The Daily Beast Podcast - Sep. 13 Member Bonus: Will The Republican Party Ever Be the Same Again?

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

This members-only episode was originally published on September 13, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse thinks the biggest problem with climate change deniers is the people that line their pockets. The Rhode Island Democrat joined The New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast and producer Jesse Cannon to talk about the environment, the GOP dropping the ball, and how putting an end to secretive political cash could be the key to solving it all. “The key thing to do on the environment is to focus on the dark money problem,” says Whitehouse. “I don't care whether you're talking to Tea Partiers or Bernie Bros, the notion that big, powerful, special interests can spend unlimited money anonymously through front groups and deploy huge political power out of sight is equally offensive across the board.” He explained how certain groups are in the pockets of political donors (cough cough, Republicans) and how the party's disdain for science has similarities to their COVID-19 response. “The power of the science denial industry is manifest in both examples, Coronavirus and climate, and the willingness of Republicans to bear pain and scorn and deny truth.” But does the GOP stand a chance of ever going back to being that Grand Ole Party? For the sake of the climate, at least? In Whitehouse’s opinion, there are two options for that to happen, one of them involves a complete overhaul. (“You wait until the Republican party is so discredited and its climate denial that a surge of new Republicans come in and sweep out.”) Then, the three discuss Trump’s eerie Supreme Court scouting and the funding of the Federalist Society: “The whole thing is being basically run like our intelligence community would run a covert operation against a hostile nation.” Plus! Molly really wants to know how Whitehouse can work with Rand Paul and if Rhode Island calamari is really as amazing as the DNC made it seem. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, and welcome to another the new abnormal member exclusive episode. And we thank you so much for being here. Today we have Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who is going to be talking to us about a wide variety of subjects, including how dark money is affecting this country and how the GOP has become a toxic force. So can we start talking about the essay you wrote on Medium about how the Republican Party has lost its way? Tell me what, I mean, this feels very right of the moment, especially considering the tapes yesterday, the Woodward tapes. I happen to feel like a healthy Republican Party is good for democracy. How could you see the Republican Party coming back from this? I think it's going to take kind of an internal revolution of some kind.

You can plot a trajectory for the early work like, what's the matter with Kansas, that showed how the party propaganda had been able to convince regular Republicans to. to vote against their interests. And then when it looked like Trump was going to lose to Hillary, there was this little burst of confession by Republicans about that's what happens when you've run something that basically has been a scam, has been consumer fraud on a political level against our own voters. And now they've kind of turned on us. And then you've got the further expansion of that view through the never Trump

Republicans who are disappointed in where their party has gone, which has had a little recent explosion in the It Was All a Lie book. So there's been this sort of thread running for quite a while, and the common feature of it is that very clever people who are paid a lot of money by people who have immense money are running a propaganda operation to scam Republican voters in order to get power and get advantage, tax advantages, polluting advantages, the kind of things that are traditional grist for political mischief.

You have been very involved in environmental causes. It's hard right now as we have these fires racing across the West. Talk to me about where you think we are with the environment, what we can do, how we can come back from this, what you're working on right now. That's going to be really hard because, in my view, the Republican Party is more or less dominantly funded by the fossil fuel industry. And in addition to the funding, there's this huge array of phony front groups

that the fossil fuel industry has stood up. up to mask the fossil fuel industry's own role and put a veneer of science on their climate denial and to be the political muscle that breaks people if they cross them. So that's why they took over the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That's why they took over the National Association of Manufacturers and became, why would those two groups become the two worst climate obstructors in America? It doesn't make sense given their membership, but it happened. And I think for that, you've got to follow the money. So the two ways out of this are you follow the money and you disable and you discredit this operation that has seized control of the Republican Party.

And the second is you wait until the Republican Party is so discredited in its climate denial that a surge of new Republicans come in and sweep out those who were complicit in the phony bologna operation that the fossil fuel industry ran. That probably takes too long for climate. So we probably are going to have to work in a partisan fashion to get a bill done if November is good to us, although I hate to see that be the case. Maybe if it's inevitable, some Republicans will come over because they see the future and want to switch to the right side and now it's inevitable. Could you see that happening? Yeah. I mean, I talked to probably a dozen Senate Republicans who understand quite clearly that climate change is real, that it's a terrible threat, that it hurts

their home states and threatens their home states. And they're looking for a way to get something done, but they want it to be a way that doesn't force the opposition of this whole apparatus that the fossil fuel industry has set up, which is completely dominant in Republican election politics. I mean, if the chamber goes against you, National Association Manufacturers goes against you, API goes against you, Americans for Prosperity goes against you, now you're looking around for who else is going to support you and it's mighty thin gruel at that point. Right. Do you see any senators where their state is being so affected that they're going to have to or now? You know, Alaska obviously has huge stakes here. And I think Senator Murkowski has been one of the most forward-leaning. of the Republicans. Contrast that with Florida, where they're seeing daytime high tide flooding and having to do enormous infrastructure projects to try to keep pump the water out of their cities.

And they're seeing the encroachment of the sea through the limestone into what used to be fresh water for wells and so forth inland. And the Army Corps of Engineers Jacksonville office sees that this just goes really badly for the state in terms of flooding and fresh water and coastal flooding. And yet, look at the Florida delegation. They couldn't care less about this. It's interesting to me in Florida because you have two senators who are theoretically sort of, I mean, it's all relative in the Republican Party, but more intellectual than some of the other Republican senators and yet seemingly in complete denial about climate change. Yeah, well, I'm afraid that a lot of that intellect is devoted to tracking the steps of climate denial from it's a hoax to we don't know

enough to it's going to crush the economy through the various stages of retreat, but always defending against getting anything done. Do you see a parallel between the Republican Party's coronavirus response and their environmental response? I do. I think they share a couple of characteristics. One, if you hate government as a general proposition, then you don't want it to come to the rescue, whether the problem is a marauding coronavirus or a planetary emergency. So there's that overlay. There's the powered up distaste for science, which, you know, back in the old days, it was anti-vaxxers, it was flat earthers. It was a pretty small group of people, a lot of them in their basement with tinfoil wrapped around their heads who were the big science

deniers. But it didn't take long for big industries like the fossil fuel industry to say, wait a minute, if we put some real money behind that and put some intellectual fake credence, we can actually capture that and turn it to our advantage in terms of climate denial in terms of denial about the poisonous nature of our products, whatever. And so the power of the science denial industry is manifest in both examples, coronavirus and climate, and the willingness of Republicans to bear pain and scorn and deny truth when the interests of their big funders demands it

is also a commonality between the two. Sorry, I'm in my Senate office. And that horn you hear in the background is the floor bell. So President Trump yesterday did one of his news cycle distractions and he announced the list of ridiculous potential Supreme Court nominees. Did you have any feelings about that? Yeah, I think the question that we need to ask is not who is on the list. The question we need to ask is who is behind the list?

Because in the same way that a enormous dark money operation has been stood up to do climate denial and obstruction, an enormous and indeed much overlapping dark money apparatus has been set up to do court capture. So somebody, I mean, the federal society has very legitimate things that it does, like on college campuses and being a DC think tank. But it also has this role where it vets and approves judicial nominees. And it's weird for a private organization to do that without disclosing who's funding it, particularly with the kind of money that's involved in the scheme, because you don't spend that kind of money for the hope of no result.

And they not only fund the Federal Society, they also fund the Judicial Crisis Network, which does the political campaigns. They fund the groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation that cook up the phony plaintiffs to tee up the cases, particularly. strategically for the court. They fund a little flotilla of emmachus, emikycrii, who come in and write a chorus of similar briefs to direct the judges who've been nominated and confirmed, thanks to the same money, as to how to rule. And that whole thing is being basically run like our intelligence community would run a covert operation against a hostile nation.

I haven't heard people talk that much about the recruiting the people to be plaintiffs. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so the Pacific Legal Foundation, I'll just use it as an example because I've argued against them in the Supreme Court. They were set up by corporate interests who were irate about pollution regulation years ago, and they troll the country for cases that present a fact pattern that they can use strategically to bring before the court to push the agenda of their big donors. And they not only do that themselves, but they have this array of other groups that will come in with them as emmiki and file a whole bunch of briefs that appear to be a chorus of support for that notion. When you look behind who's funding them,

there's an enormous degree of overlap in who funds them and in who funds the Federalist Society. And I actually did a diagram in a brief that I wrote to the Supreme Court recently of some of my fellow emmiki and who their common funders were. And a research group took a look at that said, we can do a better job. And they did a really good report that late. made out in even greater detail how the little flotilla of Emicki was funded by essentially the same little group of donors. It's not separate groups, it's separate tentacles of the same little group. It's a variety of right-wing trusts that have been set up over the years and that invest in this kind of stuff. A lot of it comes through a group called Donors Trust, which is a donor-specified trust set up by the Koch Brothers operation for the purpose of stripping the identity.

off of money as it goes between donors and organizations. So we actually don't know a very complete version of how this all gets funded. But thanks to a lot of diligent reporting and occasional slips and corporate reports, you can begin to look backwards and assemble a reasonably good sense of who is behind it. And we can get you a copy of the little appendix and go through who they all are. I'd be curious. So we have a lot of people listen to this podcast who are really committed to a lot of the values you hold dear. How can they support what you're doing on the environment? The key thing to do on the environment is to focus on the dark money problem. And I think that's a very bipartisan thing. I don't care whether you're talking to Tea Partyers or Bernie Bros.

The notion that big, powerful special interests can spend unlimited money anonymously through front groups and deploy huge political power out of sight in Congress is equally effective. across the board. And we've kind of let them get away with it. And it's time to put an end to that. It puts an end to the court capture. Once it's disclosed, who's behind it, it puts an end to the climate denial. Once it's disclosed, who's behind it, cleans up politics a ton when it's disclosed who's behind it. I mean, if I can run an ad in my own name, I'm restrained in saying the worst possible things because that blows back on me a little bit. But if I can launder my political effort through a fake front group with a name like Americans for Peace and Puppies and Prosperity,

then I can say anything at all. I can say the foulest, most disgraceful lies, I can unleash a tsunami of slime into the American election process. And I get away with it, Scott Freed, because nobody knows it's me. That's interesting. So you think the dark money question would solve a lot? It'd solve a lot. Yeah, I describe it in pretty stark terms. I describe it as a small group of very big donors who were essentially running a covert operation against their own government in order to seize power to protect their interests in polluting and low taxes and so forth. You don't have to answer this. This is just like for my own edification.

How do you work with someone like Rand Paul? I actually don't much with him. He doesn't do a lot of legislating. He demands votes on issues for points that he wants to make. But I do a lot of work with Republicans and get a lot of bipartisan. and bills passed, and you have to learn how to operate on two frequencies. One, trying to attack this structure that I think has done evil to their party and seized their party in a kind of a hostile takeover, covert op type situation. And the second is, we got work to do in the meantime. So while

we're winning that battle, if I can do bipartisan work on carbon capture, if I can do bipartisan work on ocean plastics, if I can do bipartisan work on opioids response, I'm going to do that. But you do have to kind of reset your brain for the two different aspects of working here. So you've been a strong voice about rent relief and evictions. So many people seem confused as to why the Republicans won't come to the table, especially considering the coming election. Do you have any insight on why there's so much in action? As I see it, first of all, Mitch McConnell was a very cany operator. And he doesn't like to fling himself into circumstances in which you are just kind of negotiating towards an end without a plan. So his routine, it's almost ritual.

at this point is to wait until he has his Republicans lined up on something and then start his negotiations with forcing a vote on whatever that thing is, knowing that it's going to fail, and then testing our resolve, good situational and tell for him, and then you begin your negotiation. That process has been very attenuated here because, first of all, Republicans didn't want to respond once Trump started saying this wasn't real. And then they were all over the lot, so he couldn't get 51 votes together and he didn't want to show up at a negotiation with a divided caucus and try to just let the process sort through it. And only now is he testing the proposition whether you can get to 51 votes on today's measure, knowing full well that no Democrat will vote for it and that

no Democrat was consulted in preparing it. So his standard operating procedure here just got very spread out by the disarray between Republicans in the Senate and the White House and among Republicans in the Senate. And he just hasn't been able to forge a working partisan coalition. But aren't you surprised that like they just let enhanced unemployment expire? I am. I would have thought that that would have been sort of an easy one to continue. And I would have thought that trying to keep the economy buoyed before the election would make sense, right? Yeah, would have been good for them. But we may be thinking in pre-Trumpian terms And it may actually be that by upsetting people, particularly when you can blame it on congressional inaction rather than taking the blame as an individual legislator or as a party, that you create a sense of disarray and of nervousness and of anxiety that actually works to Trump's advantage.

His strength of purpose, his clarity of making his points, his viciousness and his disruptiveness all become assets in a world in which everybody is frightened. So why else would you create? anxiety about the postal service for Pete's sake. DeJoy is still in charge, right? There's a pretty serious allegation that he took straw donors. So what is happening? I know this is not your committee, but I have a feeling you have a sense. Can Democrats do anything to get rid of him?

It takes some patience because you have to build the case in Congress. You have to have committee investigations. You have to get subpoenas out where they won't answer, and you have to be willing to enforce subpoenas. And given the fact that the Trump administration essentially ignores all congressional subpoenas, you've got to be willing to go to court and fight. So it's very difficult to utilize the tools of congressional oversight in the Trumpian world. And that slows things down.

And given the late date that we're in in this term of the presidents, there's very little chance that we can put the pieces together to have a real investigation. and get out evidence that would force them to let this guy go. Also, I think there's kind of scandal fatigue, and Trump particularly takes advantage of that. Once you've fully occupied people's capacity to be outraged, all other outrages are free, and nobody ever thought that way about politics before,

but they figured that out, that you saturate the zone with outrage, and then you go way beyond that, and there's no real cost to that because the public's already outraged, So what are you going to do? But the people who you're helping, the big polluters, the big donors, whomever it is, they are infinitely grateful that you've been willing to take these hits for them.

And it actually works in a weird way to your benefit. Again, not a traditional political calculus, but we're seeing it. Do you think there's any world in which Mitch McConnell takes that to the Senate? I mean, it just feels like Nancy Pelosi passes bills and Mitch McConnell's like, no thank you. Yeah. I don't see why he would want to. And particularly at this point, The strongest feature of the Republican Party, its biggest political asset, is that they're in it and they're going to stick together through hell or high water.

Call veterans who laid down their lives, suckers and losers, we're still with you. Sell out the environmental agencies of the country to the fossil fuel stooges. We're with you. We're with you. We're with you. We're with you. And the news kind of moves on when they have that power of coherence, of not fracturing, of not turning on each other, of turning away. all criticisms and just putting their heads down and continuing to do what their big donors want.

And then they pay for that with enormous sums of money that can be dumped into races to attack Democrats. That's the strategy. But don't abandon ship. Don't separate from the team. We're in this together. If we're going to hang, let's all hang together. Theoretically, who do you think is more responsible for the most American carnage? Is it the Murdox who have been working the propaganda machine, or is it the Cokes who have been just so focused on the Republican Party?

Oh, boy, two beauties, and I'm supposed to choose as to which is more. And it's also hard to see much of an actual seam between those two. I think it's a joint effort. And I think the internal effort by the Cokes to create a political apparatus that outpowers the Republican Party, displaces it, and demands compliance with all of its polluted. orthodoxy and the Fox News operation that sells that and creates distractions so that people aren't seeing what's going on. It's a very clever joint operation, I think. And I suspect that their operatives on both sides talk all the time about how to make

sure that the coordination works for them. It's just shocking to me. In Kansas, the Koch brothers really got to do everything they wanted. They sort of had such a super majority. They were able to really do everything. And in the end, it backfired for them. Now Kansas has a Democratic governor. Like, could you see that scenario happening on a larger scale or now?

Yes. I think on a small scale, we're seeing it a little bit in health care. The reason health care is such a good issue for Democrats, and the reason we're constantly returning to it as an issue is because it affects people's lives very directly. And they see that the sort of propagandized nonsense about health care that comes out of the far right is really damaging to their interests, whether it's cutting Medicare, cutting Medicaid, undoing Obamacare, all of that is really hazardous to your health. So that's a recurring one. The big one, unfortunately, is going to be climate. And the terrible thing about the climate change

realization that we was had is that by the time people realize that we was had, it may be too late to go back and clean it up. With health care, you can rebuild Medicare. You can rebuild Medicaid. You can rebuild Obamacare. You can provide coverage. You can make the system work again. When you're dealing with fundamental natural systems that have been disrupted from the way they've run for tens of thousands, tens of millions of years, rebuilding that is one hell of a trick. Some of these things are, it's a ratchet. You go through that gate and there's no coming back. And that would be the terrible thing. If people didn't figure out that they got lied to about climate change in one of the most massive and dishonorable covert operations run in the history of the planet until it was too late.

It takes you back to the dark money problem, though. Because if you look at the dark money problem is the heart of what's behind. climate denial, what's behind court capture, what's behind the berserqueization of the Republican Party. There's a common thread of some very big donors who have gone to enormous effort to hide their hands. His whole apparatus of phony front groups and intermediaries and shell corporations and 501C4s and donor advised trusts and all that kind of stuff, that was built for a reason because they don't want to be caught because they know if people see that it's them, the whole scheme falls apart. So in that structure is the clue to its weakness. And shame on us as Democrats for not having pursued that in a more effective way. Right. Oh, no question.

For the past month, there's been a very big mystery out of your home state of Rhode Island. I wanted to see if you had any insight on it. Calamari, man, should we fear him? Calamari. Calamari. You've got to understand Joe McNamara, who is our party chairman, and is one of the most gregarious and effusive personalities you could ever hope to meet. And he spent a long time as a state legislator where he has a state bird and a state stone and a state song.

Well, he wanted a state appetizer. He wanted Kalamari to be the state appetizer. And by God, he got his colleagues in the General Assembly to declare Kalamari the state appetizer. And he was right. Rhode Island Kalamari is really, really good. And it's beautifully prepared. And it's a special thing in our state. So for him to take the moment that he had in front of the whole country to do his

calamari thing, along with the chef from Iggy's, one of the great calamari places, that was like totally in character with Joe, Joe Mac, we call him. That was a totally Joe Mac moment, which made it even more local and even more wonderful than the calamari part and the Iggy's part. Yeah, that's amazing. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to this. Thank you so much, Senator. My pleasure. Thanks for doing this and focusing on these issues.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh,

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