade of Yeah. His daughter's the only one in that family that makes a lick of sense. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. All right, guys, we're going to move. on to the next one. I was an altar boy as a child. That's it. There was nothing else that happened. Okay. Discuss? It's just a real bait.

No, so I think you guys know what this clip is going to be. So to preempt it just because I think it's very tonally different. I'm going to read you guys the response from the president to what you're about to hear. But I also can't do a Trump impression. So what I've realized is that if you read his things like Ira Glass, it still kind of works. Oh, okay. The so-called bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a radical left, hard-lined Trump hater. She brought her church to the world of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone and not compelling or smart. She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA.

Apart from her inappropriate statements, the surface was a very boring and uninspiring one. She is not very good at her job. She and her church are the public an apology. Now let's listen to those terrible comments. make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you. And as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country. We're scared now. There are gay, lesbian, and transgender children in

Democratic, Republican, and independent families, some who fear for their lives. And the people, the people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meatpacking plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals, they may not be citizens,

or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and our good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, Wadara, and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.

Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we will all want strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love, and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people, good of all people in this nation and the world. I can't thank Bishop Marianne Edgar Buddy enough for being an absolute profile in courage, a level of courage and directness that we have not seen from ne'er an elected official, pushing back against the horrendous flurry of executive orders that we have seen. And the recognition that there are people in this country right now that are terrified,

that are terrified to leave their homes, to go to school, to go to work, because of what may be meeting them on the other side. Now, I know that Maga loves to feed off of people's fear, and that's what gets them excited. But it is people like her that are modeling how you stand up to, and how you are direct with these people. And I for one loved watching them have to sit in that church and listen to everything that she said without any of their nastiness and their vile comments that they love to spew on

like on the house floor or on social media. They just had to sit and listen. So she used her moment and her platform and her religion in the best possible. way. Brilliant. If you watch that clip, it tells you everything you need to know about them just from their facial reactions. J.D. Vance looks offended that this is happening and very, very angry. Donald Trump looks clueless and bored. My favorite is Tiffany Trump, who just has the, oh my God, is she really doing this face? How dare she? All you need to know is she gave a speech, a sermon, rather, asking the president to be compassionate, asking him to show mercy to people.

And they are very mad about that. And they are very mad at the ideas of compassion and mercy. I want to highlight a representative from Georgia. Republican goes without saying. His name is Mike Collins. He tweeted out that clip that you just played and he wrote on it. The person giving this sermon should be added to the deportation list. She's from New Jersey.

And I want to highlight that because for those people out there, I'm guessing they're probably not new abnormal listeners. But again, there are far too many people out there who think that this is, you know, that the Trump administration and MAGA in general wants to stop with them and that they want to deport them and they want to silence them. but not me. This just lays bare how false that is. And the fact that you've got a sitting member of the House of Representatives calling for an Episcopal minister to be deported because she said something he didn't like. They are not, yes, it starts with immigrants. Yes, it starts with trans folks.

It doesn't end there. It never ends there. which is of course not to say that it wouldn't be bad enough if it did end there it would be bad enough but this is for the people who want to put their head in the sand and think that they are safe because oh trump is talking about those people not me uh yeah we'll just we'll get rid of he'll get rid of those people but that doesn't affect me uh no you're uh i don't know you are sadly misguided is the nicest way i can put it uh i i i i don't know you're uh i i i don't know you are sadly misguided is the nicest way i can put it uh i think. And it was a great sermon. And I'm with you, Danielle. Kudos to her for saying it where and when

she did. And we're going to need a lot more of that in the next bunch of years. I'm really glad to hear you say that, Andy, because I could think of no better place to look for a reaction to that clip than your old place of employment. Here's a pastor on Fox News talking. She was so arrogant. The way she didn't even acknowledge the president of the United States of America. She had an opportunity to minister the gospel instead of that she is a heretic. She should never be allowed to preach the message of Jesus in her life because she's not even talking about Jesus. This is why no one's going to these.

Yeah, this is why these denominations are dying, sadly. There's that Christianity I know and love. You heard of your first, folks. She's a heretic. I don't care for whatever it is. that people on Fox and the like paid fools that go on there to tap dance, to curry favor would Donald Trump think about faith? They know nothing about faith.

They know nothing about any tenants of anybody's religion, which is steeped in like love and acceptance of thy neighbor. And the only thing that she offered was empathy and compassion, which they are devoid of. So, of course, you would see that as an affront to your disgusting way of being. You know what? Let me take a breath.

Yeah, I mean, look, I have nothing to add to that. I guess this guy, Sewell, I guess his name is, this is who they are. This is who these people are. You know, she should be deported. She shouldn't be allowed to preach. Trump saying MSNBC should be taken off the air. This is who they are.

And to close us out, I think, again, well, I guess Jesse thought, because again, Jesse picked these clips, not James. We might as well hear from the man himself. Now, there was a lot of discussion around the other. Jesus? Unfortunately, he is not back yet. Oh, shit. So around the election, the conversation was that Trump won on the economy, because he was going to lower the price of eggs, the economy. He was going to make the economy better.

He was going to do all these things. So during an interview with Sean Hannity, well, sometimes you just got to let him do. Joe Biden has very bad advisors. Somebody advised Joe Biden to give pardons to everybody but him. They wanted to take care of the economy. I don't care. They're yelling at this is more important because right now the economy is going to do great. I want to know about the economy.

But you have to understand, he had bad advisors on almost everything. It's like in the old days when the Secretary of State said he never made a correct. on foreign policy. Joe Biden got very bad advice. Yeah. I want to talk about the economy. I don't care. Yeah.

They were already backtracking about prices coming down. I know there were people who were fooled by this. I don't think they are our listeners. So I don't know what to say. It was never about the economy for Trump.

Of course not. What does he care? He's rich. Yes, it's about the economy to the extent that he wants to make himself and his buddies richer. And it is much more about retribution. It is much more about, it's about everything but the economy. He doesn't care about

the economy. Yes. Yeah, if it wasn't clear also in that rant, he was basically saying that Joe Biden has bad advisors and is dumb because he pardoned his family, but not himself. Right. Yeah. That's his priority. Yeah, no, exactly. And that's what he made it very clear he wanted to talk about and he did not want to talk about the economy. And that, you know, time after time, these people are showing us who they are, and yet there are people out there who don't believe them. He's saying everything that you need to hear, right? And people just pick and choose. Oh, he's kidding about this, but he's serious about this. But this is a joke, but this is real life. He said before he was elected, oh, when prices are up, it's very hard to bring them back down. He said that a couple of weeks before the election. And I'm sorry,

but in the flurry of executive orders, tell me again where he has directed anything that provides any benefit to anyone in the United States? What is he providing and giving with any of these executive orders? Absolutely fucking nothing. Everything is about shutting something down or taking something away. So that's the daddy. These motherfuckers wanted. That's who you got. Jules Boycough has written six books on the Olympics, has been published in multiple professional journals, along with media outlets, including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, and The Guardian, where his lady. piece is entitled Donald Trump's return to power lays bare the lie that sports don't matter.

The piece greatly intrigued me and Jules was gracious enough to join me now to talk about it. Jules, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for the invitation, Andy. So if I read your piece correctly, there are sort of two stories here. One is that the Trump campaign did a really good job using sports during the campaign and the other is that the Democrats, as you put it, flat out, dropped the ball. So let's start with Trump. Talk about how his campaign did take advantage of sports. Absolutely. So the Trump campaign, first of all, got a number of big-name people to support Trump. I mean, you remember Hulk Hogan, the former wrestler was at the Republican National Convention. You had Dana White, the president of UFC,

given a speech at the victory celebration. You had prominent golfers, NHL players, and Nick Bosa wearing a Maga had pretty much every chance he got. So there were a lot of athletes supporting him. Second, people that own sports teams also supported him. For example, Dallas Mavericks owner, Miriam Adelson. She gave some $100 million to his reelection effort. So he benefited from sports in that way. But one of the arguments that I make in the piece is that, you know, he used the sphere of sports in a way that was actually subtle. You know, Trump isn't known for his subtlety. And the thing that I was kind of playing with and wondering was whether sports can actually be more politically effective by being less explicitly political, meaning he appeared on a bunch of

podcasts where he would just sort of talk about what was happening in the world of mixed martial arts fighting. And he had a pretty deep knowledge. And that impressed a lot of people. And what we know for sure is that sports can be sort of like root one to the manosphere. And I felt like he definitely manage that. Now, in terms of the Democrats, there were efforts to make connections to podcasts such as All the Smoke, where actually we had Kamala Harris appear. That's the podcast with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, the two former NBA players. She did Club Sheshay with Shannon Sharp. So I'm not arguing she didn't do anything. But even her own campaign manager admitted that the campaign was not effective enough at getting leverage with sports podcasters. Now, last thing I'll say is just that

she was at a disadvantage. I mean, the sports world, unfortunately, is still extremely man-dominated, and so she's walking into that at a sort of disadvantage. But still, there's a whole lot more that Democrats can do moving forward and could have done in the recent election if they would have put their minds to it. Well, and along those lines of Harris being at a disadvantage, is it fair to say that another disadvantage is just that Republicans simply have it easier when it comes to sports? Sort of like the way Democrats do in Hollywood. It's just easier for Republicans to recruit athletes, team owners, league executives, et cetera. Absolutely.

No, I think you're really hitting on something there. It's the owners that tend to line up now in a Republican direction. But again, I want to return to the idea that just the fact that Trump knew about MMA fighters could name specific fighters, they weren't talking about politics. They were talking about sports. And I feel like this is something that previous presidents have taken to their advantage. I mean, look at Barack Obama. He used to fill out his bracket for the NCAA tournament.

This is kind of an analog in some ways, and it made good friends for him and kind of made him seem like one of the guys, you know, and that's kind of what Trump managed to quite incredibly do, is make him seem like just kind of one of the guys here. Well, is this one of those times when the phrase the liberal elite really does have meaning? Is there sort of a condescending view of sports in the gleaming ivory towers of liberalism? Well, you know, in the piece, I do point to some examples where you see that. I live in the world of academia where I teach political science out here in Oregon, and I have seen many academics look me right in the eye and say things like sports absolutely don't matter. You're wasting your time talking about the politics of sports.

And so I think academics and political strategists have for a long time basically snub sport as unsurious turf. And the American Political Science Association, you know, I'm a political scientist myself. It's sort of seen as the number one flagship professional organization. They've got like 55 organized sections on just, about every topic out there and they don't have sport as one of them. And so, yes, there's a long tradition in intellectual circles and also sort of dismissing it from the liberal perspective. That's changed a lot in the last 10, 15 years, but it definitely hasn't changed enough. Yeah, it's kind of interesting to me that, you know, you mentioned the sort of some of the

disadvantages that Kamala Harris had, and I've never heard her talk about sports. She could be a huge sports fan for all I know, and she was told not to talk about them. Or she could just not be a huge sports person. But Tim Walls, like, why not use him in a way that, you know, Trump was going on and talking, like you said. Actually, you know, he probably, he follows MMA. He follows professional wrestling. You know, he's always popping up at wrestling events. I mean, Tim Walls, you've got a former high school football coach. Why not go on football podcast and talk about football? Like, is that the kind of thing they should have been doing, you think? That's exactly what I'm suggesting here. I mean, they definitely use the whole coach

walls label quite a lot, but they didn't dig underneath it and take full advantage in the ways that you're talking about. I mean, it was a tricky thing because he didn't want the coach, if you will, to overshadow the presidential candidate in certain ways. But yes, that was definitely a missed opportunity. Again, just kind of seeming like kind of one of the people, everyday people who follow sports out there, that was a missed opportunity. You know, another missed opportunity, I would say, is just women's sports in general. I mean, this is a huge growing sphere. And yes, I said before that sports at the elite level are dominated by men, but you got the National Women's Soccer League that's on the rise. You've got the WNBA. You've got this new really exciting three-on-three

basketball league called Unrivaled. And I'm not saying that Kamala Harris has to get there or any future Democratic candidate. For me, it's not really about Harris in a lot of ways, but they go to a match. They don't have to like give a speech about politics. They can just like actually study who's playing out there and have some basic knowledge. I think that could actually go a long way. You know, the Democrats in the last election, they had a lot of set piece, obviously primed and ready for the public kind of moments. You had a lot of athletes who came out. There was a group called Athletes for Harris Walls, I mean, who had like some big names in the sphere of sport. Magic Johnson, Billy Jean King, Steve Kerr, Ali Krieger from soccer. I mean, Candace Parker, Doc Rivers. There was a ton of

people in the sphere of sport who supported Harris and Walls. But it was kind of more one of those fancy things where they just signed their name. It wasn't like sitting in a podcast talking about everyday life or kind of not talking about politics. And that's kind of what I mean by you can be more effective politically by actually not talking about politics. I know it might seem kind of counterintuitive, but that's sort of one of the the theses of the piece. No, I think that's exactly right because it really does get, you know, it goes back to the sort of George W. Bush, you know, the famous, oh, well, he seemed more like a guy you'd want to have a beer with. It feels like that's kind of the same thing that you're saying. It's like basically, look, this is a chance to show

people that you're not the caricature of a liberal in their ivory towers completely disconnected from the common man or whatever other cliche you want to put in there. And the Democrats just generally do not do a good job of that. Yeah. And this paid huge dividends for the Republicans. I mean, let's be absolutely clear about it in the most recent election here. Some exit polls show that men aged 18 to 29, flipped from double-digit Democrat support to double-digit Republican support in a single election cycle? That is wild, Andy. And that is exactly the group we're talking about here, men aged 18 to 29, big sports fans, and that's who he reached. He got a lot of voters who are unreliable voters or people that, you know, maybe we'll vote Democrat one time, maybe a Republican another time,

maybe he'd not vote at all. He got a lot of those people from that age group to come out and support him. At the same time, you know, that one of the stories that I think hasn't been talked about in the election is how women just didn't turn out for Kamala Harris and Tim Walls. You know, 7.1 million less votes from the 2020 election in Biden. And, you know, I'm just saying if you would have gone to a couple NWSL games, the women's soccer league or gone to some WNBA games and sort of talk to people there and not made a big spectacle of it, but actually kind of talk to people, you might have done better with mothers of school-aged children. I mean, mothers of school-age children went to Biden by 12 points in 2020. In 2024, they went to Trump for a two-point advantage.

So you're seeing these swings, and I view it as missed opportunity. I'm not saying sports is like the panacea. And it's like the one thing that's going to help Democrats. But in these kind of fine margin elections that have become the norm in the 21st century, it certainly couldn't hurt. It really gets to the point that there's something a lot of people say, including me, which is like how in the world can you sit there and think Donald Trump is, fighting for you when I think it's fairly clear, at least to me, that he is fighting for himself and for his fellow billionaires, et cetera. But this is one of the reasons, isn't it? Because he can sit there and he'll talk about things that resonate with, like you said, with 18 to 29 year old

dudes. And the Democrats just aren't doing a lot of that. And it was one of the reasons I thought picking Tim Walz was such a good move. But like you said, they didn't really dig down into that beyond referring to him as coach Walls. Yeah. And here's the other thing. I mean, we've been talking a lot about how Trump's use of sports has helped him in the past, but you can see he's pivoting now as president and figuring out ways about how it's going to help him in the future. And a good example of that is Los Angeles is coming up with three pretty big events, you know, two mega events in the men's soccer world cup where they're hosting eight games in in 2006, but also they're hosting the Olympics in 2008, the Summer Olympics. And along the way, they're also hosting a Super Bowl.

So when the L.A. fires came, there was a lot of questions raised, good questions, I would say, as to whether this was a good idea for Los Angeles to be hosting a sports mega event like this in an era of climate chaos. And Trump made absolutely clear that he supports these events. I mean, he's been bashing Gavin Newsom every chance he gets, but he's going to work with Newsom on these events. And the reason why is because these events are really popular with everyday people, and it provides them with an opportunity to engage in what a lot of people these days are calling sports washing, you know, using your position to look positive in the public eye and have us look away from a lot of the social problems, the chronic problems that are happening under your watch.

And so Trump very much sees a sports washing opportunity in his future, first with the World Cup and then with the Olympics, and he's not going to squander it. I mean, he already, when he was president way back when, said that he would do whatever it takes to make the Olympics successful, giving some, you know, two to three billion probably in security monies for the LA games to even happen. And so, you know, he has, he has looking forward at some things that are happening, and he's not oblivious to the power of sport in that regard. Yeah, absolutely. And as you note in the piece that, you know, he was talking to Bill Belichick on his podcast and, he basically said that he was responsible for getting both the World Cup and the Olympics to America

in the coming years. And obviously, you are sort of the expert on this. There's a lot of anti-Olympic sentiment from some Angelinos, et cetera. But all of that is going to sort of fall by the wayside once the Olympics are happening and people get wrapped up in rooting for America, et cetera. And he's already basically saying this was all me. Yeah. No, there was a lot of bluster when he was talking to Belichick, the former New England Patriots coach on Belichick's podcast and taking all the credit. He obviously was overstating the amount of credit he should get. But it's true. He did say he would provide the security money, which I say will be around $2 to $3 billion. This is not the kind of thing they skimp on security. It's kind of a once-in-a-generation opportunity for security forces to

ramp up their weapon stocks, get all the special laws that they want, new officers and all that. And you can bet that Los Angeles and California isn't going to squander that. But, you know, I think if you look further beyond just the events that are happening in Los Angeles, and I will say, yes, it's really important, I think, for people to note. There is serious activism against the Olympics for a whole host of reasons, overspending, greenwashing, militarization of public space, displacement, gentrification, just straight up corruption in some of these organizations running these events. And there's a really smart group called No Olympics, L.A., that people might want to check out, a coalition of groups in Los Angeles that are pushing back against the Olympics. But against that,

you've got plenty of sport honchos who are more than happy to help Trump sportswash Los Angeles Olympics and World Cup. You know, look at Gianni Infantino. If you were watching the inauguration, you could see his unmistakable pate bobbing from the back row of the VIP section. Infantino's the head of FIFA. And he was treated as if he were like a former president of the United States. He was only sitting a few rows behind the Clintons, for example. And so Infantino, every chance he gets, he sucks up to Trump. He puts mega photos of the two of them on Instagram. He's moved residents. He's got a residence now just down the road from Mar-a-Lago in Florida. I mean, he knows where his bread is buttered moving forward, and he's been sucking up to Trump and was a special guest at the

inauguration. So, yeah, this is definitely something to keep an eye on. Just one other thing I would like to say about that is that the current government under the prior government i should say under under president biden put into effect something called a national special security event what people call an n s s e and a national special security event is essentially using the state of exception of one of these mega events like the olympics in 2028 to give police forces basically free reign in the city it allows groups like ice immigration and customs enforcement and numerous other federal agencies that perform surveillance and policing, basically free rain in the city. So undocumented folks in Los Angeles are freaking out. There's a lot of undocumented folks in California, and especially Los Angeles,

because basically ICE has free rain right now. You might remember, Andy, about five years ago at the Super Bowl, the rapper 21 Savage got nabbed on extending his visa. That was because the Super Bowl is also one of these national special security events. And so ICE was running free in Atlanta at that time, and they nab 21 Savage. Well, there's going to be a lot more people that are going to be nabbed under the Trump administration under this NSSE, National Special Security event than just a famous rapper. It's going to be everyday people whose names we never see. And so that's one of the main reasons why you're seeing this rise in pushback against events like the Olympics in Los Angeles,

concern for local residents who've been there forever. And on the flip side, it's one of the reasons maybe why Trump is so in favor of it. He knows it's a sports washing opportunity, but it's also a chance. for the federal government to stick it to Gavin Newsom by deporting a bunch of people on national television right in front of his eyes when there's basically nothing Newsom can do about it. Yeah, wow, that's really, really not good. I want to ask before we go, do you find it interesting that Mark Zuckerberg is sort of taking a page from this playbook and putting, for example, UFC's Dana White on the meddoboard? I think it's really important. Zuckerberg is also, you know,

into fighting himself. He's buffed himself up through lifting weights. he's very much moving in the same flow as all the things that we've been talking about, you know, trying to become a big dog in the manosphere. It's sort of pathetic with him. It doesn't really work. It's really transparent. Some people do it well. He doesn't.

But again, I think you're right. This is a signal he's sending by bringing the head of UFC Dana White onto his board. And I think we will probably see more of that moving forward. So I want to ask you, maybe this is a more general question. But you had in your piece at The Guardian, there was what I thought was a great. sentence. It was Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election in part because they failed to embrace spaces where community connection was being forged. And obviously, you're talking here about sports, and this is not just sports. There are equally obviously many other places where community

connection is being forged. But that sort of does get to the heart of your argument, doesn't it, that why sports are important and why they shouldn't be simply dismissed? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really key point to spotlight is that a lot of people were hammering on Trump for his ground game during the election being not up to snuff, vibes-based, all that, you know, taking a gamble on infrequent voters. But these infrequent voters are hanging out in these sort of off-the-radar communal groups, and many of these off-the-radar communal groups are fan groups. I mean, you think about the sports or the teams that you like.

you'll be hanging out with people who maybe don't even have the same politics as you, and you have a really strong connection, a lot of people do at least, to sports teams or franchises and the people that they go to the games with that they're really close with. And if you can kind of get your thoughts and your basically campaign messaging in a really subtle way to those groups, you can actually make real inroads and score some votes. And in these really tight margin elections that we've been talking about, that can definitely be the difference. You know, poet Emily Dickinson once wrote kind of famously, tell the truth, but tell it slant. I feel like the corollary here is sort of like talk politics, but do it at a slant, and it might

actually be a more effective for your campaign. Yeah, I mean, look, as someone who is a huge fan of historically sad franchises like the Mets and the Islanders and certainly the New York Giants over the past decade or so, I can say that I have forged many a bond with people on social media or wherever over our sad fandom. So I think maybe that's why that sentence really rang true for me. And I think it's such an important point. Yeah. And my condone to all those teams, sorry about that. Thank you. No, thank you very much. You sort of, you get used to it. You become a tiny bit numb. But, you know, it prepares you for life's disappointments, which is one of the great functions of sports, I think. Jules, thank you so much for being here. I love the piece. And hopefully we'll

have you back as we get closer to events like the World Cup and the Olympics, and we can talk more about that. Sounds great, Andy. Thanks a lot. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com. 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

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