The Daily Beast Podcast - The Hamster Wheel of Trumpism Will Turn Greene Into a Hero

Episode Date: February 5, 2021

So how are House Republicans dealing with the fallout from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s freshly resurfaced 9/11 trutherism, school shooting denialism, and threats on fellow lawmakers’ lives? They’re giving her a standing ovation. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is House minority leader,” co-host Rick Wilson says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “She runs the House.”  The newly elected Georgia Republican, Rick says, is the GOP’s equivalent of the “crazy uncle.” “You know, we know he’s drunk. We know he’s crazy. We know he comes to Thanksgiving dinner every year lit to shit. And we’ll just pretend it’s not happening. And even though Greene was booted from her committees Thursday night in a largely partisan vote, Rick predicts she “will raise a ton of money because they will all say, ‘Oh, we have to teach the lying libtard cucks a lesson. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is a hero and Trump loves her, and therefore we love her’... I guarantee there will be a cottage industry that emerges and says, ‘Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is rough around the edges. She says some crazy things sometimes. And you know, we don’t believe in those crazy things she says, but, but, but a little echo the distance but she’s just asking questions. She owns the libs. Don’t you want to own the libs?”  Later in the episode, co-host Molly Jong-Fast asks Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) whether Republicans will return to the normal world now that former President Donald Trump has been defeated. “Some of the early signals are not good,” the senator says. “Look at Kevin McCarthy yesterday, there were basically no consequences for one of the members who’s just spinning these conspiracy theories. And based on what I heard, there’s a real question about when the dust settles here in the next couple of days, whether she’s going to have more power than she did before.”  Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) tells Molly that while he has always “tried to form coalitions where I can, when you have someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s not just refusing to certify the election results but was actually threatening assassination against Secretary Clinton and President Obama and harassing members of Congress, you have to draw the line.” “Kevin McCarthy last night displayed the greatest moment of weakness in a party leader I have seen since Newt Gingrich tried to resist the all you can eat pizza bar at Sbarro,” Rick concludes of the House GOP’s closed-door vote Wednesday night. “This idea of giving Marjorie Taylor Greene a free pass by rapping her lightly on the wrist and having her say, ‘I no longer believe wink, wink, wink that QAnon wink, wink, wink is a real thing, wink, wink, Hillary Clinton wink Adrenochrome wink the Jews wink.’ By letting her pass through there and letting his people give her a standing ovation with no punishment, no sanction, nothing, he showed his weakness and he showed how weak he was to the country, to Pelosi, and to the rest of his party.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just Rick & Molly discussing the fuckery. 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’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks. This is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Chongfast, a left-wing pundit, and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. We take the issues seriously. Ourselves, not so much. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we get ourselves out of it. Hi, Rick Wilson. Howdy. We're limping

along here. We're shambling towards some sort of new reality. The autopsy for the Trump campaign, there was no steel. There was just fuck up. No, you know what this is? This is one of the situations where the lurid fantasies of one group of people that were monetized into a gigantic scam, it turned out to be horseshit of the highest order. Let me say that again. It turned out to be horseshit of the highest order. The beautiful sort of ancillary droppings off of this whole thing,

let's not forget, starting well before the election, he was saying, stop this deer, and it's going to be stoned, and all the stuff that predicated the actual moment when a couple days after November 3rd, when they realized he's lost, and this became a $200-plus million scam to suck a little bit more Vig out of the disability check crowd for Donald Trump to enrich him personally. And so when you look at their own pollsters, slowly trying to rehab their reputations, there's an old genre in D.C. of people who, at the end of a losing campaign produce a memo that basically says, if only they'd listen to me, well, that's a

what this is. And I think, look, I think the conclusions are largely correct. This guy lost this election because he fucked up COVID, because he was a bad person, because he was a bad leader. I mean, they identified all this. And you can't. And also, because Biden was a, you know, he did well in the states he needed to do well. They ran a targeted campaign. They did what they were supposed to do. This is like Occam's razor of politics. The fact that Donald Trump lost this election is not ascribed to, you know, voting machines being altered or zombie Hugo Chavez or any other bullshit. Right.

He fucked up. Bad campaigns, bad person, bad candidate, bad president. End of discussion. No zombie Hugo Chavez. Yeah, right. No zombie Hugo Chavez. They knew this from the very beginning. They knew this.

They knew this from the very beginning. At no point was there any question that this was real. It's always been a fake. They knew it from the beginning. It's interesting with this Smartmatic filing. Can I submit into evidence? Submit it to the record? Into the record the first two sentences of the Smartmatic filing.

Please do. Because it's kind of great. The Earth is round. 2 plus 2 equals 4. Joe Biden and Camel Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen. Smartmatic.

$2.7 billion. They're suing Fox. They're suing terrifying North Korean propagandist, Lou Dobbs. They're suing big lips, Maria Barteroma. They're suing Judge Box of Wine. They're suing

America's most expensive free lawyer, your old boss, Rudolph Giuliani, and Sidney Powell. Sydney Powell, the Crackin Lady. Hey, you know, what's interesting? you know, there's all these people that accuse me and my

college, the Lincoln Party, they're like, oh, you're all grifters. If we were really good at grifting, if we were actual grifters, we would have beaten Smartmatic to the punch on suing Rudy. Because I mean, by the time they're done with him, he's not going to have, it's going to be like, who gets Rudy's cardboard box? It's pretty awesome for when he's sleeping at the Port Authority, like all those people he kicked out of there. Right.

Yes, sir, sir. Sir, you can't defecate in a shoebox. Stop it, please. Let's talk about this lawsuit for a minute. What do you think about this lawsuit? It's delicious. It's nutritious. It's massive.

I mean, it's 275 pages long. And for me, I'm thinking, it's Proustian length. Seems to promise many delights. Lou Dobbs. I mean, Will this be the end of his low-rated North Korean-style propaganda, or will he continue on? You know, I don't know the answer to that question yet, because Fox is now Oppositional Defiant Disorder Network,

and they really, really, really love them some crazy. And because that is, you know, a centerpiece of this entire affair, they probably want more crazy. I don't know if you heard that serial plagiarist and serial, you know what, Ben Dominic, by the way, is going to the Fox Network to run their podcast. Yeah, it's good. So does that mean the Federalist is no longer? I don't know what that means for the Federalist. I mean, its traffic had been, I think, fairly blah for a long time. I don't think it ever became what I called the gentry version of Breitbart. Yeah. Attracting the traffic. Because in this day and age, what do you need to win? You need crazy. You know, all the crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. You need all the lunatics, all the barkers. And as much as they were the hub of the anti-Anti-Trump. movement. You can always tell what happens to one of these sites where for a while they'll have a lot of, like, ex-journalists or whatever. And then it becomes like, you know, Kitty Smith is a junior at Hillsdale College. She's now the executive editor of, you know, okay. There was this interview this week, which I think speaks the lawsuit, where Mike Lundell, everyone's favorite mustache propagandist, was two, cuckoo for newsmax. No. Yeah, for newsmax.

I said this yesterday, Nicole Wallace. If you're too crazy for newsmax, you're too crazy. Yeah. You can see those guys just like about to crap themselves. They're like, oh, no. Well, when he started saying Dominion, they were like, we would like to go in. You saw the woman look down at her paper.

Right. And the anger be like, it's like, we're going to cut away now to our story about Tovin Throat Singers. That huge paper. that just has in a 90.5 that says no talking about dominion, no lawsuits. Right, no dominion. That was kind of amazing. So can I do a dramatic reading? Please, please, please, please. Page 39, heading A, Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell created a story about Smartmatic. Rudolph Giuliani and Sidney Powell did not want Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to win the 2020 election. Mr. Giuliani and Ms. Powell wanted the Republican candidates, Donald Trump and Michael Pence, to prevail on the election. But in the loss,

they also saw an opportunity to profit off of President Trump's and Vice President Pence's popularity. President Trump and Vice President Pence had and continue to have a significant and loyal following. President Trump and Vice President Pence received approximately 70 million votes during the 2020 election shortly after the election. Mr. Giuliani Ms. Powell decided they would spread the story that the 2020 election had been rigged in favor of Joe Biden and Kamala Eris and stolen from Donald Trump and Michael Pinas. They also decided that the story would involve the manipulation of election technology in selected states, ultimately Nevada-era. Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The problem was the story was they needed to identify a villain.

Okay, we can't read the whole filing because it's 200,000. I know. You know what? I really could, but I shouldn't. You could. We can do that as an extra. Right. Folks, we're going to give a donation to charity to hear Rick Wilson read the erotic, the erotic

of Lou Dobbs. Hold on. Let me just say this. Let me just do this one line for this. Mr. Dobbs then took the initiative and contributed additional false to the narrative by telling people the smartmatic and dominion sent votes out of the country. What is it wrong with you? That was good. That was good.

It's been a rough week for the My Pillow guy and one of the other many hits that keep on coming besides the fact that, and also I would like to say that the Newsmax audience immediately sided with the My Pillow guy and were furious with the anchors for trying to keep him from spreading disinformation, which I think is, feels like, peak newsmax. But the thing I wanted to say was, I think that it's important to note that actually David Hogg, according to Axios, is starting his own pillow company. The My Pillow guy is not the only game in town. There's some folks in Tallahassee, Florida, of all places. I didn't know before any of this. They were the ones that donated to the pillows to the National Guard guys who were in Washington after the riots. I'm sure that David Hogg and those guys and others, they'll all have an entrepreneurial space because, people don't want to rest their head on a pillow made of fascism.

That's a really good theme. They don't want a pillow filled with mustache hair. Each pillow comes with a used testosterone patch and a quarter tablespoon of Mike Lindell's shaving. I feel so freaked out by Mike Lindell's mustache. Is he the only person in this sort of world? It still has a 70s style pouring stash. Yes. When you see Mike Lindell walk on stage, you should always hear like,

Oh, wow, wah, wah, wah, wow. That's really true. Did someone here order a pizza or a pillow? Yesterday, Marjorie Taylor Green in a meeting with the Republican caucus got a standing ovation from about half the members. It's becoming clear that she's going to be above Liz Cheney in leadership by the end of the week at this rate. No, no, no, Marjorie Taylor Green is the House Minority Leader. She runs the House.

Cuevin McCarthy, that's Kevin with a cue. Cuevin McCarthy has no power. He has shown himself to be a toothless B. He absolutely is a ridiculously weak, pathetic man. he could have taken care of this problem weeks ago. He could have taken her out behind the barn and... Okay. Also, not my first one, but yes.

He could have put her on the rack and stretched that until she did have lessen and power. Look, he could have done something about this sooner. It would have helped the situation. It would have been smart. But as we know about Kevin, he combines three aspects of Trumpism. He's not smart.

He's not brave, and he is always looking over his shoulder at Donald Trump. His fear of Trump is so intense. His fear of Trump going down there and kissing Trump's ass and begging for mercy and all of this aggressive stupidity in handling someone who believes that the Pentagon wasn't really attacked by al-Qaeda, but it was instead of CGI missile. And, of course, the aforementioned Jew space lasers, which, by the way, if you ask a serious Republican right now and say, do you believe in you space lasers?

They're like, that's absurd. This is a left wing talking point. But if you ask them if they believe in Muslim space lasers, they go, oh, no more. I've seen it. I think she's got them. You know, they have adopted this, you know, they're like, oh, don't look at the crazy uncle.

You know, we know he's drunk. We know, we know he's crazy. We know he comes to Thanksgiving dinner every year lit off, lit to shit. We'll just pretend it's not happening. she's in the room with them right now all the time and it's not going to go away it's going to continue because they did not really punish her in the house now she will she will be i think the votes going on while we're recording this i haven't seen it yet so here's my prediction whatever happens tonight she will raise a billion dollars okay she will raise a fuck ton of money because they will all

say oh we have to teach the line libitard cucks a lesson and marjor tether green is a hero and Trump loves her and therefore we love her. Watch, watch it happen. It's almost inevitable that the hamster wheel of Trumpism will now try to turn her into a hero. And what's going to happen? The fascinating part of it, that I guarantee there will be a cottage industry that emerges and says, well, Marjorie Taylor Green is rough around the edges. She says some crazy things sometimes.

And we don't believe in those crazy things, she says, but, but, but, but, a little echo with the distance. But she owns the lips. But she's just asking questions. She's just asking questions. She owns the libs. Don't you want, don't you want to own the libs? If we don't own the libs, you know, and so you're going to end up with the same bullshit that drove Donald Trump, that put Donald Trump in office. And no one in the Republican world will publicly come out and chop her off at the knees and say, this bitch is crazy. I will not have her in my caucus. I will not work with her. I will not fundraise with her. I will not add my part of the contribute. You know, every member has to contribute to the National Republican Congressional Committee. Not one of them's going to say, hey, no money for Marge. Not one, except maybe the 11, you know. Now, I do want to talk about the other great loss yesterday of face and stature. Well, Kevin, Cuevin, of course, is crushed now. He is, he is. I feel like you know a lot of stuff. I know a thing or two about your former boss's daughter. And so I would like you to talk about it. Well, yesterday in the caucus, they were running around the caucus saying, Liz Cheney's conspiring with the Lincoln Project. We put out a statement saying, well, she's not, but we do like her odds against Matt Gates. We think she'd knock him down the first round with one hand tie behind her back. And so what it told you about the party, as it now is constituted, is very interesting. Liz Cheney, in a secret vote, easily held her position as conference chairman. Sixty one people led by

We Matt Gates and his overly tight suits voted against her. What do you know, and when did you know it, Rick Wilson, about Lynch Cheney? I know she's a fine American who believes in the traditional principles of conservative leadership. She won by a lot. She won by a lot. She took down the Maga Caucus in a way. Well, and look, here's the dirty little secret. And I've said this from the beginning.

If you were to take 100 Republicans, just for round number math, there are 35 of them who are mouth-breathing fanatic, real believers in Trumpism. Elected officials, right? A little more than the third maybe are real believers. Jim Jordans, you know, you're Louis Gomer. It's your, your Mo Brooks's, your Toothless Wonders, right? A remaining 60% are fucking terrified. They hate him, they fear him, they hate their voters.

Jim, Jim Swift, what a great piece at the bulwark today about a party that fears his voters. And it's true. They're terrified of their base. They don't want to cross their base. They don't want to have their base know what they're doing. They are terrified. Those people in the caucus last night who cast that vote, if it had been a recorded vote, Liz Cheney would have lost. The 10 who supported her would have stayed with her and the rest would have voted against her, including Kevin McCarthy, if it had been a recorded vote. But it wasn't a recorded vote. See, remember, remember, this is a piece of caucus business, so it's not an officially recorded House vote. But they can't do impeachment as they like that? No, they can't, unfortunately. There's no structure for it. Does it strike you as proof that Republicans are cowards? Yeah.

Oh, and by the way, that percentage, that typology I was giving you 5%. And I'm going to blow y'all's minds here, audience. Matt Gates doesn't believe in any of this. Matt Gates is an opportunistic hustler. Matt Gates is trying to get more hits on Fox, more revs on the hamster wheel of his fundraising machine. because I promise you, he was, I, I, I don't, I haven't looked through my, my special email box where I have, where I'm signed up for various crazy right-winger email accounts.

But I promise you, if I go through there, Matt Gates will have raised money off of it two or three times at least since that. I stood up. I flew to Wyoming. You know, but it was a defeat for Matt Gates, who has been making noises about wanting to be the House Minority Leader, wanting to be in a position of great power and, and carry forth the MAGA. banner. And remember, he doesn't believe in it. It's bullshit. This is where Mitch McConnell was for the last

four years. He didn't believe in any of this crap, but he was an opportunist. He wanted his judges. He wanted his tax cuts. He wanted the things he wanted to get done. So he played the game. Or the red hat. Played the role of, you know, Trump jester. Yes, sir, Mr. President, I'm happy to have you here in the Turtle Pond.

I don't know where that fucking voice came from. I don't know what it's a reference to. I got nothing. Just came out of my fucking head. Rick Wilson's Animal Tales. Sorry, I'm not bored. I love the voices. They're my favorite.

Yeah, I know you love the voices. You tell me all the time. Rick, do the voices. I know. You call me later tonight and say, Rick, I need to hear the Mitch McConnell turtle imitation again. Oh, Molly. You're all liberal pundit,

so I don't know what to do with you. By the way, all your voices end up being Bill Clinton. I'm aware of that. Listen, I know. I know. Bill Clinton is like the wellspring of imitations. And the only limit that I have to

talk about is the greatness of this country. The number of orgaz... The thing that I'm struck by is the MAGA caucus, just like the Freedom Caucus, isn't very good at whipping votes. No, they are not. And look, there's a lot of folks in D.C. right now

in Mitch World, particularly. Josh Holmes and all the Mitch guys, and a lot of the former people that have gravitated from Mitch Pence-Trump world to people like Nikki Haley, and Chrissy Nome and Marco and other people. They're plotting right now for what I call the Revenge of the Nerds.

They're going to do to the Magas, what we did to the Tea Party in 2014. In 2014, we said, we would prefer not to lose many of these seats by having crazy people like witches in them. So we went out and put pillows over the heads of a lot of tea partiers so that real Republicans who could win races in those states they were in would. win and they did. They're going to try to do that again this year. Well, in 22, they're going to try to start going out there and dropping opposition research on the Trump be candidates. They're going to go out and start dropping opposition research on the real hard. Their idea is we're

never having a Marjorie Taylor Green in a statewide race again. Now, their problem is the entire infrastructure of Trumpism is where the money is now and where the votes are for them. If they don't have those people revved up and crazy, then I've got to be revved up and crazy. And I'm going to be wrapped up in crazy. So if you have in state X, you have Republican candidate number one who believes in the lizard Nazi moon base and, you know, Hillary

eating babies, and candidate number two, Chamber of Commerce Republican-style person, it's going to be really hard when Donald Trump puts out the word on whatever fucking account he'll put it out on in the future. Hey, my guy is crazy lizard, lizard alien Nazi moon base guy and not

Republican cuck-shell Chamber of Commerce guy. But that's going to be out there. And I think it's going to be out there very soon that that plan is great on paper, and it's great if you have a ton of corporate money backing you up to pull it off. But you can't raise that money from the Magas. You can't raise that money from the crazy people. I had an interesting piece of intelligence came to me today from a Republican candidate's campaign manager, a Senate candidate in 20. This person told me, he said, our person was exactly right on paper in every way. every day he got up and kept getting drawn deeper into the mud and of Trumpism and having to answer questions in these town hall meetings and these and these, you know, these zooms and with reporters and these crazy people. And we realized, you know, by the time we had gone 35% of the way into being a full manga, the game was over. But the perverse incentive to keep raising money was we had to keep going further in and digging and digging and digging and digging and digging.

And so by the end of it, a winnable state, a winnable race with a decent candidate, got blown out because the overhang of having to be performatively Trumpish is not as great as they think it is outside of very red states and very red districts. Ron Wyden is the senior senator from Oregon. And today he's going to talk to us about a host of issues. So my first question to you is about marijuana. You guys are really working hard on legalization. Can you talk a little bit about that? What this is really all about, Molly, is the war on drugs has just been a mess. And so many lives have been harmed.

It's time to really make a break with the past. And so with Senator Booker and Senator Schumer and I, Bill will go to the Finance Committee where I'm the senior fellow, here's what we're doing. We're going to end the prohibition. Then we want to have sensible, regulatory oversight and sensible tax policy. We made it clear this is going to be a priority for the three of us this week. We still have a fair number of details to work out. But when you have Senator Booker, the Senate Majority Leader and the Finance Committee ready to go, I think

we're in a position to build a strong coalition. I want to talk to you about election security, because one of the things I think of when I think of you is that you've been very interested in, like, tack regulation for a long time. Isn't that right? Since the day when I had a full head of hair and rugged good looks. Molly, what it was all about is I was Oregon's first Democrat to get elected to the United States Senate in 34 years. And I came to the Senate and I said, look, we've always been about wood products. I'm going to fight like hell for those communities and those jobs.

I also want to get us into some new areas. And I came to the Senate. Hardly anybody knew how to use a computer. The late-night talk show hosts were having an incredibly hilarious time because the chairman of the major committee was asked what the Internet was, and he said, oh, it's a series of tubes. Oh, Jesus. Just howling for weeks and weeks.

So I got to step in, write some of the foundational laws for text. And it's been really good for my state and I think for the country. So it looks like we definitely need more technology, regulation, whatever that looks like. Are you going to be able to explain to the other senators how computers work? Because there's some Luddites in there. We're certainly, and I'll be a little bit of a diplomat here, we're certainly doing a lot better than we were in those days when people are going at a series of two. But here's what's also different.

You know, when senators go home now, you really see directly firsthand in everybody's lives what happens if you don't have a sound policy, for example, broadband. The reality is there's so many dead spots everywhere in my state, all over the country. So what I'm telling my colleagues is when we talk about infrastructure and people say, well, roads and bridges, and I'm going, let me tell you some, every single infrastructure bill that goes through the United States Senate. I'm chairman of the finance committee is going to have a significant focus on broadband. And what I want to do on my watch, Molly, is I want to say in America, we treated broadband like we did years ago. We said we had double electricity everywhere.

That seems really smart to me. Do you think you can get that passed? Certainly there's a lot of support that you didn't see before. For example, in bright red states, rural states, they're all telling us, Hey, our ability to create more high-scale, high-wage jobs is all about broadband. And if you don't have broadband, you don't have rural health care, rural communities can just be sacrificed zones. And that's what I'm going to build on and say we cannot let that happen. Can we talk about reconciliation? I feel like the question every Democrat gets is like, well, a Republican, you know, you want to be bipartisan, but you're using reconciliation.

And of course, like, Republicans use reconciliation to try to take away Obamacare and to pass an enormous tax. cut for millionaires and to drill in the Arctic. So I'm not going to ask you that question because I think it's dumb, but I'm going to ask you, how do you work with these people? Molly, what you try to do is have a foot in both camps. That's what Joe Biden's doing. He said, look, you know, we'll talk. We'll try and work, work something out. But this is urgent. We've got to get more vaccines. We've got to get the protective equipment, the PPE. We need more health care workers. So we got our foot in both camps. And, you know, the irony is these far-right Republicans seeing no problem spending a trillion and a half dollars on all these extra goodies and the like. And then we go deeply in the hole.

I mean, they'll spend on taxes. They'll spend on all kinds of ideological trophies. And then we pick up the pieces. Right. You led a call. There were six Republicans. senators who voted to overturn the election, but only two who really got in there and were pro, you know, whatever, pro coup. And those were Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Talk to me about what you've tried to do there and what that situation looks like. This was a strategy to incite violence. Incite violence. And clearly all of these kinds of theories they were saying, well, we just wanted to certify the vote. Come on. Look, they had just spent years, years and years resisting my effort to have handmarked paper ballots. So if they were serious about how this really was

about election accountability, they should have passed that and not have gotten us into a situation where we had literally outside the capital a domestic terrorist movement building. you had one of the most prominent senators in an iconic picture with a fist in the air, basically urging people on. Do you think that there's a world in which they can, I mean, they could be removed from the Senate? We have made it clear there's got to be some accountability here. That's really what the difference is all about. When I think about what went on and my family's asked me to describe it, We see people trying to protect senators, trying to protect the capital with machine guns.

Were you in there? Of course. And, you know, it seems like every few days we learn a little bit more. And the most prominent Republicans, Nikki Haley, Donald Trump's ambassador to the UN, you know, said something along the lines, not great. That was her comment about something that's going to go down in his. history and is causing people around the world to basically say, you know, we thought that would happen in our country. We never thought it would happen in America.

Did you feel for your life? When you're in these kinds of situations, and I have town hall meetings at 970, you know, town hall meetings open to everybody. We've had plenty of situations where somebody says, you know, we're worried about a gun being here and got that extra police and the like. You know, what you do in these kinds of situations is, you know, the adrenaline kicks in. You say to yourself, let's just do everything it takes to make sure everybody is safe. And frankly, there was nowhere near enough preparation.

The area that I was really troubled by is we have all these wonderful people who make the capital, you know, welcoming for cooking and cleaning and all the rest. And a lot of those people we heard were like hiding in closets and locking themselves in places. You always can I unpack this later. And of course, that iconic picture of the fellow who took over Nancy Pelosi's office, I heard somebody say, not only was it stark in terms of how bold, but basically those were domestic terrorists who didn't. And I think that they would ever be held accountable. And now there's got to some accountability.

Apropos of this kind of point I was making that in order to defend our democracy from, you know, what went on January 6th, we got to make it easier to vote. One of the aspects of this will be to expose the hypocrisy caucus. I don't know if you found this account of how many people in the Trump administration were out attacking vote by mail. And they were done attacking vote by mail. They repaired to their house and probably got in their pajamas and they voted by mail. So we're going to make sure that the, you know, the record kind of gets out. It has a 230 aspect of this. You know, what, what I don't think Donald Trump would know 230 if it hit him in the head.

Can you explain 230 for us just for two seconds? What 230 is all about is it's about saying that the person who creates the content, is responsible for the content. And that, in a sense, provides a shield for a website because the person is responsible for what's posted. But in our law, we also said that those platforms, websites, would have a sword. And the story was something that would moderate

the hate and the slime and the gross stuff that was on that type. I don't think the big platforms have done anywhere near enough to deal with it. And so I've got ideas on how to step that up. But here's the thing. The idea of 230 was always about the little guy. The person didn't have power and plow. And I'm convinced, for example, Black Lives Matter or the Me Too movement would have had a lot of trouble getting off the ground because they wouldn't have been able to get on these platforms about the moderation provision.

That's interesting. Hey, the one other issue just for you to pick up on, you know, it's people, New York Times had to do a big correction. People say, well, it's 2.30 that's responsible for the hate speech. The fact is, if there was no 230, you still have exactly the same thing going on online because of the First Amendment. Yeah, that's really interesting. Oh, yeah, no question. Do you think that, are you hopeful?

Like, I mean, clearly we're in this kind of insubes. insane period where Republicans have lost their minds, right? I mean, do you think there's a world in which now that Trump has been defeated that Republicans come back to normal? Too early to tell. And certainly some of the early signals are not good. I mean, look at Kevin McCarthy yesterday. There were basically no consequences for one of the members who's just spinning these, you know,

conspiracy theories. And based on what I heard, there's a real question about when the dust sells here in the next couple of days, whether she's going to have more power than she did before because she always tells her constituents, I'm speaking up for you. And constituents say, you bad. Absolutely. Go get them. And then she's more powerful. And once again, anything resembling norms of basic decency and stability are just thrown out. the window. Do you think we're going to be able to put back some of those norms and the guardrails?

Because it feels to me, like, one of the things people love to say is that the Democratic guard rails held. But they did and they didn't, right? Do you think you guys will be able to strengthen those guardrails? The key to really building back as it relates to civil society is to pass reforms that, for example, and democracy from the forces that supported and cited and fueled the riots. That means, for example, making it easier for every American to vote. And I started introducing vote by mail in 2002. During the pandemic, I said, okay, now is the time to COVID-proof the election. We saw that people like it.

It was good for public safety. They have a chance to do it when it's convenient for them at home. And, you know, my sense is that taken tried and true systems in Oregon and elsewhere where you vote at home, send your ballots in by mail. That's one of the best antidotes to defending democracy because everybody gets to participate in the choices that hold us together. I have, you have, you live in a state that Republicans are kind of obsessed with. I also, I live in a city where Republicans are kind of obsessed with. Like, do you ever turn on Fox News and are you ever surprised at the disconnect between what you must spend a lot of time in Oregon? Are you ever surprised at the disconnect between the world of conservative media and what you see on the ground?

Yeah, and look, when Donald Trump wanted to find somebody to attack, you know, yes, he went to areas like my hometown. I tell everybody, let's put it in perspective, you know, we look at our state of, several million people. And, you know, there's a small fraction who are involved in these activities. It's really a picture that far right likes to paint, but it's a tiny fraction of our state, and they get a lot of mileage at them. Thank you so much. Much much. Take good care. You too. 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 Soledite O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes it's just Molly and I shooting the shit. 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. dot the dailybeast.com. Roe Kana is the congressman from California's 17th congressional district. So I have lots of questions for you, but we wanted to start with GameStop. Yeah, you issued a statement on GameStop. I wanted to ask you if you could explain to our audience

what you think happened here and what needs to be changed. The basic flaw was the hedge funds that were engaged in this gambling and shorting, And they do this often. They short a stock and then they'll go on television or go on a podcast and tell people to sell it and drive the price down. Well, you had retail investors on Reddit, redditors say enough and they fought back and they actually were beating the hedge funds at their own game. And then what you had is Robin Hood stopped the trades. And that was wrong. I mean, the reason I think Robin Hood stopped the trades is they didn't have enough capital requirement to be able to meet the

clearing house's capital under the regulations. And instead of just being honest about that, the Robin Hood CEO has not been transparent. And he's not answered why they didn't have sufficient capital requirements and why they made false representations to the retail investors. I'm curious to know, can we talk about COVID relief for a minute? Sure. Where are we with the $2,000 checks? We need to get those out. I mean, the Biden administration has a plan where it's $1,400. They're saying that Americans already got $600. I'd rather we just have the $2,000, but at least let's get the $1,400 out. And some of us in the Congress and the Progressive Caucus are saying, let's get this passed. And we don't have to wait for Susan Collins or others.

This is what President Biden ran on. He won on. Let's get it done. It strikes me that he's picked up a lot of progressive legislation. Do you feel like that since you're inside? I do on some of the things he has, When you look at the child allowance and $300 a month to families who have children or working poor, that would cut child poverty in this country by 50 percent when you look at the expansion of the earned income tax credit. That's a very progressive policy. When you look at $15 minimum wage, that's a progressive policy. So there are clearly areas of this COVID relief bill that he has adopted progressive policies,

things that either Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders ran on. that he made his own during the campaign, and that's very encouraging to see. It strikes me that Janet Yellen is a bold progressive. I think Janet Yellen has definitely learned the lessons of 2008. I mean, she's no doubt a brilliant economist and very thoughtful in leading the Treasury Department. But I think her point is that the bigger danger is that we don't do enough, that we don't go bold enough, and not a risk of having too much spending. And so that to me is exactly the right mentality in dealing with this crisis.

Are you excited to see Bernie Sanders heading a committee? I am. I think he has a very influential role. I mean, he's going to help get a lot of Biden's agenda through because in my sense is we're going to need reconciliation. And Sanders is going to make sure that we're pushing the envelope to get things like $15 minimum wage or paid family leave, whatever we can through reconciliation. It's going to be a fight and ultimately one of the most powerful people in this country, maybe the Senate parliamentarian who's going to get to rule on what is in and out of reconciliation. But Sanders and his team will really push to get as much of the priorities in. I know.

It's this whole parliamentarian and we had somebody on to explain the bird rule. And it's just so interesting. And again, I feel like we have to remember that Republicans use reconciliation to pass Arctic drilling. So you're a serious person. How do you work in a, you are in a job where you're working in a world with a Marjorie Taylor Green and a Louis Gomerd. How do you do that? Well, as you know, I have relationships with quite a few Republicans. I mean, I had passed a bill with Mark Meadows and he had Trump ended up signing it when Meadows went to become chief of staff with Matt Gates.

we actually started the opposition to the Yemen war on the war powers resolution. I'm very pleased that President Biden is going to announce, I think, today, the end of our military support for that war. So I have tried to form coalitions where I can. But when you have someone like Marjorie Taylor Green, who's not just refusing to certify the election results, but who's actually threatening assassination against Secretary Clinton and President Obama in tweets and harassing members of Congress, you have to draw the line.

And that's why today we're going to vote to at least strip her off her committees. But there is no working with someone like her. But that doesn't mean that you can't still find some areas to work with with Republicans, understanding that there is huge disagreements on issues of race, on issues of gender, and issues of immigration. Our job is to try to get things done and to engage where we can. Do you ever feel like, I mean, I feel like we've had so much news of Republican, you know, Lauren Boper. We have them refusing to go through the metal detector, not wanting to wear masks.

Do you ever feel like you're working in a hostile work environment? Well, what I don't understand is why members of Congress think they're so special. I mean, most of us, when you go to work, before I was a member of Congress, you go to work. You have to go through the security. You have to make sure that you're not insulting coworkers, whether it's online or in person, people would be fired. if they did any of that. So why should you think that just because you're a member of Congress, those basic rules don't apply? Now, I personally don't fear for my safety more than, you know, the normal risk of being in public life. But I do fear for the safety of members of Congress,

particularly women, women of color, some of them who have been more high profile and questioning authority and whatever one thinks of their views. They have received objectively more threats and they're more vulnerable. And that I do fear for the safety of some of my colleagues. Yeah. No, I mean, it must be really something. When you were at the Capitol, were you there on January 6th? I was in my office at the Cannon Building,

and then they evacuated the Cannon Building because they had planted a bomb, a pipe bomb outside the Cannon Building. What we've now subsequently learned, at least the speculation, is that the bomb was a purposeful distraction so that police would go to the, Cannon building and not be guarding the Capitol, which shows the sophistication of the plot to overrun the Capitol. So I left the Cannon Building, and I was in the Longworth building then and then was headed to the Capitol, but fortunately, I had some very vigilant people on my team, staffers who texted me and said, well, the Capitol is being overrun. I couldn't quite believe that to go back

to your office. And I went back to Cannon, locked the door, and was there until late at night. Can we talk about, I know this is boring, but in California and New York, this is actually quite a big deal. It's salt. Yeah, of course. It strikes me as the state and local tax exemption. Is that what it's called? Yes. Yes.

I mean, basically, it allows you to deduct your state and local taxes from your federal taxes. Right. It struck me when Trump did that as a way to punish states that had higher state taxes. Yes, it was basically punishing states that believed in spending on, on, on, on public education, on health care, saying, you know, you want to have a low-tax state. So it was punishing the states that believed in public expenditure. Now, people say that those who benefit from the salt deduction are more middle-class, upper-middle-class professionals.

And that may be the case. But the wealth generation in this country, I represent Silicon Valley, the fact that you have billionaires having made a trillion more dollars, some of it just because of the digitization of the economy, suggests to me that there is a perfectly good way. where you can tax those who are making extraordinary fortunes without imposing this tax on the working class, middle class, or even, frankly, the upper middle class that aren't benefiting from this exceed extraordinary wealth generation. I mean, if you look at the S&P 500, and most people don't realize this, 90% of the gains of the S&P 500 in the last five years have been basically the

big tech companies, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Netflix, literally. So they can afford to pay more tax. talk about it because it is such a sort of Fox Newsie narrative, but we definitely are losing people to lower tax states. And I have to wonder how much the salt deduction has to do with that. Well, the salt deduction has definitely had an impact in the Bay Area. I mean, our challenges have been housing. We don't have enough affordable housing, transportation. We need better public transportation. And for some of the younger folks, the salt, the lack of the salt deduction, it's very expensive to live. And if you don't have a salt deduction, you can't live there. That said, I mean,

California is still 15% of our economy. It still leads the nation in innovation and economic growth. And I'm not concerned about our economic vibrancy. I do think it's unfair, though, that they're penalizing California for making investments in education and health care and communities. Can you explain this child tax credit? Sure. The child tax credit basically allows you, if you have, if you're a working family, if you're lower income or even lower middle class, and if you have kids who are dependents to get a refund at the end of the year on your taxes. So if you owe $10,000 of taxes, you would be able to get a tax credit, which would reduce the tax you owed. Or if you didn't know taxes, you'd actually get a check from the government.

What Biden is proposing is let's just not give the tax credit at the end of the year. let's actually give people a child allowance, meaning let's have the government write them a check if they have dependents for $300 a month. And Columbia has found that that would reduce child poverty by 50%. Matt Brewing is really the person who's been pushing this for years. And Canada and many other countries, Western democracies have a form of child allowance. That's one of the best anti-poverty measures that we have. This wouldn't go to everyone, though, right? It would not. It would be focused on working class, lower income folks who were poor. I forget the exact cutoff in Biden's proposal, and that's probably to be negotiated. But it's really designed to help those

who need it. You have this idea of giving a single COVID vaccine. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So I talked yesterday to Dr. Altstrom, who's one of the leading people on this issue. And it was, frankly, a very concerning conversation. Because what he, he, He has been right over and over again that we have underestimated the pandemic. And what he told me is that in six to 14 weeks, we're going to see another surge with all of these variants. And what Dr. Rosalham said is- So we'll look like the UK, basically. Basically or Portugal.

I mean, and now he said, look, there's no one who knows 100%, but that's what he is concerned about. He would say he thinks it's more than 50%, which, by the way, one of the things he pointed out is all of these CBO estimates and Goldman Sachs estimates, that the economy is going to recover and everything's going to be great by the end of 2021, is all dependent on that not happening. If Dr. Osterholman's scientists and doctors can't predict what's going to be happening with the virus, certainly economists can't predict what's going to be happening for our economy, which is dependent on what's happening on the virus. So he's deeply concerned that you could have these increase in cases and increase in debts.

And what he said to me is that there is all this data that when Britain went to one shot, it was about 82% effective. Now, he's not saying don't have a second shot, but he said most vaccines you could delay up to three to six months before getting that second shot, and that there is data out there in this case that suggests that after 28 days, the first shot could be 80% or 90% effective.

There could be a drop-off, though, if you don't get the second shot. And his point was just, let's get a group together at the CDC to look at all the data and make a hard-nosed calculation, because if we come to April and don't have as many shots in Americans arms, then we really are going to see more depth and more hospitalization. So my call was saying, look, there are people like Ashish Jha, Dr. Osterhom, who have this data. The CDC ought to consider it.

And then I trust President Biden to make the judgment. Is it weird to be in a complete, to have like an administration that actually believes the virus is real? It's refreshing. You know, someone of my team will. McClevy said it was that he does a daily report to me to me of all the statistics and what's going on and vaccination. And he said he used to be pulling teeth for him. He used to spend hours trying to get this data when the Trump administration was there. And he said how his life has changed now that

the Health and Human Services Department actually puts this data out affirmatively. So he just has to go to the website and get all the data. So you have an administration that's not only believes in science, but believes in data, which is why I called for this. I mean, If it was the Trump administration, they'd be no one would listen. But I do think that this administration believes in data, and they will consider all of the data and making a decision. It feels like there's a larger infrastructure issue in California with the wildfires. Can you talk to me about how the state is addressing it and where you guys are with that?

There's a huge issue. I mean, obviously, the meta issue is climate change. I mean, the fires are worse because the temperature is hotter and the conditions are. Greyer. But knowing that is happening and understanding that we have to do more to tackle climate change, we still need a more immediate solution. There are a few things we could do. First of all, we need

prescribed burns. I mean, their reality is that there's forest management techniques, places like Stanford have studied it. You need prescribed burns and a scientific application of that. Second, we need more technology resources to be able to detect these fires

at an early state. And you can actually use artificial intelligence to be able to predict where these fires are likely to break out. And then third, we need more resources in terms of the firefighters and the emergency response to these fires. So our state needs to have more of the investment in this basic infrastructure before we see the fire season again. Do you have any thoughts on how we can, I know this is like a slippery slope, but clearly we are having problems with our social media. Do you have any ideas on how we can better legislative Yes, I have a lot of ideas. I'm writing a book on the topic of what it will take to have more

democratic principles in our digital age. But let me give you a few very concrete ones. Right now, on social media, if you engage in unlawful speech, I mean, speech that's not protected on the First Amendment that incites violence or calls for assassination, even if you have a court order and certainly on the parlor site where you have people actually plotting the assassination of individuals, if you have a court order that says that that speech is illegal, the social media under the current laws do not have to take it down, even under a court, even with a court order. So the first thing you could do is say, well, if you have a court order, you should be able to take down speech that a court has said violates the law and isn't protected by the First Amendment.

But more broadly, there was a naivete, I think, in the social media. And I don't think it was intentional, but some of these folks thought, well, if you just create platforms that, allow people to talk to each other, then suddenly we're going to have peace and multiculturalism and mutual understanding. And it was such a thin reading of history and political philosophy. I mean, why do you need John Rawls or Juergen-Homerimauze or all these people who dedicate their lives thinking about what the ideal rules for discourse and communication are if it was as simple as just let everyone say anything and shout at whatever they want? And so I think what we need to do is take a step back and think about how do we create the rules on class.

platforms that actually facilitate and are consistent with liberal democracy. And what are the regulations that would help social media do that? And the competition that would allow more of these forms to come up so that Zuckerberg and Dorsey aren't the only ones thinking about it. But there just wasn't enough thought put into it. Now, the same thing happened with the printing press, by the way. There were hundreds of years after the printing press of war. And it took human ingenuity to create the institutions of liberal democracy. And so we have to be a have to do the same thing for the digital age. This was so helpful.

Thank you so much. Oh, I really enjoyed it. Thank you for thinking of me. I prepare myself for this segment each and every time we record this broadcast. For it is, trumpet solo, please. Fuck that guy. Rick Wilson. Yes, Madam Fast.

Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy today is Kevin McCarthy. Kevin with a cue. Kevin McCarthy last night displayed the greatest moment of weakness in a party leader I have seen since Newt Gingrich tried to resist the all-you-can-eat-eat-a-bara at Sparrow. This idea of giving Marjorie Taylor Green a free pass by wrapping her lightly on the wrist and having her say, I no longer believe wink, wink, wink, wink, that QAnon, wink, wink, is a real thing, wink, Hillary Clinton, wink, adrenachrome, wink, the Jews, wink. by letting her pass through there and letting his people give her a standing ovation with no punishment, no sanction, nothing. He showed his weakness. He showed how weak he was to the country, to Pelosi, and to the rest of his party. This is a guy who just took a suicide pill, and it's going to kill him slowly or quickly. We don't know yet. And then he defended Liz Cheney, let a secret vote transpire about Liz Cheney to let her stay as conference chair. And so now he's made a permanent enemy of the Magas. So who's the constituency now for Kevin McCarthy in the house?

Nobody. He's fucked. So, you know, it's kind of a shoddenfreude thing. But, you know, fuck that guy. Kevin, you were told months ago, years ago, where this went. You believed years ago that Trump was a Russian asset. You weren't this guy, but now you are reduced to being the shallowest chicken shit I've ever seen. So fuck that guy. My fuck that guy is Mo Brooks.

Because we're in this situation where Marjorie Taylor Green is all of us. sudden the queen of Republican ire, Mo Brooks spoke at the stop-the-steel rally. Moe Brooks was involved with organizing this. Moe Brooks. So, you know, it's all fine. It's all well and good to say Marjorie Taylor Green is a bridge too far. But where is Mo Brooks? Wouldn't Mo Brooks be a bridge too far, too? I mean, the idea that Marjorie Taylor Green is somehow worse than a guy who literally was like, we should storm the Capitol. I mean, he didn't quite say we should storm the Capitol, but he said a lot of very inflammatory things right before the riot. And so, Mo Brooks, you are my fuck that guy. And rightly and well deserved. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new

abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks in the Daily Beast and beyond for media, culture, politics, and science, who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm at Molly Jongfast, and he's at the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast,

at the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.