The Daily Beast Podcast - Supreme Court Justices Are ‘in the Bag’ for Donald Trump

Episode Date: February 9, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie discuss the horrifying Supreme Court hearing today that weighed whether Donald Trump will be allowed on the ballot in Colorado. Then, Jay Willis, the editor-in-chief of Balls & Strikes, joins us to weigh in on the case. Plus! Katherine Stewart, author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” talks to us about how the role faith is playing in the 2024 election. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. We have such a great show for you today.

Balls and Strike Senator Jay Willis stops by to talk to us about the horrifying Supreme Court hearing today that weighed whether Donald Trump will be on the ballot in Colorado. Then we'll talk to the power worshippers author Catherine Stewart, and she's going to talk to us more about the dangerous rise of religious nationalism in America and what she's been seeing lately. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy, the day has come for the nine black robes to hear from the state of Colorado, who was the first state to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, citing the 14th Amendment Section 2, which states that if you have participated in an insurrection and are an officer of the government, then you can't run for office and removed him.

It was upheld in the lower courts, appealed by Trump's attorneys to the Supreme Court, where as we are taping this, we're listening in real time to the audio feed from the justices who are so fucking in the bag for Donald Trump. One of the statements made was, well, insurrection. The word, it's a broad term.

Is it, Andy? Is insurrection a broad term? Or is it pretty fucking specific? I feel like it has a clear meaning. I thought that it did. But actually, according to the Supreme Court, it doesn't. Listening to Alito. And guess who is also talking today?

Look who's talking from the bench. Clarence fucking Thomas, who shouldn't even be there? Because Ginny participated in trying to overturn the fucking 2020 election. But, you know, who cares about laws and rules? Yeah, I saw people being shocked that Justice Crow was a sorry, Justice Thomas, he actually asked the first question of each aside here, which apparently is like the odds of that or equivalent to being hit by lightning, I think 30 times in your life. If he doesn't do stuff like that, then Harlan Crow isn't getting his money's worth.

If Clarence Thomas wants to provide real service for payment, I think that should be applauded. You know, I don't understand why we're giving him shit about this. But you're right, in all seriousness, he should have recused himself from this, but that was never going to happen. And I guess, like, there's nothing more annoying than people online who, if you say something, or point out, you know, that something just happened, that their reply is, you know, oh, and you're surprised. So I don't want to sit here and say that about the direction that oral arguments seem to be heading today. I think everybody sort of still thinks that the court will ultimately come down on the side of Trump here and not on the side of the state of Colorado.

It is really weird hearing them talk about how can a state decide that a presidential candidate isn't qualified for the ballot. Do these people not understand that in every election, there are people on various states ballot for president who are not on all the states' ballots, like third-party candidates? That was argued. This is a common occurrence.

I don't have stats in front of me, but I'm willing to bet that it's happened in every election in our lifetime, that there have been people on one state's ballot who are not on another state's ballot. The whole thrust of that argument just seems weird to me. If you're going to say, you know, well, but then another state could decide, yes, That's the argument here is that, you know, the states get to decide this.

And the idea that Congress has to authorize this, I know there are some legal arguments behind it, but it really does feel like it is people in black robes pulling shit out of their ass to reach a conclusion that they want. And what I posted today, I said, you know, just the fact that we are here in this moment, is a signal that Trump has already won. In so many ways, the fact that we are part and parceling, well, when the founders were writing office versus officer, the broadness of the word insurrection, do states really have the rights to do this?

Apparently states have the rights to force women to carry their rapist babies, but not to decide who can and should be on the ballot based on the Constitution. and you saying, pointing, standing in your own words, go take your country back. But that somehow is an involvement in an insurrection. And apparently even Miriam Webster, you know, we don't really know what that means, according to the right-wing justices on the bench. It is really wild to watch all of this happening in real time. It's extraordinary.

The black robes, this shit is, it's extraordinary. Danielle, I know both you and I are interviewing people who will have a lot to say about what happened at the court this morning. So we don't need to get into it, I think, any further. I just want to say the shit that I hate the most, as you were talking about, is the semantic arguments and the difference between office and officer and what interaction means. It just, it drives me nuts that that's how, you know, the highest court in the land operates. Yeah, I don't know. But what I do know, some good news. Any time that the House Republicans can look like the fucking buffoons that they are, I'm thrilled.

I'm thrilled. I'm tickled as a fucking a matter of fact. This week served as just yet another reminder that they don't know the basics of their job, which is counting, you know, counting votes. Because the House Republicans failed to impeach Secretary Mayorkas, the Secretary of Homeland Security, that they have been trying to impeach because of the fabricated crisis that's a border that they continue to talk about and drive people down there in caravans to go look and see the falsified mayhem that they are talking about. So here's the thing. Mike Johnson, who is not their first second or third choice to be speaker, but is now the speaker of the house,

has one job, which is to bring votes to the floor that you've, know the outcome of. It's not supposed to be a surprise. You know what I'm saying? But evidently, they miscalculated and also apparently don't know who the fuck Representative Reverend Al Green actually is as a human being and in his soul, which is that they decided to schedule the vote, the impeachment vote, to happen when they believed that Representative Al Green from Texas was going to be in emergency surgery just to show you how fucking craven these people are he rolled himself right in there to go cast his vote and they lost their minds and by they i mean marjorie taylor green they were hiding people in the bathroom what are you talking about you fucking idiot

you need to have your votes secured you don't worry about what the votes are on the other side That's just basic shit. And they didn't have all of their votes and the Democrats had theirs. And so impeachment denied, fail, fail, fail. We talk a lot about Speaker Nikki Hallie, I mean Nancy Pelosi. Easy mistake. Easy mistake. Anyone could make it.

Mm-hmm. Ends. Both you and I have given Nancy Pelosi her fair amount of shit over the years and mostly on ideological reasons. But the one thing that she was absolutely amazing at was counting votes and whipping votes and making sure that a bill didn't come to the floor unless she knew exactly how everyone in her party was voting. She may be one of the best House speakers in history from that perspective. It is incredibly clear and it has been since the, remember the longer ago days of Kevin McCarthy? Oh, yeah.

And his, you know, his limp gavel. I miss that. He couldn't do it. Mike Johnson can't do it. Nope. Like you said at the start, it is actually a fun thing to watch and just watch Republicans step on a rake and have it hit them in the head over and over again. What you want in a Speaker of the House is not necessarily the ideological purity. Maybe you don't want that at all.

And which doesn't mean I don't regret things I've said about Nancy Pelosi from an ideological perspective. I think she's made a lot of missteps. But the bottom line is she knew how to do her damn job as speaker. And the Republicans, I am happy that they haven't figured out yet that that's the job of a speaker. And that the job of a speaker is not to placate the House Freedom Caucus. And it's not to be having porn checks with your son. It's to make sure you have the votes before you bring a measure to the floor. Boy, do they suck at it.

And thank God they do. I just want to say, too, it was four Republicans opposed on top of all of the Democrats aligning together. And then one Republican also did not vote. So again, this is just simple math, folks. But when you decide to play circus games, like, this is what happens. And a spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security said this, quote, if House Republicans are serious about border security, they should abandon these political games and instead support

the bipartisan national security agreement in the Senate to get DHS the enforcement resources we need. And we talked about this before, Andy, because the fact is that bill gave the Republicans every fucking thing that they wanted. Yep. And they still tent it. Why? Because Donald Trump said so. Because he needs a talking point on the campaign trail that says that Joe Biden is failing

at the border. And he needs to be able to hype up his base on this. imaginary shit that could actually, in some form way, shape, be moving in the direction of being fixed. But this is not about actually doing anything on immigration. And it's the same thing with Republicans. It's not about actually governing because what they're good at is bitching. What they're good at is the showmanship is the feigned outrage. Because when it comes down to them actually holding the gavel, they don't know what the fuck to do with it. Yeah. This is a tweet from Democratic Senator Brian Shats from Hawaii. He tweeted, I've never seen anything like it. They literally

demanded specific policy, got it, and then killed it. There's so many things about this tweet. First of all, he's right. But second of all, why did they get every specific policy they demanded? Does he not understand that that's a problem too? And does he not understand that that's why this bill was absolutely awful? Look, again, thank God the Republicans are not the most competent people in the world, to put it mildly, but why are the Democrats giving them their specific demands? Why are they doing that? And the fact that he has said, I can't believe this happened. Really? You work with these people and you can't believe this happened? That tweet made me so angry that it was coming from a Democrat. It shows just such a lack of understanding of what the Republican Party is like in 2024.

And also shows that, yeah, we caved on everything. We gave them everything. They gave them everything. wanted. Why the fuck did you do that? The thing too is that if it were a strategy, Andy, do you know what I'm saying? If it was a strategy and then you were going to move forward with the messaging and weave the narrative that here's the thing that we want to show the American people, that even when we over compromise, even when we over extend ourselves in order to get something done for the American people, that is never the goal of. of the Republican Party, and this is case in point. This bill was filled with all sorts of compromises.

Spin it in that way. Don't spin it in the fact that now you're shocked that, like, the monkeys in the zoo are throwing shit at the fucking wall. Right. Like, why are you acting surprised by that? They've been shitting all over the place. I feel like even the opportunity to spin the narrative around this and show, like, they don't want anything.

They don't want anything but chaos. These people cannot be trusted to govern and run with that. Yeah, they didn't over compromise. They bent over is what they did. There's a difference there. He's admitting it. He's saying they literally demanded specific policy and got it. We gave them what they wanted.

There's absolutely no excuse for that. I'm glad the bill failed. It was a horrible bill. And the fact that Democrats, if this were part of a strategy, if this were a bigger strategy, okay, at least I could be open to hearing those. arguments. You don't get the sense that this was part of some master plan to catch Republicans and sort of watch them lose at their own game. There was none of that. There was just, we're going to

give you everything you want and then shock that they didn't accept it. It just does not seem like a strategic move in the slightest bit. No, it doesn't. This is what continues to scare me, is that there is no medium. There is no moderation because the more extreme that Republicans will go, it's like Democrats keep walking over to the cliff to go and meet them. It's not the false idea that, oh, there are these two extremes that want these two. No, that's not it. We don't have a middle anymore because the middle has been moved over to the right. Because the farther they go, instead of holding our ground, we fucking go all the way over to

the edge to go meet them. So where does that actually set us up? That doesn't set us up in a place of progression. No, it sets us up in a new abnormal. On Thursday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Trump v. Anderson. At issue is whether the state of Colorado can keep Donald Trump off its presidential ballot under a 14th Amendment provision aimed at preventing insurrectionists from holding office. Here to tell us how it went is the editor-in-chief of the indispensable balls and strikes.org,

Jay, thank you so much for being here. Hey, thank you for having me. Appreciate it. So the sense I'm getting is that this was not a great day for the Anderson side of this. In other words, the folks arguing that states can keep Trump off the ballot and that, in fact, it may have been a god-awful day for them. Yeah, I would love to sit here and tell you that three years after January 6th, Donald Trump really had his day of reckoning at the Supreme Court when, you know, the nation's nine fanciest lawyers really held him accountable for dispensing with the peaceful transfer of power.

But like, no, it was a fucking disaster. Part of this is because of the way that the question was framed before the Supreme Court, which I think kind of gave the game away. You know, usually questions to the Supreme Court are like as narrow as possible and are designed to really hone in on a specific legal issue. The question in Trump v. Anderson was, did the Colorado Supreme Court make a mistake in declaring that Trump can't be on the ballot, which just invites Trump and all of his many supporters who were filing briefs to throw really anything at the wall and see what sticks? Because all they had to do was convince the justices that there was one single reason

that they should overrule the court. That is what they did. And I think the justices will find a way to pass the buck here. Yeah, I said earlier in the show that I absolutely hate, and I'm not alone on this, when people on social media reply to something with some version of, and you're surprised? So I want to be clear that that's not what I'm doing here. But is it fair to say that even before oral arguments, there was sort of a bit of a consensus that the court would find a way to rule against Colorado here? Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, the court is, controlled by a six Justice conservative supermajority, right? Three of whom owe their life-tenured jobs to Donald Trump's largesse. Also, like, even among the liberals, right? Like Justice Kagan in

particular, she is a liberal, but she's also earned a reputation for herself really as an institutionalist, someone who tries to cobble together consensus at the court. That's a tough road to ho these days, but that is generally the reputation she's earned for herself. So just the idea that, I mean, it's really hard to count to five here to find five justices who would, practically speaking, issue a decision that kicks one major political party's presumptive presidential nominee for the third election in a row to kick that person off the ballot. And so nothing that happened today at the Supreme Court really surprised me. I was mostly just disappointed at how the liberals didn't even seem to have much of a stomach for a fight.

They just sort of seemed to be nodding along trying to find a conunding. census way to let Donald Trump be one of two functional choices on the ballot in November. Let's get into what happened at the arguments today and just in general on this issue. Can you explain the rationale behind the idea that states cannot enforce this provision of the 14th Amendment, Section 3, without Congress's approval? I'm not a lawyer. I've read the text a whole bunch of times. And as far as I can tell, nowhere does it say that?

Yeah. So the question is whether, what's known is Section 3 of the 14th, Amendment, which includes this disqualification clause, which in brief says that if you are an officer of the United States who had taken an oath to support the United States and you engaged in insurrection, you are disqualified from holding office in the future. The 14th Amendment was adopted by Congress after the Civil War, very clearly intended to prevent, like, former Confederates from hijacking the U.S. government that had just defeated them on the battlefield and, like, the South shall rise again, right? But with these amendments, there's always a question about whether or not they're self-executing, whether the amendment takes legal force all by itself or whether Congress has to sort of pass a law to give effect to the disqualification clause. Won't go too far down the rabbit hole, but like generally other provisions of the reconstruction amendments, courts have held to be self-executing, not requiring additional authorization from Congress. but courts also haven't spent a whole lot of time on the disqualification clause. Like, thankfully, there have not been very many armed insurrections fomented by ex-presidents

in the past 150 years. So it gives Trump's lawyers the opportunity to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, if Congress wants to kick Trump off the ballot for being an insurrectionist, they have to say so. Colorado can't just decide that issue on its own. And I think that is pretty clearly the direction in which they're going here, because I mean, among other reasons, it's the simplest, cleanest off-ramp that makes the court look apolitical. They don't have to issue a decision that says Trump is or isn't an insurrectionist or January 6 was or wasn't an insurrection. They just get to say, look, this isn't up to Colorado to decide.

Now, I just want to note that it's pretty fucking rich that these are typically the same justices who are very excited to empower states. Thank you. To suppress the vote of communities of color, to make it harder for people who can. become pregnant to get an abortion. But suddenly, they have found a way, they have found a reason that they need to really step in here and make sure that states don't go beyond what Congress, quote-unquote, would have wanted. Thank you, because that gets to the heart of what just seems very bizarre to me, that, you know, we are a country that is generally obsessed with states' rights. We have an election system that gives a lot of leeway to states in federal elections. We have an electoral college

that, in my opinion, is at best, anachronistic. But now we have the Supreme Court justices talking about, oh, well, there might be chaos if we let states decide whether a presidential candidate is qualified to be on the ballot. Don't they do that all the time with third party candidates? Like, don't third party candidates have to qualify to be on a state's ballot and aren't they often not on all 50 ballots? Absolutely. And, you know, I do think that it's going to be an interesting exercise for the Supreme Court clerks to write an opinion in this case without saying, without writing a sentence that's like, well, look, kicking Donald Trump off the ballot is simply, too big a deal to be legal. Like, if you want to spin this out a little bit, part of what was

discussed at the court on Thursday was the idea, and Alito latched onto this in particular, that the insurrection clause prevents insurrectionists from holding office, but not necessarily from running for office. The idea would be that Donald Trump can run for office, but if he is in fact elected, Congress would then have to take action to invalidate the election that he just won. on the grounds that he is an insurrectionist, barred by the disqualification clause from holding office. And my colleague Medea Denae wrote about this at Balls and Strikes today, but like, January 6th happened because Trump and his supporters were fighting an election that they lost. Right.

Imagine what would happen if he were disqualified from holding office after an election that he won. It's a completely impractical and aconan interpretation. And it's sort of only the kind of thing that makes sense if you just have this like terminal case of lawyer brain, where you can completely divorce legal issues from the facts on the ground looking for a way out. This court is suddenly so concerned. You know, they seem to be talking a lot about how, well, this would lead to chaos among the states and retaliation and whatever. And really, you're going to talk about chaos in the states in the wake of, I don't know, for example, Dobbs? Like, is that how we're ruling now based on the possibility of chaos rather than the law?

Didn't Brown v. Board of Education lead to chaos? Well, you see, one type of chaos implements the Republican Party's most important policy goal over the last 50 years. The other type of chaos, it's a different type of chaos. Yeah. Yeah, I see it now. One of my pet peeves is when constitutional issues devolve into semantic arguments, like where a comma is in the Second Amendment. And I feel like there was a lot of that today. And just in general, around this case with regard to defining insurrection. the sort of Clintonian, it depends what the meaning of the word officer is.

Am I wrong in feeling this way? No. And I think the conservative supermajority's fetishization of history and tradition over the past several years, the insistence that history is the primary guide for constitutional interpretation, really the ascendance of originalism, the judicial philosophy that just so happens to allow conservative justices to implement their policy preferences into law, that's what's responsible for sort of this descent into semantics, as you put it. The idea that insurrection is only definable by conservative law professors who have done like a sufficient amount of Googling until they found

a result that they like is not a functional way to do law. But that is sort of the ascendant school of thought at the Supreme Court right now. And as a result, you have that just like a blizzard of amicus briefs from people with, like, University of Wikipedia history PhDs, who are basically making the claim that, like, January 6th was not an insurrection within the meaning of insurrection as used in the disqualification clause, which as far as I can tell is just like saying, it's not an insurrection unless it comes from the insurrection region of France. Right.

The idea that these amateur historians who are appealing to conservative justices are the gatekeepers of what law can and cannot be. I think is wrong. If you are a normal person who looks at what happened on January 6th, you clock that as an insurrection. You clock that as something fomented by Donald Trump to try and stay in power when he knew he was losing it. And I just think that the legal system and the court system loses so much credibility when it sort of like wags its finger at people and says, you know, you just haven't read enough books to understand what insurrection really means. And I know even Justice Jackson, who is very much not part of the conservative wing, she seemed either to be of the opinion or at least sympathetic to the opinion that since the presidency is not specifically mentioned in Section 3, that the authors didn't mean for it to apply to that office. But, you know, again, I can read Section 3 myself and it literally says it applies to, quote, any office civil or military under the United States. So do we now need to parse the meaning of under? Is that the thing here?

I mean, I think you're right. And again, my colleague Medeva Denny just wrote about this. We just published it now. But that would functionally allow insurrectionists to hold the highest office in the land, but no other offices. Right. That does not make any sense if you are a normal person. But if you are someone who is steeped in the intricacies of a pellet procedure, you start to, like, say sentences like that out loud before thinking about how silly it sounds. I was surprised that Justice Jackson seemed not prepared to laugh that out of the courtroom,

but at the same time, I think you have to take a step back from what individual justices think and consider the like lingering and deserved sense of shame around the Supreme Court since Bush v. Gore in 2000 when it functionally handed the presidential election to George W. Bush. I think the court as an institution is very skittish about head. that could cast it as doing something similar again. And in my view, it's doing so at the expense of actually enforcing the disqualification clause against an actual insurrectionist. I think this is one where the court's desire to avoid any appearance of being political is scaring even the liberal justices away from doing something that would have political consequences. Like, sorry, sometimes the job is hard.

and that's the way it goes. Yeah, I mean, I was reading some stuff on this before we talked, and I know Mark Joseph Stern over at Slate wrote that maybe we'll get a Sotomayor loan descent, basically saying that's how bleak this was. Yes, I think that is right, and I also would not be surprised by a 90 decision. Even an unsigned procurium decision wouldn't shock me here. I think the justices will be trying to dispose of this case while saying as little as possible, and I think that does a disservice to everyone who's got to live under their thumb. I referenced earlier a piece that you wrote the other day that was about this, but prior to the oral arguments, and it was headlined you were allowed to have an opinion about what the Constitution means.

And I just want to read a little brief thing of what you said in it. You said, Trump v. Anderson will mostly treat what happened on January 6 as something of an abstraction, as the factual background giving rise to a complex legal question for the country's fanciest lawyers to puzzle over. This is not framing you have to accept. You watched with your own eyes as Trump, sensing power slipping from his grasp, stood on the stage and urged his aggrieved supporters to quote unquote fight like hell. You listened with your own ears to tapes of him threatening state officials with criminal prosecution if they didn't find enough votes to win an election he lost in decisive fashion. And you go on from there. But I know you got a little dog piled on

social media for this piece, but I want to tell you that I could not agree with you more. I don't need lawyers or historians to well, actually, my belief that Donald Trump is absolutely an interactionist. Obviously, this discussion gets a little meta, a little high level, but I wanted to write about that because I really object to the sort of constant gatekeeping that goes on in the legal profession and especially in legal media, in legal punditry, sort of claiming that only those who have spent a sufficient amount of time pouring over, like, history articles on J-Store are authorized to have an opinion about what Donald Trump did on January 6th and what the consequences should be under the language of the disqualification clause that just on its face, I don't feel like it's that ambiguous, to be honest. And, like, if you sort of take a step back from the Constitution, right? Like the Constitution was not written for like appellate lawyers and law office historians only.

It was written for lawmakers to understand, for the president to understand, for the people who are governed by it to understand. And I just think it's important for people who are watching sort of as the Supreme Court finds a way to allow Trump to skate by. I think it's important to remember that just like you do not have to take seriously the conclusions of someone just because they hold. hold a life tenured seat on the court or because they hold a tenured professorship at a law school that's named after a pharmaceutical company. Like, I encourage people to participate in the capital D discourse to give voice to what the disqualification clause means on its face, again, to anyone who hasn't spent way too much money to go to law school and hasn't gone too far into debt as a result. Like, the law affects all of us.

The 2024 election will have consequences so profound for the future of democracy that we do not have time to detail them here. And in any case, I don't feel like making myself any more anxious today. But when the law affects all of us, it should not be resolved by like dueling, esoteric, competing theories of history by people who may or may not be qualified to make such authoritative appeals to history in the first place. That is just so perfectly said, I will end it there. Folks, check out balls and strikes.org. It's such good coverage of not just the Supreme Court, but the American court system in general. And it's just, I called it indispensable in my intro. And it really is.

I read it all the time. Jay Willis, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for having me, Andy. Let's talk about something fun next time. Do you think the Supreme Court could do something fun? Is there anything with Taylor Swift going on? Oh, God. Too far.

Too far. I know. I know. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back Catherine Stewart to the new abnormal. She is the author of the book, The Power Worshippers, inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. And I could think about no better person, Catherine, than you. As I have been just, I think we all have been, but sitting and watching as white Christo-fascism takes hold state-by-state. by state. It feels as if, you know, and I'm looking at the abortion issue, but I'm also looking at

the issues of immigration and amnesty, where we're looking at how we treat people globally, our humanity, our shared humanity. It feels like this upcoming election that faith is more centered than I feel like I have seen it in my lifetime. Am I wrong about that? How are you seeing? the role. And I'm going to use faith when I'm talking about white Christo-fascism in quotations, but it is so centered in this moment. That's absolutely true, Danielle. You're seeing more of it because the right, American right, has really been taken over by a kind of extremist movement, a sort of Christian nationalist movement. They're exploiting religion for political purposes. They often like to say that this is about theology or religion.

religion, but it's really not. It's the exploitation of faith for politics and power. They say that America was founded as the so-called Christian nation and all of the cultural implications that go along with that. They say our law should be based on the Bible. But that ideology, that set of ideas and all of its implications is really just a useful tool for a deeply anti-democratic movement that wants to exploit religion in its quest for power. And when I say anti-democratic, it is incredibly anti-democratic. It rejects the principles of pluralism and justice and equality that represent the best of the American promise. They're using religion in this incredibly cynical way. And we're watching it, not just as it relates to the abortion issue, which has become just a

lightning rod. When you are having justices in different states, basically say it doesn't matter if a woman has been raped. It doesn't matter if this fetus is non-viable. It doesn't matter what matters is what is that God does not want this. Their God does not want this. And this dismantling that is happening of rights in the pursuit of, I guess, some form of righteousness is really terrifying because America built on this idea of a separation between church and state, but the church, whomever's church, the white evangelical church, the church of patriarchy and misogyny and racism, that church that they are worshipping, is at the center of everything that is happening. I mean, you're looking from abortion to school boards. And I'm wondering,

are we speaking about the power of white evangelicalism in this Republican Party in the right way? do we understand how the hold is so strong and what this could look like a year from now? Yeah, you know, it's important to remember that this political movement is not coming from the grassroots. It's a leadership-driven, organization-driven, political movement. And they're not just coming for the sort of culture war issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. We can look to so many examples around the world. On the one hand, we can look at Russia. It's theocratic and a certain sort of.

of fake sense. That is, it's a regime that endorses a particular religion and attempts to oppose those religious values on its people, its homophobia, and its patriarchal values. But I think it's more accurately described as a cronyistic kleptocracy with strong militaristic tendencies, absolute repression of political opposition and free speech. And that's what a leader like Trump wants. I mean, We have other models in places like Turkey where Erdogan arrested and jailed thousands of journalists, academics, and political opponents. Trump himself has referred to his political opponents as vermin. He surrounds himself with people who call them demonic and satanic and basically use this incredibly dehumanizing language. He's actually explicitly said, I'm going to be a dictator on day one.

And a shocking number of Americans agree with this idea. he really has whipped up his people. He and this sort of propaganda network that supporting him have whipped up so many Americans in thinking that they're in an absolute war between good and evil. Right. Right. And so they need a strong man to take over and crack the heads of their enemies. And we have to recognize it's not just about Trump. I mean, there's this network behind him that is supporting him and spreading the kinds of propaganda, the big lie, the idea of the election was stolen, the idea that anyone to the left of him is worthy of contempt. And that's really what's driving the extreme polarization that we're seeing in our politics today. It's like a rabid anti-intellectualism has taken place where if you are trying in some form or way to make a way through, to try and understand, to try and unpack what is at the root cause of what is driving these people. We have always wanted to believe that

with the difference between Republican and Democrats were an ideological one. This is not where we are anymore. You see what is happening and what is unfolding inside of the House of Representatives. These are not people that have an allegiance to an ideology that have some intellectualism that is behind their push for power. It's power for power's sake.

And I think for me, Catherine, that just seems even more dangerous than those. that actually had some type of architecture around their way of thinking, because at least then there's a way to try and dismantle it. Do you see a way to dismantle it? Absolutely. I mean, listen, we have to remember this movement is a minority of the country,

and it only has the power that it does, Danielle, because of that deep infrastructure. They mobilize their people in disproportionate numbers. Look, in a country where 40 to 50% of people don't bother to vote, And then an additional number have their votes essentially stolen from them through race-based gerrymandering, voter suppression tactics, and other dirty tricks. You don't need a majority of the population to seize control of the political system. All you need is a disproportionately mobilized minority, and they know that very well.

So, listen, people always talk about, you know, what are the solutions? This is a political problem, and it's going to require political solutions. I think it's going to require using all of the tools that democracy gives us grassroots, activism, organizing the vote. Voting is the most important thing, not just in national elections, but also in local elections, and also protecting, getting involved in organizations that seek to protect the vote, seek to get out the vote, helping people who are feeling a bit disenfranchised, understand that their vote really does matter.

And also we need to remember, we need a big tent. It's like a big family. We're not going to agree on everything. But if we can agree that our democracy is valuable, if we can agree on the fact that our rights matter, that justice matters, then we can work together to defeat the challenges that we face. I think we can't defeat those challenges until people really understand what's at stake. And all we need to do is look to dictatorships and autocrats. and autocracy is around the world to see what is indeed at stake. I want to take a look now at the Biden campaign and again, resurrecting this idea of fighting

for the soul of the nation. We're fighting for the soul of the nation. We're fighting to save democracy. We're intertwined with faith now on the other side, which is, again, bringing to the forefront this fight between good and evil. And what I am hearing from a myriad of different faith leaders is that they are struggling with aligning their constituency around the Biden administration because of the actions or inaction that they're taking globally. I wonder when we're putting together the ultimate fight of fights, it's either democracy or fascism. It's either good-ish or evil. Do you think that people understand. that like regular voters understand the stakes?

I think that some do and some need to be brought along a little bit. No one's going to get perfect. The Biden administration is not perfect. I believe that it's done a lot of things really, really well and other things, you know, that you may or may not agree with them. But this is one of the reasons why bringing along progressive Christian leaders is important, among other constituents. I mean, the fascist movement in the U.S. depends critically on the organizational infrastructure that's supplied by right-wing and conservative-leaning churches and religious groups.

So anything we can do to reorient those organizations or counter them with mobilization through more enlightened organizations is going to be helpful. And, you know, at the same time, we need organizing and messaging that appeals not just to progressive Christians specifically, but to all Americans, religious and non-religious alike. And we really need to have people consider the stakes in whatever way they think the Biden administration is not doing enough or stumbling. They should ask themselves, would the Trump administration be doing better? And I think you could look to Trump's dictatorial aims and see that the answer is probably no. I mean, Trump has promised to fire. If you know, all we need to do is look at Project 2025.

which is a blueprint that the Heritage Foundation has put together as a blueprint for the new Trump administration. And I think you'll see there that the system they want to propose is, it includes theocratic elements, along with a cronyistic kleptocratic state, one in which the, what they call the administrative state that otherwise might interfere with plutocrats' sort of desires and rapacious designs is totally dismantled and replaced with party loyalties. And that, That is a dictatorship. And if people think they're going to thrive better under a dictatorship, I think they're fooling themselves.

I wonder if we still as a country, like obviously there are those of us that research, discuss and analyze government and policies for career. But the collective, the masses of us, I still think, Catherine, that they are in this place of this couldn't possibly happen here. that somehow with, you know, with sheer will that like, that what we have seen happen country by country, that empires actually do fall, that they do crumble. I don't think that in history classes, we ever asked ourselves, well, what happened to the people when it was crumbling?

It was just like, oh, this happened, this empire fell, and then this came up in its place. But we never asked ourselves about or dug into what was happening in. that in between time. And so there's just this lack of historical knowledge and context and this continued lie of American exceptionalism that I think has a lot of Americans still in this shock phase of not really registering the danger that this country is in. Do you think that there is a narrative that can be sold that isn't just Trump is bad because it isn't just him? It is like you said, it is Project 2025. There are tens of thousands of them that are ready and willing and lined up for Trump 2.0. You're right about this, Danielle. We need to look to history, only look to history to understand that America is not exceptional in this way.

We can fall prey to some of the horrible failures that other civilizations have fallen prey to. And religious nationalism is often, not always, but often a way to sort of that. type of breakdown of a more democratic and fair system. It's a way of dividing people between the supposedly righteous and the supposedly unrighteous, the pure versus the impure. So it's really about symbolic boundaries who gets to properly belong in the nation and who doesn't. And so when you have a nation that's divided against itself, it becomes more unstable, less governable. And I think that's by design. They want a less governable, more unstable nation in order to, you know, clear the way for a dictator who can come along and say, I alone can fix it or a more authoritarian

form of governance where they say, well, we need the hard hand in order to keep order because there's so much disorder here. Because chaos is a strategy. Absolute chaos and mayhem is a strategy. It is the reason why, you know, I sit here in New York City. And the way that the Republican Party has tried to turn blue cities into the high. hot bed of hell, which is what they have referred to it as by overturning our gun laws, by transporting and trafficking migrants into the cities to destabilize them, to say, see, this is what we've been talking about. I am fearful that things in this country will continue to devolve with or without Trump being elected. Do you have thoughts around that? Because

here my feeling is, in 2020, I believe a lot of of people said, okay, we got a grownup back in the room. We elected Joe Biden. Things will go back to normal. They haven't gone back to normal. They will never go back to normal. And as a matter of fact, I think we will spend a lot of time vacillating between really bad and bad-ish. I don't know if we swing back up to good. I wonder then, again, if we've put too much stake in one person as opposed to the movement. I think the movement long preceded Trump and it will long outlast him, but he did give it rocket fuel. Listen, there is some great progress.

I want to just speak for a moment about the fact that the American economy is doing very well. Joe Biden has, you know, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, and there's also been a lot of investment in renewable energy, which has brought a lot of jobs to red states. In some regards, things are going quite well. I think he's been also solid on the sort of Ukraine issue and trying to, you know, bolster the NATO alliance, and these things are very important. So, you know, even though our country is divided and the sort of guardrails have fallen off the right, you know, the Republican Party no longer has gatekeepers, the extremists are running the show. There are some things that are going quite well in our society.

I want to go back to something you said about chaos and point out that this is exactly what they've been trying to do with public education, which is a huge goal of theirs to destroy public education as we know it, like this sort of fake critical race theory thing, being pushing, which is not taught in public K-12, which is kind of a, it's like race-baiting, basically. But it was a way to sort foster mistrust among certain people in the public education system, the moms for liberty nonsense, where they're telling Americans that they're going to change children's gender against their will or whatever. All of that is intended to foster mistrust in public education to soften the ground for dismantling public education, the right has long had their eye on the money that goes toward

public education. They would like to get that money and use it to fund their religious schools and frankly, their churches, many of which are losing large numbers of congregants. They know if they can direct the flow of public money to religious organizations directly, it's going to flow without end. And that's been a long time aim of this movement. So there's a lot, you know, they want to destroy a lot of our institutions, some of which are sort of the pillars of our democracy. And I mean, we are truly in a battle for our democracy. And now is the time for people to really step up their engagement, not to sit out the election because they may disagree with one thing or another. You know, the way I do my research, Danielle, is I go to a lot of right-wing conferences and

strategy gatherings and meetings. And lately, I've started to hear, there are fissures within that movement. And I've started to hear a lot of the speakers, quote Ronald Reagan when he said, and I'm going to paraphrase here, the person who agrees with you 80% of the time is not your 20% enemy. That is your 80% friend. And we need to recognize that as well. We need a big tent. We're not all going to agree on anything, but we don't have a hope of having a voice if we seed our democracy to a more authoritarian form of governance. Stewart, always appreciate our time together, and I wish that there was more. Thank you for leaving us on a note of hopefulness.

Always appreciate you. So great to speak with you tonight, Danielle. Thank you. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Danielle, close out this week. Who's your fuck that guy? It's an entire fucking state.

I mean, honestly, I really want it to be the entire country, but let's part and parcel some shit the way that the black ropes do. Anyway, so the state of Missouri, Missouri senators this week, guess what they did? They voted. Folks, the way that my voice sounds is just because the state of consistent disbelief, disgust that I find myself is just so deep and real. They voted against amending the state's abortion law to allow exceptions in cases of rape and incest. I want you to hear what one of the GOP senator said, Rick Brayton. This is what he said. Quote, if you want to go after the rapist, let's give him the death penalty.

Absolutely, let's do it. But not the innocent person caught in between that. By God's grace may even be the greatest healing agent you need in which to recover from such an atrocity. Rick Brayton, you absolute evil piece of shit. What did we talk about on this show a couple of weeks ago, the atrocious numbers coming out of a report that it said that since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, there have been over 60,000 rape-based pregnancies in this country, in the 14 states that have the strictest abortion law.

that do not make room for amending in the event of rape and incest. Over 60,000. And this motherfucker has the audacity to tell those women, well, maybe the rapist baby that you are carrying will be the healing agent you need to recover. There is not a deep enough place in fucking hell for these people. There is not a hotter place in hell for these people. They are sick.

They are twisted. They are gross. And evil. This is what evil looks and sounds like. That to have the ability to re-traumatize victims of such a heinous fucking crime. And you get to decide how the fuck they heal. Outrageous doesn't begin to do it. I need a thesaurus.

So for that reason. the state of Missouri, but especially you piece of fucking shit, GOP, Senator Rick Brayton. You are my fuck that guy. Whatever they do, chiseling into, you know, granite or marble or whatever it is, that's where you're going. That into hell. Anyway. Andy?

We need a 10th circle of hell. I agree. Nine is not enough. Also, it's weird. I thought the innocent person was the woman. Right. But clearly I'm wrong here. Also, I have no words for this.

Fuck that guy. Oh, my God. Mm-mm-mm. So, Andy, who is your fuck that guy to end this monstrous week? Oh, it's my old pal, Tucker Carlson. Oh, dear. He is, as I'm sure, our listeners are aware, he sat down earlier this week and interviewed Vladimir Putin. As of this taping, that interview has not been made public yet, so I don't know what's in the interview.

And Tucker is a very smart person. There's no other word I can use other than he does this thing where he lies. And he says things like, you know, in a video we put out promoting this interview. He said, not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, meaning the Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is not so much a conflict as an invasion. And he's upset that Vladimir Zelensky has gotten all this press coverage and Vladimir Putin has not.

When you say not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview Putin, what you're saying is that no one has even tried to interview Putin or thought of interviewing Putin. None of that is true. And the funniest part of this is that Dmitry Peskov, who is Putin's spokesperson, actually came out on Wednesday after Tucker said this. And he said, no, Mr. Carlson is wrong. We receive a lot of applications for interviews with the president. Not only are you lying, but even the Russians are calling you out on your lie. That's how bad your lie is. That's how obvious and transparent your lie is that a Putin spokesperson is coming out and saying you're wrong. It is just absolutely unbelievable. There is, as Oliver, as CNN's Oliver Darcy noted, Evan Gerskovich is a Wall Street Journal reporter. He is currently sitting in a Russian prison because he went over there to try to get the Russian. inside of the story for the invasion of Ukraine. So I don't even care what's in the interview. I have absolutely no doubt that it will be fawning and gross and, you know, will be not dissimilar from the way right-wing media treats Trump in this country. But the fact that he would portray this as, you know, look at me. I am the bold truth teller. I am doing what no journalist has ever tried to

do or even thought of doing. I'm interviewing, you know, Vladimir Putin. And to frame it that way, which is just 100% dishonest and he knows it's dishonest. That's what bugs me the most is that there's a lot of people on the right who are stupid and they say stupid things because they're stupid. Tucker is not stupid. He says stupid things because he is a liar. And it really sucks that this is the world we live in right now. So for all those reasons, just absolutely fuck that guy.

I hate him so much. Fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode,

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