The Daily Beast Podcast - The Lincoln Project’s Secret War Plan—Revealed!

Episode Date: October 27, 2020

Rick Wilson and his crew of Republican refugees have been getting in Trump’s head practically since the day they got together. But over the weekend, the psychological combat hit a new peak, when Jared and Ivanka sent one of daddy’s lawyers after the Lincoln Project over a billboard they put in Times Square. And Rick, for one, was loving it. “A big part of our operations has been from the beginning to disrupt the leadership of the Trump campaign and to cause Donald Trump himself to poop his diaper and to cause these people to lose their minds. [Now we’ve] pinn[ed] down Jared and Ivanka Thursday and Friday of last week, and distract[ed] Donald Trump,” Rick explains to Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal.  “So it's the eve of battle. And two of the generals of Trump's army have now been paralyzed. They have thought of nothing else for the last several days… You drag off resources, attention, time, focus from what they should be fighting and you make them fight the battles you want them to fight. Think of me as kind of like a redneck Sun-Tzu.” Then! Molly has an incredibly powerful interview with Dr. Rick Bright, the vaccine expert turned whistleblower. He was in charge of a massive federal effort to develop medical countermeasures to biological threats. But he couldn’t stand by while Team Trump pushed a bogus treatment for COVID-19. “I had to decide at that moment to be complicit and be part of a government that would put people's lives at risk—or to step out,” he tells Molly, choking up. “I still get emotional about it because I still remember that day of stepping out and how impactful it was on me, knowing that it was going to change my life. You just know they're gonna come after you. So you have to decide, is it worth it? And to me, it was absolutely worth it.” Plus! Will Trump’s wig come off in a toilet? Where’s the real power in American politics? (Hint: not in D.C.) Why did Team Trump want to inject Santa? And how in the name of Gotham City did Bane get on this podcast? Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our, kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers.

Wow, I was just reading the New York Times and I saw two familiar names in it today. Who could it have been, Jesse? Yeah, I would like to know. My favorite podcast host. Would it be Molly John Fast? And Rick Wilson? Why? I feel like we've made it to the big time, Molly.

I love that the journalist was like, you're a former Republican and I was like, ew, no. I was like, I never voted Republican in my life. Well, it has certainly been a weekend of great joys for the Trump family since Thursday night, the Lincoln Project, put up a billboard in Times Square. It turns out that Ivanka does not like having her face on billboards when talking about coronavirus deaths. Weirdly, I mean, I would have thought that she would have enjoyed it, but if it's COVID, it has to be good. By the way, it's like the picture of her from the Goya Beans and then the COVID death statistic. So when did you get the lawyer's letter? Tell us everything. So on Friday night, we received a letter from Javanka's attorneys.

Actually, they're Trump's attorneys. And from what we're hearing, it was Trump who told Mark Casowitz, Mark Casowitz, their attorney to sue us or to threaten to sue us. Do you think he saw it? Oh, absolutely. It was blowing up on social media. And I know that Jared Navanka saw it because they went squealing to him like a stuff. And so they went out of their minds, which is, of course, what we expect. This is not unsurprising in many ways. And so Caswitt sent this letter, which is best read in the voice of Bain.

We represent Mr. Jad Kushner and Ms. Ivanka Trump. I'm writing concerning the false malicious and affirmative ads that the Lincoln Project is displaying on billboards. in Times Square. If these billboard ads are not immediately removed, we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous, compensatory and punitive damages. Sincere, Mark E. Kassowitz.

And essentially, our attorney, Matt Sanderson, sent back a response that, now I'm not an attorney. I don't even play one on TV. But I believe the essence of the letter boiled down into the simplest of terms is go fuck yourself. This is a pure First Amendment matter. It is political speech, which is the most highly protected form of First Amendment speech. It is unequivocally within our ambit to do this.

And we'll talk more about Mr. Caswitt shortly. But the idea that the guy who's used to intimidating strippers and porn stars and various rando girlfriends of Donald Trump into shutting up was going to step to the Lincoln Project with that same fucking attitude. Good luck. Good luck. So you've taken down the billboard is what you're saying? No, in fact, the billboard remains up even as we speak.

As we're recording this in the middle of the afternoon on Monday for you East Coasters, the Ivanka Billboard is briefly blank. It is only blank right now because they're updating the death toll count that appears on the billboard every day. Enjoy Avanka. Can we just talk about this for second?

There are the naysayers. You know, I don't know any of them, but the naysayers who say, you know, New York is a blue state, why are you doing this? Explain why you're doing this because I think it's important to be said. Because a big part of our operations, not the biggest, but a meaningful part, has been from the beginning to disrupt the leadership of the Trump campaign and of Trump world and to cause Donald Trump himself to poop his diaper. and to cause these people to lose their minds.

Okay? By pinning down Jared Navanka, Thursday and Friday of last week, and by distracting Donald Trump for several hours of Friday last week, and by being in his head still all through the weekend and today, we know that this sort of psychological warfare is an element of the campaign that you can't buy. You can't buy this sort of thing unless you are strategically smart about how you deploy it. So it's the eve of battle, and two of the generals, of Trump's army have now been paralyzed.

They have thought of nothing else for the last several days. And Molly, your quote in The Times was, like, Chef's Kiss Perfection. They know that they are now so tarred and so stained by what they've done in the White House, they will never go to the Met Gala again. We've talked about this before. It's almost like giving, you've actually said this. It's like why you give money to Mitch McConnell's challenge. job. Right. You drag off resources, attention, time, focus from what they should be fighting,

and you make them fight the battles you want them to fight. Think of me as kind of like a redneck sun-sou. And I may not want to understand them as well as I do, but I do understand them as well as I do. And so we were also able to raise a meaningful amount of money at Lincoln Project.us over the weekend and put it right back into digital advertising against Donald Trump. And that's going to be going into Florida and South Carolina. The money we raised over the weekend will be in Florida and South Carolina. South Carolina in the Senate race against Lindsay, Florida in additional advertising for seniors talking about COVID. So the fact that Washington is full of strategists who've never strategized or created a strategy in a campaign, I was air quoting guys. And they don't understand

what we're doing and how we're doing it is impressively dumb. It takes like a willful amount of dumb, not to understand that we don't do anything randomly. We're never trolling because we know we'll always put a fish on the hook. We know it every time. We know what we're going to do to them. And we did it again, in the words of the political philosopher, Britney Spears. Oops, I did it again. I thought that the quotes in that New York Times piece.

The Staten Island guy. Yeah, it was like, they'll never work in the Republican Party again. I thought that was pretty great. Oh, no. Throw me in the briar patch. Yeah, I don't, you know, I thought you were for sure that Mitch was going to hire you. So on Sunday morning, I don't know if you watched Jake Tapper show. I did watch Jake Tapper, drag Mr. Meadows to the Wippen Shed,

and deliver a beating that will take weeks to heal and special ointments. You know, hell has no fury like a Jake Tapper scorn. Listen, the thing about Jake is he's sort of like the Hulk. You don't want to see him angry. There's been some talk about this, but not in my mind enough. Mark Meadows said the quiet part loud. He said, we're no longer trying to mitigate this virus. Right.

Yeah. We're done. Goodbye, Grandma. Right. I think that was a source of Jake Tapper's righteous anger. I mean, you could see the expression on his face when Meadows said that. And it was, there was like a switch. And he clearly, and correctly, in my view, called Meadows bullshit on it.

Yeah. I thought it was kind of a. amazing that we had a situation where he was like, we can't control the spread. It's very contagious. Like, oh, really? Okay. Well, and that kids give up. Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you for bringing that up in late October, Mark. You think? You know, I think the funny thing is they're not even bothering to try to contain it. They are, in fact, now a primary disease vector with this aggressive super spreader rally schedule. All this week, we, we, Super Spreader, USA!

It's the one, the only, the original monster COVID facts. Yet they're early to get exposed. First come, first served. Experience in person the virus that's killed nearly a quarter of a million Americans. First 750 in get a free, make the ICU's bulligan ass. Ten lucky winners will get to meet and kiss the Super Spreader himself. I'll kiss the guys and the beautiful women. On the lips!

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Paid for by COVID-19 and the funeral homes of America. Action. Yes, this weekend, it went from president's problem to the vice president's problem. It is all of Pence World, or as we call them in our house, because of, um, Borat, Michael Penis, all of the people in Michael Penis' world now have COVID. Michael Penis.

Michael Penis. The Lily went courtesy phone. I had to say it. You set it up too, you set it up too perfectly. His body man, you know his body man. Yeah, and Mark Short also,

who is his chief of staff and sort of consigliary. It's not good. It's not good. Yeah, it's almost like it's very contagious. Molly? Yes.

Rick Wilson? Since the super spreader rallies are now a sort of typhoid Donnie traveling the country thing. And since Mitch McConnell is telling his senators, it's finally time to run away in the closing days of the campaign. And since the polls are slipping and since the only person they can get it go on TV is Jason Miller. And also, Corey was on Meet the Press this weekend. Right, and Corey. Man, I wish he had run for Senate. I had such a fucking great ad written.

Corey Lewandowski, he'll do anything to win. he'll do anything to beat a woman. Ew. And guess what? It would have worked. It would have worked like gangbusters. There's no world in which he would have won a seat in New Hampshire. But yeah, Donald Trump's had a really rough time.

It seems like the most important person in Donald Trump's world is finally breaking with him. Do you know who that is, Molly? Junior? No, it's not Junior. Ivanka? Oh, Ivanka. No, she would never leave Daddy's side or lap. It's Vladimir Putin.

That's right. Vladimir Putin is defending Joe Biden and he's dissing Donald Trump. I mean, how sharper than a serpent's tooth than to have a thankless Vlad. I mean, this is just crazy. Can you explain to me what the thinking there is? Because I'm curious.

Look, Vladimir Putin ran Donald Trump like an asset for four years. He ran him until he lost value. And now he doesn't really have. have value. So I think that the whole story about Putin defending Hunter Biden over the weekend, some of it's trolling, but it's also sort of dismissing Trump now. Because even the Russian troll farms aren't breaking through with the intensity that they broke through with a few years ago. Now, is that because people have gotten smarter or is that because... I think they've reduced

their investment. Oh, really? You think Putin doesn't have his hard on it anymore? Correct. Oh, interesting. I think he's thinking to himself, I'm going to have to adjust. It's going to be a different world. I might as well just reset here and try to rebuild something now that Donald has been effectively sidelined that is no longer capable of pushing my agenda in the successful way that he once did. So you really don't think that Putin wants to reelect Trump? Look, I think Putin is not a guy who's going to spend a single dime on anyone who is no longer a value-added asset. That seems like an important paradigm shift.

It could be. But look, at least Donald Trump will be able to flee to Russia for political. Oh, wait, he might not. If this works and Trump loses, where do you think Trump goes to live? Florida. Oh. I'm afraid so. That state is not big enough for Rick Wilson.

You know I'm right, Tim. I mean, that is not going to end well. No, no, it won't. No. A spilled drink, a nasty look, it's not going to be good. Suddenly there's gunfire breaking out all over the place. That's frightening. I got Donald in the bathroom giving him a swirly in the toilet.

Oh, Jesus. Watching his wig hoover down into the... That thing is implanted. It's not going anywhere. Oh, Molly. I'm sorry. It's not that implanted. I don't mean to be a naysayer.

Hey, Molly. Hey, Rick Wilson. Do you enjoy strange overseas propaganda? propaganda efforts pushing bizarrely pro-Trump messages? Yeah, I mean, who doesn't? I mean, right? Who doesn't? Would you say that those are exclusively Russian,

or would you say that those could come from other and unusual vectors? Well, is it a Chinese cult? Because everybody likes a Chinese cult. Well, yeah, duh. Tell me more. There's a great article by Kevin Roos this week, and we'll put in the show notes, about the epoch times. And it has grown very, very quickly into a major pro-Trump propaganda outlet.

It is very much one of these sort of unseen vectors of what is essentially propaganda in the current moment. It's become, as he says, it's a bullhorn for the far right. And it's got a massive, massive social media following. It's got a massive online audience. It's bigger than Breitbart, which is kind of crazy. You know, they're definitely full on Trump, full on conspiracy. It is something that Steve Bannon is praising it to the heavens. And it's just a fascinating.

What do you think it's akin to? The closest thing is Breitbart, really. I have an interesting thing. So I live on the border of a largely poor Hispanic neighborhood. And it is distributed so heavily. Like if I go to get my favorite tacos, there will just be free ones sitting in the taco place. And they really are doing the craven thing

if they try to just infiltrate, the people that they think are going to be susceptible, they're bullshit the most. And it's really horrifying. I get it jammed in my door sometimes. Yeah, that seems not great. There's a massive infrastructure behind it or underneath it, and I'm fascinated to see where the rabbit hole leads eventually.

We watched that Borat movie, and by we, I mean everyone in America this weekend, and the daughter becoming an OAN anchor or an OAN type anchor, I almost wanted to see just a movie on that. you really could envision that sort of thing happening. It's how it works. And a lot of these people are like popped out of the cloning tank. You spend the doll one way, you get a Tommy Lawrence,

spend the dollar one way you get a Chinot-Rey-on. Yeah. And they all have a kind of like similar look and sound. And they've mastered the parlance of the Trump-right, you know, dickery. And so I think this is sort of a print and online addition of that. But it's also one of these places that is like walls of lawyers surrounded. that everybody who's ever worked at the Epic Times is Indiate up the ass. It's an unusual situation.

And Falun Gong that is supposedly behind it is one of those places or one of those institutions that on the one hand, you look like it, it looks like they're trying to save themselves from oppression from the Chinese government. On the other hand, you know, they forbid gay marriage and they don't like things like medicine or pharmaceutical products or antiviral products. Definitely don't like masks. I see that everywhere. They don't like masks, and they don't like interracial marriage.

And there's a whole bunch of strangeness about the whole thing. And as somebody pointed out to me the day, it is not an endorsement of the Chinese government to examine Falun Gong. It's just one of those things that it's like, we don't even realize how powerfully Facebook has amplified this. Because when you get to the bottom of any shit thing in this fucking universe now, you'll find Facebook. its algo has been worked whatever way it gets worked to boost things that are that ultimately are

detrimental to democracy. To democracy and journalism and the truth and, you know, the minor stuff, the little things. So basically the last couple of times I've seen the sites with the most engagement for Facebook, which they, of course, say, measuring... Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro,

Damagina, Ben Shapiro. And Bonga, Bongo, has like nine out of the ten. I mean, he's the dumbest person on earth. The way they do this shit is they form dozens and dozens and dozens of these shadow Facebook groups, okay? Right. They're closed groups, but they follow bingo. And then when bingo tweets something, these groups, and whether it's a bot or an algo or an administrator, they share it or pretend to share it a gajillion times. These guys have gamed the algorithm.

They understand what the algorithm is and how it works. so they've gamed it. And that's fine. It is just going to reduce Facebook further into, you know, a septic tank for these kind of crazies. Right. It's true. They killed local news only to replace it with Ben Shapir. Dr. Rick Bright is an American immunologist, vaccine researcher, former public health official, and whistleblower,

as well as the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. I am so excited to have you here. testimony in front of Congress, I've used that opening statement in like five different pieces because it's just so succinct. And basically what you said was, and this was in March, and you correct me if I'm wrong, but you basically said, this is going to be the darkest winter in modern life if we can't get it together. Absolutely right. Molly, thanks for having me on today. We knew back then, we knew from many years' experience in studying and planning for exactly the scenario that we're in today, what this was going to look like and how it was going to play out.

We knew what to do about it. And we could see our government was ignoring all of those factors, all of those areas. And so it was obvious to me that without intervention now back then, we were going to have a really bad winter. And I did call it the darkest winter in modern history. And guess what is coming true. That's what I started thinking about when I saw those numbers this weekend. I kept thinking like we have to have you on. What I would love for you, to talk about is yesterday we had Mark Meadows on Jake Tapper saying, we're not going to try to control the virus, which they were sort of shopping that over the last few months. Can you talk to me about how much trouble are we in here? Molly, we're in a lot of trouble. When I heard Mark Meadows say that

yesterday on Jake Tapper, there are very few shining points from this administration related to this outbreak, but Mark Meadows actually revealed a bit of the truth about the administration's plan and strategy that they've had all along is they're not going to try to stop this virus. They haven't done anything to try to stop the spread of this virus and start to reduce the number of people who are dying from the virus. So I heard that. It's very frustrating. It made me very angry. It actually made me pretty sick to my stomach as a public health expert. But he did speak the truth. This administration hasn't done anything from day one to try to slow the spread of this virus. It's been a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of public service announcements, but none of it has really

translated to anything effective because it's been so random. You know, the one thing that President Trump and his senior advisors tout to tout that they did back in January was this travel ban from China. But I really want to debunk the impact of that travel ban from China. It was to, to, you know, late. It was haphazard. We funneled a lot of people into our country in different places, and then we let them go randomly through our country without any type of testing. We didn't do anything after that. We weren't testing or tracking. And then if you look at the pictures from the travel bans from China and from Europe when they did that as well, look at the chaos in those airports. Talk about the world's first super spreader event that Trump and his administration ignited back in January and

February and then spread across our entire country. That's scary. Yeah. So you have this background in both virology and vaccines. Yes, I have the background in virology and immunology and making vaccines. And not only just making them, but working on expanding their access globally so we can be prepared to stop a pandemic in its tracks. And focused a lot on pandemic influenza. We really thought that was going to come out of the waterfowl, the ducks in China and the market. And so we laid a foundation for that type of response with the World Health Organization and other international organizations through the years. You know, what's interesting and disappointing is all that hard work and planning that we've done with my expertise and knowledge was literally ignored or kicked to the curb in this administration. And that's why we're in the place we're in now. Some of that was John Bolton, right, that they sort of took apart the pandemic response team.

They were like, why do we need this? if it's not a pandemic right now. That was an incredible team that was set up in the White House. I know almost every one of those members, and they were recruited from all areas of expertise and had deep experience in government and science and policy. And to see that dismantled one by one by one. And every now that you can find and bump into one of the experts in the hallway

of the old executive office building, and then they were just gone. To have that mindset from this administration, thinking that we didn't need to prepare or have a staff on board in the event that something like this happened was just ridiculous, actually. And then not even trying to resemble anything like that when the real pandemic was upon us was ridiculous. Yeah, that's kind of shocking that they were like, we'll just go to Jared Kushner. I feel like in the movie, they go, well, okay, now we have to bring in the scientists. We may not like them.

But that's not what happened at all. In the real movie, in the exercises that we've done, for a number of years, we would, bring in the scientists around the table and solve the problems and get it done. In this real-world scenario, Jared Kushner brought in, you know, high school graduates and college students who hadn't yet graduated from college and said, gather around the table with whatever the social media app is of the day and let's, you know, solve the supply chain problem. I'm running out of words. You can't describe how reckless and careless and actually translate it into deadly. That type of approach has been in this response.

I think in some ways, one of the most dangerous things that's happened is that we are seeing a slightly lower death rate for coronavirus. And somehow this has been interpreted mostly by the president and his allies as coronavirus is not as dangerous. Well, what's really important to know is that death rate is a trailing indicator after you start to see more cases and more hospitalization. So we've seen, you know, over the last several months, a couple of months, we saw the case counts lower a little bit. We saw the hospitalization lower a bit, and we saw the death counts lower a bit.

And then you start looking at the rate of deaths. And, you know, we know that we've learned a bit about the virus. We learned a bit about how to treat people who are infected with the virus. And we've had spaced in our hospitals to provide that type of excellent treatment. What we're starting to see now is a significant rise, a surge in cases. And that's being followed. You see the trend already by the surges in hospitalizations. So it's just a matter of time and maybe just a week or two.

I'm already seeing reports of ambulances being turned away. I see you units being filled up. But once those hospitals get crammed again and those doctors and nurses who are working 24 hours a day, literally, not figuratively, they're exhausted. The supplies are going to run. short, we're going to reload on basic supplies, such as fluids and salings and then all your PPE and basic medicines to treat this many people again, you're going to start seeing everything that we've learned and all the benefits we learned in even our basic treatment,

be overwhelmed once again, and we're not going to be able to provide that level quality of treatment to that many people all at once. So what you'll start seeing is that death rate start to increase once again. You're going to see it exploding around the rural communities right now because that's where our surges are in the middle part of our country in the upper northwest too. And those hospitals are not as equipped as the big hospitals and university centers that we've seen already struggling with the previous outbreaks. We're in for a really, really bad few months, actually. We're in for that dark winter and we're going to have influenza cases. on top of the COVID cases.

And we're going to just start seeing this compounding. It's going to be in the wake of these super spreader events that President Trump has had on his campaign rallies. That is going to translate into our senior citizens are being hospitalized. 80% of our deaths today are in people over 65. And so if you look at the explosion of cases we'll have, you're going to see a lot of our parents and grandparents

and older relatives not, be around for the holidays and not be around any longer. We're also going to see the minority populations that we have, the Latinx populations and the black populations and those who already have trouble getting access to health care, they're going to be hit hardest. So again, this winter, because of the super spreader events that we're continuing to have and somehow promote still by our administration right now, the consequence of those is nothing short of just pure deadly. Psychologically, you are not a political person. You decided to testify. You are now a whistleblower. What is that like? I don't think anyone ever plans a career move in their life to be a whistleblower.

I think that's right. I mean, it's a mixed message. I wouldn't recommend it as a way of life, but I certainly would recommend anyone who sees anything wrong, finding the courage to speak up. I've learned that there is a support group out there. There are some really good legal guidance and assistance out there. However, you know, it's not a club that you ever want to find yourself happen to be in. I had to make that choice. I didn't make that choice readily, but I was faced with what I believe to be a life and death situation where the Trump administration was moving forward recklessly at a breakneck speed to push a dangerous drug onto the streets, this chloroquine, hydroxychloricine. And we were gathering information and data, scientific data, about the potential dangers

of this drug, especially in people who were infected with coronavirus. But at the time, didn't seem like they even cared if you were infected with coronavirus. They wanted to push the drug out. I tried everything possible to raise the flags internally and resist moving forward with the administration and their public health leaders who were gung-ho to follow the president's guidance and directive. And once I saw that they were all on board to push it and make it available and flood the streets, literally, I had to decide at that moment to be complicit and be part of an organization and a government that would put people's lives at risk and potentially cause more people to die. or to step out. And I still get emotional about it because I still remember that day of stepping out

and how impactful it was on me knowing that it was going to change my life because I was going to be retaliated. You just know they're going to come after you. You have to decide, is it worth it? And to me, it was absolutely worth it. I'm not a partisan person. I'm a scientist. I'm a public health expert. And I have every day my life, woken up my professional life to say, How can I save someone's life? How can I change or improve our health care system or improve access to it? And what they were asking me to do at that moment was against everything that was within me. So I had to step out.

And honestly, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I don't regret it for a moment. I believe it impacted the narrative and changed the discourse in many ways. It gave me an opportunity to testify in front of Congress about the truth that wasn't being shared with Americans. the lies that were being put forth about the real risk of this virus, I'd hoped that it would have had an impact in maybe turning up the action and that the Congress and the government and others who could would have listened and taken steps back then to change the course of this outbreak,

but I still see this administration has chosen to ignore the outbreak, lie about the outbreak. I mean, there were only 85,000 deaths, a lot. There are 85,000 deaths when I testified, and now we have 225,000 deaths, and that's going to double the next coming months in the U.S. There are only 1.4 million cases, infections in the U.S. when I testified, and now there's 8.6 million. We didn't do what we had to do, and this administration has not stepped forward with a plan, with clear messaging, and leading by example. And honestly, that's all they have to do to impact this outbreak is to put forth the plan

and message it clearly and consistently and lead by example. We're not asking them to do anything too miraculous, but they still refuse to do that, and they still refuse to tell Americans the truth. And that is why I continue to speak out. Again, Molly, it's not the career path I chose. I love being on your podcast on other areas, because, again, gives me a chance to try to tell Americans the truth. But it's not what I wanted to do or ever thought I would do in life. What would be three of the things you would think that would be

the sort of the first things a new president might do? Actually, what we're missing most is a single coordinated plan, a real strategy to get our country through this pandemic and reopen our schools and get America back to work safely. Components of this national strategy that would be critical to roll out as quickly as possible would be clear messaging and guidance and leadership on appropriate wearing a face mask. Also, a national testing strategy. This isn't about just making more tests and how many tests you do every day. It is a coherent strategy that talks about the different types of tests and when to test and who to test and how often the test and what you do with that information. and then coupling that testing with a strategy for tracing and contacts of people who are infected

and then appropriate isolation and compensating people for that isolation because it's really difficult for people who are breadwinners for their family to adhere to an isolation and quarantine strategy if it means taking food off their table. So this comprehensive strategy for testing and tracing would also need to be resourced in a way that will incentivize people to follow with appropriate public health practices. We need, in addition, the strategy for producing adequate supply, top quality personal protective equipment for our health care workers. So it's critical that we prioritize our health care workers who are exhausted

and doing their best on the front line every day and they're putting their own life at risk to try to save the lives of others. And they are fatigued. And it is our responsibility, and it would be the obligation of the president, to ensure that we have done everything possible to ramp up and manufacture and make available face masks, 895 face masks and gowns and gloves,

to protect our frontline healthcare workers, doctors, and nurses. We've lost over 1,700 of our healthcare workers, this outbreak already just in the last several months. So the highest priorities would be to protect our health care workers in all of these public health measures, but support them, not just talk about them and certainly not ridicule them as we've seen our current administration do. How worried are you about rolling out this vaccine? And what are you seeing? What is hopeful? Give us something to not be too depressed with. You know, I'm excited that there are so many different effort, so many different options and strategies in place to make an effective, safe and effective

vaccine. We've never seen in the history of probably any outbreak the number of different companies and technologies and scientists at work around the clock, around the globe, trying to address this challenge of making an effective and safe vaccine. And they're making progress. So there's a lot of money behind it. There's a lot of effort behind it as well. And there's a lot of thought behind it. And we're seeing on the front end progress on how the scientists are designing these vaccines and progress and how the companies are beginning to make more, scale up production of the vaccines. And we're starting to see some really encouraging information and data from the clinical trials. I do think is important, however, to remember we still have a lot of work in front

of us. We can't cut the clinical trials off too soon. We can't be so eager for a vaccine. that we truncate the data set and move too quickly into an emergency use authorization scenario where we can't fully appreciate how these vaccines work and how safe they are. It seems to me like Pfizer and Moderna certainly agree with you. You know, it's interesting when you watch basically a number of different vaccine approaches all striving towards that same goal as quickly as possible. You constantly see different leaders and front runners. and then you see them meet a typical vaccine development challenge,

and you see them kind of pause or slow down and some other technologies sort of take the lead and it's sort of this almost like a horse race going back and forth until someone eventually crosses that finish line. And so as I've watched the various technologies, we see some of the frontline technologies that can move faster, such as the messenger RNA or MRNA candidates from Moderna and Pfizer. It's important to realize that neither one of those approaches have been ever licensed to make any type of vaccine.

But they can move quickly. And then we have some more established technologies. Does that worry you? It doesn't worry me so much as the realistic view is we don't know who the real frontrunner is yet. Each of these are meeting typical vaccine development challenges. Each of those new technologies such as messenger RNA are going to have some downstream. challenges, even if they get their first clinical data set, those technologies have never been scaled to large volumes. So we're going to face those. You know, I'm a participant in the Pfizer

trial, so I know all about having defrosted and everything. They have to kept at minus 70 or super cold temperatures. And so it creates challenges in our distribution chain in our pharmacies and doctors offices. So while they might be the first to get a data set, we still have a long road in front of us and putting all those things in place to distribute and actually administer those vaccines. I'm concerned, I mean, if we can't even get the swabs for the testing, how we're going to distribute this vaccine that needs to be at these sub-zero temperatures. Can you just talk for two seconds about long haulers? Well, when we think about long haulers and an interesting name, the interesting phrase that has been attached, but we're learning something new about this virus every

day. It is a new virus in the human population. And we're, finding more and more frequently that people who are infected with this coronavirus have long-term effects and some of it are as seems as minor as occasional balance of fatigue that just come and go and some of it is much more dramatic long-term damage in your lungs and people who have chronic respiratory challenges today and other organ challenges as well as we find this virus disrupts your entire system depending on how severe your infection is and how robust or strong your body is and trying to recover quickly. And so we're learning now that even six months out, people are having symptoms and chronic symptoms and that they're showing

that they're not fully recovering from an infection with coronavirus. And so that's very concerning as we learn more about the virus and how it impacts people. Another thing that we're learning that is concerning, and again, not to put fear in everyone, but we're seeing more and more cases of repeat infection. We're learning that even a natural infection from this virus may not elicit or induce a strong enough immune response or a long-lasting immune response. So three or four months out after an infection, we're finding people who are getting reinfected. And we know it's a reinfection because we have all these tools and genetic capabilities to analyze the virus. And we know it's a very different virus than the first virus that the person was infected with.

That's really important to track now and to follow closely is we need to understand how long the immune response might be to the vaccines. And we might need to find ourselves in a situation where the vaccine itself has to do a better job than your body does following natural infection from the virus. And this is also really important because in many cases that have been documented, it seems that this second or repeat infection maybe isn't as bad as the first infection. However, we're starting to see a couple of cases where the second infection is actually worse than the first infection. That could be for a number of reasons, but we have to really understand that because if our vaccines are not inducing us strong enough or a long enough immunity,

we need to understand what implications that could have for a follow-on second infection or our first infection of the virus following the vaccination. And so there's still a lot that we're learning in the science and basic virology, epidemiology, and immunology about this virus. This was so great. Thank you so much, Dr. Bright. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully.

Only beast inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com to become a beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. The Daily Beast.com. Ben Sheehan is the founder of OMGWTF, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, and is a political explainer who is going to talk to us about voting, gerrymandering, and the electoral college.

What's in the Constitution? I saw the little book that people carry around. Is that the whole thing? Yeah, it's short. Really? It's short. Tell me more. It's very short. It started with just seven articles, and then we've added 27 amendments. The whole thing is less than 10,000 words, and it's really meant to just be an outline and a kind of guide for our government, but it's also the outline of what the federal government can and can't do and what states can't do. Do you think any Republicans have ever read the Constitution? I'll be honest with you.

I feel like there is a subset of Republicans that are extremely familiar with the Constitution. And I started following hashtags on the Constitution on Instagram. And it's almost all conservative accounts that post about the Constitution and hashtag Constitution. Yeah. Give me an example of one of these people because A, I don't believe you. And also, B, I'm fascinated. Well, I feel like there are constitutional experts and scholars like Eugene Volick at UCLA. I think he's sort of more libertarian, but he's constitutionally brilliant.

I mean, if you went up to Ted Cruz and asked him to recite passages, he, I think the rumor is that he has the whole thing memorized and can recite the entire thing. Ted Cruz doesn't count because he's the worst person in the world. But yes, continue. But I do think that, you know, to be honest with you, I feel like the Constitution has been more discussed. and sort of studied and poured over in conservative circles, then liberal circles. And now having read it and written this book, I'm sort of confused as to why, because I actually think that there's a lot of stuff in the Constitution. And maybe it has to do with that. We, you know, we think of it as something that's so antiquated and, you know, not a match for our

times and needs to be changed. And there's obviously this originalist strain. What stuff is in it? I mean, there's a lot. What's the liberal stuff in there? Because we need to know. Well, I'd say the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are personally my favorite parts of the Constitution and basically made it apply to everybody. Okay, spill it. We need cliff notes here because no one knows what the 14th is. Smart people do, but I don't. The 13th abolished slavery, accept as punishment for a crime. The 14th basically established birthright citizenship. So it made former slaves and African American citizens for the first time. It also established equal protection of the laws.

It even was the first amendment to give African-Americans voting rights in a way because it punished states that didn't let men 21 and over who were eligible to vote and citizens vote. But the punishment was just like a few less people in your state for a population basis for the House. And so states kept violating that. And then two years later, they ratified the 15th Amendment, which was protecting voting rights based on race. So we drastically changed the constitution and made it apply to a lot more people in that five-year stretch than it ever had before, which is, you know, it's not. everything, but it's certainly a progression. And now we all get to elect U.S. senators directly. We didn't used to do that. 18-year-olds have voting rights protections, women have voting rights protections. So the additions we've made to it have definitely made it a more democratic document.

What's the bad stuff in there? There's a bunch. Obviously, in the beginning, the whole idea that enslaved people counted as Second Amendment. Second Amendment, obviously enslaved people not counting as full people. And that being factored into the electoral college is why of the first five presidents, four of them were from Virginia because Virginia got three extra electoral votes just based on its enslaved population. Thomas Jefferson, his margin of victory over John Adams was because of the electoral votes he got from enslaved people in Virginia, many of whom he owned. So our audience gets really scared about the elector's not being bound to vote for the electoral college. So you talked about this a good amount that, you know, some of them can do what they want.

Are there any swing states that you're scared of that happening in? Yeah. I mean, there's three that I have discussed a lot, which is Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Texas. Those three states do not bind their electors at all. So it is theoretically possible that whatever the electors get appointed. Now, of course, it's the political parties who are picking the slates of electors. But my worry is that if there's a claim of voter fraud, if there's a claim of something else like, you know, polluting, distorting, contaminating the voting results in the state, the legislature could move to act and appoint a different slate of electors. And because they're not bound to vote for the popular vote winner in the state, they could do whatever they

want. Now, this would be, you know, the first time in well over a hundred years that that's happened, but I think that we're in a territory where a lot of things that we probably have had happened in 100 years plus are starting to happen. And so I'm looking at those states in particular, especially because Georgia and Texas are Republican trifectives, so state house, state Senate, governor, all Republican. And then the other ones I'm worried about are Florida, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Why even have this law in the first place? But they have a law saying that they have to bind the electors. But the electors, there's no penalty for breaking that. And the vote still counts if the electors don't vote for the popular vote winner. So what the point of that law is, I don't know.

Those are the six states that I'm looking at in terms of swing states. But with Pennsylvania, there's the safeguard of the Democratic governor. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So we don't have to worry about that one as much, but the rest of them. Now, is this a state-by-state thing, or is this something we could reform in some way after the election if there's a Biden win? No, it's state-by-state because in the Constitution, it says the manner of appointed electors is up to the state legislatures. So they really have full control over how the electors get appointed. And that's what the Supreme Court upheld earlier this year in July saying that if, you know, states have laws preventing faithless electors, those are constitutional. If they don't have those laws, that's also constitutional.

And that was a 9-0 ruling. So the power is really with state legislatures on this. Which is why Democrats need to flip more state legislatures. I mean, that's my biggest takeaway from the Constitution, is that where we think the power lies in our government is not where it actually lies. It is truly in the legislatures. And state legislatures have so much power. And we need to start thinking about them as like top ballot races and not down ballot races.

Let's talk about the sort of sexiest topic, gerrymandering. Talk to us about gerrymandering, because you've written a book about gerrymandering, too. I have, and I also co-created a line of jewelry where every necklace and pin is shaped like one of the worst gerrymandered congressional districts in the United States. I remember this. I didn't realize you were the one who did that. Yeah. I want that. Go to gerrymander jewelry.com. You're not going to send me a free one, huh?

Okay. I can. I can. I can. I can. Pay for it and then promote it because that's how I roll. Wait, it's called gerrymander what? Jerrymander Jewelry.com. And you can go there and watch our Jared slash Zales, you know,

60-second jewelry ad. That's a very serious jewelry ad. And it's real. We're selling them. I am buying them right now because I don't need to be given them for free because I'm classy like that. And all right, continue on. Jerry Manning. So like this is our last opportunity to elect people who are going to draw the lines next year. And those are in most states, in like two-thirds of the states, it's our state legislators. So again, the people who control how the electors are appointed, the people who control how the lines are drawn. In most states, it's our state legislators and also governors too. So it's so important to elect people who are going to draw fair lines because these last for 10 years.

And this goes for both the U.S. House and our state legislatures. That is totally fascinating. Why do you think Democrats never got involved in mandering before? I mean, I feel like it's like filling those court seats. Like Democrats sort of had a problem with cheating, so then Republicans came in and cheated. Is that your takeaway or now? They do gerrymander in Maryland, which I'm from Maryland, and my home state of Maryland is heavily gerrymandered to harm Republican voters.

Most gerrymandering that's happening at the congressional and state legislative level right now, the majority of it is being done by Republicans. But historically, it's also been done by Democrats. I mean, in the 80s, California was terribly gerrymandered and other states as well. So I think right now, because really it was this plan. In 2010, Red Map, like change. I mean, it was the most aggressive gerrymandering plan plot ever. And what they did is they went to Republican donors, the Republican Party, and they said,

hey, for a quarter of the price of donating to a congressional candidate to get them elected, if you give a quarter of that money and put it towards state legislatures, they can draw the line so that that candidate can keep getting elected. And that's what they did. So for a quarter of the prices, they would have had to pay, they flipped the house, they solidified these districts for 10 years. and it was a total nightmare. Democrats didn't see it coming.

And I do blame the Democratic Party for this because I think the focus was so national coming off of Obama's win, and that was where the attention was. And he was this rock star. And there was so much money coming into the National Democratic Party, and they just totally took their eye off the ball. And I think that it's really important going forward

to understand how much power states have. And I think the Democratic Party would be well served to reshift their focus. It sounds like it. I saw a great article you wrote about how, voting is not protected by the Constitution, the plague of voter disenfranchisement. What are your hopes for reforming this and which are our listeners be pushing their Congress people to do in the future?

I really think that the only way to really combat this in a lasting way is with a constitutional amendment, which is super hard to do. Senator Dick Durbin introduced one earlier this year and you would need two thirds of the House and the Senate to propose that and then three quarters of the states to ratify. So getting 38 states to agree on anything. I was going to say, can we agree that that's probably not a viable way? is there any other option? Yeah, I mean, if, you know, if the Democrats were to hold the House, take back the Senate and take the presidency, they could pass a new voting rights act and

reinstate, you know, the parts that were removed by the Supreme Court in 2013 and a bunch of other protective measures. And I think there is one that's being discussed and named after John Lewis, in fact. So that would be a huge thing that the federal government can do. And then, you know, really every state has the ability to decide who can and can't vote and pass their own voting laws. So again, goes back to state legislatures. What do we think is proper voting reform? Like, One of the things I hear a lot of people talked about as a guarantee of one machine per X people. What do we see as being really what will help with reenfranchising the vote? Well, I think you have to start with what's being used right now in a modern sense to disenfranchise

that we're all these administrative measures. So, you know, banning things like exact match. You know, there's no other right in the Constitution where if we don't send a postcard back within a certain amount of time we lose that right. That's what's happening in Ohio. Exact match is the one that's happening in Georgia, where if your name doesn't exactly match what they have on file for you. A dash is off or a space. Then your registration gets thrown out. I would say banning that. All of these like administrative things that sounds menial, but are really designed to have a

disproportionate effect on people of color. So I think really a full overhaul of like our voting process and procedures around registration. How can Democrats get more power at the state level? I think they need to invest in candidates for legislatures. I think they need to really put money toward organizations like the DLCC. They need to do a lot of voter education about it because it's just been all, it's all about the federal government all the time. And, you know, again, reading the constitution, like the federal government is very limited and so much is left up to the states and we just don't think about it like that. So it's retraining our brains to understand where the power lies, why these entities are so powerful and they're really investing in candidates because that's also like the future national

leaders or people who become state leaders. I mean, look at Stacey Abrams and what she's doing for voting rights on a national level. She was in the Georgia. state house. I mean, there are people who are future national stars that come from state legislatures, and I think we just need to invest in those candidates and those people and also help educate people on why they're so powerful. Any advice you have to our listeners about voting this week, anything that you think they may not know? Absolutely. I would say if you're able to vote early in person, I know that it's in the middle of a pandemic, but if you can do that and you're able to physically do that, you should do that. And I would also say that not just so that you can cast a vote,

around this race, but make sure you know who your state legislators are. The easiest way to do this is go to a site called openstates.org, and you can just plug in your address and it tells you who your state legislators are. I say follow them on Twitter, on Instagram, tweet things at them. They usually don't have a ton of followers, so you can get through to them as a constituent this way. It's like the understatement of the year. Yeah, they're probably looking at their mentions like everybody else, seeing what's going on. So tweet at your state legislators, like tweet a video at them saying what you want them to do. In fact, this organization, Countable, looked at all the ways that are the most impactful as a constituent to influence your elected leaders. And they said that tweeting a video at your elected representatives is the most powerful thing other than voting.

Because unlike an email, unlike a phone call or a letter, like those are private one-to-one communication and that could be thrown out or ignored or deleted. But Twitter is like, this stays up forever. It's public one-to-one communication. So you can retweet it later, you know, put that person, on blast and everyone else can see it too. So it's a really powerful way to get your legislators' attention. So go to open states, plug in your address, see who these people are, vote for them, make sure that if they're up this year, your values and views align with theirs. But also as the electoral college process unfolds, make sure that they are not going to ignore your vote and find some other way to appoint the electors. Yeah. That's great. That's great. Tell people not

to worry now. Don't worry. It is a low chance of this. happening, but I feel like there's a low chance of a lot of things over the last four years that have happened. So it's better to just prepare for the worst and be ready for it rather than be shocked by it with scrambling to find a recourse. Hi there, Jesse Cannon here. I'm the producer of The New Abnormal.

And I have a little secret here for members of Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. On Election Day, Rick and Molly are going to be doing what they always do and talk about what's happening with the election. And you can listen if you join Beast Inside today and gain access to an exclusive Zoom version of our podcast that will be

on Election Day. Molly and Rick will help you stomach the last moments, or so we hope, of the longest, weirdest, crappiest presidential campaign in modern history. Join Beast Inside today and join us on Election Day when we pull back the curtain, New Abnormal Style. To be able to hear this episode, head to newabnormal. Dot the DailyBeast.com today.

That's new abnormal. com. All right. So, Rick Wilson. Good afternoon, Molly drunk fast. Who is your fuck-that guy? My fuck-that guy is you. Mr. Mark Kasselitz. Oh, yes.

I know that your experience has primarily been to shake down and try to intimidate Trump's contractors, be they actual contractors, building things or contractors in the stripper or porn star business.

I know that your experience with them has been that you can send a bullshit letter full of hollow threats and you think that they're going to blink and roll over right away. Welcome to my party, pal. Because,

because, because this case, and you know it, is going to lose you a ton of money. And by the way, as Trump's collapse continues, I know you're the one guy that still gets paid by him. Don't expect his ability to continue to cover your invoices to be commensurate with the amount of damage that will happen in this case. So, bye. I feel like this lawsuit is one of the best things to ever happen to the Lincoln Project. Am I wrong? Well, look, it's not a lawsuit yet.

It's just a threat of a lawsuit. But you're pretty psyched. We have seven of the top 10 First Amendment lawyers in the country on board with us for this case. Here's the real thing, though. Kassowitz is part of Trump's sort of thugocracy where they're used to intimidating people and threatening people. It's just not us. You want to go? We'll go.

We'll go all day long. But the idea that this guy is going to actually prevail in a case on the First Amendment is absurd. So they're going to be more billboards? We might have a billboard or two to come. Yeah. We're looking at one for Staten Island that says, Welcome home, Jared Navanka. I await the day where Jared Navonka are living in that 3-2-1800 square foot condo on Fresh Kills Terrace East.

You know what? I'm not going to even say anything. Yeah, you are. No, I'm not. My fuck that guy, I know you're curious to know who it is. I am. It is someone who I think you've actually met in real life. Is that true?

I don't know yet. You're going to surprise me with it. Michael Caputo? Oh, Michael Caputo. Yes. Aren't we supposed to be kind to Michael Caputo now that he's on psych leave and has something or another? I can only think about the fact that Michael Caputo wanted to vaccinate Santa's to shop the vaccine. And he promised the elves and Mrs. Claus early vaccine access.

What in the hot, holy name of fuck are you talking about? I wish I were kidding. It's a piece in the Wall Street Journal. I'm not kidding. Where it turns out that one of Michael Caputo's many stupid ideas was to have Santa's advertising the vaccine. I swear to God, I'm not even kidding. The even supply in the country is already very vastly diminished, but I am all out of evens with which to can't in this regard.

It's just unbelievable. Unbe-fucking-levable. And so concludes another successful day of fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. Who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode.

If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly Jongfest, and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline.

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