The Daily Beast Podcast - Ron DeSantis Going Full Trump Won’t Work

Episode Date: August 28, 2022

Florida Governor went full on Donald Trump during his “Keep Florida Free Tour” last week after saying he wants to “chuck” the “little elf” Dr. Anthony Fauci across the Potomac. Will it help him gain traction ahead for a 2024 presidential run? The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy shares his hot take on how well this is gonna work for DeSantis on this episode. And this conversation is before he and MollyJong-Fast listen to a clip of DeSantis talking about the woke crowd. Plus! NBC’s Capitol Hill Correspondent Ali Vitali joins to share some of the reporting she writes about in her new book, Electable: Why America Hasn’t Put a Woman in the White House . . . Yet, including why Everyone Hates Kamala.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello and welcome to another Sunday edition of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Ali Vitale, who's, of course, the Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News.

And she's here to talk to us about her new book, Electable, Why America Hasn't Put a Woman in the White House yet. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes, you are, Molly. Yes.

You guys may be familiar with a Texas representative name, Dan Crenshaw, kind of a contrarian bad take machine. Love him. Are we ready for some Crenshaw? I mean, okay. Is anyone ever ready for Dan Crenshaw? No. And look, again, why not just ask him?

Why not just ask him? I thought they'd been negotiating and trying to get the information from him and... And he cooperated. He didn't turn over boxes and boxes of material, as far the Justice Department says. But he's been cooperating. And I think he's on the record saying whatever you need from us, just ask. It's great to see you guys. It was a very friendly environment.

His lawyers said they didn't have any more classified information. And the Justice Department said, yes, you do. And they went and got it got it. And the only reason we know about the raid was because Donald Trump announced it. Right. Well, I think we would have figured it out even if he hadn't. But look, yes, the lawyers did sign that document that they have nothing left. Now, that's either a huge mistake on part of the lawyers.

But even if it was nefarious, again, why not say, hey, we don't believe. you, now let us come back, and let's go through these boxes again. There's tons of boxes here. I mean, do any of us really believe that Donald Trump is, like, reading his nuclear secrets on his bedside at night? There's an intent question here. No, there isn't. I don't know why there's no intent question at all. It doesn't matter. If you take classified documents, it doesn't matter what you intend to do with them. You can't do that. What the hell, man? Like, he so clearly knows that this is fucked and is just trying his best to spin it like it's not that big a deal.

But he knows. I mean, he's a former military guy. He knows you don't just take classified documents to your hotel. But I'm telling you, my favorite part, though, is like, the defenses go from, like, they overreacted to, like, Trump is so stupid. Right. I want to point out, the idea that Trump is too. dumb to crime is like a trope in this whole administration. And remember, fucking Don Jr.

Was too dumb to crime because of the, you know, the Trump Tower meeting. Well, did he really know it was treason? I mean, you guys give this guy so much fucking benefit of the doubt. Like, people are giving this family a whole lot of fucking benefit of the doubt. For a family that's too dumb to crime, they've been criming for like 40 fucking years. It's true. Consistently. I have an alternate theory as usual.

Oh, yeah, let's go. So, you know, everybody keeps to be like, he's not reading top secret documents at bedside and I'm like, you know what I think it is naked Kim Jong-Ooon pictures? Because that's what he really loves. Oh, God, Jesse, come on. Come on. And someone who is a big Kim Jong-un person in my own way. Talk like that about Molly's cousin. That's true.

Yeah. It's true. Okay, so as we know, Credge Shaw couldn't turn his back on Mr. Trump because then you pay the price of losing your place. We have follow-up this week where Mr. Alex Jones, who had turned his back on Trump, well, he's reconsidering. So this is my emergency message to you, Mr. President. To go and actually watch the first 30 minutes of Thursday's show, we'll put a link to it below here. So you can see what I said in context. The corporate media edited down a 30-second clip to make it sound like that I'm only for a disson.

and that I've abandoned you. That's not true. It's the contrary. I understand you're under attack. I understand you are surrounded, and I'm trying to get you to reassess the situation. I know people like Don are telling you that you need to reassess a situation. The idea that he thinks Donald Trump is going to go back and listen to 30 minutes of his show.

That's just hilarious. Listen, man, it's nice that someone's still. like loves Trump. I mean, I guess. But also, can we talk about like what world is it where it matters to a Republican candidate that Alex Jones likes them as opposed to the other way around? Like, they should not want Alex Jones to like them. That should be a bad thing. Have you, have you seen the base of the GOP? No, I know. It's just, it's just amazing that that's where we are now, where it's like they want his support as opposed to not wanting his support. You know, like it used to be like David Duke would say something and the candidate would have to be like,

well, I don't want his support, which was a lie. But at least they would have to say it. Now it's just, you know, it's just a fight to get Alex Jones's support. Just, God, help us all. Not good. Well, I've before all. So some follow-up posed my hypothesis that Tucker Carlson is Alex Jones in a fat suit. I think I have more proof here in this next clip.

Amos has completely eliminated any risk coming from the international or domestic politics of the Biden administration, and they're coming after him for it. Maybe if he promises put more chemicals in the milk that turn kids trans, they'll lay off. Did any of the federal marshals decline to raid an Amish organic farm, on principle or do they all just go along with this? Do you know? All I know is that many federal agents did not decline to go and did go along with it and rated the farm and took inventory of Amos's farm to make sure that he doesn't sell or produce

any more meat. You know, we're for law enforcement, broadly speaking, but there's such a thing as Congress. Like at the end where he's like, we're for law enforcement, I mean, except when they go after There are people for milk. What? Look, this is the first time hearing about the government putting chemicals in the milk to turn cage trans. So I'm going to have to do my own research on this. Yeah.

You get on Google right now. You get on that Facebook. And when you're there, find out about the genocide in Myanmar. This is phase two after, since they already turned all the frogs gay, of course. Right, exactly, right. The frogs were just the beginning. We tried to tell you. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, my God. There's no bottom, no bottom. The most watched show on cable news. Yeah, yeah, well, well, more bad news for that party. The guy that everybody has their hopes for for Mr. Trump's arteries are, have a coup staged against them by the Colonel at KFC is Ron DeSantis. And he has some terrible takes to give us that we're going to close out the show with. You have people like Fauci saying that his lockdowns didn't come. cause any permanent damage to any young kids. I got news for you. It did. And we are going to reap

those rewards across the whole country for years and years and years because they treated kids so poorly. And I'm just sick of seeing him. I know he says he's going to retire. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac. It's a lot of applause. Yeah. Man, whatever. He's like the poor man's Donald Trump. He's like the bizarro Donald Trump. He's like the bizarro Donald Trump. He's Donald Trump without whatever it is that makes Donald Trump appealing. And I mean appealing in quotes. No, I think that's exactly right. And I have to take back something I said on the pod a week or so ago where I said, I thought the danger of DeSantis is that he's a little smarter than Trump and wouldn't make, you know, wouldn't go there the way Trump does. And clearly I was completely wrong about that. And he has decided to go full Trump. And you're absolutely right, Molly. The problem is that, you know, Trump is, again, not to me and not to you anymore, Molly. I think you've, you've, you've, Yes, I finally turned my back on him. I finally rejected him.

Thank God that finally happened. Yeah, just being so respectful towards his crime. Trump has that sort of weird charisma that... Right, that some people like. Yeah. DeSantis has none of that. And it's just... Desantis just sounds like an asshole. He just sounds like a mean asshole.

Whereas Trump sort of, you know, he says that he is a mean asshole. And he, but he somehow, when he says these things, there's something kind of a little funny in the way he phrases it or the way he does, whatever. It just takes a little bit of the edge off it just rhetorically, even though the concept is the same. But DeSantis just doesn't have that. And I don't know that this is going to work for him like this whole idea of going full Trump. I don't think that's going to work for him. But who knows? Yeah, I mean, it's worth a shot.

As long as it ruins it. As long as it ruins him, I'll be happy to see it. Yeah, sure. To your point, between the Top Gun thing this week. Yeah, that was amazing. I wish we could play, but it's a visual gag. It's just DeSantis dressed up like the world's least successful Democratic candidate. Yes.

Kitty DeCoccus's husband. Yes. Olympia to caucus his cousin. Yeah. That's right. Truly bad political instincts going on here. I do love Olympia to caucus. Okay.

I do have bad news, though. His streak of doing bad things this week that are pathetic, they didn't in there. There's another clip to hear. At the end of the day, we're not going to let this state be overrun by woke ideology. We will fight the woke in the businesses. We will fight the woke in government agencies. We will fight the woke in our schools. We will never, ever surrender.

to the woke agenda, Florida is the state where woke goes to die. We've accomplished an awful lot in Florida more than anybody's thought was possible. You're a state filled with elderly people, and woke is going to be the person who's going to die. I mean, I'm going to die. I was like, it's a state where most people's grandparents go to die. Is he trying, like, is he consciously trying to do the Winston Churchill thing there? I couldn't tell. No, no, I think you are right, but that's some of his phrasing is that he thinks that, like,

culture warring with statesmanship is his ticket to the top. But, like, the idea of comparing Judge Churchill's speech about the Nazis coming into Britain with people who want black people to be treated like human beings, it's like, oh, my God, are you out your fucking mind? I mean, my God, he sucks. Wow. Yeah, no, he's a piece of shit. But I'm delightfully orange.

You know, I forgot to mention when we were doing the Fauci thing, though, is that he's only two inches taller than Fauci. So he's only whatever stages above elephant height. Right. But you want to know what that listing that clip sounded like to me, it sounded like the most annoying song on Earth, Baby Shark, but just with the word woke instead. Yeah. I mean, it's just that's their mantra. They just repeat woke over and over again and call everything woke that they've decided. they don't like and it's just, it's so dumb. It's just so dumb. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing.

Allie Vitale is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News as well as the author of Electable, why America hasn't put a woman in the White House yet. Welcome to the new abnormal, Ali Vitale. Why did you write this book? Tell us everything. I'm so excited to be here with you guys. I wrote it in part because we came out of the 2020 election cycle with more women running than ever before. It felt like if you looked at the polls and you looked at the data that maybe the U.S. was ready to do what they did in 2016 again and elevate a woman to the top of the Democratic Party and then go a step further and elect her president. But ultimately, we all saw what happened. And this book was sort of born out of the coverage of Senator Warren dropping out of the race and that feeling, that creeping

feeling from after 2016 coming back again of why is this so elusive? Why is this so hard? Yeah, why is it so hard? I mean, the short answer, and it would have been a much shorter book is misogyny. But the longer answer is that just structurally, running for president is an executive role that we still associate so many male and masculine characteristics with. And so women in real time are not just running presidential campaigns, which are really hard to run it in the first place, but on top of that, they are asking voters not just to envision them in the White House, but to envision something that they have literally never seen before. And in 2020, you remember this.

The only thing that Democratic voters really, really all agreed on was they desperately needed to beat Donald Trump. And they didn't want any risk associated with that. And they just didn't want to take a risk with someone who they hadn't seen in that role before. And certainly Joe Biden was not a risk. Yeah, I'm like obsessed with this idea. Why are people so hard on the VEP? Well, you and I have talked about this. Like you either just wrote or writing a piece about this.

And I think that you're allowed. Right? Like, I'm a reporter first, and I will always believe that our public officials need to be scrutinized and held to account. And you can do that, whether they are male or female, black, white, otherwise. It doesn't matter. But the ways that we scrutinize them are different if they are non-white and non-male. And in the case of Kamala Harris, I think part of the reason why people are so frustrated with her is because they seemingly expected her to recreate the role of vice president that has been around for hundreds of years, simply because she doesn't look like everyone else who has held that role. And that is just, a fundamentally unfair expectation. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. The kind of hostility towards her from the pundit class, I have been really shocked by. Well, because it's palpable. Everything she does is the sign of like the worst gap ever.

And I think the thing that I heard time and again when I was talking to people for this book, yes, she has gotten media training since being in the White House. Is that rare or a little bit odd? Yes, but at the same time, just because she's getting media training, doesn't take away from the fact, and many people have pointed this out to me, that she is the

vice president to a man who was literally known for his gas during the 2020 campaign. That is something that everyone in his orbit would talk about. They were nervous about him talking to the press because they just weren't sure what he was going to say. So for Kamala Harris to be criticized, I think in some cases rightly for not having a ready to go answer, for example, in an interview with Lester Holtz about why she hadn't been to the border yet, there was an answer that I wasn't. wasn't sure why she wasn't giving the answer of I was a California lawmaker for a decade plus. I've been in these issues at the center of these issues. I wasn't sure why that wasn't the answer she was giving. But at the same time, like, all their vice presidents have had snafus and

interviews and it wasn't a sign of, oh, well, they can't govern. And I think with Kamala Harris, that's the thing is like, we're looking at a media strategy, which I do think is important if you want to be president. You got to run through the media. But it's not a sign that like she would be a bad president. It's not like a review of her governance abilities and somehow people are acting like it is. Well, one of the things I was most surprised by was like the president of Mexico loves her and has been like her great champion. Her job was to go down and try to fix something, the southern border, which is completely unfixable because Republicans love to use it for one thing. And immigration is such a problem because no one wants it fixed ultimately. Well, it's an intractable issue. How many

years have we've been talking about comprehensive immigration reform and how many times has it gotten done? Right. And so it's so interesting to me that here she is being, you know, actually doing what she's supposed to do here, which is work stuff out with Mexico as best she can. And nobody's even talking about it. Well, and especially because the rollout of her and the border kind of missed what her actual assignment was, which is like her assignment wasn't like fix immigration. Her assignment was the root cause. of immigration doing diplomacy on the foreign stage with these countries in South America. It wasn't like, let me fix every crisis on the border. That's a Homeland Security issue, actually, along with the White House. So I think fundamentally, her role kind of got messed up. But there are many in the Biden orbit who would say, A, Biden did this job as vice president.

It was a part of his portfolio under Obama. And B, he didn't complain when he got it. So there is a little bit of that going on here too. Right. For sure. That's definitely something that's also going on. The interesting thing to me is like vice president has been a job that it's the world's most important job that nobody knows what it's supposed to be. Because nobody knows how to grade it. And I write about this in the book. Like we know how you judge a president, right? You judge it in on the foreign stage, you judge it in terms of domestic policy agenda items that have been notched. And certainly Biden's had several over the course of the last year, despite the fact that there have been also moments of Democrats sort of in disarray on how to get them done.

but broadly, like, we know how to grade a president. It's a lot harder to grade a vice president because if they're doing their job correctly, you're probably not seeing or hearing from them too much. And in the case of Kamala Harris, I was struck by the fact that when you look at her unfavorable ratings, and they really did start dipping and eclipsing her favorability ratings during the whole border crisis moment in the summer of 2021. That was a real inflection point for her.

The numbers haven't recovered, but if you compare where she was, June of 2021, when I last checked before I could put this book to the printer, her numbers are lower than almost all of her counterparts. So Cheney, Biden, Pence. I saw the numbers were actually not that much lower than other counterparts. The aggregate, though. Oh, okay. No, she's definitely being judged on a completely different scale. That is for sure true. But yes, I think that's right. You know what's also funny is like everyone knew Mike Pence wanted to run for president, but no one was foot-tapping him during the four years that he was number two to Trump, saying, well, why isn't he making it more apparent that he wants to be president? It seems like right now with Kamala Harris,

despite the fact that we all know that she will likely run for president again, everyone seems very impatient about the fact that she's like not being overt about that, which like, it's kind of hard to be overt about that when the guy who is the president right now says he wants to still be the president. She gets criticism for everything. She gets criticism for having people who defend her online. Like, that's somehow her fault. I actually, think it's good. Good for her. Like, that's something Democrat should be doing. Like, I mean, I just feel like she gets criticism for everything in a way that male politicians just don't. And it reminds me a lot of other female politicians. Talk to me about female politicians who are, I mean,

who do you see who, where you're like, this person is bucking the trap? I think there's people on both sides who are doing that. I'm pretty fascinated by Liz Cheney right now. I think a lot of us are in Washington, just because she is, I think, embodying of a larger thing that's happening in Republican politics right now, which is the people leading the accountability movement against Trump are, by and large women and predominantly women. I mean, it's Cheney, of course, because she's front and center with the January 6th committee, but it's also the women from the Trump administration who have testified in front of that committee, who have faced great amount of threats because of the fact that they did that. And then also, when you look at the actual legal accountability game,

got Tish James in New York. In Fulton County, you also have the female DA there. I mean, there are women at every rung of this, elected or not, or trying to hold Trump accountable and keep accountable small D democracy. And I think that's pretty fascinating, especially the way that conservative politics tends to put gender and identity in the back seat. And then also in the Democratic Party, I think you have women, I mean, the fact that Kamala Harris exists in the vice presidency is a clear your sign of progress. She's closer to the Oval Office than any woman has been before. And most of the people that I talk to in this book, Republican and Democrat alike, say that is good for every woman who aspires to this office because it helps that imagination game that they're

asking the public to play. You now see a woman closer than ever to the Oval. Yeah. I mean, no, I agree. And that is like, it's funny because it's like we're really seeing the march of progress, you know, the backwards and the forwards. Except, and this is a concept that I toy with. that at the end of the day, Kamala Harris was elevated to that role, not elected in her own right. And that is still the hurdle that has yet to be jumped over. Yeah, no, I know. But Nancy Pelosi was elected. Well, she was sort of elected in her own right.

Nancy Pelosi is emblematic of the way that many women in other countries have risen two executive roles. I mean, if we, the United States, were a parliamentary system, then we would have president Nancy Pelosi if everything was equivalent. So it does matter the system of government, and that is one of the things that I think is a barrier to the U.S. not yet hitting this milestone is the fact that the way we elect our elected officials and the way that we elect our president is a system that is not necessarily favorable to female candidates. And I'm not arguing that we change a system to be favorable to one type of candidate over another, but it's a system that is tilted against non-white and non-male candidates. And I think that when you look at each rung of it, both from funders, raising and candidate recruitment and just how parties have taken a while to fill the pipeline with viable candidates, it all sort of amounts in, okay, this is why we haven't had a female president yet. Yeah. Is there a way for women to sort of game the system? I don't know if it's gaming the system, but I think it's to continue running, which I know sounds like a quaint answer. But the earlier

that these women are starting their careers, and we're seeing this over the course of the last few decades. Part of why you had so many presidential primaries where there just weren't any female candidates is because women weren't running in starting their political careers at an early enough point that by the time they got to the age to run for president, they had a sufficient resume to do so. At least now, I actually think we're done with the days of seeing no women be able to viably run in presidential primaries. And the reason I focus so much on primaries in the book is because that's when the gender biases are the most at play. When you get to a general election, you know this, of course, is once you're in a general, if you're a Democrat, you're voting for the Democrat. If you're a Republican, you're voting for the

Republican. Like, no one is sitting there saying, well, I'm just, I'm only voting on gender. By and large, the trend line show you that it's party ideology that guides you in a general election. So it's where the primaries are that if you invest in and support female candidates and then they get to a general, when they run, they win at the same rate as white male candidates do. We've seen that borne out time and again. So the primary system is really, like this swirling pot of all of these intangible biases. And that's why I focus on it in the 2020 primary so much. That's super interesting.

Do you think open primary solves any of that? I mean, I just spent some time in Alaska where they're doing the rank choice voting system for the first time. And I hear the, oh God. But experts have said that it's a system. No, I like it. I mean, except I come from New York and we have the World Force mayor again. So I don't know how that worked out for us.

The thinking on the part of experts that I talk to about ranked choice voting is that it's a system that women can do well in, in part, because when you think about the qualities that voters by and large assign to female candidates, it's building community. But like when you think about the words that voters assigned to female candidates, there are words like collegial and communal. They're inherently sexist. Well, they are, but they also work in a ranked choice voting system where if you were a firebler, if you were a fireball, brand who is lashing out at every single one of your opponents, the voters who like your opponents are probably not going to want to put you second. So there's a strategy to rank choice voting that actually benefits female candidates. Now, the asterisk there, of course, is that if you're looking in the case of Alaska, like Sarah Palin is not a collegial person in terms of the way that she politics

necessarily. So that might fly in the face of that system. But like it might work for someone like Lisa Murkowski. So that's kind of an interesting way to toy with it. Can you explain to me what's happening now with that? When does it happen? Okay, so Murkowski is like pretty much done. The primary, we know she made it to the top four. Now we just have to wait for November. And that's going to take a little while because A, tons of vote by mail in Alaska, huge state. Right. They were joking about the quaint, cute size of Texas when I was there and I love that. Right. And then the other piece of this is that rank choice voting obviously just takes a little bit of time. Like as a New York voter, you know. Yeah. The thing we're waiting for is the Palin race for House,

which, I mean, we're a week out and it tracks that we're still waiting, but it's no less frustrating. I love results instantly. So she's going to win, though, right? She could. Yeah. Oh, wow. I don't know. I also have a theory where like if things shake out in a certain way, then maybe the Democrat

Mary Pelotola there wins. And then we did this race all over again in two months anyway. So. Jesus Christ. That is just haunting. I'm not going back to Alaska in November, though. Yeah. Wait.

How did you even get what I don't. I don't even want to know. I mean, you flew there, right? Of course. Yeah, yeah. Channels. It was a really long walk. Yeah, exactly. What other pieces of wisdom do you have from writing this book? I think the biggest takeaway that I had from 2020 was, although there was heartbreak from a lot of voters that I talked to about not getting a female nominee and then not getting a female president, I think that I prefer to look at the one step forward instead of the two steps back, which is that when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his vice presidential nominee, it was not new in that we had seen both parties pick female vice presidential contenders in the past. Obviously 2008 with Sarah Palin, 1984 with Geraldine Ferraro. that sample size is way too small, but nevertheless, Kamala Harris was not first in that respect. But she was interesting and fascinating in a sign of progress, because when Biden picked her,

he did it because her gender and her diversity was an asset and a power move. It was something that was so obvious within Democratic politics that he needed to politically do something like this to win, to be victorious, unlike with Mondale and Palin and Ferraro and unlike with McCain and with Mondale when they made their picks, which is they were just kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall trying to energize their bases in whatever way they could. And they were like, oh, well, a woman would be novel and new.

In Biden's case, it was like, okay, a woman would be historic. And also, she is an asset for this moment. That's a huge sign of progress. Thank you so much, Ali Vitale. This is great. Absolutely, you guys. I'm so happy to do it. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.