The Daily Beast Podcast - Senator Smeared as ‘Groomer’ Has Message for Suburban Moms w/ Sen. Mallory McMorrow

Episode Date: May 1, 2022

Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow’s scathing speech on the floor in response to being called a “groomer” by a conservative colleague went viral. She joins as special guest on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to tell co-host Molly Jong-Fast how it all went down and what she wants people who are non-marginalized to know. Plus Molly and co-host Andy Levy listen to Fox News proclaim that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is a liberal puppet and Ben Shapiro gets skewered for his “Twitter” advice to Elon Musk. 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 Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objective. 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 bonus episode of the new abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special episode with Mallory McMorrow, who's, of course, the Michigan State Senator, whose speech went viral last week. And today we're going to talk to her about the messaging Democrats can do to win the midterms.

But first, let's have some fun. All right, are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Yeah. Yeah. Why the fuck not? I am super, super ready to listen to some clips. So there's this fellow, Sean Hannity. He has the 9 o'clock spot on the Fox News program, but he wants to tell you about his journalistic integrity because he wants everybody to make sure he knows it's above board. We, in this hour, I am not told what to say. I don't vet the information on this program that I give out. We have always been independent, follow our own path on this show.

That's not going to change for me ever Such an idiot I am always impressed with what an idiot That's the phrase telling on yourself Well that's the thing I know what he thought he meant But it's not what he said And it's just

Oh my God I just I don't know what to do I don't know what to do I want to pat him on the head Sort of. But then I don't. It's all very confusing to me.

Andy, are you trying to pat about the head to see if it's a wig like some people accuse him of? I don't believe it's a wig. What? I don't think it's actually. I've never even heard of this pocket. I didn't know that was a thing. People say that.

It's probably an implanted wig. Oh, okay. Maybe. Maybe. Like his friend, the former president. I mean, I've been super close to him and never thought it was a wig. That's right. Well, I have good news.

His program has also given us some more material. Here's Senator Kennedy. And I wanted to say a few things about, this is like one of those weird Republicans I'm obsessed with. So I would like to, he's my Louis Gomerner of the Senate. He was a Democrat and actually is just pretending to be a moron. So let that comfort you while you listen to this. You know, Molly, sometimes.

We have a rebuttal against something in the form of this clip. I think this is going to rebut that he's not actually a moron. So let's give it a try. I have seen the federal government, for example, give $530,000 to a group called Hookers for Jesus. I have seen the federal government spend $2.1 million for sex education for Ethiopian prostitutes. and I could continue with other examples of spending porn. And every time that Congress allows this to happen, it is as if Congress is taking a great Dane-sized whiz down the leg of every taxpayer in America.

Jesus Christ. Well, Molly, what do you think? Is your mind changed? I want to die. I mean, here's the thing about him. You know, fucking Pentagon has like $10 million toilet. The Pentagon budget is 10 billion times what the regular budget is. I mean, let's, I'm going to trim the fat.

Let's start there. Yeah, the stuff that people like that always talk about, it's all, it's like, it's drops in the urine bucket. It's nothing. Yeah. $2 million in tax credits to, you know, doulas. And they're absolutely apoplectic, but billions of dollars for, you know, And they're like fine. Hang on, I'm looking up hookers for Jesus.

Oh, they help women affected by the sex industry. See? I mean, the joke is, I bet you hookers for Jesus is a Republican organization. I'm going to get, it says, we address the harmful effects of prostitution, sex trafficking, and sexual exploitation linked to pornography in the sex industry. Right. Pornography. I mean, hookers for Jesus.

Absolutely. So that makes it even funnier. But, oh, they're based in Nevada. That's nice in Las Vegas. I would hope. Well, prostitution is legal in Nevada. But he, like, he can't really pull. I know he's from Louisiana and whatever, but he can't really pull, like, there are politicians

who can pull off the, like, the urinating down the leg thing, but that he's not quite, he doesn't have the good old boy Southern accent enough to pull it off, I think. So it just, to me, it just sounds forced and I don't like it and I don't like him. I mean, that's because you're a coastal elitist, someone like me, who is with the people. No, I'm just kidding. No, he's terrible. He went to Oxford. He's fancier than anybody. That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying. He can't pull stuff like that off. Like, I'm trying to, like, people. He thinks he can't. Like there were people who could, you know, well, I, well, governor, I would surely think. And they can pull that stuff off. And they say, you know, that was a great accent, by the way. I was going to say, I think you've spent more times with Clay Higgins than he has.

But yeah. Well, Andy used to work at Farn. It's true, I did. And I was in the Army. I know it this, Sal. Yes, see, I was in the Army. Oh, no, never mind. Okay, go on.

Speaking of Fox, another one of their top commentators, Tucker Carlson wants to tell you about what he sees in Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy of California told his close friend Liz Cheney that he hoped the social media companies would censor more conservative Republicans in Congress. Donald Trump, the sitting president, had already been silenced by those companies. but McCarthy wanted the tech oligarchs to do more, to force disobedient lawmakers off the internet. Quote, quote, can't they take their Twitter accounts away too?

Those are the tape-recorded words of Congressman Kevin McCarthy, a man who in private turns out sounds like an MSNBC contributor. And yet unless conservatives get their act together right away, Kevin McCarthy, or one of his highly liberal allies like Elise Stefanik, is very likely to be Speaker of the House in January. That would mean we will have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party. Kevin McCarthy puppet of the Democratic Party. It's just amazing.

You can just say anything. I mean, really. I guess that's cool. I don't know what to say about these people anymore. It's like there's plenty of things to go after Kevin McCarthy for, but pretending he's some kind of liberal. Like, what? But it works. Like, all his listener, all his.

viewers, all of Tucker's viewers, now believe that Kevin McCarthy is a liberal Democrat in private. I keep thinking of that interviewed, Molly, you and I did with the guy who did the, or the shallow fake of Sean Hannity saying things, and then they saw how they would list today. He says, and this feels like Tucker just playing with the mob to see if he can move in directions. I do think he does that sometimes. I honestly do. Like, I just think he says, like, even the whole, uh, the testicle tanning thing. That's a big. We talked about the testicle tanning thing. It's also because he wants to get the men's health crew,

and there's sort of goop for men is like a very good audience. Right. I know. I mean, I said that at the time, and I agree with everything I said, which is good. But I also do think that sometimes it's just like, what can we get these people to believe today? Like, I do think that there's, you know,

he pretends to be a populist, but I think he's, I think maybe, maybe the rich guy who went to private school and married the heiress to a fortune is not a populace. No, he's the, no, he's the stepson of an heir. Oh, I thought he married the heiress. No, she's just very beautiful, but she's not actually an heirs. But we've got that vet, but I want to clarify that. There's another conservative commentator whose logic doesn't always make a lot of sense that I want us to listen to. He goes by the name Ben Shapiro.

Tell me more. Actually, don't. Musk needs to come in and he needs to fire everyone. I mean everyone. Twitter has hundreds of not thousands of employees. Therein studies done of the donations, the political donations of the people working at Twitter, 98.7% of all donations from the people working at Twitter, went to Democrats in the last election cycle.

98.7%. So it doesn't matter what rules. Elon Musk sets top down if the so-called Twitter deep state is still implementing its favored policies. Because this is the thing. Donald Trump found this out when he was president. You can name the policy top down,

but if everybody at the State Department hates your guts, they're just going to undermine your policy. You can name the policy top down. But if everybody at the FBI decides to spend the next four years ginning up nonsense about Russian conspiracy theories, you can't get much done. When Musk takes over the company, he should do what every boss at every company does,

and he should review the employee list and figure out who is good and who is bad, not purely on the basis of politics, but on the basis of performance. So there are a lot of reasons why Elon Musk needs to fire like all of his employees at Twitter. Why, does he really talk that fast, or do you have it on one and a half?

No, that's on point five. I'm sorry, but I know people like him because he is very tiny like a little doll. But I'm just telling you, that guy is such an asshole. And like, I understand that when you're young and you're, you know, you have a Jewish mother who adores you like my sons. You sometimes think that you are adored. But he is just awful.

I can't, you know, I'm saying this. As a Jewish mother who adores her sons, you did a number on him. It's time to hang it up, Mrs. Shapiro. There's a couple of things here. First of all, I'm workshopping. new phrase tantrum conservatives. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm trying to decide if I like it or not, but he's like a, these are all like,

they're tantrum conservatives, like something happens that they don't like, and they're like, yeah, we have to fire everyone. We have to, no, we got to do this. We got to all these people, we need to, shut up. Like you're, like you're two years old. Like, you just, that's not how the world works. But also, like, fire 98.7% of Twitter's employees. That's what a genius I do.

to keep a platform running. Like, what is, what does Ben Shapiro think is going to happen to Twitter if Elon Musk fires 98.7% of his employees? He doesn't care. I mean, Ben Shapiro is. But he's supposed to be, like, he, I keep getting told, you know, we've been told for a long time now that he's like, Republicans are good for business. Hilarious.

Well, and also, but how smart Ben Shapiro is. And, like, and yet all he does is say idiotic things. But he's just because he's Jewish doesn't mean he's smart. I say this as a Jew myself. Yes, you're allowed to say that. And I'm allowed to agree with you. Right. I do think, like, he's short, he looks like he should be smart.

He talks very fast. But he's not smart. And he's just, I mean, he's not smart. He's just reactionary and incredibly angry. And, you know, it's like Charlie Kirk. These guys feel they have gotten a raw deal. Like, imagine how bad they'd feel if they had actually experienced discrimination. Mallory McMorrow is a state senator from Michigan.

Welcome to the new abnormal Mallory McMorrow. Thank you for having me. We're so excited to have you. I feel bad because you have this thing where now everybody is interviewing you and you've probably done the same interview like 50 times. So I'm going to try to be a little bit less boring if it's possible. I trust me you will. Not everyone knows the story probably as.

well as I do. Will you just give us a little bit of the details of your race and your opponent? Because I think you should probably regret sending that email. So let me even go back a little bit because one of the craziest thing about this whole experience is she's not my opponent. We're not in the same district. We don't serve the same constituents. That is, you know, to kind of go back a little bit. So I woke up last Monday morning and I got a text from my husband who was out of the country, he was in Germany, who had a screenshot of an email that he saw somebody post on Twitter. And it was from this senator, Lana Tice, from, again, a different district, who called me out by name and accused me of grooming and supporting pedophilia and

wanting eight-year-olds to believe they were responsible for slavery. So that is how my week started last week. It's an interesting phenomenon because this kind of fundraising email, Republicans have been sending these emails for the last couple months. I mean, this is not anything new, right? I mean, you've seen these attacks before. This is kind of this Richard Hofstadter paranoid style politics now. Yeah. So I represent a district that was Republican. I flipped at Democratic in 2018. And I've noticed if you are signed up for the Michigan GOP's email lists or any of these email lists, I'm worried for my constituents. We have an older woman who started calling our office almost every single week who just sounded so upset because she believes that the election

was stolen, that China, you know, hacked into computers in Oakland County, believes that Mike Lindell is an election security expert. And then this pivot towards grooming and pediment. And I warned about this actually after January 6th because Michigan has been at the epicenter of this and the fanning of flames of the big lie and all of these conspiracies. And if you buy into it, then you're buying into QAnon, which is that the government is run by a Satanist cabal of pedophiles. And people will stop at nothing if they fundamentally believe that they're saving children. It's really horrific.

Funny because we saw Mike Lundell writing these crazy attacks. But I guess that some people don't read that as crazy. No, if it's what you're receiving all the time and Michigan is home to the Romney's. And like I represent Mitt Romney's hometown. So if you grew up with moderate Republicans, whether or not you agreed with Democrats or Republicans, you could trust people that people were telling you the truth. And if that is the feed that you're getting, it's hard not to believe it. You know, it's so horrifying that you have to look at it and go, oh my God, we have to do whatever it takes to stop this.

So I have interviewed a lot of Michigan Democrats, including Debbie Dingell and Gretchen Whitmer. And like one of the things they say about your state is that there's a lot of really scary stuff that goes on at Michigan. It is really the epicenter. I was wondering if you could explain to our listeners, a lot of them live on the coast, what exactly your state is like. just a little bit about the topography. Yeah, I mean, Michigan is, I mean, we are the home of Detroit. It is one of the largest majority black cities in the country. And it's also incredibly rural.

You know, this is the cherry capital of the country. And you have this divide where we elected Gretchen Whitmer and Dana Nessel, who's an openly gay, badass woman attorney general who fought for marriage equality. And we also have more homegrown militia activity. than any other state in the country. Timothy McVeigh trained in Michigan before trying to carry out, you know, a domestic terror attack, the largest one we'd ever seen. So Michigan is everything all at once. Yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about how the women, the Democratic women in Michigan are able to sort of deal with this? Because it strikes me as like pretty scary stuff. Yeah. You know, I think that that we can all deal with it because we have each other. So on April 30th of 20th, We had a protest at our state capital that was supposedly about COVID restrictions and frustration. But I ended up writing an op-ed that NBC picked up and it went national at the time,

pointing out that this was something much darker. We saw swastikas, nooses, Confederate flags, boogaloo boys, you know, wearing the Hawaiian shirts. And there was a photo that went viral of four heavily armed men with AR-15's full tactical gear in the Senate gallery, above my head. So you know, you see the picture of these four guys and what you don't see is me right below it on the Senate floor. And so we've all lived through this together.

I think we're all really close because of it. I think having gone through when we heard about the plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer, the governor, I was sitting on the Senate floor. We saw the news report from the FBI was streaming it on my computer. And the Senate Majority Leader

Mike Shirky, who's a Republican, went from hearing about that story. He walked out of the Senate chamber, went to our Capitol steps to a rally that was hosted by the same far-right fringe groups that organized this whole plot and told them to keep going. It's amazing to me. One of the things I'm also struck by is these guys got off. Yeah. And a lot of people I've seen on social media are like, well, this proves they didn't do it. But that's actually not what it proves. As a woman in the state, it was really frustrating to watch that that happened because we know that

some of the same guys in that photo were the ones who were charged with this plot. We know that they came to our capital and used it to recruit other people. We know that just because it didn't work didn't mean they didn't try. And it's really frustrating to see the result of that trial. I think it was the wrong result. But also a lot more worrying that we're. we have leaders of the Republican Party, my colleagues, who are more than willing to stand beside these, frankly, anti-government extremists instead of with their colleagues.

I mean, I've written now about your speech and I think a lot about Democratic messaging, but I'm just curious, why do you think you cut through all that noise? I mean, number one, I'm mad. And I think that was evident. I had written down what I wanted to say, but I, in thinking about the delivery of it. I don't think I would have come across as angry if Senator Tice had even bothered to look at me, but she didn't. You know, I was looking at the back of her head the whole time. And I was more and more angry as sort of the speech went on. And I think that came through, but I'm glad I wrote

something down because I stayed, you know, as kind of measured and controlled as I needed to. But what I've seen happen is over the past two years, we've seen moms take on a lot through COVID, school closures, trying to balance work in school and being a parent and being a teacher and particularly parents of young kids still not having a vaccine for their kids and wondering when, you know, everybody's gone back to normal and parents of young kids haven't had that opportunity yet. So moms have been through a lot. And I've seen in my district, we have seen the rise of groups like moms for liberty that are going to school board meetings and pressuring schools and I think taking advantage of that very real frustration and now using it

for this fear mongering. You know, it started with CRT. Now it's the LGBTQ community. And what really pushed me too far was this idea that groups like that and the current GOP somehow speak in a unanimous voice for moms, for parents, for Christians. And I just had enough. So, you know, it was for me taking my own identity back because she tried to steal that for me and say that I am somebody who, you know, let's call a groomer what it is by definition, somebody who befriends children for the purpose of sexually molesting them and wanted to take that back. And I was mad. And I wanted to speak for every other, frankly, non-marginalized white suburban mom who is otherwise fine and say, this is enough. This has gone way too far. We can get mad about it. and point out that it's also a deflection. So whether or not you're the parent of a trans kid, they are lying to you to get you so mad and hateful and angry

towards somebody else that you forget that they're not actually putting forward any policies to help you in your everyday life. And that's not right. You know, what I'm struck by with your speech is that obviously the Republican Party is completely radicalized, but there was something about a suburban mom explaining to, You know what I mean? I feel like there's so much Republican messaging that has focused on making people think Democrats are these very fringe characters.

Right. We're not. You know, I sort of joked on Twitter at last year sometime. I don't know. I chimed into some conversation and called myself Senator Suburbs because that's the area that I represent. It's people who we love our families and we love our communities and we love our schools. And, you know, my mom was a homeroom mom growing up and came on field trips with us and was super. involved in the idea that somehow there's this fight between parents and schools when there shouldn't be. There's nothing that makes that exist right now. I mean, it's just, it's so crazy. And it is trying to create this divide. And I think, you know, the ironic thing is Republicans always accused Democrats of playing identity politics when they are creating all of these divisions that did not exist until they made them exist. It is such an interesting thing because it's like they've sort of pushed this idea that if you believe in rights for someone, then you are that person, right? The statistics are like 1% of all Americans are trans, right?

Right. I mean, so that's not the bulk of the Democratic Party. That's not the bulk of anyone, you know. But believing that those people should have absolute rights the way that everyone else does, I mean, that's hardly a controversial thought. I'm watching this Republican Party in real time become more and more insane. And it's just so striking to me. And so I did feel like when I heard you, you sort of just were like, let's just get back to what this really is.

Exactly. One of my closest friends and colleagues, Jeremy Moss, is an openly gay senator, the only one, the first one that I served with. So we've talked a lot over the past few weeks. And one of the things he said today was, you know, if he had stood up and said, I'm not a groomer, the response would be okay, groomer. and that he acknowledges the speech I gave was something that only I could give because of who I am. And I'm not talking to him necessarily. I'm talking to every other straight, white, suburban mom to say, this is happening because we're letting it. And it's not fair.

You know, it's easy to target a minority group because by definition there are fewer of them. You know, politics works when more people vote for you than vote for them. it's way too easy for people who aren't the ones being targeted to say, you know what, it's not my issue. So I'm going to stay out of it. I mean, it does speak to the idea of allyship, right, that we use the privilege we have. I mean, I think about that all the time. I grew up with a lot of privilege that I use that privilege for people to try to get the voices of other people heard and to try to protect other people who don't have that privilege.

Yeah. Well, and I think it's got to mean something in politics. A lot of people don't like politics, right? And they say like, oh, I don't want to get involved. It's really nasty. But politics is the decisions that are made about other people's lives. And we can't just have this kind of culture where people who are comfortable think that, oh, I put up a pride flag.

And I went to this event and I went to a drag queen story time and think that that's enough. If we're not actively involved in this process about who makes determinations about whether people can be discriminated. or not. That's not actual allyship. So I think a lot more of us have to get a little more uncomfortable and get into these spaces and be involved politically, which frankly we saw in 2018 after Donald Trump got elected with a lot of angry suburban women who got organized and did some things and helped people like me get elected. Yeah, I think that's really right. People who are listening to you right now, what should they be doing? Find out who your local

elected officials are on the state level. And if you don't like them, help get them out of office. It seems like a very wise words. And thank you so much, Mallory McMorrow. Thanks, Molly. 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. We'll 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.

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