The Daily Beast Podcast - Should We Replace the Trump Administration With Chimpanzees?

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

No, seriously. After turning the Rose Garden into a superspreader party, after lying 143 ways to Sunday about the virus and 17 more about the president’s health, maybe it’s time to let some other mammals have a shot. “I could release 50 chimpanzees in the White House and they would behave with more care,” says Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Molly Jong-Fast replies, “My favorite moment was when they”—the White House staff, not the monkeys—”said, ‘you know, he's totally fine, but we've given him this experimental drug that has only a compassionate-use approval... Being lied to about the president's health is a time-honored tradition. But this group has really done it with a kind of zeal and flare and incompetence that we have never seen before.” Speaking of those experimental drugs, Yale’s Dr. Howard Foreman breaks down all the different therapeutics the president is taking—and lays out why he thinks Trump has been sicker for longer than anyone realizes. Maybe as long as two weeks. Then! The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and The New York Times’ Peter Baker compare covering Trump’s D.C. to covering Putin’s Moscow. Plus! Matthew McConaughey’s Camaro! Hugh Hewitt’s dumbest moment yet! White House moles emerge! Bill Barr gets even sneakier! And Rick shares his thoughts about Biden’s decision to take down his negative ads while Trump was in the hospital. “Joe Biden is falling victim to this asymmetric bullshit, civility, fuck that noise. Get on it. Get back on the negatives, do it. Now he's attacking you. He's attacked your family. He's attacked your campaign over and over again. Do not hesitate.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our, kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers.

Molly Jong Fast, how are you? I'm good. Not much happened. Slow News weekend. Really, really slow news weekend. I slept, I think Friday, like, I don't know, 12 hours, Saturday, 10 hours, and then Sunday, I was in bed almost all day, just lounging, taking it easy. In your undisclosed location?

In my undisclosed location. And by those numbers, folks, I mean, those are the amount of sleep I've actually had in the last three months, when your sole principle of governance is detonate one shit show to get to the next shit show, and suddenly you find yourself a victim of your own stupidity, you end up with weekends like this weekend. And there's Donald Trump hospitalized for the disease I was reliably told was a hoax. So here's a question. We have the president. On Friday, he went from asymptomatic to mild symptoms to hospitalized. Right. On Saturday, his osteopath told us, that he was completely fine and that the abundance of caution. By the way, when this administration

says they're doing something in the abundance of caution, watch out. Right. Because if they say it's an abundance of caution, it's essentially the equivalent of like a nuclear weapon going off somewhere. These people have the least probity of any administration in modern history. Right. They have no interest in operating in an abundance of anything, let alone caution. Listen, I could release 50 chimpanzees in the White House and they would behave with more care than as gone on in the last couple weeks. Folks, I've got to get this out of the way. Molle, will you indulge me? No, never. Please? Please? Please? Yeah. Pretty pleased? Okay. Go for it. I wrote a piece in the beast today, which I would encourage you all to read about the lack of pity parties happening for the president

and is very much upset his cheerleaders on the right. They can't believe that the same people who screamed out that Hillary had Parkinson's, that Hillary had a stroke, that Hillary was dying. They can't believe that America isn't silently weeping over a guy who knew he was doing all the things he possibly could. I mean, short of going to lick a doorknob at Sturgis, that he was doing everything he could to get COVID. And of course, what did he get? COVID. Diamond and Silk actually tweeted out. And I would just like to point out that this is kind of an amazing tweet. It shows a certain lack of insight, perhaps.

Wait, I haven't seen this, but can I make a guess? Yeah. Are they saying the Biden campaign deliberately infected? Donald Trump with COVID. No, better. Oh, go on. Do tell. Was the White House targeted?

Who, you know who targeted them, Arlington? Do you know who? Themselves. Antifa! Oh, God. I mean, the idea that Trump getting a virus that 210,000 people have died from, as conspiracy is pretty, is pretty impressive. Well, the idea from the very beginning that this was a biological warfare agent and not just

virus that does what viruses do, has been a sort of subtext. There is a growing little rumble in Russian propaganda channels, RT and elsewhere, in the info farms that feed the American right-wing Trump media now that this was a deliberate bio-attack on our president. And of course, the, again, the bio-attack was not from some malevolent external force, but rather from a malevolent internal force inside Donald Trump's broken brain. But Molly, you know, when you go to the hospital and it's just fine, you're okay, it's all good, you're going to be out the next day, you're on ribdesivir, regeneron, dexamethisone, supplemental oxygen, zinc, vitamin D, amount of tide, melatonin, and aspirin, and aspirin. All those things. That's what always happens when I'm fine. I don't know about

you. I mean, there was so much lying about the president's condition, and then my favorite moment was when they said, you know, he's totally fine, but we've given him this experimental drug that has only a compassionate use approval and also steroids and also dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. No, we're definitely being lied to. Being lied to about the president's health is like a time-honored tradition, but I think that this group has really done it with a kind of zeal and flair and incompetence that we have never seen before. They do have a certain verb to their lying, and I'm just going to say this, you know, I know we're supposed to be very, very civilized now and never, ever, ever, ever roll our eyes and say, hmm, but let's be real here. Kaley McInney up on that podium for

months on end lying about COVID, lying and lying and lying again and again and again. Only to get COVID. Only to get COVID. It proves to you that karma is a real and very magnificent bitch. On Friday night, Steve Schmidt, who is one of your people in the Lincoln Project. Yeah. Tweeted out a sort of call to arms. Just for context, we've had visibility in the White House for months, several people inside the White House who've been very helpful. We've had more visibility in the campaign even because these are both dysfunctional organizations. Good organizations leak on purpose, bad organizations, they're bad organizations. But Friday night, Steve put that out and then I followed it up and said, listen, DM me for your signal, we'll protect you, we've protected everybody else.

This became a little bit more of an effort than we thought because there are so many people in the White House right now who are absolutely furious. So whenever you do a White House event, you notice all the seats are always full. Well, there's only usually about 20, 25 guest seats, about 100 more. And they use staff to fill seats. Amy Comey Barrett, half the people there were just like White House staff people. They were told, show up at this event, sit down and clap politely. And don't wear a mask, right? Don't wear a mask. Don't wear a mask. We don't wear masks. And there are a lot of these people who are now infected. We're hearing from different people inside the White House that between 40 and 75 people may be infected. They've also been told, don't go to the White House clinic, go to a private clinic,

so there's no record. These people are absolutely amoral. They're willing to kill people. They're willing to expose people. I already have a fairly low opinion of Donald Trump, as you may have heard. I don't tell me more. You like him or you don't like him? I have a fairly low opinion of the president to begin with, but here's the fact. He knew he was exposing his wife and probably his kid to this disease. He knew he was exposing his staff. He knew he was exposing his large adult sons to this disease. Now, that may have been deliberate, but he did this deliberately. He chose to do this. He knew maybe as early as Monday that there was a problem. And there was a problem. And White House is, of course, lying and lying and lying and lying like crazy.

What do you think the real number is? Because remember, the doctor said on Saturday that he had been diagnosed 72 hours ago, and then he walked that path. Right. Listen, so one thing we're picking up from inside the White House is there was a gigantic struggle, fight, power struggle, whatever you want to call it over the weekend by Jared and Ivanka to essentially have Mark Meadows never speak again and spend the rest of his time in Siberia, because they want to control this. They're trying desperately to control this.

All the indications are that he was sick Wednesday, that he knew Monday was sick Wednesday, went and still did everything he did this week to expose people to this disease. It is an astounding, astounding level of malfeasance on his part. I'll say. So he exposed his donors. Oh, yes. He exposed a bunch of very wealthy people at Bedminster. Well, not very wealthy.

Trump doesn't have any real wealthy friends. Right. Definitely not our kind, dear. So how do you get those people to donate to the RNC now? Well, they're still going to donate. Many of them are still going to donate. And they're going to donate because they're in the matrix with Trump. Look, they're telling people not to talk.

The president himself is saying, don't tell people. Don't let people know. This is a scandal. This is an ugly, weird moment in our political history. And it's happening in front of our face. Did you see Hugh Hewitt, professional Trump sycophant, tweeted that it was so, that Mark Meadows was so loyal that he had exposed himself to coronavirus this weekend? You know, let's get real here for a second.

The idea of exposing yourself to the plague for the master, it sounds like medieval Chinese court culture, not America 2020. And I'm sorry, but these people are collaborators now with this. They are co-conspirators with this. They are causing more people to get infected because, remember, this was the culture that mocked wearing a mask, that mocked any sort of social distancing at these events. Look at the last couple of events of the White House. Look at the RNC speech and look at the Amy Comey Barrett speech.

And those were largely maskless. They were assholes and elbows right up next to each other. They were collegial. They were backslapping, handshaking, hugging, kissing. Well, I'm sorry. Can I tell you why this happened to them? Aside from the fact that the presence of weapons grade moron, it's happening because the virus doesn't watch Fox News.

The virus is not on Team Trump Eagle Patriot Maga 400 Facebook group. The virus doesn't care about Donald Trump's Twitter feed. It's a virus. It does what it does. And so they have done everything they could to open up their people to exposure. I call bullshit on this entire right-wing media complex that for months has been out there seizing on every single absurdity. Oh, hydrochloric one cures it. Oh, bleach you cures it.

Shub a light. Oh, up your ass. That'll cure it. We've got a vaccine coming in a week, in a month, in two days. All these things. And they've spent all this time. And you've got Info Wars and Ben Shapiro and Bing Bong-Bong and all. all these are idiots on their various channels and platforms saying,

well, nobody really died of COVID. It's only 9,000 people. It's the flu. Nobody gets it. Kids don't get it. Elders don't get it. It's not a big deal. Oh, the only people who die have a co-morbidity.

All this other stuff. They have spent nine months, almost 10 months now, on this same track. They are also responsible for this shit. Oh, yeah. No question. And look, we don't even have a clue about the contact tracing, if any, and I doubt there's any, at these Trump rallies. Oh, yeah.

Forget it. There's no way there's contact tracing. They do keep track of everybody that goes these rallies because they have an email ticketing system. So they know who went, but they're not tracking them. I promise you they're not tracking them. They just can't do it. They could, but they won't. They could if they wanted to.

Right. I presume we're going to be able to map an overlay of COVID deaths and COVID infection rates increasing to various rallies and various Trump events in the last couple of weeks. Well, Sturgis, right? We saw that with Sturgis. Yep. A huge bump after Sturgis. A lot of people are concerned he's going to pull the thing he seems he's starting to roll

out, which is, I understand the virus, and now I'm going to give you all what I have, and they are afraid that a vaccine-dash cure is going to tip the election. What do you two think of that? Look, a lot of people are paranoid now that Donald Trump is going to come out and be more compassionate and understanding and express empathy with people and say, I feel the pain that you have felt. I understand your suffering. But here's the problem with that. Have you met this motherfucker? Right. He's not going to do that. I mean, that's the thing. People are very worried that he's going to, like, be something that he's not.

He can't. He can't sustain anything for longer than about 48 hours at most, okay? That moment that he had on that video, all I could think of was, you know what Donald Trump is and does. When Donald Trump has to do something for campaign purposes or for governmental purposes, it's like a time bomb goes off at his head. And a clock starts running. It's like, when am I going to do the next big dickhead thing that I want to do in my heart? He is a human oppositional defiant disorder.

So he is already thinking, how can I misbehave? What can I do next? What should I do now? I'm going to own the lives. So what does he do? He makes that video where he sounds, for a moment, rational. And then he goes on this bat-shit tweet storm today. And he will not be able to resist the behaviors that define him.

Yeah, that tweet storm was something. Yeah. He will not be able to resist the behaviors that defined him. Like, I don't know. Forcing four secret service agents into a vehicle with him at close proximity while he is in the maximum spreading phase of the vid. Those guys sign up to protect the president in the United States, no matter who he is, whether it's Donald Trump or Barack Obama or George Bush or Bill Clinton or whoever, they sign up to take any risk from an external force. They don't sign up to possibly

be infected and die because the president is a reckless, juvenile, narcissistic child who demands to have his ego stroke. He drove up around that block. It was like a combination of Mike Dukakis in the tank and Matthew McConaughey in days and confused. circling the parking lot in his Camaro looking for chicks five years after he graduated from high school. It was just pathetic. No hand on the former governor, okay? But let's be honest, the tank ride did not work well for him. This tank ride did not work well for Donald Trump.

In fact, some of the people we're hearing from now are Secret Service folks who have basically said the same thing to me, I just told you, which was I signed up to die if Al Qaeda attacked him or if some crazy lunatic comes in with a gun or somebody tries to take him. I didn't sign up to get a disease from him because he wants to get his campaign numbers back up. This is not going over like he thought it would go over. Although there was a quote from one of his followers on site who said, I will die for Trump. I will die for him. And of course, there was this fascinating article by Dan Zach in the Washington Post where he talked about his supporters are out there with flags and cardboard cutouts saying eight more years, long live Trump.

you know, they want a lifetime appointment. And by the way, just to make you feel even more confident, Donald Trump today announced the Trump Army. You can go online to armyforTrump.com. I'm not saying if you go on there like the teenagers with TikTok and enter a bunch of bogus data that would cause them any trouble, I would never suggest anything like that. That would be so wrong.

And also just petty. In a way that we know you're not. You know I am not a petty bitch in any way whatsoever, except I'm just saying, if others went on there to like enlist, as they say. We'd never encourage it, though. The irony of a army for Trump is that Trump has always avoided the army for the United States because of his bonespurs. Call me crazy.

But look, this moment is a moment of maximum peril for Trump. It has broken the idea that Donald Trump is the godhead and cannot be touched. That's why they're going to make up elaborate conspiracies. Joe Biden had a sneeze ray that sprayed COVID under Trump. They're going to come up with all this crazy. bullshit in the next few days. Mark my words. We have people that monitor this stuff now. They are already seeing it that Trump was deliberately infected. They're going to say it over and over again, okay? Wait, what? The, you got to talk me through this into Anody here.

So we monitor a lot of the overseas Russian troll traffic and media traffic now. And we've discovered a pattern. You can always spot it now. About two days, three days after it pops up over there, it ends up on Gateway Pundit. Then it metastasizes to Breitbart. Then the federalist writes something to make it respectable. And then Fox covers it. And then Trump tweets it. So they're going to say in the next few days, Trump was infected deliberately. And now he survived that. He is the hero of our time. The problem is his campaign is in rebellion. The kids in the campaign are pissed off. There's a lot of infection spreading there. A bunch of the debate staff and advanced stuff from the campaign are positive. Bill Steppy and the campaign manager is positive, leaving Jason Miller,

Dr. Love, uh, in charge. I don't think his name is Dr. Love. But we'll go with that for now. continue. Yes, and the campaign is still having financial troubles. They're off the air in many, many, many swing states now. I know this weekend they spent some time wondering what the hell to do about Texas, because it's now showing in their polling, that they're losing white working class voters, even in Texas. Yeah, they're not upside down yet, but they need to hold their number. They need to get 65, 70 percent of the white working class voters, and they're not getting it. It's falling off. So they are scared everywhere. They're running scared. The only thing that can save them is, of course the Democrats fucking up because they'd never miss a chance to seize defeat from the jaws of

victory. So, of course, Joe Biden has pulled down his negative ads. Now, I'm not allowed to talk to the Biden campaign because of federal law. And since I look terrible in an orange jumpsuit, trust me, I know. I can't directly contact the Biden campaign and say, put your negative ads back on the air. But if I were with the Biden campaign right now, I would say something to the effect of put your fucking negative ads back on the air. Why? Because the Trump campaign is still running all their negative ads, all their negative social media, all their negative social advertising, all their negative earned media efforts are still

firing away at 100%. So Joe Biden is falling victim to this asymmetric bullshit civility. Fuck that noise. Get on it. Get back on the negatives. Do it now. He's attacking you. He's attacked your family. He's attacked your campaign over and over again. Do not hesitate. Go at this guy.

Finish him. So, Molly, I know that you've been paying a lot of attention to your good friend, Amy Coney Barrett. Oh, always. and her potential for a successful and swift nomination. But there may have been a speed bump this weekend, although I don't think it's as big as people think it is. Really? Tell me more.

Well, look, McConnell is holding the Senate out of session, but the Judiciary Committee is coming in so that they can process the nomination. I think a lot of people on the left this weekend got a little bit of hope in their hearts that they can stop it. I am here to be your array of pouring cold, icy rain. Mitch McConnell will bring Chuck Grassley in dead on a slab and hold his hand behind Chuck Grassley's jaw to flap it open and say,

I, when the time comes, they will bring in every infected senator in a goddamn hazmat suit to vote if they have to. I don't know when this at Lustin is going to sink in. No matter how low you think Mitch McConnell will go, he's already planned out, got the roadmap, GPS coordinates are in there, and he's ready to roll. How many senators have the virus right now? How many Republican senators have it? There are three who have tested positive. There are two. others who are currently self-isolating. We don't know. And it's probably more than we think.

Then we're being told, right. Dr. Howard Foreman is a professor of public health and a practicing physician at Yale. He's going to talk us through some thoughts about the president, the coronavirus, and where we are with the vaccine. Howie, first, before we talk about the president of the United States, you and I are both in this coronavirus vaccine study together. At Yale, New Haven Hospital. right? Yes. And we both have now had our second shots. Correct. And we both think we got the placebo.

Well, I think I think it more strongly than you do, but I agree that I've certainly had no side effects that I can notice. Now, our study doctor, the amazing Dr. O, says that everybody thinks they're in the placebo group, right? That's correct. The data really shows that the majority of people have no symptoms and as you get older, you have fewer symptoms. So I'm considerably older than the young Molly Jean fast. So it is more likely that I would have less symptoms, even if we both got the vaccine. Oh, that is so interesting. So we'll see. We don't know, though.

When do you think we're going to find out whether we got the vaccine or the placebo? I would have a hard time believing that we'll know before the end of the year. But I'm hopeful that the vaccine will be proven to be so highly affected that it would be considered unethical to continue the trial any further. much past the early part of next year and they will unblind at that point to make sure that the placebo group gets treated. Or if 36 people in the placebo group get the virus? That's less likely. I mean, I think that there is a lot of room to continue doing the trial with blinding if there's a difference between the groups, but it's not so substantial as to make it unethical to keep it going. I think we've got to get to that fine point where you have enough information that you can unblind,

even if you continue to track each individual. Right, that makes sense. All right, so let's talk about what is going on with the president of the United States. Yeah. I think the most important thing for people to recognize is we're at a new high of lack of transparency, a new high in opacity in understanding what's going on with the president. This is not, by the way, this is one of those rare things that you can honestly say is not unique to this president or one party.

This is something that presidents have historically done particularly well that is hiding their own health information when it suits them. Now, one of the things you and I have talked about is the timetable of this whole thing. So the White House told us that he got diagnosed on Friday night. But the president's osteopath, not that there's anything wrong with that, told on Saturday that he had been diagnosed 72 hours prior. So first of all, it almost does. It doesn't matter what Dr. Connolly said. What we know to be sure is that they were already double-checking the president on Thursday. So he's either test-positive Thursday.

He's almost certainly symptomatic by Thursday. They've said that he was feeling fatigued. There's some evidence that he may have been symptomatic on Wednesday based on, I think, one of the events that he attended. But it's hard to say that for sure he did have a debate the night before. But somewhere between Wednesday and Thursday. Thursday, he developed some symptoms. So that means that he's only on day five now, right? Day five of symptoms, but I would say that what we know about it is that symptoms present in the average person, somewhere between three and five days and in a person of his age, sometime between seven and nine or even 11 days,

on average. So what you do is you start by saying like, when did he have symptoms and then track back seven days or so, and you're starting to talk about the window when he was first infected. But what I don't understand is, so he definitely knew he had the virus when he went to the club on Thursday, or at least they suspected. Sounds that way. So, okay, there's like a moral question here, but I don't understand, like, most of people I know who get coronavirus, they get really sick at, like, day 14 or day 21. So what do you think is happening here?

Because this is just a very speedy recovery for a 74-year-old with coronavirus. I'm convinced based on both circumstantial as well as actual fact-based evidence that his timeline indicates an infection that probably occurred almost two weeks ago now, that he was infected, that he's probably somewhere around day 12, 13, maybe even 14 by now, just based on his age, based on the symptoms he's had, based on even the treatments they've chosen for. him. It's really hard to imagine that he's only on day nine, which would presume he was infected at the Rose Garden event. It's not impossible. It's just becoming harder and harder to believe that. So do you think that what happened with him is, and this is just anecdotal, right? We don't know

anything. We don't know the doctors. We only know what we see. Is this a case for the monoclomal antibodies? And can you explain what they are? Yeah. So they're basically synthetic antibody. antibodies that have been created that would replicate the antibodies you would make in your own body. The idea is that it prevents the virus from actually getting into your cells. So it could be used even to prevent infection, but more likely it could be used with somebody who's very, very early on in the infection to prevent a continued replication of the virus inside your cells. In the earliest studies that have been done on it so far, the phase two studies, what they have found is they're more effective in groups that have not already made their own antibodies, which

makes sense, and for whom they have very high viral titers, which also sort of makes sense. So you're trying to get to people that have a high infection and have not had a normal response to it yet, have not created their own antibodies. What we don't know about the president, which certainly should be available to him, if not to us, is did they check his antibody titers before they gave him the monorougham? carnal antibody cocktail because that would matter if he already had his own antibodies by then it would also tell us that he was further along but it would also tell us that this was not going to be as effective on the other hand if he had very high viral load and no antibody titers and he's less

far along and this is more likely to help him can we explain what viral load is so the viral load is how many viral particles there are in a milliliter or a microliter of blood i mean it's just a measure of how many viruses are circulating. It gives you a sense of how infected somebody is at that time. And the antibody titers refers to the fact, did your body already start to fight this by generating antibodies that attack this specific virus? And those are the two things that we're trying to measure here and trying to figure out what phase of the illnesses this is in. This seems to work best early on. It does not seem to help once you've started to create your own antibodies. Does it have to be made specifically for each person?

I'm not sure about that. I don't think so, but I'm not sure. So, and then he had the steroids, and then he had, he's basically been treated with all the things. Yes, but in fairness, all three things act by different mechanisms. So the rentals of years stops the virus from replicating, presumably we think that's how it works. And the dexymethycinetone works much more late in the illness because what it does is if anything, it reduces the body's ability to fight the virus, but what it tries to do is block the body's active immune response, which creates changes both in the lungs as well as the other parts of the body that are counterproductive. The so-called cytokine storm is what is used as the best example.

Do you think he had it before the Rose Garden? I believe that. It's very hard for me to piece this together. And this is speculative. So I'm not saying that I believe this because there's absolute evidence. But once you start thinking through the sort of the detective work and the epidemiology of it, you have to ask yourself, who could have spread this to so many people that attended one event? And there's a relatively limited set of people. I mean, and I'm not going to say their names, but there probably are some other campaign operatives

who would have gone around and had one-on-one conversations. with all these people that we know to have been infected. By the way, we certainly believe that there are many, many, many more people at that event who were infected, and we just don't know who they are at this point, either because of their own privacy concerns or because they haven't been tested. But presumably, there were people at the Rose Garden event who were infected, but then the question is, how could they have transmitted it to so many people? To be a super spreader, you can't just be infected and sitting quietly in your seat or standing

off to the side, you have to be somebody who's actively engaging with people. And that's the piece that starts to lead you to think, who is that small set of individuals? And President Trump is at the top of that list. And then add to that the fact that he seems to be treated as though he is much further along in his disease. And the fact that they almost want to discharge him already makes me think more and more that he's not at day nine or day 10, but rather he's at day 12 or day 13 or even maybe later than that in his infection. It's fascinating. Howie, can you explain to us a little bit more about the technology and the advancements around

this? Sure. I mean, I think one thing that we've learned because of the president's experiences, he got a compassionate use waiver for using this monoclonal antibody. It's caused a lot of us to pay a lot of attention to what it was. We have learned a lot about the use of this monoclonal antibody from regeneron. It does seem to have promise. It does seem to have promise in patients that are relatively early on in their course, but have already been diagnosed. My guess is that it has more promise

if used earlier than it was used for the president. But at this time, it was used on the president with a compassionate use authorization, not an emergency use authorization, which is different. And it would be nice to see the data analyzed by the FDA. And if they think it's appropriate for an emergency use authorization, that would add one more tool in our armamentarium of treatment options to help reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with this virus. So that's one new thing we have. Do you think that worked really well? I don't think it worked well for the president, but it does seem to have had the early evidences that it works reasonably well. people that are very early on in their course. But how is he okay? He's 74. He never looks well.

He is overweight and he's beating this thing. Like, I'm just curious to know what you think. I'm sort of surprised. First of all, he is on dexamethosone, which will reduce symptoms dramatically. It does not mean that it is curative. It does not mean that there aren't other factors going on in his body that are causing changes. You're more confident of how well he's doing. and I am at this point. We have very limited information about how well he's doing. You know, I haven't listened to the last two hours. If there's been another press conference, there may be information that I don't know, but I would want to look at his CAT scan. I'd want to look at his x-rays. I'd want to know really what percent saturation he has in his blood with oxygen over the

last 12, 18 hours and how much that varies by time of day. He's on three different drugs. He He continues to need a two of them, remdesivir. He's going to continue to need an infusion of, and the dexymethosone is typically, I believe, a 10-day course. He remains, in my opinion, a very sick man until this is all resolved. So I'm waiting to see that. I wish him well. I want to see him have a full recovery,

but I think it's way too soon to say that he's beating this. It's interesting to me because I was watching Fried Sukaria on Sunday, And this woman who was a friend of Boris's, who writes for the economist, was saying that Boris has never been the same after having coronavirus. We have seen dramatic variability and outcomes for individuals. My nephew had a fairly long course of it. He's not what I'd call a long hauler, but he had about four weeks of being fairly ill, including two different hospitalizations. And he's only, I think, 35 years old. There are numerous, very young people that have had devastating outcomes.

and there are some elderly people that have seemingly had mild courses. I've known people in their 80s to be treated at home. So I think we have to respect how little we know about this to know what are the factors that influence it. The president has the best care available to him. Does he, though, don't you think that his serial lying about his health has affected the people who will take care of him or now? Well, I was very purposeful on how I phrased that.

He is the best care available to him. I do not know that he's receiving the best care. is a lot of concern that VIPs in general either get too much care or care that is influenced by their VIP status. I am not sure, for instance, that if I were making the best decision for a patient that I would have made the choices they've made for the president, they seem to have made choices for the president that may have been influenced by the president's understanding of what the options are available to him, perhaps even biased by his relationships with the different CEOs and different people that he speaks. So I don't know that the president is receiving the best

care. I believe the president has the best care available to him. That's fascinating. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover at all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But, listen to carefully. Only beast inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. dot the dailybeast.com to become a beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. the daily beast.com. Susan Glasser is a columnist for the New Yorker and her husband,

Peter Baker, is the chief White House correspondent for the New York Times. Together they have just written the book, The Man Who Ran Washington, the Life in Times of James A. Baker. Can we talk about the book a little bit? Yes, please. How did you guys decide to write this? Tell me the whole story. Peter's the one who got us into this. Oh, man, under the bus. Straight under the bus. No, no, we're lucky.

He had just finished his previous book, Days of Fire, which is about Bush and Cheney in the White House. And a fortuitous trip to Texas led to this one. Yeah, we've been talking about wanting to do a book together. We had done one in Russia together in 2005. We've been talking about ideas of who might be an interesting subject. And Baker's name had been one of those we talked about. And while I was having lunch in Texas with Mark Uptagrove, it was the time held at the LBJ Library and also a historian and writer, I said that. And he said, well, you know what? Baker's actually been interested in finding somebody who would work with him on a biography.

He'd written two of his own memoirs. But he understood, I think, that if you're a really a historic figure, somebody else has to write your book and has to be independent. And so we approached him and found him very open. Yeah. And the other thing I think for us was we saw right away that it was an opportunity to write both about Baker but also about washing. at this moment in time, our original title for the book, but it was too long. The man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world. This is a period of time that was over from the end of Watergate to the end of the Cold War.

What do you think happened? Why do you think Washington doesn't run the world anymore? Well, you know, it's the economy's stupid, right? The truth is, is that the time when we all grew up was the exception, not the rule. That in reality, the American century was not even really a century and was a real outlier. in terms of Washington and America's artificial dominance of the world economy. We had such a high percentage of the world's GDP in the years after World War II and such an enormous advantage coming out of that and through the period of the Cold War.

That was always probably not destined to last when you look at our population and our relative size. We have enormous assets, which we still have today. But the unique kind of unit power moment, I think, was never destined to last. I'm so curious to know, because I see it in your writing, Susan, because I know the New Yorker is a little bit different than the Times, but what must be like the seismic shift you have witnessed over the last four years? Well, that's right, Malia. The truth is that Peter and I, with a couple of tours as foreign correspondents accepted, have spent our careers as journalists in Washington. And the disruption of the Cabell really is the big theme of the last few years. And another reason, by the way, where we were interested in doing the book, I think there was a sense that it's important to have a baseline for what American politics was as it's being blown up. And what was a White House that was functional. And obviously, Jim Baker remains sort of the gold standard of White House chiefs of staff, which he did for both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and no one else has ever done for two presidents. And that was actually the approach I've had. And I think Peter, too, in different ways to covering the Trump administration was trying to isolate an

understand for people and in our writing, what is truly unique to Trump and what represents sort of perhaps a very partisan Republican presidency? Which part of this would be happening possibly anyways, even if it was a president, Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, versus what can we attribute directly to the president, his character, his management flaws. I think that that was also in a way the kind of clinical approach to the book, too, is trying to understand how do we get here. And Peter, have you had that same feeling. It must be just so wild. Yeah, it's absolutely. This is my fourth White House, fourth president. I had actually gotten to the point before Trump came into thinking that presidents and White House were much more alike than we thought that Democrat or Republican, obviously

had different ideologies, but there were so many factors and dynamic heritives and incentives and so forward that were familiar across White House lines. They had the same, relatively same narrow set of options in various cases, and they would respond in a certain number of ways to different challenges. And then Trump comes along and throws everything out from the new. Everything I had thought I had learned about a White House, everything I thought I had understood about how presidents lead turned out to be completely different. And that does go back to Baker, because I think Baker and his generation sort of set the measure for how Washington worked in the post-Watergate era. Everybody was judged against that generation. to some extent. And then Trump comes along and says, we're not following any traditions here. We're going to make up everything as we feel like we're going along. It's amazing. What did you guys think of this weekend's wackiness? Just when you think it can't get any nuttier, it's here we are 30 days from an election. And the president comes down with the deadly illness whose deadliness he's been downplaying for six months. Then his White House botches the handling of it, lies to the American people

repeatedly gets doctors to misrepresent things to the American public, that president endangers further people's lives by going on a joyride in his limousine. I mean, it just, it's like everything. It's mind-blowingly shocking and not at all surprising. That's so true. What I was thinking about was, first of all, Susan, you were on an amazing panel this weekend, unreliable, with Margaret Sullivan and Masha Gassett. I mean, that panel, I thought, was like, sometimes television news is incredible. Well, it was so, newsy exactly on yesterday. And then right after that came the latest Walter Reed Doctors Press Conference and then going back on the air listening to the real-time analysis that was so helpful

from the TV doctors. Really, I found it invaluable. And this is an example of journalism in action. Peter and I were correspondents across the former Soviet Union for four years and the idea of being labeled the enemies of the people for the last few years by the president. of the United States, that Vragna Roda is the Russian phrase for enemies of the people. And it is literally the specific term that was used by Joseph Stalin to condemn millions of people to the gulag and death. And of course, Trump has been told many times by now the connotation of this phrase and that they've continued to use it. I mean, that is a signal aspect of this era. The sustained, politicized attack on journalists in order to, I think it does two things for Trump, right? Number one is

to be able to say you have a built-in enemy here and to undermine the credibility of those who seek to hold you accountable. And also the idea that maybe the Democrats weren't sufficient of an enemy. The other thing, of course, is to assault a rival center of power. I mean, there's a reason authoritarian leaders tend to launch sustained attacks very first in their playbooks on independent journalism. You've seen that in Turkey. You saw that when we lived in Russia at the beginning of Vladimir Putin's presidency, the first thing they did was go after the only independent and television network in Russia's history. What do you guys think?

It seems to me, and I can't tell where this starts and where this ends, but this is true on both the left and the right, it seems like people don't totally understand straight journalism. Totally. There's a lot of people on Twitter anyway who seem to think that a straight reporter, a beat reporter, is supposed to be on their side. And how come you haven't denounced this or come out against that? Like, well, that's not what I do.

That's not what we do. It's not our job to do that. And by the way, you shouldn't want us to do that. There are plenty of columnists, plenty of opinion people. There's lots of voices in the marketplace of ideas, and that's a wonderful and healthy thing. But it's also good to have people who are not part of that, who are at least supposed to give you the facts in a neutrally attached way with some analysis. And I admit that there's a hard line defined between analysis and opinion. But my job as a beat report is not to take size and not to sit there and call out people per se. It's to

report the news. And if I've done that well, then everybody else can come up with their own conclusions without me telling them what the thing. Do you think it's possible to do you that? I know it is because you guys are doing it, but how hard must it be to do that in a world where you have a White House that's really an autocracy? I do find it's harder with this White House than it has been in previous White House. I think that's true because I think everything is so polarized. Everybody is so strongly in their camp that there is less recognition of or appreciation of a neutral reporter's voice anymore. People feel very strongly, understandably, that this is incredibly important that these times are so consequential that you can't be on the sidelines one way or the other.

And I get that. But again, I think that most important time then to have reporters rather than having everybody just simply take sides. I mean, we've had partisan press in the past and there's, there's nothing wrong with that per se. But I think there's such a value to having at least a starting point of our conversations in an article, let's say, that we can all rely on hopefully as a provider of the basic facts, and then we can argue what they mean and why we should care about it this way or that way. I mean, I totally agree. It does feel like the reading public is not educated on the differences. That's true. And in some ways, maybe the media is at fault. Maybe we should do a better job of sort of explanation of how we see our role. And the differences that we have blurred the line so much. And I'm guilty of this because reporters now sit on panels on TV with columnists, with partisan operatives, with people with a point of view. And so it's not surprising that our viewers and our readers find it hard to make a distinction between us. because we're not making enough of a distinction.

The old-fashioned newspaper segregates the news from the op-ed pages in a definable and relatively easy-to-understand way. But on the website, they're all kind of mixed and match it a little bit. And we try to label them, this is opinion, this is news. But the truth is, if you're just picking something up from a phone or from a Twitter link or something like that, you don't see it categorize in the same way that we used to categorize things. It's not surprising that people find it hard to make that distinction because we're not making it as much. How hard is it to report from this White House because truth is not a goal here with sources? I mean, the sources do not have truth as their goal.

I think there is a certain benefit actually to standing outside of it for that reason, actually, Molly. I mean, you know, when you're dealing with people whose relationship, the truth is so distant at times, all White House is lie. Peter can speak to this, but few have used it as the core strategy of their White House. And the president himself seems to have embraced not just misspeaking, but disinformation as his political strategy. So in a way, it changes fundamentally how you view these things. I mean, there's no question that the White House press secretary of previous eras in Democratic and Republican administrations did see themselves as a representative to the American people and to journalists in a way that has been exploded. And certainly they were aggressive advocates for their presidents. And certainly they put strong spin on the ball.

And yet, I don't think, I can't really think of any of them who use their podiums as a conscious spreader of lies and disinformation. Is that right? Yeah, I think that's right. In fact, he used to be that when a press secretary got caught out saying something that wasn't true, even if it wasn't intentional, it was a big deal. It was a big deal. It affected their credibility going forward for years. Sometimes they ended up not quitting, but they hurt them. Like, I remember Larry speaks, misled the reporters about the Grenada invasion.

It wasn't his fault. He was given misinformation from his own NSC, but it just was a big deal. When Scott McClellan provided for George W. Bush an inaccurate account of the CIA leak because he was misled. It drove a big wedge inside that White House between him and Carl Rowe for the rest of that presidency. So it used to be that saying something wrong from the podium had consequences. It was considered a big deal. And today it happens every single day. A White House covering for sick president is pretty derogar, right?

Every time this happens. But the sort of North Korea stuff where the videos and the photos and the drive feels different to me. Well, look, I think that's right. Look, you're right. The history is filled with presidents who hid their health problems and lied to the American public. Woodrow Wilson was debilitated for a year while his wife was sort of stiff-arming cabinet members who wanted to see them. Obviously, the FDR and JFK never fully owned up to the public just how difficult their medical challenges were. The most famous incident is, or not the most actually not famous incident, but maybe should be.

was Grover Cleveland, who had cancer in his jaw. They put him on a boat so he could have an operation to remove it and kept them on the boat there where people couldn't see. No, reporters could figure it out in order to hide it for years. They didn't keep him on the boat for years. No, they didn't keep him on the boat until he was ready to come back on shore when people wouldn't know what had happened. But in our book on James Baker, the Reagan assassination attempt in 1981 is a classic example.

He was in much worse shape than Baker's White House led on. But the difference was that Baker, I think, perfectly willing not to tell reporters the full truth and perfectly willing to spin to his advantage or his president's advantage. Made a point of not lying, right? Like, in fact, it was really important to him as a lesson from his original experience in national politics when he ran Ford's campaign in 1976 that not lying to reporters was a form of power because it meant you had credibility. And so he didn't exaggerate the delegate count, for instance, at the Republican Convention

in 1976, whereas the Reagan team did. And reporters came to understand who was telling the truth and who wasn't. And Trump, what we've seen in the last few days, is the natural. extension of four years of a White House that has peddled falsehoods repeatedly. Our friends of the Washington Post have counted 20,000 false or misleading statements by the president as of July. Not surprising that that trickles down and you get completely false or at least very misleading briefings from doctors and AIDS. And it's really something. I mean, the doctor was so caught out. He was so obviously trying to satisfy an audience of one. But everybody walked away, even the average

television reviewer who doesn't pay a lot of attention to this, walked away realizing he was not level with the American public. I mean, I guess we can't ask questions about what it's going to be like if this ever ends. But do you think ultimately, and this is, again, a very open question. But before we were in this coronavirus, Trump has coronavirus news cycle. We were in the Trump committed tax fraud news cycle. And before we were in that new cycle, we were in the Trump won't accept the election results news cycle. Can we go back to the Trump won't accept the election results news cycle for a minute?

I have questions for you. A, what do you guys think about the way that question was asked? to him? What do you mean in the debate? I'll jump in since I remember the question. A lot of people were mad that we even asked Trump if he would accept the results of the election because that enables him to do more of his goalpost moving and allows him to break another norm by even saying that it's a possibility. Here's what I would say about this. Donald Trump has attacked the election process every two years like clockwork since he entered public life. And I was shocked a couple months ago before this latest ballot, I asked that people at fact base who've been sort of compiling

a database of all Trump's public statements, well, tell me how many times he's questioned election results or talked about a rigged election. And they came up with more than 700 examples. And this was a couple months ago. So before he really escalated. And he did it, of course, in 2016. And he did it in 2018. And now he's doing it in 2020. And in 2016, the difference was A, we didn't think he would win. And I have to say, I was editor of Politico at the time. I did not even take it that seriously. Perhaps I should have taken it more seriously. But then he won. And of course, he wanted to stay president. So although he questioned his own election, which was insane, he obviously wouldn't really do that. Now, so flash forward to 2020, where he's been behind in the polls

the whole time. All year long, he's been talking, but with increasingly high decibel levels about the rigged election. The difference from now to 2016 is he's, seems to be overtly encouraging violence. He actually, not once but now twice, suggested delaying the election. So he has escalated, which is the thing about Trump. He has the same playbook, it seems to me, and doesn't have much variety in it. But what often is now being forced to do is to escalate and to amplify his rhetoric because the shock value of the original shock has diminished. Hey, Molly, who's your fuck-that-guy? My fuck-that-guy is Bill Barr. Bill Barr, do tell. Well, Bill Barr is evil.

A burning hunt of love? Yeah. Too sexy for his shirt. Also, hates democracy and the rule of law. He's so sexy it hurts. But hides behind it. You really, you really pushed through that very well. I have to give you props.

I know. Well, I'm very good at it. Quite talented at that. Yes. Yes, Bill Barr refused to quarantine. Even though he's been exposed, we know that the incubation period, I mean, Kelly, McAnanini, recently got diagnosed this morning. It's pronounced Munchausen.

Munchausen by proxy. She got diagnosed this morning, so we know that the, and the incubation is four to 14 days, but Barr this weekend was like, I will not quarantine. I will continue on with the Amy Comey Barrett. I have to say this idea that this is the curse of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I'm just saying there are some people who think this is the curse of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She said not to fill her seat. So Bill Barr, you are my fuck that guy.

Well, folks, you're going to be shocked by my fuck that guy this week. I know this is going to come out of left field. You're not going to believe it. You're going to say, my God, Wilson, you've gone mad. My fuck that guy this week is returning champion Donald John Trump. Sometime president of the United States. Fuck that guy. He has lied about this disease, about this plague sweeping our country for nine months.

He lied this week about when and how he was exposed. And he chose to continue circulating because his political desperation is so powerful. and his ego need is so powerful that he doesn't care who he infects. He was willing to infect his wife, his kid, his family members, Eric the Slow. I think he probably thought that Don Jr. wouldn't be affected because he has a load of various antivirals in his system. And by antivirals, I don't mean antivirals. But this guy is a reckless, callous, unbelievable example of depravity. This guy is a goddamn degenerate who doesn't care about the lives of anyone around him.

He knew he was infected and still went to Bedminster. He knew, he may have known as early as Monday, there was a problem. And he has built a culture where mask wearing and social distancing was mocked and reviled. He has built a White House where the policies of this White House have been lie, piled upon lie, piled upon lie. We have two hundred and ten thousand dead Americans. Seven million people have been infected. We're in the middle of a resurgence of COVID because they fucked up the response the first time out and have done nothing to fix it and are insisting that their minions reopen everything immediately.

And they have stacked HHS and CDC with political hacks like Michael Caputo. And this country is watching this president right now, infected with this disease, still not changing his behavior because he gets and makes the secret service drive him around to feed his little hurt feels. So he gets a little ego bump. It is the most richly deserved fuck that guy that I think I've ever done by far. Yeah. I think you're right. You have many more words. I have some words, but I think I'm done now.

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.

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