The Daily Beast Podcast - That Mitch McConnell Video Is F*cking Scary and Terrifying

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, why Mitch McConnell’s concerning press conference this week should be a wake up call to both sides of the political spectrum. Plus! The Nation’s Elie Mystal joins us to talk about the Supreme Court's Alabama decision. Then, The Bulwark’s Tim Miller talks all about the latest in Republican party madness. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse 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 some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

The nation's Ellie Mistal joins us to talk about the Supreme Court's Alabama decision as well as affirmative action. Then we'll talk to the bulwarks, Tim Miller, all about the latest in Republican Party madness, including DeSantis' staffer sharing a Nazi symbol in a video he made. But first, let's have some fun. Terrible news to start out the show today. Terrible in just, it triggered so many emotions in me to learn that the amazing artist, Shnade O'Connor, has passed away at the age of 56 years old. And it conjured so many memories, but really just the courage and bravery that she had in the very early 1990s to call out a Catholic church who would not.

be called out for their criminality and pedophilia for decades. She did so by going on SNL, ripping up a picture of the Pope, and from thereon, had been booed off of the world stage. And lo and behold, her activism was just ahead of its time, because then the world would know a decade plus later exactly what she was talking about. And so her voice was a gift, her current is something to be modeled, and it's just, it's very sad to learn about her passing. Yeah, I mean, as the kids say, she was a real one. On top of everything else,

I don't want to overlook how great her music was. Lion and the Cobra, I do not want what I haven't got. Just two unbelievable albums that came out, if I remember correctly, within years of each other, a few years of each other. She was just, she was so damn talented, but she also was. She was ahead of her time.

she was just at the forefront of so many movements. She kind of famously got the public enemy symbol, dyed into her little fuzzy hair when she went on the Grammys because the Grammys refused to televise the best rap album award. And so she did that to stand up for rap music. And then, of course, she had to give the award to Will Smith over a public enemy, which is just painful to think about. But she really was just on the forefront of so many things.

And she always stood up for what she believed. And she pretty much did not give a damn if you hated her for it. Just an absolutely amazing woman. And just so sad and so shocking that she's gone so soon. Yeah. And I just, you know, I want to make note because a lot of people have been stating this as well that, you know, she converted to Islam in 2018 and spoke on it. and was wearing a hijab and in a lot of the coverage about her passing that is somehow being erased.

And she had also changed her name to Shahada David, later changing it to Shahada Sadakat. And so I just want to honor that as she left us, that she had made a big conversion that seems to be being a race. We know her because 90s kids and the activism and the courage, but I just want to honor that as well. Absolutely. So on to other things that are really important to note. And I know that it's a fine line that we need to walk and all of these things, but we would be remiss if not to bring up the fact that the aging and the health, our nation's politicians who are making the laws and rules for the rest of us is something that we need to talk about. Most recently, Mitch McConnell was in the midst of a press conference and was ushered away from the mic because he appeared to stop speaking and reacting to reporters. Also this week, Diane Feinstein also seemingly had some cognitive issues. I bring this up not as a way to do both sides, but both sides really do have an issue when it comes to the health and their aging senators.

I also want to make note of the fact that when Mitch McConnell had his issue earlier in the week, the outpouring of, I wish him well, I may not agree with his policies, but I hope that he is okay, came pouring out from the left side of the aisle, from Democrats. The same cannot be said for Republicans when Joe Biden. Biden tripped. It is so clear and obvious. And I know that the good thing to do would be to avoid talking about it, but it's just like, yo, they have no empathy and no compassion whatsoever. And yet we are continually called upon as Democrats to take the high road. And I will because I'm a good fucking person. But like the difference cannot be clearer. Yeah, I think that's 100%

true. And I just want to look, I watched the McConnell video and it's fucking scared. Yep. No love for Mitch McConnell as a politician obviously should go without saying. But to watch a human being just go blank the way he went blank. Honestly, you know, I know I'm getting old because that just looked terrifying to me. But we do have to talk about it. You're right. And we don't have to diagnose what happened. I see that I hate this. I've seen, I think even Sanjay Gupta on CNN. Well, he clearly had a, you know, a transient stroke, basically. I'm not saying he didn't. He's a doctor. right, but he watched like everybody else did. We don't know. Yeah, I don't like that, you know, diagnosing from TV, and I am absolutely not going to do that. But whatever happened, it was not good. And then we found out a little after that,

that apparently he also took a fall a week or two ago that was sort of not reported by anybody. But the reason we do have to talk about this is we have to talk about the gerontocracy in this country. And this is a both sides issue. This is not a Republican issue. This is not a Democratic issue. This is a problem with our problem.

political system. We've said this a million times. This is not ageism. And there are plenty of people, again, in their 80s who are perfectly fit and able to serve. And I, you know, I don't think there should be some kind of law saying that when you hit a certain age, you can't serve anymore. I don't think anybody is saying that. But we have to take a look at a system that keeps people in these positions that makes them basically lifetime appointments. A hundred percent. Yeah. And it's just not good. whether it's Feinstein, whether it's McConnell, and I'm going to vote for the guy, but the concerns about Joe Biden are not unwarrant.

I don't mean the concern trolling on the right wing, but in general, the concerns about when you reach a certain age, it is okay, I think, to have concerns. And then you can say, well, no, this person clearly seems fine. We bring this up as an example of a lot. Bernie Sanders, Bernie Sanders, I feel like he'll be 115, and he'll still be the same, you know, yellowy guy that he's been since he was like, you know, I think seven.

I mean, I will tell you that I interviewed Gloria Steinem. Yeah. A couple of months ago, Gloria Steinem is 89 years old and, like, doesn't miss a beat. Yeah. We're not just talking about age for age sake, which is what the right has been doing. We're talking about the health and well-being of people who we're watching deteriorate before our eyes. And these are people that are not just making decisions and votes that affect their lives. They're making decisions and casting votes that affect the lives.

lives of over 330 million people in this country. A hundred percent. I absolutely could not have said it better. That's what we're talking about here. You know, again, we are talking about the fact that a lot of these people get like what amounts to lifetime appointments. And even when they are, I don't know if this sounds cruel, I certainly don't mean it this way, but when they are past the point when they should be public servants or at least

in, you know, in a political role. And they should, it's just, there's no. way to think that this is good for the country or good for them. I'm sorry, it is not good for Diane Feinstein to be wheeled out for votes and not know where she is and start giving a speech until somebody taps her and says, you know, you're just supposed to say, I, to cast your vote. We're not in a good place when that is happening. We're not in a good place where one of the leaders of the Senate goes blank the way Mitch McConnell did. These positions are too important, as you said, these positions are too important to, you know, the 300 plus million American citizens.

Yep. For this system to work like this. I don't want them to be ineligible to run because of their age. But really what we need to do is a lot of this is on us. It's people that vote them in. And people need to take a look at this and say to themselves, I need to stop doing this. And we need to get some younger people in office. 100%. I couldn't agree more.

It's about time. And, you know, I'm not above talking about term limits. Like, these should not be lifetime appointments because you have no challengers in your state or what have you. Like, there should be term limits for every fucking body looking at you Supreme Court. So basically, you know, in staying in Congress, we haven't talked about him in a while, Andy. And I've been happy about it, frankly. Because Kevin McCarthy honestly, really is not worth conversation, except when he, wants to try and make news, which is what he's been flapping his gums about all week with regard

to potentially opening up an inquiry into impeachment of Joe Biden. This kind of bullshit tit for tat that Republicans do just makes me sick. It's like you have literally tied yourself to a man that has been on a motherfucking crime spree for the last 40 goddamn years. Indictments don't just drop. Like, because Donald Trump has been indicted doesn't mean actual people who don't commit crimes on a regular basis will be indicted. But their desire is that, well, if you're going to go after our guy, we're going to go after yours, except guess what? When Donald Trump was president of the United States for those four god awful fucking years, he was also in control of the Department of Justice under sessions and then under bar. And he had all the opportunity in the world to do.

dig into his political opponents and guess what they came up with. Not a fucking thing. Why? Because they're not criminals. So the idea that Kevin McCarthy would go out and start to plant the seeds once again around somebody's impeachment inquiry is bullshit and even his own party. Ken Buck, of all people, who's a member of the quote unquote freedom caucus, came out and said that it's nonsense, that this is just him.

Fishing. It's impeachment theater is what he called it. Hell must be cold right now, because every place else feels like hell. But I agree with him. Hang, a pig just flew by my window. It's really weird. I don't know if I've ever seen that before.

Yeah, it is something for Ken Buck, who has a very cool name, in my opinion. It's a very Tom Clancy spy novel name, Ken Buck. He can't possibly be the good guy, Andy, if that's what you're comparing it. He's the good guy in a spy novel, absolutely. Okay, all right. In real life, not so much.

But, you know, that's how it works. He is absolutely right in calling this impeachment theater. And look, you know, everyone on the left has been saying that for forever now. But this is what Kevin McCarthy, when you have a limp gavel, you have to draw the attention elsewhere. And that's what he's doing now. I get so frustrated with this because it's so obvious. And, like, it sucks that we have to keep. talking about how stupid this is and how obviously theatrical this is and that it is, as Ken Buck

said, this is a shiny object for McCarthy to wave to distract people. You know, you put a shiny object in your right hand and people don't see your limp gavel in your left hand. Or vice versa. I don't know, I don't know what hand McCarthy uses. Thank God. But it's just, again, I don't even know what to say because it's so goddamn frustrating that we even have to talk about impeaching Joe Biden. There is literally nothing to impeach him on. You don't have to be a huge fan of the guy. I don't even care. You know, if you think he's the worst president in American history, fine, believe what you want. There is no legitimate reason for impeaching him. It is absolutely insane. And we have to point out, this is the same guy that wants to expunge Trump's impeachments from the record. You don't have to be either a genius or Ken Buck to get what's going.

going on here. Because they're not one in the same. No, I'm not sure. Exactly. Once again, we're going to waste an incredible amount of time. This is giving me Benghazi flashbacks to all of the hoopla because what what Kevin McCarthy, what the Republicans want. And Ken Buck said it. He's just like, they don't want to talk about spending. They don't want to talk about, you know, anything that actually matters. And I wonder, and again, let me not hold my breath because I don't want to pass out. But I wonder if we get to a point where some Republicans, I don't know, maybe they're smelling salts and they wake up out of their coma and they realize that people voted for them to do something for their lives and not just go and put on a fucking show every day.

Because I can't think that the people who voted for, you know, a Marjorie Taylor Green who voted for Lauren Bobert are like thrilled with their representative. but maybe I'm wrong, right? Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that people who still vote Republican actually want something other than someone to share in their grievance, someone to just yell that everything is woke. Maybe I'm wrong that people actually want their lives to feel and look better. I think you might be, at least to some extent. I mean, there is no reason to vote for Marjorie Taylor-Green if you want work getting done in Washington. Like, there's nothing in her career that would lead you to believe that she is going to do anything,

but set out to own the libs and talk about Jewish space lasers and continue to be QAnon adjacent. So I don't know. Lauren Bolbert, you might be more right about because she did have a tough re-election and barely got in and we'll see what happens next time. I guess I would say I think you're right and wrong. I think you're right that there are, I have to believe there are still Republicans out there who want something besides owning the libs on your resume. But there are definitely a lot of Republicans out there who only want owning the libs on your resume. And that's who McCarthy is trying to play to here and who he's trying to placate. And the thing is, like, he's not the smartest man in the world,

but even he's smart enough to know that there's nothing there with Joe Biden. And they can drop the phrase Biden crime family all they want. It doesn't mean anything. And, you know, again, we've been saying on this podcast, and I know everyone I know on the left has been saying, I don't give a damn about Hunter Biden. Like, if he broke the law and it looks like he, you know, I think he obviously did, punish him. Like, whatever. Find him guilty. I don't care.

I honestly don't care. But to try to link everything he's done to Biden and then you, oh, we have to impeach Biden. And we hear these quotes about how, you know, the most corrupt president in history from people who support Donald Trump. But this is the point. The point is to drive people like me crazy, so I can't let them do it. It's 100% true.

And just to remind everybody, but I know people who listen to this show are really smart and engaged, Hunter Biden didn't run for anything. He's not an elected official. Nothing he does has any bearing on any constituency at all. So I don't care what Hunter Biden has

done because it doesn't affect me. Yeah, you can't impeach Hunter Biden is the problem that the Republicans have because in order to impeach him, he'd have to be a government official. Correct. I hate it here. This is why the aliens aren't actually coming. This is, I mean, I just want everybody to like be aware that they're not coming. They lock their doors when they drive by this dumpster fire. Or at best, maybe they, you know, as they got close, they, just looked at what was going on and were like, I can't take it. And they just suicide crashed into the planet. Jesus Christ.

All out of fuel. We got to pretend we did this mission. Talking about alien suicides. Yeah, this is America. I mean, it's one and the same of talking about like DeSantis' campaigns. So it's like they're both crashing and burning. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. My friend, the brilliant.

mind, Ellie Mistel, who is the nation's justice correspondent, the host of the legal podcast, Contemptive Court, and the author of, Allow Me to Retort, a Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution. Who needs that little old thing, Ellie? Welcome back. Hi, Danielle. So long time to speak. Nice to talk to you again. It is so good to talk to you again.

Ellie, let me tell you something. You need to do like an Ellie Mistal fan club. meet and greet so that all your like Twitter, X Twitter, whatever the fuck we call it now, fans and everybody can meet in person because the way people hype you up and the way you get people hyped up is something to see and like feel in real life. I wish all of those people could tell my wife how awesome I am. Doesn't always feel like that on the home run. Well, you know, just go on, just go online, you know.

Be like Ron DeSantis. Just be hard online. Exactly. In white cowboy boots. Yeah. And that'll all be great. I want to talk to you today about the fact that apparently we live inside of a banana republic where Republicans in the state of Alabama have basically decided after the Supreme Court case,

I believe it's Alan V. Milligan, where the Supreme Court ruled against Alabama's defense of their bullshit electoral map that would essentially have the black residents of Alabama lose a seat, mitigating their voice and their power in the legislature. The Supreme Court actually found that what Alabama did was, in fact, illegal. Guess what Alabama is deciding to do? We don't take kind of no Supreme Court's around here is what Alabama's doing. A hundred percent said, I don't give a fuck, basically. And so are deciding that there are ways to work around the Supreme Court.

And in a thread that I set out yesterday, I said, so let me get this straight. If the Alabama white racist legislature can decide that they don't want to follow the Supreme Court's decision, you tell me why half of the population of women and people with uteruses have to follow the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. I don't understand why we are all then not able to do exactly what the state of Alabama is doing and say, fuck you, try me. Yeah, I mean, because we're not white, right? Right.

I forgot, I forgot. I don't have a mirror in front of me right now. There's always that, right? I want to start here. The idea that white people follow the Supreme Court rules when it works against white nationalism is just untrue. Historically speaking, white people always do this when the Supreme Court rules. Court makes a ruling that white people don't like, they ignore it. People forget that to integrate schools as was required under Brown v. Board of Ed, Bobby Kennedy had to put boots on the ground,

all right? Remember Ruby Bridges walking into that school with all those, you know, vicious white people yelling and screaming at her, the vicious white people that Ron DeSantis wants to pretend never existed. She was flanked by troops because they had to be sent there because the white people were not going to follow the Supreme Court's rules. And this happens, like, way more often than people think. So we shouldn't be that surprised about Alabama as kind of where I'll start, right? Let's pull back and remember what the Supreme Court actually ruled in Allen v. Milligan, right? Because initially, the Supreme Court allowed Brett Kavanaugh specifically allowed Alabama to use its racist maps in the last election when it was already clear that those maps were racist, right? Now, how were the maps racist?

Well, Alabama happens to be 28% black. See, a lot of, especially a lot of white liberals in the Northeast, but even a lot of black folks that are on the coasts kind of don't realize that most black people still live in the states where their ancestors were enslaved. The blackest state in the union, if it was a state would be D.C., but then the second blackest state is Mississippi. If you look at the top 10, it's Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina. This is where black people live, right? So Alabama is 28% black. Alabama has seven congresspeople. If you do the math, 28% of seven works out to just about two seats on the nose, right? So that suggests that Alabama should have two majority minority seats as opposed to one. Not only that, but the potential majority minority seats are in continuous, like geographical areas.

basically there's a black belt, if you kind of think about where black people live, that kind of sweeps through the former Confederacy. And it goes east to west or west to east if you're coming from the wrong way. And it works laterally, right? And so if you make the districts in Alabama lateral, you very easily end up with two of seven majority minority districts. So, of course, the good white people of Alabama don't draw their districts laterally. they draw them vertically, right?

If you draw districts in Alabama, for the most part, on a north-south axis, what you end up doing is splitting up a contiguous black population into the other six districts, right? So that is fundamentally what the Alabama state legislature did. And when it got to the Supreme Court after Brett Kavanaugh initially said, well, it's too close to the election for us to do anything. So use the racist maps for now. In a fairly surprising decision, the court ruled, with the help of Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts for the first time upholding the Voting Rights Act, saying that, yeah, Alabama's maps were potentially racist and should be thrown out and they should try again, right? So that's the ruling.

But they didn't say specifically they should try again to make sure that there are two majority minority districts, right? They said that their map with only one majority majority district was kind of clearly racist, but they didn't say they had to make two majority minority districts. And so what Alabama is trying to do, the way they're trying to get away with this, is to still go out of their way to not make two majority minority districts by, again, drawing their maps kind of as vertically as possible, but saying that, look, we're following the Supreme Court's rule that the first map was racist. but the Supreme Court didn't order us to make a second district so we don't have to. Do you know what I'm saying? Like the lengths that these motherfuckers will go through in order to ensure supremacy is so wild. And I know, Ellie, I know that at this point, I should not be shocked. At this point, I should have outrage fatigue, but I don't.

Because to boldly defy this Supreme Court, which is a six to three grifton ass court to begin with and then turn around and want to cry law and order and tell the rest of us, but this is the Supreme Court that we, the rest of us need to follow. But white evangelical Christians don't. It's like, how not work? Look, it comes down to power. And it's something that I feel Democrats are particularly poor at both understanding and using, right? Like, you can do. what you do because you have troops and people with guns to back you up. That's what it all comes down to. That's what the Supreme Court has been reduced to because there is no other faith in their rulings,

right? There is no legitimacy from these nine unelected law wizards who have been packed, who have been stacked by Mitch McConnell to produce reliably conservative results. Nobody believes in their legitimacy anymore. But what people do believe in is the fact that there are state governors with state troopers who are going to enforce certain laws and ignore other laws. And that's where we are. And at some point, I'd like the Democrats to figure that out, right? Because as you rightly started, you started with Dobb, you started with the Supreme Court's abortion ruling. There are various ways that a, shall we say, more chesty, more bold Democratic administration might have gone about dealing with the Dobbs decision other than, well, what can we

do? It's pretty sad. Oh, well. Like that's, you. me, that's been the answer. We should maybe one day think about codifying Roe in Congress, even though we don't have the votes to do that. One suggestion that I had in real, before the decision, after the decision, in real time during the decision, was that, you know, the Supreme Court cannot stop abortions from happening on federal property. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. So the, yes, I remember this. Go ahead. Tell the people. So the Biden administration should use all federal property, including military bases, to start providing abortions for people in red states that can't otherwise access.

them. And if they have problems with the Texas bounty hunter law, for instance, where they feel like people will be sued if they help people get medical care, well, then Biden should, again, send in the troops to secure safe passage for women and pregnant people in red states who want to go to a military base to get an abortion. Boom. That's one way of doing what Alabama is doing, understanding that the Supreme Court exists, but thumbing their nose at it and finding a way around it. That's one thing that the Biden administration could have done. They, you will note, haven't done that. They haven't done anything.

That's your problem with the current leadership of the Democratic Party. When they have the opportunity to fight, they look to compromise. I want to also get to the decision with regard to affirmative action. And now these colleges and universities needing to contort themselves and figure out other ways, if in fact they choose to, to look at, right, black and brown candidates coming into their universities and understanding that their path to getting to that school looks very different from a white privilege legacy kid. Danielle, the affirmative of action ruling is so fucked on so many levels. And I want to, I'll start with where you're starting just because what you're suggesting and what college. and universities of conscious have been suggesting, what the decent folks have been suggesting, it's not going to work, right? Because the way the Supreme Court wrote that case, right,

isn't just to end race consciousness in admissions at schools that want to do it, right? It's to prevent schools from coming up with other ways to do the same thing under threat of lawsuit. The Supreme Court not only banned affirmative action, but it set up the next lawsuit coming at colleges and universities, right? So I've written about this in the nation how the only way for a school to show that they are in compliance with the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling will be to performatively decrease black enrollment below the standard of where it is now. Because if they keep the same level of diversity that they have now through any other means, all that's going to happen is that they're going to get sued literally by Stephen Miller,

by the ghoul, you know, Stephen Miller, he will come out of his crypt and file a lawsuit that he's promised to file, alleging that schools are simply doing affirmative action by other means if they maintain the level of diversity that they currently have. So all of these plans and theories are like, oh, we're going to look at college essays, we're going to look at zip codes, we're going to do all of these other things that the Supreme Court didn't explicitly ban. Those are great ideas. but there's a quota now. See, there wasn't a quota before, but there is now. And that quota is you can't have as many black kids as you had last year. Because if you use any of these other strategies, the zip codes, the yes-days, whatever, you're just going to get sued. Let them get sued.

Like, here's my thing is that so then the assumption, again, the assumption that is being made is that black and brown kids don't deserve to be in universities. That's the assumption that is being made. The desire of Steve Miller and Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott and the entirety of the Republican white supremacist cult party is that black and brown people do not have access to education as so long as we can deny it and say that they serve no value, don't have the grades, don't have the means to get in, we can subjugate and keep you at a lower working class level. That's the desire. And so I'm confused about why the defense, why the ability to show this, why the ability of lawyers and to show what it is that they are doing is so difficult.

It's not difficult. The problem is that, as you already mentioned, we have six Christo-fascists in control of the Supreme Court. The very bad people that we're talking about are the people who are in control of the courts. So it's not like you can't show this. It's not like you can't prove this, but you can't win in front of conservative justices on this issue. Who remember, for most of their lives, have had to deal with being, you know, out-competed in some ways, by Black and Brown soon, who have had a rougher time in their lives because they didn't have the all-white, all-male, for the most part, educational opportunities of their forefather assholes. And so, like, you've got a bunch of, for the most part,

white male cis hetero judges who are still pissed off about how, you know, some girl took them to task in law school and embarrassed them, right? They're still nursing those injuries. Man, I've got, I don't know that I can say this on air, but like I went to law school at the same time, at the same law school that Tom Cotton went to law school, all right? And let's just say that Tom Cotton was not a a paragon of respect and intellect in the halls of Harvard Law School when I was there, right? That dude got made fun of in many ways. Because he's a full-fledged dummy. Right?

Okay. And he's still pissed off about it, right? Because it wasn't his white boyfriends making fun of him, right? It was women. It was certainly women. Oh, my God. Sorry. I know.

Try not to get sued. I personally have made fun of Tom Concoff. Law School. How about that? And so, like, that's the kind of dude that remembers that stuff when he gets a chance to make it harder for people like me and for women to get into schools. People remember perhaps the Katanji Brown confirmation hearings. And people might remember the testiest exchange of those hearings was between Jackson and Ted Cruz. Ted Cruz asked her one just ridiculous question. And she basically just took this pregnant side. it's like and you could hear on that side that she was like, I'm about to kill this motherfucker.

But then she like had to pull it back and like answer his question. And people didn't like I was watching that. And I understood they went to law school together. That's a fight they've been having for 30 years. Katanji Brown Jackson has had to deal with that fucking idiot. People forget that these elite law schools, especially these elite colleges, they're very small communities, right? Everybody knows everybody. Like it's a click, right? And so like when you have, you know, a Harvard educated judicial appointment and a Harvard educated senator, like you're talking about some rifts that go back, you know, they got some history, right? That's the kind of motivation that a lot of these judges are coming with. And so it is in their personal interest, let's put it that way, to try to revert education into a whites only, males only,

kind of situation, and that's exactly what they're doing. Because that's the only way that they can compete. So instead of using that energy and resource to go to therapy, which you clearly fucking need, you decide to take it out on the rest of us. But can I often just say before we move on, Danielle, that it's, this is also a white liberal problem. Like, I'm, I'm dunking on conservatives because they're the kind of worst versions of themselves. But this is a white people problem, right? This is the most racist clap trap. I have heard white liberals feel comfortable to say to my face. Who knows what they say when I'm not in the room? No, we have an idea. Comfortable to say to my face involves their fucking views about affirmative action and how that stopped little Timmy

from getting into, you know, Dartmouth. They hold those grudges for real and they are sure. I mean, sure that the reason their kid didn't get into Stuyveson, you know, super high school in Manhattan, or the Dalton School in Manhattan, or Harvard University, or Yale, they're certain. It's because some low-account black person that probably didn't work as hard as little Timmy took their spot. They are certain of that. Immigrant families, right? Immigrant families who believe that education is the silver bullet in this country will say

the worst kinds of things about the culture and work ethic of black people if little Julia doesn't get into Harvard and they think that some black kid took their spot. Like, this is not just a conservative problem. This is a issue where people, when their own kids do not get the full faith and credit of being white, do not get the full faith and credit of their privilege. People lose their shit. And that's a huge reason why affirmative action was banned. I know that we have have to leave it here right now, but it is just where we are, Ellie, you have two boys who are far away from college, you know, at this point. But just quickly, where do you think we will be in the next five years, 10 years when you're getting ready to send your kids away? Well, my two kids are

double legacies at Harvard, so suck it. I love it. I love it. I I love it. But seriously, I am not as concerned as other parents are, other black parents are or need to be. One of the reasons is that, yes, I have two little black kids. And I have, I am lucky to have resources, right? My wife's a lawyer, you know, I'm, you know, not living under a bridge. Like, I'm going to be able to throw resources at test prep, at private test prep, at whatever the hell. At band camp.

So they have that breadth and depth. I'm going to be able to throw resources at those little princelings that will help with them along in their attempts to get into schools. A. B, I think partially having gone to Harvard, I'm kind of like, I'm not as like, oh, yeah, they have to get into Harvard. Like, there are other schools, man. If they ended up going to Michigan, you know, and actually went to a real school with a real football team, that might be cool. So, like, you know, I'm not as like, I think partially be kind of. I've been there and done that. I'm not as like, oh, my God, if they don't get into Harvard,

what will that happen to them? Like, they'll be fine. And then three, this is something that I hadn't really, I didn't really think about when I was applying to school. But I will make sure that my kids at least think about it, is going to an HBCU. Yeah. Part of this problem is that we as black people shouldn't necessarily be desperate to get into places where we ain't where we ain't wanted. There are good schools out there. There are good HBCUs out there, which don't subject black people to the kinds of things that some of the kinds of things that we're talking about, right? And especially if you kind of think about education, not as college as the end point, but college as the starting point, right? A college education that has to be buttressed with postgraduate education,

potentially at a professional school, like a law school or medical school, or a PhD program. If you think about college as like a 10-year thing as opposed to a four-year thing, you know, spending the first four years at an HBCU, it kind of is not the worst idea in the goddamn world. So I think my kids will both have options that I had and options that I didn't have. They'll figure it out. But again, they'll figure it out because I have, at the end of the day, just frankly, money that I can throw at them, right? Yeah. And the reality is that everyone else isn't as privileged.

And that is the point. Ellie Mistel, always a pleasure, my friend. Thank you. Thank you for making the time for the new abnormal. appreciate you. Thanks so much for having me. On Monday, the Bullwarks, Tim Miller, host of the Next Level podcast, wrote an intriguing piece in which he said there are two GOP primaries happening and only one is real.

And he's here to tell us what he means and maybe talk about some other stuff if he behaves himself. Tim, thanks for joining us. Uh-oh, that's a big F. Good to be with Andy. How are you doing, man? I'm doing all right. I think you know, Tim, that I get paid to ask the incisive questions.

Okay, I do. So I'm going to start by asking you what? you mean by a fake primary and why you think it exists. Yeah. The point I was trying to make is that there's this fantasy primary that is being propped up by a lot of rich white right wing donors who want the Republican Party to be something other than what it is. And the real Republican primary is the competition for voters who make up the majority

of the party. These voters are MAGA. They liked Donald Trump. They might be open to having a different candidate, but they want somebody who gives them all the Trump stuff that they like, you know, lib hating, you know, making people like Andy Levy cry, you know, Putin feel. Like, this is what they want. All the stuff that the big donors hate about Trump, this is that, that's the stuff that

the Republican voters were going to show up and vote in Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina like. Not 100% of them, but a vast majority of them. So anybody that can't appeal to that MAGA voter, the person that likes all of Donald Trump's cruelty and all of his derangement, isn't really. really participating in a campaign to win at all. They're participating in an effort to make them feel good about their party identification and, you know, they're participating in an effort to put a pinky in the mouth of a bunch of rich finance guys who don't want to like see this really

distorted and gross reality of today's Republican Party. Let's start with the fake primary. Which candidates are in the fake primary? Nikki Haley is in the fake primary. She is a pipe dream. I don't know, people who like Nikki Haley, for the most part, are not Republicans anymore. She would be the leader. You know, obviously, all the second tier can't, the Doug Bergams of the world are in the fake primary. I think that Tim Scott is probably in the fake primary. He's the one that is the most teetering.

Yes. But he's being propped up by the Oracle founder who's given 60 million to his super pack. And it's like, you could give this guy $6 billion. It's not going to matter. The only way that Tim Scott wins is if we get the well done cheeseburger of our dreams that kills Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis collapses and he ends up being the last one standing. I got of luck, right? He is there. All of the wishcasting for people off the sidelines, Glenn Youngkin, Brian Kemp. The mag of voters are not pining for someone who has a half-zipped

sweater and hangs out with hedge fund billionaires to come off the sidelines and save the party. They're happy with the party. They're happy with Donald Trump. That's why Donald Trump has a majority support right now. So that whole fantasy politics of how someone might come in and do better than Ron DeSantis, it is just a total hallucination by folks that are in the donor class and in the strategist class. Okay. So before we get to the real primary, I kind of feel, is Chris Christie sort of running in his own third primary?

Yeah. Thanks for mentioning that. Chris Christie, I don't fit in either two camps because he is running for a different reason. He sees what is happening clearly within the party. And he is running a suicide campaign to try to kill Donald Trump and also to get in from himself because he likes attention. But, you know, most good deeds also have a little bit of self-serving nature. Especially in politics. So as I wrote in the piece, there are reasons to run for president that are not really believing you can win, right? There is, you want to raise the

salience of an issue. You know, you want to sell more books. You want to, you know, I think Jesse Jackson, I give this example, 1984, kind of wanted to prove that somebody that had a coalition of minority voters, a Rainbow Coalition actually had a constituency that could win. Those are legitimate reasons to get in as long as you're not lying to yourself and lying to voters about while you're in there. And I think Chris Christie doesn't really think he's going to win the nomination. I think that he thinks that it's useful that somebody like him making the case against Donald Trump because all these other guys are too big of pussies to do it. And so I think that's a useful exercise. You know, again, I think that if some of these other candidates, you know, were as honest about their campaigns as

Christy, then, you know, I wouldn't have had to write the piece. Yeah, no, that makes sense. Okay, let's get to the real primary because it's obviously Trump. It's obviously DeSantis. And you've got a third candidate in there. Yeah, Vivek. This is the funny thing, right? The people who think they're serious, Andy, the strategists, you know, the guys that have built beach houses that are doing all the TV ads that everybody hates, you know, that worked for W and worked, you know, for Romney. Like, they all think that, oh, you know, we're running serious campaigns with Nikki Haley and with Tim Scott and we know what we're doing. And it's like, these guys don't fucking know what they're doing at all.

The voters do not want those candidates. They do not care about those candidates. They kind of like Vivek. If you spend time like I do, listening to MAGA media, listening to all the fucking Godforsaken Daily Wire podcast and Bannon and going to Republican voter events, the engaged Republican-based activists like Vivek, he's an outsider, he is MAGA, he does not smell like he's from the Bush-era neocon party that they don't want anymore. He's willing to scratch their culture war itch. And so I think right now, if I had to bet on who gets the second most delegates in this

primary, I might vet on Vivek. And I think that it's really close between him and DeSantis. Yeah, that he is light. And he is actually speaking to MAGA voters where there are. He's not deluding himself into the idea that, you know, whatever the globalist tax cut Murdoch family, you know, wants the party to be. He's speaking to Republican voters about the things they care about. That's not what I care about. Vivek is not my cup of tea, but he is actually campaigning for the voters that will decide who the Republican nominee is. And if you listen to these MAGA media outlets, they like Trump, obviously. They really liked DeSantis, so that's starting to wane. And they like Vivek and they like RFK Jr. who's running in the wrong primary. If RFK Jr. was running in the Republican primary, I think he'd be running a strong third right now, maybe second. That's interesting. Yeah, that was actually going to be my next question, but you've answered it. I just want to point out that you are the second bulwark person I've had on who feels this way about Vivek. Jonathan last said, this was a couple months ago, I think, said absolutely do not sleep on him. Yeah.

Are you all just secret friends of his rapping? DeVake. Boy, I was pretty disappointed in DeVak, actually. I watched this video, and I hope you guys can cut in just a little audio for folks. I was ready to be on board with him wholeheartedly and kind of go to one of his shows. But they leaked pretty clearly a self-leak, I think. I think they're pretending like this was Apo, but I'm pretty sure this was Vivi. himself who leaked this. It was a video of himself rapping to lose yourself by Eminem during the early

aughts. And he is off beat, off key, and his stage presence is unappealing. So it has nothing to do with his rapping for me. It is just simply that I actually listen to Republican voters. I'm not a commentator for the National Review who lives in New York City, who only talks to like-minded people like me who wants the Republican Party to go back to what it was in 1983. Because I can understand why those people wouldn't take Vivek seriously. But if you actually talk to people that show up to Republican events, you would understand that it's Nikki Haley that shouldn't be taken seriously. I just want to know it as just a little side note. You said it's not the wrapping for you, leaving open the possibility that it is the wrapping for Jonathan Last. For sure. I don't think

Jonathan Last is a rap connoisseur. So it's possible that Vivek is an entry level. kind of thing for him. He's an on-ramp. Do you view this primary as different from the norm? Because, look, let's be honest, in either party's primaries, for as long as I can remember, there's always a bunch of candidates who have no business thinking they're going to be the nominee. But it feels like you think this is different than that.

I do. Because here's the thing. Like, even, so I worked for John Huntsman in 2012, right? And you might say that we were running in a fantasy primary. Right. But at that time, there was at least a plausible path for everybody in these races, right? Because the type of electorate that was in the Republican Party, let's go to 2008, for example. They plausibly could have nominated, I think, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani. All of those folks were trying to appeal to the real Republican electorate. But the Republican electorate has changed since that, right? Like the time, many of the voters who were there for John Huntsman, John McCain, all the candidates, I worked for don't identify as Republicans anymore, right? And they're not going to be participating in this primary. Meanwhile, a whole new batch of people that were brought into the party by Trump are now the most rabid activists in the party. And they want something totally different from the old classical

liberal type Republicans. Like, they like John McCain less than they like RFK, right? You know, and this is a totally different type of person. So what is different about this primary is that you have a category of people. Gosh, I can't believe I haven't mentioned Mike Pence. Mike Pence is so over. then I forgot to mention them. You have a category of people like Mike Pence and Nikki Ely and Tim Scott that are trying to run to win the primary of a party that doesn't exist anymore. They're trying to appeal to something that they wish existed that doesn't. And so I think that is a category difference from what we see in the past. And part of the reason why it's different is because we've had this realignment within the parties that was already happening slowly, but that Trump's supercharged.

It's happened in the last eight or ten years. And I think that there are a lot of people who just aren't willing to accept that and ready to accept that yet. And they need to go through a few more cycles of pain before they do. That's why I think that this is a difference. And the other big difference here is that the potential nominee is a person that tried a coup and tried to end our democracy. Right. And so don't fucking tell me that you're the serious one, that you're the normal one and that you're in this primary to win, but you're not willing to criticize the frontrunner who is going to be the most abnormal, dangerous major party nominee of our lifetimes. And so, like, I think that is another category, that category difference that in some ways it's actively harmful, in my view, to kind of perpetuate

this fantasy that there's a normal primary existing because of what's going to happen at the end of it if Donald Trump becomes a nominee. It wouldn't have really been that big of a difference if Mitt Romney or John McCain or Rudy had been the nominee or Fred Thompson, right? Like on balance, like that's all within the band of normalcy. This is not that. Right. And when you say Rudy, you're, of course, speaking of the old Rudy. Yeah, the pre-alcohol poisoning pre-in-Rodd Rudy. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

Yeah, exactly. It's funny, you bring up Mike Pence, and I keep saying, like, I cannot remember in my lifetime, really, a candidate running in a primary where a not insignificant number of the voters would like to straight up murder him. They'd like to kill him. Yeah. They wanted him to be dead. And he's not even going to make the debate stage.

If that's not a wake-up call to how much is. Party has changed. The only thing that Mike Pence has done wrong was not go along with the coup. That's it. Mike Pence maybe wouldn't have been the nominee, but he was in good graces with the party and would have been a perfectly plausible candidate when he was Donald Trump Stoge. The only thing he didn't do was go along with the coup. And now he can't even get enough donors to get on the debate stage. He's behind Doug Bergham. Okay. This is insane. And you know, this, your point about them wanting to kill Pence, I got into an argument, let's call a Rove on a panel a couple months ago. And he's, you know, the king of the fantasy primary, you know, and I was saying to him, I was like,

Carl, would you go to a Trump rally? Like, would you feel safe at a Trump rally? And, you know, he didn't really answer. The obvious answer to me is I think no. Yeah, sure. If the voters who are poised to nominate somebody are so extreme that you wouldn't even deign to mingle with them without security, maybe you're in the wrong party. Or maybe this isn't the party for you anymore. Anyway, that's just something to think about. No, absolutely. Okay, can we talk about Nate Hockman for a second? Is that okay? Sure. For those who don't know, Nate Hockman is the DeSantis staffer who was fired a few days ago after secretly making, apparently, and then tweeting out a video that ended with DeSantis' face in the middle of a Zonanrod or Sunwheel, which is an ancient Norse and Celtic image. That was, you know, used by the Nazi party, the S.A, the SS back in Nazi Germany.

My question is, who could have seen this coming except you and everyone else? Yeah, except I literally wrote an article. It's like, okay, DeSantis hired Nate Hockman back in March, and that should be a sign. Look, at some level, I'm torn about this whole story because Nate is a 25-year-old kid that, I guess kid is maybe an exaggeration for 25-year-old, but he's a 25-year-old who was given way too much power and way too much attention too fast. And what you have here right now is if you're a 20-something coming up in the Republican Party, the only path for you is MAGA. Right. Like that, your whole life has been Donald Trump. I mean, like, he was in high school when Donald Trump came down the escalator, right? And so if you want to succeed in the party right now, what is in vogue among young Republicans is very Nazi adjacent, you know, or at least I maybe ironically Nazi is a better way to put it. And there's a whole club of 20 something, mostly white boys that kind of do this, oh, you know, edgy, you know, meme lord kind of stuff, you know, in to try to show that they're a contrarian, that they're not part of woke culture. And there's a lot of dark stuff there. And the line between, you know, kind of being funny and edgy and being racist and

Nazi, you know, ends up being pretty damn thin. And so, you know, DeSantis goes out and hires a bunch of these people. Nate was the most prominent among them. And I wrote about this back in March. I said, this tells you where DeSantis is going to go. He's going to play footsie with this alt-right crowd. And that's the type of campaign he's going to run. And that's the type of campaign that these guys ran on his behalf and I guess they got a little too hot in the kitchen for Ron. And so a few of them, it's not just, it's not just Nate, Will Chamberl and some others are now out on their ass. I think that this says a lot about where the party's going is that it's like that the mates of the world are the up and coming, you know, kind of young Republican staffers. So if you want,

if you want a little fright, the guy doing the Nazi memes was on the come up. He might, he might have hit a little snag with the firing this week. But, but, but, That's where the energy is on the young right. It's pretty alarming. Well, yeah. And now, of course, I've seen a lot of people defending him, people like Glenn Greenwald, people at the Federalist, the Claremont types, etc. Glenn Greenwald was Glenn Greenwald's defense?

Yay, Nazis? Or was it like, oh, the Ukrainians can do it, but Nate Hochman can't? That was it. It was the Ukrainian thing. Yeah. It's bad when you're so predictable that I cannot see your tweet and know what your tweet is. Yes. No, it was utterly predictable.

And, you know, the Federalist and the Claremont. are basically defending him in the he didn't know what he was doing. It's the he didn't know what he was doing defense. The problem with that is that he had already gotten burned on this. He was on a Twitter space with Nick Fuentes, who is an unabashed white nationalist. On that Twitter space, Nate was saying, oh, sometimes you go a little too far, Nick, but I think you're based in like the, and your influence on young conservatives is much better than Ben Shapiro's globalist Jewish influence on young conservatives.

and the dispatch wrote about that article and then I wrote about the audio once I was sent the longer version of it. And so he got totally burned by this already. The DeSantis people hired him anyway. And then he turns out doing a meme that is very Nick Fuentes adjacent, right? And so it's like, yeah, maybe he didn't know exactly what the, all of the historical implications with the Sondrad, but this is an smart young guy that has multiple times been caught, you know, with his hand in the Nazi cookie jar. What kind of cookies did Hitler like? I don't know. Something vegan, I guess? Shortbread? Yeah, I don't know. I was not prepared to answer what kind of cookies Hitler would on this episode. Well, as you're the interviewer anyway. Well, exactly. You know, it's a little unfair

for you to put me on the spotlight. This is a gotcha question. That's what this is. This is a gotcha question. My thing is, okay, fine, you don't know it's an outright Nazi symbol. It's a fascistic symbol. Just look at it. Come on. You know what you're doing there. You're like you said, you're playing with fire. And, you know, look, we've gone through this on the left, I think, with some of the irony bros who end up sounding not any different than the things that they are, I guess, think they're satirizing. And it is such a fine line. Like, you can, you cosplay as something for so long, you know, and suddenly you are that thing. For sure. And I think that also, when you have a platform, like, you have to understand that there are going to be people consuming that

that might not be in on the joke, you know? And I think that at some level, they know that there are some people that aren't in on the joke. And that that's what they like about it. That's what's edgy about it. That they're, you know, throwing out this, you know, alt-right Nazi kind of material and that there are young, easily, you know, potentially radicalized young men that are unhappy with society that feel put upon by woke culture that think that they're getting screwed over in college admissions by affirmative action who, you know, who this is going to resonate with. And so, you know, this is, look, this is some lesson I learned a long time ago when I went to all boys school, right? You know, it might seem funny, you know, to be like, hey, I can make it, I can make an edgy joke or a racist joke because

I know in my heart, I'm not racist. But like, the problem is, is that it still perpetuates the racial animus and these feelings and that there's a reason why the joke is edgy. And there's, and that not, you know, everybody gets to have a full view of what is happening. in your heart and brain and that we've seen plenty of evidence of young men who've been radicalized by this kind of thing and taking it to violent ends. Look at Buffalo, at Christchurch. No, absolutely. And look, the fact that he did this, you know, very on the slide, to me, sort of mitigates against him not knowing that this was something that he shouldn't have done. If this wasn't problematic, why did you have to put it on a, like a fake DeSantis scam?

Like Twitter account, right? Like you would have put it on your own Twitter account. Put it on the DeSantis Twitter account, right? Like it shows that they had to use an anonymous Twitter account to kind of get this out there that they knew that there was, you know, something that was over the line. Tim, thanks so much for being here. Always a pleasure. Tim Miller, we love you.

We love what you're doing over at the bulwark. And please come back anytime. Andy, thanks so much, brother. We'll talk to you soon. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Who is your fuck that guy to round out this good, good, week.

My fuck that guy is not something I'm happy about, but I have to do it. It's Ice Cube, Danielle. Mm-hmm. Cube, what are you doing? He don't know. What are you doing, Cube? He's taking rides with Tucker Carlson for Tucker's little Twitter show. He's talking about how he refused to get vaccinated.

Why are you riding around a car with Tucker Carlson? Like, regardless of what you're saying, what are you doing? I just, I don't understand it. I've given Cube a pass for a long time because he, every once in a while he says something that's, you know, it's the minimum, it's borderline anti-Semitic. And I just keep thinking, you know, he doesn't mean that. He just doesn't, you know, I just, I keep giving him passes and I can't do it anymore. No more passes for you, Cube. I know you'll be absolutely devastated by losing a white podcast host. but you've done it this time and I can't take it anymore

I don't know what you're doing man and you should stop it until you do fuck that guy My whole thing with Ice Cube is Have you gotten a lobotomy? I know What in the fuck? Like this is not the Ice Cube

that I grew up with This is not the socially conscious Like politically astute rapper that I grew up with Even when he turned into the movie star and, you know, bringing really thoughtful, good black entertainment and movies. Like, what the fuck? Like, the money can't be that good for you to have lost your goddamn mind and sitting in a backseat with Tucker Carlson who 10, 20 years ago would have been calling for your lynching. So stop.

Did you mean 10, 20 minutes ago? Yes. Just one more thing about Cube is that he said some really dumb. stuff when he was young and there was a whole thing when easy e got AIDS there was a whole bunch of homophobic stuff that came out of his mouth and it was awful and he has since i thought i mean he had since grown and has like repudiated that shit and talked about how like he doesn't even like listening to no vaseline which was a unbelievably famous disc track aimed at easy and a bunch of the other nwa guys but i don't know me now it just feels like in a lot of ways he hasn't grown and again

Oh, fuck that guy. Yeah, 100%. So who's your fuck that guy, Daniel? Well, we haven't talked about this person in a while, Katara, George Santos. I actually had forgotten about him, but apparently the New York Times hasn't. Because in a recent piece entitled how George Santos used political connections to fuel get-rich schemes, I mean, obviously, like, are we dull dumb? George Santos came to be because of Donald Trump, because of the way that we have allowed any elected office to be a grifting machine or non-elected office.

Looking at you, Clarence Thomas and Alito, essentially you have grifters that are looking and saying, oh, all I need to do is, you know, say some things that I will never do for these constituents. they'll give me a bunch of money. People will start to see my name elevated. I can cozy up to donors and then I can defraud everyone. And Donald Trump's been doing it and he seems to be fine because he's not in jail. So I can do it too. That's George Santos in a nutshell, except he doesn't have as much money and as many lawyers as Donald Trump does, which is why he finds himself in the position that he's in. But, you know, he's gotten caught up in cryptocurrency. He's gotten caught up in just like, you name it, he is basically the Nigerian prince of Congress. Like he is just like, he's a fucking fraud. So I don't know why anybody's shocked. And it just shows us how broken our

system is that this man is still in Congress, that he's still in Congress. That he's still in Congress. And he's under indictment. I swear to God. Yep, the aliens, they don't come by. They lock their fucking doors. And for that reason, George Santos is my, fuck that guy. Yeah, it's just unbelievable. You know, he did a lot of this stuff before he got elected.

And all right, you can sort of, I guess, give people a pass. We're not realizing who he was. But he's continuing to do it since he's been elected. And it's like, at that point, I ain't feeling sorry for anybody who gives him. a dime. No. I don't know what is going through your brain when you say, I want to be in business with George Santos. Like, that's, you know, you deserve to lose all of your money. And I don't think it's a surprise, as you pointed out, that crypto is involved in this. I just like, if ever a grifter met the perfect vehicle for a grift, it's George Santos and crypto. It's like two awful tastes that

go together. Right in it like a donkey. Absolutely. So, but yeah, the fact, like you said, the fact that he is still sitting in Congress and talking about running for your election is just absolutely unbelievable. Fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our, 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

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