The Daily Beast Podcast - The Hidden Pattern Behind Trump’s Military Purge

Episode Date: February 25, 2025

The New Abnormal hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie are not surprised by the path the Trump administration has seemingly taken to overhaul the U.S. military, noting that an obvious pattern seems to be at play. Then, Elie Mystal, justice correspondent at The Nation and host of the Contempt of Court podcast, joins the show to discuss the legalities of President Donald Trump’s recent moves. Plus, journalist and New Republic contributing editor Meredith Shiner, stops by to dissect the Democratic Party’s current state of leadership. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Ellie Mistal, Justice Correspondent of the Nation and a host of the Contemptive Court podcast, joins us to break down the legal chaos of the failure to check Trump's authoritarian moves and how Elon Musk's growing influence is accelerating the administration's dismantling of democracy. Then Meredith Shiner, journalist and New Republic contributing editor joins us to talk about her recent piece, primary every Democrat. and why the party's leadership is stuck in the past, I've been frankly just missing the moment. But first, let's have some fun. So another week and more fun stuff to talk about, Danielle, I guess. Let's start with what happened, I guess, over the weekend, on Friday and bled into the weekend,

which was Donald Trump firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an Air Force general named CQ Brown, and also firing the head of the Navy, an admiral named Lisa Franch, I don't know if it's Franchetti or Frankelly. She was the first woman to lead a military service. And not to be overlooked, they are also removing the judge advocates generals for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. And those are the people in charge of basically enforcing the uniform code of military

justice. You know, they're familiar if you've ever watched a few good men or the cane mutiny or anything like that. Or the TV show Jag, for people of a certain age. So all these people are now gone, as numerous people have pointed out, because it couldn't be more obvious. The two top generals that were fired were a black man and a woman. None of the white men who lead the other services were fired. Danielle, this is just another in a series of amazing coincidences that this keeps happening, isn't it? Yes. And I thank God that I'm not in it. so that I can see the patterns that are here, which is that anyone, evidently, even if Donald Trump

elected now the former Joint Chiefs of Staff himself in 2025, which he did, doesn't matter. It is now that if you are a woman, if you are a black person, if you are a person of color, evidently, you do not belong in the U.S. military or any positions of power because a fox news host, who is a womanizer, evidently, has a bigger resume and more power than you do. What's happening here is exactly what it is that this entire administration projects about diversity, equity, and inclusion, except what they do is promote people who didn't earn it, their version of DEI, which is mediocre, unqualified. white men that are being put into and elevated into positions that they have absolutely no

fucking business being in. And it is obscene to me that Pete Higsef has the audacity to speak in the way that he does about the former Joint Chiefs of Staff that he wrote about in his Maga hate-filled book, a four-star general, a former fighter combat, pilot, who has been in the military public service for four decades, is being critiqued by a guy whose job was sitting on a couch and running his mouth. A man who was in charge of multiple nonprofits that went bankrupt. A man that has a rap sheet for alleged sexual assault. A man whose own mother wrote emails about his womanizing and his drinking, has the audacity to wonder aloud whether or not an esteemed man, such as the former Joint Chief Staff, should be in the position

that he was in. It's obscene to me, Andy. It is obscene to me. And the fact that mainstream media, corporate mainstream media, doesn't discuss the obvious pattern here of white supremacy and whitewashing that is happening here as what it is, is wild. I mean, all of this is galling and all of this makes our country less safe. But I think the thing that stands out to me is Pete Higsteth, one of his favorite words is warfighter. We need more generals. We need more, you know, officers who are warfighters. And he contrasts that, which what he claims are the generals, the, the, the, the generals.

DEI generals, as he calls them. We have got here in the case of General Brown. As you said, he was himself a fighter pilot. He also commanded the Pacific Air Forces. Our entire Air Force in the Pacific was under his command. I mean, this guy is the definition of a war fighter. Lisa Fran Ketty, she has commanded carrier strike groups in the Navy. She commanded all of the U.S. naval forces in Korea during her career.

Again, these people are war fighters. So we can very, very easily dispense with the fiction that that's what this is about. And what this is about is firing a black man and firing a woman. And we've already got, I haven't seen a name surfacing to replace Frankeety yet. But Trump has already announced that the. guy he's going to replace Brown with is a retired lieutenant general named Dan Kane. This is the first time ever that someone is, will be taken out of retirement to become the chair of the joint chiefs of staff. He is not even, there are certain qualifications you have to meet

to be the chairman of the of the joint chiefs of state. And if you don't meet them, he don't have them. Right. And if you don't meet them, you have to, you have to, a waiver has to be signed by, I don't know if it's ex-seth or the president or both. As you said, he does not have these qualifications. He needs to be wavered into this. And so what we're doing is replacing two highly competent, highly trained, quote-unquote, warfighters with a retired military intelligence officer who does not even have the basic qualifications to be the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

And look, people can sit here and argue all day and be anti-military and against a lot of the things the U.S. military does. Totally fair, obviously, totally cool. The bottom line here is, regardless of how you feel about the military, what is being done here does make us less safe as a country. This is becoming a pattern from this administration. You know, and when you said that these are war fighters, I just want to be clear that they are people who are fighting external wars. Donald Trump and this Trump-Musk administration, they're interested in fighting the quote-unquote war within. They're interested in fighting the enemy within.

And so in order to do that, you need sycithms. You need loyalists. You don't need people that believe in an oath that they took to the country and to the Constitution. You need people that took an oath to kiss Donald Trump's ass, to do his business. bidding and whatever it is that he says. And Hig Seth said it himself. Now the quote unquote roadblocks are gone.

Roadblocks to what exactly? Lawlessness? It is about racism. It is about misogyny. But it is also about removing people who they deem as roadblocks to the next step, the next part of this regime. And that should have everyone concerned. That's why I said earlier I wanted to point out that the judge

Advocates General had also been removed. And look, we've seen this pattern before with Trump. He has pardoned convicted war criminals. And by removing the people in charge of charging people with war crimes, charging Americans with war crimes, that is doing nothing. And look, we can assume because it's Trump, whoever they nominate to take those positions, will be a lot more lenient towards war criminals and not really care so much when things like the Geneva Conventions are violated by American troops. So all of this is of a piece. You're right. It's all about removing roadblocks. Let's talk about, because we're talking about making America less safe, let's talk about what's going on in Europe, because the Europeans clearly understand that America is making not only America less safe,

but making the world less safe. So there's a couple of things that happened both over the weekend, and on Monday, on Monday, the U.S. voted against a U.N. resolution condemning Russian aggression in Ukraine. It passed overwhelmingly in the General Assembly, but the U.S. joined notable good countries like Russia and North Korea in voting against this. I mean, that is breathtaking. It really is. Go, Danielle, go. The United States has decided now under Trump that our allies are not. the Europeans, no, not the former like post-World War II alliance. It is now North Korea and Russia. And we should feel safe by how they're moving forward and this new reordering of the world's power.

And the fact is, is that, and you'll say it, Andy, the new chancellor in waiting. Yeah, go ahead. Talk about it. Speak on it, Danielle. Speak on it. I'm going to speak. Is Friedrich Merz, who just won the election for the new chancellor in Germany, beating out who Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and J.D. Vance wanted, which was the alternative for Germany or AFD or the Nazi party in Germany that they'd been talking up and apparently, according to Elon Musk also bankrolling lost. And in his response about the United States and calling out Donald Trump and

Elon Musk, he said this. I never thought I would have to say something like this on a TV program. But after Donald Trump's latest comments in the last week, it is clear that the Americans, or at least this portion of the Americans, this government, care very little about the fate of Europe. And when on to say that Germany and the rest of Europe are going to have to become independent from the United States because they can no longer rely on us as allies. And not only that, but other PMs, other people have said that not only can they not rely on the United States as allies, but that they may want to start thinking about the United States as a threat. Let that sink in. No, it really is. It's absolutely wild. We should point out that Merz is not a lefty. He's a conservative.

And thank God it's not the AFD, which is the far right neo-Nazi party, but it is a conservative party. So this is not some wild-eyed leftist saying this stuff. And, you know, he has said a bunch of things. In addition to the quotes that you gave, Danielle, he says that they're looking with the greatest concern at the attempt by Trump to make a deal with Russia on Ukraine. over the heads of the Europeans, over the heads of Ukraine. And he talked about the people who are saying America first, what they actually mean is America alone. And he's basically, look, A, he's not wrong. But B, I think we're going to be seeing a lot of this out of Europe, at least out of the non,

not counting like the Orbanes in Hungary, who are right along the same axis as Putin and Trump. But among the more democracy-friendly parties, we're going to be seeing a lot of this. out of Europe. And it is absolutely unbelievable to think that for better and for worse, I mean, America was the leader of the free world for 80-ish years, starting in 1946, I guess. We haven't been overthrown. We've abdicated. We have abdicated our position. And look, there are bad things about being the leader of the free world. And there are a lot of things we've done in the last 80 years that were absolutely horrible that were done in the name of us being the quote-unquote

leaders of the free world. We cannot deny that. But there are also good things that come with being the leader of the free world. And one of those is keeping certain areas of the globe democratic and safe. And Europe is certainly one of those areas. And again, we are just, Donald Trump has just decided to abdicate this. And I don't think that Donald Trump, Donald Trump is an asset of Vladimir Putin. I know there are some on the left that want to believe that or choose to believe that. I don't believe that at all. I think Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

I also don't think he'd be doing anything really different if he were an asset of Vladimir Putin right now. So I mean, tomato tomato. I know. Look, we were warned. Yeah. Right? We were told by a woman nobody wanted to listen to by the name of Hillary Clinton that Donald Trump was Putin's puppet. What we know is that these, and we're going to move into it, these cuts that are being made,

these firings, large swaths of the federal government and civil service being cut, are just leading to a hollow, not only a hollowing out of our government and the protections and guardrails and people who swore an oath again to the Constitution, but we are now alone. Like, we are unsafe. And the fact that our allies are now looking and saying, we cannot rely on you. And not only can we not rely on you, but you are a threat as you don't care about what happens to Ukraine. You're referring to Zelensky as a dictator. Even the New York Post for fuck's sake.

The New York Post of all papers post a picture of Putin and says, no, this is what a dictator looks like. But that is who Donald Trump refers to as a friend. And then also, you know, if you remember the love letters to King John Oom, where we're headed, ain't good. No. Danielle, you mentioned this absolutely insane letter that was sent out, I guess, under the banner of the Office of Personnel Management. And it was a letter instructing pretty much every federal employee, it looks like,

to sort of justify their existence and to name five things. that they did in the last week, in like bullet points, and to put them in an email and send them, and that if they didn't do this, they would face dismissal. This is insane on so many levels. But what was interesting is that a lot of agency heads pushed back on this, including Kesh Patel at FBI, including the Department of Defense. And it got to the point where on Monday, the Trump administration had to sort of back. off from it and had to say that, oh, this is actually, this is up to the agency heads. This is

just guidance for the agency heads. Well, that's not what the letter said. So they're trying to essentially retcon this into it being what they meant all along. And Danielle, you were saying, before we started recording, you were saying that you bought that, that you, that sounded right to you. I don't really agree with that. So go ahead. Let me let you speak your piece before we're done here. Yeah, hold on, because I need to get the bus off of my back. So first off, I'm surprised that they even sent a letter because I thought that it was just Elon Musk sending out threats via X. And then they followed up with a letter. So, okay, lovely there.

But the fact is, Elon Musk also posted on X telling federal workers to justify what it is that they do. I would like Elon Musk to justify what the fuck it is that he does. And what is his actual title? Is he the head of Doge? Is he the special assistant to the president? Is he the actual president? I would love him to let the American people know what his role is. Donald Trump called him, oh, he's just a patriot to what country?

Nonetheless, now that they are backing off of this, I want folks to see that I don't think that Elon Musk has a lot of friends outside of Donald Trump. Elon Musk was a vehicle to get Donald Trump. elected, a $270 million vehicle, because that's how much money he's paid to buy this presidency. But inside of Maga World, I don't think that they like him. And it's not just Steve Bannon. I think it's Patel. I think it's like a lot of them.

So we'll see where Donald Trump is going to, he loves people fighting over him. And he loves, you know, because mob bosses do. But we'll see who is going to win out in what I see the. beginning fissures of Amaga Civil War happening. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal, Ellie Mistal, who is the justice correspondent at the nation. He is also the host of the nation's legal podcast, Contemptive Court, and is a New York Times bestselling author of the book, Allow Me to Retort a Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution,

which addendum no longer exists. Ellie, Lord, good God. Where does one begin when the country is on fire? I want to start today with the recent decision by Judge Chutkin down in Washington, D.C., who was presented a case by 14 attorney generals from 14 states, who wanted to block Elon Musk, illegal, doge, agency, committee, department, I don't even know what it is, but band of in cells from being able to steal our data, have access to our most precious pertinent information. She has said that the

states did not meet what she believed to be an exhibit of how this was going to have irrevocable damage to the American people. Make this decision right now makes sense. to me because honestly, it does not. It infuriates me. I will try. First of all, hello. I think this is the first time we've talked since the election. So, oh, God, yes, it is. It's very nice to be back on. I bring that up in part because, like, I feel that you and I, everything that we were trying to tell people about before the election has come true. These people are doing exactly what they promised to do. I don't know why people are surprised. They literally wrote it down. And we are living now in a time of consequences because people did not take what they promised to do seriously, and now they're

finding out that they were as serious as a heart attack. So, hello. As far as Judge Shuckin's ruling, look, I didn't agree with it, but I guess I do understand it. And the way that I understand it is kind of an old school, you know, Omar, you come at the king, you best not miss. What Chuckin is essentially saying is that, and if you read the whole decision, she's a like, I'm pretty sure these people are wielding power absent executive authority, right? They are post-constitutional, if you will. She voices significant concerns about what they're doing and how they're doing it, right? But the legal specifics are, can you show that what they're doing and how they're doing it is causing irrevocable harm right now? Because the legal question is not,

are they allowed to do this? The lead question for to have standing, which is to have the ability to sue, is to say that what they are doing is hurting me, the state attorney general right now. And she didn't feel like they met that burden quite yet. And she gave them an opportunity to go kind of find some more evidence that what Doge is doing is hurting people and hurting the states and hurting the state attorney generals right now this second. I think. it was a very cautious ruling, but I think it's a ruling that she made because she didn't want to get potentially overturned by the DC Circuit or the Supreme Court. And remember, this is the same judge that got overturned by the Supreme Court in the Trump immunity case. So is she perhaps

a little bit gun-shy? You know, I don't know the woman. I feel or fear that may play a factor. I mean, again, she went hard on Trump immunity, and she lost hard because of the unconscionable decisions by the Supreme Court. And so I think that what that ruling is is really her trying to button up and get all of her ducks in a row. Now, I think that the problem with that ruling, and again, I understand it, I don't agree with it, because I think the problem with that ruling is that it assumes that there is some evidentiary standard, that there is some version of events that's going to make the Supreme Court do the right thing, that you can button up your case enough that it can't be overturned by Sam Alito.

And that assumes that a person like Sam Alito or Clarence Thomas or John Roberts is still interested in doing law and not interested in doing whatever helps Trump the most. And my read on the immunity decision is that that is the proof that the Republicans on the Supreme Court are only interested in doing whatever helps Trump the most. And so there is no evidentiary standard that, you know, you can bring. You can say as much as you want, you come at the king, you best not miss. But if the king is wearing a cloak of invincibility, right? Right. Frickin Harry Potter, and there ain't shit you can do. And so I think Chuckin was being cautious, I would say overly cautious, but it was overly

cautious on a theory that we still have a functioning federal court system. And if we did, she'd be right, but we don't. So I think she's wrong. I want to dig into that for a moment, because there have been so many pieces that have gone up that have said that the federal courts are holding this current regime accountable, that they are standing strong in terms of blocking some of the most egregious and unconstitutional executive orders or staying them like the federal freeze, the firing of the USAID workers, etc. But you are a lawyer, one that I go to to, to like tell me the truth. Do you think that the courts are holding?

And do you think that there is like hope there at all? Given again, how many Republicans have been placed to federal benches because of Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump the first time around and the fact that they are moving at break pace with this second regime? No, I don't think that at all. And I'm not being nihistic when I say that. I wrote a piece in the nation that was not like the bullshit pieces that you are talking about, trying to explain to people the limits of what courts can do, right?

Like I'm even beyond the part where we're talking about what courts want to do and what specifically Republican appointed justices and judges want to do. I already assume that they want to do everything possible to help Trump. I'm saying, all right, let's say that we have a few liberal justices, a few liberal decisions, a few good decisions. We also have to understand the limits of what courts can do. And the limits of what courts can do goes back to the fact that courts have no enforcement power. They have no army.

They have no police. We rely in our system of government on the executive to enforce court orders. Well, what happens when the executive doesn't? And this is what I wrote about in the nation. So you, Danielle, brought up the funding freeze, right? The funding freeze has been stopped by multiple. court orders that Trump is simply not following. Trump says, oh, I'm going to follow court orders, but he is literally in violation of court orders as we speak, because if you go out to the agencies

and you go out to the nonprofits and you go out to the schools and you go out to the people who are expecting their federal checks, they'll say the money hasn't been turned back on. No matter how many court orders there are overturning that executive order, the money has not been turned back on. So Trump is in violation of these court orders. And almost nobody is reporting on that, right? ProPublica, of course, they are. But everybody else is just like, oh, well, Trump says he's going to follow the orders. No, damn it. He's not following them right now. Right. So that's number one, just the limits of what courts can do, right? And that's with me talking about Trump. There's also, I think, the very obvious fact that even if we think for reasons passing,

understanding, but even if we want to have hope that Trump can be pressured, bullied, whatever, into following a court order adverse to his administration, there is simply no evidence that Trump is going to enforce a court order against his owner and co-president Elon Musk. There's no evidence that's going to happen at all. So when we're talking about the Doge case with the Chutkin case, right, what we're talking about is trying to get a court order that has to be enforced against Musk. Who's going to do the enforcement? That's the question that I have.

And that's what I feel like when people are writing these pieces that are like, oh, trying to, I don't know, find like a mustard seed of hope in this moment of saying like, oh, the courts are holding. I'm just like, but if you just decide that I don't give a damn what you say and you have no power, no authority to make me do this thing other than I'm supposed to be upholding the Constitution, but I actually don't give a damn, then like what the courts are saying is moot. It's a false hope. It's a fool's hope. It's not something that's actually going to impact people on the ground, right? I look at it, you know, the other case that I'm tracking very closely is the one

with Gwen Wilcox. She was the black woman commissioner of the national labor relations, right? She was fired by Trump for no cause. He's firing all the black people. So, you know, she's black. And so, you know, despite her years of service and impeccable credentials and whatever, apparently she was a DEI, she wasn't appointed under DEI. She was appointed by the president, right? But no, no, no, no, she's black. So she must be DEI. So she's out, right? And so she's fighting back. She's suing. The idea that Trump can fire independent commissioners is simply false. It's simply illegal for independent commissioners. You have to fire them for cause. Trump did not cite a cause because he can't say, I hate black people in legal documents.

He can say it, you know, on podcast or whatever. So she's fighting back. And that case is percolating up through the courts, but she don't got a job now. Right. And that's critical because the National Labor Relations Board, that has to have a certain number of commissioners in order to have a quorum, right? And by firing Wilcox, Trump has fired Wilcox. and he hasn't appointed the commissioners that he can appoint.

The commissioners that Biden appointed were blocked by the Republican Senate. So when you fire Wilcox, you actually take away the quorum of the National Labor Relations Board. So it literally cannot function right now. While all these people are talking about all these Supreme Court cases and all these court rulings, the National Labor Relations Board is functionally dead right now. And you know who knows that? Jeff Bezos. because the first thing that happened after Trump fired this black woman was that Jeff Bezos's

Whole Foods went to court and tried to get an adverse ruling from the National Labor Relations Board overturned saying that without the quorum, the NLRB could not enforce its order basically allowing Whole Foods workers to unionize. That's the first thing that happened, Danielle. So like Jeff Bezos is paying attention, but the American people are not and all the court orders in the world right now cannot restore the NLRB to basic functionality because of what Trump's doing. Now, the Wilcox case, it's going to get up to the Supreme Court, and I think Trump will most likely win because the Supreme Court itself has an entirely wackadoodle theory called the Unitary Executive Theory, which basically holds that everybody who works in the federal

government actually serves at the pleasure of the president exclusively, and that the president can fire or hire for any reason or no reason at all, any federal worker. That's the crazy part of the theory. But the Republicans on the Supreme Court believe it. And I think that when Wilcox's case gets to the Supreme Court, having with the NLRB not functioning for however many months it takes for it to get to the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court will say, yeah, Trump's able to fire the NLRB people. And he doesn't have to hire anymore, which then takes the NLRB, this institution created by an act of Congress and basically writes it out of existence. And so please, please, tell me again how the courts are functioning.

Tell me again how the courts are holding Trump accountable. Tell me again how the center is holding when the NLRB literally cannot function because Trump committed an illegal act and nobody is stopping him. All of this time, we've been saying that the United States, is a backsliding democracy. We're sliding into fascism. Giving the illusion that somehow there is still remnants of democracy when in fact everything that you have just laid out paints the other picture, which is that it's

here. This is what fascism looks like. America isn't a democracy because you would have a functioning court. You would have co-equal branches of government, all of which are gone. And frankly, Donald Trump, to a point that you made in one of your recent pieces at the nation, entitled Elon Musk's vision is coming into focus, and it looks a lot like neo-apartheid, is not even really the president. He's just a guy who sits in an office signing his name on shit, signing off on executive orders that are put in front of him. Because the person that is actually out there painting America White again is Elon Musk an unelected bureaucrat, multi-billionaire, richest man in the world that comes from an apartheid country

who left because of what? Right? Like because white people weren't deemed to be all holy, all-knowing and all-great anymore. And equity was brought in. And so I just, in your piece, you talk. about Elon Musk's vision and how Donald Trump parroting his thoughts on South Africa, denying them life-saving HIV medicine and aid and because of their quote-unquote land policies. Like, just explain it to us on how Elon Musk is now modeling America after apartheid South Africa. Yeah, so I want to start

here, Danielle, because I am sure there are some of your listeners, even your listeners, who do not think that Trump and Musk are racist, right? There are always people, there are always listeners to this program, listeners any program that I'm on, who feel like racism, who are basically more concerned about calling people racist than actually racism, right? And they're always trying to frame racism as a personal failure, right? They're not interested in systemic racism. They're interested in the structure of racism. They think racism as solely a personal failure of the heart, right? You just, you know, in their mind, the racist is only the actual Klansman who runs around and says, I hate black people, right? And uses, frankly, a different word for black people than the

one I just used, right? Well, here's the thing. This thing with South Africa is the most provably in their heart racist thing that Trump and Musk have done. And the way that I can prove that is that if you think about what Trump is at 30,000 feet, like what his rise to power was based on from the time that he came down, the golden escalator, right? It's what? It's anti-immigrant. Trump does not like immigrants. He does not like refugees. His entire will to power has been based on smashing immigrants. But here with South Africa, all of a sudden, he wants to throw open the borders to white South Africans, literally saying that white South Africans should come to this country as refugees. As he is literally kicking black and brown refugees out of this country, he's inviting

white South Africans to come and live as refugees. Not black South Africans, by the way, not them. Tabo and Baga can still stay his ass in South Africa. right but cleetus and i know that's not an africana name but that's how i'm going with cleetus is free to come on over here and live as a as a refugee that is the most provably racist thing trump and musk have done right why why because the south african version of apartheid while we all think of it in terms of its brutality and segregation and inability for the vastly majority black population to participate in government. While we all think about the movie version of apartheid, never forget that apartheid started first and fundamentally as an economic system, as a system of economic

protection for white folks in South Africa. White folks in South Africa who were getting out-competed for jobs, not owners. Like, South Africa from as soon as the British and the Dutch came. No, obviously black people weren't allowed to own shit, but just the work-a-day stuff of South Africa, the mining industry being such a huge part of the European extraction of wealth from all sub-Saharan Africa, including South Africa, just to be able to get a job in the mine, the white folks were getting out-competed. And so the start of apartheid is really the implementation of what South Africans called the color bar. The color bar was a law they passed in 1911 that said that there would be, and stop me when this sounds familiar, Danielle, that there would be an independent government commission that would be in charge of certifying who is truly qualified to run a mine, to operate heavy machinery.

We only want the most qualified people to operate heavy machinery and be in charge of mine management. And we're going to have a government agency tell us who's qualified, right? the 1911 Mining Works Act never explicitly mentioned race. It just said the government agency could give certifications on who to work in the minds. And of course, the government agency never gave that certification to black folks to only gave it to white folks. That's what Musk is doing here. That is what Doge is all about. It is creating an agency that claims to have sole exclusive knowledge about who is qualified and who is not qualified.

And it turns out only white men are qualified according to Doge. Black people, women, people with disabilities, gays and lesbians, all of us are apparently not qualified. That, at an economic level, is the basis of apartheid. And it's the basis of the neo-apartheid, Musk and Trump are trying to institute here. We will have to leave it there today, Ellie. But I mean, this rundown, this connecting. the dots that you did. This is the point. This is where we are. This is what he's been given the power to do and it is working. My friend, I appreciate you so much. Please do not let it be

several months before you join us again on the new abnormal. Absolutely not. I appreciate you. Dude, I got a new book to show. I'm going to come back. Meredith Shiner is a journalist, a communications of public affairs consultant, a lecturer at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy and a newly minted contributing editor at the New Republic, where a few weeks ago, she wrote an excellent piece called Primary Every Democrat. She joins me now. Meredith, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I wish that the circumstances weren't the collapse of democracy, but I'm actually excited to be here. You know, you take what you can get. So before we get into the piece she wrote, I want to ask you about a couple of things that have happened in the past few days.

Let's start in the world of TV news. On Sunday we got word that MSNBC canceled Joey Reed show. Then on Monday, just a few hours before we're recording this, NBC announced that its longtime nightly news anchor Lester Holt would be stepping down from that role this summer. And then we heard that MSNBC was canceling a bunch of other shows, all of which, in wild coincidences, seemed to be anchored by women and or people of color. What, if anything, do you think we should be making of this? Well, I think that this is one of those circumstances where the reality and the optics have really converged in that we are living through a time right now where the current president of the United States is trying to pass policies that effectively re-segregate the government and also work to re-segregate our country.

And so when you have a corporately owned media that is either demoting or moving around or straight up firing anchors and correspondence of color, I think that that's a huge problem because the way that people consume information, the way that our members of Congress consume information, and I know we'll get to that soon, is still really driven by the people who get to shape the narrative. And for the Democratic Party, that is MSNBC. And so whether or not this was all coordinated and these anchors were targeted because they are reporters or anchors of color, the optics in this moment are really bad. And when you have these corporate interests who are looking at different mergers or acquisitions,

we're seeing this across corporate America. And now we're seeing that journalism is not immune to it. And when you're living through a constitutional crisis, that's a really, really scary thing to see. I think Joy Reid especially was the kind of anchor who was willing to talk about race and racism and how it intersects with our crisis and democracy. And to remove that voice, to remove an anchor who was willing to empower other women of color to talk about their expertise. I think it's really alarming. And with the Lester Holt news coming out of NBC today, you know, I have no idea if this was related or not. Maybe Lester Holt didn't want the

daily job of this. But the news is that he's stepping aside this summer, the idea that you would announce it today, as all of these other things are happening, is incredibly suspect. And what it shows is that NBC doesn't really care about the optics of this, which makes you really wonder who is the audience for all of these announcements, because it's certainly not your listeners or us. And so overall, it just creates this culture of alarm and fear and how normalized this is becoming within the media. And I don't feel like I can separate it from the AP suing the White House and the White House Correspondents Association being really quiet about the AP's removal from Air Force One or

from Oval Office opportunities. All of these things are happening, and they're happening really quickly. And of course, if you're just a neutral observer, you have right to be a little bit anxious about what this means. And the last part about MSNBC that I think is really important is, you know, they announced they're removing Joy Reid. They announced that they're removing Alex Wagner. And the people that they're replacing them with. So Joy Reid is allegedly going to be replaced by a panel, a three-person panel, Michael Steele, the Republican Party chairman, Simone Sanders Townsend, who for a really long time was a Democratic operative. and then Alicia Menendez, daughter of convicted felon senator Robert Menendez.

And Joy Reid was someone who spent years in media, and they're replacing them with people who spent years in politics. Same with Jen Saki potentially replacing Alex Wagner. And you're choosing people in politics who are from an era of politics that's probably already antiquated. As we're looking and we're questioning what the Democratic Party is, whether or not we still have democracy, people who built their careers in the status quo, in a version of the party and the country that

doesn't exist anymore, choosing them to be your top analysts at the network is a very strategic choice. And I think it's one that's not going to age well. Yeah, no, I'm totally with you on that. And I feel like that leads sort of perfectly into the state of the Democratic Party today. And, you know, more specifically, the piece you wrote about primarying every Democrat. I wanted to talk to you about this because it's something that with an uncomfortably small number of exceptions, I am totally behind. But talk about what led you to write this piece. A rage blackout. I don't know. We were one week. I mean, we were one week into the Trump administration. And I think I, like so many other people, but I was watching what was happening. And I didn't

know what to do. You know, I think a lot of people want to feel like they are contributing something, that they are helping to inspire other people at a minimum to feel less alone. And I think one of the biggest failings of the Democratic Party in recent years, but especially in recent weeks, is that they have been unwilling or unable to match the energy of their base, and therefore, at least the plurality, but maybe majority of people. And so when you're looking at Donald Trump and Elon Musk, burning the government to the ground. And someone like Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries, acting like this is normal, acting like you can have a conventional 1988 response of sitting back or still saying people want bipartisanship,

it doesn't match what we're seeing. It doesn't match the anxiety. It doesn't match the desire to fight. It doesn't match just our overall sense that the things that we cared about, the things that we wanted are increasingly out of reach. And so there are a lot of contributing factors to this. right? When the Democratic Party, and this is one of the points that I make in the piece, when they have been so rule-bound, but not rule of law-bound, right? Republicans aren't even rule of law-bound anymore, but Democrats self-impose rules from antiquated protocol in the Senate and pretend like that's constitutional law and that they're totally hamstrung and they can't do anything and that they can't engage with the media, they can't shape a narrative, they can't stop

Republicans, there's so much intransigence. And I think it comes from the fact that they have so committed to empowering the most senior people as opposed to the most capable people. When they put deference to seniority above acknowledgement and empowerment of talent, an ability to create message, an ability to organize, they have helped contribute to this place where we are. And in some ways, the most severe thing you could say about them is that they've been complicit in helping to bring us where we are. And so one week in, and it's even gotten worse since then, obviously, in terms of what we've seen at the Department of Justice, the fact that we've seen the entire humanitarian aid industry, not just USAID, but people who had work in adjacent spaces be totally gutted when they're threatening to get rid of the Department of Education, when they have 19-year-olds named big balls in the computer systems that undergird our economy and the global economy to stand back and say there's nothing we can do. We lost an election. is just it's unserious and it's so irresponsible and it is so, so impossibly out of touch. And so when I see this piece, which ran almost two and a half weeks ago now, continue to get viral

moments online, it's because people continue to want them to do something before it's too late. And I'm sort of of the belief that it might be too late that democracy ended in January 2021 when there was no political accountability for January 6th when they were unwilling to take the time to call witnesses they got the votes for in the second impeachment trial because Chris Coons wanted to go home for Valentine's Day. And when 147 Republicans duly elected Republicans who voted to reject a free and fair election got to just stay in Congress and live their lives and Kevin McCarthy who voted to reject Joe Biden's election got to be at a state dinner and called good friend, the theater of Washington means more to these people than our Republic does. And I think that

there are a lot of people who share that view. And that is the energy that is driving the idea to primary every Democrat, because if they're not going to listen to us or the people who are in the pundit class or the donor class are telling something that it, them something that's out of touch with reality, then we have to start using our voices and create. a critical mass of pressure to get them to understand that their jobs aren't safe, that they're not safe in these positions because there are people who want to work harder and there are people who want to stand up and be outside these federal agencies every day and to continue to speak to the desegration and demolition of our government because they actually

care about it. Yeah, hang on. I'm just crossing out my future question, which was going to be, has anything softened your positions since you wrote this piece? Doesn't feel necessary to that at this point? No, but I will say, you know, every once in a while, people on Blue Sky are like, what about this one? Shouldn't this one be safer? This one is good. And I feel like as a prospective Democratic politician, one of my driving ethos is that we shouldn't do means testing, that we know from a policy perspective, that means testing doesn't work. So if people want to avoid losing in a primary, they should work to be better and work to be good. So primary every Democrat literally means primary every Democrat. But I acknowledge that there are some people who might survive those primaries.

Okay. So let me ask you about something you sort of hinted at here. In the piece, you talk about maybe running yourself and maybe primarying your senator, Dick Durbin. How serious are you about this? Serious enough that I want him to be scared. There are a few things that really inspired this piece and this focus on Dick Durbin. One is that he has been the number two Senate Democrat for 20 years now. I don't know that you would have any reason to know this, Andy, but when I'm committed to an idea, I really fall down the wormhole of it. So I can tell you that the median age of an Illinois resident right now is 39.5 years, and Dick Durbin has been in Congress for 40. And so I'm not one to believe in or ascribe made up rules, but maybe we should start considering that if you've been on

Capitol Hill longer than the majority of your constituents have been alive, it's time to reassess whether or not you should be there. And the politics of the 1980s are not the current politics. And I worry that people who have lost touch with communities other than the community of the United States Senate, people who are unwilling or feel icky saying the word abortion, you know, Dick Durbin has been the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee at a critical time. He took it over from Diane Feinstein, who was also incapable of leading the Senate judiciary at a critical time. But Republicans have run several strategies that have helped bring us to this place. First and foremost, they worked to reshape the federal judiciary. Mitch McConnell

stole a Supreme Court seat because they knew back in 2000, the Supreme Court was able to decide a presidential election. And so the combination of unlimited politics and money and a broken judiciary was an effective counter to Democrats who thought they could use the law to prevent some of this authoritarian creep. So when you abdicate the legislature, when Congress stops doing legislation, and when the courts aren't necessarily fair or neutral, we find ourselves in a playing field where it's really set the table for people who want to break the government, who don't believe in government, to really enact their will against us.

And Dick Durbin didn't seem to see that. you know, here in Illinois, within the past few weeks, Planned Parenthood, Illinois, announced that four clinics would be closing. And contemporaneous to that, Dick Durbin took the floor to talk about a piece of legislation that is really important to me. There's this bill that's been in Congress now for a few years called the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act. And it is one of many anti-abortion bills that Republicans have pushed. And it is one that would have impacted me personally. In 2019, I lost a pregnancy at 22 weeks, six days. And if this bill were law, my doctors and nurses would be incarcerated right now. And so that's very real to me. And there are people in this country

who have had that experience. And for Dick Durbin to take to the floor and to not understand how to articulate the urgency of this or to contextualize what Republicans are trying to do, Republicans attacks on abortion aren't just about our bodies. They're also about undermining science. And we have seen the devastation that undermining medical science has wrought on this country. Like, we all lived through, are still living through COVID. We might be living, we might live through a bird flu pandemic. I don't know. It's all really scary shit to me. But the idea that you can't dot connect, that is the job of these people. And so one of the reasons why I think it was important to like highlight Dick Durbin in this piece is that Dick Durbin should retire.

He is up for reelection this cycle. He is 80 years old. If he ran for re-election, he would be 88 years old at the end of his term. And the longer he waits, the more he's trying to clear the field for someone who has a lot of money and a lot of, you know, insider influence to take this role. and getting rid of Dick Durbin is not good enough if he's replaced by Rahm Emanuel. That was the last piece of this was that I saw one of those Washington publications. A new one sprouts out every day. This one was Notice. And notice was reporting on who could replace Dick Durbin. And they were just talking about who could raise money.

You know, members of Congress who have done nothing other than being castigated by dear white staffers for being abusive to their staff. If they have $17 million cash on hands, maybe they could be the next senator. And so my goal is not necessarily to be a senator because that seems like a pretty miserable job. And I don't want to share the same title and standing as Tommy Tuberville unless I have to. Although, you know, my background was in sports. I got started in sports. I was the sports editor in my college paper.

I as a coach of Auburn would have never lost to Vanderbilt. And I think that's really important to stay for the record. But I know. I just, I really like getting that dig in there every time I'm married and SEC football fans. so I feel like it's a really important baseline for a lot of people to know. But what I want is for the context and the frame of debate about who is qualified for these jobs to change. I want the people who get these jobs to be the people who want them, the people who care about their communities, the people who care about their kids and other people's kids. it is impossible for me to think about having a kid in 2020 and knowing what he's already lived through in his life.

And to be in this moment where we feel like democracy could totally collapse from underneath us, this wasn't the life I dreamed of or signed up for when I was little. And I can't even imagine what kids of his generation will believe is possible growing up in this moment. You know, you'd mention one of my many roles. I've got a lot of hyphenates, you know? And I teach second year master's students at the University of Chicago. And by nature of how higher education has changed, a lot of my students had come straight from undergrad. And something I think about so much is that I had 23-year-old students.

They were 13 when Donald Trump came down the escalator. This is the only politics they've known, right? My pilot, I was forged in the W. Bush era, and that was a totally different can of worms. But I think it's so important to know that the people who are growing up now, what they conceive of politics, what they conceive of public service is all being shaped by what's happening now, what's happened over the past 10 years. And it breaks my heart to know that the people who were in positions of power to save democracy, to fight for our government, to fight for public servants are falling short so catastrophically. So before I let you go, I want to ask you about a congressman from South Boston named Stephen Lynch. And for our listeners who don't know this story, I'll try to do this quickly. Lynch is a Democrat. He's no fan of Trump. He was speaking at a rally outside a VA hospital in Roxbury, Massachusetts.

He said we're in a constitutional crisis, so far so good. But then, according to MassLive.com, things started to go bad. One of his constituents asked him to commit to not voting for any Republican legislation. He declined to do that, and then he said, quote, I got elected. So I got 800,000 people that I represent. I got to figure out what's in their best interest, not the best interest of, you know, Sally Blue from across the street. And then someone in the crowd yelled, this is in the best interests of our country and our democracy.

And his response to that, and his voice rose, according to Mass Live. He said, I get to decide that. I get to decide that. I'm elected. I get to decide that. You want to decide that? You need to run for Congress. I get to decide that. And I saw this clip and I just thought, oh, I'm sure Meredith has no opinion on this whatsoever.

I have no opinion on most things, Andy. You should know that about me. Well, first and foremost, actually, I like to say that I'm probably too normal to be a senator, but I'd like to clock that you asked me a question and I actually evaded it. So maybe I am Senate material after all, your last question. I don't think you evaded it. These people think that they're entitled to these jobs, and these jobs don't belong to them. They belong to us. And the entitlement of saying, I get to decide. No, you should be representing your constituents. And Stephen Lynch has been to the right of his constituents for a really long time. And I cannot wait until all 800,000 people he represents decide to launch a primary against him.

Because that's not acceptable behavior. And in saying that and being so obstinate, being so smug, if there were one quality I could actually erase from Democrats across the board, it would be smugness. And that's actually a quality that I think has really taken root regardless of age of some of these Democratic operatives. I think there was this smugness in the like really incalcified ruling class of, you know, we've been here forever and we know. And moving on after January 6 is an. everyone's best interests and this is all behind us now, that kind of stuff. But there's also that young podbro attitude of like, we know better and we're so savvy and we're so smart. And it's all

fucking bullshit. And so this guy is facing constituents who are concerned in Boston, by the way, where the entire economy is undergirded by universities that are going to lose research, that like, that city wouldn't exist without the federal government. And for him to be like, oh, you know, this isn't a big deal. And I know best. And you guys are. just, I don't even know. Like that kind of attitude is just so irresponsible and it makes people hate government. And so you're doing part of the job and enforcing this idea that government isn't for the people. And I just, it's gross.

It's totally gross. And that guy should get primary by everyone. And I think people should, let me restart. Let me say this. Sometimes when bad things happen in the world, I think about. how you explain it in an age-appropriate way. So when January 6 happened, I thought about what I would have told my son if instead of being almost four months old, he had come home and he was in elementary school. And one of the things I think about when I think about January 6th, there were so many

images I think that can be burned in your brain, right? Murder the media etched on doors, bloodstained statues. But one of the things I think about all the time, is then representative, now Senator Andy Kim, in the rotunda with a dustpan. And AP photographer Andy Harnock captured this photo. And Andy Kim is literally cleaning up pieces of glass and debris from the floor. And to me, what that photo represents is the idea that the people we sent to Congress should be caretakers for our democracy. And on that day, he took that job so literally. but their actions, their words, how they respond to constituents, how they respond to these

existential threats, to our constitution, to a government made up of millions of workers who just want to serve other people. To not see themselves as caretakers in that way. To not see themselves as people who hold those positions in our trust, but to see those positions as things that they themselves own is part of what God has here in the first place. And so, for Stephen Lynch, for him to say I decide is so condescending and it's such a serious example of how we've lost our way. Yeah, 100%. It's still hard to believe he actually said that. Merida, thank you so much for being here. I encourage everyone to check out Meredith's writings at the New Republic. And it's been a joy talking to you. Hopefully we'll have you back soon. I would love that.

Thanks so much for having me. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you kicking off this glorious week in post-democratic America. Well, along those lines, let's take a little trip to Kerdalene, Idaho, where there was a legislative town hall meeting, and a woman named Teresa Barrenpole was dragged out of it, literally dragged across the floor by plain-closed security people, because she shouted out, which she admits was, quote-unquote, out of turn.

As one of the legislators was speaking, she shouted out, his name, Phil Hart, she said, Phil Hart stole timber from public land. This led to her being grabbed by the county sheriff, man named Bob Norris, and then he turned to these two completely unidentified men, not in any kind of uniform or anything, and said, guys get her.

And they dragged her out of her seat. Her shirt nearly came off. And they dragged her out of the town hall. So on its own, this is obviously discussed. Jackbooted thug fascist behavior. It turns out that the men that the sheriff turned to and said guys get her were part of a private security company named Lear Asset Management and they were in complete violation of the city code that requires clearly marked uniforms. And the sheriff is claiming he didn't know anything about the security arrangements, but the chairman of the The city council says nothing was done without him being aware.

And then we come to find out that this sheriff was formerly a lieutenant with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. He left because he now collects $150,000 a year in disability payments from the L.A. County Retirement Association. And he claims that he has partial disability in both his left and right shoulders. and again, this guy grabbed with his arms, this woman, which has led a lot of people to ask some questions about just how bad these disabilities are, that the taxpayers of Los Angeles are paying this guy $150,000 a year while he is working full-time as a sheriff in another state. What?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Lack records. I don't know. Look, there may not be anything illegal about the receiving of partial disabilities. payments from one area and working in another area. But yes, there is. This sounds like the kind of thing that a department of government efficiency should look into.

Yeah, I mean, if you're looking for fraud, this guy, Norris, has also, according to LAMag.com, he has drawn criticism for pulling out pepper spray during a traffic stop. He made headlines for the unauthorized removal of library books that he thought were inappropriate and is facing a 500 grand defamation lawsuit from a local photography. This is the kind of guy that is the sheriff in Cordillin, Idaho, and even the police chief. And this is an Idaho police chief. So we can assume that he's not an Antifa member. He said, I don't care what your message is, especially in an open town hall like this.

We have to respect everybody's First Amendment rights, regardless of what side of the aisle you happen to sit on. This was too much even for him. So we'll see where this goes from here. It was starting on Monday to get some pickup beyond locally in Idaho. So we'll see where it goes. But for now, I mean, as far as this sheriff goes and the security firm, fuck those guys. And frankly, the woman, Borinfoil, who was dragged, said, quote, it was really violent and really traumatic. They had grabbed my wrist.

They contorted my wrist. body. They lifted me up and dropped me down. My only thought was to sustain my airway. They were forcing me down on the ground. I just wanted to make sure I could still breathe. She went on to say, I didn't know if I was being detained by what I now knew to be the sheriff's office or if these were private hired guns. I was so confused and I didn't know if I was being arrested by the sheriff's office or being kidnapped. Yeah. Like what the fuck is going on? Ain't that America? America? Shit.

Let me tell you what. Like, that's, yeah, okay. We see you. Fuck those guys. All right, Daniel, close us out who you got on this Monday where it's actually warming up a little bit in New York City. Yeah. Yay. Something to look forward to.

Fascism in spring. Springtime for Hitler. Here we have. So I know that we rail against Democrats on this show are largely being 50% of why we're in this current. nightmare that we're living in every week. But evidently, we're not the only ones. Democratic donors are pretty much done with the Democratic establishment. In a right up in the Hill, one major Democratic donor was noted as saying, I'll be blunt here. The Democratic Party is fucking terrible, plain and simple. In fact, it doesn't get much worse. A second donor was equally as pointed,

according to the Hill and said, they want us to spend money and for what? For no message, no organization, no forward thinking. The thing that's clear to a lot of us is that the party never really learned its lesson in 2016. They worked off the same playbook and the same ineffective strategies and to what end. Thank you, donors. Maybe stop throwing your money at the same fucking people that have been in Congress for

decades upon decades upon decades that have done nothing but move their politics further and further to the right in order to capture what they perceive as quote unquote real American voters. I do not want to listen to fucking Chuck Schumer who you and I, Andy, I'm pretty sure he has been our senator for our entire fucking lives. And just so people know, we're not that young, you know, we're not young. You're not. So here we have Schumer, Jeffrey's saying, what leverage do we have? What do you want us to do?

They own the government. And Chuck Schumer's saying, we'll get you next time. It's time to move on. It's time to move on. These people need to step aside. They have a lack of imagination. They have a lack of forethought. And playbook for the love of fucking God, Project 2025 was written down.

and bound 900 pages. You could have gone line by line and said, hmm, if we lose the House and we lose the Senate, what do we do? It's called creating a war room and actually having strategy. What they did with these donors money, I have no fucking idea. But for that reason, the Democratic establishment, which should have been building a pipeline this entire time of younger, thoughtful talent, has just been clogging the drain.

and we need to be done. So for that reason, they get my start of the week, hearty, full-hearted, fuck those guys. Yeah, I don't have much to say because I talked about this with my guest a little bit on the show on this episode. So I don't need to repeat myself. The only thing I'll say is as far as the donors go, like I'm glad to see them come around. But they're a huge part of why we're in this mess. So it was the donors that have been fairly consistently pushing. the Democratic Party to be Republican light. And the funny thing to me is, is that I view a lot of

the Democrats in action now as them thinking they're being responsive to the donor class, which is why they seem to not really care that they're pissing off actual voters. So this is all very ironic to me. But like I said, I'm glad to see the donors coming around. I am skeptical that they will start giving their money to the people that you were talking about, Danielle, the younger people, maybe a hell of a lot more non-white people, a hell of a lot more women, and really changing the face of the Democratic Party, which is what is needed. I just, I'm kind of skeptical that these big money donors are going to do that. But we'll see. For now, yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and

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