The Daily Beast Podcast - Ron DeSantis Is So Clearly the Beta to Donald Trump’s Alpha

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, we’re joined by Jeb Lund and David Roth of the It's Christmas Town Podcast who talk all about Ron DeSantis entering the presidential race. Plus! Representative Jasmine Crockett talks about the clown show that Reps. Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Green have turned the Congress into. 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. 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. We'll be joined by Representative Jasmine Crockett, and she's here today to talk about the clown show that Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Green have turned the Congress into. Then we'll be joined by Jeb Lund and David Roth of the It's Christmas Town podcast, and they're going to talk all about Ron DeSantis entering the presidential race. But first, let's have some fun. So Danielle, do you ever have that nightmare where everybody is sort of laughing at you and pointing at you and you have no idea why, but they just won't stop and you can't move and you're kind of, you know, stuck where you are? Yes, happened.

We all had that? Yeah, I think we have. Marjorie Taylor Green lived that nightmare the other day. She was acting as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's familiar and sitting in for him in the chair. holding the gavel. She asked the Democrats to abide by the decorum of the House, and here's how they responded. The members are reminded to abide by decorum of the House. An order. That was just not something you hear a lot is just basically an entire party on the House floor, just openly mocking the person holding the gavel, but well-deserved, I would say. I mean, Marjorie Taylor Green,

of all goddamn people. What I loved were all of the memes of her that people were tweeting on top of the laughter. So her and her Corella DeVille white fur jacket screaming liar at the president of the United States during the state of the union. Her following David Hogg when he was a teenager around the Capitol building

screaming at him. Her pointing her finger at Representative Jamal Bowman and screaming at him. I mean, miss me with the decorum, honestly. Yeah. No, it really is the pot calling the kettle

white in this case. Because definitely not black. No, absolutely not. This clip is hilarious, but the part of it that of course isn't funny is that Marjorie Taylor fucking green

is sitting in the speaker's chair of the House of Representatives. That shit will never be funny. And it sucks. Like, I hate that I've become this like, you. I used to be the guy who was like, oh, you should laugh at anything. And I still think that. It's just that all this shit has just gotten to the point where, yes, this particular thing was

hysterical. But like, if you sit there and start to think about it, it's like, how did we get to this point where Marjorie Taylor Green is running the House of Representatives? It's what happens when you sell your soul because you believe that having the title of speaker is more important than it actually embodying the power of speaker. And that's what Kevin McCarthy they did. It was years ago, not years ago, but it feels like years ago at this point, where folks said, oh, Marjorie Taylor Green, she's just a fringe character of the Republican party. Oh, pay her no mind. And inch by inch, moment by moment, push by push, she has now elbowed herself into being pretty much second in command in the house. And it is just, it is wild,

it is disrespectful to the body politic that this woman, this conservative, this conservative, conspiracy theorists, this thug of a human, can sit there and hold the gavel in this chamber. Like, I think that to your point, it is important to really think about the power that Marjorie Taylor Green has because of Kevin McCarthy, because of Donald Trump. Like in any other time in our lives, Marjorie Taylor Green would have never been able to make it into Congress. She would have been a laughing stock and a joke, which she is. And so I appreciate the laughter by the Democrats, but it's almost one of those moments where you laugh so you don't cry.

So speaking of laughing stocks and jokes, Ron DeSantis. Yes. Full stop. We're done now. It's all I got. Ron DeSantis, aka De Sanctimonious, aka Meatball Ron, aka Rob, announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the president of the United States on Wednesday. and he did it on Twitter in a thing called Twitter spaces, which for people who don't know, is sort of like a place you can go and have large audio conversations, like hundreds of

thousands of people can listen, many people can speak, etc. It's not ready for prime time, much like apparently Rondas. The launch didn't exactly go as planned as Elon Musk was trying to introduce him. Everything went dead. And there was like 20 minutes of basically nothing going on before they could finally figure it out and get everyone on the same page. To use a technical term, it was a shit show. It got pretty roundly mocked on Twitter and elsewhere. But we now live in a world where someone has declared for the presidency on Twitter. Bravo, I guess.

I mean, I think that it's, what's funny is that the media was already calling this a reset for Ron DeSantis. He hadn't announced yet. So he's had so many stumbles, so many false stars. already, that this was just par for the course, and it was comical at best. And the way that they have tried to spin this, David Sacks, who was, I guess, moderating the conversation, said that, oh, yeah, this is, you know, this is what happens. We've broken the internet. And it was like, dude, there were 600,000 people, according to the Verge, that were in the Twitter spaces.

And they're like, in comparison, 12 million people showed up for Travis Scott's Fortnite. concert in 2020. So like 600,000 people is not an internet breaking moment. And I think what's also really important to note is that just like Twitter people do not actually mean enthusiasm. Ron DeSantis used a person that is bigger than him, has a bigger footprint, a bigger mouth, a bigger presence than he does, which by the way, when you're announcing the presidency, you should be the biggest person on the stage, whether it's an audio one or an actual stage. You should be the biggest person. He didn't do that.

And so on top of that, you bring out Elon Musk. You do it in a space where there is no pictures of you looking presidential behind a bunch of flags, no cheering fans, no nothing. And just reading the word woke over and over again like you have some kind of tick. It's paltry at best. And here's where I will, for the first time, agree with Donald Trump. fucking disaster. Yeah, look, Trump showed exactly why he's Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis isn't.

Trump was just ruthless in going after this. He did it in a funny way and he did it, you know, a lot of people I saw on Twitter and elsewhere just being like, you don't have to hand it to Donald Trump. He sucks and he's a fascist and whatever, but he nailed this. He kind of did. And he just, he made DeSantis look even smaller. in comparison. And, you know, look, there's a couple of things here. First of all, if DeSantis hasn't been on such sort of a bad little streak where polls are increasingly showing Trump with a

bigger and bigger lead over him, all of this little technical trouble might not have been a big deal. And the other thing is, if he wins the nomination or if it's a nail bider down to the end, nobody's going to remember this. The problem is it's what people are thinking about now. There's becoming this sort of set view of Ron DeSantis of sort of this is who he is. And again, not ready for prime time and plays well in Florida but doesn't travel well. Nothing that happened yesterday, I don't think puts the lie to that sort of narrative that's sort of developing around him. And again, narratives can change and it's still early. So I think it'd be foolish to say he's done. Let's write him off. No, I don't think anybody is really saying that.

But he is so clearly the beta to Trump's alpha to use their terms. And given that he's in a party that sort of worships this whole cult of the phony alpha man, I don't really see how he beats Trump on a thing like this. I mean, I saw so many people yesterday saying things like, again, and these are people that loathe Trump, but who were just saying, I cannot wait to see Donald Trump just destroy Ron DeSantis on a debate stage. Because it's going to be so easy. I know.

And also, I mean, DeSantis is so unlikable that there's very few people where you would say, oh, I want to see Donald Trump destroy him. Ron DeSantis, I think, might be one of those people. He did himself absolutely no favors with this announcement. And like you pointed out, it's 2023. You're making an audio announcement? I mean, come on. Leave that to us. Do you have something to say, Andy?

No, I'm done. Do you want to announce? Not at this time. Not at this time. Okay, fine. No. I think that the alpha and the big. conversation is one that is important. Because again, you're right, for the Republican Party,

this toxic masculinity, this expression of the alpha male is what they're all dying to embody. And what is so apparent in Ronda Santis's wet noodle body is that he doesn't have the tenacity to take on Donald Trump, toe to toe. He'd rather take on Mickey Mouse. Like, he would honestly rather go toe to toe with a cartoon character and everyone's favorite place on Earth than he would Donald Trump. And so even in his announcement, he's not calling out Donald Trump. So how are you going to show that you have the power to be the leader of the free-ish, because we ain't free anymore, the free-ish world, when you can't take on the man that is calling you everything but a child of God? I mean, the funniest thing was in one of Donald Trump's, I guess, socials or

truths, so whatever the fuck you call them, when he has the picture of who's in the Twitter spaces, is he put up Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler and the devil, like on top of like the FBI. Like it was amazing because I mean, give it to Donald Trump to be the 15 year old boy in the room that knows how to put together really great clapbacks. But it's like you're clapping back against somebody who doesn't even have the balls to step to you because he really doesn't. He's afraid of Donald Trump's base. He's afraid of Donald Trump.

And so I'm like, so how do you show this rabid, base of people that clamors for toxic masculinity that you're the one. And doing it on an audio where you can just look down at a paper or your phone and read, ain't it? Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing with the doing it on the Twitter spaces thing is it's probably not him as much, but his staff is too online. There's a difference between being online a lot and being what people call too online. And being to online involves mistaking online for real life. And his whole campaign seems to be based on online. It's, you know, as you said, it's, I lost track of how many times you said woke before I

just had to shut the damn thing down because I can't take it. I think it was either the third time he said pronouns or the 28th time. He said woke. I was like, that's it for me. Did he also say woke pronouns? Like, was that part of the? I don't know. He did say woke mind virus, though.

he did get that in. But Donald Trump is not too online. And again, I hate that I have to sort of compare Trump favorably to someone. But Donald Trump and his people understand that, yes, online is like a component of this and riling up, you know, the base on Twitter and truth social and whatever, you know, ain't nothing, but it's far from everything. And Ronda Santis, or his staff anyway, seem to think that all they have to do is look at Twitter and look at what the right-wing goobers are talking about on Twitter, which inevitably is either something to do with woke or it's transphobia or whatever, and think that that's what the country cares about. And my guess is the vast majority of the country is probably not transphobic.

It's probably a lot more live and let live than Ron DeSantis and then the people, you know, the right-wing chuds online. or even if they're mildly transphobic or whatever, they don't really care. Like it's not in their top 10 issues of things that are important to them. Exactly. But Ron DeSantis's people seem to think because that's what they see on Twitter, they seem to think that, well, this is where the country is with us. This is what the country cares about.

And I think they're just wrong about this. And I think the fact that he did this thing on Twitter is just more proof of that, that he is just too online and that there are people on his staff. I don't know if it's Christina Pasha or if it's other people that are giving him horrible advice, but they are mistaking Twitter for real life. And again, that is what the kids like to call being too online. And I think that's what's going on here. I mean, I think too, you know, sometimes I look at the DeSantis campaign and I'm just like,

are these Trump plants that are in here making these decisions to totally screw him over? Because it just seems like a series of really bad choices. and also this idea that the rest of the country wants to look like the state of Florida. You know, where houses and buildings can't be built, you know, where agriculture can't be picked, where drag queens can't exist, where history doesn't exist, and everything is around making white people feel comfortable about being racist. It doesn't translate. And I think that the reality is that while Ron DeSantis is absolutely dangerous, because

I don't want people to overlook like all of these gaffs and all of these mess. misses with thinking like that we should not be taking him seriously, right? In the same way that we opened up saying we should have been taking Marjorie Taylor Green seriously as a true contender for power within the Republican Party. And it's the same way that I feel about Ron DeSantis. While he has as much charisma as a brick wall, I think that his policies that he is rolling out in Florida and wants to nationalize is absolutely dangerous. He embodies fascism and white supremacy in a way that even Donald Trump, when he was president, didn't. Like, Ron DeSantis' goal is to out-trump Trump in terms of how he hates people and being

able to legislate that hate. And it is happening every single day in the state of Florida. And people are really fearing for their lives. Like, you don't have the NAACP taking it lightly to issue a travel warning. You don't have it lightly for equality Florida to say, yeah, you shouldn't come here. I'm just waiting on the international community to start warning people that, yo, that state maybe don't go there for a whole host of reasons, including their trigger happiness that Ron DeSantis has aided in as well with his lack of gun safety policies and the desire to just have everybody locked and loaded, including teachers. So I just, I want people to understand that while, yes, the Twitter launch was a failure, it was an abject failure and it's a string of failures for his public persona and what is real. life, but the real life trauma and cruelty that he's inflicting on Florida is something he wants

to do nationwide, and we can't just shrug it off. No, you're absolutely, you could not be more right. And also, I should point out, the human rights campaign has now joined Equality Florida in their travel advisory for queer people. You're absolutely right. And the thing that Republicans have learned is that you don't need the majority of people behind you to do what they want to do. And you do it by packing school boards and you do it by appointing young judges who are perfectly willing to make law from the bench in your favor. You do it by gerrymandering so that you end up as they did in Florida with a supermajority in their house. And there are all these ways to do it. Look, we saw the Washington Post reported this week that the vast majority of the book bans in schools of the complaints

that we've seen across the country come from 11 people, 11 people who have taken the time to fill out form after form after form, wanting a book removed. And guess what? A lot of times, all it takes is that person or those 11 people to get the book removed. So they have learned those lessons. They have learned that you can govern sometimes comfortably without the majority of the people behind you. So you're absolutely right. And that's sort of why I said no one will remember this shoddy launch if he becomes a serious candidate and is challenging Trump up until the end or becomes the nominee or whatever. ain't nobody going to care about this any more than they care about a State of the Union speech, you know, two days after it happens. Yes, we should be making fun of his rollout because it was goofy

and he sucks. But yes, that does not mean dismissing him as being a not dangerous person because he is an incredibly dangerous person. Yeah. I mean, just like Elon Musk, so they made the perfect team for their like cruel and cruelty, dumb and dumber routine that they did this week. Musk is not having a good month of launches, is he? No, because everything that he launches fucking crashes, right? And burns. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, who represents Texas's 30th congressional district and is a former civil rights attorney and was elected into Congress in 2020.

Congresswoman, first of all, I want to say it's a pleasure to meet you. Your video most recently that went viral, I was sent by my aunt, by my mother, my several of my friends who said, do you know her? Because they had not recently seen a brilliant, articulate, thoughtful takedown like the one that you did most recently. And I just, you know, I want to give you an opportunity to kind of talk. about the exchange that you had with your freshman colleague, Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna, when you were discussing her accusations around sexual abuse and crime stats and the

District of Columbia. And basically, you said, please miss me with the conversations around caring about sexual abuse and like, and crime. Speak to that moment. Just to be clear, nothing was scripted, even though it may have seemed so scripted, because I just don't know how that was the line of questioning that she decided to prepare for this hearing. And she was just so disrespectful to one of the witnesses. And, you know, a lot of times we get stupid stuff said on the right. And then it's just a matter of, are you going to address it or not? But there was no way that I could not address the fact that she was so concerned about sexual assaults in D.C. and I'm sure she probably will be front and center as one of the biggest supporters of Trump

who obviously had recently just been found guilty of sexual assault. So if you want to keep the streets of D.C. safe from sexual assaulters, we can start with your wannabe president. And so I could not let that moment pass and not make sure that I outlined the blatant hypocrisy of her attempting to act as if she gave a darn about sexual assaults taking place in the city of D.C. I mean, it is amazing to me the composure regularly of Democrats. And I say that, not to say that you didn't have composure because you absolutely did,

but I think that I would lose it on a regular basis if I had to sit and listen to some of the nonsense that comes out of the mouths of members of the Republican Party, particularly those that are in the House of Representatives. And I want to ask you, too, because, you know, in your response to her ridiculous line of questioning, you said, why don't you start by cleaning up your own house and you're talking about George Santos and talking about the fact that the man has been indicted on 13 felony counts and refuses to resign. Kevin McCarthy, which we refer to on this show as the Fisher Price speaker, has refused to call for his resignation because he has but a five

vote majority. So can you speak to what it feels like? inside of the House these days when you want to have good faith in negotiations with regard to policies that are going to move the country forward. But this Republican Party seems to only want to cape for criminals. Oh, yeah. Listen, people ask me about, you know, do you think you guys will get somewhere on X, Y, or Z, some policy matter? And I feel like I'm a Debbie Downer a lot of times. And honestly, my focus is on 2024. For me, it's a matter of exposing just how ignorant they are, how callous they are. And even if you send a Republican back, send a better one, right? Like, send a better representation, someone that actually wants to govern. Because right now, I mean,

we're having this conversation, but obviously we're dealing with a debt ceiling. And instead of staying and trying to fight this out, come up with something that makes sense. Not that we should be fighting anything out because the Democrats dealt in good faith previously under a person who never should have occupied the Oval Office. And they raised the debt ceiling a record three times for him. And that was that. Because at the end of the day, the Democrats looked at this and thought that it was bigger than them. It was bigger than party. It was bigger than antics or partisan politics. They understood that this was about the people. If people don't start to wake up and recognize that Republicans could give a darn about people, then we will continue to lose as a country. The reason that

we're struggling isn't because we have a two-party system. It's because we have extremists that honestly could care less about functioning and governing. Governing typically when it works means that nobody's really that happy. It means that we absolutely end up in a middle ground. We don't get there right now. It is either far right or the highway. It's very difficult to really walk in every day and know that unless it is absolutely something that would harm the people that you swore to serve and honestly protect, that you can't get anything done. It's absolutely amazing that this is where we are. I had the wonderful opportunity to work for Congresswoman, Evette Clark, in the 110th Congress. So like many, many moons ago. And I remember coming to Capitol Hill, I am a black queer woman,

child of immigrants and was so in awe of the ability to come to this storied place to work for another child of immigrants because Congresswoman of that Clark's family is also from Jamaica and walk through these halls and have pride in the work that I was doing. And I wonder for you and for your Democratic colleagues, how do you feel about how the house is viewed right now? how Congress is viewed, how the office of elected officials is viewed right now. Yeah. When we got here for orientation, there was a lot of history that was passed on to us. We were taken on tours. We have various events. So Speaker Pelosi didn't event for us. And Hoyer, as well as with Khyburn, like we did these things. And they gave us a history of almost

every space that we stepped into. And you could see and you could feel a sense of pride and respect for the institution. Regardless of like what's come out, you could see it, you could feel it. It was seeping through their skin and it was infectious. And so you sit there and you say, man, how did I get here? Right. Like the young black woman who hates politics with every fiber of her being. Like how did I end up here?

But I was given those glimpses in those little. moments, those windows where I could say, this is truly powerful and it really made you feel like you were at the seat of democracy. It made you feel like you were living and walking in the history books, the ones that they want to delete at this moment. But nevertheless, like, it made you have that feeling. And then you end up with this wake up call because like, all hell breaks loose, right? Like, you get there and you've got friends and family that have traversed the country to come and see you sworn in because this is a historic. time is the fourth black woman ever from the state of Texas to be able to do this and I don't get

sworn in. I don't even make it to my party because we're on the floor because it is nothing but chaos from day one. And unfortunately, that set the tone for where we will be going in the 118th. And the tone and the trajectory has not correct the course whatsoever. We are still there and we have absolute jokes that serve in the house and honestly spit in the face of everything that we think of and treasure and appreciate about being at the seat of democracy. We have those insurrectionists that have not been prosecuted, but they are nevertheless that are serving in this chamber, the same chamber that they are trying to tear apart. And so it's interesting because just yesterday we were on the floor and I didn't even realize, you know, you never pay attention really to

who's standing up there and is serving as speaker. And all of a sudden, we're told that we needed to be reminded of decorum. And we all look and see that it's Marjorie Taylor-Ree. Oh, we saw. Yes. And it was like, I mean, it was just a natural response. Like, serious? Right?

Like, it's just one of those things. Like, because she is a joke. Like, Georgia, I need all to do better. I get that it's a deep red seat. But, like, let's get on normal Republicans. Somebody that's got some common sense, somebody that actually believes in democracy, somebody that is going to do more good than harm for you. Because to be clear, if this debt ceiling thing does not work out, it's not just going

to harm those in my district. It's going to harm y'all too. I just want people to understand that the harm will be spread equally amongst our districts. The only people that maybe won't suffer as much, but they still will suffer will be the millionaires and billionaires. But everybody is going to be harmed by this. And that's what I need people to understand, is that if you you're a Republican, you don't just stand and say, I'm about this life because I'm a Republican, because you're about to be broke, you're about to be out of job, you're about to potentially be paying some ridiculous rate as it relates to your interest rates, which we are already struggling with high interest rates right now. So if you thought that you were feeling it before,

just know you're about to feel it even more. You know, and that's the thing I think, Congresswoman, that is so troubling. The Republican Party has created this siloed Earth 2, where they are the heroes and everyone else who is not white, is not cis, is not straight, is not a part of their white Christo evangelical fascist ideology is the enemy of the people and the state. What do you think that Democrats need to do, particularly those that are in the House, because you are face to face, like you said, with some of the biggest clowns of the Maga Party, you are toe to toe with on a regular basis. And even though Democrats are in a very slim minority in the House,

what kind of messaging do you think needs to be done in order for the country, not just those in your district in Texas, but the country to understand that like you have allowed, you know, clowns to take over this country. And just because they hate the same people as you is not actually making your life any better. No, that's absolutely right. Listen, first of all, as Democrats, the gloves have to come off. You know, I think that especially when you look at those that have been around for a long time, they are really believing in my mind that they can lead by example.

They can show some of these younger folk, this is how we conduct ourselves. But the reality is that Marjorie Taylor Green, Paul Gossar, Matt Gates, Boberts, all of them, they are not trying to do things the way that they have been done in this chamber. And so we've got to fight fire with fire. And I think that that's why that moment went viral. Number one, I told the truth. Like, there were no lies detected, right? But number two, I think that there's so many people that are like, why are y'all not fighting harder?

Because they'll see the lies and they go unanswered. And so, you know, in serving on oversight, we're not really conducting the government oversight that we should. It's really just literally the clown show. The only person that isn't on the oversight. Committee for the Republicans that is a part of that circus is Matt Gates. The rest of them, the whole team is there. And so we have to check them in real time. And we've got to make sure that the disinformation is disallowed and we speak truth to power. Number one. So like that makes

people say, you know what, I'm going to get up and I'm going to go vote because at least I know, even if they are in the minority, that if I send Jasmine back, she's going to check them. Like, she is going to speak up for me. She is going to say everything. thing that I was thinking and I was yelling at the TV. Like she is going to do that. Like people need to feel like they are truly being represented instead of feeling like they are being trampled upon because that's what the Republicans do. They are nothing more than bullet. So it's like I'm not going to stand here and take these punches, especially when I got the facts on my side. The other part is that I think is really important that we have conversations specifically in rural America.

And we need to have these conversations, not just when it's an election. season, even though it feels like we are constantly in an election season. But we need to educate them and say, do you want to know why you don't have hospitals in your area? Do you want to know why your life expectancy is not the same as saying mine in urban America? It's not because the Democrats are shutting down your hospitals. It's because the people that you keep sending to office. They're the ones that are saying, no, no, no, we won't expand upon Medicaid. We don't see the point in that. And those rural hospitals can't survive. When we're talking about things like Snobes, benefits. I need you to understand that when they're talking about cutting them, it's actually

rule America that is using more SNAP benefits than say my constituents. So I just want you to be clear that if they cut them, it's going to cut you too. It's not going to just cut the black and brown folk in urban America. And so even I had a long conversation yesterday about broadband access, what people need to understand is the struggle of many of the inner city lower socioeconomic areas is the same struggle in much of rural America. Just a different complexion. It's just that that is the only difference. But honestly, there is so much more that unites us.

And so I need them to better understand that the policies that they're pushing are hurting you. In fact, there was an article that I read recently that Higgins, who also sits on my committee in oversight, where he was talking about the cuts, he was going on, this and that, and whatever. And when the numbers come out, it shows that his district is one of the largest beneficiaries of many of the bills that have been passed by Democrats. So he'll show up to every ribbon cutting that they're doing for infrastructure and this and that. But you voted against

this. And so, you know, for me, it's about calling them out. Because see, I'm not above it, right? Like, you show up to the ribbon cutting when we got this new highway coming through. I'm going through. I'm going to say, thank you to Mr. D. Thank you to Ms. D over here. But Mr. R, can we talk about why you didn't vote for this, but you think it's a great thing right now. Right. Like, people don't understand these things. Like, they are not doing anything to help you in your communities. And if we don't call them out, if we want to just be kind of like, oh, well, you know, it's all hunky door. I'm not going to be the one. So I'm waiting on them to show up in my area because I'm going to set the record clear. I mean, the energy that

you have, Congresswoman, is the energy that all Democrats need to have in both the House and the Senate because it's past time. It's past time. It's past time. to stop looking at the Republican Party from across the island saying that those are my friends. These are my colleagues. No, they're not. They are people that have sworn allegiance to fight against you and to fight against democracy and to uphold that above everything else. The question that I want to ask you with the limited time that we have left is about your state of Texas, which, like Florida, has become a petri dish for white supremacy and fascism and just anti-democratic policies that are coming at the hand of Greg Abbott. And, you know, a lot of folks who don't live in red states

often say, and I'm one of those people at times when I get frustrated, throw the whole state away. But then this same state sent you as a fourth black woman to represent them in the halls of Congress. And so what do you say to those people who are not inside of the red states, but you know, because you are face to face with your constituents all the time, that these people are worth fighting for? Yeah, what I say is don't give up on Texas. No, I've thrown Florida away, but Same. But don't give up on Texas.

And I'm going to tell you why. We are a majority minority state. We have more African Americans in the state of Texas than any other state. We have all the tools that we need to be successful. And that is why you see the pushback. That is why you see what I'm calling temper tantrums, right? That is why they're like, uh-uh, we don't want to talk about race because we don't want there to be an uprising. When we look at what happened in the last decade as we were preparing for the

the census, 95% of the 4 million people that we added were people of color. We only added 180,000 Anglos in the last decade. And we also know that there's always a significant undercount when it comes to people of color. So in my opinion, the numbers are probably skewed even more. But it's a very difficult state. And so what they like to project is that, hey, we are conservative, conservative, we are far right, we are extreme, we are red. But the reality is that they are not because if they were, then they wouldn't be so stressed about, you know what, let's do the voter suppression. Okay, the voter suppression. isn't enough. So let's go about voter subversion. Like they understand that they literally are on the

brink of losing their power. If we just get the investment and if we can put together a ticket, it's the same thing that we see throughout all of the Democratic Party. Well, we're not building the bench. We're not building a bench of candidates so that we can see a ticket that is reflective of who we are in the state of Texas that will motivate everybody across every spectrum to come out and vote and excite them. And they can actually raise the money. Texas is thircive. 30 million people. The land mass is absolutely astronomical and ridiculous. And we have some of the most expensive media markets in the country within Houston as well as Dallas. But obviously it's still not cheap to get your message out when you're talking about San Antonio and Austin as well. And so it's very difficult for us to run our races versus on the Republican side. And on a state level, when you're talking about governor and things like that, we don't have any campaign finance limits. So it's nothing for Abbott to jump on the phone and tell people, give me a million dollars. You give me a million. million dollars. And they'll do it. And so it gives this view of us that doesn't really exist because it does look like how in the heck do you get Jasmine Crockett elected out of this state?

And that's because there's really a lot of amazing talent that we have. I was just tweeting about the county attorney, the first black county attorney in Harris County, a young black fraternity brother of mine who is really, as far as I'm concerned, the real AG in the the state of Texas. But he's the one that issues the clapbacks. He's the one that is constantly going against the ridiculous laws that are coming out of Austin. Christian Menifee is really, I've told him a million times, you will be the first black AG in the state of Texas. And honestly, if he continues on the path that he is and he can increase his name ID, he will become that. But we need help. We need D-T triple C, DNC. We need everybody saying, you know what, let's make investments into Texas. Colin Allred is a

great candidate, we're going to actually have a number of candidates running for Senate against Ted Cruz. We know that when Ted Cruz was able to win his seat this last time, he only won by like 250,000 votes. But Texas is a non-voting state. So between the voter suppression and the voter subversion, we just have the voter apathy. We are in the bottom five as it relates to voter turnout. But if people recognize this one thing, unlike Florida, this is why Texas matters more. Texas matters more because there is no math that maps for Republicans to get into the White House. And they understand that. That is why we were at the epicenter of everything that was going to go bad is because they know that they can't make the map work without Texas.

Democrats do it all the time. We got a lot of ways to make the map work. But if they lose Texas, they don't get the White House. And so that's why, you know, if there's one thing I could scream from the mountaintops is just invest in Texas, make sure that we get organized. make sure that we get mobilized. And I promise you, we will do this country right. Thank you, Congresswoman. I appreciate your energy. I appreciate the clapbacks. I appreciate the truth telling. And we will continue to watch you as you create a path that all Democrats need to follow. Congresswoman, Jasmine Crockett, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal.

We really appreciate you. Thank you. We now live in a world where a major party presidential wannabe made their candidacy official on Twitter. spaces, and an event of this magnitude means I need two guests to dissect it. Jeblund is a journalist whose writing has appeared in such places as The Guardian, Weiss, Rolling Stone, Gawker, and the New Republic. He's also the co-host of the Quaid In-Full podcast. David Roth is an editor, at, and co-owner of Defector, and co-host of the Distraction podcast.

Together, they are the Super Team co-hosts of the It's Christmas Town podcast. Merhaba, fellas. Merhaba. Merry Christmas. And also to you. Yeah, Merry Christmas all around. The way that that bio set up, it's cool that it's just like, so we're calling in the big guns. The hallmark idiots are here. Yeah, this is the hallmark of political podcasts. I think that's beautiful. I like to think of myself as a kind of the Candace Cameron Burray of pundits. I'm a multi-thread. All right. Be serious, guys. God, this is my job. I don't want to make light of it. Jab, I'm going to start with you since Ron DeSantis. is your governor, you may or may not have voted for him, not my business, but you get to go first. Would you say that the DeSantis Twitter space was more of a home run or a touchdown?

I will say this. I was looking forward to signing on to try to crash the infrastructure of it, and I couldn't do that because it had already done so. Right. Which, like, freed me up to make dinner, which was nice. But presidential launches don't really become metonyms for campaigns. Like, the average voter isn't like, well, I remember exactly when Trump came down the escalator and that made all the difference for me. But the fact that, like, he was targeting this

insignificant audience and couldn't even do that well, I think is going to be one of those, like, resonant metaphors for a while. I was just watching the, you know, people react to it and thinking, like, you know, people are going to hang on to this. It's too funny not to. Someone that made the point on there. I don't remember what it was that it's amazing that the universe has provided a jeb again to Trump, that this is just like another guy who gets, and this is like, you know, please clap, that's theater. You know, like that is, that's a performance. There's people there. This definitely fits like sort of where we are now on the, uh, the sort of the shoulder of the long period of decline that was marked by us not electing Jeb Bush as the president of the United States.

As Jeff said, they're like competing for the 10,000 most unappealing people online. That is who you're trying to get to watch your Twitter space. And they couldn't even do that. That sort of leads to my next question, Dave. I'll let, I'll, I'll go to you first. Is Desantis is staff to online. I was talking about this in the main section with Danielle, but I want to get your guys' perspective as two people who, you know, are too online. Everything he says, it's woke this, it's pronouns that, it's woke mind virus, it's insane. And you get the feeling that, you know, this guy thinks that Twitter is real life or his staff thinks that. So to me, this was like another example of that. Like, he's like, I'm going to get on Twitter spaces. You know, that's where they

get their news from. I just think maybe his either, I don't think it's him. It's probably his staff. but I feel like maybe they are just, they're just too online. It's definitely the one thing that is, I mean, beyond their wide selection of incredibly unpopular and anti-human policies, which I don't want to diminish the fact that they are also pushing, like some of the worst ideas we've ever seen and everybody hates those ideas and they keep losing elections because of them. That aside, the other thing you can do that is going to turn people off is to do like memes. Like, if you're a grown adult with a powerful office and you're signing things into law, you shouldn't be using Wojacks.

I think it's in very poor taste. And so in this case, the idea that you're trying to, I mean, beyond the fact that DeSantis himself is as unpolishable a turd, political talent-wise, as I could imagine, trying to make him epic isn't going to do him any favors either. Do you know what I mean? Like, he's a nasty man. He definitely has that going for him. I think that Republican voters would like that. But you're not going to be able to, like, you can't lower the sunglasses gif onto his face and put a deal with it over it and have it sing. He's still Ron DeSantis.

Right. Right. But even those policies that you talked about, you know, again, this is all the Chris Rufo, the conceptual James, all these Twitter figures, Cat Turd 2 and whatever. They spend all day scared of their trans shadow. and being transphobic and being this and that. And I will contend that I said this in the main section, not necessarily because I think Americans are, you know, writ large of great and just and fair people.

I just don't think Americans writ large give a fuck about stuff like that. No. I get that he's been able to, you know, I guess with the help of Jeb, Lundah and his buddies, he's been able to turn Florida into that. But I don't know that it works nationwide. Yeah, Jeb, as a DeSantis' voice, voter. How dare you slander me in this way? How true is this ringing to you? As somebody who's on Team Desantis and you've been there from the beginning. Well, look, I think you're right, Dave.

This is sort of at least the end tier, to this point in history, manifestation of what happens when you have a political party whose entire program is anti-human and antithetical to the needs of its voters. You have to kind of create like a holistic ecosystem outside of the bounds of like material reality for the people who are voting. And most of his policies are kind of N-H-I policies, like no humans involved for the DeSantis voter. They're not immigrants. They're not trans. They're not black. They're not socialist. So it doesn't matter what he does to them. But because you can animate a sense of like, this is how we reclaim America. This is how we restore our greatness. This is how we animate ourselves from that. Like the marriage of Twitter to that attitude is perfect because

Twitter is like a phantom grievance harvesting engine. You have, you know, the sort of people who tuned into this Twitter spaces are the sort of people who spent eight bucks because they got two likes in every tweet, that went up to four, and they're still convinced they're being shadow banned. This is sort of the message for them because it's something to feel, you know, violated, plundered, and exploited by that isn't happening, has no bearing on them. And then when they vote for a hammer, it comes down on someone else. Right.

It's the same sort of dynamic, I think, as like cable news. which is the ultimate. And I think like the original sort of deranging factor for a lot of these people, but in the sense that there is always some new, dumb bullshit to get too upset about and react to and then to get further upset because people aren't reacting to your reactions the way that you want them to. In that sense, DeSantis belongs on Twitter. I mean, that that is how he has governed, that he's never going to let some opportunity

to, not just to bully somebody or some group of people that he thinks are bulliable. but he's never going to not do a post. There's the way that, like, I think that sort of, especially among reactionary politicians of this moment, that they basically are influencers in terms of the cadence with which they're expected to produce their stuff, that like, you can't take a playoff. If, like, the George Washington University basketball team changes their name from the Colonials to the revolutionaries and you don't care, like, that's fine. You've got to do a post anyway, because everybody else is doing a post.

And so in that sense, I mean, you. the idea that like DeSantis, who is creating these controversies wherever he can, not just because, you know, he's not doing any other stuff that he'd be able to brag about. Like, he can't operate any other way than this. He can't do less. Right. And as for whether it's his team that's too online. I mean, his team is, is him and his wife.

They are paranoid to a Nixonian degree without like the pedigree of accomplishment that at least soften the like, okay, Nixon's a maniac. But so I find it hard to believe. that's not coming from inside the house. And I think, you know, from an image management standpoint, which is evidently what Mrs. DeSantis Casey does very well, putting Ron DeSantis next to trans people for their voters is a way to make him look charismatic because you're automatically going to be, if you are that kind of like angry issues voter, you're going to be revolted. This has hit the wall with like Disney. But for the rest of their targets, right, like he winds up seeming just by default,

almost like a swashbuckler when instead he has this sort of pinched, like extremely wedgible voice and, you know, laughs like a hyena on nitrous. I like that he does Trump gestures, you know, that he's like running against the guy, but he still has to do all of the stage moves. Right. It would be like if every band that wanted to have a single, like the lead singer had to do Mick Jagger mouth stuff while they weren't singing. Right.

Yeah. He's like the great out of the band, Flee. Yeah. Right. Yeah. There is a real great of it. Like, where, it looks like they're wearing, like, a Halloween costume that came in a bag. Yeah.

That said, like, you know, Robert, Robert Plant. Yep. But you can't call it that because he might get sued by, like, whatever, someone from his representative. So it's just like Richard Flower and you have to try to figure it out. Right. So let's talk about Donald Trump had a lot of fun with DeSantis's announcement and with the technical difficulties, et cetera. And I want to read some of Trump's posts that he made on, on Truth Social. This one I love, it's just what it is.

His collar is too big, exclamation points. Classic. Now, that's what I call Trump. She's coming. And then there's... Seems gay. You're like, oh, good one, sir. But I have to tell you that, you know, I look at these posts from Trump, and I'm like,

Desantis is dead. He's just dead because he can't compete with this kind of stuff. Trump, here's another one. Rob, he consistently now is calling DeSantis Rob, which I think is absolutely hilarious. It's very funny. It's the one bit that really feels like vintage Trump to me. Absolutely. Yeah. I think he's lost a few miles an hour off the fastball overall, but Rob, in quotes, is just withering and stupid enough to like really sing. It's amazing. It's amazing. So he posted Rob, my red button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working. And then in parentheses in capital letters, truth, exclamation point, yours does not. Per my conversation with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, soon to become my friend.

I don't even know what any of that really means, but I also know that I read that and I just think, Desantis doesn't have a chance, man. Yeah, it's funny, though, because only the Rob part of that is a bar. The rest of it is like so densely encoded that you would have to, in order. order to understand that, you would have to watch three years worth of Fox News programming. Like in the, I'm forgetting the name of the device from a clockwork orange. Like, you can't take any plays off. You have to watch the commercials in order to get all of that.

But the Rob thing is a bar. I believe it's the Ludovico technique. Yeah, no, it sounds like one of those answering machine messages you get from a grandparent, maybe from the villages, right? It's like deeply informed by the grievance conversation that was had over BLTs earlier. You don't know what it refers to, but you know that you have to call back and reference it. And that, I think, is, like, going to be a challenge for Trump if he, I mean, or it would be a challenge for him. That's not really what he needs to do, though, that, like, he's not going to win any substantive policy debates.

He's not going to have them. I mean, the whole thing is that he plays the hits for his fans. That is not a majority position. And he's certainly not, I think, in the way that he was in 2016, able to say other people's lines effectively enough to, win some people over. You're not going to win anyone over. The stuff that he talks about now where he's just sort of like the 51 agents, you know, they took him to Chinatown, but I didn't like that. So I called Gary on the phone. And the crowd like definitely knows who Gary is. They know who the 51 agents are. China Town means something to them. But that is word salad to everybody else.

Right. And that was the knock that I think a lot of people had about the Twitter Spaces thing was, you know, DeSantis and David Sacks. Like, first of all, who the fuck is David Sacks? Why the fuck what I who David Sacks is. He's basically like, he's Elon Musk's personal ball fondler. That's not who I'm going to vote for. Anyway, but they're asking these questions that are so dense with like, at this

point, the kind of, you know, the 6,000 page like David Eddings's like fantasy epic that is the deep state crusade against republicanism that like, you know, if I'm a voter who hasn't had the full Ludovico done to him by that point, there's no

purchase. How am I going to be attracted to that. How am I going to what am I voting for? So this is where I should say that I was unable to get the Twitter spaces to function at all. I tried a few times and then I was like, why are you trying to do this? Right. Like is this really what you want? Like finding yourself hesitating, reaching into a toilet on the bus. And like your body is telling you not to do that. There's nothing in there for you, man. And so after I stopped refreshing it, I missed a lot of what actually happened. But apparently David Sacks asked a number of questions about Bitcoin, which to me is, again, perfect. That is just

the fucking weirdos club was getting together and they were doing their secret handshake and then a bunch of like greasy people were watching it and being like how can I use what's happening now to promote my fraudulent real estate venture? And that is the gang. That's the crew. Yeah, that's who they

are. I mean, David Sachs, Jason Calcanus, all those guys, I tweeted yesterday they are the Council of Ministers in the Death of Stalin. Right. Yeah. They're just sitting around picking at the corpse or what they hope will soon be the corpse, you know, and positioning themselves because they all think that they have a real chance of being the next guy. And none of them do. But that's who they all think they are. Yeah. Until such time as Elon actually like abdicates

his throne as the most epic rich guy there is. It's like imagining like a Johnny Carson show, but there's like six Ed McMahon's and they're all roaring with laughter in the same way after every joke or like competing with each other to say yes louder that that is a that's a pretty grim set up like that is not entertainment for most people yeah right but like if they're going to conduct the campaign if they're going to conduct like whatever movement conservatism is now through twitter and i don't think that's a bad idea i mean i think like Tucker carlson doing his show he could just basically pull up tweets and go well we can't verify this and just amplify the grievance more but like if that is the platform Elon musk is not in control of it. He is the

principal beta of his own website. In humiliating terms watching him try to appeal to the better angels of cat turd two's nature. Right, but also like he doesn't have the confidence to dictate what the conversation's

going to be. If he's going to be sort of the end all leader of this, you would hope that he basically sets what the platform and agenda is so you can come in and manipulate it. But he's very much just sort of following the flow out this, I think, unctuous need to be the most popular person on the thing he bought, right? Kind of like realizing that he's the kid in the neighborhood where everybody goes to play basketball with

because he's got the biggest driveway and the nicest backboard. Right. Right. It's nothing to do with him. Like mom brings the snacks. Right. So if he's following whatever the flow of grievances, these guys, they don't have access through him to control it. That's something he has in common with Trump, I think, too, to a certain extent in that like Trump is not, again, an idea guy. I mean, he has ideas, but those ideas are just sort of like, I should receive oral sex right now or like, I need to be on TV immediately. Catherine Helman should apologize for not talking to me at the Carnegie Deli. Right. Yeah, Suzanne Submers was very nasty to me in 1983.

And, you know, like that sort of, those are the thoughts that are in his head. She thought she was the boss. She's not the boss. Not the boss. But those like impulses, he is a creature. Like, basically he got the way he is because he watched Fox News so much. And it might be that DeSantis or, you know, that Tucker Carlson to a certain extent that they have deranged themselves similarly by being in the online spaces that they're in. I don't know what Tucker's, you know, personal online predilections are.

But you can tell that his writer's staff is in some pretty dark places. They're like on Chan boards because they're talking about like Chan grade fascist shit on his show or they were. And they certainly are not going to be doing any less of that on Twitter. I think with Musk that, I mean, I don't think that he's like even reading all of most tweets. Like, he just does not seem to be a guy that is especially curious about that sort of thing. He's got bad instincts and nasty impulses. But I think that he, in the same way as Trump, but I think without the sort of theatricality or the swagger that sort of put Trump over when he was over, that he's just going to sort of go where that tide carries him. And, you know, you can already feel that it is going out where Twitter is.

concerned. Right, but that's the power of Trump, right? Like the wily coyote on the cliff versus the roadrunner. Like the roadrunner can just go across because it doesn't stop to consider whether it is going to fall. And Trump doesn't consider whether he's going to fall. And that's one of the, I think, most powerful things about his setting the news narrative is like it doesn't occur to him to ask whether any of this shit means anything. Because he's thinking about it, it's the most important thing in the world because he's been thwarted in this moment. That is the most dire and criminal victimization and exploitation, but because you've got people like DeSantis

who are going to be trying to read the tea leaves and anticipate where to move the audience, he's going to misfire a lot more. Trump doesn't care. You know, you just have to get behind him and follow. This is what we're doing right now, which is I think why he's so effectively colonized

the Twitter space because it's transient and sort of stupid, but like we're going at it 100% because what the fuck else are we going to do? Our jobs? Yeah, we're going to have to leave it there. Jeblund, David Roth, thank you very much for what has been frank and open conversations, at times brutal, I think, sometimes very moving. But overall, I think very informative and has made the country

and dare I say the world a better place. I agree. Thanks, fellas. Thank you. Merry Christmas, Andy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy. So who is your fuck that guy to end out this pre-holiday week? So as we get ready to begin the month of pride, which I believe has been outlawed in the state of Florida, and in pretty much all of the red states that are following the domino effect of hate, my fuck that guy isn't going out to those people because I know who they are. It's going out to Target. Yes, Target. Because a couple of years ago, Target had launched a huge pride, queer line of clothing and rainbow things. and rainbow that, you know, what the corporations have done to rainbow up the month of June and then forget about LGBTQ plus people for the rest of the fucking year. Kind of like black history,

but with rainbows. Now they have decided to cave to threats of boycott and threats of violence against their employees at the hands of these right-wing white Christian evangelical fascists who apparently can't avert their eyes to a fucking thing. Like, apparently we have to create the world and the universe around things that make them feel comfortable. So these people can't possibly walk into a target and just walk past a display of something that they don't like. No, they have to call on threats to the staff of Target. They have to call on and say that they're going to run a massive boycott. And what does Target do?

Instead of standing with the LGBTQ plus community, instead of saying that they are a private company and get to do what the fuck they want, they've decided to cave. Yep, and this is what they've written. Quote, given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior, said the company. And I'm like, really? So what example do you set to this group of white evangelical toddler terrorists when you can just cave to them after they raise up their hands and say no rainbows, no more, no gays, no nothing. And then you turn around and say, okay, we don't want to cause any harm. Do you think that there are more evangelical people that are shopping at fucking Target than there are queer people

and people who could care less about passing rainbows on a regular basis? And so they are doing the opposite of what Disney is doing down in Florida with DeSantis, where they are like, no, well, go toe to toe because you would receive more support target if you were to actually say, you know what, we're not going to cower and we're not going to be threatened and we're not going to be afraid. We're actually going to do what those brave queer people did at Stonewall and fight for the community's rights to exist. But instead, no, they have caved. So for that reason, Target this week and the whole fucking month of June, fuck you. You are my fuck that guy. Instead of doing what they're doing, why not hire more security?

Hmm. Novel idea. And then if people come in, like you said, if these little terrorists come in and try to knock over displays or whatever, do what you got to do. Arrest them and turn them over to the cops who will, you know, more than likely sympathize with them and let them off. But it still feels like $109 billion in revenue in 2022 for Target. $109 billion. in revenue. That's up more than $30 billion since 2019. Target is doing all right. Yeah. The point being, I think they can afford to hire some security. Rather than caving to this, we've allowed the hecklers

veto to become like the standard in this country where the minute, you know, one person complains about a book and it's taken out of the school. One asshole walks into a target and knocks over a display and Target says, well, we better take down these displays. Like you said, that's not the way this is supposed to work. It's the opposite of the way it's supposed to work. It's disheartening. And I'm starting to think that corporations can't be trusted, Danielle. I know. It's so weird. It's so weird because, you know, Target is the same group that also, you know, gives money to Republican Pax and has always done that. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm starting to think they maybe didn't have queer people's best interest at heart when they started this. And maybe it wasn't ever about that. I don't know. I'm just, I guess I'm just cynical.

Yeah, you're cynical. So, Andy. Yeah. I don't know. You can top it. But who is your fuck that guy to close out this week? My fuck that guy is more fun because it's almost not even a fuck that guy. It's a let's laugh at these guys. It's the shit that's going on down in the House of Representatives in Texas. There are like two things going on at the same time. Over the weekend, the speaker of the Texas house, Dade Phelan, was slurring his words really

badly, I guess, and Attorney General Ken Paxton, a former member of the Texas House, called on him to resign for being drunk. You know, he told a radio host, he said, it's pretty common knowledge that there's a lot of drinking that goes on on the house floor and he's part of it. And so this became a whole thing. But at the same time that Ken Paxton was leveling these accusations, a House committee was meeting and heard new testimony that basically Paxton has committed impeachable crimes. You can't make this shit up. Including providing a friend with confidential FBI documents, retaliating against AIDS who reported the misconduct,

which is in violation of whistleblower laws. Both of these things were going on at the same time. Literally, while Ken Paxton was calling for the speaker's resignation, this House committee was uncovering this information that Paxton had committed impeachable crimes. And then right after these Texas House attorneys presented their case, there was a big fire in the dumpster at the Texas Attorney General's office. Was it Jesus? I'm not making this up. It was apparently, like, smoke was billowing everywhere and the fire department had to be called.

And Paxton is, of course, claiming that this was arson. This was arson. Who could have done such a thing, you know, just as they're saying they have evidence of committing impeachable offenses, suddenly the dumpsters outside his offices are on fire. I wonder how that could happen. It's just unbelievable what's going on down there. It was just like an unbelievable week. Ken Pacton is always a fuck that guy.

He's horrible. But this, like I said, this is more of just let's just sit back and laugh. at these guys kind of thing because at least for once. I mean, these are all terrible people. And Texas is, you know, doing its damn best to out Florida, Florida. But in this one case, this shit is funny. So fuck those guys, but also laugh at those guys. A little update from future, Jesse.

The investigative committee just voted to impeach Ken Paxton. Can we just go back to the place where you said it's common knowledge that they drink on the floor? Like, is it a fucking frathe? house? Well, Ken Paxton said that. That was Ken Paxton said. That was a quote. It's common knowledge that we're all drinking on the floor. Yeah. What? Yeah. These are the people writing the laws. And apparently they're at a kegger most of the fucking day. Amazing. Yeah. I mean, we should point out, Phelan has not said he was drunk. As of now, this is just an accusation. The people that I sort of follow on Twitter or I'm friendly with that follow Texas politics or all like, yeah, he was drunk.

But we don't know that for sure. So this is just an accusation as of now. He was flaring his words. I mean, you can see that. But we don't know for sure if he was drunk. But like I said, people who know about these things seem pretty sure he was. Andy, we're doing this show all wrong. We should be, honestly, like I need a sponsored bar cart.

I'm doing it just fun. I'm doing it just fine. 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

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