The Daily Beast Podcast - The ‘Clown Car’ of Reasons That Trump Could Go Down

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

Donald Trump is closer to wearing an orange jumpsuit than he’s ever been. That’s what TrumpNation author Tim O’Brien thinks anyway. He came on this episode of The New Abnormal to share why he thinks this Trump Org investigation is going south for Trump. Plus, Molly asks former Biden White House Senior Advisor Andy Slavitt if COVID will ever go away, what the new Pfizer COVID-19 pills will be able to do, and if we should try to stay cautious or just live as normally as possible. And Daily Beast politics reporter Ursula Perano breaks down the restrictive Texas voting law, SB1, that’s ironically hurting rural districts, including red ones with Republican politicians.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Shopify. coms bar records. Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it.

Today's show is really something. Andy Slavitt, former Biden White House Senior Advisor for COVID response will update us on the pandemic. Then we'll talk to Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien about how fuck Trump is since his accountant dumped him. Then we'll talk to the Daily Beast Ursula Perino about the fuckery down in Texas with their voting. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jong Fast. The amount of conservative wishcasting that's going on right now is a sight to be seen.

And I want to start with the sheer fact that one Laura Ingram tweeted two days ago, the walls are closing in on. You guess who she said the walls are closing in on. Well, I can't really guess because I know. But even if I didn't know, I know enough about Fox News to know that it would have to, be Hillary Clinton. Yes. Hillary Rodham Clinton didn't even run for president in the last election, but is still in their hearts. Why can't they quit her? Because she's always in their hearts. They love her. They absolutely love her. I thought for a bit that Hunter Biden might take her place, but I don't think he has the legs, honestly. Can you explain to me what it is about her that they love to

hate so much? She's a woman. She's not the most likable person in the world. so it makes her an easy target because even people that don't subscribe to the madness over there might not have a great opinion of her, but all their hopes and dreams are pinned on Hillary Clinton and I am fairly certain

that there is somewhere in that building 1211 Avenue of the Americas that there is now a sort of like a satanic ritual room where they offer up you know sacrifices and and burnt offerings that she will run in 2024. I mean, I don't want to get too gross,

but the multiple orgasms that would come from that place, I know, if that were announced, there would be an earthquake in New York City. Andy, can I ask, do you think the burning of the Christmas tree was part of that ritual? It might have been. That might have been a counter-ritual. Oh, okay, okay.

But here's the question about this. So there was news this week, the Durham investigation. So, Mayor Garland made. B. A. Wall, but Durham, John Durham, and his complicated facial hair is everywhere. He put out a statement that was vague enough for Fox News to run with it. It said, ultimately, if you read this Charlie Savage piece in The New York Times, it said nothing of what, it said almost, almost nothing that Fox News is saying it said. But with, again, with an investigation that good, you don't have to read it. you can just pretend you've read it, which seems to be what's happening now.

Well, but I'm sure that because Charlie Savage wrote a piece of the New York Times, and he basically laid out the facts and explained that no, nothing is really happening here. There's no evidence. There's not even really an allegation that the Clinton campaign spied on Donald Trump. In 2017, when there wasn't even a campaign. Right. So, Molly, I'm sure that once this sort of fact thing came out and debunking that Fox News reacted rationally.

Oh, I'm sure. As they're known. In fact, we know they reacted rationally because instead, Laura Ingram had a show yelling at Charlie Savage. Because that's where you're supposed to get to from that. I guess that's the other way to go. But it is interesting. And right now, I think it's worth talking about this. The conservative news stories all are largely aspirational, right?

We have the Durham investigation, largely aspirational, that finally, they're going to lock her up. And then we have the Canadian truckers, which is another very exciting thing for the right because they hate Trudeau because he's a liberal. And they hate Canada because they're all vaxed. And so, you know, they've an incredibly high vaccination rate. And Canadians tend to just sort of be law-abiding in a way that we Americans are not. And so there you have it. So Molly, you wrote a really good piece on the truckers in your newsletter called Wait What, which everyone needs to run out and subscribe to.

Tell us what's going on with the truckers. So this is being portrayed in right-wing media like Fox and other places as this huge grassroots movement opposed to vaccine mandates. And I'm assuming that's exactly what it is. Oh, yeah. When would Fox ever lie? No, and you know what's interesting. And we had cheat here on the podcast on Monday. and he talks, and he lives in Saskatchewan.

Right. So he actually is in Canada with Canadians, and he is Canadian. So he has the full Canadian experience. And he said to us, which I think is interesting, and what, and the reporting also bears this out, is that this is very annoying for Canadians. Yeah. And even Canadian truckers, right? Canadian truckers, and this is according to Trudeau, are 90% faxed.

What happens here is that we have a situation where a lot of these people are neither truckers, nor unvaccinated, right? And it's gotten to be kind of a, you know, a kind of crew of the sort of Q&on, far right, all-to-right crew. And they're getting together in these Canadian cities, blocking traffic, hot tubbing. It's very cold there. I don't know why they're hot-tubbing, you know, building little camps and refusing to move. My question is, I don't quite understand, like, if the police wanted them to move. Yeah. Wouldn't they be able to get them to move?

I mean, like, this is like January 6th. Like, if police just arrest you, can you still stay some? Like, explain this to me because I'm not following. Well, I think it stems from your original thesis is that you said, if police wanted them to move. Right. So the question is, do the police want them to move or are the police sympathetic to them? It seems like that's where we're at. It is very, very funny watching people on the right suddenly appreciate protest movements.

You know, we had Sean Hannity out there last week or a couple of days ago. I can't even remember when it was. I think it was a couple of days ago saying if the people decide they've had enough, I can't guarantee the safety of the police. And it's like, really? I mean, now you're just, I mean, it's just this anti-cop rhetoric coming from the right just has to stop. It's such a mirror image of the Black Lives Matter and all the protests that went on here. in that suddenly you've got all these right-wing people saying, you know, oh, the protests,

it's good that they're blocking the roads and it's good that they're, you know, making things difficult for the people who live in the areas. That's how you protest. And it's like, really? That's what you believe now? Because that's not what you believed a couple summers ago for protests that were far more real and far more grassroots than this one. But suddenly you're all about the great history of protesting and what it can achieve.

and, you know, you spend your whole time calling for, it's interesting that when, when black people in America protest, you want them arrested. But when it's a bunch of truckers in Canada, you're suddenly all in favor of it and warning the police that, well, we can't guarantee your safety if you try to interfere with this protest. Like, you could talk about the hypocrisy of the right wing media ad nauseum, which I guess we kind of too. We pretty much do, yes. But you would, my point is you would never get to the end of it. Like, you would never exhaust that topic. Anytime there's a chance for hypocrisy on the right, they're going to take it. And this is just another example of that.

And it has the sort of beauty of being in another country so it doesn't affect them on a daily basis. So they're okay with it. It is interesting. They don't have any sheepishness about the rhetoric that the right and the Fox News hosts used to discuss, like, lock these protesters up. I mean, they were very violent in their saying that. Black Lives Matter was a terrorist organization.

Now we have these truckers and they have found a bunch of weapons. They found a cash of weapons. These guys, they got weapons. They're camping out. No one wants them there. And they're breaking the law. And yet the Fox News hot take is pretty much the opposite of what it was. I wonder what the difference is.

It's really hard to quantify what the difference is between a bunch of white truckers and a bunch of black Americans. I can't figure out the difference between the white protesters and the black protesters. It's on the tip of my tongue, but it's still, I just, I just can't figure out the white, black difference. But can we get to something? So these two scandals, quote unquote, Durham and the truckers are being used on the right wing media complex to distract from what's happening in the Trump organization, right? Oh, what could possibly be happening in the Trump? Trump organization besides their long-term, you know, their longtime accounting firm saying they no longer have any confidence in any of the stuff they've done. And maybe they're turning state's evidence.

I think we call this Trump kids in disarray. I think it's a vibe shift. It is a vibe shift. It is definitely a vibe shift. The vibe is new accountants? I think it's that they're in a little bit more fear is the shift of the vibe. But it is, you're definitely seeing right-wing media run cover for the family and also probably for all the Republican infighting, right? Today I saw polymath and Republican pundant one Lou Dobbs say that Kevin McCarthy, who is desperate to become the Speaker of the House and will do anything he can to debase himself in this pursuit is a rhino.

Discuss. It's enough to make Eric Trump almost cry, I think, Molly. On Sean Hannity's show. Yes. Were those real tears? What do you think was going on there? Those were, please, love me, daddy, tears. I think that's the clinical, psychological term for them.

I am not a board certified psychiatrist or psychologist, but I do believe that those are known as please love me, daddy, tears. It's like King Lear with the son's going. on television trying to sort of top each other with love for daddy. It's interesting to see it out because remember the Bush family had a similar dynastic kind of dynasty and you never saw this kind of weird, I mean, not that the Bushes or anything great, but you never saw quite the level of insanity play out in the public forum. Yeah, well, the other thing here is, I mean, it's just, you know, Eric, you lost, man.

I mean, you know, at a certain age, you just have. to recognize it and just know that it ain't happening for you, pal. Just go about your, but you know, go to another country. You know, be your own Trump, I say. It's impossible to feel sad for Eric Trump. But if you could, it would be over this because he just so, the situation is it's not sad because it's the Trump family, so it's hilarious. Right.

But the situation itself is kind of sad. I mean, you just have this one son who can just, he's never going to be the son. that has dad's name, just psychologically, just that alone, like, put you at such a deficit. And then on top of it, it's like, if it's not junior, it's Ivanka. So, you know, he's not even second. And he's losing to a woman, which in a dynastic family, that's not how things are supposed to go. He's in third place, you know, when you got Baron coming up quickly, who the hell knows? I mean, so it's just like he could end up in fifth place by the end of this if he's not careful. You know, it's so funny, though, because there really was a window for those kids

to get in Sconson in Republican politics, and it would have been really easy for them to have run for Congress and the Senate, and they could have installed themselves as like the future of the Republican Party, and none of them decided to do it, because I guess, because it's more of work than being on television, but it's just sort of fascinating because they really did, I mean, thank God they did, but they let that go by. Well, I think they, because they all think, you know, well, that's not how dad did it. Dad became president without doing any of that. So I don't need to do that either.

The jury's still out. We could end up with, I mean, look, we're not getting a president Eric Trump. That's never happening. Well, unless Trump ends elections. Right. No, unless it becomes just a pure appellate. But even then, it's not going to be Eric. That's what I'm saying.

It's not going to be Eric. If I were Don Jr. and Ivanka, I might have food tasters. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member, where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism,

as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. Dot the DailyBeast.com. That's New Abnormal.com. Andy Slavitt is a former Biden White House senior advisor for COVID response, as well as the past head of Medicare, Medicaid for Obama, and the author of Preventable and the host of In the Bubble podcast. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Andy Slavitt.

I'm loving the name of the podcast more every day. I mean, I feel like we haven't had you on in a while, and the landscape when it comes to COVID has really, really, really changed. Where you feel that the public health messaging is right now on COVID. Like, what stage of the pandemic are we in? What do you sort of believe is the thoughtful way to act in the world? What we've learned about COVID-19 in the last, I'd say, particularly nine to 10 months, is that, this is not necessarily a contagious virus that we will all get immunity to. It's not necessarily a very lethal virus that's going to kill a lot of people.

What it is is a very wily shape-shifting virus that year after year can come back in slightly different forms and wreak havoc. And that's a very different kind of virus to plan for. If this were the COVID-19 of 2020, we could say, hey, get vaccinated and life will be good. If it was another type of virus, we could point to the therapies or the treatments or the protocols. But we can't do that here because Omicron, Alpha, and Delta are all very, very, very different. And it can do, the bug does things like shortens the time it takes to get infected, infects kids differently. It can do all kinds of things.

And so each time we take an action, we end up with another unpredictable to follow. So we just have to understand that the traditional questions you might ask, Like, when is it over and when are we into a new stage? And is this going to be endemic and so forth, are much more difficult to answer. Right. We don't really know. The thing that I have been struck by is there's been a lot of complaints about public health messaging. You know, you told me this.

Now you're telling me that. But that is really because the knowledge keeps shifting and changing and we keep accumulating knowledge, right? Yes, 100% true. And it's also the particular text. of knowledge that's evolving is the type of knowledge which tells us that you go away six months or nine months and the next time COVID-19 appears, it ends up looking pretty different. And it has the ability to shape shift because it has this sort of biological fitness to it, evolutionary fitness to it, that says if you attack me here and I look like a diamond,

I will change into a rectangle. And if you challenge me there, I can turn into a star. And so you tell the public, look, we're dealing with a rectangle or we're dealing with a diamond. And nine months later, you could be dealing with a star. What does that practically mean? The practical implications of that. The best way to explain it is to talk about what actually happens or what probably is actually happening, which is this virus, which mutates billions and billions of times, which divides and billions of times, changes all the time, what it looks like. And it's most extreme case if the virus is inside somebody that has a sort of compromised immune system,

It's not working super well. It can multiply inside body for months and months and months until it comes up with something that changes the way that it works. And the reason it does that is because, like all of us, it fights for survival. If you attack it very effectively, it will change the rules on you. So very practically what that means is instead of taking five, six, seven days to infect you, in which case by the time it does, your immune system responds, It can affect you in one to two days now, which is what Omicron does, which is almost impossible for your body's immune system to respond quickly enough without giving you some symptoms or some infections.

And so a vaccine that's developed for an earlier version of this virus isn't going to do the same things. Now, fortunately, the vaccine still protects you against being hospitalized and against death. And that's great. That's important. But if we're telling people, we're trying to tell people how to avoid getting infected. or infecting others, it's difficult to do that because the rules of the game keep changing because the virus is transforming what it looks like in order to survive. Does that make sense? It makes sense, but I think that it's a little bit theoretical for a lot of people. And so I want to get a little bit further into it. Like, I feel like part of us are, you know, sort of we're trying to figure out what we're supposed to be doing, most of us. And it's constantly shifting. So, I mean, for example, I'm curious to know,

Like how, I mean, for me, I live in New York, and we had a very bad outbreak in December. And since then, I've been pretty low-key. You know, we're all vaccinated. We're all boosted in my house. And so I've been pretty much, you know, trying to act as normal as possible. I mean, we wear masks when we go places. But I'm curious to know, like, how are you living your life that's different than it was at the beginning of the pandemic and the middle of the pandemic? Give us what it looks like for you.

It's sort of like sunny days, rainy days, and cloudy days. And, you know, on there's sunny days, I go play outside in the shorts and a t-shirt and jump in the pool and all that without a care in the world. You know, we can tell when there's sunny days because you just look around in your area and you see, well, the hospitals are empty and there's not a lot of infection and there's not a lot of protocols, in which case, I'm going to indoor sporting events. I might wear a mask during certain, you know, parts of where, I'm in a big group. I might wear a mask for a lot of it. But if I'm going to take, if I'm going to, you know, have a sip of my beer and I would take my mask down for a few minutes, I'm not going to be paranoid. But when it's a cloudy day or a rainy day, my behavior changes.

And, you know, it clearly, around Christmas time, it was very rainy, so to speak. And, you know, during that time, if you didn't come into our house without taking a test, We dined outdoors 100% of the time. We didn't see a ton of people. But the thing is, the region you can get through the rainy days, is just like actual rain. Unless you live in Ireland, you know it's temporary. It's going to last a short while and then things will come back. And so I think for now, rather than getting so far ahead of ourselves and worrying about the future,

I think a lot of people have trouble with the pandemic because when they have a rainy day, they think, oh, my God, how long is this going to go on? And is this going to be afflicting us forever? And the answer is it's not. It's not going to go on forever, but that feeling that you don't know what it's going to end really weighs on people. So I just say, hey, it's a rainy day. It's rainy today. I'll wear a mask.

I'll avoid some tougher situations. I'll ask my mother not to travel. But when it's not rainy, I don't worry about it as much. Talk to me about the COVID pill, because that seems like a real game changer. And I know there are two pills. So I'd love you to talk about both if it's possible. And actually, there's like, it's like the pill is like four pills. day for like three days. So it's not as easy yet as it probably will be. But you can imagine a

place where we have a pill you could take as soon as you get back, you get infected. You can imagine a point where you could have something you can spray into your nostrils that either protects you or provides before or after you'd get infected. And those are the kinds of things that are coming. I mean, I think we're sort of a generation one. The most promising pill is one called Paxlovid from Pfizer, which we have very small amounts of. Today, and come April, we'll have, I think, a lot more. By the end of the summer, we'll have 20 million in this country. And that's something that if you take after five days, within five days, I should say, like a Tamiflu,

you would end up being able to fight off the worst of the virus and keep it from spreading further. So that's, I think it'll be a really big new thing this year for people. And right now for people that are at high risk, and particularly those who have a vaccine doesn't work very well for, people who are immunocompromise, they should really have first call on those pet-lovod pills as they come out. So let's talk about indoor masking and masking in schools. My sense is, and I want you to tell me, if this is right, that the public health messaging is to take a break from masking, you know, to sort of have them enjoy this time. And then, I mean, clearly, at least

in the north, COVID is seasonal, right? It's a winter virus. Now, in the south, it seems like COVID is seasonal. It's a summer virus, right? But the mask requirements are about giving people sort of a time off. Is that what it is? Or am I reading this wrong? It's interesting because mask is like, on the one hand, it's the most sensible, low-tech way to protect yourself if you have any concerns that you're going to be infected and you don't want to be infected or infect somebody. So a high-quality mask, that's an easy thing you can do. What else is a mask? Mask is also the symbol.

It's like the scarlet sea for COVID-19. And it's the very visible thing which says, hey, we're living in a troubling time and people don't like it. And they want freedom from it. And, you know, the truth is, nobody likes going to school and having their kids have to be muffled or learn a language with a teacher. you can't see their face and all of those things. So I think the general sense of things is that there's large parts that they don't ever wear masks, ever, any period. And the parts that do, there will be people that will have the,

because they don't want to take any risk, will continue to wear masks. But in those parts of the country, people will also, during time periods like this, as you say, many of them will take advantage of the fact that the risk is lower. And as the risk of transmission is lower, they can drop some of their guard on some of things. The numbers aren't great yet. So, you know, I still wear my mask indoors, but as the numbers get better, and we go through a period where things are sensible, it'll make sense to do that. Talk to me about long COVID. There's a lot more information coming out about long COVID. The question a lot of us have is, can you still get long COVID if you're vaccinated and boosted? So there's some good news there, which is you're much less likely, and I wish I could quantify it for you, but you're much less likely to get long COVID. if you've been vaccinated for a couple reasons. And one of them is you're just much less likely to get COVID period. And then if you're vaccinated and boosted,

it's much less likely to replicate significantly inside of you. You know, there have been a couple of really interesting studies, I think the first of their kind out showing the kinds of things that predispose people to getting long COVID. And they are interesting in that there's somewhat, similar to what we learned about when people get multiple sclerosis. So there are some clues here that we're learning. Fortunately, Congress has put a lot of money into the NIH.

The NIH has given out a lot of grants for people to study this. And so I think we're going to see a trickle, hopefully a drumbeat soon of information about this. I think at the very individual level, this is the thing that keeps some amount of people from being a little less cautious, right? because people, I think, tend to say, well, I can, if it's a really bad viral flu, I can live with that. I don't want it, but I can, you know, I'm not going to change my life for it. But if you're telling me it's something that's going to be with me for months, if not years, well, that's going to cause me to take a little bit more risk.

That's one of the things makes people crazy about this virus, is that just the unknowns are just enough out there to cause people to go, how do I respond to this in a way that doesn't completely change everything? And long COVID's a perfect example of that. It's sort of lurks there. It's very real, but it's getting much, much less likely. And I still fly on plans and get in cars and do a lot of things where there's risk. And so if it were down, if it were me and it were down to just, you know, long COVID, I probably wouldn't let that just rule my life.

And you're talking to somebody who's got a, my son still has symptoms from COVID 16, 18 months after getting it. Can you give us a little bit of a prediction on where you see this going? Yeah, I mean, look, I don't think anybody's at the point. any longer where they will say we've seen our last variant. There's a couple people that are saying that. I think there will be more variants. There likely will be another variant of concern. And there will be a question as to whether or not how much havoc it reeks. But, you know, this thing is pretty feisty. What I can say is, with certainty, is that at least now, COVID-19 is no longer a novel virus. Our bodies have seen it before. It may look a little

different, but our bodies know how to react to it. 95, 98, some percentage like that of us have either been vaccinated or had COVID. Now, if you've had COVID and not been vaccinated, you have very modest protection relative to if you've been vaccinated. And if you've been, if you've had COVID and been vaccinated, you've got the most protection because your antibodies are ready to fire up at any sign. So it's, it's most people's prediction, with a lot of people's predictions, that whether COVID comes more, the next variant is more severe, less severe, more contagious or less contagious, even if it's more wily, that the body will be able to protect against it better. And therefore, we'll have what looks like milder cases, not that the virus is getting

milder, but that the body is responding better because it's no longer novel. And that means less to fear. And with our tools, the antiviral pills you talked about, be they masks, be they boost, be the vaccines. Those are really the tools that should allow us to live most, most of us, to live normal lives. Now, I want to just make one point of emphasis if I can, Molly, and that's the most of us point. A lot of times what happens, the pattern in these conditions is that as soon as most of us can lead normal lives, people start to tend to move on and say, hey, I'm safe, so I'm really tired of this thing. This thing is over. Meanwhile, who is not encountered for most of this? Well, right now, it's still kids under five. It's people that are immunocompromised. It's people that have

comorbidities, particularly obesity. It's frail elderly. It's actually tens of millions of people. People are immunocompromised, I should have mentioned. It's a lot of people. And so increasingly I think you're going to find yourself with people who, and I'll add one more category of people, people who work by the hour and are exposed frequently and can't stay home during times when the virus is spreading. So you take all that and you say, well, gee, there's a lot of people. Most of them are people we would consider to be underrepresented in our political dialogue and debate and policymaking who are going to be left more exposed while a large part of the country moves on. I don't know if that's the prediction per se, but boy, that's a pattern that I've seen happen

and we've seen happen in this society over and over again. Most of us move on, a small percentage of us continue to get hurt. 2,200 people died yesterday from COVID-19, not making headlines anymore. Yeah. Thank you so much, Andy Slavitt. Mildy M.Fast, thank you for having me. Tim O'Brien is a columnist at Bloomberg Opinion and the author of Trump Nation. Welcome back to the new abnormal Tim O'Brien.

Molly, it is always a treat. It's been a while, so thank you for having me back. Well, I was so excited because when I saw this Trump Mazers reporting, I said to Jesse, oh, good, we can have Tim O'Brien on. That's true. Yeah, there's another Trump disaster. Let's call Tim. It's financial malfeasance, which as someone who writes at Bloomberg, financial malfeasance is sort of, you know, it's in your bailiwick, as we say. No one says that. Well, and, you know, the other thing is it's like Groundhog's Day, because everything that he is being investigated for now by the Manhattan District Attorney in the New York State Attorney General is the sort of substance of a chunk of my book that he ended up suing me for. And weirdly and magically, the accountants who just quit this week are the same account. we deposed back in the mid-2000s and asked them the same questions that the investigators are asking them right now.

The difference is back then they didn't quit because I was just a journalist and I didn't have subpoena power or, you know, a prison sentence in my toolkit. And now, of course, you know, the Manhattan's attorney in the New York AG do have those kind of power. So it appears that Trump's more of Trump's accountants are heading for the exits. How unusual is it for your accountants to quit? Usually unusual. In the business world, if you're an observer as a journalist, if you're an investor, if you're a lender, if you're a competitor, if you're a business partner, and the subject of your observation loses his or her accountant, that is one of the most mammoth and gigantic red flags that can be waved in front of your face. It means something is seriously wrong. And in this case, with Mazers and the Trump organization, the term that I'm still kind of reveling in, it just For whatever perverse reason, it cracked me up. But when they wrote the letter to Trump informing him that they were quitting, they were firing their own client.

They said in there, among the many reasons, they were deciding to leave was because they had an unwaivable conflict, quote unquote, an unwaivable conflict. And my cynical journalistic mind translated that as cooperating with law enforcement. Oh, interesting. Can you say more about that? Well, I mean, I think if they haven't begun cooperating, with Tish James, New York Attorney General. They obviously can't, in good faith, continue to represent someone who they're testifying against.

Now, I'm speculating, but that, I just, the language was so arcane and technical. And, you know, and the other things in there were delicious sort of things. We've seen so many times before with Trump, you know, that we're not sure that any of the stuff in your financial statements that we once said we could get behind, we no longer can. we've seen things come out in this investigation that concern us. We can't file your tax return and your wife's tax return because you won't give us the information we need to file your tax return. Right. It was like a clown car wreck of reasons for why they were leaving it. I think Trump's response to it was pretty Trumpy. Well, you're so nice sometimes. You're so much nice with me. I wouldn't call that a response, Molly. I would call that the daft and unhinged ramblings of someone who is angry, afraid, and insecure.

That letter that Trump released on, look at this series of events, right? You get on Monday this document released by the Attorney General from Trump's account saying we're leaving. And by Tuesday night, Trump's like, la, la, la, no, no one's leaving me. In fact, I'm worth bazillions and bazillions and bazillions of dollars. I'm with so many dollars that it would be crazy. And then on top of these investigators caused my accountant to leave, even though my accountant just said the day before that we're leaving because there's a problem with me. But I'm going to say that the, you know, the prosecutors drove him out the door. And what was just so strange about it all is anytime he comes under assault about his money, it unleashes this wild insecure child in him who judges the world and his own value by where he falls on the Forbes list.

and then gets into this puffery around how much money he had. I think he said in that screed that he has $8 billion, which is a lie. He certainly doesn't have that. And then he said, and by the way, I know all of these specifics about my finances and everybody else is wrong, which blows up his legal defense that he had made, his lawyers had made from a day before, which was he won't sit down and testify because he doesn't know anything about his own money. And then the next night Trump is like, wrong, wrong.

I know a lot about my money. His lawyers must have been pulling their hair out. Right. I saw that that means now that Tish James can bring him in and say, you tweeted this and so, or you said this. I mean, that is more proof for her. Well, we should remind your listeners here that was like what the issue in her case. And in the Manhattan case, they're essentially saying that Trump duped tax collectors and bankers by inflating the value of what he had when it suited him. and deflating the value of what he had when it suited him.

And his defense and his children's defense, explaining why they weren't going to testify, they don't know anything about their own business. And they don't know anything about their own wallet. Right. And then she has now has an opening and say, well, that entire defense you just put up got eviscerated by Yosemite Sam getting on to Twitter and shooting himself on the feet like 300 times. Trump has had years where he's paid $750 in federal taxes. Correct.

He's had years where he's paid nothing, too. Right. And that's under examination. Donald Trump almost went broke in the early 1990s. And he needed to borrow massively from his father to avoid that. And then he ended up not paying back hundreds of millions of dollars to banks, money that he owed to banks. And I think he probably took writeoffs against that for years.

that may not be questionable. And that's one of the things that reduced his tax burden to zero. By the way, this is not uncommon in the real estate business. All of these big developers, by the way, Trump is not a big developer. He is a high profile developer, but he's a pipsqueak among the Manhattan titans. But they all borrow a lot of money to continue to move their businesses forward, and they can write off those debts as a business expense. So it's not uncommon for very successful real estate developers to have extremely low tax bills. It's a huge loophole in the tax code that we mere mortals can't take advantage of. The other thing is you are able to devalue assets with real estate in a way that you're not with normal assets.

It's totally scammy. But I just want to, I apologize in advance to my friends who work in real estate. But it is totally scummy. But I just want you to give me like a sort of pull out of what the landscape and Trump world looks like right now. the legal landscape. Donald Trump has never been under the microscope with well-resourced, aggressive law enforcement officials like he is right now in the state of New York. They have ample fodder involving financial fraud. It doesn't only touch Donald. It touches Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric. They were all senior figures in the Trump organization senior executives.

Trump is facing the potential of people who've been his allies for decades in the business world turning against him and cooperating to protect themselves from his mistakes. And I think he's got the real possibility of one of his business holdings unraveling. And then two, he winds up in an orange jumpsuit at the end of the day. There's New York, right? And then there's Georgia. And Georgia is a very different thing, which is also substantial. That's flat out election fraud. and the investigation there, once again, it has evidence that Trump just provided law enforcement officials because he got on the telephone and he called the Georgia Secretary of State. And like a 19th century award healer, he said, find me 11,000 votes. Right. I need him tomorrow. And that was taped.

And, you know, that's like, that's not, there's not a lot of wiggeroover on that one. And that's, that's, you know, imperils him. I don't think it has the same kind of existential weight to it that the New York, particularly the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation has. For me, my anxiety is always that Trump can just appeal and appeal and appeal and kick this up to the Supreme Court. And I mean, do you see a world where he can just put this off and put this off and put this off? I don't think he can put it off indefinitely, but he can put it off for some time. But look, it. Grand jury has been impaneled. That means the prosecutors believe they have extremely compelling evidence against the former president. They're not going to bring a case

against the former president unless they feel they're on solid ground. So this is going to be, I think, become quite a legal showdown. Thank you so much for joining us. This was great. Thank you, Molly. Thank you, Jesse. Ursula Perano is a politics reporter at The Daily Beast. Welcome to the new abnormal, Ursula. Yeah, thank you for having me. So talk to us about voting rights in Texas. Yeah, so basically last year, the Texas state legislature passed this bill called SB1, which is just a mega elections overhaul bill and the state led by Republicans and then later signed by Republican Governor Greg Abbott. There's a lot of things packed into this bill. One of the key things that we are now seeing that Texas is approaching its primaries, though, is that there was a mail ballot change in the bill that requires folks to have their state ID or driver's license number or the last four of their social on their mail ballot applications.

and the return ballot, and it has to match what the state has on file. That's been causing some issues. State elections administrators don't necessarily know how to execute this new law. They are having difficulties matching numbers that folks are turning in with what they have in the file. They do not have enough guidance to know if folks are allowed to put both. And at the same time, there's a serious lack of awareness among voters about this new rule. A lot of state elections administrators I spoke to in Texas said that they were seeing some folks just straight up forget to put the numbers that they needed on their applications and their ballots. So we're seeing a really high rejection rate for these mail-in ballots.

And some of the ballots that are starting to be returned as well. In addition to mail-in voting, there's been issues with voter access for folks with disabilities, a ban on drive-through voting, rollbacks of early voting access that was expanded during COVID. So there's just a lot going on. And folks in the ground are sort of sounding the alarm. So I've seen a lot of reporting and also, So people interviewed who were trying to vote and having their ballots returned, this seems to be really emblematic.

How different is it than it used to be? Texas was always a state that had scaled back vote by mail rules. It was you had to have a disability. You had to be over 65. Somebody was pregnant. There were only certain categories of folks that could vote by mail. But because they're trying to make these changes with really limited time before the actual election day.

and because these are changes where the numbers aren't always matching up and folks don't have necessarily the time they need to correct these things. It is different. It's different because there's not enough time for folks to always fix the errors that they've made. Texas voters, when they have a ballot get rejected or a mail ballot application be rejected, they are entitled a chance to fix those things. But when the state is trying to implement this new rule just weeks ahead of time with, you know, mail voting starts. and then the election is just a few weeks later, there's not a lot of room for folks to go back and make the corrections they need. And for folks that don't have that time,

that don't get the time to go and correct their ballot, their only option is in-person voting. But when again, you're dealing with these groups, like folks with disabilities, folks who are elderly, folks who physically can't always make it to the polls, that's not an acceptable failsafe for a lot of people because they physically can't get their male voting for a reason.

So is there any way that Democrats, who are in the minority and Texas, you know, has a lot of crazy stuff going on, like the, you know, the power grid and the abortion stuff. But is there any mechanism for people to push back here? Well, so Democrats at the federal level would say they want to pass a federal voting rights bill to sort of codify and protect some of these things that are happening at the state level. Because as much as Texas is, you know, a case study and sort of how some of these election laws play out, we have a lot of places that are trying to enact these sorts of. of laws and we're going to see these issues, I expect, in multiple states this year. But as far as folks in Texas, they are in the minority. They do not have the governor's seat. So there is limited things they can do to change it within their state. But I will say there are a lot of activists on the ground who are working to organize, to raise awareness, to make sure that folks have the access that they need as, you know, registered voters and entitled voters to cast their ballot this election.

Right now there's a primary election in Texas, right? Early voting has started and it's been very low. Can you explain what's happening there? So there is a primary election right now happening. The actual election day will be March 1st, and early voting did begin on February 14th. And there are a few things that have changed. Part of SB1 is that certain things that had helped boost early voting access during 2020 and rolled back, drive-through voting being a very popular one that is no longer available. There have been some restrictions on hours for early voting places that were not previously in place. It's about 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. That is new. sort of limits access. Some folks say, especially for folks who work non-traditional hours,

previously in 2020, there were in one county a 24-hour polling place, for example, with the idea being to expand access. And then on top of that, though, there does have to be some sort of consideration that there is, it's a midterm. Folks don't vote at the same rate in midterms as they typically do. So folks, yeah, and a primer, you know, so some folks I talk to were like, we are expecting lower numbers than you would have seen in 2020 for obvious non-presidential reasons. But yeah, the numbers are folks have concerns about turnout. I heard the other night on Maddow, they were talking about that they're not having a proper mechanism to cure ballots that are getting rejected. Yeah, so essentially elections administrators in Texas don't have a uniform process for getting

ballots corrected once they get rejected. At a minimum, they have to send a letter out to say, hey, your ballot did not get accepted. And there is a tracking system at the state level online for folks to check. But folks I spoke to said awareness of that system isn't as high as they would like. And so it really depends in a lot of ways on the resources of that individual elections administration's office. So it goes county by county. And some counties and really populous counties that have high populations and high budgets, they have folks that can work 12 hour days. They can boost their staff to help get in contact with voters. to say, hey, there's this error, we can walk you through how to fix it. But in folks that are in rural counties for those offices where they might not be well-staffed and they might not have the resources, they don't have the same degree of folks trying to make sure that these errors are corrected. So there's definitely some pretty severe disparities from county to county, and a state that literally has 254 counties. You know, it's huge. And so when you see those disparities across, it's sort of a cause for alarm because you don't know that people are getting

equal treatment. Am I right to say, too, that it seems like when we're talking about the equal treatment, it seems like this is a little bit worse than the bluer areas? Actually, in this instance, I would say that blue areas tend to be more highly populated, so they tend to have more staffed elections offices. Got it. Oh, that's interesting. So like Texas's first district, which is Louis Gomez district, would have more problems. Yeah, it is primarily, elections administrators I spoke to, said it's a lot of the less populated counties that have lower budgets for their elections administration's office that don't have the resources always to reach out to folks and say, you need to do X, Y, Z to fix your ballot. For example, I spoke to the spokesperson for Harris County elections, which encompasses Houston.

And she said she's been able to double her call staff team. That was the place where she said they were working 12-hour days sometimes reaching out to folks. That's a city that has the means to reach out to people. And of course, there's questions about, you know, the size of the population, if that outweighs the benefits of the slightly more increased staff. But yeah, they definitely because they're a city, they have more resources, they're going to have more staff than say rural counties throughout Texas. Could this be okay for Democrats? Because Democrats tend to be in urban areas and Republicans tend to be in rural areas or now?

I think Democrats are primarily concerned about the mail-in voting turnout and the access to early. voting. I don't necessarily know that it would outweigh just because the Texas, the cities would have more access with the elections administrators to correct the ballots. I don't know that would balance out. Do you have any other voting things that you're seeing in other states that are really worrying to you? I would say that a lot of states have really been looking and scaling back mail and voting in the past year in their state legislatures. And I think what we're seeing here in Texas, where there is simply not enough guidance for folks to properly implement this law, there are not enough resources for voters to get the education they need.

I think that's going to make it difficult for some of these laws to go into place this year. A lot of Republican-led state legislatures have been trying to pass these restrictions. And when we see them playing out in 2022, I expect Texas is sort of going to be a bellwether for some of the issues we can expect. Oh, let's hope not, but it sounds very likely. Thank you so much for joining us, Ursula. Yeah, thanks so much, y'all. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate,

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

slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly Johnfest. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy this week is an old friend of the pod, Ben Shapiro, who on Wednesday, I guess it was, decided to get into a little spat with Tim Miller, because Tim Miller wrote a piece about the Florida bill, the don't say gay bill, which is absolutely horrible. And Miller said, he said when he set out to write this piece, he thought, well, maybe everything's overblown and it's not that bad. And then he said, no, no, it is that bad, if not worse.

Yeah. So Ben Shapiro went on his podcast and said, most people don't care about how Tim Miller feels about whether he gets to present him and his husband to a bunch of six-year-olds. Tim Miller was like, what? And Shapiro just kept going on. And basically, the idea here is that Tim Miller is saying, you know, under this bill, if a parent or a teacher is gay and is married, they would not be allowed to reference that ever. But of course, if you're heterosexual, you can reference your husband or wife or, you know, partner. And Ben thinks this is, you know, perfectly fine. And he said, Tim Miller demands that he decide how and in what context your six-year-old child

is taught about same-sex marriage. Your opinions and your children are of no consequence to him. And if you don't let him have his way, he will be very hurt because he is the priority, not your kids. So what Ben is saying here is basically the facts, which are that some people are gay and they get married and they even raise children are not what's important here. But what's important here are the feelings of the people who don't want their kids to know that gay people exist. It's such a bad faith argument. I'm going to say what it is. It's homophobia dressed up as somehow being pro parents and pro freedom. Right.

And that's all it is. And the bottom line is if you just replaced same-sex marriage with interracial marriage and you use the same words that Ben is using that basically like, oh, yes, parents need to teach their kids about interracial marriage. Six-year-olds can't be learning that stuff in school. It would be obvious what's going on here. It is obvious what's going on here. And the fact that they try to make it about, well, it's just,

There are issues that six-year-olds or people in school, you know, Ben made up the six-year-old thing, but let's just say kids in school. If kids in school can know that straight people can get married, they can know that gay people can get married. And it's nothing but bigotry. And, you know, he loves to dress it up in whatever, you know, language he does. But at his heart, he's a simple, he's a simple bigot like all bigots are. And for that, he gets my fuck that guy for today. Yeah, and not great for the Jews as you and I are Jewish. Not good for us.

He is what we call a Shonda. He is a Shonda. That's right. You know what I always find funny, though? It is particularly he did it to Tim this time, which was really illustrative, is that he presents it like, this minority faction wants to rule things. When no one's more of a minority faction than his Puritan views and, like, him, would him and his sister present to the world of, like, live this classical life that pretends we're in 1950. No one's a greater minority than that, and yet he portrays other people as minorities that should not get a voice. Yeah, no for sure.

Yeah. So my, fuck that guy, is a little bit complicated, but not that complicated. Inflation is a real problem, okay? It's a real problem. People don't like it when things cost more than they did last week. I get it. Part of it is unsnarralling the supply chain. Part of it is it's a once in a hundred year, hopefully, pandemic.

part of it is corporate greed. Part of it is, I mean, there's just a number of factors going on here. But the person who can address inflation, I mean, and again, it's more complicated than this, but the Fed is very important for addressing inflation. Republicans have decided that they care a lot about inflation and good. I think Democrats should, too. It's an important issue, and people are suffering, and it is the job of our electeds to serve the people. And so this should be high on everybody's list.

But I actually think Republicans are full of shit and pretending to care about inflation because there was a Senate banking hearing run by one chair at Brown, a favorite of this podcast. You know, it's to interview the Fed chair, to get that going. Republicans didn't show up. That's not possible. Republicans did not show up. And so I say to them, if you care about inflation. You got to go to the fucking hearings and you're fucking hypocrites and they have won my ire yet again as the fuck that guys. The street continues.

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