The Daily Beast Podcast - The Left Will Never Have Its Own Version of Joe Rogan

Episode Date: November 29, 2024

Can the left replicate the success of Joe Rogan’s podcast with one of their own? The New Abnormal co-hosts discuss. Plus! Jeb Lund and David J. Roth, the co-hosts of the It's Christmastown podcast, battle it out once again to determine who is the most Thanksgiving American. Then, author and historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins the show to discuss the shift in Trump’s regime and the narrative that is being presented from him and his followers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

David Roth and Jeblin, the co-host of its Christmas town, battle it out once again to determine who is the most thanksgivingest American. Then author and historian Ruth Ben Guillaude is here to explain the potential dangers of Trump's second term and the connections between his leadership and rising authoritarianism in the United States and the world. But first, let's have some fun. Hello, Esther. So we were all talking, and we realized there's been a very silly discussion that we wanted to have with you on this Black Friday to keep it, well, a little more light, which is that the left needs a Joe Rogan, and we all had abundant feelings. So I wanted to start this discussion off with whoever would like to jump down our respective throats first, since we all are seething to say what we feel about this. I'm going to leave it to the white men to really kick this conversation off. Oh, wow. Wow. I feel like this is your moment. Suddenly we're white now?

Yes, this is your moment to shine. Wow. And I want you, I want you to feel empowered in the way that Joe Rogan makes white men feel empowered. I was going to say, Danielle, maybe if you had been more like this in the past couple of years, Harris would have won. You're right. You're right. You're right. I need some soul searching.

Yeah, okay, sure. I'll throw out a few thoughts. Most of them revolve around the fact that this will never happen. There are several main reasons for this. One is, I think there's a very good chance Joe Rogan is basically a unicorn. And it was catching lightning in a bottle. He just, it was very much the way Howard Stern did what he did back in the day and just became, you know, like an absolute empire.

And stuff like that is not easily replicated. I would maybe compare it to you had the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which became this huge, like, cultural event and, you know, over 15 years or however many years it's been. And then Warner's tried to duplicate that with the DC extended universe, as they called it. And it just didn't work. And it's not that the movies didn't do well. They did, but they didn't have the cultural imprint that the Marvel movies did. where really for a large number of years, a lot of America, it was maybe as close to a monoculture as we came as we come these days was Marvel movies. That's my first thought is that you can say, yeah, the left needs a Joe Rogan of its own

in the sense that they need someone, you know, that huge. But the odds of that happening, like I don't think you can try to do that. I think regardless of what you think about Rogan, I think his success is very organic. So Joe Rogan, obviously one of the earliest podcasters, but also by hour, clocked more hours than anybody else because you have to remember. For many years, this is a person putting out three times a week, often three hour podcasts, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. But what also he did that was so interesting and what built up this audience was that he did a variation of content in that he would have, I should say, I was a very early Joe Rogan listener. it obviously did not make me one, I owed a more right wing,

but he would have somebody who was Timothy Leary's biographer. The next guy would literally be talking about how you get an inch more of your biceps. And then the next guy would talk about some psychotic shit about how men are being treated badly by women and women are the dominant figures of society. And then the next guy would be talking about plant DNA. So there was something bringing in

all these different people who had different interests for so many years before anyone was showing up to this. And this is the year that everybody got the memo they need to be on YouTube. Rogan's been there for fucking ever. And that algorithm spreads things. It spreads podcasts more than anything. And the left woke up to this literally, I feel like, in the last few months. Yeah, I think that the point, Andy, that you made about lightning in a bottle.

And it's funny, until you made the comparison just now to Howard Stern, I don't think I had ever made the comparison. before where you had, there were so many different disc jockeys at that time, but there was something that was captivating, very organic about Howard Stern. And I think in the way that he was pure entertainment, he's going to say and do the things. I feel like the thing about Rogan is that whether you like him or you don't, he has that same charismatic nature of I can do and say all of the things that people told you to have his inside thoughts. Not only are they outside thoughts, but I've given them a platform.

And I've given them a variety of people that you can tap into. And it's that like there is something that I feel like white men of a certain age need in order to feel like they still have this power and, you know, an intrigue about them. This I can do whatever I want. This very like Indiana Jones like, you know, grab the woman like this form. formula of masculinity. And he does that. Like he's this big, beefy, steroid-looking guy that fits a certain dynamic. And I don't think that you can replicate that. And then on top of that, there isn't anybody that I can look to and say, oh, this is our $100 million person. This is the person

that a Spotify or an Apple or whomever is going to put that kind of resource behind. And to the point about all the different types of places and avenues that he tapped into, I also think that there is something that is very, dare I say, narrowing and nichey of the kind of conversations that the left has. Like you have a niche and a person or a group of people for every community and there isn't kind of this larger, you know, quilt or fabric, let's say. This is where I will push on that. That is what Hassan Piker does. I was going to bring him. love. So Hassan does do everything from fashion to TV shows and everything like that. But I think the bigger problem you have is, Daniel, you made this great point of, you know, all of the right people are

saying, hey, white man, your worst instinct is good. You were right. Hassan is literally going, you're a fucking idiot. If you think this, you're totally wrong. This is a bad thought. It's a moral. You're a bad person to think it. And it's very, very judgmental. And what I will say, say is the term woke scold is not particularly fond of. But there is this very interesting thing that Matt Healy, the singer of the 1975, who a lot of people have said for years was the one aspiration like men would look at him and say like, wow, I want to be that guy. And he would say, there's a better way, men, being a sensitive guy who treats people

well as good. And he got tired of doing it because everybody canceled them every five minutes when he didn't like literally dot a tier cross an eye properly. Not to say there wasn't a later cancellation that was much more due for some dumb things he said. But for years, it was very, very petty. Yeah. See, the thing for me is to piggyback off of all of that, I don't think Joe Rogan is on

the right. Really? Well, here's the thing. For me, Joe Rogan's defining feature is his unbelievable sort of credulity. There is nothing a guest can say that doesn't like absolutely wow him. He can have Jordan Peterson on spewing his nonsense. He had Mark Andreessen on saying shit. Like, Elizabeth Warren personally runs the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

That is so insane. I don't even know what to do with it. But Rogan won't push back. He'll not in agreement. He'll say things like, well, that's crazy. Which, yes, it is crazy, but it's crazy because it's a lie, not because it's true. But the thing is, as Rogan himself keeps pointing out, he endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020. And there was something, so there's, there is definitely something in the popular.

message that speaks to Joe Rogan. But look, Elon Musk is the same way. We see this all the time on Twitter, you know, where he retweets things that are just blatantly not true and he's like interesting or, you know, absolutely right. And it's something that is absolutely wrong. And I feel like Joe Rogan is kind of the same. Elon, I think, is fully on the right. So I don't want to confuse that.

But with Joe Rogan, when I say he's not on the right, I don't think his podcast is a right-wing podcast. I think he has a lot of right-wing guests on because he will platform just about anybody, and he won't push back on them so they like going on his podcast. But it's not a political podcast. Look, I don't listen to him at all. I don't find him in the least bit interesting, but that's fine. Obviously, a lot of people do. But he does have guests on that are on the left. Can I push back with some facts? Yeah, sure. Okay. So I recently studied. Joe Rogan's feed for a reason that you two know that I'm not disclosing on air. And one of the things while I did this was I was actually trying to find a left-leaning

journalist that he has on regularly and see if one existed. The amount of right-wing voices he had on in 2024 and 2023, it would be impossible to say that he's not giving hours more voice to the right by a proportion that is not near 60-40 that is much closer to 80-20. So I do think that the big problem you have is this, but you do identify a crucial thing about this all, which is that Lex Friedman, Joe Rogan, and then many of these tech podcasters, you know, one of the things before the right wing learned this is that people like Zuck Bezos and Elon all learned you could go on these useful idiot podcasts like Lex Fridman talk for five hours. You will never have any pushback on anything you say of any substance. The most pushback you will ever get is, on will say, we're going to be on Mars in six months. He's like, really? You can do this in six months? But I wonder, but I see, it's to that point, we have in many ways, and I mean we like progressives, in many ways have received the tag of being elitist, of being judgmental. And if you're going to

go on a podcast of somebody who proclaims to be progressive, then like you actually have to come with facts and, you know, and information that their audience want. And I wonder, like, somebody had said that, what, was it here? Was it you, Andy? I don't know. But somebody recently said to me that what the right did, which is something that needs to be unpacked, is like, they actually created a sense of belonging for everyone. For all of the people that we have wanted to push to the margins of society, whether we think that you're undereducated, whether we think you're racist or misogynist or whatever, the right made a home for them. So these disparate groups kind of came together and said, oh, I'm accepted here. And the difference is that, and this is

just some things that people are, you know, have been saying is that like, do we create the same sense of belonging on the left? So where folks can again arrive at Joe Rogan's place, they can talk for, you know, 87 hours, you know, love to hear themselves speak. And never, hear one pushback or one word, like, it's like, oh, your voice matters here. And I wonder if we've done, again, on the, on the left, like, if we've done too much, like siloed thinking, too much, like if you don't understand pronouns, if you're not in this space with us, if you haven't evolved at the same pace and the same rate, and you're using the same language, then we're very quick to kick you out of the club. And I wonder if we need to actually understand what

it means to genuinely create a sense of belonging that isn't steeped in judgment and all of the things that you do wrong. Okay. So I want to address sort of what both of you just said together, because I wonder if there's not a connection there. The connection being that, Jesse, as you said, the data show that he platformed a lot of right-wing people in the last couple years. The question then is, is that because he didn't want left-wing people on or left-wing people didn't want to go on. I can tell you this straight. Okay. Here's a good example. I'm actually friends with some of the big leftist YouTubers who get millions of views. Art Chad, I know pretty well. Jay Ragg, J. J. J. J. McCull. One of the funny things, so there's this podcast, Horseshoe Theory. I'm a very

big fan of that while the name is ridiculous, it's poking fun at it. It's not that. They all dream of going on Roken. And one of the funny things also was one of the biggest left podcast was Comptown. They all dream of going on Rogan. So I don't think this is the case of, as we found out this week, that podcasts like La Coltristas, which is very left queer culture, hot ones, which is just mainstream culture, both denied Kamala. I don't think that's the case. Okay.

I'll accept that for the kinds of people that you named, the sort of cultural people, but I actually was talking more even maybe about politicians like, and along those lines, what I was going to say, where what Danielle was saying struck home with me was, There's a lot of people on the left that yelled at Bernie Sanders because he used to go on Fox News. They do it also with Pete Buttigieg because he had no problem going on Fox News. And sort of getting to Danielle, what you were saying about kicking people out of the club is, you know, my attitude has always been, look, I think my feelings about Fox News are pretty clear. But I absolutely never begrudged Bernie or Pete or anyone else on the left going on there to try to spread the message, I think it's mostly a futile endeavor at this point, but they weren't going on there

to reaffirm the Fox News view of the world. They were going on there to push back at it. So, like, I would love to see AOC go on Joe Rogan. I literally, like, you are inside my head, because I was like, I'm thinking this whole time you're talking, who would be that person? And I think it would be her. Go ahead. Sorry. Absolutely. I think what you said also about kicking people out of the club is, I think the left is also way too fragmented to have a Joe Rogan. I mean, I don't know, for sake of argument, Pod Save America may be the biggest liberal podcast. A lot of people on the left loathe Pod Save America. Chapo Trap House, maybe the biggest lefty podcast. A lot of liberals loathe Choppotrapp House. I would argue that this is looking a little narrow. This is one of the

things I think that this whole discussion is really missed is that when we're right there, we're mostly discussing podcasts. What is much bigger is Hassan, I wouldn't say as Joe Rogan's reach, but Hassan is far bigger than Pod Save America, by far. I totally agree. And as, you know, look, I said before I was going to bring up Hassan because he was the one name I thought of. Howard Stern was the only other one that I...

Rogan is sizably bigger than Howard Stern ever is. Yes. But what I would also want to say is that contra points, who puts out a very rare video, Hassan Piker, Destiny. There's a lot of these people who have way more reach than what we discuss on the left of the Chapos and the Podsaves. I think like it's so absent from this conversation because Democrats have become so absent of the culture that's actually moving used. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like there's a lot of TikTokers who I'm going to say, say, like, probably are making more of those impressions every day.

And a lot of those TikTokers who were making a lot of impressions every day, we're also not all in on Kamala. by any means. And that's a lot of where this goes, too, is that the left fragmentation you're totally right about. But I think it goes far outside the sphere of podcast and right into where much more of these youth and the people who are making their first political impressions exist today. I totally agree with that. I was only using those two things as examples of in the podcast world. I completely agree with you. I think if there's an answer to Joe Rogan, I don't think it's in the podcast world. I think it's in the Hassan Piker streaming world or it's in TikTok. So I was only using it for that reason.

Yeah. My thought then here is when you say that there is, you didn't say this, so I'm going to, for lack of a better term, like that the left has lost like a cultural touch point. What I find really interesting when we think back on, you know, Kamala Harris's 107 days, there were a number of celebrities, a number of musicians, a number of artists who came out for Kamala, we're doing concerts, we're, you know, doing engagements, etc. But I wonder to the extent that those people, they've already arrived, like they were big name celebrities.

We're talking Beyonce. We're talking Meg the Stallion, John Legend, like blah, blah, blah, that there was still that missing of where young people and where culture is really created now. Well, Danielle, the other name I was going to throw out there was Charlemagne the God. Because he does seem to have, first of all, I think a younger audience. certainly a more diverse audience. And he really does get into culture. I don't think of him or that show as necessarily a quote unquote political show. It's a culture show that talks about politics because politics is part of the culture. So I don't know. Maybe someone like that is obviously not as big as Joe Rogan, but I don't know, is someone like that maybe like what we're talking about here?

So I would push back on Charlemagne in the way that, one, he, to me, yes, he is a culture voice. He is somebody that understands hip-hop culture, that understands black culture and is representative to a certain extent of that. And that is what the breakfast club is. But when it gets into politics and his understanding of politics, like he has said some wild that shit. So which I don't agree with and don't think is representative of the black community. I feel like what we need is somebody that is as tapped into culture as they are into politics. And I think that with Democrats or with progressives, it seems like an either or proposition,

like either you're fully steeped in politics, which only a fraction of a fraction of the population is, or you're really tapped into culture. And I feel like we need someone or a range of people that are steeped in both. But to me, Charlemagne, no, I would say no to that and also clearly, you know, not as big. We're running out of time, but I did want to bring up one last thing, which I did find horrifying that I thought the audience should know, which is I think the other thing that's missing from this conversation is that the Daily Wire runs one minute unskippable ads on YouTube channels that target young men. And the YouTube does not allow YouTubers to turn it off because listeners probably don't know this, but I have a YouTube channel where I discuss music marketing. And I was told by my own viewers that they're run on my channel and I cannot turn that off.

But those videos are trying to indoctrinate people and we need a left-distance infrastructure where people are funding like the right wing funds, the daily wire to do that to try to bring people over to the side. Because that's the other thing is this is not just symmetric warfare of podcasts. is asymmetric warfare when they're paying literally to infiltrate apolitical things with those thoughts. Yeah, I guess I'll just close in saying that, Jesse, I think exactly what you're just saying is I think for a long time, the left slash liberals, Democrats, however you want to describe it, we sort of took for granted that we didn't need our own political echo system because, you know, we had the New York Times and the Washington Post and whatever and their, you know, their editorial boards were reliably liberal or whatever. And if there's one thing we've learned

in this past election cycle is that was a big mistake. And the right invested in this infrastructure that you're talking about, this sort of parallel universe of their own news and cultural universe. And I think the left needs to look very seriously. at doing something similar. And I don't mean just like, you know, obviously there's a lot of great left-wing news sites out there. But I'm talking more in the cultural sphere and thinking about things the way you just described to Jesse about running ads that can't be avoided and doing things like that because it just

feels like the left has gotten way behind on this stuff. David Roth is an editor at and co-owner of Defector and co-host of the distraction podcast. Jeb Lund is a journalist whose writing has a. appeared in such places as the Guardian, Vice, Rolling Stone, Gawker, Truthdig, and the New Republic. He's also the co-host of the Quaid in Full podcast. And when they stand before the altar of Hermes, Trismegistus, and recite as above so below, as below, so above three times.

They are the super co-hosts of the It's Christmas Town podcast and my next guests. Jeb, Dave, welcome. Thank you. Thanks for having us. What an incredible delivery. You did not take it easy on yourself. there with the incantation. I didn't. I know.

I'm racking my brain for all, you know, everybody's favorite alchemists, like Cornelius Agrippa of Nettlesham or, you know, who else? Sure. Sure. Not in the alchemy strain, but I almost went with Madame Blavatsky. Right. Yeah. The office is coming back in a big way, I think. Yes. I almost went in a the philosophical direction. Friend of the pod. Maybe Madame Blavatsky. Maybe next time. Yes, exactly. She talked about a Lacey Schaer movie with us once. Speaking of Lacey, I have a.

some Irish lace tucked in the back of my throat. I'm going to hork it up later, so it looks like a real ectoplasm. Excellent. All right. So this is our special taped in advance all-star Thanksgiving episode. A little later, we'll have Sebastian Gorka live in studio to share his strategy and tactics for getting an entire yam in your mouth. And Academy Award winning actor James Woods is going to stop by to talk about why he's been in character as white supremacist Byron Dela Bekwith since filming ghosts of Mississippi in 1996. But first, Jeb, Dave, I'm going to ask both of you a series of questions, and then at the end I'll announce who is the most thanksgivingest American. As always, my choice will be guided by the principles of non-Euclidean geometry, the infernal logic of Charles Babbage's

difference engine, and of course the bizarre sexual memories of science fiction Grandmaster Robert Heinle. Guys, are you ready? Yes. All these questions are about James Woods? No, James Woods is coming on later. If you stick around in the green room after you can talk to him. Good. Yeah, hide Amber Tamblin. So I checked the tape and in the last 53 quizzes we've done, I was shocked to discover that Jeb went first and I apologize for that.

So in the interest of fairness, my first question, this time goes to Jeb. Jeb, as you well know, the first Thanksgiving was celebrated in 1621 over a three-day harvest festival. How many pounds of turkey were consumed during this three-day feast? Well, first of all, I'm thankful for you're asking me that. I'm going to say 1776. They didn't know how significant that would be, but that's the spirit of America. Interesting.

Dave, do you concur or do you have a different answer? His answer is the most inspiring out of any of them. I don't think I could say anything that would bring a patriotic tear to my eye. There's no other number that really works that way. I would just say that probably if a thousand pounds of turkey were cooked, that something like 700 were consumed that night. And then the rest of it, that was a lot of the American casserole food way. When people don't talk about as much was invented over the subsequent week. The correct answer is zero.

Zero pounds of turkey were consumed during this three-day feast. According to Food52.com, there are only two surviving documents that reference the original Thanksgiving harvest meal. And they describe a feast of freshly killed deer, assorted wild fowl like goose and duck, a bounty of cod and bass, and something called Flint, which is a native variety of corn harvested by the Native Americans. That sounds significantly better. Yeah, you got to have your cod.

Yeah, did you say a bounty of cod and bass or a feast of cod and bass? Yes, I said a bounty of cod and bass. What a wonderful phrase. Yes. That is also, if you look at any of the videos where the rock breaks down what he eats in the average day. Yes. A bounty of cod and bass. That's at 5 a.m.

Yeah, it's got the oils. You need that. Yeah, exactly. Does he keep Wahlberg hours? I didn't know that. Is he also eating? Oh, no, I don't know. It just seems like something.

He seems like a rising grind person, so. Yes. I know. I know Walberg's is completely. That guy's in the gym at 3.30 in the morning just because nobody else is. Yeah. Because nobody else wants to be in the gym with him. He wants to be there before Jesus gets there.

So he's the first person to see him. You want to be prayed up by the time Jesus starts doing rose. Oh, God. All right. Second question. Dave, at this first Thanksgiving, there were 50 pilgrims and 90 Wampanoag Indians. Out of those 140 people, how many, women do historians believe were there? I didn't know there's going to be math involved in this. Andy,

you have to tell me stuff like this before we start, because I don't, I don't like doing numbers. So how many did history say, how many do historians believe were present? How many women out of the 140 people at the first Thanksgiving? How many were women? Like eating at the table, it's quite possible. That was like zero. Was it 50? Sorry, let me answer that more confidently. It was 50, Andy. Okay, Jeb, do you agree or disagree? I feel like we can't know because we did not have a squad of oleogenes Trump administration Fredos going around genitally checking everybody. Yeah, this is, that is.

We should have Riley games answer this question, I think. Apparently, the correct answer is five, really, according to historians. Sounds like a sausage party. Well, who is checking? Yeah, that's what I was going to say. Like, oh, I'm sure that pilgrims would have been into that sort of thing. How did they manage those numbers? Because that feels like just one of those things that's not sustainable.

It's not replacement level. Yeah. I mean, also just it's a bad party. Like there's a lot of talk. This is like cars and crypto. It's a codfest. Yeah, it's a total codfest. It's a real bounty of, yeah, I would say.

Yeah. It's just a bunch of cod pieces. Okay. The next question is open to both of you. Hands on your buzzers, please. What was Franks giving? Wow. I'll take this one, I guess.

Dare. Yeah, so 2007 Green Bay Packers, Detroit Lions, tight end Bubba Franks, two touchdown receptions, one of 22 yards, one of just one from Aaron Rogers. I'm going to say it was a creation of the Buffalo World's Fair where they invented the wing. What is Franksgiving? Interesting. Both interesting answers. Neither correct, but I appreciate the creativity. Did you say both correct? I don't think I said both correct. I said both incorrect. No, all right. No, no. I just wanted to see if maybe I could trick you into doing it. Oh, okay. So in 1939, FDR moved Thanksgiving up a week with the idea that this would mean an extra seven days of Christmas shopping. And it became known as Franksgiving because it's Franklin D. Roosevelt. And retailers were a big fan of this.

A lot of Americans weren't. Alf Landon said that FDR acted with the omnipotence of a Hitler. Wow. For moving Thanksgiving up a week in 1939. Uh, posting some real alf hog on the issue. I would guess. Yeah. It's also, it's good that we've managed as a country to, uh, bring down the temperature of our rhetoric from. From the audacity of the Hitler trying to get people to go to, uh, the best by doorbuster five days before.

So they did this for two years in a row. They did it in 39 and 40. And then Roosevelt solved the problem, which by doing what I guess he should have done in the first place. and officially made Thanksgiving the fourth Thursday of November. Prior to that, it was the last Thursday of November. And so sometimes it would be like the 30th. I can't wait that long for that. No. So by making it the fourth Thursday that the retailers were happy. And for some reason, that was not Hitleric.

I thought you were going to say he solved the problem by doing what he should have done all along, which is joining the war effort in Europe. Fighting actually. Just to put things in. perspective a little bit. This is not the same thing as asking you to eat turkey five days earlier than you otherwise would have. Right. I think a turkey lend lease could have really solved the issue, right? Because we're just subsidizing all of our turkey husbandry people. I don't know what the term is, right? But we're sending them overseas. Over there, we're nourishing them over there so we don't have

to nourish them over here. I hope there isn't another term for turkey husbandry. There shouldn't be like a one word way to describe that. You should have to spell it out what you're talking about. Can you tell our listeners what animal husbandry is? Raising of animals, I believe, right, for breeding stock and consumption? I believe that's correct. I think there's not really... The name implies a matrimonial aspect that I think is really absent, especially in today's factory farm era.

Where's the loving touch? Yeah, at an industrial scale, one simply cannot be a loving husband to that many pieces of livestock. And, you know, our food isn't as tasty because we have sort of civil union meats now. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't like that phrase very much at all. I believe turkey farming is the preferred phrase. Fine, if you want to be simple and plippy in about it, I suppose. And a turkey herder is called a polter.

The P-O-U-L-T-E-R. P-O-U-L-T-E-R, exactly. One who pults. Yeah, that's that checks out. I feel like I'm learning a lot. Well, that's the idea here is that you and Jeb learn a lot. The listeners learn a lot. And I somehow, I somehow get dumber.

The listeners are like, when is James Woods coming on this podcast? You know, learning from your mistakes is key, but learning from the mistakes of a guest on a podcast is a lot easier and less embarrassing. Exactly. I'm here to just face plant for the culture. He gives and he gives and he gives. For example, I was not really clear what animal husbandry meant. And so I figured I would ask you to explain it to the listeners as if I already knew, but I was

giving you the chance to explain. Personally, I hope I fucked it up, and then you have to read a bunch of email about it. Yep. No, you got it right. You got it right. Yes. It was one of the things where I sort of thought that's what it meant, but I wasn't sure. So you do not want to get on the wrong side of the Polter's Guild.

No. They're tenacious. They smell crazy. Just a searing column from Ann Polter in the... Yep. Yes. Yes. Yes.

The PGA does not play. Okay. Okay, next question. I'll go to Dave first. Is there a dumber American sort of tradition than the presidential turkey pardon? It stinks. It's a real bad one. I think the vibes have been off for a long time. I'll put my cards on the table here. I am not optimistic about the Trump administration part two, the edgy reboot of the critically acclaimed original. However, I do think that one of the few things I'm willing to say for him as a president is that he has the capacity to elevate this sort of stupid, event by going out there and like telling the bird how nasty and unfair Chris Hayes was to him or something like that like he talks to people adults children I imagine animals more or less the same way all about the same thing so he's like and especially he's been on Theo Vaughan's podcast like he's talked to animals with roughly that level of cognitive capacity so he can get out there

and like instead of like in lieu of pardoning the turkey just tell it a lengthy story about being snubbed by say Priscilla Barnes in 1981. We were going to be bismbodies, but she said, no. It's a very nasty woman and very unfair. Jab, I'll go the same question to you. Is this the dumbest American sort of tradition, or is there off the top of your head? Can you think of a stupid one? A more stupid one.

Yeah. More stupid. I don't know. I kind of like it. I mean, if nothing else, at the end of the first Trump term, he definitely pardoned a lot of turkeys. Oh, there he is. He elevated it. But there is something, you know, kind of uniquely blind to the atrocity that is pardoning one bird in, you know, the shadow of the execution of millions in the same way that, you know, we kind of grandly like some ladies with a podcast did 12 years of work on their own and we freed one person from prison.

Yeah. And then, you know, meanwhile, we're sort of incarcerating enough people. to staff a couple Caribbean nations. There's some unintentional goodness that comes out of it. I'm thinking of the time that Sarah Palin was doing that interview where that guy was grinding a turkey's head off and a hopper behind her. And she's just sort of, oh, you know, and just chirpy,

and then you hear it. Yeah, that was one of the first real inkling of what role animal cruelty, specifically murdering animals and then acting like it's not a big deal, would go on to play in reactionary parts. in reactionary politics. Everybody fucking shown out for Trump.

I'm trying to include the most egregious bit of animal cruelty in their campaign biographies. Christy Gnomes sort of like a thousand Spaniels were walked in that day but none walked out.

Doing the old Rolling Stone cover of buy this magazine or we kill this dog but it's just by this magazine we have killed this dog. Was that rolling stone? Oh,

It was a lampoon. I'm sorry. Yeah, that's what I thought. Okay. Just a quick follow-up question. How long do you think it'll be before Fandul and Draft Kings allow people to bet on the turkey pardon? I think at this point, it's not really worth it for them unless there's a way to parlay it. So if it's the sort of thing where if you could place a bet on Trump forgets to pardon the turkey because he's telling it a long story about the time he invited the Clemson football team to the White House and gave them a bunch of room temperature filet of fish.

And then the parlay there is at the Easter egg roll at the White House. He says a very inappropriate word to a very young child. But you need to stack them, you know? Right. Otherwise, it's not really worth it. And also it works better for the, for Fanduel. Yeah, I would need to check my phone. I'm not sure it's not already happened while we were talking.

But I think the other thing I would be concerned about is that if we got rid of Fandul or the rest of the betting sites, maybe the entire Turkey Deli industry would collapse overnight because that's the only thing keeping it. afloat after the Boers' Ed Listeria thing. Right. That wasn't, by the way, a trick question, but I will say that in 2019, sportsbooks did have a betting line on whether Trump would pardon a turkey and the odds were even for no and minus 140 for yes.

Of course. Was there some, had he been saying, like, if China doesn't start dealing more fairly with us, I'm going to kill the turkey? Like, how would he not have done it? Well, because he's Trump. Yeah, I guess that's true. He doesn't respect our norms, Dave. Right.

This is again, well, this is the closest I can come to say nice things about him. One norm that he violated that I enjoyed was the, there was a Halloween event during his, the early part of his presidency at the White House where he very clearly timed walking through the doors with Melania onto the Great Lawn or whatever the space where you greet the media and you're assembled fans and sickos. He walked out at the very moment that Ray Parker Jr. saying, Busted makes me feel good in the Ghostbusters theme, which was playing through speakers at the time. I think it's one of the best things any president has ever done.

It's very apt that he picked a song that was sued successfully for plagiarism, too. Yep. Yeah, wound up none the worse for it. Again, the omens and signs are all around us if you know where to look. Yes, definitely. Portents everywhere. Madam Blavatsky, are you being channeled through David? Final question.

Who is the biggest jive turkey that Donald Trump has appointed or nominated to his second administration so far. Jeb, go first. The next one. I mean, I think the ever-descending staircase into more implausible atrocity and incompetence, like, I cannot say that we have reached the Jivis Turkey yet. It's always going to be tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. So there you go. Yeah, okay. I will point out that my question ended with the words so far. Oh, well, fine. So I'm just making a note to subtract some points. Wow, that made it tight again. It was the most recent one. So there back at you. Okay.

Pam Bondi, I think, maybe. Yeah, that'd be a good one. Speaking of just doing horrendous things to animals, like kidnapping a Hurricane Katrina victim's dog and then saying, like, I don't see your name on it. For like a year, she refused to give the dog back, right? Yeah. And then just very transparently rolled over for Trump after a donation after already being

one of our, you know, even by Florida standards, one of our most venial public servants. She's a Florida nine when it comes to venality. She's an Eric Adams administration seven, but a Florida night. Yeah, this is the thing that's kind of hard about it is that like think about how depressing a question has to be that Jeb just doesn't, like, you could wake Jeb up in the middle of the night and say the word Matt Gates to him and he would give you like 15 minutes of blistering oratory. And yet it really, they have flooded the zone with shit, as they used to

say. There's kind of just a lot there to process. Like my, there are some that seem funnier than others, but it is amazing how few of them have not, uh, either hurt an animal or, uh, a tried to hurt a woman. Like, it is just a really remarkable group of people. I want to say a special little bit of praise for Pete Hedgesith, former Princeton University rotation guy, uh, on their basketball team. Just to stand out among this group of people as someone who is not just obviously, unqualified, but like so frankly predatory that even the most rolled over and checked out individuals are kind of like, I don't know about this. Like Gates at least works with these guys. Like everybody that is an elected official at the national level has been shown a picture

of a nude woman on Matt Gates's phone that Matt Gates took. That's not great. But Pete Hedgeseth is just a guy on TV with a bunch of crusader themed tattoos and a vibe that somehow, even in this cohort, everybody was like, I don't know. This is kind of an important one. Yeah. Now, he's this sort of person whose mom covers her drink when she's around me. Oh, God. Jesus. Yeah, I am glad that we're possibly getting Gorka back in the monitors one way or another, though. Hello. Hello. Have you any familiarity with new Magyar cuisine? Paprika. I always thought it was tough to choose between him and Bill Barr, who was my favorite John Goodman character of the first administration.

Yeah, Gorka, he drove a Mustang and would apparently just park it wherever he, like, just on the sidewalk, wherever he was. Right. Which I think is super. Getting out of the car with his size 18 head in his McLevin vest. It's like tactical everyday carry thing. He's like, I have two garots in each pocket of this vest, which you've surely noticed is lavishly pocketed. All right, I'm being told we are out of time. I'm just checking the scorecard to see. I got Jeb got those points, but Dave, the winner is me. Wow. Your hot street continues. This almost never happens.

This almost never happens. Congratulations to me, I guess. It's been very, very unfair. Jeb, where are you writing these days? I've been doing regular columns at Truth Dig. And frankly, you know, it's, as America is sliding into moral bankruptcy, I'm sliding into the literal kind. So if you have any content writing work you need, I'm here to help you out. Just contact Andy. He's, I think he posts his email on this thing. You know, he's very good. I do not. Do not contact Andy. Yes. Do not contact me or my wife. Jeb, Dave, thank you both so much. It's always a pleasure to quiz with you and best of luck to you and yours in the coming year. Yeah, man, happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new

abnormal author of the acclaimed book Strongman Mussolini to the present historian and expert on authoritarianism and propaganda Ruth Ben-Giott. Ruth, this is the first time you and I are speaking since the election. It has been a few weeks since what I have been referring to as the seismic shift that has occurred in America's political landscape. We have watched now as Donald Trump, his second regime begins to take shape and color. And I want to get your thoughts on this shift on his regime, on the narrative that is being presented from him and his followers. Yeah, I'm glad to be back. It certainly is one of these times, and you don't have to be a historian to think of this as a historic time. Some of the things that are being

proposed, have been proposed either during the campaign by Trump and his collaborators or are now being proposed are historical in the sense that they're unprecedented, where Trump says he wants to be a dictator. That's unprecedented, where they're floating using the U.S. military for domestic operations and domestic repression. These are all things that are new on a national scale, and it's quite a time of transition. It's also a time of shock for many who didn't perhaps grasp the depth of disaffection that Americans had for the Democratic Party and the depth of disengagement for all the people who didn't vote, even though this was supposed to be with the most important election of our lifetimes. And finally, the depth of disinformation, the enormous toll that's so

tragic that people believed these narratives about America being of failure and the economy failing when we have one of the most robust economies in the world. So all of this is, it's a lot to process. It's a lot to take in. And I know not alone in feeling like this is a time of reckoning. It is a time of reckoning, I think, in a lot of ways about just this idea of the American project and the power of storytelling, I think. You know, Donald Trump has been weaving a narrative over the last, you know, decade about America, one that is filled with American carnage,

that is filled with what he refers to as vermin. It is a dark picture of grief and resentment. And then you had another picture where in the beginning it was Joe Biden, who had said he was here to save the soul of a nation. and to do the work of democracy, and he's this stalwart of public service for 40 years, and then we change gears,

and we try and usher in a time of joy and levity and color. Why do you think that it is easier, or why do you think that it seemed easier, for people to grasp Donald Trump's vision rather than one that was wrapped and steeped in hope? One is, it's rather shocking that the narratives that Trump peddled so successfully, and he's a brilliant propagandist, are the same narratives that have been peddled since Mussolini. And they're repeat narratives because they work. And I'll just mention two.

I'm also teaching a class on coups in history. And we have also found that some of these narratives are used before every coup. One of them is the strongman who is saving the nation from the radical left slash Marxism slash socialism. And those are all things that are going to bring crime and anarchy and the end of hierarchies because the far right and fascist love hierarchies to know who's on top and who you can oppress. So that's one. The other that was used is so authoritarian is not content with making people polo

polarized. Polarization is just the beginning. Polarizations when you and I don't agree, we really are very far apart, but we're still agreeing to disagree. What people like Trump do and Mussolini did this and Hitler, they have to get people into what it calls survivalism. It's me or you, and only one of us is going to survive. Ah. So sometimes it's been great replacement theory, the specter of white annihilation. Somebody's going to replace me, literally efface me from the earth. Other times it's just crime and anarchy. My family is threatened. My security, my safety is threatened.

But what they were able to do, the MAGA universe, was get people to feel that they were existentially threatened. And that is what authoritarian have done for 100 years. So those are narratives that we use very successfully. And we in the democratic world had counter narratives, but they came late. The joy and hope, which is very important for anti-authoritative. authoritarian practice. And it's often been linked to successful efforts to get rid of far-right parties like in Poland and the elections of 2023. But it was introduced not too long before the election happened. And so I think it didn't have time to cede nationally and to reach those people who ended up not voting, even if we can say, okay, we were never going to convince the people who voted for Trump, many of them. But we could have reached with this message of hope and optimism. the tens of millions we didn't vote, but we didn't have time.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. It's interesting because what I find, and let me be pessimistic for a moment, is that Democrats are very good at pointing fingers at one another post-in election. It is always who did what wrong. And I've heard that a lot with regard to the Harris Wall's campaign. And there's a lot, too, that is now present about Joe Biden. if he had left the race earlier, right?

If he had really believed and said that he was going to be a transitional president. And we knew that, that he was going to be stepping aside that there was going to be no second term for him. There would have been a longer runway, whether that had been for the vice president or if, you know, other establishment Democrats had had their way of having an open convention, which I personally think would have been a disaster. But I wonder how helpful, Ruth, you think it is at this stage when we are on the precipice of a new America, frankly, how helpful it is to point fingers at what could have been done as opposed to bracing oneself or preparing oneself and one's party to face down something we've never actually experienced before. I don't see the recriminations and very helpful at all because we are in a situation of emergency. I think that it is important to do an inventory of what strategies were perhaps misguided, but that can be done behind the scenes, so to speak. It can also be done when we're getting closer to 2026. Right now, when we have two months left of what we have known as democracy, and we're faced.

you know, somebody who's announcing that he's going to start mass deportations. I mean, the number of people they want to deport, that they say they're going to deport, is like emptying out the entire population of Sweden or Bolivia or Indonesia, even if they're starting to say they're scaling back. It's just the number of 15 million. And those mass deportations are going to occasion this use of the military. Now the militias are saying they might assist the military. It's a whole new configuration, and I expect Trump to want to have some kind of state of emergency. And here it's very interesting, like, what is the emergency? Because when do you declare a state of emergency? When you're at war or you have a national weather disaster, a natural disaster, a health, public health crisis. The emergency is what he's been setting up by saying, we are at war. I'm going to liberate the occupied towns and cities. He's at war on the American people.

So given what we are going to face, and that's not even mentioning the tariffs and the economic chaos, the chaos by design, it is not helpful to be taking each other down, faulting each other so publicly and so completely right now. What do you say to people who believe that there is nothing really to be concerned with, that this is going to be essentially a redux of his first term? which we saw as a revolving door of chaos, and not a lot got done, except obviously the tax breaks for the Uber wealthy, and the misalignment, I should say, of who our allies were, pulling out of the Paris Climate Accord and different things of that nature, which were disruptive, but in some people's eyes, it was not disastrous. And they believe that, don't worry, we'll be able to hang on another four years,

years and the institutions will hold. What is your response to that? Well, frankly, people have some kind of annesia about Trump 1.0. It was so destructive. I would urge them, there's lots of books you can read, but I documented everything I could in Strongman throughout all the chapters. I have stuff on Trump 1.0. I mean, he did take out, he carried out purges of the civil service. He was criminally negligent in his handling of COVID. He politicized everything that could be politicized as far as he could. He developed a huge personality cult. He preached political violence over and over again to sue his followers, which is how we got to January 6th. So that was bad enough. The problem is, this is why I never used the word fascism. People were thinking, well, if it's not Hitler, it's fine. Well, there's a lot in between Hitler and And so I would, you know, urge people to remember what happened, what actually happened to, above all, remember January 6th, which was a product of all the domestication of the party, the remaking of the Democratic, sorry, the remaking of the Republican Party as an autocratic entity depended on threat and corruption, which is how he got so many GOP members of Congress to try and overthrow the government, overturn the election, become co-conspirators, all of that was done years ago.

And so now what he's proposing is hugely accelerating that. And I frankly don't understand how anyone could feel not concerned when all the models of leadership that Trump is presenting as positive to the American people are dictators of one sort or another. That is who he's been conditioning the American people to, think that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin and Orban and Bukhle and all of these corrupt thug-like leaders are good leadership. And it worked on many of them. And he's been telling them democracy is failing. My dear Christians, you'll never have to vote again, calling people vermin.

So this is one of the people think this is just rhetoric. And I can tell you from studying these people for a hundred years, you know, of their histories, that rhetoric and language is how you get people in a mindset to accept your violence later on. And we saw that with January 6th. So I take very seriously everything that is said as well as everything that is done. So we have two months. And then on day one, as Donald Trump has said, he's going to be a dictator. You have people who are cheering the, you know, building of potential deportation centers and housing, quote unquote, violent criminals, as was said in Texas, and willingly giving over land and giving over buildings to Donald Trump to do this quote unquote purge. How quickly do you think that America just descends into full and

complete authoritarianism? Because for me, I have believed that the last nine years has been the slow creep. And so now I feel like we are here and folks don't recognize that the accelerator has already been laid out, that all you have to do is put a little bit of pressure on the gas and we're over the cliff. So your final thoughts on that. Tragically, due to the Supreme Court becoming half of it kind of far right operatives masquerading as justices, giving the presidential position immunity, Thanks to that, plus dropping the court cases, Donald Trump is going to come in with the kind of situation of personal executive power that other autocrats have had to work for years to get. Having presidential immunity is like the golden ring of autocracy because autocrats are highly corrupt and what they really care about is staying out of jail. And Donald Trump comes in, empowered by this Supreme Court and empowered by a Department of Justice that didn't pursue him the way Brazil pursued Bolsonaro and got him banned from running for politics and convicted him.

Or Silvio Berlusconi, a very corrupt individual in a very corrupt country, he was sentenced and banned from politics. Instead, Donald Trump is coming in with immunity. And that is a result of all that has been done, a climate that has been created and engineered. And so authoritarianism always takes time to create its own institutions. And so he may do some showy things on day one and just after day one to show the world and Americans who's in charge and how different this will be. But it does take time to have all those transformations of institutions that, you need for an autocracy to function. Well, I guess we are at the wait and see portion of the next phase of America. And, you know, I just have to thank you, Ruth, over the last several years,

for trying to ring an alarm to create and express the parallels and warn people of what was happening as it was happening to avoid this moment. And now that this moment, and now that this moment is here, you know, I feel like the people who have been asleep or disassociated from this process are going to wake up as if a bucket of ice cold water was poured on their heads. And that is really unfortunate, but that's the place that we're in. Thank you, as always, for making the time for the new abnormal. Really, really appreciate you. Thank you, Danielle.

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