The Daily Beast Podcast - Tammy Duckworth: Trying to Teach Kids During COVID Is FUBAR

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

Sen. Tammy Duckworth may be on Biden’s VP shortlist. But when it comes to childcare during the pandemic, she’s just as confused as the rest of us. “So my choice is five hours of homeschooling every day for my daughter and failing her, because I'm not a trained educator, or sending her to a school where she could very likely get this virus or bring it home and get her two year old sister sick or my 79 year old mom, who lives with us,” Duckworth tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “That's the problem: impossible choices.” Duckworth also opens up about just how hostile the Senate was to working moms until a hot second ago. One particularly ridiculous question stands out. “They want to know if you're gonna breastfeed on the floor. [And I said,] ‘I’m not exactly planning on whipping one out in front of them. But if the baby is hungry, I'll feed her.’” Then! Princeton’s Sam Wang talks about the out-of-the-way campaigns that could make a huge difference for decades to come. Plus! A Trump ambassador goes to a Nazi cemetary—and gets all wistful. A Republican candidate swears “celebrities and Democrats catch COVID and magically heal.” The Stephen Hawking of the U.S. House of Representatives displays his genius—at infecting everyone around him. Finally! Rick asks the big questions: Who’s more popular, Zombie Bin Laden or Ron DeSantis? Was Tulsa Trump’s Jonestown? And does Chuck Schumer realize that “he's got Mitch McConnell's balls in a bag for once?”  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. Hi, Rick Wilson. Hello, Molly.

How are your dreams lately? Oh, thank you. You're the worst person. Wait, um, can we talk about demon sperm? That's why I asked about your dreams. I have nothing to say about demon. So... Yes, you have plenty to say about demon sperm.

We all have plenty to say about demon sperm. The president's new favorite doctor operates out of a strip mall in Cali, Texas. Next to her church. Her doctor's office is next to her church. That's right. In a strip mall in Kathy, Texas. She is a pediatrician, quote, unquote, and a minister. She was discovered by the president of the United States in an event hosted by...

Bright Bart. No. Tea Party Patriots. Was it Tea Party Patriots? Wow. Tea Party Patriots. But Breitbart was promoting it. They were the live streamers, right?

Really, when you're looking for quality live streaming broadcast product, It involves people who believe that sperm from demons causes endometriosis and who also believe that alien DNA has been used in medicine. Bright Park's really your streaming network of choice. When OANN is too high tone. Right. Good bright part. But I would like to point out that the woman, the demon sperm woman, believes that doctors are making vaccines to keep people from being religious. Well, I believe there's a vaccine that causes people to be irreligious, and that's called alcohol.

I don't think potentially. No, listen, I mean, all joking aside, what you're seeing here is some of the large dead animal twitch reflex of the Trump world's efforts to shift the blame for the catastrophic death of 150,000 Americans so far, more than that as of today, obviously, onto this amorphous conspiracy that just somehow is keeping the miracle elixir of hydroxychloroquine from being used to prevent this fell disease. But look, this is the MacGuffin of Trump's COVID excuses, and it keeps getting rebooted by these groups like TPP and Breitbart and this completely astro-turf horseshit group. Frontline Doctors of America. Which apparently included an eye doctor who's clearly specializing and treating a lot of COVID. I believe she went to med school in a different dimension. I think that's quite clear. Probably an astral plane of some kind.

She went to astral plane med school. She's probably not a more reliable doctor when it comes to the pandemic than Dr. Anthony Fauci. I'm going to put that as a high order probability that Dr. Cuckoo Pants from Kathy, Texas, who operates her medical practice out of a strip mall, is probably not in the same category of infectious disease specialists as Dr. Anthony Fauci. But I will say she has an advantage just that her poll numbers are probably not as high as Donald Trump. It's true. It's interesting. Like Trump really has his hatred of Fauci.

One might think that it's like a larger dislike of medicine or of whatever. Expertise or science. But it seems to actually just be a personal grudge about polling. It really is a personal grudge about polling, which is why, again, looping back on why this bullshit group was created by an AstroTurf. Tea Party Patriots. Who are trying to make Donald Trump's life a little bit easier? The Tea Party Patriots the same people who occupied the capital in Michigan? No, they are not.

That's a different group. Okay. That was Beardy Weirdy McHs. I don't think that's an official name, but. I'm not sure, but I think Beardy Weirdy is definitely in that. Democrats don't have a answer to Astroft protests, do they? Yes and no. Here's the thing about protests.

99% of politicians on both sides of the Feds do not care. Protests do not scare them. You know what scares them? Voter registration drives conducted successfully and aggressively. That scares the living shit out of them. Usually protests in the streets, you know, massive marches and those sort of things. You know, 95% of these guys, and again, on both sides of the aisle, we'll roll their eyes and go, well, let's go around the traffic. It just doesn't do the thing that people think it does as a rule. In some ways, that's a shame, right? It would be great if the will of the people on the streets in some ways would led to people hearing their grievances. But very frequently, it doesn't. Remember, During Obamacare, the capital was surrounded by tens of thousands of these Tea Party guys screaming their heads off and didn't do a damn thing. And so, you know, mass protests, they're romantic, but they're not as effective in terms of how it influences the behavior of actual political office holders. Yeah, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of that. But we are in this time of mass protests. We are. And just because they don't necessarily work to influence political figures, it isn't an excuse for people to, I don't know, deploy Bill Barr's army of faceless goons into the street to beat people.

We should talk about that. Oh, we should talk about the fact that in a just world, Bill Barr and Chad Wolf will be sitting in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when all this is over. Nurenberg. And Chad Wolf, I guarantee you it was going to say, first off, my hair product needs to be aligned slightly. And second off, I was just following orders. Following orders.

This has been really interesting because, so Bill Barr testified on Monday on Tuesday, And that testimony was, I thought, pretty wacky stuff. We can talk about that. But then in Tuesday, he said he's going to withdraw from Portland, right? But they're not going to be on the streets, but they're still going to be there, right? And that is probably because the AG has been suing the Trump government. What I hear around the feed store. Yes, let's hear what you hear.

Tucker Carlson and a few of these other alt-right or nationalist right type guys have been the ones telling Trump, you've got to go after the suburb. vote by scaring the fuck out of them. The old Roger Ales reboot, okay, the 68 rebukes. And that was like the tweets we got yesterday, your suburban paradise will be. Right. That, that set of tweets was so egregiously racist. I'm surprised it didn't come with a complimentary pointy white hat. Well, it also felt like real 1964 stuff. I mean, nobody's even had this conversation in the last 10 years. No, of course not. This is, of course, also the imaginary America in their heads. And that hasn't existed since the 1950s. The suburbs have changed demographically in the last 20 years, 25 years, to a point where they are much more reflective.

And so don't get me into a demographic discussion of the suburbs because I can go on for days. Right. But also the idea is Trump is using suburban to mean white. Well, yes, of course, because he thinks, that's what he thinks. He thinks of Massapequa Long Island circa 1959. He doesn't think of the average suburb today, which is much more racially and ethnically mixed. And frankly, since the Great Recession, it seems so quite today, doesn't it? We'll look back on. We're going to call it the wee little blip on the radar of recession compared to this. After that ended, the housing stock was relatively available. And so a lot of people moved into the suburbs, and they have become much less Lily White than they used to be. Right.

They're not reflective of the overall population nationally, but they're closer to it than they used to be. But also, what he was talking about was this larger idea of white people leaving the cities in the 60s and 70s. This is not a phenomenon that's happened in the last 20 years. No, and I mean, there's a slight subset of that, which in suburbs like Prince George's County, Maryland, and Oakland County, Michigan, and Seminole County, Florida, where you've seen a slight exodus of upper middle, class and middle class African Americans from the cities to the suburbs, that's not the number or the demo. That's not what he's saying.

And what he's really trying to communicate here, remember, there's a two-parter to it. Your home values are going to go up because they won't be there living in your neighborhood. Right. I mean, it's the they that's important. Right. I mean, it's just a very old-school racist trope. My question to you is when we talk about the president's Twitter for the last 48 hours, I keep coming back to this idea because we also had this tweet, which we have to talk about, which is where Trump decides that we should delay the election because he may not win.

Yeah. Well, let me go back one second. I just realize what the fuck he's doing. What? They're about to brand nationally Trump towns in the suburbs around America. No. With places like Robert E. Lee Dron. Burning Cross Acres.

And Eric's failed gum surgery lane. We did not see that coming. You did not. No, I did not see. Can we just say, though, is this constant thing in Trump's Twitter feed? He doesn't know the law or he doesn't care that he doesn't know the law? He doesn't care. He was already told, I'm sure, a hundred times.

You can't delay the election. It's literally in the Constitution. It's hardwired into the country. And you know what? We didn't delay elections in World War II. Or the Civil War. Or the Civil War. We didn't delay elections during the Great Depression.

We do the elections because that is a definitional characteristic of what America is. We have small D Democratic elections to keep our small our republic moving forward. What this represents is a guy who is trying to delegitimize the result of this race in advance. He is trying to do battlefield preparation because what he wants is for the race to be close in the electoral college. And for them, then for him to go to the Republican. in establishments in states like Florida and say, this election was stolen from me. Don't use the electors that have been selected. Use electors that will be favorable to me. Can he do that? In those states, trust me, in Florida, you could name 48 hamsters to the Electoral College thing,

and he could get away with it in Florida. Ron DeSantis will do whatever he wants. I have a question for you. When does Ron DeSanches get his apology? You know, I don't know, except for poor Rich Lauer, wrote that headline and I'm sure he thought I'm being very clever about Ron DeSantis. Well, today in Florida was the number one day for deaths of all time. Good job, Ron. Heck of a job. Good job, Ronnie. I mean, it does seem to me, and again, I think I don't understand how killing your constituents is good for your re-election. We've actually never been able to test it before, but he's sure pushing it. But then again, let's remember, Ron DeSantis'

his approval rating has plunged 30 points. So basically, Zombie bin Laden is about as popular is Rod DeSantis right now. First off, yes, he is a guy who is a reckless day trading gambler scumbag who will try any trick in the book to stay in office. But it's also about the desperation level he's feeling because his numbers, his approval numbers are now in the 30s. It broke that 40% threshold that it just never quite cracked. His numbers are now in the mid to high 30s. That's devastating. The GDP is crashing in this country. We're going to be down approximately 32% on the year. on the quarter.

1.4 million people again this week applied for unemployment. Mitch McConnell and the Senate have suddenly, Hallelujah, thine to glory! They found fiscal discipline again because they don't want those shirkers sitting home getting $600 a week. I mean, that was kind of nuts, right? They just decided that they love fiscal discipline this second as the unemployment is about to run out.

These guys have been spending money like drunken socialist sailors, okay, until right about now. suddenly, they've become, they're sniffing and clutching their pearls and saying, Heaven for a fend we should spend this much on the pores. It is also, just to remind Mitch McConnell, maybe I shouldn't tell him this because it's real. If you're looking to blow a hole in the 23 critical elections that you're trying to win, or 12 of them now that are on the endangered list, maybe, maybe call me crazy now. I've only done this for 30 years, so call me crazy.

Maybe a brilliant electoral strategy isn't to put people. in a position where they're going to be unable to feed their fucking children. Yeah. So we have a situation now where both the Republican Senate can't agree with itself. They haven't even gone to Democrats yet. By the way, Chuck Schumer has more power in this negotiation than he's ever had in any other that I've ever seen. Chances he blows it. Well, I actually think he realizes that he's got Mitch McConnell's balls in a bag for once. And McConnell has, look, Mitch McConnell is a wily, he may be pure evil.

But he's a wily motherfucker. You cannot ever, ever, ever, ever underestimate his ability to play fuck around. Yeah. He is a beast when it comes to that stuff. But he's an impossible situation. I mean, you have 11 Republican senators who are refusing to even come to the table. Correct. That is now a flaw inside his own caucus.

And that is the kind of like purity posse horse shit that Ted Cruz. I mean, Ted Cruz said this about I'd rather have 40 good Republicans and not have the majority. Which, you know. He's about to find out, right? Every grown up in America back then was like rolling their eyes. Like, sure, Ted. Work with that idea. And now, yeah, he's about to discover how delicious it is to be in the minority again.

Fabulous. Right. And they're going to lose all of the sort of less pure Republicans, right? Like the ones who might have done something that wasn't totally. Correct. And while a lot of those Republicans are resigning or retiring or on their way out the door. And unfortunately, once this bill is voted on. That's pretty much it for the legislative year. Mitch McConnell pulls the plug at that point,

and they're going to try to get out there and hustle to try to turn some of these races around. But, you know, I talked to somebody in Michigan yesterday, a Republican who's recently decided to see the light. He told me, he goes, listen, I've been trying to get John James elected. Forget it. He's like, we can't defend Donald Trump being, A, a racist asshole, and B, the fact that the Mitch McConnell's in Congress right now trying to say, that we'd better to talk about judges instead of economic recovery. No, and I mean, I also think attacking the governor of Michigan was probably not a great move. You mean when she's got a 62% approval rating? That was low on the good move scale.

And saying that she overreacted. And now we have this older generation of Trumpists getting sick and dying from coronavirus. You know, look, I didn't know Herman Kane well. I met him a bunch of times over the years. You know, he is a sort of guy on the circuit of Republican Party politics. He ran for the president the one time. And let me say this about Herman Kay. My encounters with him, he was. was an affable, funny guy. I don't have any real, you know, I didn't have any brief for against the guy. And there is some very cruel humor going on today on Twitter. And look, I can engage in cruel humor

as much as the next guy. But you won't. But no, but I'm not going to. And I'll tell you why. Because he didn't have to die. None of these people needed to die. Herman Kane did not need to die. Donald Trump and this cult that has decided that not wearing a mask and not social distancing is a sign of how

much they love their freedom. Look, everybody has responsibility for their actions. And Herman Kane, As a grown-ass adult, he probably should have known better. But when you're in a cult, like the Trump cult, when you want something out of the Trump world, you're going to play their game. I was talking to somebody about Herman Cainton. He was actually a friend of his. And I told the guy, I said, I feel free, man, I know you're close. And he said, you know, this is Jonestown.

He goes, and I hadn't talked to him for a little while. And goes, I regret it. I didn't talk to him for three or four months before because, you know, sort of parting on the Trump stuff. He said, this is Jonestown, though. They told him to all drink the Kool-Aid. So there they were. No masks, no gloves, no hand sanitizer, no social distancing. And you know, got diagnosed two days after the rally.

But also the other thing is that, you know, two days to two weeks is the period. And then the guy who did the seed funding, the guy who discovered Charlie Kirk, also died of coronavirus. He did. He died this week of coronavirus. And that was another one where turning point has been pretty consistent. Well, Charlie Kirk gave a speech last week where he said, I don't wear a mask. I'm too manly to wear a mask. My freedom is more important than your desire to make me.

We're a socialist mass. Right. For fuck sake. These people are killing the older generation. And the guy that founded, turning for all these groups that have been on this ecosystem of Trump cheerleaders. And they've been rapidly trying to, you know, they went from, COVID, it's a hoax. It's the new Democrats, new Russia again. It's a hoax.

Hoaxy hoax hoax. Remember Eric Trump saying it would go away in November. Yeah. Yeah. And then they transitioned to it's not a hoax, but it's not that deadly. and it's going to go away. It's the flu. Right, it's the flu. And then they transition to, we're going to have a vaccine any minute now. Right. Hydroxychloroquine. Then it was hydroxychloroquine's going to work and everybody's cured. Right. And why did Democrats hate hydroxychloroquine? They must be

politicizing it. Yeah. And then it was, nobody's really going to die. We're going to stop it. It's going to stop at 25 or 30,000 or 50 or 60 or 70 or 80 or 100. And then it became, we've got to reopen right away. We've got to reopen right right now. Because we're killing the economy. Because dying on a respirator is much, much worse than wearing a mask or staying home for a couple of weeks. Right. Remember, I think the worst was the lieutenant governor of Texas. Oh, basically saying granny needs to die for the Dow Jones average. Yes, I would die too for the Dow Jones. You first, pal. Speaking of the great state of Texas. I guess we have some news about your very favorite congressman, the Stephen Hawking of the U.S. House of Representatives. A man, um, Burruburn.

The Gerto Echo once said was a paragon of literary and social virtue. He did not. It's such a lie. I think of him as the dumbest member of Congress. I think of him as a toaster of it in human form. That's exactly the level of performance he's generally able to execute on. And we are talking about one, Louis Gomert. So one of Louis Gomer's hallmark legislations was his bill to ban the Democrats on the floor last week.

What? Yes. It was a bill to ban the Democrats. I don't exactly remember, but... He's the king canute of crazy bills. Fantastic. It's very Louis. Yes. We are indeed talking about Louis Gomer, who was this week about to go on the Air Force One with the president, and he was given one of the routine screenings that everyone who goes near the president receives. And it turns out, Louis and the Rona are having a dream date. Yes. And then it turns out he is terrible to his staff. We went to see his staff without wearing a mask.

Yes. He actually... didn't tell his staff until after the news broke. Right. So much so that his staff were all unprotected and unmasked because he demands that they all go in the office and they not wear masks. And sure enough, they're all now telling reporters, you know, by the way, please mention that Louis was, they've sold him down the river. Yeah. And Louis lives in his office. Yeah, he does. And by the way, speaking of selling people down the river, this has been a great week for leaks.

The White House this week has been springing more leaks than a screen door on a submarine. Tell us what you're thinking of. Well, look, these people are now, they're now being quoted. It's closer and closer to the ring, to the president. And they're saying things like, oh, God, not this shit again. When he starts talking about demon seed lady. And there, I've talked to a bunch of different reporters who were just like, it used to be, I had three or four, two or three or one or two good sources.

And now they're like, my door is like falling down. They're all trying to get their story told. And all I have to say is, too late, you stayed on the ship too long. There's no more room on the dock for their other. rats, the rest of your compadres are already out there. Well, that is true. I mean, I wonder what will happen to these people. Well, I think what's going to happen to 99% of them is they're going to have to practice the phrase, would you like that in a loafer or a pump?

Tammy Duckworth is a former U.S. Army lieutenant colonel serving as the junior Democratic Senator from Illinois. She occupies Barack Obama's Senate seat and is on Biden's shortlist for vice president. Hey, Senator, thanks so much for being on today. No worries. How are you both? You know what? Aside from the, you know, president trying to overthrow the election, delegitimize it four months in advance. Yeah, pretty good.

So did you see that tweet? His tweet? Yes. I did not see it. I've been reading up on it. And frankly, he acts more and more like a tin pot dictator every day. This is what they do when they're about to lose. Yes, it is.

You know, Senator, I guess since we, I know your time is limited, so let's jump right in. This is the kind of behavior that is not. small D Democratic or small R Republican in any way, is it? This is sort of pregame warmup for the authoritarian crash. Well, that's exactly what dictators and authoritarian regimes try to do, right? This president continues to act like he wants to be some sort of a tin pot dictator, whether it's turning the military against peaceful demonstrators who are exercising the First Amendment rights or now it's very clear that he's going to lose the election, trying to delay or postpone the election. But by the way, he doesn't have the authority to do that. The Baltimore son ran a commentary yesterday that said Tammy Duckworth should be Biden's VP. Do you have any thoughts about that?

Thank you. Listen, I am team Biden because we need real help in this country. And Vice President Biden is going to be able to lead us out of this COVID crisis. He's got empathy and the tenacity and the grit and the resilience to help us rebounder economy fight this pandemic. and we unite the country and bind our wounds. So it doesn't matter what position I play on the team. I'm happy to be on the team, you know, because I truly believe that we need to heal as a nation,

and Joe Biden's the person who's going to be able to do that. Obviously, this Veepstakes question. I ask, we have a couple of people that are proximate to, and I always like to ask the question, in the hypothetical that you work. That's just a hypothetical. What would your focus be in terms of, where do you think a VP could serve a President Biden going forward

in the next couple of years, where we're going to have some very big challenges. Well, the vice president has already identified what his priorities are going to be, right? He's going to fight this global pandemic. He's focused on building back our economy better. And he's talked at length about keeping our promises to military families, something that Dr. Biden has worked on for a long time and regaining America's role in the world. And I also think, you know, that he's a person who's going to help bring us back together

and deal with the very, very important issues of, you know, race, system that exists in our criminal justice system, healing the racial divides that President Trump has ripped open in our country. So, you know, those are my priorities as well, and they have been here in the Senate. And then I would also throw in, I would hope that after he gets sworn in, one of the first acts that he does in his first hundred days is to rejoin the Paris Accord. Yeah, me too. You were attacked by Tucker Carlson. Rick and I both have been attacked by Tucker Carlson. Welcome. Is there a club? Is there like a pin or a membership card? We get a jacket.

They get a jacket. Jacket. That's right. Your 50th death threat, you get a free sub. I thought that was pretty incredibly brazen, even for him. I thought your response was pretty great, too. But it's consistent. This happens every time.

I think it also happens a lot against Asian Americans because it's easier to think of Asians as the other and question our Americanness. But frankly, this is the attack that the other song. has lobbed against me ever since I started running, and they lose every time they do it. Joe Walsh, you know, did it. It didn't turn out well for him. You know, Larry, what's his name that ran against me in 2014 tried? It did work against him. And then the last guy that tried it, I beat by 14 points, and I took his sentence. So you know why it doesn't work? It's Americans don't believe it. Americans know the diverse nation. Americans know in their heart who truly cares and loves this nation.

And America's that. They're way smarter than that, but they can try all they want. It just doesn't work. I suspect that you've been to the rodeo a few times on being actually shot at as opposed to their metaphorical attacks. Yeah. Yeah, it takes a lot more. It takes a lot more than Tucker Carlson on a bowtied. To make me nervous.

Fantastic. I guess one of the big questions I've been curious about is you've been a person who has experienced enormous loss in the course of your service. and you seem to be still in the fight every day, which I think is an incredibly great model for so many people who've come out of the military in the last 20 years with. But one of the things I think was so admiral about you, is you went back and you said,

look, I trained at a place like Fort Rucker, which a name that you didn't think about it at the time. No, we used to call it Mother Rucker. Uh-huh. We don't know. That's where you did all your rotary, right? Yep, it is. Well, I noticed that you had written an article recently about

we've got to rethink the names of these bases, And it was, the president was fighting so hard to keep that in the, in the NDA, the defense authorization bill. Just, what was your, what were your thoughts on that? Well, it passed with a bipartisan majority of the vote. So Republican also voted to change the names of these cases, names for traitors, right? For Confederates who raised arms against our nation. And so I don't understand why the president would go against something that both Democrats and Republicans voted to make happen, other than the fact that he is pandering to a small portion of people that he thinks, you know,

will help him win his re-election. And it's just not going to work. I mean, our servicemen and women deserve better. Our military is so incredibly diverse. And it could not do its job without the diverse troops that are in its rank. And it is really an insult to them to ask them to train a basis that are named for traitors, period. I don't know if this story is true, but there's a story of you sneaking in a cell phone to a protest. Is that a true story?

That's a true story. So it was the sit-in with the great John Lewis who's being laid to rest today. I'm so proud that I got to participate in a little bit of his good troubles, as he would call it. And we were demanding a vote on universal background checks. That's all we wanted. We wanted a vote in the house to end and close the loopholes that allows people, even people who were convicted felons, to go to a gun show and buy a gun without a background check. That's it.

And 95% of all Americans support universal background checks. But Speaker Bainer wouldn't let us have that vote. So we say just sit in. At the time, so the Republicans turned off the air conditioning. The speaker's office did. And they would turn down to lights. They thought it would drive us out. And then they were guarding the chambers.

They didn't want people to be able to broadcast what we were doing. And so I stuck myself, I took off my prosthetic leg. I stuck my cell phone into my leg and put my stump into it above the cell phone. and I figured, you know, there was highly unlikely that the Capitol Police was going to. So I got my cell phone in, and then we live streamed the sit-in. But then they ended up, you know, not stopping us out. So it was a lot of effort and not needed, but it was a little bit fun to do. One of my favorite stories.

So aviation nerd question. You ever get a chance to still fly at all? You know, I do fly. I did get, I was never certified in fixed wings. aircraft. So it took me about five years after the shootdown, but I did finally get my private pilot license in single engine aircraft. And I flew for a while, but then I have not flown in a couple years because I was pregnant with my daughter. There it is. And I, you sound like you fly. So I need to do my biennial flight review, which is you have to do every two years. I can fly. I just can't take passengers.

And I just have not had, I've been a little busy, but I've not had a time to go out there and do that. I've got about eight hours in the R-22, but. Oh, fantastic. I've never finished. my rotary, but I'm going to get there someday. One of my questions for you is you changed the law about having a baby on the floor. Can you talk a little bit about that? So it's Senate rules. It's not technically a law. It's Senate rules that prior to Speaker Pelosi becoming Speaker the first time a few years back, you could not bring children on the floor of the House or the Senate. It was only senators or Congress people and their staff and only certain staff. And Speaker Pelosi, when she became speaker, change the rule in the House that would allow children under the 8th from 12 and under to go onto the floor, which is wonderful.

The kids come, like school groups come. You can bring a kid on the floor. They can see the votes happening. Really participate in our democracy. But the Senate rules were never changed. So I had to petition to be allowed to bring my baby onto the floor because you see, there's only two ways to go onto the floor to vote. And you must vote in person in the Senate. There's no proxy voting.

You have to go in person and vote. And the one way that you can go to the floor to vote, children can't come through. There's a back way where you can walk up some steps and stand at a door that opens, and then you can wait from the back of the chambers for the vote counter to see you, and they can take your votes. And they said, well, you can just vote from there. I'm like, it's not wheelchair accessible. And I said, so I needed permission to bring my daughter onto the floor.

So it's like a whole long process. And thank goodness Amy Klobuchar is the ranking member on the Rules Committee for the Democrats. And so she said, Tammy, I'm going to work with you and we're going to do this. And it was very funny because we got questions like, what's the dress code for the baby? Because see, there's a dress coat of the floor. You must wear shoes. No hats. You must wear shoes and you should have a blazer on.

I'm like, well, I could get a little baby blazer, but she'll probably be in a onesie with no shoes. I'm sorry, but she's wearing her beanie. You know? And they kept asking me like the weirdest questions. And then one time, I think with Senator Orrin Hatch, asked, well, if we let one baby on the floor of the Senate, what if there'll be like 10 babies on the floor in the Senate someday?

To which Amy Klobich are like, that sounds great. because that would mean there'd be, like, more women in the Senate. So, but it was very crazy. It also boiled down to, I finally, one of the Republican women was, like, put forward by the Republican men, and she came to me, she's like, Tammy, I don't, this is not coming from me, this is from the guys,

but they just want to know if you're going to breastfeed on the floor. That's all. Jesus. I'm not exactly planning on whipping one out in front of my baby or guys, but if the baby is hungry, I'll feed her. Right. No, I just want to come into vote. I'm out loud.

A working mom. They're working moms all over this country. But you know what? I mean, we laugh. I think about all the working moms in this country who are trying to breastfeed and do their job. No, I know it well. Can you talk about reopening schools? Yeah.

I am desperate for schools to reopen, but I'm more desperate for my daughter to stay safe. Because I am the worst homeschooling teacher in the world, according to Abigail. I'm all so bad at it. Yeah. Apparently dropping your kid for push-ups is not like appropriate. she gets a question wrong. So I joke, but you know, working families need schools to be open

so kids can go back to school because people can't go back to work. My daughter's school is going to be doing five hours of homeschooling four days a week come fall. How do I do five hours of homeschooling and hold down my job or anybody? But then on the other hand,

we've not put any money into this rescue package that we're debating right now so that schools can afford to spread out and have more training and more PPE and more of the precautions. I mean, the Department of Education, Betsy DeVos, hasn't even put out any type of guidelines for schools and how they can keep students safe.

So my choice is five hours of homeschooling every day with my daughter and failing her because I'm not a trained educator or sending her to a school where she could very likely get this virus. Her self gets sick or bring it home and get her two-year-old sister sick or my 79-year-old mom who lives with us sick. Right. Well, that's the problem. These are impossible choices. These are impossible choices that we are forcing on American families and working families. And it does not have to be this way. thing about the Senate stuff right now. I know that the Republican caucus has suddenly been born again on spending discipline and fiscal restraint. What do you think the ballgame looks like right now for

passing continuation of the $600 a week unemployment benefit? Democrats are standing firm on it, and they're going to need our votes. They're going to need 60 votes. So I don't think that they're going to be able to flash it the way that they have. You know, families really need that $600. And it's plain that people are not coming back to work because, you know, they make more money on unemployment and that's why they're not coming to work. It's absurd. It's absurd because most families have at least one person out of work, if not too. And if you're out of work and you don't have health insurance, and if you don't have health insurance, you're paying for health insurance yourself, which is between $400 to $800 a week. So, you know, it's families are barely getting by.

Mortgage and rent protections are ending also. So people are now facing a mortgage crisis or getting kicked out of their apartments because they've not been able to pay rent because they've not been able to go to work. Because this president wouldn't provide test. in a widespread manner in this country. So to pool a safety net out from under families, it's going to, I think, I mean, it's hotless and it's irresponsible. And our economy is really going to tank. There have been studies that have shown that the $600 additional has been what's kept our economy from absolutely cratering. And without it, we're going to be in a lot of economic trouble. I spoke to a hedge fund guy this morning who told me that their model could be up to three times

the number of foreclosures we experienced in the Great Recession, which was 7 million. And if it's 21 million foreclosures coming up in the next 18 to 24 months, we are going to be in some very deep water. Before we get into things today, we have a fun little treat rolling out soon. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes each week just aren't enough to cover it all. So the new abnormal is going to start releasing a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for beast inside members only. Starting in August, we'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully, only beast inside members will have access to these. So head over to new abnormal.thedailybeast.com to become a beast inside member. That's new abnormal.

dot the dailybeast.com. We promise it'll be worth it. If you sign up today, you'll hear our first bonus episode. It's a fantastic interview with Senator Corey Booker. Sam Wang is a Renaissance man, a neuroscientist, an author, and the head of the Princeton election consortium and Princeton gerrymandering project. Today he's going to help us understand what's happening in the polls and take a look at the electoral landscape for the U.S. Senate, the House, and the presidency.

Sam, how are you? How are you doing? Good, man. Great to have you on the show. And for our listeners to the new abnormal, we will now proceed to do political math nerdery. Yes. Why can we trust the polls this time, but not last time? Well, the polls were off last time in case you didn't remember. No, no.

Tell me more about this 2016 and 11. So let me just do it in terms of numbers. The national polls were not that far off. State polls were off by about three points. And so, you know, three points is kind of a bigish error when you look at polling averages and putting them together. I think that reasonably one could trust them about as well as that. And so let's say three points is the error that we should expect out of polls. But look, pollsters are not dummies. They worry now about whether they've adequately sampled non-college whites. And so they're paying special attention to that. You know, honestly, probably this year's battle is going to be different from last time's battle. This year, this year, the battle is going to be adequately dealing with mail-in votes, dealing with, you know, Hispanics who are always hard to reach. But historically, they've done pretty well. They did well in 2018 in the, in the congressional races. They did well in 2019 with governors' races in Kentucky and Louisiana. It's like that guy says in Dr. Strangelove, let's not let one little slip up cast out on a whole program, right? Whatever Buck Turgensen says. So I think that, let's say that we can trust polls within about three points or so, worst case scenario. That would be my take on it. Which, as Sam pointed out,

The national polls were pretty much on the button, but we don't work on national polls. We work on electoral college maps. And so this year, I think all the professional groups are working very, very hard to make sure we don't get an undersample of non-college whites and that we don't get an under sample of shy Trump voters, which we still think are out there. I think the Trump people think there are more than there are, and the Democrats may think there are fewer of them than there are. But you're right. The state polls are working very hard to make sure our samples look appropriate. it. Yeah. And the way I would put it is that if you look at this snapshot of where the polls are now, right now, according to my estimates over at election.prinston.edu, the Princeton Election Consortium, Biden is about, according to current state polls, he's about 5.7 percentage points above threshold from a toss-up. So if the worst case error is three points, then he's still above threshold to win, 90-odd days from now, and I mean odd, 90-odd days from now, things could be different. But I would say it's pretty darn likely that he's ahead right now. And we've got 13 weeks to see what happens. Right. Do you think that people have changed the way they poll in significant

ways since 2016? I think that pollsters are always changing their methods and maybe Rick knows more about this. But look, there's all these technical things they do. Like they've incorporated cell phones. They've started using text messages. There's like panels that get followed over time. And so pollsters as a community are trying a lot of different things. And as I said, they've had a couple of elections since the 2016 excitement. They've had a couple of elections since then to sharpen things up. And I would say that they are, I mean, honestly, I'm kind of surprised and impressed. I think they're doing about as well as they have in the past. And so I think that's not bad. Yeah. I mean, Sam, that's one of the things that there is a sort of mythology now among the Trump supporters that says, well, we lie to pollsters. We don't tell them what we really think. And there are a lot of tools out there in the toolbox to smooth out that kind of, even if it occurred at scale, to detect it and sort of push back on it. But so on the academic analysis and poll. rolling side. Have you found that social media has changed how you would interact? And I mean, there was a day when you would have written papers about this stuff and taught about it. But now you're in a, we're in a different world. So you've become kind of a math nerd celebrity in

the election side. That's one way of putting it. I don't know. Like when Nate Silver was trashing me in 2014, I guess that must have meant that I had wrong. Man, you've got to talk about a vicious rap battle, the Wang Silver throwdown. So what would you say you are, if not a political scientist? It's kind of, it gets used, maybe overused, but I guess I'm a data scientist. Because look, I run a neuroscience lab. I do polling analytics at my election site. I run a group that works to try to reduce gerrymandering and to think of ways to make redistricting fairer.

And I've started a new thing. Actually, I have a new activity starting up called the Electoral Innovation Lab. And it's a lab that is like a neuroscience lab except it's in the domain of democracy. And I got a team of people here at Princeton. And we're working on understanding politics better from a citizen's point of view, making democracy work better, whether it be getting rid of gerrymandering or improved methods of voting, like rank choice voting. So I've got a little lab of law, math, and data nerds here. So we're a merry band of reform-minded intellectuals. So Sam, a lot of our listeners are very interested in the outcome of the Senate. Can you tell us a little bit about what your projections look like right now and your moneyball model for the Senate?

Wait, will you explain what the moneyball thing is? Okay, so I'm not a sports guy unlike Nate. So like, okay, here's my version of money ball. I think it was the Oakland A's, if I remember correctly, that didn't have a whole lot of money at one point and basically found ways to use data analytics to optimize who they acquired and how they spent their money. And rather going for the big stars,

they went for lots of little growing talents. So the money ball concept is basically using data and analytics to make your money go the furthest. And what we are doing over at the Princeton Election Consortium is finding opportunities to make the money go farthest or to make voter, you know, to make your time go the farthest for the presidency, which is a four-year bet, the U.S. Senate, which is a six-year bet, and redistricting, which is, which basically sets the playing field for 10 years. And we're actually about to unveil the whole thing later this afternoon of the day that we're recording this. And so if you go to election.prinston.edu, we're about to unveil all the ways that people can make the biggest difference possible. And that includes the U.S. Senate, which was what Rick was asking about. So the U.S. Senate stuff, if you look at the polls, Republican candidates in, the states that are at stake are kind of cratering. That is true in Arizona. It's true in North Carolina. It's somewhat surprisingly true in Maine because Susan Collins has been around forever. But after that cruddy ad, she seems to have made a Sarah Gideon ad, which I don't really understand. Like,

you're not supposed to make ads for the opponents. And then there's even states like Montana, Kansas. I would say that there are a lot of places that Democrats have made competitive. And if the election were held today, Democrats and independents who vote with them would probably end up with about 52 Senate seats, which is enough to control, right? Because they need 50 if the vice president's on their side. So things are looking pretty strong for the Democrats right now. Presidential and Senate polls tend to kind of in the aggregate go up and down together. And so Biden's running very strong and Democrats are running strong. And everyone's got this like Trump sized and shaped anchor around their necks on the Republican side. And they're, they can't hide from it. He's their guy. Talk to us about Alaska.

Rick and I are obsessed with Alaska. The main thing I know about Alaska right now is that there, I think the legislative chambers are contested. Like there's an active chance. And I don't remember how close it is, but it's like this crazy thing where there's a few members who are like renegades and caucus with the other party. And I get the idea that it could flip. Wait, why are you obsessed with Alaska? Yeah, exactly.

I'm fascinated by the Senate race there because I think Al Gross is one of those like oddball characters out of the left side of the field. I don't mean that politically. I mean because he's a huge character, like a huge personality. Oh, yeah. He's been around for a long time, hasn't he? Yeah. And Sullivan is just like watching paint dry.

I see. That's sort of my oddball outside state for this time. Well, that in Montana, honestly, because Bullock, you know, was so popular and Danes is so nothing burger. Yeah, but Montana's so Republican. Like, I think that's still a pretty tough fight, even for Bullock. Oh, it's a hard fight. No question. It's a hard fight. But, you know, it's interesting because Dane said something the other day. He said, in an ordinary year, it would matter that I got an A on guns and Bullock got an F. But this year, because of COVID, it doesn't. But Kobach is, he will have the MAGA vote, I think, pretty much wrapped up. And if it's Kobach, I think the seat's in play. If it's not Kobach, you know, we're looking at an R plus 20-something seat or state. Yeah. Huh. The polls don't show

that the polls don't show that much of a gap, but you think that Kansas will come, Republicans will come home if it's... I think Cobach makes it competitive. I think, you know, people in the second, third district there across the river are not going to be as Cobok. Even Republicans, they're going to look at Chris Kobach and go, but I see, but if it's Hamilton or Marshall, then you think not. I don't think it's as competitive if it's a Hamilton or Marshall. But what is competitive, weirdly, is the Kansas legislature. Yes.

Where they're one seat away from losing their super majority. And if the Republicans lose one seat, then they got to make a deal with the governor for redistricting and on God knows what else. And so it's like a weird, like this money ball concept, our weirdest money ball bet is to change one seat in the Kansas legislature. I mean, there's other obvious bets that we are pretty sure are valuable like Texas and North Carolina. Tell us about Texas and North Carolina. Well, Texas and North Carolina, okay, so Texas is a state that. that's been trending purple for a while. I mean, for instance, Beto O'Rourke, won more state legislative districts than Ted Cruz did. And so it's kind of on the edge of becoming, I would say, broadly,

generically competitive in five to ten years. But because Trump is so far underwater, Trump has managed to make Texas competitive for Biden. And what that means is that the state legislature might be competitive for the Democrats. And so I believe that the Democrats need to flip, if I remember correctly, five, or is it nine? Nine legislative seats in the Texas lower to take over the chamber, and that would blow open congressional redistricting because at that point, redistricting would have to be between the legislature and the governor, therefore bipartisan, therefore both sides get a seat at the table. So that's not a crazy bet. And so I would say the Texas legislature is very much in play. I mean, you know, it is a Republican state. So it also could well

stay Republican. But I would say especially there are seats in the in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, basically all of Tarrant County, which is this county that surrounds Fort Worth, the entirety of Tarrant County is just one giant battleground for the two parties. So if you live in Tarrant County and you're listening to this, then you know what to do. Redistricting and Sam and I could probably really get in the weeds on this. Weds, definitely weeds. Deep, deep weeds with swampy water beneath them. That really is the ball game. And one of the things that Republicans, and I had a Republican in 2017 make an argument to you as well, you know, even if, we lose some seats because of Trump, we'll still have chamber control when redistricting rolls around in 2020. And I said, are 21? I said, are you sure about that? I mean, some states, sure, but Texas is surprisingly close. North Carolina surprisingly close. And I think some of the states that are going to be competitive on the Senate side and the legislative chamber side are bad news for the Republicans, because

as you said, there's a Trump-shaped anchor hanging around their necks in a lot of these places. It's not the easy skate that it would have been in Texas five years ago for the Republicans. It is obscure. I mean, redistricting is obscure because it's like the technocrats who shape this playing field. And, you know, who wants to hear about the playing field? You want to hear about the players on the playing field, right? It's more fun to talk about Chris Kobach than it is to talk about, I don't know, supermajority requirements in the legislature. It's technical, but the thing is it makes democracy go, and it's going to be important.

What's your feeling about Georgia? There are two Senate seats in Georgia. I think it's going to be hard for those to leave Republicans. hands because of their runoff system. So basically that they've got this crazy top two system where if nobody gets a majority, then it goes to a runoff about a month later. And Democrats just don't really turn out as well in that second election. And so, you know, I think it's close for John Ossoff. I think it's close for whatever C. Kelly Loughler is about to vacate. You know, in both cases, I mean, look, it's possible. And I think that Democrats obviously should fight everywhere as hard as they can. But they do face a handicap, which is that they have to, in all

likelihood go to a second election. I mean, you know, unless this Trump anchor like develop, unless some of the lead turns into like plutonium, maybe Asoff can pull it off. I'm just saying as a handicapper, I think it'll be close, but I think it's going to be tough. That's what I think. Yeah, I think that's right, Sam. There's a lot of motion in Georgia. The 23 counties of the donut around Atlanta are turning much more purple than they used to be and much more blue in some places than they used to be, but there's still, you know, 40% of the vote still outside of Atlanta metro. It was really consequent. Yeah. It's a very red vote for the most part. Stacey Abrams losing that governor's race a couple years ago, that was really consequential for the people of Georgia. Similarly for Gillum in Florida, those were tight, tight

governor's races, and there was a lot at stake there. And they were not, you know, if you lived in Georgia or Florida, I think they were really high profile. But I think we're all going to find out, well, honestly, people in Georgia and Florida are firing out now because of coronavirus. I mean, imagine Stacey Abrams in charge of the coronavirus response in Georgia. That looks pretty different from Brian Kemp. I will say this as badly as DeSantis has handled Florida in every way and killed a lot of people. Andrew Gillum may have had some baggage that might not have worked out as well. It is difficult to be, it is difficult to

hold up one's head and talk about governance under a Gillman administration given what's transpired since then. I mean, but DeSantis may kill us all, so there may be an upside. Death cult. It is a damn death cult. So you think we're going to end up with about 52 Senate seats? For now, I mean, it could go up, I mean, the thing is... Yeah, as of

today, all externalities control for, etc. Yeah, like I think the most one can imagine is it looks to me like maybe 54, 55 seats. And on the other hand, a swing of just a few points the other way. I mean, right now I would say that currently the Senate, I would say if polls just swung four points in the direction of Republicans, then we'd be at a toss-up for who controls. So it's not, and four points is not that big a swing. Remember, we said that three points would be an error that was in 2016. So I think just a few points, like let's say Republicans get all ginned up over a Supreme Court appointment between now and November. Let's say that they get, you know, in some way mobilized in a way that

mobilizes them more. Let's say the post office gets crippled and so it's harder to vote by mail. One could imagine a few points swing that makes the Senate competitive. I'm such a nerd. My biggest concern this year is the post office. I'm really wondering whether... Oh yeah. Talk to us about the post office. Well, the post office was losing a lot of money and it looked like they were going to run out of money by September. But from what I've been reading, the package business ironically has saved them. And so anybody who orders things by mail, if you use USPS, then you're contributing a few pennies to helping them out. But anyway, so much vote by is going to happen, that I think that, you know, forget about polling. That's the last battle.

Like, asking about polling is like the last problem. The current problem is actual voting involving orderly elections by mail, involving making sure that there are poll watchers at stations who are willing to step up and do their part. The orderly conduct of this year's election is front and center. And I appreciate that people worry about polls, but what people should really be concerned about is the actual election itself. And so, you know, the U.S. Postal Office. So, I mean, I thought that everybody liked the post office. That was just my, as you can tell, I don't get out much. I just think there are these things that are non-partisan. So I think, oh, yeah, everybody likes the post office, you know, so why would we be against the post office? Which tells you how out to lunch I am sometimes. Well, I was sort of shocked about that too. I also think everybody should vote. So, you know, I'm really like that. Yeah, well, me too. So the thing you're unveiling today will show where you can get the biggest return on investment, right?

Absolutely, right? Like down to the granular district level. And so can you give us a spoiler? Well, yes, I would say that I think if you live in the Fort Worth or Houston area, then you have many opportunities for activism. If you live in North Carolina, then there are some really good opportunities all over the state. And I would say that challengers, you know, and this is symmetric advice, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, these are going to be where the battles are. So yeah, I would say if you live in Sugarland, Texas, then you're going to have a busy fall. Right. And it's what happens. What Senate seat would you invest in?

Senate seat? Well, over at election.prinston.edu, if you do voter power, we have a voter power calculation and currently Montana, because it's close and because the population of Montana is small, that means money goes a pretty long way. So I would say the top opportunity for making a difference right now is Montana. There it is. Oh, wow. All right.

All right. So now we come to our segment. The segment. Our only segment. The only segment. The only segment. So basically our show is interviewing people. Wholeshitting with each other and this segment.

Right. Pretty much. If we lose this segment, that's it. The whole show falls apart. That's right. This is all of it. Our segment, fuck that guy. I'm going to start.

My fuck that guy is actually a woman. She is a house candidate for Georgia's 5th District. She is, her name is Angela Stanton King. I actually wrote a piece in The Daily Beast a couple weeks ago about these crazy Republican house candidates, which included the always nutty, Laura Lomer. You may remember her from chaining herself to the headquarters of Twitter. Laura Lumer is running against Lois Frenkel in Florida. It's hard for me to describe using accurate mathematical terms. The ass whipping Lois Frenkel is going to deliver to Laura Lumer.

Well, Laura Lumer released some internal polling that showed she was doing very well. She really did. I mean, I'm not making this up. I'm going to release some internal polling that says I have a long, flowing mane of blonde hair. A six-pack. So anyway, the tweet that got Angela Stanton King, who was actually not related to Martin Luther King, but changed

her name to King, I guess, as an homage. Or a grift. Right. The tweet they got her on this list is all the celebrities and Democrats catch COVID and magically heal. But Herman Kane is dead. I swear, I hated here. I

was right there with him. We were perfectly fine. This is war. Explanation point, explanation point, explanation point. What? Yeah. The, wow. Yeah. And I thought my fuck that guy was egregious. Yeah. So, Herman Cain was killed by Democrats. Clearly. And just like Louis Gomer got coronavirus from his mask. Because we live in the stupidest dystopia. That's Dr. Louis Gomer, noted philologist. And that's right. PhD of stupid. PhD in dumb fucker. That's right. My, fuck that guy today. is U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands, Pete Hoekstra, formerly a contender for the dumbest member of Congress.

Pete Hoekstra today tweeted out, locked among the graves of Yessleton, a cemetery for German soldiers from World War I and World War II. A terrible reminder of the cost of going to war and why we must always work toward peace. It was a fucking Nazi cemetery, you dumb motherfucker. Jesus Christ. I mean, this is a proof that you try.

Trump is that A's hire B's and B's hire C's and C's hire D's and Trump hires people I wouldn't trust to run a fucking 7-Eleven. This is astounding me. He goes into a Nazi cemetery and gets all wistful. Are you fucking kidding me? They're taking the Antifa a little too, right? If you're anti-fascist, you're actually fascist? You know, there were some astounding responses to this tweet of his. One of them was, they killed my grandparents for being Jewish and threw them in a deal.

bitch with 3,000 other people. I don't really give a fuck about their graves, Pete. Another one was, walking in a Nazi graveyard reminded me of just how precious life is, is frankly, an unsurprising take from a Republican in 2020. These are the graves of Nazi soldiers. And some of people are going to say, well, there were Nazis from World War I in there, too. Well, it's the turn in the punch bowl. Once you throw the Nazis in there, it's not cool to go and be wistful about it. And yes, there's a terrible cost to going to war, and the Nazis paid that cost because we dropped a bazillion metric tons of bombs on them, and our soldiers stormed the beaches at Normandy, marched across Europe and the Pacific

to eliminate fascism. Thank you very much, Pete Hoekster, for not fucking getting it. Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's pretty bad. You know, it comes back to this larger trope, and we talked about this a little earlier, the idea that Trump world is both, like, highly uneducated, and also... Morally blind. Yeah. Also, shit to your... human beings. Well, there's also that, yes. I assure you, by sundown today, the Federalist will have written some, actually Pete Hochstra's right to praise Nazi soldiers. Right. I bet you, though, the Federalist will have a whole thing on how

libs were mean to Herman Kane, and this is proof that they're terrible. Well, as I talked about in the beginning, Herman Kane's death, like the deaths of 154,000 other Americans, if you want to look where the blame needs to be assigned, it is that Donald Trump lied to the American people for three months and said, oh, it's not real, it's a fraud, it's a hoax, blah, blah, blah. And then has proceeded to rat fuck this entire effort. He's jealous of the people who are smarter than him or are better regarded than him. He has run this country into a ditch, and Herman Cain's death did not have to happen.

Thank you, Donald John Trott. 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.

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