The Daily Beast Podcast - Right-Wingers in Congress Won’t Win Their Wacky Shutdown Fight

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

On this episode of The New Abnormal: Why Joe Biden is right to let Republicans shoot themselves in the foot during yet another idiotic shutdown fight. Plus! A look at Trump’s weekend of manic posting on Truth Social. 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.

One excellent show we have today. The American Prospects Ryan Cooper joins us to talk about the likelihood of a government shutdown. They will talk to Foreign Affairs, Daniel Block, about his article in the Atlantic, A Killing in Canada, shows what India has become in the feud between Modi and Justin Trudeau. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, a bit of what appears to be good news over the week. The Writers Guild reached a tentative agreement with the Association of Motion Picture and TV Producers. We don't know any of the details of the deal yet, but it does appear from what a lot of writers were saying on Twitter and the few that I've

talked to who have a little bit of knowledge of the situation that the writers got a lot of what they asked for. This was a really long strike, almost 150 days, I think. And when it started out, a lot of people thought, well, the writers are never. going to get this stuff. And the studios certainly seem to be pretty intransigent on it. But look, this was at least it appears without knowing the details yet, but it appears that this was one of the most successful labor actions in recent memory. And hopefully it bodes well for the Screen Actors Guild who are still on strike. So we should point out that Hollywood is not reopening just yet. But also for like the UAW and things like that. This is, you know, really showing that organized labor and the power of

organizing is still really, really strong in this country. Yeah, I think that this is a really great sign. Shout out to all of the writers who have been picketing and using social media to air out just the absolute unabated greed of networks and studios. We've heard some of the most disgusting things said by some of the top CEOs, like wanting people to go bankrupt and lose their homes and apartments, cutting branches so that the heat gets to them while they're picketing to really stand strong after nearly 150 days and be able to get what it is that they want,

which is hopefully tentatively a three-year contract and deal that protects their job so that they can live, I think is really exciting. So TBD on how it all shakes out and what happens with the actors following this deal. But great, great day for workers. Yeah, absolutely. I sort of load the social media at this point, but we should point out, I think, that social media played a big role in this, as you mentioned. And I don't think the producers were fully cognizant of how powerful social media is. And they tried to run this strike the way they've done in the past by leaking things to the trades, variety in Hollywood reporter, and places like deadline. And in the past, they've been able to sort of use their connections to get their side of the story out as one-sided.

And that's changed now. And writers were very easily able to go on social media and refute point after point after point. And I think that played a big role in this. And I don't think it should be underestimated. Yeah, 100%. Speaking of social media, Donald Trump was on one over the weekend. When is he not? Yeah.

On his, as Daniel likes to say, his busted-ass Twitter known as, although I think Twitter is now busted ass Twitter. Busted ass. Right. but the other busted-ass Twitter, Truth Social. He was just out of control. It started with, there was a big article about General Mark Millie in the Atlantic that was very much not flattering to Trump.

And obviously, Trump couldn't let that stand. And he posted a very long thing about Millie that included the sentence, this is an act so egregious that in times gone by, the punishment would have been dead. And calling it treasonous. And this was about something that Millie did while he was chairman of the joint chiefs, I think. We're at the point. And I know the temptation is to just roll your eyes and say that's Trump. And I don't know. I think we have to guard against that. I don't know if you agree. You probably do, Daniel. But I think we have to guard against that, oh, that's just Trump being trumping. And just continue to point out how awful this is. And that he is basically sitting here saying that, that General Mark Millie committed a treasonist act that in the past would have been punished by the death sentence. I just don't think we can let this shit slide as tempting as it is. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. What Donald Trump has been able to normalize over the past seven to eight years that we have been living in Dante's Inferno is this idea that weaponizing social media and using that as a way to hide behind the First Amendment, oh, I can say.

what it is that, oh, he doesn't mean what he says, like fucking Susan Collins. He'll learn, you know, he'll learn because a 70-year-old is akin to a fucking toddler. But the reality is that we have seen how Donald Trump's words are turned into physical violence. We saw that on January 6th. He said, this shit is going to be wild. He directed people to go take their country back. We've seen him target citizens, like the two election workers in Georgia who have their own. lawsuits against Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. So for him to turn around and this fucking 43 years of service, 43 years, I don't care what it is that you think about the U.S. military. I have my own, you know, thoughts about the military and how we balloon their budgets and what have you. But I got to

tell you that these people who dedicate their entire fucking lives to service and defending this country are worth so much fucking more than Donald Trump. And the way that in the recent article that is in the Atlantic, the patriot done by Jeff Goldberg, that profiles Mark Millie and what he was under, essentially this man and a collection of people are basically what stopped us from Donald Trump taking us into fucking war and preserving our democracy. The way that he talked about service people in that piece. So for Donald Trump to turn around and say that this would be warrant death, what do we think that he's doing here? And I'm so fucking tired of pretending that this man is not a authoritarian warning to have generals in his pockets so that he can turn the U.S. military

on the American people. That's what it is. Millie wouldn't do it. He made the one mistake at Lafayette Square where the world saw him in his military fatigues walking alongside Donald Trump after Lafayette Square was forcefully cleared of protesters so Donald Trump could pose in front of a church he don't go to holding a book he has never read upside down no fucking less. I don't know. It should be on every breaking news ticker. It should be on every front page. But alas, it's here, Andy. We're talking about it. So that's what matters. Exactly. Also, there was that thing in that Goldberg piece where Millie told him that a wounded veteran who had lost a leg and suffered brain damage after an IED attack in, yeah, it was Afghanistan, a saying at a ceremony, Trump came up to

Millie afterwards and said, quote, why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that the wounded. Can you imagine if Hillary Clinton had said something like that? She would have been public enemy number one in this country and Republicans would have been basically calling for her to be drawn and quartered or whatever. But for some reason, they have decided that when Trump says this shit, it's okay. And it's gross and it's disgusting. And everything this guy does is he's just an awful, awful human being. But again, I just, I think it's important to keep talking about these things and just, and not let ourselves be taken down the, oh, that's just Trump road that I feel like a lot of people in media just sort of shrug this stuff off.

You know, it's the way for me that Republicans have constantly used the military. Yeah, exactly. Right? Because they don't care about these people. And I believe his name was Luis Alva, who lost limbs due to being in combat. And here he is. And General Millie was saying, like, these are our heroes, right? Like trying to think that he can convince Donald Trump, a man that is ever,

Everything to him is about veneer. He chooses these people for their aesthetics. And Mark Millie is holding up this person and saying, like, this is a hero. He lost limbs. It's severely impacted by the trauma of combat, but Donald Trump thinks that this is like a game. And the fact that you would have these Republicans want to talk about the importance and the strength of our military, and then when they don't get their way, they turn around and

call it woke. I can tell you one place that's not fucking woke and it's the military. Like, give me a fucking break. Yeah, it's all awful and it's all disturbing and it's all a pattern. I mean, you know, obviously we can go back to Trump during the 2016 primaries saying he of John McCain that he prefers his soldiers. Oh, my God. Yeah, or his military. Not captured.

Not captured. Yeah. He thinks that the military is the little green men that used to come in the big, tub that you that you could play with. And it's gross and disgusting. And you're right. It doesn't matter what you think of the U.S. military or whatever. That's a wholly separate question here. But when you have a guy who suffered brain damage and lost a limb in Afghanistan and your first reaction is nobody wants to see that, it's just beyond gross. You know, I said Trump was on one because he didn't just stop with Millie. He posted a whole other thing going after

the media, I'll read it. He said, they are almost all dishonest and corrupt, but Comcast with its one-sided and vicious coverage by NBC News, and in particular, MSNBC, should be investigated for its country threatening treason. He says, I say up front openly and proudly that when I win the presidency of United States, they and others of the lamestream media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events. They are a true threat to democracy and are in fact the enemy of the people, the fake news media should pay a big price for what they have done to our once great country.

First of all, if you said all of that about Fox News, you might at least be right. But even that is you should not talk about the government thoroughly scrutinizing any member of the media, which Fox News sort of is at any rate. But I mean, this is about as, I hate the word un-American, but this is about as un-American as it gets, I think.

I don't know what would be more un-American. You know what I'm saying? Like I actually don't hate. I hate the way that the right uses the term. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, but my fucking God. The fact that there are people who are willing who just, I don't know what it is about Donald Trump that aligns people and have them lose all sense of what it is that they pledged

allegiance to, that they swore oaths to. It's truly sickening. Again, in that piece that was laid out, Donald Trump. Trump is unfucking stable. He's unstable. Whether or not like you like him, you don't like him, this, that, and the other thing, the questions that have been brought up, which is that the founders never ever thought to themselves, what happens when you have an executive that is actually unfit to serve?

That is mentally unfucking fit. Because anybody else taking the actions and in all caps on their broke down social media platforms, using it in the way that Donald Trump does, do you think that we're looking at them and we're saying to ourselves, oh, they seem well. Yeah. They seem totally unbothered and okay. They seem to have, as Hillary Clinton pointed out to us in 2016, he does not have the fucking temperament to be president of the United States.

This is a motherfucker that should have actually taken some type of test to see whether or not he knew anything to be able to run the country. Yeah. we've talked about this. I have issues with Joe Biden's age and I am not the world's biggest fan of Kamala Harris. Either one of them would be so far superior as president to Donald Trump that it boggles my mind that this is even a choice and that there are people out there who want to both sides this and say, well, Trump may be crazy, but Biden is old. I don't, so what? I mean, I will take old any day over bat shit crazy. And that's what we've got. here. And it's just every day he says something that is just openly insane. And like you feel like you're beating your head against the wall saying over and over again, look at this crazy ass motherfucker,

but we have to keep saying it. My point is we can't set the bar low for Trump. We have to hold him to the same standards. And speaking of people who got bars, Bob Menendez, Senator Robert Menendez from New Jersey was indicted for a bunch of things, including bribery. And among the really fun details were that he had apparently had wads of cash all over his house in like jacket pockets, in the closet and stuff like that. For some of these bribes, he received actual gold bars. I mean, look, when we transfer to a post-apocalyptic economy, it's not going to seem so stupid, maybe. But I don't know what the hell you do with gold bars now. I don't think I've ever seen. I think the last time I saw gold bars was in some kind of heist movie. Like I don't know how to hell you. Because where else do

see them but in like a fucking Bond movie? Exactly. And like not even a recent Bond movie. Like where the fuck else do you see gold bricks? Oh, it was in the Italian job. What I'm like? Right. You know what are you talking about. But this is totally fucking normal thing that people have in their safes, I guess, if you're a New Jersey senator, like gold bars. But you know what? The crazy thing, and not crazy, because it's just a sign of our times that can somebody explain to me why there is not a peep out of anybody in Democratic leadership other than John Federman? Can somebody explain to me why, if you want to be the adults in the room, you want to be the party and take over of actual law, constitution and order, tell me why you think that somebody like Menendez who is on his second

fucking indictment, you wouldn't be calling for his resignation, that the only people calling for his resignation are fetterman and then the Jersey governor and leaders in that state. Tell me how that makes sense. I think AOC also has called for it. But you are correct that it feels icky that there hasn't been more of this. I suspect there will be over the next couple days. But it would be nice to see, I don't know, for example, maybe Chuck Schumer. Get out there and say something.

You mean the leader? Yeah. Yeah. He does sort of have a leadership position, doesn't he? No, I agree with you. It hasn't come fast enough. I do think it's coming. I will say this.

And boy, talk about a. low bar again. At the very least, you don't see a lot of Democrats defending him the way we've seen on the Republican side with Trump. And in some cases, even with Menendez, we got Danielle, your boy, George Santos. Oh, my boy, because he's on Long Eye. He's your boy. No, no, man. Don't pin that Long Islander on me. He is out there saying that Menendez should not resign because he's innocent until proven guilty. Menendez has come out. He held a little, you can't really call it a press conference, I think, because he didn't

take questions. But he gave a little speech and said he's not going to resign. The worst part about this is he has been, I was going to say intimating, but he's not intimating it. He's straight up saying it. He's been saying things like, oh, it's not an accident. They're coming after a Latino man. And then he gave an excuse when he gave his little speech about why he had all the

cash around the house. And he said, oh, I take a lot of cash out of the bank. because I remember what happened in Cuba when Castro took power and seized all the bank accounts. And it's like, oh, my God, you have got to stop this. Like, it's just fucking pathetic. This is the second time this man has been investigated. The other case, there was a hung jury. This was in the mid-2010s that this happened.

So here's the thing with this. When you do not stop crime and greed from happening, guess what? people continue to do. Crime. They don't learn. They learn how to be better. And he didn't because in almost 10 years, he has learned nothing. He's just doubled down and got slicker and better connections.

But anyone that tells you that having half a million dollars on hand, my man, where are you going? Like, where are you going? Why you need, they tell you to have a couple thousand dollars, couple hundred dollars of emergency cash in your home. Not half a million dollars. September 30th approaches, and with it, the end of this fiscal year. At this point, it's a given that Congress won't pass the 12 appropriations bills

that would set discretionary spending levels for fiscal year 2024, meaning the only thing that could prevent a government shutdown on October 1st is for the House and Senate to pass a continuing resolution that would temporarily fund these programs. But standing in the way of this is intramural warring by a bunch of Republican factions in the House, and so far President Biden and the Democrats have been content to let them fight. Joining me now to tell us why he thinks this is the exact right strategy is the managing editor of the American prospect and co-host of the left anchor podcast, Ryan Cooper.

Ryan, thanks so much for being here. Glad to be here. All right. So before we get to the Democratic strategy here, let's talk about these GOP factions. Who do we have? What do they want? I guess let's start with the House Freedom Caucus because they tend to be the most insane. What did they want? Well, that's kind of a good question, I guess, because it's not clear what they want exactly, just that they keep blowing up any possible even messaging bill. Yeah, as you say, this is about two dozen or so. Nobody is really sure exactly how many official members there are, but the most intransigent, far-right members of the House Republican caucus, and that includes, you know, Matt Gates. I think Marjorie Taylor Green was in there for a while, but she got kicked

out for being too loyal to Speaker McCarthy, which is kind of funny. And, yeah, Aside from the Freedom Caucus, then you have the so-called Main Street Republicans who are nominally more moderate. And I don't think that really, they're more moderate, I would say, in tactical terms in that they kind of recognize that, you know, they only hold the house and not by a big margin at all. And so there's only so much you can do. There's only so far that you can push to get your agenda enacted. But as far as like the policy agreement, most of them, you know, are dedicated like Trump supporters and agree with the Freedom Caucus in terms of, you know, the principles such as they exist at all. But they're just less willing to kind of blow things up for the sake of blowing them up, as it were. Are there any actual moderates?

Yes, you've got the House Freedom Caucus. Then you've got, like you said, the Main Street Caucus, which is, you know, and they kind of bristle at being called moderates. because as you said, if they're moderate in anything, it's at least compared to the Freedom Caucus, it's tone, not policy. Are there any actual moderates who are just like, you know, hey, we need to make a deal with the Democrats here? Well, you know, not moderate compared to like the 1980s, maybe, you know, where you used to have like a faction of actual kind of like socially liberal Republicans, you know, a leftover from like decades previously, the Nelson Rockefeller type of people. But there are a number of representatives who, you know, they won control of the House

thanks to sweeping a number of districts that Biden won in 2020. And a lot of them are in New York. The New York State Democratic Party famously flubbed the 2022 election compared to a lot of the other, you know, more swing states like Michigan, where they romped. And those folks are among them as George Santos, who is not, I wouldn't call him a moderate necessarily, but, you know, those guys are looking down the barrel of almost certain defeat. If they're associated with the broader Republican brand of sort of like fascism, Trump, and outlying abortion, and I think there's some limited willingness to maybe cut a deal there with

the Democrats. But the flip side of this is that it's being perceived to be moderate as the kiss of death in a Republican primary. So they're also pinched from the possibility of the other side of losing to like a fanatical Trumper in the next primary and then, you know, on the other's hand, losing to whatever Democrat is nominated in the general election. It's really between a rock and a hard place for those folks. I said in the intro, the idea of actually passing a budget on time, which is later this week, basically, is gone. So we're talking about continuing resolutions or continuing resolution. I always thought that a continuing resolution basically kept the budgets from the previous agreements. In other words, it,

continues the fiscal year, in this case, 2023 budget on a temporary basis, until they can get their act together and pass the actual fiscal year 2024 bills. That doesn't seem to be how these factions of the GOP are looking at it, or particularly the Freedom Caucus, right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can amend, you know, certain things in a continuing resolution. You know, your sort of default would be whatever the previous budget is, but then you could like add stuff to it. And, And yeah, the crazy thing about the whole background context of this is that they already agreed in the debt ceiling negotiations back of several months ago that basically we're going to have a continuing resolution on the 2023 fiscal year budget level, which already contains a lot of concessions to Republicans. They got some cuts that Democrats are not happy about, and they weren't happy about a lot of them, at least, not happy about negotiating over the debt ceiling in the first place. And that was a deal. We're going to settle this debt ceiling thing and then we'll have the budget as well. That'll just be a sort of like afterthought. But then the Freedom Caucus basically reneged on the deal. So, you know, they want even more concessions. They want deeper cuts. I've seen proposed, you know, so they want to make big cuts to the government. But then they want to exempt a lot of the big things like Medicare and the military. And so it's like you're making the huge cuts. And it's so, you know, everything else is going to be cut by like 20%. And that's just dead in the water in the Senate. And the white.

House. So yeah, it's a failure to sort of appreciate their tactical situation, I suppose, but that's what they seemingly want to do. Yeah. Okay, so let's get to the Democrats. Over at prospect.org, you wrote that, quote, luckily President Biden has the right idea, letting House Republicans twist in the wind. So why do you say luckily? In part because Biden previously has had a reputation of like big footing into negotiations at the last minute and basically giving the house away, the farm away, as it were. He did this in 20, was it 2012, 2013, but when the Bush tax cuts were going to expire, Harry Reid and the Senate was going to basically let them all go and then negotiate again with the Republicans who controlled the house from a standpoint of now

the taxes are way higher on the rich. And so that would give him a lot more leverage. And Biden basically came in and just like gave Mitch McConnell everything he was asking for, more or less for some pretty pitiful concessions. But this time, no, Biden seems to have after negotiating on the debt ceiling, which I did not recommend doing, but it wasn't that bad of a deal relative to what the Freedom Caucus was asking for. You know, I think their basic thinking is like, we had an agreement, you know, we made a deal. We did a deal. We gave you concessions, and now you're trying to do the deal again. And it's just like, no, no thank you. And now the debt ceiling was a genuinely terrifying, you know, possibility that we're going to, like, do a national debt default and maybe

cause, like, a global financial crisis. Now it's just the government shutdown. And that's bad in a lot of ways and terrible for some people, but it's not the same kind of like terrible threat. And that Republicans have done this before and they've lost every time. You know, they look terrible and it puts a lot of pressure on some of their key constituencies. Biden has the right idea to just stare them out, you know, say, no, we're not negotiating with this. We had an agreement, you got to stick to it. And the House Dems are kind of on the same page, aren't they? Yeah, they were very annoyed at having to give up anything in the debt ceiling negotiation. I mean, basically countenancing like a terroristic threat against the global economy for the sake of terrible

policy outcomes, just like random cuts to food stamps and stuff that everybody in the Democratic caucus agrees is. And easiest way out of this would be for the House Democrats to get together. I mean, you would only need a handful of Republicans to do a discharge petition, which basically is a way to get around with the whole House leadership structure and just force a vote on a particular bill and just do the continuing resolution, do it clean, and that could go to the Senate. And I think Democrats are totally united on that. If they had the five or six Republican votes, however many it is, then they would do that tomorrow. And I think it won't happen until the shutdown puts leverage on the really vulnerable Republicans. but, you know, that's probably what they'll do.

And what about the Senate Republicans? Where are they on this? Are they just kind of shaking their head at the crazies in the House and just saying, you know, come on, guys, get us something that we can work with? Previously, they were, you know, they were playing nice with Senate Democrats for a while. Susan Collins and Patty Murray, I think, were sort of like the lead negotiators. And they were doing the regular order budgeting thing that you were mentioning before, like passing all this stuff out of all the very,

committees basically in line with the previous agreement. Now that's kind of stopped. And it seems like that they're just waiting to see what happens over on the House side. Because on one level, it's like, well, maybe we could get some more than we thought. But then on the other hand, it's like, why bother, you know, doing all this pro forma stuff when it's obviously pointless? You know, we're just going to have to see what we can lever out of the House. And so, yeah, they seem to be basically in a holding pattern. We've talked a lot about Biden and the Democrats just sort of letting the Republicans look bad on this stuff and, you know, letting them twist in the wind and all that stuff. But I saw over the weekend, there was that ABC News, Washington Post poll that,

I don't know, it's come under some fire because it shows Trump with like a 10-point lead over Biden. But there was another thing in that poll that showed that 40% of Americans say Biden and the Democrats would be to blame for a shutdown. Only 33% say it would be congressional Republicans' fault. This is obviously troubling. A, do you think we should just throw the poll? out, which I'm always hesitant to do. Or do you think this is a problem with messaging? Or is this just the mood of the country right now? You know, as you say, I'm quite hesitant to just dismiss polls out of hand. You know, it's like a lot of people did that in 2016. And then that turned out to be a terrible mistake. That one seemed really wildly out of the consensus of previous polls,

which have showed them more or less tied. And Trump winning, especially among under like 35 voters, and that would be truly staggering, you know, like a 40-point swing relative to 2020. But I do think you have to consider it as a possibility. This is a, you know, pretty good pollster that has a good record. You could spin a lot of theories about this, but mine would be that it reflects the different level of propaganda you have between the two factions. Republicans have an extremely powerful organized and disciplined propaganda apparatus that gets its message out to, like, like, let's say, 40% of the country, and Democrats just don't. What they do is they try to, like, frame everything in a way that the New York Times will report it in the way that they want.

And when that doesn't happen, which it almost never works, then they complain to the New York Times, you know, leadership or whatever. They just don't have anything like Fox News, Breitbart, you know, Ben Shapiro, that whole vast galaxy of influence. I don't know about if you could build up a cable news network. You know, MSNBC is sort of there, but kind of not really. You know, it's also owned by a big corporation. But basically just pointing out the reality that it just objectively is the Republicans' fault. They had a bargain and they didn't stick to it and now all the national parks are closed. If you got a problem with that, call up Matt Gates, call up the rest of these Yahoo's and tell them to stop being so dumb.

You could do that with television advertisements, with buying ads on Facebook possibly, but somebody just needs to get that message, which is true and compelling and simple to explain, out in front of voters. And I think that it would work if you could do it. But, you know, I'm not an expert in mass communication at the level of the entire country. Right. And just circling back a little bit, what is the speaker's role supposed to be? And what is Kevin McCarthy's role? Well, the speakership has evolved over the years. The committee chairs used to be much more powerful than they are now.

Because thanks to the end of regular order budgeting, in which a lot of important decisions were made in the committees and on these individual bills, now that just doesn't work. So everything gets packed in, as we've been talking about, any of these massive congressional resolutions. So the speaker is very powerful. A lot of people have quit promising careers. Keith Ellison, what's the guy from Minnesota?

Because you don't, you can't do anything as a backbencher in the house anymore. You can't build a sort of modest career like Henry Waxman and consumer regulations and stuff, like back in the 2000s. When like Nancy Pelosi was speaker, she was tremendously powerful. You know, she basically had the whip hand over the whole rest of the party, which was bad in some ways. But Kevin McCarthy is, he's just a cat spa for the Freedom Caucus. And that has to do not with the structural difference in the committees and whatnot, but just the fact that these folks are willing to vote down anything.

You know, they're so extreme that they have to be bought off that, that you can't pass anything without their, you know, say so. You know, on the other hand, the Freedom Caucus also knows that he's their cat spa. So this insistence that they're going to, you know, they've been threatening to get rid of him. But that raises the question of, well, who are you going to replace him with? And it's going to be someone who's just exactly like him. who has to negotiate this impossible compromise between the intransigent, stubborn, crazy people and, like, having to govern this country. So the speaker is much less powerful under this sort of Republican context,

and they don't control the budget and the way that Nancy Pelosi did over the past, you know, decade or so. So I guess my exit question is sort of asking you, I guess, for a prediction. Do you think that we get to a government shutdown? Do you think that sometime in the next five, six days, somehow a CR gets approved by the House and approved by the Senate and somehow something that's amenable to everyone pushes its way through? I would be very surprised if we avoided a shutdown. It's certainly not impossible, as we've been saying, the Freedom Caucus is dead against it. They seem to just want to shut down the government just for itself.

They don't like it. They don't like the administrative state. And so I think the only way you're going to be able to put enough pressure on, you know, for example, the quote unquote moderate Republicans to get a continuing resolution out would be to undergo a shutdown for, you know, at least a week or so. If I had to make a prediction, obviously that's, that can be foolish. But I would get that is what's going to happen. We're going to shut down for a couple of weeks, maybe even a month. Who knows, somebody's going to come up with some kind of backroom deal to face facts, you know, and get a continuing resolution through. All right, you heard it here first. Ryan Cooper from the American prospect says with 100% certitude that there will be a government shutdown and there's absolutely no way it can be avoided.

Ryan, thanks so much for being here and explaining all of this. I really appreciate it. Come back soon, please. My pleasure. Anytime. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal for the first time, I believe. Daniel Block, who is the senior editor at Foreign Affairs. And just recently wrote a piece that caught my eye, and I hope that it caught a lot of other people's eyes at the Atlantic entitled, The Killing in Canada shows what India has become. The government in New Delhi may well be the sort that will do anything to silence dissent. Daniel, we all were made aware. And by we all, I mean those of us that follow mainstream news and pay attention to what is happening outside of our own crumbling democracy.

pay attention to what is happening abroad. And for quite some time, I've been hearing a lot of rumblings about what is happening inside of India. So before we dive into your piece in particular, can you just set it up for us and the listeners? What's been happening in India, Undermode? Sure. So to go through it very quickly, Arundromodi, as a prime minister, is a very aggressive Hindu nationalist. He comes from a political organization and a political party that believes that India is rightly the homeland of the Hindus and really nobody else. And so since coming to power in 2014 and then especially since winning re-election in 2019, he's pursued a series of policies that marginalize various minority groups, particularly Muslims, but also Christians.

There was an Muslim majority state in the north of India, Jammu and Kashmir. he basically got rid of a variety of rights that this state had that were constitutionally enshrined and were designed to protect it, given its status is only than Muslim majority state in India. And he got rid of those. Then he actually stripped it of statehood. So he turned it into a territory where it had less rights and he divided it in half. His government has passed a law that could potentially in the future effectively strip citizenship from the country's Muslims. And we're talking here about hundreds of millions of people. And generally, we've just seen a wild increase in hate crimes since Modi came to power. And his party, when it takes charge at the state level, it often will weaponize the police force and turn it against minority groups. So what we really see here is an illiberal kind of ethnic nationalist government that's making life much more difficult for religious minority groups.

That's the domestic front. I can talk about the international front if you want or you can jump in. Here's the thing that was concerning to me, which is given, just the brief primer that you just gave as to what Modi has been doing on the ground in India since he was elected in 2014. Prior to that, his actions and organization had been a part of a incredible attack that killed, I believe, thousands of people that took place because of his Hindu nationalist beliefs. And he's somebody that has been shown. shunned before on the world stage, but was just recently welcomed with open arms to a state

dinner and sit down with President Biden. So can you just give us the primer as to how you go to essentially anti-democratic policies in your own country that are marginalizing and increasing violence against an already marginalized group, such as Muslims in India, and Christians as well, to then being invited to have a state dinner in your honor. Sure. And I'm so glad that you actually brought up his prior marginalization, because that's not something I think a lot of people are aware of that. Modi was actually banned from entering the United States under the George W. Bush administration, no less, because he governed this state. And when he was in charge of the state,

there were these mass attacks that killed an enormous number of Muslims. And his government, at a minimum, didn't really do anything this. stop and there's some evidence that suggests it actually encouraged and made those killings worse. But of course, as you said, he becomes prime minister and all of a sudden he's welcomed. He's welcomed first in 2014 when Barack Obama's president. Very recently, he had a state dinner. He delivered a joint address to Congress. And the reason for that, there's a few reasons. One is just India is a very large country and it's a very large economy.

And so the United States government wants to do business with it. It wants to make sure that American businesses can access its market and just a general sense that this is a very large power. We need to have good relations with it. But more recently, I think the main thing that's been driving these two countries closer together and that's been driving the United States' outreach to India, you know, having them woo, Modi and woo the government is China. The United States, as you could argue, its main foreign policy priority.

This would be a competition between that and Russia is trying to constrain China in various ways. This is an area where they have some alignment with New Delhi. New Delhi also sees China as a competitor. It views China as a pressing security threat. And so there's kind of this alliance of convenience that's developed between the two. I mean, as a result of that, the U.S. government has been reticent to really criticize India over anything. And to your point, it's not just not criticizing India. They welcome Modi with open arms. They talk about how India is a great democracy. Secretary of Commerce at Rimundo, she gave a speech. I can't remember exactly what it was she said, but she talked about how Narendra Modi is, you know, the greatest leader in the

world and an inspiration and just really kind of fawning over him in all this various ways. So there's really been no recognition from the top about the human rights abuses and the democratic backsliding. It's odd to me that what India and China have in common in terms of their governments is their hatred of the Muslim community. One China with the Uyghurs and here in India, and only one is actually spoken about publicly by the United States, and that is very convenient. Let's talk about now what happened on Canadian soil with Canadian citizen Hardeeb Singh Nijjar,

who was gunned down outside of a Sikh temple. And this is the murder that prompted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to say that he had credible evidence, which I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that that evidence came from U.S. intelligence that India had a hand in the killing of Nijjar in Canada. So please tell us what you have uncovered and what you reported on in your piece for the Atlantic. Sure. So Nijar was a prominent activist in the Sikh separatist movement, which is a movement that calls for an independent sick nation in the north of India called Kalistan.

And to be fair to India, this is a movement with a very violent history that carried out many terrorist attacks. They waged a violent insurgency in India. But that happened in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s. That's not something that's happening today. And the Indian government's response to this insurgency, by the way, was equally brutal. But called for this independent state live on within the diaspora. And Nijar was one of the most vocal proponents of trying to get an independent state created in northern India. And for some reason, I have my own hypotheses as to why, but it's difficult to understand why they want to do this strategically.

If Canada is right, the Indian government ordered Nijad to be assassinated. And then he was gunned down, Ganglang style, in front of the temple that he was president of. And yet, it seems like the intelligence that showed that part of that actually did, it appears, come from the United States. It's funny, you look at the Indian government's reaction to the accusations. And on the one hand, they say, this is ridiculous. You know, we would have never done this. What a horrible accusation. And on the other hand, they say, but if we did it, we were totally justified.

And, you know, Canada's harboring terrorists and these people needed to be reined in and yada, yada, yada. And if you look at the way it's played at home, it actually appears like it's going to bolster Modi's popularity. It makes him more quite strong. I'm like it makes it look like he has reached beyond the borders of his own country. Please continue. No, no. No, you're exactly right. And it plays into this narrative that Modi is promoting that he is.

a great power. And India is a great power, but that India is a great power because of him, because he's strong. He's standing up to the world. He's making India be recognized and not be bullied anymore. It kind of bolsters that narrative. Daniel, I will tell you that what makes me so extraordinarily angry is that, again, these are the same tactics that the Chinese government has used and does use on a regular basis, that America wants to hold up and say, look at our enemy, look at them over there and what it is that they're doing. This is why we must out-compete and preserve democracy. Modi is moving in the same exact way. So tell me, with our love of capitalism and our desire to continue to be an economic giant, is there a way that you see for the U.S. government

to both call out, as we're trying to hold on to democracy in our own country, what is obvious aggression by the Indian government, and also be able to continue to have peaceful relations, or will it turn out to the extent as what we're seeing unfold between Canada and India, with India, expelling a Canadian diplomat and trying now to not have that situation escalation. I think this is one of the most important questions right now in U.S. foreign policy, especially when it comes to China, is how the United States should handle its relationship with India. And to answer your question, I think there is a way to do both. The United States makes common cause with a lot of really nasty countries. It has a partnership with Saudi Arabia. It has a partnership with kind of more run-of-the-mill autocracies, you know, Jordan. And it manages to do this and it manages to hold these partnerships to advance its foreign policy. interests without necessarily praising these countries as paradigms of democracy or these wonderful

liberal states as models for the whole world. And it can do the same thing with India. It can and it should be frank and honest about what it sees as the shortcomings. And it can do that and it can still trade deals. It could still access the Indian market, whatever you want, whatever you have you. It can still cooperate on security. Now, will the Indian government grumble and complain? Sure. I would be shocked, though, if it would pare back diplomatic relations. or cut off trade or do some of the stuff that it's doing with Canada right now, namely closing visa applications to Canadians and expelling diplomats, simply because the United States is too important to India's goals.

And it does want and need the United States as it heats up its own competition with China. So I think the United States can be honest, and it should be honest, it really needs to be honest, and it can still continue to have a working relationship with India. And if you don't mind me making one other point, one thing that people in the United States may not realize is that every time the United States government praises Modi and praises India, it is plastered across Indian news and celebrated as evidence that Modi is great. You'll see stuff about how, oh, all these complaints that Modi is being undemocratic. That's false. Listen to what John Kirby, the White House spokesperson, has said. And so by cutting out the praise, we're actually

helping, I think, the domestic situation in India get better simply by not making it worse. As somebody who works at foreign affairs and follows essentially American politics and policy abroad, what is it that you feel like we need to understand in this country in terms of there is a new alignment that is happening? There are new axes that are forming that have grave implications on our ability to, one, hold on to democracy, but also to actually remain a world power and competitive. We don't have the billions of people that China and India do. And at some point, the United States is going to show itself to really not be a major player. And so this is my opinion.

And so I'm wondering how you foresee really being able to, as these things continue to happen, wake the American people up to, this global society that we live in, that what happens in India matters to what is happening in the United States and elsewhere. I think that one thing the United States should keep in mind, particularly when it comes to this India-Canada dispute, is that part of why the United States remains so powerful, especially when compared to China, a country that's way larger in population, is because it has a really deep network of alliances. And that's something that China doesn't have going for it. And the United States is trying to move India into this column. But I think one thing Americans need to be aware of is that India will never be the type of close democratic ally,

at least not under this government, that it wants, that can help sustain to an extent U.S. power. But also the values the United States professes to advance, even though we obviously rarely follow them to nearly the extent we say. Canada, on the other hand, is it's one of these close allies that the United States has. And so the United States is it doesn't want to call out India's bad behavior. It doesn't want to what appears to make joint statements with Canada alleging that India was behind the assassination. It views Canada to some extent as a less important partner and ally. And you might think, oh, well, okay, that makes sense. Canada is small. It's nearby. India's large. It's where we quote unquote need it to be in the world. But India's never going

to be that type of partner. India's never going to be that type of ally. Canada is. And so This is an opportunity where the United States, I think, can actually align its foreign policy aims with the right moral judgment, with the right ethics. And that's to stand up and say, this is wrong. If these accusations are true, this is a horrible thing that India did. And there needs to be some kind of answering for it. And that will have the dual effect of right sizing or realizing where India is really going to be in the world. And also bringing a close partner, a good partner, Canada, closer to the United States and making it clear. We do stand up for these values.

We do stand up for our partners. Because Daniel, I mean, you know, last question for you, what happens, right, if America chooses wrong? Do you know what I'm saying? Like, if we allow Canada to just be out on its own as the sole moral authority and choosing to align ourselves based solely on economic prosperity or what we perceive to be economic prosperity, what happens? A few things happen, none of them good. First is we undermine, we further undermine any claim to moral leadership. What's it called the summit of democracies, different calls for making democracy, the center point of U.S. foreign policy, something that Biden came in and talked a whole lot about. To the extent that any of that remains and any of that remains valid, we further undermine that kind

of claim of moral leadership. But I think in addition of that, we just, we emboldened bad international behavior, right? You know, we've already had this problem with transnational assassinations where you have countries like Russia that go overseas and kill people in the United Kingdom. This is already a problem. But if we say, okay, a friendly country of ours, we're not talking about an adversary, we're talking about an ostensibly friendly state can do this and we're not going to say anything. We're not going to stand up with Canada. We're not going to back them. We simply make this more acceptable behavior. And that's very dangerous. If you're criticizing another country from a different state, you want to feel safe doing that somewhere. And that's one of the few ways that opposition to authoritarian regimes

stays alive, right? If you live in China, you can't criticize China. It's not safe. You have to go somewhere else. But if we create this precedent where, no, it's okay, a state can go down and kill or arrest people who are living in a different country and are criticizing their politics, it just makes opposition in an increasingly authoritarian world even harder. And that's a very frightening thing, I think. Yeah, 100%. Daniel Block, thank you so much for your peace, folks. It is entitled and up at the Atlantic. The killing in Canada shows, what India has become and check out Daniel's writings as senior editor at Foreign Affairs. Appreciate you and hope that you will join us again.

Thanks so much for having me. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy. So kick us off. Who's your fuck that guy for this glorious week? You know, well, I'm just going to do everybody because it just makes it easier. But let's start off with the fact that Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, who Donald Trump has made a target of because of his lack of willingness to overturn the will of the people of Georgia

and turn the election of 2020 over to Donald Trump, who has been attacked and made a target by Donald Trump. Guess what this motherfucker has said, that if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, he will back him because, quote, would still be a lot better than Biden. Sir, are you dumb? Are you fucking dumb is really the question. So Donald Trump not only can insult people's wives, he can threaten their lives, he can turn his entire rabbit, violent base on you. But because he has an R after his name, he would be better than Biden. A man who we have just learned to all of our worst thoughts is unstable and incapable of doing this job and could literally tweet us all into World War

3, which he thinks would be World War 2, because that's how little he fucking knows about history, but you would vote for him because he's a Republican. That's how you know this is a goddamn cult and not a political party. Because anyone else would look around

and say, you know what? I actually don't give a fuck if he has an R by his name, because he's not the kind of Republican that represents my values. But Brian Kemp is indicative and emblematic of the entirety of the Republican Party. Trump can do no wrong so long as he has an R after his name, then that means that we have power. And for that reason, all of them, including Kemp, are my,

fuck that guy. Fuck that party. Yeah, it really is amazing how many of them there are. Kemp in particular, though, Jesus Christ, what are you thinking? Like, are you going to go out there and campaign with Donald Trump? Probably. That's just nuts. This guy has called for your head. Like, I don't know. These people are insane. Bill Bard did this. God damn John Goodman character-looking attorney general. Don't bring John Goodman into this.

Did the same thing. He would sit there and tell you all the things that Trump did that were just blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. And then when he asked if he would vote for him, he'd have him in Haw. Like, are you fucking kidding me? We can't just make this about Kemp and bless you for making this about all of them. Fuck those guys. So, Andy, how are we starting off this good, good week?

Oh. So Clay Travis is just a fucking loser. Like, I don't even know how else to say about all these people anymore. He's a guy who made his bones writing about how we need to keep politics out of sports. And then he somehow managed to part that into a nice little grifting career of injecting politics into sports, which is odd, but whatever. And Travis Kelsey, who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, was kind of in the news this week. and because Taylor Swift came to the Chiefs game to watch him play, and there have been rumors that they are maybe seeing each other. So it became this big thing. So Travis decides to tweet in the middle of all this. Travis Kelsey is doing Bud Light and COVID shot commercials. He needs to fire all his marketing agents, or he needs to just go ahead and cut his dick off,

become a chick, and endorse Joe Biden. I don't know what kind of person you are that, well, I do know what kind of person you're a piece of shit. And it's interesting that he would mention the COVID shot commercials. Clay Travis is not just anti-vax. He's a COVID denier. He was one of those people out there in 2020 talking about how COVID was no worse than the flu. And look, if I ever said something that unbelievably stupid, I don't think I would continue to appear in public, but these people somehow turn that into a career. He's one of those guys also that always used to call himself. He said, I'm a moderate. I'm a moderate. The Democratic Party left me. I voted. I voted.

for Obama before I voted for Trump. I don't give a shit who you voted for before Trump. You are now, you are a COVID denier, you are transphobic, and God knows what else, because we usually know what goes along with those sets of beliefs. But I'm so tired of these people, it's such a fucking grift. And this guy now appears on Fox News all the time and does his little schick. And just fuck these guys as far as you can possibly throw them. Also, saying that, like, I would love to hear him say that to Travis Kelsey's face. I would love it. Can we get video?

It would be the last thing he ever said. Yes, it would be. Fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. 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.

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