The Daily Beast Podcast - The Case for Arnold Schwarzenegger Being Speaker of the House

Episode Date: October 24, 2023

This week on The New Abnormal, Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella makes sense of the clown show that has become the Republican Party—which he used to be a part of—and its attempt to find a new Speaker of the House. Then, The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard tells us about how Scholastic has caved to the far right and made it easier for schools to ban diverse books at their book fairs. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

What an excellent show we have today. Democratic strategist and LA Times contributor, Kurt Bargdala, sits down with us to try and make sense of the clown show that has become the Republican Party, which he used to be a part of, and its attempt to find a new speaker of the House. Then The Intercepts Natasha Letterd is here to tell us all about how Scholastic has came to the far right and made it easy for schools to be on diverse books at their school book fairs. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, it's not fat shaming.

It's actually fat-loving. In case you're wondering why I'm saying that, listeners, that is a quote from Arizona Republican Congressman David Schweiker, who has just a brilliant idea for how to solve the nation's obesity. crisis. And that is to make the drugs that we know as Ozzypic, Wegevi, and others, available to people on Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, et cetera. Okay, this is an idea. I will give him that much. This is absolutely an idea. I guess these, uh, I think these drugs will become generic. The patent will expire, I think, next year. So he's talking about wanting to do it then because the price will come

way down. It should go without saying, and then I'll toss it over to you, Danielle, these are diabetes drugs. Yes. These are drugs for people with a disease. And they also happen to cause you to lose weight. According to the studies that we know of, they cause you to lose weight right up until the time you stop taking them and then you put the weight back on. So basically what Schweiker is saying is these people would have to take this drug for the rest of their life to keep the weight off. And we already know about some side effects of the medication. We probably don't know about all of them. Take it away, you. So, I mean, here's the thing. One, look, these weight loss drugs that come around ever so often, everyone is looking for a magic pill, a magic shot. And that is basically what Ozempic and all of these are

right now. To your point, which is logical and truthful, is that once you go off of these medications, the weight comes back on. And if like other medications in the past, not only does it come back on, but oftentimes you gain more weight than you actually lost. So let me take you back in a time machine to the Obama era, which, you know, if we remember, former First Lady Michelle Obama was on a major campaign to reduce childhood obesity, to get fresh foods into our schools, to get people to move.

It was the let's move campaign and get people active. Why? Because better quality nutrition and movement are going to be the best ways to come. obesity, whether it's in children or whether it's an adult. Mind you, the Republican Party was the same party right now that's wanting to hand out shots to everybody that said that Michelle Obama was trying to steal your lunch, trying to steal your dessert and make your children unhappy. So it's just amazing that you fast forward nearly 10 years and they're like wanting to hand

out medications that you don't even know what the fucking side effects are like, you know, pest dispensers. but when it came to actually creating healthy lifestyles, which will last you longer than these shots will, the Republican Party was anti-combatting obesity through healthy means. So they're just full of shit, is essentially what I'm saying. This Ozempic for all, you know, not fat shaming, but fat-loving, brought to you by the people that wanted your kids to eat pink slime in school.

Just want to just want to say that. Yeah, and this is the anti-vaccine party. This is the party that doesn't want to. You're going to get shots. But now they want you to get shots. You know, Schweiker was opposed to COVID vaccine mandate. But he's all about letting people on Medicare and Medicaid and whatever, having them shoot themselves up every week to lose some weight. Yeah, some interesting stuff there.

And I'm pretty sure, you know, there's some type of kickback involved here. So let's just be clear that these people do not do anything that doesn't result in cash in their pockets or gold bricks in their closets. I know it was a Democrat with the gold brick, but you get my point. Yes, I do get your point. All right, let's move on to slightly more important stuff. That is a subject that our producer Jesse Cannon refers to as, I believe, it's the dance of the nine fools. Is that correct, Jesse? Talking about, of course, the nine Republican members of the House who have now thrown their hats into the ring to become the next speaker of the House now that Jim Jordan has once again failed.

So we got nine people. None of them are really big names in terms of like ordinary people knowing who they are. There are some Tom Emmer is the, I think he's the whip right now. So he's obviously known to the people in his party. But we got nine people here. None of them of exceedingly great stature. And most of them, I believe seven of them are sort of, what do you call them? Election deniers, Danielle. Is that what we call them? Yes. Seven of them. voted to overturn the 2020 free and fair election of President Biden. And no one knows who these people are. I would argue that some people inside of their own party don't know who they are,

which means, and in folks, all jokes aside, the reality is that this is a job that comes with great prominence, requires great skills at negotiating, requires fundraising capability, the ability to get on television and spread your party's message. And when I'm looking at this roster, not only do I not know who these people are. Also, can somebody explain to me why the fucking New York Times decided to run the roster as if we were trying to choose like the high school athlete of the year? Like why it was like it started out as and so and so 69 years old used to play hockey. I don't actually give a fuck.

It actually does not matter to me what sport or hobby. These people have it. It's not a pageant, folks. We are speakerless, right? It's like, and he looks good in a speedo. Exit. Don't care. It's really extraordinary that out of all of the Republicans,

those of which make headlines on a regular basis, that the people that we're talking about right now in The Dance of the Nine Fools, there's only one person I think that maybe they garnered 81 votes when there was a vote that was taking place like that they pulled at internally 81. You need 217 to get to speaker. Byron Donald's, I believe, got 20 votes,

and that's from people inside of Florida. Again, you need 217. So I don't know, Andy. I think that we're going out of 2023 and into 2024, in all possibility without a Speaker of the House, because this is week three and this is the best that they've offered up. So there's this thing that always goes around whenever there's a speaker vote, and that is that there's nothing in the rules that says the Speaker has to be a member of Congress, and that's why, you know, we've been hearing Donald Trump's name floated, whatever. I think I have the right pick. I think it should be Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Oh dear. Because he has experience being a kindergarten cop. And I think that's exactly what this speaker is going to be. It's trying to keep a bunch of kindergarten kids in line and letting them know when it's nap time and when they have to drink their milk and whatever. Because this is just, like you said, you're probably right. I mean, I don't know who is going to get to 217 out of this crew. And that means, yeah, the house will probably be speakerless for a while. And I guess we're going to find out what that means exactly because we've never been in this position before.

I don't know. I mean, I'm like, I was looking through this list of names. The only name that I really, I mean, I recognize most of them, but the only name I really knew was Pete Sessions. And that's only because I think he's been in Congress since before I was born. Mm-mm. But seven of them voted to throw out the results of the 2020 president election. One of them who didn't is Tom Emmer, who's the majority whip. He did not vote for that.

But he did sign on to a Supreme Court amicus brief in support of throwing out votes in various states. So let's go for eight out of nine in terms of election. deniers. And the funny thing is that the ninth person probably has no chance of winning because they're not an election denier. So the Republican Party is just, I mean, we saw it over the weekend. We were talking about this before we started recording. You know, you're starting to see a lot of Republicans talking about how bad this is making them look and how childish they all seem. And for Republicans to actually realize that, man, you know things are bad. It's looking at the fact that this couldn't come essentially at a worst time. We're getting ready to enter into election season in a major way. And Republicans' argument

is give us the gavel, give us more seats because we know how to run government. They can't pick a fucking speaker. What is your message to the American people as to why they should vote for you? You have a majority in the House. It's four seats, but it's still the majority in the House. And this is what you've been doing. So like when I'm looking at this, what is it? that the Republicans are showing the American people right now. What if they put forward? Okay, so they decided to avert a government shutdown for right now. Aside from that, we have Hunter Biden. We have a couple of really contentious committee hearings that we've seen. We have absolutely no real legislation that has come forward. And then you have been speakerless as we're counting heading into one full

month while there are international crises as well as crises in the United States. I don't understand what your pitch is to the American people in election season as to why we need more and not less Republicans. Yeah. Well, it sounds to me like in that case, this couldn't be coming at a better time. For Democrats, 100%. I, e. for the country at this point. I do have to correct something I said earlier. I said that the ninth person probably didn't have a chance because they were not an election denialist. I misspoke. The ninth person is Austin Scott, who also signed on to that question from Cordomique's brief along with Tom Emmer, so it's nine out of nine. But yes, back to what you were saying. We've got flashpoint situations across the globe, either one of which

could conceivably spread to a wider conflict. And this is what the Republicans are doing in the House. And as you said, that's not even to mention all the various crises going on here at home. They can't govern. They've shown that. And anyone who votes for them, is basically saying they don't care. And that's where they are right now. And look, so much of this, I think, is because all these guys, and it is nine men, all these guys are enthrall to Donald Trump. So you get seven of them voting to overturn the election, two of them signing onto

Supreme Court brief. Who knows how many of those nine actually believe that shit and how many of them are just like, well, I got to do this or Trump will post mean things about me on his busted ass Twitter, truth social. Either way, it's pathetic. But they're all enthralled to him just as the party as a whole is. And I'm not discounting Donald Trump's chances of being president again because they're way too strong for my liking. But at some point, it's going to hurt them in other races. And we already saw that it's already started. It started in 2020 and then it continued in 2022 where the red wave that was supposed to happen never really materialized. And so a lot of this down ballot stuff is where. they're seeing the effects of being enthralled to Donald Trump. But it's not stopping them because none of them have any courage and none of them have any principles.

So they just, they look at this and they say, oh, Donald Trump is popular. I have to support him 100%. And if that means saying things that I know aren't true, I will go ahead and say them. And that's going to work for a while. It has worked for a while. It got McCarthy to the speakership. And then, of course, it got McCarthy out of the speakership. So they all suck and none of them have any principles.

And at some point, I think it's going to come back and bite them in the ass. I think that we've reached the biting of the ass part. Like I just, I don't see how this gets any better. I think that it gets worse as time goes on. And just to remind you that everyone that Donald Trump put his Midas touch on, it was more like the touch of Medusa and they all died on the vine. Like that he didn't have any winners that he endorsed for elections, whether it was the Senate, whether it was Secretary of State or what have you, they all lost.

So they want to keep on that streak. Keep on, keeping on for 2024. Yep. And the other person that's going to keep on keeping on is Donald Trump when it comes to lying on his busted ass Twitter, truth social. As we know last week, Cindy Powell and then later Kenneth, I am honestly unclear how to pronounce his last name. I'm just going to say Cheesebro because it's more fun. So Cindy Powell and Kenneth Cheesebro, both of whom were. lawyers for Donald Trump pled guilty in the Georgia cases and have agreed to testify against him.

Donald Trump took to Twitter, sorry, to True Social over the weekend and said, despite the fake news reports to the contrary and without even reaching out to ask the Trump campaign, Ms. Powell was not my attorney and never was. And then, of course, people pretty instantly found an old post of Trumps from 2020 in which he welcomed Sidney Powell, among others, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, to his legal team to work on, quote, the legal effort to defend our right to free and fair elections. So this is what he does. We know this. And I've already seen people who, you know, because there are marks out there who will just take his word for anything.

I've now seen this story spreading from people. Oh, well, Sidney Powell actually never was his lawyer. She was. She very clearly was. And he's very clearly lying. But this is what he does. Yeah. And the tweet was from November 14th, 2020.

and here's exactly what it said, quote, a truly great team added to our other wonderful lawyers and representatives to work on the, quote, legal effort to defend, in all caps, our right to free and fair elections. This was when welcomed Powell, Giuliani, and Ellis to his team. I just, you know, the fact is that you realize that people are going to believe whatever it is that they want to believe about Donald Trump. It doesn't matter if he says it in his own words. It doesn't matter if he puts it on his broke down social. It doesn't matter. But the law

is pretty fucking clear. And I think that he should start getting, if not already, pretty concerned about the fact that one by one, just as Fannie Willis had indicated, these people are pleading guilty because they realize a couple of things. They're pockets are not as deep as Donald Trumps are. They don't have the bandwidth to continue on with bullshit maneuvering and slow walking and these things because guess what? They don't have a bunch of marks that is their constituency that are paying the bills. Donald Trump is gripped it on T-shirts and mugs and rolling out emails every other day

because he has this loyal base of people that are willing to put up money for him. Yeah. When you're looking at Powell and. and Giuliani and Chesboro and all of these other names, these people don't have a constituency to gripped off of. And Donald Trump's not coming to their aid. So as they begin to plead guilty one by one by one, the walls are closing in on Donald Trump.

And I think that we're going to see more and more of his outrageous, broke down all capital. I don't know, maybe the orange will start sweating down from his face the way it did Giuliani style, yeah. assuming that Trump never pleads guilty and that this case does get to trial, all of this is going to be under oath on the record. And so he can lie only wants on truth social and face no repercussions. But is he going to lie on the stand? Are the people around him going to lie on the stand and commit perjury for him?

Or are they going to actually tell the truth? And we know now, I mean, Sidney Powell is going to get up there and she's already agreed to testify against him. So has cheese bro. And by the way, I need to say, I need to. start calling them Cheeseboro and Cracken, like Cheese and Crackers. So you've got Cheeseboro and Cracken, and both of them, you know, who served in some capacity as his attorneys in regard to election stuff, are now going to testify against him. And like you said, this is the beginning of the walls closing in.

And, you know, a lot of this is going to obviously depend on Trump not getting reelected, after which he could, you know, I'm sure make all these charges just go away. But if that doesn't happen and this does eventually go to court, It does kind of feel like, and I know you never want to count out Donald Trump when it comes to getting away with shit. So I'm absolutely not doing that. But as you said, with the two of them flipping and they may be just the first two of who knows how many others, there's got to be makeup running all over his body and into cracks and crevices that we don't want to speak about or think about. Why did you do that?

I don't know. Why did you do that? Like felt dirty. The thing is, I don't even feel bad about it. And you think I would. should. Folks, you know that whenever I have the opportunity to bring friends of mine onto the new abnormal, I am always pleased, particularly when one of those friends happens to be a former Republican turned Democratic strategist, columnist, all around fighter warrior for democracy, Kurt Bardella,

is in the house with the new abnormal Kurt. Your former party, I mean, I need a new word for shit show. I don't have one right now, so we'll just go with the oldie but a goodie. But my good God, let's just say that the third time was not the charm for Jim Jordan, who after Steve Scalise's failed attempt to become Speaker of the House, Jim Jordan flamed out as well after three attempts and no dice. Now there are nine, count them nine people who are running from your former party to take on this. job and I just want to start off with getting a sense from you. I mean, what in all the good goddamn is happening across that aisle? When you have a party that actually stands for nothing, when you have a party that is abandoned, really any policy, legislative, substantive element to their core and instead of replaced it with cult of personality, this is the inevitable outcome. Let's

just try to make sense of this here. You have people who decided that strategically, the most effective thing that they could do with their very, very narrow congressional majority was to remove their leader without having a succession plan in place. And here we are now, day 20 of not having a speaker of the house, day 20 of not having an effective functioning legislative branch of government, day 20 of a break in the separation of powers. day 20 of a break in the line of presidential succession. And these ass clowns are nowhere near close to even finding their way through this. These guys couldn't find their way out of a paper bag.

Nevertheless, have nine people, the majority of whom are anti-democracy, the majority of whom did not vote to certify a free and their election in 2020. It seems that being an election denier is a prerequisite for trying to be the leader of the Republican Party. And here we are now with global circumstances creating an absolute necessity to have a functioning Congress, in my opinion, with the situation in the Middle East as well as Ukraine. when you have significant national global security implications on the line. And we don't have right now a functioning branch of government. That is not something that you expect to say about the United States of America. Imagine, imagine what these very people would be saying.

If the day after September 11th, 2001, Democrats in charge of Congress somehow manufactured this situation where nothing could get done and so much was riding on the United States overall. They would be losing their shit, rightfully so. And really what we're seeing right now, Danielle, is the seeds of which were planted really back in the 2010s with the Tea Party, the rise of the Tea Party, the rise of people like Jim Jordan. People have to remember that's their origin story. Like the Jim Jordan of today doesn't happen without the Tea Party being elevated and beginning to try to make ground on the Republican Party itself. Before there was Donald Trump, there was a Sarah Ping. You know, before there was a Matt Gates, there were people like Louis Gover at Michelle Bachman.

Before there was the Josh Holley's and the Ted Cruz's. There were these people that came to Congress that really did represent this radical, at the time, the radical wing of the Republican Party that is now morphed into being the central nervous system of the Republican Party. And what we are going through right now is the inevitable outcome of what started back in 2010. I mean, I'm just so glad that you kind of ran through that very quick list. of the before they were stars moments of how the Tea Party morphed into Maga and which is where we find ourselves right now. And I want to go back to what you said at the top, Kurt, when you say, this is what happens when you have no clear agenda, when you have no policies that you're offering. This is what happens when you become a cult of personality. What I find is that outside of Donald Trump being

their ultimate king and the man that they're trying to make into a martyr, there is no other person to hang your hat on. And so right now, where we find ourselves looking for a new speaker, there is no one else that the Republican Party wants to coalesce around other than Donald Trump. So talk to us about these nine, you know, election deniers, these people who find themselves wanting to throw their hat in the ring of the circus that they don't have. have the brand recognition. They don't have the name recognition. They don't have the fundraising prowess to be able to take this party where it needs to go. Yeah, I mean, it's really something when you look at the nine volunteers for embarrassment, because let's be honest, anybody who's doing

this right now, it doesn't end well for you. Spoiler alert. You look at what's remarkable, Kevin McCarthy, Thieves Gilles, Jim Jordan, three people who were at the upper echelon of the Republican hierarchy, who, in just a matter of days now, have completely and perhaps irreparably damaged their political brand and NF created this permanent legacy of failure and embarrassment. And now here you have these people, like Karsun and Kevin Heron from Oklahoma, Jody Errington from Texas, Austin, Scott, Daniel Mazur, Mike Johnson, Jack Birdman, Byron Donalds, and Pete Sessions. You look at this list of people, you're just like, first of all, most people are going to go,

who the hell are these people? Second of all, is this really as good as it gets? Or is this really the indication that this is the job that nobody actually wants, the idea that any of these people would have the ability to shepherd this ungovernable group of buffoons through Israel, Ukraine funding, through a potential government shutdown that we're marching towards in less than a month, being able to navigate and negotiate around the Marjor, Taylor Greens, Lauren Bobarge, the Matt Gates of the world, and still do the ability of protecting their majority, which is, by the way, the speaker's job is in theory to protect the congressional majority into the next election, I don't see how any of these people are in a position to do that. You are signing up for political failure and for a job that, frankly, there can be no success because this is a party that is made up of people who have been individually rewarded for breaking all the rules, who have been given opportunities and platforms and money and followers and have created this ridiculous incentive by system to completely.

completely annihilate the structures of governance so that they can become the congressional equivalent of an Instagram influencer. Pedaling instead of products and makeup and cooking and brands. Instead of they're peddling anti-democratic values. They're pedaling racism. They're pedaling sexism and misogyny and anti-Semitism. They have continually, time and again, been elevated by like-minded people who are profiting from this type of garbage.

And anyone who wants to sign up to be the leader of that pack, you will become cannibalized by those very people. It should not shock a single person, Daniel, that some of these people who voted against a Jim Jordan ended up getting targeted by the Maga masses, had threats set to their spouses, very disturbing and dangerous things that you and I have been living with since 2016 at the very least.

It's like, welcome to our world, guys. It's not so great when they turn it on you, but that's what will ultimately happen. Just as anybody who signs up to work with or and to serve Donald Trump usually ends up needing a lawyer at the end of that sequence. Anyone who signs up to govern, try to governing corral the Republican conference and the House Representatives, you are just signing your political obituary ahead of time. You know, Kurt, as somebody who worked on Capitol Hill that worked for the Republican

conference, I just have to ask, what does this say to Republican voters coming into 2024 about this party's inability to be able to get their ship together. How are they going to ask for votes from a constituency when they have nothing to show for said votes? You know, it's the old adage that you can't beat something with nothing. That ultimately is what the Republicans now have been offering the American people for a really long time. Absolutely nothing. Just catchphrases and slogans, build the wall, drain the swamp, Hillary's emails, Hunter Biden's laptop. Like, These are all nifty catchphrases that at the end of the day have nothing to do with anyone's day-to-day life in the real world, right? And the idea that that's going to be the prescription that somehow sweeps the nation by storm is, I think, such a fallacy.

While there are those who obviously enjoy the political entertainment, we'll call it, the WWE UFCification, if that's the word of our political process. That's really what they've done to Congress. Congress might as well be the octagon at this point. that is not going to be a long-term winning strategy, as we have seen now in 2022, as we have seen in special elections all across this country, as we have seen in Georgia, as we saw in the presidential election, as we saw in the 2018 midterms. The Republicans keep doubling down on this recipe that leads to electoral and political failure. And rather than learn the lessons, I mean, remember that it's become a joke now,

when we say the word R&C autopsy, all these autopsies that they commissioned after they get shallap in elections that they should win, and yet they get these reports back that says what they really should do, turn more towards the mainstream, they instead do the opposite. No, no, no, we're actually going to go further on abortion. We're going to go further into white nationalism. We're going to go further into racism, voter suppression. And now we're going to go even further than that and completely shut down. I mean, we are living right now. And effectively, a government shutdown induced by Republicans for no particular reason and with no end in sight. It is one of the most, I think, profound acts of self-sabotage, I think I have ever seen in my entire career in politics. And the architects

of this self-sabotage, understand, they have no interest in governing. They have no, they're not holding out because they want a bill passed or a specific policy prescription that they're fighting for. I could wrap my arms around that. If you had a specific thing that you're willing to die on the hill for, like, okay, that at least I can rationalize. But when you just go through this, and like I said, you kicked out your leader, Kevin McCarthy, but had no succession plan. There was no plan B. And we all know Republicans don't like plan B as it is. So it's not really that surprising. But still, it's like come. I mean, you have to ask yourself if you're a Republican Congress right now and you look at what's going on. Almost longer you're really to tolerate this shit.

Like at what point you just confront some of these lunatics and just say, knock it the fuck off or I will literally knock you out. This is a plague on everyone's house here. And the longer that this goes, the more inept and incompetent and just completely, you know, the advantage of the event. You know, the abysmal failure of Republican leadership. Like, you can't say the leadership of Republican right now, because it's just a joke. If there were to be someone or a small faction of people who would say, we have to knock it off like it's time to move forward, who would that even be? Who would that even be? Sure, there are a handful of people that won their seats in districts that Biden won in a major way. But who would that be that other people would coalesce around and say, oh, yes, let us follow this path,

Because the path of Donald Trump has led to 91 charges, has led to multiple people being indicted, has led to losses in the Senate. Like, so who would that be, if anyone? Well, this is why I have felt that, you know, there are kind of a couple paths here. I think that the path of least resistance is for them to just find a way to continue the elevation of Patrick McHenry, who's already in the Speaker's chair right now. And there is continually every time that they fall short of a speaker. speaker, that that conversation continues because he's already kind of in place. And he's well liked in the conference objectively. Like, you know, this is someone who most people don't have really anything bad to say about him in terms of the internal dynamics, their public conference. I also

think that there is not a good chance, but like there's like a 5% chance. The longer this goes, the more of the, maybe we should just go back to Kevin McCarthy, like that there's an appetite for that conversation. Which I keep thinking about. Yep. But there's this part of me, I'll tell you that just says, you know what? You and I both know on some level that there is that pipe dream that some of these people have of like, oh, let's just make Donald Trump Speaker of the House. Right. You want to stop with the only person who might actually be able to get the 217

in the Republican Conference at this point? There's no reason for me to believe that if Donald Trump really went out there and said, okay, make me speaker, we're going to knock this shit off. That wouldn't happen. Because if these people were so willing to just cast aside democracy to fuel Donald Trump's lies and conspiracy theories and fraud, there's nothing that makes you think that they wouldn't do the same thing to the House of Representatives if Donald Trump really would.

ward and said, I want to be Speaker of the House. These guys are capable of anything. And if there's one thing that we've learned from this whole sequence, is that if there is a wrong move, a bad move, or a dumb move to make, these Republicans will probably do that. Yeah. It's hard for me to stay in a place of just unimagined bad behavior when the consequences are so extraordinarily stark. We're talking about funding two separate crises that are happening internationally. in Ukraine, in Israel and Palestine, and not being able to do that because we don't have a functional house to go through. We're talking about a presidential election coming up.

The government shutdown, which could be inevitable, but maybe not because you, again, have those handful of Republicans that are in Biden districts, right, that need that seat and a government shutdown on top of not having a speaker, probably the death knell for Republicans. But like, when you think about the gravity, Kurt, of the moment that we're in, you know, what comes up for you? Because we can make all the jokes that we want because there are plenty to make. And I'd rather laugh than cry. But we're also at a real precipice for democracy, not only in this country, but around the world. Yeah, I think sometimes, and it's hard for, I think, us to do it who live and breathe this stuff every day.

But you have to almost step outside of it and look at how the rest of the world is looking at America right now. Because in a very short amount of time, we've had some really concerning destabilizing moments that you would not expect to see happen to the leading democracy in the history of mankind. January 6th wasn't that long ago. No. I know everybody wants to act like it was and they want to put it in the rear of mirror. And it is alarming to me how casually it has been allowed to, you know, the water to be muddied around January 6 in some way. But the rest of the world saw American citizens storm its own capital breached the walls of the United States House of Representatives for the intent purpose of hanging the vice president and stopping the certification of the 2020 election. A coup, an act of domestic terrorism. Now, just two years removed from that, they're seeing that same House representatives grind to a halt because the majority party that is in control can't seem to get their shit together.

And as the world is watching to see what the American response is to Ukraine and, in the response to the Middle East and whether or not America will continue to be active participants in the global fight to preserve democracies, they're watching this unfold. They're mortified. They're worried. I had dinner at an embassy of a country that is very invested in the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine. And the ambassador was watching what was going on with the speaker's race here with a certain amount of both obviously just curiosity, but also a lot of trepidation. because the rest of the room looks at America and I was like, you guys are a bunch of shit shows. Like, what the fuck is going on over there? You're supposed to be, number one, you're supposed to be the beacon of hope for the rest of the civilized world.

And this shit's unfolding right now. Just two years after your own citizens try to sack your capital? Like, is it any wonder why people are looking at other nations for more stability? Is it any wonder why a country like China has taken such large and aggressive steps

to try to supplant the United States of America. Like we are, and the Republican Party more specifically, is a House divided, and it is divisions within the Republican Party that have fractured the rest of our system right now. That's a problem. Yeah. Well, Kurt, we will have to leave it there for today,

but we will certainly call on you again as we continue to watch the House meltdown and with it the collateral damage of our democracy. Always appreciate you, friend. Well, thanks for having me. We'll see what happens next season on what is its House of Cards acted out by the cast of Veep.

Ugh, good God. No doubt many of you are familiar with Scholastic, the world's largest publisher of children's books from the many book fairs it holds in schools across the country. Well, the company, which is worth over a billion dollars, now finds itself under fire for a decision to, I guess you

could say, segregate its elementary school fairs by having a separate section for books that touch on race, gender, and sexuality. Joining me now to discuss is Natasha Leonard, columnist for The Intercept and also the Associate Director of the Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism Graduate Program at the New School for Social Research here in New York. Natasha, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. Hi. Hi. So obviously, all of this is a response to legislation in states such as Florida, Arizona, Alabama, and others. Tell us a little bit about the types of laws we're talking about before we get to Scholastic's decision. Sure. So we can broadly describe these as the book ban laws that.

are being pushed forward, proposed and passed quite swiftly in red states by Republicans very much invested in removing from educational spaces, not just elementary schools from K through 12 and college to any sort of content texts that speak to the history of black struggle, black history in the U.S., the white supremacist founding and continuance of politics in this country, anything like gender nonconformity, non-heterotypical sexuality, immigrant experience, anything that teaches of stories and tells stories outside white patriarchal heteronormativity. Currently 15 states have laws on the books banning texts for school children that relate to what some of the right-wing think tank propagandists like Christopher Rufo call critical race.

theory. Obviously, this is a term that's been so perverted from its original meaning in legal theory. It basically applies to anything, anything that relates to black experience and the challenge of white supremacy and white supremacist history. So these laws have been taken up by a number of states. There's 30 proposed now, 15 have been passed, and they're really vague. So they have all kinds of language that speaks to anything relating to critical race theory, ethnicity or sex, or complicated topics. So, for example, if we look at the language from an Arizona ban, it bans for all school children the instruction that presents any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex. So of course, these are kind of like extreme dog whistle concepts. No one is

never going to reprimand a teacher from teaching a book that includes a heterosexual couple, a heterosexual cis couple, or the story of Christopher Columbus going unchallenged as a sort of salutary history. So it's a lot of kind of dog whistle language that gives states and then school districts and right-wing school boards that have been infiltrated on mass at this point by right-wing parents' rights enthusiasts. It gives them a huge amount of leverage to pick and choose which books to remove under the broad remit of these very feebly framed and loosely framed laws that then put, you know, school districts in that difficult position of how exactly does one abide by such a kind of infirm and reprehensible law and indeed should one. And that's the

context in which we're talking about this decision Scholastic has made with its school book fairs. Okay. So what Sculastic does is they look at this that's going on in all these states and they say, what we're going to do is we're going to have our regular books that we give out to these book fairs or that the book fairs can sell. And then we're going to create a special collection called Share Every Story, Celebrate Every Voice. And this way, the schools have an option whether or not to add this collection to the book fair. And what they say in their statement is because they got a lot of pushback on this from authors and more generally from people who want kids to actually, you know, learn. So what they said in their statement was, they said,

quote, these laws create an almost impossible dilemma, back away from these titles or risk-making teachers, librarians, and volunteers vulnerable to being fired, sued, or prosecuted. So what they're basically saying is it was either do this, offer a separate but equal, I guess, collection of books that schools could then decline to not to be sold at the book fairs or not sell those books at all. And this did not make a lot of critics happy, including you. Why not? Right. So I call this kind of a cheap abdication. We are talking about a very, very powerful, as you mentioned, multi-billion dollar corporate enterprise that really has a monopoly over school book fairs. You know, multinational publisher could have thrown its weight behind challenging book bans and defending potentially

imperiled teachers who are fighting for a robust education that is anti-racist and non-discriminatory. Instead, they've sort of gone out of their way to make the enforcement of these laws all the easier for school districts that are so willing to jump with vigor at these really discriminatory appalling laws, these sort of anti-child laws, let's say. So yes, they've gone out of their way with this particular segregative move to round up a whole bunch of books, most of which it's, you know, absurd to think that they could ever be considered controversial in any way, but I suppose that speaks to the moment and to the Republican agenda. They've really gone out of their way to make this so easy

for people to exclude anything but books of whiteness, books about whiteness, books for whiteness. You know, and it's worth mentioning that this collection, and honestly, what an absurd name. Like, it sounds like it's about a diversity experience, about supporting diversity experience. So there's something really cynical there, I think calling this collection,

share every story, celebrate every voice, in this sort of cloying way, when in fact, what they've created is what one librarian described as a bigot button. So before the book fairs come to a given school, school officials can say, oh yes, none of those books, please.

Just none, no books with black identity, LGBTQ characters, stories of indigenous history, migration, all the things that are grouped under this cheesy, cloying title are presumed excluded and less included. And that is really doing the Republican, agenda for it. It's really fulfilling Republican desires before they have to. And in fact, a company

with this sort of power and weight should be doing the exact opposite. Furthermore, we are really not talking about controversial book titles here. Not that I don't think young children should be able to engage with interesting titles. And I, you know, I don't even want to be having a debate on the terms that the Republicans are setting. But just to talk about the level of absurdity we're dealing with here. Within this collection that can be ignored with the bigot button, as it's been called, you've got books including the biography of Supreme Court Justice, Kentangy Brown Jackson, so the first female black Supreme Court justice. You've got another children's picture book about the late representative John Lewis. You've got a collection of poems

by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman. I mean, this is the young woman who spoke at Biden's inauguration, read a permit, Biden's inauguration, you know, hardly a voice of radical revolutionary fervor, you know, like a liberal favorite. God bless her, but that's what we're talking about. Right. And then, you know, you've got kids books in there that just have LGBTQ characters. They're not even necessarily LBGTQ stories. They're just normalizing the fact that, you know, LGBT people exist, indigenous people exist, disabled people exist. Yeah, and they're their kind of grouped together in this way so they can just be easily removed from all school book fairs, and I just think that's doing the Republicans work for them.

Am I especially surprised? No, like I didn't think, you know, a multinational corporation, which is very much engaged in a problematic education, private public partnership that we are providing for children in this country. You know, am I surprised that they're doing state work for some of the worst state laws? Not really. These are the sort of companies that will go, only so far in their diversity and inclusion efforts as market testing will advise and permit. So I think,

you know, jumping through right-wing hoops when it seems that that is the smoothest way into selling books in certain places is entirely what we can expect a company like this to do. Being robustly inclusive and warm and understanding of different experiences and identities and struggles is exactly what we can also expect a massive corporation to do when that is, you know, what best serves the bottom line. So, you know, no one should have been waiting for Scholastic to take on Republicans. Sure. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't point out the kind of cynical act that we're watching play out here that will obviously affect children's access to books.

Right. It's absolutely insane to think that a story about John Lewis or something like that should be somehow controversial. But the one that really got me was there's a book called I Am Ruby Bridges, which is, about obviously Ruby Bridges, who was the first black child to attend a White's only elementary school in New Orleans during school desegregation. And it just struck me that that is just, it's so on the nose that this is the kind of thing they're worried about being offensive. It's absolutely insane to me that this is where we are as a country in 2023. Right. And I think even the defense that Scholastic's

statement seemed to put forward, not only saying, oh, we're actually trying to do this for teachers to help teachers so that they are not held liable, which also forecloses and evacuates the possibility of teachers standing up, right, and saying, no, we want to take risks together and we want your support in doing that. But also to suggest, like, no, we are still, look, we're really offering these books. We publish these books. We believe in these books. They're in our special section now without sort of taking into account and just the sheer grimness. That means that all these stories are considered other, right? They're considered other to what is central in American life, according to any sort of grouping like that.

So something as crucial and central to you, like history of American childhood, U.S. childhood, as Ruby's story, right? I don't know what the actual book is called. To be foreclosed is to say, like, who gets to be a child in this country? And it's, what is it? It's just like little white children,

little white cis children. They get to be the focal point. They get to be the main character. It boggles by mind that no one stopped and thought, We're going to put a book about Ruby Bridges. We're going to put that in a separate category. It's a book about a girl who helped desegregate schools. And they're taking that story and segregating it.

And it just, it boggles my mind that nobody stopped and thought about how inane that was. I mean, I think a lot of the actions we're seeing not only companies like this take in order to kind of serve or, you know, in response to paranoid concerns about going a. stray of the law without understanding that like obviously any sort of history we would want to teach often include stories of people disobeying bad laws. But again, do we expect massive corporations to do that? Do I think this was particularly carefully done evidently not? Do I think it's going to be a company like scholastic that means that we undo these laws existing in the first place, that we unseat these kind of Republicans, that we shift the shape of education so that actually access to books for children in schools around the country is not reliant on bringing in a massive private corporation

to sell in schools in book fairs. You know, we've got a lot of change that needs to happen that wouldn't be in the interest of scholastic. But it's worth remembering that nor is scholastic, especially, in the interests of fighting for best possible educations either. It's pretty shocking, but no more shocking than a lot of the other things we're seeing playing out. That's true.

In the educational terrain right now, thanks to Republican Eliminationist agendas. So you wrote an excellent piece on this at The Intercept, and in that piece, you cited another excellent article on this that Judd Lugam wrote over Popular Info, and he pointed out that there's this new company called Brave Books that has been created to counter, quote, the progressive agenda in so many of today's children's books, and that this company, Brave Books has been criticizing Scholastic along the usual terms. The word woke gets thrown around a lot. It feels like That's part of at least what we're seeing here is that Sculastic is afraid of some small minority of idiots calling it woke. Does that sound right? Right. And thanks to minority rule,

the small minority of idiots do have quite a strong voice in this country. Yeah. You know, and regularly have the support of the highest court in the country and leaders of dozens and dozens of states. So this minority is a powerful one. But the idea that Brave Books is actually a threat to the monopoly control that Scholastic has over book fairs is absurd. But what we're seeing play out in this discourse is exactly what we saw with Ronda Santis trying to create a campaign around Disney being some force, black liberation and queer liberation, woke Disney. In the same way, the idea that like Target was, you know, some force for LGBTQ liberation because they dared to suggest that gay people exist and should

celebrate pride in order to sell t-shirts, right? And I think with all these cases, what it does is It kind of shifts the fulcrum in a really grim way because I don't want to find myself fighting for Scholastic. I don't want to find myself fighting for Disney. But, you know, nor do I want to say it's absolutely fine for Scholastic to do something like this book segregation offering or for Target to remove its pride clothing items and whatever it was selling that so perturbed the deeply troubled and eliminationist far right. But, you know, now we've ended up in this argument again where we're trying. talking about, you know, massive corporations whose drive and sovereign is capital, to then the far right who treat them as some sort of like far left force of revolutionary freedom. So it's a, you know, it's, I hate the fulcrum. So it's, and it's all the more pathetic when you do

have companies then bend towards the far right. It puts us in the framework of what some far left theorists call the three-way fight, which, to put it most simply, is like your enemy's enemies, enemies, not your friend. And I feel like we end up in these kind of scenarios a lot when we find ourselves speaking with two and foreign from the position of corporate speech, which we don't really want to do. But to be clear, brave books is however like far right zealot and small they are compared to something like scholastic. They are gaining some space and platform. And their books are really dangerous. These children should not be reading a book that is titled, for example, Elephants are not birds, which is anti-trans propaganda teaching children that boys are not

girl, right? And so it's like, hey, I worry about that because of the, obviously, anti-trans hate that it reaffirms and entrenches. I also don't like children not understanding how language works and how constructs work. You know, like how, like, the world is categorized through the use of language. So it's like, you know, it's, this is terrible education from like just literally basic, basic understandings of meaning making, but then is also truly like producing hate. So problematic all around. And yes, scholastic, I think, pointing out what they're doing now, they don't get Brownie points for not being brave books, right? Yeah. Look, it strikes me that this type of decision by Scholastic is exactly what the Ron DeSantis is of the world want. They pass these laws, not just to

affect their own states and their own school districts, but because they want it to have a chilling effect all across the country. And as you pointed out, by Scholastic lumping or putting all of these books in one category with an option of a bigot button where people can just, it's very easy to just push that button and say, oh, this will make my life easier. I'm just going to put this button and then I won't have to worry about this. And Scholastic, it seems, has played right into the hands of those kinds of people. Natasha, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for writing on this issue. I've been following this for a while and it's really disturbing and I appreciate the work you're doing. Thanks so much. Thanks for covering. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy.

Danielle, kick off this week for us. Who's your fuck that guy? Bring it. So here's the thing. Everybody. Everybody has an allowance from this motherfucker above me. I just don't. don't understand it. Harlan Goddamn Crow, the comic book villain of democracy, apparently gives rights checks not only to his favorite Supreme Court Patsy Clarence Thomas, who he's funded everything in this man's life down to his draws and private schools and vacations and what have you. But apparently he is also given money to Cornell West. Cornell West has decided, however, to return the money saying this.

So Harlan Crow gave Cornell West $3,300, which is chump change to this man who has, you know, given at this point to Clarence Thomas, has got to be millions when we're talking about trips and private schools and buying a home and all of these different things. But this is what West said when he took to the other broke-ass social media platform formerly known as Twitter. Quote, how sad that perceptions so quickly triumph over truth and our decadent culture. He goes on to say, this holds in our major catastrophe in the Middle East where the rich humanity of Palestinians is rendered invisible. It also holds at home in the minor scandal about Harlan Crow's donation to my campaign. He is a staunch anti-Trump Republican who has never forgot collections. of tyrants and patriotic collections of Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.

First off, like, I miss the Cornell West that I actually, like, grew up with and appreciated and knew and was a scholar and had people on their heels with the realness that he used to offer. I don't know who this fucking person is. And it is a disgrace. Like they say, never know your heroes and never, you know, it's just the star has faded. from Cornell West. But to say that this man is just a collector, by the way, who has a whole wonderful collection

in his home dedicated to Hitler, give me a fucking break. But Cornell West has found it in his heart to return the money because I guess his campaign is flush. I say that tongue in cheek. So for that reason, I'm doing it. Actually, I'm going to do a tufer. For that reason, I'm saying fuck that guy

to both Cornell West, what happened to you and also to Harlan Crowbe? because Jesus, just doling out the checks. If you need my address, Harlan, let me know. Jesse, I just got a text from a Mr. C asking us to please cut this segment or we will not be getting any future endorsements. I guess I shouldn't have doxed you last week. Yeah. Daniel, you left out the best part for me of Cornell West returning the money.

And that was the sentence in his tweet where he said, as a jazz man, I listened and decided to give the money back to Brother Harlan. Oh my God. Yeah, I don't really know what it means. So I'm just going to leave it there. But I appreciate a jazz man doing the right thing. And good for him. Good for him.

So for that, Andy, how are you kicking off this good, good week with your fuck that guy? Well, this is a weird one because this story involves the Attorney General of Oklahoma, who is a Republican. So you would assume that he would be my fuck that guy. And that would be, I would guess, 99 out of 100 times. That would be a correct assumption. I'm here with that 100th time. His name is Gentner Drummond.

Whatever. If you want to know what he looks like, picture Gettner Drummond. And that's what he looks like. But he is the, again, the very Republican Attorney General of Oklahoma. He is suing a state board in Oklahoma because this board wants to, establish and fund, according to the Associated Press, what would be the nation's first religious public charter school. Drummond had warned this board that this would be a violation of both the Oklahoma Constitution and the United States Constitution. The board decided it didn't care.

And they have signed a contract for the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual Charter School, sponsored by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. So they have gone ahead and done this, and they are now being sued by their own, again, I have to keep saying this because it's blowing my mind. Republican Attorney General is suing his own state board for establishing a religious charter school. This is amazing to me. So he is not my fuck that guy. The members of the school board, which voted three to two to approve the Catholic Archdiocese application, they are my fuck those guys. We have reached the point where it's even too much for a Republican,

attorney general in a state like Oklahoma. And good for him for doing this. Again, I have to think that this is the one time out of 100 where he's doing the right thing with his life, but he's doing it and taken heat from his own Republican governor, Kevin Stitt, who has called this lawsuit a political stunt. It's pretty amazing to watch him do this. So he does not get my fuck that guy, although I'm going to be watching him hard because I feel like I have to bring balance back to the world. So at some point I'm going to have to make him my fuck that guy. But for today, he is not my fuck that guy. The fuck that guy are the members of this school board that are voting for a state funded religious charter school in Oklahoma. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys. Like, oh my God,

just fucking homeschool your people. But that's not the goal. The goal is to grift off of the state and have us all pay for it with our tax dollars. And I'm just so over it. Fuck those guys. 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 star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at

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