The Daily Beast Podcast - Ted Cruz Knew Exactly What He Was Doing Caping for Trump

Episode Date: April 5, 2022

You know who’s telling on themselves? The American conservatives cheering about Putin pal and proto-fascist Viktor Orban’s big re-election win in Hungary.  “It’s a pretty good litmus test,�� says The New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong. “If you are celebrating that, you're probably a bad guy, like the people who are still support Putin.” Speaking of people telling on themselves, Washington Post investigative reporter Michael Kranish joins the pod to run down his reporting on MAGA mutts Madison Cawthorn, Mo Brooks and the inimitably awful Ted Cruz, who somehow managed to escape much scrutiny for months into his pivotal role in pushing Trump’s big lie, and doing everything he could to stop Joe Biden from taking office. Plus, Press Run founder and editor Eric Boehlert explains to Molly why “the coverage of the Biden economy is unlike anything I’ve ever seen” as the press coverage “reeks of both sides.”   Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. First, we're going to talk to Washington Post investigative reporter Michael Kranish, and he's going to tell us about what he's found about Ted Cruz and Madison Cawthorne. Then we're going to talk to the founder and editor of press run.

Dot Media, Eric Boller, and he's going to talk to us about the media's coverage of Joe Biden's presidency. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Johnfest. We'll start with the rise of fascism. Oh, it's a cheery Monday. That's right. Happy Monday.

Victor Orban has gotten reelected in a move that should surprise no one. Was there even anyone running against him? He has six foes. The left, the international left, the Brussels bureaucrats, George Soros, and the Jews. No, he didn't say the Jews. He didn't say the Jews. He said George Soros, which is basically the Jews. All of those are basically the Jews.

Yeah. And Zerlinsky, who is, remind me what religion he is. So that was great. In Pakistan, we have the prime minister, Imran Khan. I think I'm definitely butchering that. He is musing about whether or not. he's going to stay, even though he also lost his election. Well, he lost his election, but he's musing about perhaps staying on anyway.

Never great. Well, this is Orban's. This will be his fourth term, right? Yes. So really, he's Hungary's FDR is the way I like to look at it. Except without the free and fair election. You read that list of things that he attributed to the people that are his enemies, whatever. and as we said, they're all sort of code for Jews.

And the international media. Yeah, I mean, it's all, like, it's just very long-winded ways of saying Jews. But, like, I can't decide if I should be sort of happy that we're at a stage where even guys like him know you can't just come out and say Jews. Or if I shouldn't be happy because they are, in effect, saying Jews. So I'm sort of torn on that one. But look, this is a big day for the GOP. Right. They're guy won in Hungary.

They're guy won. And you have commentators like I think it was Rod Dreher saying that Orban is now the leader of the West. If nothing else, we have learned who the closeted fascists are in the Republican Party over the last bunch of years. How can we get the closeted fascists back into the closet? Yeah. Well, the problem is they're comfortable out of the closet now. That's the effect of Trump and the last six years. is that, you know, it's not that they weren't fascists before that or had fascist tendencies or however you want to describe it.

It's just that they weren't comfortable saying the quiet parts out loud as the old expression goes. But now, you know, with the exception of actually saying Jews, they are very comfortable saying those parts out loud and cheering on people like Orban and, you know, and again, and Putin, for that matter, and people like that. It's a big day for them. And I don't know. Should we make it? Is it a national holiday now, Orban Day we have? It's a pretty good litmus test. Like, if you were celebrating that, you're probably a bad guy.

It's like the people who are still supporting Putin. It's like, if you're looking at those pictures of the people, the street strewn with bodies of people who have their hands tied behind their backs, you're probably not such a good person if you're like, well, this is obviously theater and this never happened. I mean, it's not even like Russia is working particularly hard to say this didn't happen. They're largely just like, well, it's, you know, it's CGI or something. So I do think, like, if you're still supporting Putin at this point, which Donald Trump is, and so is our favorite Madison Cawthorn, there's a pretty good sense that you're not on the right side of things. Yeah, and you brought up the fact that Russia doesn't seem to be working even all that hard at it, and it's because they don't really have to. I mean, you know, they can just play clips of Tucker Carlson tonight, and their job is done for the most part.

They're basically Alex Jones level right now with talking about crisis actors and all that stuff. And then they have like, it's like five different stories. It's like the bombing never happened. And then it's no, well, the bombing happened, but it's a false flag. The Ukrainians did it. Right. And there's like three or four more. stories down the road

and they don't settle on any one thing and this is the same thing we see from you know this is the same thing we see from the Q people and you know with the return of JFK Jr. He's coming back on March 3rd. He doesn't come back on March well oh we read the signs wrong

he's coming back on June it's June 3rd and you know and it's every cult ever you know it's every end of the world Armageddon cult when the world doesn't end on that day. And then they, you know, you would think they would just say, hey, we were wrong. But they don't.

They say, oh. Yeah, they never say we were wrong. No. But you, right, you wouldn't even think they were wrong. But you would think people would sort of latch onto it and say, hey, you were wrong. But instead, the people who are in the cult generally just go along with the next thing the cult says. And that's what we're seeing here. And, you know, with Russia and all of that.

But it's also, you know, to go back to Orban, it's like they will make any excuses they have to to sort of elide the fact that he is sort of a, you know, he's like a little proto-fascist over there. It's interesting, though, if you think about people being wrong, right? Trump never apologizes, never says he's wrong. Tucker Carlson and much of Fox News, like they'll make a mistake like Ivermecton, they'll never say they're wrong. Where, like, the mainstream media will correct the record and say, like, well, we made a mistake here or something. you'll see the right-wing media never will do that. And I just think that's a sort of interesting function.

No, absolutely. And I mean, I know Ivermectin is kind of off topic, but none of those people who were championing Ivermectin, whether it's Laura Ingram, all the so-called intellectual dark web people were all over Ivermectin. And, you know, we now have official studies that show that, what do you know, the dewormer doesn't work for COVID? I mean, it works well for worms. And for different parasites.

Yeah, but it's almost like COVID's not a parasite, you know, and taking an anti-parasite drug is not what you need to be doing. But like you said, none of them will come out and say, hey, this drug that I was championing, I was wrong. But none of them will do that. And none of them will do that. You know, Tucker sort of nodded at it with Putin. And some of the people who said that he would never invade

because they really had no choice once he invaded. Like, they couldn't. That's not something they could just wait. away. So, so then they came up with the, you know, with all the excuses for why he invaded. And, and, you know, again, as we've talked about, blaming Ukraine for wearing a short skirt and drinking too much. Right. And, and also NATO and how dare NATO try to give people. Yeah, that was clearly, obviously, their fault. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it is amazing. The thing that I'm always so impressed with is that I always thought when Trump came to power that eventually, like, he

would fail to deliver and people would have a moment. His supporters would have a moment of like, wow, that really didn't pan out. But in fact, like, they just are so good at moving the goalposts that there never is that moment. Yeah, and you listen to, I mean, I forget where it was, but just, I think over the weekend, there was just, I saw an interview with a Trump supporter and they said, you know, what do you like about him? And one of the things she said was, like, he always tells the truth. And it's like, how do you get to people like that? Like, you can't. You know, I know there are people who have supported Trump who are reachable and you can sort of, you know, maybe if you sat down with them or if you gave them enough things to read, they would go, oh, you know what? I didn't realize

that. But people like that woman, like, if you think Donald Trump always tells you the truth when in fact he almost never tells you the truth, you are unreachable. There is no way to get to you that I can think of. At best. So Ukraine took back a bunch of these Russian-held cities. When they went in there, they discovered what we suspected, which was a genocide had been happening in these cities. And this is where we're seeing these Kiev area towns and these towns closer

towards this sort of, you know, Odessa area, that there's been genocide there. And now there's a call for Putin to be treated as a war criminal. I don't understand, like, this doesn't seem like a huge shock to me, but how would you even do that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little toothless. If war crimes are being committed under his watch, then yes, he should be called that as a war criminal. That doesn't seem like a big strad. No. I honestly am not comfortable with the genocide word.

I know Zelensky's been using it. I don't think that's accurate. But war crimes, based on what we've seen so far, seem not at all out of the question and seem very much in the question. You can call Putin a war criminal all you want the same way. You can call George W. Bush a war criminal all you want, as many people have. And ain't nothing going to happen to him. Putin's not showing up at the Hague to defend himself. That's never going to have.

I mean, the only way that happens is if, you know, if someone invades Russia and deposes and capitalizes and capitalizes, him, you know, and then hauls him before a tribunal. But, you know, that's not happening. So, but look, labels, labels, that doesn't mean labels aren't important, you know, I mean, if his regime is committing war crimes, then, yeah, call him a war criminal. But it has no real world application, as far as I can tell. It's like when Biden said that Putin can't stay in power. It's largely true, but doing anything to will that to happen will mean World War III. Putin is a war criminal, but that and a dollar, right? Right. And like you said, what Biden said, I don't love that Biden said that.

The original thing about that he can't stay in power, because that does sound like, you know. Regime change, but it's clearly America can't do regime change. No, of course. And look, if what he's doing is telling the Russian people, you got to get this guy out of power, okay, fine. But considering the Russian people probably don't even have access to his speech, I don't know how much that. flies. But yeah, it's, you know, the only time you can get tried as a war criminal is like what happened with a lot of the Iraqis under Saddam Hussein. Yeah, or Milosevic, but because a stronger power went in and took you out, you know, but that's not, like we said, that's not happening with Russia. So, again, it's, it's semantics and it's whatever, but call a war criminal a war

criminal. I'm okay with that. It's kind of good because it's sort of normative, government, business. Like, think about if Trump were president right now, you would have, there's no world in which Trump would be like, yes, Putin is a war criminal. He'd be like, yes, Putin is a great guy. And if he can find me, you know, any of Hunter Biden's videos, you know. So, I mean, I feel like there's certainly a sense in which the sort of normative American kind of speech about this is actually good, if that makes any sense. Yeah, absolutely. To take that a little further,

there is certainly an element on the right that sort of doesn't even believe in the concept of war crimes, or at least they don't seem to, and they sort of think that like, well, you know, it's sort of like, oh, well, you do things in war and... And you kill a few kids.

Right, and you can't judge that, which is, you know, a horrific way to look at it. It's also runs contrary to what a lot of generals would say. Well, no, of course. There's very few people in the military, I think that would say that, at least at a high level.

Yeah. I hope anyway. But, and look, you know, we've done things. I mean, there was, you know, Abu Ghraib as one example. And drones and killing wedding parties by mistake and stuff like that. And look, there's. Yeah. But there's no excuse.

You can't just say war is messy, which is like, I see that a lot, that type of thing where it's like, oh, well, it's sort of the shit happens view of war. And it's like, no, there are, war is horrible. And no one should think it's not anything but horrible. but even horrible things have sort of rules and guidelines. And, you know, we have things like the Geneva Conventions for a reason. And you sort of have to follow the rules for the most part, even in a war situation. And you can't just say that like it's okay to execute people, you know, with their hands tied behind their back.

You can't say that that's okay. You can't say, well, this is war. It's like, no, it's not supposed to work that way. And I even, I hate talking about this because I hate normal. You know, it sounds like then you're like, it's like normalizing war. And it's like, well, this killing is okay, but this killing isn't. But the fact is, that is what war is like. That's why war sucks, you know.

But even things that suck have to have rules. And if you're doing things that, you know, grievously go against the rules, then you're a war criminal. And it's, you know, case closed. It's a fascinating time when people are defending, murdering on armed civilians as people on the right are murder. murdering unarmed civilians as just like the cost of doing business. Yeah. Just to close on us, we've seen this with, you know, there were, there were Americans who were on trial for doing stuff.

And you saw the, you know, like Navy SEALs and people like that who, by all accounts, did horrific things and should have been on trial and should have been found guilty. But you see the right sort of rally around them, you know, and they have the, it's like the mystical view of the troop who can do no wrong. And that's, to me, that's anti-student. troop because, you know, most soldiers do the right thing, given the circumstances, and you don't, and we saw that with a lot of these times, a lot of times when Americans are brought up, it's because their squad mates or their platoon mates or whatever, turn them in or said, word got up because

their fellow soldiers or sailors or Marines were not happy with what they did. So to defend the people committing atrocities is to attack the people who reported the atrocities, who in most cases, are troops. So I just want to, you know, I hate this little support the troops thing on the right. I feel like there's an army story you need to tell us here. You know, nothing like that ever happened around me, thank God. I mean, I was never, I never even heard a shot fired in anger, so I can't. I certainly didn't witness any atrocities. But it just, it just bums me out that supporting the troops has come to mean supporting the troops who violate the Geneva Conventions and the rules of war.

Yeah. Sorry for the tangent. Michael Kranish is an investigative reporter at the Washington Post and co-author of Trump Revealed. Welcome to the new abnormal, Michael. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I am very excited to have you. You have written two pieces that I'm quite obsessed with. And I want to talk about them at nauseam.

I apologize. So let's first talk about Ted Cruz because you wrote a piece last week. There was a lot of stuff in there that I had not seen anywhere. So explain to me how Ted Cruz sort of got away with that. Well, it's interesting. Thank you so much for those kind of words. I spent more than a year looking at different figures who've been involved. Most of them on the Republican Party, how they've moved the party to the right, especially

given what we know about what happened January 6th. So I've done stories, and I'm very lucky the Post has given me the time to do this about figures such as Josh Hawley and Mo Brooks and a number of other individuals, Madison Cothorn. Yeah, they're really researched stories that really find stuff that I have never, that I didn't know about. But the Ted Cruz stuff is just an incredible revelation in my mind. Thank you. Well, you know, there's a lot of reporting that's been on all these individuals. And in doing a story like this, you know, I often will take a month.

It was to give me that time for which I'm so appreciative. And I go back and I try to read what's been written. And then I try to just go back day by day. So I thought that it was very important to look at a number of the key figures. I had written a long story last year about Josh Hawley, who famously raised his fist and was the first one to say in the Senate that he would contest the Electoral College results. But when you look back, Ted Cruz was the one who put forward this idea

that there should be a 10-day audit, that they should basically have vice president, hence, not certify the election of Joe Biden, that there'd be this 10-day audit, which would go on more than 10 days, send it back to state legislatures. And he got at least 10 or so other senators to go along with this. And, you know, that really, if that had happened,

there's a quote from Liz Cheney where she had made elsewhere, where she talked about that. In fact, there wasn't Biden's inauguration on inauguration day. It seemed to be a very important point that because in the end, it didn't succeed. didn't get that much notice. One of the things that really struck me is I was talking to my, you know, various sources who pointed out to me that there's been a lot of focus on the Trump lawyer, John Eastman, who wrote these two memos about how Pence could theoretically not certify the

electoral votes on January 6. And this person said, you know, really people don't seem to focus on the fact that John Eastman and Ted Cruz have known each other for decades, that they were co-workers for the middle judge, Michael Ludig, and they've known each other for a very long time. And the more I looked into that, I saw, you know, there's real parallel track there. In fact, if you go back and read the first Eastman memo, he specifically says, he says two senators by name, and one of them's Ted Cruz, who could object. So he mentions Ted Cruz as that possibility. And then the second memo doesn't happen to mention Cruz's name, but outlines basically what Ted Cruz ended up doing in proposing this 10-day audits. So all of that seemed to me information

that I didn't know, and I've been pretty well read on this, and I figure a lot of people you know, didn't know that. And so I contacted Judge Ludwig, um, who basically said to me, yeah, I think that Ted Cruz, the role he played, you know, was absolutely essential that. Perhaps if he hadn't done that, it wouldn't have folded this way. So if it had only been Holly who said, I'm objecting, maybe this wouldn't have gone as far as it did. Cruz saying that he would come along and then bringing along his other 10 senators for the 10-day audit, that really, when you talk about stopping things from the inside, that, you know, was a very important point. to understand. And that got me interested in his role with Trump. And the bottom light of my story

is that I document how Trump and Cruz worked directly together. I document phone calls that they had together. Cruz's various efforts to try to basically keep Trump in power. That's something that I try to spell out in detail in the story. It's so interesting because you did, I mean, Josh Hawley, that fist, that raised fist, it was very clear what side Josh Holly. was on, but Ted Cruz wasn't quite as clear until I saw this reporting, which I was really, I wouldn't say shocked because I've come to expect this type of cravenness from Ted Cruz, but I didn't know the extent of it. So that was really interesting. Also, I think that what I was really struck by is Cruz is both smart and a lawyer. Right. Well, if you talk to Republicans,

you know, they, they, even the people who really wanted to do everything they could to keep Trump in power. There's quite a few of them who didn't think very highly of the various attorneys who were surrounding Trump, you know, Rudy Giuliani and various other folks. And there were some folks who thought, well, Ted Cruz, okay, whatever you may think of Ted Cruz, he did go to Harvard Law School. He did represent Texas before the court in numerous occasions. He appeared before the Supreme Court arguing various cases on behalf of Texas on a number of occasions. So he had a reputation. and people who work for him, some of whom now do not like at all what he ended up doing, they did have respect for him as a conservative legal scholar and so forth.

Yeah. So that was important. So for instance, I give the anecdote that leads off the story where in December 8th of 2020, there had been an effort. Ted Cruz said he would represent folks in Pennsylvania who wanted to test what had happened in the state, the vote there in that state. That did not feed. and then Cruz is out to dinner near the Capitol

on the evening of December 8th, and he gets a call on his cell phone from Trump saying, you know, really disappointed what happened in Pennsylvania, would you represent me in a new case that Texas Attorney General, Apection is going to file to try to contest these results.

And Cruz says, yes, we happen to do that, you know, if the Supreme Court takes the case and so forth. So, you know, this was one of several occasions where he's talking directly with Trump, working with Trump in a way that, for some of, Cruz's associates, they thought that was great for others who'd worked with him for years. They were dismayed that he would take on that case because basically seemed at odds with the way

they interpreted the Constitution. They thought this was exactly opposite of what Cruz had stood for regarding federalism on the Constitution. Yes. Can you explain to our listeners what kind of foils it in the end? Well, in the end, what foils it, there's a lack of support. So had he gotten a majority perhaps to go along, maybe, you know, that would have succeeded. Who knows? So the proposal would have required vice president tense to not certify Biden's election, would have had a day audit of the results, sent the back to six state legislatures of which could have been enough in theory to then give the election back to Trump. And Liz Cheney, the Republican, who is a member of the January 6th Congressional Investigating Committee, she said earlier this year,

and I'll quote here from the story, she said it was a very dangerous proposal and you know could it very easily put us into territory. We got to the inauguration and there was not a president. And I think that Senator Cruz knew exactly what he was doing. I think that Senator Cruz is somebody who knows what the Constitution calls for, knows what whose duties and obligations are and was willing, frankly, to set that aside. So, you know, I wanted to ask Cruz about that. I wanted to ask him about a lot of things that I reported in the story. Initially, his office agreed that he would talk to me. And I went to Capitol Hill and just before the interview was about to happen, his press secretary emailed being saying, you know, his schedule is too tight. He can't do this

interview. So I then sent a series of questions, including about Liz Cheney said that I just read to you. And they didn't respond to that. They didn't respond to a number of questions. They responded to some others, which I mentioned in the story. But, you know, that's a pretty serious allegation from Liz Cheney. As of when I wrote this story last week, the committee had not yet asked Ted Cruz to speak to them. They hadn't asked for his voluntary cooperation. And they certainly hadn't subpoenaed him, nor had they subpoenaed other members of Congress as of last week. I don't know if that's changed in the last couple of days. So I do wonder whether there's a hesitation on behalf of this committee, which is a House committee, to question members of the

Senate who played a role here. I think that's a question that they're going to have to really wrestle with in the coming days, especially since they say they want to have hearings starting in May. That's so interesting. So you wrote this piece about Madison Cawthorne has a lot of explosive revelations in it. Came out a while ago. Tell our listeners what the most explosive revelations in your mind are, and I'll tell them what mine that I thought were. Sure. So this was a story I actually wrote more than a year ago. It was called The Making of Madison Cawthorne. It was 26-year-old. old, elected to Congress. And the subhead of the story was something like how falsehoods propelled him to this job. And I documented a number of things that he had said when he had

gone to college briefly, when he ran for Congress, that were just clearly documented, not true. He said, Madison Cawthorne is a congressman from North Carolina. He's in his first term still. And he is Wilshire Bound. He was in a horrific accident. He was in a car that was driven by a very close friend of his and they were driving and there was a car crash and Madison Cawthorne later said in a speech at the college he went to briefly, Patrick Henry College in Virginia, that he had been declared dead, that his friend had left him in a, quote, fiery tomb, unquote. And the friend had never talked publicly at that point. And I tracked him down. We had a nice interview. And he said, you know, this is not true. I didn't leave him in a fiery tomb.

I pulled him out of the car. I got the accident report. It didn't say that. Madison Cawthor had been declared dead. It said he'd been incapacitated, which is a very different thing. And then separately had been previously reported by a news outlet in North Carolina that Madison Cawthorne had told folks that he had been essentially accepted to the Naval Academy and that this accident prevented him from going. In fact, before the accident, he had not been accepted by the Naval Academy. So there's a lot of things there, some of which had been reported,

some of which, especially about the accident that I mentioned, had not been. And then I go through sort of step by step, here's the things about, you know, Madison Cawthor that don't add up, you know, that were false. And that story, you know, even to this day, you know, new people find it, new people read it because there's just continuing interest in Madison Cawthor because he'll say something. And people say, you know, wow, where did that come from? And then they come upon my story from last year. I read it. When it came out, I read it more recently because of Orgy Gate. The revelations in it, there are so many of them.

Did you, when you published the story, did you think, like, how is this person going to stay in Congress? Well, in doing a story, I just wanted to document for readers. You know, here's what he said. Here's what we found. This is not something, you know, based on an autonomous quotes. This is based on documentation. You know, I found there's all sorts of lawsuits regarding the accident. So, you know, that's, for me as a reporter, I just want to go and say, you know, this was a historic figure, the way he was elected, you know, so young.

turned down he only went to one semester of college. I mean, it's pretty unusual. If you go and look at the lists of background education members of Congress, you know, most people have graduated college, not that you have to, but he only lasted one semester at Patrick Henry College in Virginia. He was the youngest member elected at the minimum age of 25 at the time. He also was putting out there an awful lot of things about the election baseless allegations about voting fraud. in a video, for example, that had been viewed four million times, and that Trump retweeted saying, thank you, Madison. Madison Cawthorne spoke at the January 6th rally along with Trump, where the mob was inside to storm the Capitol. He played, you know, an important role in a number of things. So it just seemed to us, this isn't, you know, who is this person? Even though on the one

hand, he's a backbencher, you know, he's gotten an extraordinary platform, literally, by speaking at that January 6 rally and what he did, you know, thereafter. So, you know, he had said, for example, on January 6th, as the mob was still, you know, surrounding the Capitol, that these votes were, quote, paid by the democratic machine. It was just on and on that he was saying these things that were, you know, demonstrably false. I want to talk to you about Mo Brooks. I mean, Mo Brooks is an amazing, I feel like, character because he's had such a downfall. And he was most recently, like two weeks ago, unendorsed by Trump. But before that, he was very involved in the January 6th riot. Can you talk to us about that?

He had said in early January 2021 that he had received a dire warning from another lawmaker in Congress that Antifa was planning to demonstrate the January 6 rally, quote, dressing like Trump supporters. He was – Brooks said he was so convinced his life was in danger, that he stopped going home, he slept on his office floor. And before going to sleep on the night of January 5th, he tweeted that Trump had, quote, I asked him, quote, I'm just quoting it from the tweet by Brooks to personally to speak and tell the American people about the election system weakness and that the socialist Democrats exploited to steal this election. So as I write in the story from a couple months ago, Brooks put on body armor underneath this yellow and black jacket, and he delivered a very incendiary speech to the Trump backers on the ellipse and said, today is the day American Patriots start taking down names and kicking ass, their ancestors back in front of blood, so on and so forth. he's faced a lot of questions about what he said. There's been a lawsuit against him by another member of Congress.

And he said that he led the charge. At one point, Brooks said, I led the charge. So I've heard of this lawsuit, which is brought by Representative Eric Swalwell of California. Yeah. Which accuses him of conspiring with Trump and others to undermine the election, incite, the insurrection. So, you know, all this is pretty extraordinary. He, like Madison Cothar, was one of the speakers at the rally.

So naturally, you know, they're going to get, you know, a lot of the. attention. It is pretty amazing that he had been endorsed by Trump. You know, he had been at the forefront of spreading these allegations that the election had been stolen and so forth. And even that's not enough because he made sort of an offhand comment at an event in Alabama last year where, you know, we should start looking ahead to the midterm election. And Trump didn't like that because Trump continues to want to focus on his allegation, you know, the falsehood that the election was stolen. So what's interesting, I didn't know this until I did the reporting, and I had not seen it explain elsewhere. In a court filing, Brooks actually said that his own tweet in which he said that Trump had personally asked him to appear at the rally was false.

He now says that Trump actually didn't personally ask him to hear the rally. So it's just one of those oddities that came up in the reporting. He blamed an unnamed staffer for the tweet. And so the invite came from someone else at the White House. But the tweet was still up when I wrote. Oh, that's so strange. Thank you so much for joining us. this was totally fascinating

and really appreciate you. Oh, thanks for having me. Eric Bullert is the founder and editor of Press Run.Media. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Eric Bullard. Hey, thanks for having me. What the fuck is going on? Can you be more specific?

I want to start with you. There's like this weird moment in media world where the media has paused to reflect on the fact that while the economy is extremely good, this, of course, not including the issues with gas, which the gas prices are really, really high. So oil is not.

So make of that what you will. That the media has had a sort of moment of like, why is Biden so profound? Why are his popularity number so bad? And why do people think the economy is so bad when it's not? I've got to tell you, the coverage of Biden economy is unlike anything I've ever seen. It's quite unique. It's not, and what it's interesting, it's not a man-made GOP phony scandal and the press chases it. Yes, Republicans have pushed inflation, Biden created inflation, Biden's Jimmy Carter. But for the most part, this is atrocious coverage completely manufactured by the press itself. They cannot blame, you know, this isn't Benghazi or something.

Right. They're doing this on their own. They want to do this, and it's bizarre, and they have dug a hole so deep, they can't get out. They don't want to get out. So let's take a look at last week. So Friday Jobs Report, another basically blockbuster, anything over 4,500,000 jobs is considered, you know, a blockbuster jobs report. It was the 11th month in a row under Biden. that it's averaged 400,000 jobs or more. So if any other president, particularly if there was an R next to his name, I mean, the press would be talking about where do we fit him on Mount Rushmore? How do we get Biden up there? He's got 7 million new jobs.

In two years, he's going to be at 10 million new jobs. The unemployment rate's going to be at 3%. I mean, the New York Times did a piece on Lincoln, Nebraska, last week. The unemployment is 2%. Bartenders make $30 an hour. Yeah, we want to go. We want to move there and switch jobs. This is beyond full employment at this point. This is something this country almost has never seen. Anyway, so what does the press do with this jobs report? It's so ingrained or it's so built in. I did a piece of press run for Monday, and I listed five headlines that ran immediately after, three from CNN, two from the Washington Post, and they're all basically,

this blockbuster jobs report might be bad news for Biden. I mean, it's a parody at this point. It's literally a parody at this point because, again, they have convinced themselves that the entire economy is about inflation, and they've convinced themselves that, you know, these huge job, these huge job gains either aren't a big deal or they might be a problem for Biden because there aren't enough workers. It's totally bizarre. And again, we've never seen anything like it. And again, the weirdest part is this isn't the fault of Fox News or Republicans. This is something the Beltway media took on by itself and decided to run with this. And they're just going to keep running with it. So yes, clearly this is what's happening. But I wonder how much

much of this is like some kind of media self-correction or some response to Trumpism like clearly Trumpism and Trump free press had a lot of trouble covering Trump right and they became adversarial in a way that they needed to have become much sooner but eventually they did sort of get there now I wonder how much of this is I mean look I'm not

making excuses for anyone and it's clear that whatever's happening here ain't good. Yeah. But I'm just wondering, like, is this a reaction? Is this a kind of, like, how did this come about? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, no, that's a good point. And I think a lot of this kind of reeks of both sides.

Oh, well, they certainly puff out their chest and pat each other on the back. And they certainly think they spent four years just being super tough on the Trump administration, which is, you know, how can you not? It was a criminal enterprise from day one. But certainly the public perception and the perception Trump created was that the press was just murdering him and out to get them and full of Democrats. So I think this, in terms of the self-correction, yes. And I think this is both sides. So if we were tough on Trump, we have to turn around to be tough on Biden.

And we have to create a, well, we have to be tough on Biden. Then they look around. they're like, how are we going to do that? Right. You can't compare the problems that Biden is facing inflation, gas prices, war in Russia, even the poet of Afghanistan, which a lot of people, smart people thought, may have not gone the way it perhaps should have or could have. Even those things are not the same as like asking Vladimir Putin for dirt. I mean, they're just not on the same scale.

So I do think they're trying to get that drama back in a way. Yes, that's a good point. So all those things you mentioned, the economy, foreign policy, war, troops, those are traditional issues that an administration that a president deals with. This is kind of presidency 101. These are relatively unexpected crises that pop up. This is a traditional framework. The Biden presidency is a return to normalcy in every way, shape, and form.

Yet even the crisis. sees are normal, right? You know, an adversary is invading a foreign country. We have economic concerns. These are what presidents are elected to deal with. This is what a presidency has looked like for the last half century. And then there was Trump. So I think coming out of Trump, the press loved that addiction, love that adrenaline. As I've said many times, for four years, there wasn't a single editor-producer reporter under the Trump era who went to work and said, what am I going to write about today? Like, there's no news. You know, it just rained down on them and they got addicted to that. And so Biden comes in, you know, he's a return to normalcy.

He's the no drama Biden. And the press kind of like by the summer, by last summer was like, this isn't really working for us. This isn't, this isn't, where's the drama? Where's the conflict? There are no leaks. Nobody's under indictment. So I think what to your, to your point, and it started with Afghanistan, then inflation. They covered these traditional issues, but they blended in the kind of chaos or the drama from the Trump years, and they tried to inject that daily soap opera approach to covering Biden, and it doesn't really work. Covering Biden, just cover Biden, the good, the bad, the ugly. Like I said, he's a traditional president. If he makes mistakes, let's detail it. If he has accomplished.

let's detail it. But I think the press kind of boxed itself in and created a storyline. Just a real quick point. And it's not just the inflation and it's not just hyping crises. You know, all winter long, we were told COVID defined the Biden presidency, right? They hung that around his neck every day for three months. And then it essentially disappeared. We're back to normalcy. Yes, people have to be careful. where's the parade? Where's the celebration? Where's, oh, Biden did what he said he was going to do. They went straight to gas prices. And that's where they've been camped out ever since. Democrats are unequivocally, undeniably, profoundly terrible in retail politics. And so, while Trump had numerous Rose Garden celebrations for everything from literally things he didn't even do, the Biden administration and Democrats in general, they passed this big infrastructure. They were like, yes, we're going to go celebrate the infrastructure. I never saw that. Like, I never saw any of that. You know, he went to one bridge and that was it, right? And then Republicans were like, we passed infrastructure. Aren't we great? Your new bridge is from me, you know, Madison Cawthorn. If Democrats had a little bit of game, the media might not be where we are. Totally valid point. And I'm torn on it. I go back and forth. I am frustrated, you know, in terms of the media,

messaging and the Democratic messaging, and I think they should do better. And frankly, I think they have a kind of thin bench right now in terms of who can carry that message on a daily, weekly basis. You know, it reminds me of the Judge Jackson hearing. There's something wrong with that Democratic panel, that Judiciary Committee. None of them stepped, very few stepped up. Nobody defended her. And just weren't charismatic or, you know, I tweeted about this. To terms of played to the camera. Joe Biden played to the cameras on that committee for decades. Ted Kennedy played to the cameras on that committee for decades. It's a good thing to play to the cameras on that committee. Right. That's why they're televised. Yeah, exactly. Take advantage of it.

But so, yes, I do think there's a thin bench. Democratic senators in particular are not good communicators at all. Their Twitter feeds are awful for the most part. But, and then here's where I, here's where I put the caveat. It's not a balanced equation. So it's not like Republicans are really smart and savvy on their media marketing, and that's why they have an advantage. They have an advantage because they're pathological liars, and there are no rules. And if you're talking about Tucker Carlson, these are craven awful people who don't have a soul. So then you step back, you're like, well, we don't want Democrats to counter that. So what's the framework?

You know, the framework used to be center right, center left. who's the smartest, who's the most savvy, who can who can position their party in a way to, you know, reach independent voters. And that model is kind of broke. And now it's like Democrats, you know, who probably aren't good at messaging trying to do the right thing, facing off against this Q&N mob pedophile obsessed Republican party that lies about everything and Fox News boosts it. And you look at that and you're like, what are we supposed to do? I don't, I don't have an answer. You saw that study this weekend that Fox News, they actually do move the needle when it comes to elections.

And they do. And that if you, I mean, the Euglesias wrote about it in Bloomberg this weekend. But like the idea that you can, that you could switch CNN for Fox and you would have different elections. I mean, maybe not profoundly different, but certainly it's also about what Fox is not covering. So I do think that that is an issue. I mean, I wonder, and it's like impossible to know, but like does a Ron Johnson, right, who is a Republican senator and who's a complete lunatic and who never shuts up? Is he more effective, right? I mean, he never shut up.

You know, big tech, this, that. So is he more effective than a Dick Durbin, right? I mean, that's really the question. Yeah, lying works. I mean, it absolutely works. It works if you're Ron Johnson and you're inside the Fox News bubble, and obviously no one is ever going to question you. And we're to the point where it works on the mainstream media because they decided not only are we not going to call Trump a liar, we're not going to call any Republican liars. I mean, I tweeted over the weekend, CNN on the surface had this very good report. They went back

and Herschel Walker, who's, you know, picked to be the next U.S. senator in Georgia, who has back, baggage larger than any candidate in U.S. history. So CNN did this piece that said, you know, he was a star running back University of George in the 80s. And he's been telling crowds, you know, he was an inspirational speaker over the years. He said, I graduated in the top 1% of my class. Well, it turns out Hershaw Walker did not graduate college, period. And CNN does this good story and their headline and the text of the piece is Herschel Walker overstated his academic achievements. Right. And so what's the lesson if you're Herschel Walker or anyone running for office as a Republican?

It's even you can lie about anything. And if you get caught, no one's going to call you a liar. They're going to pretend like you kind of misstated something. I mean, do you think Herschel Walker didn't know he didn't graduate in the top 1% of his class? You think like he got confused? I wonder how much of this could be improved if people in the mainstream media called lies, lies. Yeah, I've been on that kick for four years. I never got a good, serious explanation from anyone in the mainstream media why a documented liar like Trump couldn't be called a liar.

I mean, Dean Beckett, early on, the editor of the Times told somebody, well, you know, we can't read his mind. you know, that's not our business. We have to be careful for calling people liars. And, you know, someone documented that there was one lie that Trump told about the border wall. He told it in public 87 times. At that point, I don't think this is a mystery game. Right. The other thing was, well, some people said, it's no big deal if we call them a liar or not. And I kind of turned it around. I said, if it's no big deal, how come nobody's doing it? If it's just a coin toss, How come every news organization came down on one side and decided not to call him alive? But again, more importantly, now with the Herschel Walker and everything, as he anoints these crazed candidates around the country,

it looks like that's how the press is going to cover all these people. And they're going to soft pedal all this stuff. And they're going to come up with these ridiculous adjectives to make it seem like, you know, they're not demented. And I was just going to say that goes back to your original question about Democratic messaging. You know, this is not, the Democratic Party isn't facing the Republican Party of 10 years ago or whatever or even eight years ago. They're facing a totally different beast and the press still hasn't figured out how to correctly cover that beast. So true. Thank you so much for joining us, Eric. Okay, have a great week.

What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcast. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. Who is your fuck that guy? Oh, is that the segment we're doing now? I didn't know which segments we're doing.

It's the segment. Sadly, that's it. Unfortunately for you. My fuck that guy is a couple of gals. Let's start with every libertarians' favorite Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard. Do libertarians still like her? I don't know if they still do, but boy, did they? like her for a while. And she has now come out and said that not only does she like the don't say

gay bill that recently passed in Florida, she says it doesn't go far enough. This bill, you're not allowed to discuss sexual orientation or gender identity up through like the third grade, like kindergarten through third grade. But you're also not allowed to say like if I went running with my girlfriend this weekend, and I'm a teacher. I'm not allowed to tell them that. Right, exactly. She said, quote, I was shocked to learn and only protects kids from kindergarten until third grade. Third grade?

What about 12th grade or not at all? I mean, it's disgusting because it's so anti-LGBQ, but it is like I love my 12th grader, not being able to handle the fact that someone is gay. Yeah, no, it's unbelievable. I know. So she wants to tie this to, she talks about, she says, our schools are failing. 34% of our students are below basic reading level in the fourth grade, et cetera, et cetera. So banning gay people should do it. Yes. Well, you know, she seems to be under the impression that teachers are spending their entire, like, math class talking about their gay partner and not teaching math, which, you know, is, of course, obviously not what's going on. But this is how the Wright has been trying to portray this whole thing.

As, you know, that's why they love to talk about grooming and stuff like that. Right. Because that's what they think is going on in the schools when, of course, it's absolutely not. So you got Tulsi saying it should go until 12th grade. And then you got Laura Ingram over on Fox saying that now that Disney... They're really mad at Disney. The Wright is very mad at Disney. Ben Shapiro is apparently spending like $100 million.

He's going to start his own Disney. Yes. You know, $100 million is like the, is the, is the budget for one movie. It just feels like that's a lot of money to throw at something just because you're mad because you're not, you're not tall enough to ride on their rides. It's so mean. It's just being true. I mean, $100 million just to have a theme park where you can ride the rides.

So now Laura Ingram is mad at Disney because Disney has come out against the legislation. belatedly. Yeah, really took them a long time. So now Laura Ingram wants, is saying that when Republicans get back into power, companies like Disney, quote, need to understand one thing. Everything will be on the table. Your copyright and trademark protections, your special status within certain states, and even your corporate structure itself. Why do they hate capitalism so much? Well, that's the thing. They're not capitalists. They're fascists. That's what they're just, that's what she wants there. She wants the government to be, able to control a private industry.

There's a name for a political philosophy on the right that believes that, and I'm pretty sure it's fascism. Fuck those gals, fuck those guys, basically fuck anyone that wants to erase people. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good one. Do you want to know which one mine is?

I very much do. Sarah Palin Super Spreader. Alaska has one congressional seat. It was occupied by this guy who was a racist and used to bring a knife with him. and had lots of fights. He died at 88.

And now the seat is up and many people are running for it. And wouldn't you know, you bet you. Donald Trump's favorite, the woman who was one of the first people to endorse him has put her hat in the ring. Molly, give us some of that juicy Trump statement. Sarah shocked many when she endorsed me very early in 2016 and we won big.

now it's my turn. She's still considered to be a conservative firebrand, but I would just call her a racist moron. Sarah Palin, she's coming back to Congress. She's going to make Marjorie Taylor Green look like Lincoln. Well, that's, I don't know. I was actually thinking about this. I feel like she might actually raise the IQ of the Republican caucus.

Stop it. You monster. This is a rough take. I mean, look, I think the rest of the Republican Congress got stupid enough. So she's like just about average there. Yeah, well, that's pretty much what I'm saying. Yeah. But nicer.

She will definitely find her people in today's Republican Party. And, you know, it's a great job for her because she will just basically do nothing and be an appear on Fox News. Congratulations, people of Alaska. Well, maybe she won't win. Yes, she'll win. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. 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, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.