The Daily Beast Podcast - The Most Acid Trippy Episodes of The New Abnormal

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

Trump getting COVID. Antifa plotting to take down the White House. The truth about Russia disinfo. Bill Clinton impressions. The Lincoln Project scoops. The very first year of The New Abnormal by The Daily Beast has been a wild, trippy ride. It featured scientists, politicians, whistleblowers and the Daily Beast’s best and brightest reporters. In this special episode, we compiled the most fun, most hilarious and most brutally honest clips from co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson’s best episodes. We kick off with the duo talking about Trump getting COVID (and if Biden secretly planned it all), then go into a few clips from bonus episodes that only Beast Inside members had access to including what Rick and Molly got wrong about the election (and what Democrats should have done differently, like running celebrities, says Molly. Also, “are you out of your mind? Voter fucking registration,” said Rick). Next, there’s the episode where comedian Ike Barinholtz recounts the obviously real friendship he and Don Jr. shared while killing innocent animals and boating. We even had Rev. Raphael Warnock on the show before the special election run-off officially kicked off in November (“Kelly Loeffler was appointed appointed by Gov. Kemp to warm up the [Senate] seat before I get there,” he jokes of his incumbent opponent) and Veep showrunner Dave Mandel’s episode dives into why Mitch McConnell basically punched America in the penis. Masha Gessen drops a bomb on her episode, claiming that the country’s problem is not Russian interference, it’s the fact that we let it in. And of course, the greatest moment of TNA’s history: when lightening literally struck Rick’s house during a “Fuck that Guy” segment. 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. Hello, New Abnormal listeners. This is producer Jesse Cannon here. And today I have a special treat for you. We're going to go down Memory Lane and play some of our funnest segments, as well as

playing a little bit of some snippets from some of our locked episodes and show you all the fun that we've been having throughout the last year of doing this podcast. You know, it may just be our personal style at the New Abnormal, but personally, I think it's a great side would I said episode to Daily Beast editor Noah Shatt. And he asked if we have taken acid before we taped it. And that's what happened when I turned this episode in. So enjoy listening to this nice clip from all the way back on October 6th. His cheerleaders on the right, they can't believe that the same people who screamed out that

Hillary had Parkinson's, that Hillary had a stroke, that Hillary was dying, they can't believe that America isn't silently weeping over a guy who knew he was doing all the things he possibly could. I mean, short of going to lick a doorknob at Sturgis, that he was doing everything he could to get COVID. And of course, what did he get? COVID. Diamond and Silk actually tweeted out. And I would just like to point out that this is kind of an amazing tweet.

It shows a certain lack of insight, perhaps. Wait, I haven't seen this, but can I make a guess? Yeah. Are they saying the Biden campaign deliberately infected Donald Trump with COVID? No, better. Oh, go on. Do tell. Was the White House targeted?

Dun, don't, do you know who targeted them, Marley? Do you know who? Themselves. Antifa! Oh, God. I mean, the idea that Trump getting a virus that 210,000 people have died from, as a conspiracy, is pretty, is pretty impressive. Well, the idea from the very beginning that this was a biological warfare agent and not just a virus that does what viruses do has been a sort of subtext. there is a growing little rumble in Russian propaganda channels, RT and elsewhere,

in the info farms that feed the American right-wing Trump media now, that this was a deliberate bio-attack on our president. And of course, again, the bio-attack was not from some malevolent external force, but rather from a malevolent internal force inside Donald Trump's broken brain. But, Molly, you know, when you go to the hospital and it's just fine, you're okay, it's all good, you're going to be out of the next day, You're on ribdesivir, regeneron, dexamethosone, supplemental oxygen, zinc, vitamin D from out of tide, melatonin, and an aspirin. All those things.

That's what always happens when I'm fine. I don't know about you. I mean, there was so much lying about the president's condition. And my favorite moment was when they said, you know, he's totally fine, but we've given him this experimental drug that has only a compassionate use approval and also steroids and also dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. No, we're definitely being lied to. Being lied to about the president's health is like a time-honored tradition. But I think that this group has really done it with a kind of zeal and flair and incompetence that we have never seen before. They do have a certain verb to their lying.

And I'm just going to say this. You know, I know we're supposed to be very, very civilized now and never, ever, ever, ever roll our eyes and say, hmm, but let's be real here. Kaylee McInney up on that podium for months on end lying about COVID, lying and lying and lying. lying again and again and again and again. Only to get COVID. Only to get COVID. It proves to you that karma is a real and very magnificent bitch.

But I know you, our dear listeners, also know that it's not all just fun in games and Rick echoing out in Antifa voice all the time. Sometimes we do serious political analysis. And this one you may have missed since this was on one of our bonus episodes right after Thanksgiving, where we talk some serious issues as the election had just settled down. So I want to first do the question that I think everybody who is a responsible person who discusses politics to do, which is say, did you get anything wrong? Did you think anything that was totally wrong about this election season? I got wrong a lot. And the thing I got the most wrong was, and I wrote a piece that Joe Biden should drop out right before he won the nomination.

He had lost whatever it was. It was two first states. And he was just about to win South Carolina. Oh, I remember that. So that was the thing that was the stupidest that I've ever been. So, yes, I'm amazing. Rick? One thing I got wrong was I thought Bernie would be a lot more problematic for Biden than he was during the campaign.

He was a really good, sir. I thought he would snipe from the edges and sort of do a repeat of 2016. And I think that was one of the reasons that Biden was able to get firmly parked in the middle with a lot of the perceptual, you know, aspects of how he was in the campaign. He didn't fall into the trap of having to, like, trying to back and fill on policy stuff. Right. So I think, I think I got, I got Bernie's participation wrong. I also got wrong that at some point there would be a diminishing returns level

on the sort of alternate reality maga world and we're still living through it right now. Yeah. I mean, at some point you were thinking, I thought, well, you know, even like Fox is going to have to say, listen, you know, the president's not telling the truth. This is a crazy town. Do not get on the train. But they wrote it till the very end. I mean, and even now, like the small bits of daylight you're seeing, they're really insignificant in the big picture. But yeah, that was something I would say that I thought that there would be a moment where they would get. He would lose them. He waited and they waited until basically, about a week before the election, he was getting very cranky about Fox.

And he's gotten increasingly cranky about Fox. Yeah, I'll say. Yeah. So anyway, next. What do you wish Dems did different during the 2020 election cycle? Look, I'm going to say three things I wish they'd done differently. Voter registration. Voter registration.

And are you out of your fucking minds? Voter registration. Right. Because this is one of those Potemkin villages that often appears in Democratic campaigns. And then doesn't happen. Now, in reality, that's one thing, I wish they'd done differently. The second thing that we have looked at post hoc, and it's a sort of thing you couldn't have known. Right.

They, even with COVID, probably should have done some door knocking. Yeah, well, that's what we've seen, right. And everyone thought it was a terrible idea, including me. I'm not going to dispute that in the slightest. And so they stayed away from it. And they stayed away from it for all kinds of correct reasons. but, you know, we looked back at the very limited experiment we did with direct voter contact with door knocking, and it was, it was, you know, markedly more effective, even in the COVID era.

And so that's something that, you know, again, there were a million reasons not to do it, and they were all correct reasons not to do it, but I wish they'd done it. I mean, the recklessness of the Trump people doing it was probably, you know, contributing to super spreader events. But in a normal non-COVID year, that commitment, needs to be ratcheted way back up there. Yeah. And the last thing I wish they had done in the cycle for their candidates out in the world

was been a little stricter and a little more directive on how they encouraged fundraising flows. God bless Amy McGrath. She's a great person, but she was never going to beat Mitch McConnell. And that $80 million or $88 million sure could have gone to Maine or Iowa or Alaska. Yeah. I mean, that segues into what I think they did. which is picking these candidates who lost congressional races to run for Senate races. And that's Amy McGrath, and that's M.J. Hagar.

And that's, you know, that's a bunch of candidates where they were sort of John Osoff is another one. I hope he wins. But, you know, those are people where they were sort of repurposed. And I feel like candidates that we see like, you know, Warnock, people where they, you know, are from where they, you know, there's sort of a star. We've seen that has sort of done better for Democrats. So I wish that there was more of that. And also there's this fundamental question,

which people have said to us, and it's sort of cynical, but I wish Democrats would think a little bit more like this, which is, and everyone's getting mad at me for saying this, but it's true. We spend all this time talking about why Trump won and why Trump and why people were drawn to Trump, but you have to calculate that some of this

was because he was famous. I don't think some of it was because he was famous. I think 95% of it was because he was famous. And Democrats should fucking run celebrities. Like, they don't have to do it all the time, but certainly there are states. If Matthew McConaughey wants to run for Governor Texas, I'm totally down for it, bro. I think he should. I'm serious as a heart attack, man.

Yeah. It would be that, that'd be the tits, babe. You just want to do an impression. You don't even have any of interested, Matt, Matthew McGahn. Listen, I'm in the Rick Wilson from Prussian fan club personally. Do your Bill Clinton, because that's your best impression. That is your best one.

Yeah. Well, Molly, I think the mystery that most women haven't really delved into, even at this time. So bad. It's really fundamental. And it's not. It's not what can you give. One of our favorite things we do on this show is our interviews. And this one with actor and writer, Ike Barron Holtz, was one of the fun

funniest ones we taped all year. So we find ourselves in 2020. Where are you, Ike? What are you working on? What is happening? What are you doing? I am in Los Angeles, California. Yes, I've heard of it. We had an amazing event yesterday. Me and my friends went to the valley and we had a great rally from Mr. Trump. Wait a second. I drove in. I drove in from where I live about 120 miles away and just kind of cruise down Ventura Boulevard in my F-150, which somehow has caterpillar tracks on it. And I just, I just kind of laid my horn for about two, three hours. And I think I swayed some undecided voters. So it was a pretty great day. Did you have any flags? It was funny because we got there. And then my friend reminded me that I left all my flags on my boat. I was, I was hoping we

would get to the boat. Yeah, you know I'm a beautiful voter, right? You know that, right? I'd heard. Yeah, so we got there. But like I said, look, everyone focuses on Ohio and Arizona, but people don't think about the swing voters on Ventura Boulevard between Jones on Third and Asanabo. There's some folks there who are still on the fence. So I think we did a lot of good.

I think we did a lot of good. Can you explain to me what you like about voting for Trump? Well, look, for years, for years, me and my friends would go on the lake. and zoom around on our boat and yell at each other and get blind drunk and disrupt other families having a good time. And it was fun, but we didn't have a purpose. And it wasn't until we realized that we could hold up Trump signs, that we could really make a difference and sway some other boaters who are, because this is thing. People, again, talk about swing voters. No one talks about swing boaters. That's right. And so I can't tell you how many times I've, my

boat has gone the SS Ivanka, had gone past another boat and I've just blasted my air horn. And they're like, what the fuck are you doing? And I'm like, I'm for Trump. And they're like, get the fuck out of here. And then I zoom away, but maybe they will vote for Trump. Who knows? You never know. That's the thing.

You've got to keep trying. Are you concerned about boater fraud? I, boater fraud is a very real thing. That's why you can never buy your boat in the mail. You have to buy your boat in person. And it's tough. It's tough in the age of COVID to go to a boat store. But we really do, the boaters for Trump, we do discourage a boat by mail. We really think this is something that you should be doing in person. I was told by international polymath, Donald Trump Jr. Yes. My good friend, yeah. That boating is not a right. Boating is a privilege.

It is. Look, everyone is is born with a boat. We know that. But only, only people who really commit to not just the boating lifestyle, but also the MAGA lifestyle, have earned the privilege to fuck up all of the wakes in a lake. And so it is. Once again, DJ, TJ is right. And that's why I'm supporting him in 2024. How many animals have you killed? How many animals have I killed? Well, let me see.

I went with DJ, TJ. We went to beautiful Tanzania back in 2014. And it was amazing. We talked to the locals. and they were really great. And then this really nice man, he was a guide, and he took us to just the most majestic group of sleeping rhinoceruses. And we just blew their fucking heads off, man.

It was beautiful. We just took out, we had DJ, TJ has an elephant gun. And we took turns just turning this majestic family of endangered species into just a big old puddle of Kool-Aid. So I'm going to shift gears here. you wrote, directed and starred in a movie that I loved in recent years, The Oath, which I encourage our viewers that they would very much enjoy it if they haven't wanted it. Oh, thank you. It's unavailable on Hulu. My thing, rewatching it this weekend and then having my parents do the same is it was absolutely more Prussian. And I think one of the worst things, like certain hosts of the show may have even been putting out things about how dystopias have underplayed their hand.

But right now, your dystopia that you made, seems to do you. have aged perfectly. Have you had any thoughts since you wrote it about what you've seen more of and what's coming to view in the picture since you made this movie? Yeah, a very angry film. I made it at the time where I definitely saw that fascism was alive and well in America and was really starting to bubble. It's only gotten much, much, much, much worse, much, much worse. The movie came out and just not a lot of people saw it when it came out, but recently, like a young lady on TikTok gave a little TikTok video about why the movie's true and what's happening right now. So a lot of younger people, and I guess K-pop fans have seen it.

Oh, K-pop. Yeah, it's very depressing. It's very depressing. And it's just, it just shows you, yep, still fucked. So while it is, yep, we're still fucked, you do have a very insightful kind of thing about the commentary of like what this does to both families, but also what it does when you're not getting out there in the streets. You really well, and I was saying before we started taping, like, I saw a little too much of myself of the main character,

to a degree that disturbed me because I know they were being mocked. What do you feel like there's a lesson to be learned from that, like, right now? Like, would you encourage people to not just be the woke family warrior? What would you encourage? Basically the first time, I'm a very lucky man. Like, I grew up in the best possible time to grow up in the world in America, in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. We did too. Yeah, it's the best. We are so lucky. And so in my lifetime, there hasn't been, like, I have not seen mass mobilization movements happen a lot in my lifetime. The first time I really kind of remember it was Occupy Wall Street. And I was like, oh, cool. And then after Ferguson, we started seeing it more and more. But I think the power of the street, it's at an all time high in this country, where we saw, whether it was the Women's March or the March for Our Lives or the George Floyd protests, people know how to mobilize and they want to mobilize and they're fucking fed up. So, you know, my character, I think, why I was trying to make a commentary of, like you said, Jesse, a guy who was a bit of a backseat social justice warrior, who's, you know, his safe place, he's furious and he's got a lot of righteous indignation. It's real mad, but his kind of his MO is to bitch about it, read Twitter and bitch about it to his family. And I think we are seeing now people who are taking the next natural step, which is to hit the streets and, you know, do like a big show of force and remind the people who want to take the power from us that there's a lot more of us than that.

there are of you. No, I think that's right. Speaking to this idea of like being an enraged liberal. And so I'm curious to know what you think is the smartest thing for them to be doing. Well, I think right now, look, look, we're in this very, very precarious time where the most important thing right now at this moment is some kind of galvanization between, which I think you're, you are kind of same. Look, Rick Wilson, right, and David Sorota are voting for the same person. Okay? So like that's like the most important thing is to come together right now, except the real reality that Joe Biden is our nominee, right? Maybe he wasn't your first choice. I'm more of a Bernie Liz Warren type of guy, right? But we got Joe Biden and he's a fucking

decent guy. And our job right now is to get him to win and get rid of the fucking literally like the penguin from Batman. What I would say, though, is that the worst thing we could do is push hard to get Joe Biden elected and then go back to sleep. I was thinking about that too. Our next interview, though, is a little bit more serious with one of the most important political players right now at this very moment. Georgia Senate candidate Reverend Raphael Warnock. Tell us about what the Georgia special election is and when it happens. I don't know that our listeners know it's a little wacky. So can you explain what's going on? Well, thank you. And it's great to be here with you. Georgia is the only state in this cycle that has not one but two United States Senate seats available.

I'm running in the special election, which means I'm running to finish the last two years of a term that was Johnny Isaacson's term, the Republican senator. And so I'm in a race, and because it's a special election, people call it a jungle primary, which they had a better word. Yeah, it seems unfortunate. Everybody, Democrats and Republicans are all on the same ballot. And as it turns out, there are 21 people who've qualified. for my race come November 3rd will all be on the ballot for the first time.

They will indicate people's party affiliation, but other than the incumbent, everybody's name will be listed alphabetically. Oh, so you're at the bottom. My last name is Warnock, so I'm right near the bottom, which is where I used to be in the lunch line as a kid, on the way to reset and the cafeteria. So in order to win, you've got to have 50% plus one. And if no one gets 50% plus one in the November 3rd election, you know, many analysts think is likely because so many people in the race, I'm pushing to win outright on November 3rd.

But if that doesn't happen, the two top vote getters go to a January 5th runoff. So that's the special election. What does the landscape look like? I know, but I would love you to explain to our listener. I am the Democratic standard bear in this race running against Kelly Leffler, who was appointed by the Republican governor, kept to warm up the seat until I get there. She's the incumbent, but I'm running against her. And it's an interesting race because although she was appointed by the governor,

she's being challenged by Republican congressman, Doug Collins, I think became most well known in our nation during the impeachment hearings in which he was an arch defendant of everything Donald Trump. And so the two of them are fighting on that side. And their argument, it seems to me, is essentially the same. They're both arguing and squabbling with one another about who would be the best representative for Donald Trump. And I'm running to see who's going to be the best representative of Georgia. And I think based on my record, the work I've been doing all these years, that person is clearly me.

Oh, no question. We have another Lieberman trying to lose the seat for the Democrats. Can you talk to us a little bit about that? My question is not biased at all. Well, there are several people in this race. I said there, there are 21 people in the race. two major Republicans on that side, the incumbent being challenged by the Republican congressman. And then on our side of the race, there are a few Democrats. I can't remember right offhand how many. And there's some concern about that. But look, I'm going to run the best race I can. And I'm very gratified by the support that I'm feeling all across this state.

And I intend to win this seat for Democrats. So much is that state. We certainly cannot afford to have either Kelly Leffler, who's seen much more focused on her stock portfolio than the people of Georgia when she heard about the coronavirus pandemic through a secret private briefing given to senators. She was much more focused on sheltering her investments than the people who are sheltering in here in Georgia across the state. We can't afford to have her and we can't afford to have Doug Collins, who has been a career politician who seems much more focused on careerism. And so he's been focused on making deals. She's been focused on making

money. I've been focused on making a difference. I'm really encouraged because we're building a lot of movement across the state. I went on television a little over a month ago, and my polling numbers have increased quite significantly, and we intend to win this seat. River Moorock, I think one of the things the American people don't always see is how the person who's going to represent them compared to the person who's currently represent them is going to change things for their lives. What will be substantially different for what you will be fighting for compared to Ms. Lothler? My fight is for ordinary people, and it really comes from my own story, I think that the best indicator of what a person will do after they're in office is what were they doing before they were elected. And so let me first of all just say that while I serve as senior pastor of Ebeneza Baptist Church,

spiritual home of Martin Peking, Jr., one of the most well-known prominent pulpits in the country, that's not where I started. I grew up as a kid in public housing, Kate and Holmes' housing projects down in Savannah, Georgia, one of 12 children in my family. I'm number 11, and I'm the first college graduate in my family. So when you look at me, you're looking at someone who understands the importance of personal responsibility, my dad and my mom, who were both very hard workers, instilled in me the importance of hard work. But when you look at me, you're looking at a combination of someone who takes seriously personal responsibility and public policy. When you look at me, you're looking at the product of Pell Grants and low-interest student loans, without which I would not have been able to earn a college degree.

I often say I went to Morehouse College on a full faith scholarship. I didn't know how it was going to pay for the first semester, but good public policy helped me to realize my dreams. I'm also a head start baby, which more people need to know about. This is an early preschool program that allows poor children to have a good start in stimulating their brain. I mean, look, none of us will be as smart as we were between age of zero and four. there's not hardly a smarter investment that we can make as a nation than to invest really in very small children from the beginning of life and then K through 12 and then making sure our kids have access to a good quality education, whether that's a four-year college degree, as was the case with me and went on to receive two master's degrees and a PhD degree. But the kids who grow up and really need a technical school education, junior college, where you can learn skills to get you ready for the new economy. These are the people I'll be standing up for. And I will be leading with this issue. of health care. Here in Georgia, we have 500,000 people in the Medicaid gap because we've refused to expand

Medicaid in this state. And as a result of that, our rural hospitals are closing. The ninth hospital now has announced that it will close in our state in a decade, nine hospitals in a decade. And so whether you need Medicaid or not, you ought to want Medicaid expanded in the state because our hospitals are closing. And it doesn't matter if you have insurance if there's no hospital nearby to get to. Meanwhile, Kelly Leffler and Doug Collins are standing by as the Trump administration is trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. There will be a Supreme Court hearing a week after the election. And Georgia needs a senator who will work at the federal level to ensure that Georgia joins the other 38 states that have already expanded Medicaid. Some of them led by red state

governors because it just doesn't make any economic sense for us to do otherwise. So I'll be fighting for health care, and I'll be fighting for the dignity of workers who should not be called essential workers while being denied an essential living wage and essential benefits. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Basically, what do you need right now from listeners? They can give to my campaign. Let me tell you, we've been gaining a lot of steam and momentum. People all over this state are supporting us, but you can support us whether you live in this state or not, both through contributions and you can volunteer. I'm excited about our momentum. Tell people that Reverend Warren the pastor of Dr. King's Church is running to become the first black senator in the state of Georgia

and only the 11th black senator in the history of our country. They've been nearly 2000 at a time in which we're not only dealing with a once in a century pandemic and a once in a century economic turned down, but at a time in which we're dealing with a renewed conversation and reckoning around our age, old problem of race and racism in this country, demonstrated by these tragic flashpoints, George Floyd, Brianna, Taylor, Ahmad, Aubrey, right here in the state of Georgia, Rashard Brooks, whose eulogy I preached and whose eight-year-old daughter and other members of the family I had the sad honor of comforting during that death. And also the pastor of John Lewis, who served as I officiated. I'm running in the tradition of John Lewis.

I think we know what it's like to have Washington, D.C. filled up with only professional politicians, which is the case for most of the folk who were there. I think we need more citizen representatives. Somebody who will go to Washington, but will stay closely planted in the community that sent me there in the first place. The Congress did make John Lewis. He was who he was

and it was rooted in his moral authority. He was a great patriot who risked life and limb in order to secure for all Americans the promise of the vote, which is your voice and your human dignity. And because of his moral authority, he was able to bring people together about only at life.

He did it in. death. Three American president showed up to his funeral. Much of the country paused to watch in spite of all that's going on. And that's because he exuded a kind of moral authority that was rooted in his own life witness, a kind of faith that suffering produced. I can't be him. I'm Raphael Warnow. But he was my mentor and I want to bring that kind of commitment to the upper chamber. We need more moral voices in our country. Across faith tradition, folks are wondering, what about the pastor running for the Senate? I believe firmly in the separation of church and state is part of the covenant, actually, we have with one another as an American people. And I believe in equality for all people, regardless of race, religious tradition or no faith tradition at all,

regardless of whether they're male or female, members of the LGBTQ plus community. There's no such thing as equal rights for some. We have to protect one another, stand up for one another. And I'm deeply hopeful that in this defining moment in America, I might be one among the many moral voices, and bring the spirit of the pastor to a United States Senate that I think could use a conscience. And who could forget the first time our friend Dave Mandel came on the podcast and told us all about what it was like to make Veep? We are so excited to have you.

So the funny thing is, I was watching Veep last night. There is an episode of Veep that is literally what we're going through right now. The funny thing is, is I don't even think we came as close. I mean, we did a Supreme Court episode. Yes, that was what I was thinking about. as sort of horrible, tragic, and whatever our VEP worldview was, we have lapped it, maybe even double-lapped it. Yeah, just truly, truly horrifying. No, we did a very fun episode where sort of Selena as an ex-president United States sort of half throws her own hat into the ring for an open Supreme Court thing.

Yes. And kind of, you know, plays it to its fullest as sort of like her legacy in sort of, you know, the kind of like taft kind of way of. like the way ex-presidents used to be thought of that way, before all this maybe partisan stuff kind of crept in, dare I say. We came close on a lot of things, but I bow my cap, I shake my whatever to Mitch McConnell. He really has outdone himself. Best comedy writer of our generation.

That's how I honestly feel that way about him. Amazing. He truly is. I've always thought about McConnell. His physical affect and his appearance is so at odds with the fact that he's this bloodthirsty insider and knife fighter inside the system. But now you see him, he looks even more reptilian lately. And it's amazing someone so mild manner is about to plunge the country into civil war.

Yeah. By the way, to me, it's not even reptilian. It's a cartoon version of a reptile. It's how in Looney Tunes, they would draw a turtle, so to speak. Not necessarily a real turtle, but a cartoon version. And he's literally about to punch the country in the penis. I mean, I'm sorry, there's no other way of saying it's not just a punch. It's accurate.

It's a dick punch. It's literally a dick punch. I mean, let's just be honest. It's not a regular punch. It's a dick punch. As would be so on brand for 2020. Do you think that when you are making that show, especially towards the end, I felt like Veep really grappled with the idea that ultimately politicians are really, I mean, the government

plays an enormous role in some of these people's lives. And I felt like there were a lot of moments where you got to that, where you got to sort of that this is all fun in games until the government. failed. Yeah, I think we were really trying, especially near the end, where we really felt, for lack of a better word, the Trump administration breathing down our necks in terms of the absurdity. It felt like we were saying something on a Sunday and then Trump was doing his version of it four days later. But I think we sort of felt like in our showing how horrible Selena was, you could see what the right thing was supposed to be and how what the things you were supposed to do.

And dare I say that perhaps a little bit in our finale with the sort of sense that in the future, Richard Splett would become president and in some ways do the proper things and sort of straighten it all out, that you at least understood what was supposed to happen. And boy, it just hasn't come close. We're going very much in the wrong direction. That's my analysis of the last three and a half years. I know it's a very brave one. The thing I always enjoyed about VEP was Washington's conception of

of itself was House of Cards. And as a guy who's lived and worked in Washington, that's what people want to think that they're doing. But it's really Veep, but everyone's really Jonah. Everybody's Jonah. And the other thing, too, is we really went out of our way. I mean, really out of our way to also, for the most part, dress them all very poorly.

Like, we always sort of felt like we're going to kind of, our vision of Washington, D.C. is our custom woman, Kathleen Hagar, was so wonderful about it, which was a couple of steps behind the rest of the country. but thinks they're doing a really good job. And in some ways, fashion-wise, I thought that summed up Washington in a really great way. And dare I say, House of Cards,

everybody looked a little too good sometimes. You know, they were a little too smart, a little too suave, a little too chess playery. And on VEP, I think we embraced the stupidity. And I do think we sometimes did embrace, like the one thing with Selena that I still really appreciate about her, was I do think we embraced, they do have that sense of like that.

They know how to street. fight. You know what I mean? Like, they like to think they're playing like three-dimensional chess, but as you put it, they're just knife fighting. And it's crude and it's violent. I like to think that's what we captured sometimes. That's amazing. And it's funny because I keep thinking about just, I don't know how you do satire. We've actually talked about this, you and I before, like how you do satire in a world that is so beyond satire. No, I'll tell you something funny. This is just a comedy thing. Years ago, my first, I guess, real job job was Saturday Night Live. I worked there for three years from 92 to 95.

And the most fun thing to do at S&L was to do commercial parodies. But the problem was, as commercials started getting funnier and funnier, it's hard to make fun of a funny commercial because they're already being funny. You're trying to find the ones that are kind of full of themselves and have a message in those kinds of things. But they started doing these really funny ones. And in some ways, that's what happened with Veep, which is D.C. It just got so unparodial because it became such a parody of itself. It was like this weird comedy rule. You just can't do it.

That is so deeply disturbing. Like, especially that. And it's funny because it's true. I mean, you don't see those commercial parodies anymore. Yeah, they do them. And, you know, the one certain ones come up. And look, there are always things. I mean, boy, here's a sentence you'll like.

One of the great things about COVID is commercials have gotten very full of them. You know, like they really, they want to let you know what every product thinks about COVID and how they're dealing with it and whatnot, which I do think it will be ripe for parody, hopefully at S&L this year. But the truth is, it's, again, those funny commercials, you know, any of those really funny ones, it just was impossible. Nothing else to say about it. Castrol motor oil. We stand with first responders. Yeah, it's just like, really? We don't care.

We don't care. Yeah. I think it's interesting, too. could you imagine the My Pillow guy even being on Veep? I feel like it's too on the note. No, we always say, because, you know, the Veep writers are still in touch and a lot of the cast. You know, we're always chit-chatting and whatnot. And we always sort of say, like, if that was pitched in our writer's room, I don't know.

I think I'm out of fire, Jude. Do you know what I mean? It's just like there was no version of politics four or five years ago where someone would go, yeah, we've got to get the My Pillow guy to speak at our convention. I mean, or the president should pose with beans on his desk. I mean, it's just like, Selena on her worst day doesn't do these things. Jonah, let's go the other way. I mean, Rick, you said Jonah.

Jonah on his worst day doesn't do a product spot for Goya beans. It's so funny because it's like I've heard the My Pillo guy give two different speeches. And both times, I've thought to myself, like, this man is shockingly unprofessional. positively, almost, I would say, deranged. And yet I have sat through two full-length speeches by him. I have never seen a convention where you thought to yourself as you were watching, boy, a lot of these people seem really high on cocaine. Like person after person after person.

Like, what convention can you think of that you could even say that about? I'm not even sure you could say that about a cocaine convention that this many people. Like, I think at a cocaine convention, people pull themselves together for their big speech. And they go, like, you know what? I'll do cocaine after my speech. Not before I address the nation from the White House. I mean, my lord. It was like the annual cocaine aficionado meeting.

Instead of tape marks and cue marks on the stage, Don Jr. had a long line of blow that he hoovered up as he crawled across the floor to the podium. I mean, good God. And clearly from like some of the screaming, it was like, they must be seeing millions of people. in their hallucinid. What are they seeing that they're yelling so loudly into who? What vision are they having of something? But my God. I mean, it's amazing. And I'm curious to know what you think. Like, if the world gets back to normal, will you be able to parody Washington, D.C. again? Will the world get back to normal? This is a very open-ended question. I was going to stop you, which is I am unfortunately of the belief that nobody sort of as the Roman Empire was falling,

sort of stopped to kind of go, hey, I think we're declining and falling. You know what I mean? There was no moment, although lately I've been having that feeling a lot. Like, I just don't know. Do we ever get back to normal? I'd like to think so because I have young children that we will. But then I also envision like,

this is the moment in the movie where then you just cut to 20 years from now and our street is overgrown and my children are wild boar hunting with bow and arrows in our front yard kind of a thing because that's how it's become. And at night the children come up to you and say, Grandpa, tell us about the before times.

I was talking to a buddy of mine. We've now pushed back my daughter's bat mitzvah for like the second time. And he's like, well, if our clan is allowed to cross across the other clans to your clan area come a year from now, then we get a free pass for the Civil War. Then that sounds fine. But yeah, it's like I just don't know if we're going to get back to normal. But I will be the first one out there.

with a civil war comedy. That'll be very priority. So you wrote one of my favorite movies. Oh, Lord. The dictator. Oh, my gosh. Co-wrote. I like to say co-wrote with my partners,

Jeff Schaefer and Alec Berg at the time. Yeah, very proud of that. My second son, my war-loving second son, and I actually watched that again this weekend. It is so brilliant, but it also speaks to Trump World. Yes. Although I will say the following, which is it has one thing. The dictator character is insane.

He is a base. a rich baby, all those things, you know, constantly executing the people working for him. So again, very similar to Trump world. But every now and then when he speaks, as he sort of attacks democracy and whatnot, there are some really scary moments. There are some of my favorite moments where you actually sometimes start to go, oh, boy, he has a point. And we tried to do that on Veep every now and then, too.

We had some scenes with Selena was doing some really underhanded stuff with the Chinese president about overthrowing, basically getting him to back her for the presidency, which, by the way, again, has something very much to do with Trump world. And she calls it a democracy. And he goes, is it really a democracy? And she kind of goes, well, you know, and that's kind of, I think, where the dictator is the strongest, where it kind of, it's so frightening, but you actually go, oh boy, yeah, it's crazy, but it's making sense. That's, there's nothing more scary. And the one thing that I'll say about Trump, which I guess is where I worry about the next guy, is. Is he so stupid and so incompetent?

There are so many things that he could have done over these last three or four years that actually we'd be so much more F than we are. If he could have just managed to do a little bit of infrastructure work, I think we'd all be screwed. There'd be no chance he'd lose. I mean, if he had lifted the smallest finger with COVID, we'd be screwed. You know, it's like there's so little he'd had to do but couldn't do. And it just makes me worry that when Tom Cotton gets a chance to run the stuff.

same playbook, we're in some real trouble. Will we be able to parry this? I don't know. Maybe in our camps where they like round us up, we'll have little plays, you know, little Day the Clown Died style, entertain the other prisoners. I don't know. Please let me write the play with you. Okay.

And you may have missed in one of our bonus episodes that we interviewed the genius Masha Gessen, which by the way, if you want to get those bonus episodes, you need to subscribe to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program, which you could do at new abnormal. Dot the DailyBeast.com. That's New Abnormal.com. We're so thrilled to have you today. Thank you.

First, I want to talk to you. You wrote this piece in the New York or last week or this week or today. Who even knows? In the Forever Tuesday, yeah. Right, exactly. And it was, and I know you've written about this in your books, and you've written about this before, but it was so struck by it.

and I wanted to talk to you about this idea that we kind of got off easy this time. The piece I published right after the election was right after the election. We're still in the election. It's like we're always in March and always in the election. It's about the concept of an autocratic breakthrough. I borrow that idea from a Hungarian sociologist, Ballant Maggiar, whose work I've used a lot. He's brilliant and has developed this very detailed model based on studying the central and Eastern European democratic backsliding. And he divides autocracies into three stages,

autocratic attempt, autocratic breakthrough, and autocratic consolidation. Now, what distinguishes the autocratic attempt is that it is reversible by electoral means. And the thing is, like, we don't know or we don't necessarily always know, when the autocratic attempt is over, when it has passed into autocratic breakthrough. But he suggests that there are structural changes and institutions, changes that aspiring autocrats put in place that create the process of autocratic breakthrough, and after we pass through their autocratic breakthrough, it is no longer possible to dislodge the autocrat by peaceful means. So what he looks at is what he calls the vertical of vassalage, which I think is a beautiful term. Weirdly, Putin uses a similar term and has used a similar

term ever since he came to power 20 years ago, he was talking about vertical of power or the power vertical. And by this he meant that, you know, he thinks that the whole sort of system of checks and balances is really unwieldy. You just should have a single command center. And, you know, like you figure that you decide what needs to happen at the top and then it gets passed down to the bottom and that's much more efficient. But the concept of vertical of vassalage is, more evocative and more accurate because it's really it's like this vertical loyalty network. There are these people who are put in place by the aspiring autocrat who are bound to him because he gave them the power. He often gives them the money or the access to accumulating wealth

through power and they owe him loyalty. And this is a very important thing to modern autocracies, right? They're all like mafia states basically. So Donald Trump, what I'm arguing, in his piece is that Donald Trump, not only is he refusing to admit electoral defeat, but he's actually trying to activate a vertical of vassalage that he's put in place. And so far, you know, it's not a terribly impressive one, but it's not an unimpressive one. What he has done is he's created these verticals that you can trace, you know, from Trump to Mitch McConnell to all the judges and three Supreme Court justices that Mitch McConnell got through the Senate. Or you can trace it through from Trump down to Bill Barr

and the Justice Department that he's turned into his personal law firm, or personal law enforcement agency and private law firm. We're seeing this vertical reacting in ways that Trump expects it to. You know, we're seeing Bill Barr sort of issued this weird memo basically saying, okay, re-examine the votes before they've even been finally tallied up. We're seeing Mitch McConnell go along with refusing to admit electoral defeat. I think at this point, this vertical will probably not hold up Trump to the desired end of staying in power. But we can see the outlines.

Right. For the next time. For the next time, exactly. And this is something Zaynab Tufeki wrote about it in the Atlantic. She suggested that the next autocrat will be more competent. I don't know that it's necessarily a question of competence. I actually think incompetence is something that autocrats weaponize really well. It's like the destruction they reek is all the more effective and total because of their incompetence. But what I do know is that the incoming Biden administration will have to dismantle this vertical.

And to dismantle the vertical, it will really have to examine what allowed it to be constructed. Yes, and that's where your piece from today comes in. Will you talk a little bit about that? because we just had Ellie on the podcast, too. Uh-huh, great. Yeah, I agree with this idea, too. So the piece I published today on the day that we're recording is a piece in favor of reckoning. And I'm arguing against a fairly longstanding American tradition of sort of staying in a hand of vengeance.

Ever since Ford pardoned Nixon, there's been this idea that presidential magnanimity has to extend to his predecessor. And that the right thing to do politically is to move. on. So there's a direct line from forward to Barack Obama, who decides not to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate illegal detention and torture under President George W. Bush, or to even take a closer look at the Iraq war. I think that Biden is poised. He and Kamala Harris signaled in their victory speeches that unity. and healing are their goals. And these are goals that I share, right?

But I think that the way that American politics have generally pursued unity and healing is by kind of putting a Band-Aid on the thing and pretending it never happened. And I don't think that's what you do with a festering wound. I think you have to clean it out and then you stitch it up and that's no guarantee of healing, but it's the best chance you have. You definitely can't let it fester. I try to take the argument a little bit away from this argument about whether we should have truth and reconciliation commissions or whether it should be sort of the regular institutions, regular trials, regularly investigations, congressional hearings. I'm not sure that that's that important.

Like that's not the question. Yeah. The question is, is there a national commitment to reckoning? And we may not need truth and reconciliation commissions. Jill Lapoor has argued, I think, very forcefully that we don't need them because we have regular institutions. And Ellie has argued back, you can't use those regular institutions. They failed. I think they're both right. We may not need to invent brand new rituals of storytelling, but we either need to use existing rituals of storytelling, right? And that's a weird way to refer to courts, but that's what courts are, right?

They are ritualized story factories. And so are congressional hearings. And so are special counsel investigations. And so can be town hall meetings. So are certainly journalistic investigations. All of those are possibilities for a reckoning. But there has to be, it can't be like some heroic prosecutor somewhere. It can't be the Southern District of New York founding Trump into the ground.

that's not the point. The point is not to pound him into the ground. The point is to actually have a conversation about what happened to us. Right. How we did it to ourselves and how we can recover. Right. And how we can prevent it the next. It almost feels like you're making a case for more narrative nonfiction. I am perhaps making a case for more narrative nonfiction. But the problem with narrative nonfiction, again, you know, it's like if we leave it to and of course, you know, I say this a couple of hours after Twitter went aflame because they're really, rumors that Trump negotiating a hundred million dollars worth of book deals, right? Yeah. Like, it's just disgusting. That's not the kind of narrative that I mean. But it also points up the problem.

You can't leave it to profit-oriented publishing houses. Right. Whether it's, you know, long-form magazine articles or books, that's not where it happens. It has to be a public-oriented commitment. Yeah. Like Nuremberg, but without the punishment, right? Exactly, yeah. You know, Nuremberg, again, it created a story.

Like, after Nuremberg, there was a story to tell about the Nazi regime. It had been written down. It had been documented. People had been heard. And a lot of the time where truth and reconciliation commissions have functioned, it's where people who've suffered the trauma are voiceless. That's not always true in this country, right? We have longer legacies where people have been systematically deprived of their public.

voice, right? You know, the legacy of racism, the legacy of colonization. The story of the last four years is not necessarily primarily a story of the voiceless being suffering trauma, right? I mean, we're very voiceful here on the left. Yeah. It almost feels like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but this is my own, like, experience of the last four years, what we've seen the most trauma inflicted on besides the ICE situation and the children being separated from their parents and, you know, all of that really tragic, serious dictatorship stuff. The other thing I've seen, it almost feels like he's, you know, inflicted a lot of his trauma on federal government employees.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point that, you know, there's been a wholesale debasement of government. We have seen people, you know, who have tried to, who actually, you know, who haven't lied about trying to stay in the system to, to stay in the house on fire. but actually, you know, people like Colonel Vindman or Fiona Hill, who I think truly try to put out the fire while staying inside the house, right? And lots of people whose names we don't know in the State Department, in the national security establishment.

I think that sort of the major national trauma, there's several nexus. One is, as you mentioned, ICE, and we have all suffered moral injury by being complicit in the creation of concentration camps. and putting children in cages. It's not like too grand a pronouncement to say that. It's just a fact. We have all been victimized and traumatized by the handling of the pandemic. To have a government that basically communicates that people's lives are disposable,

that they're worthless. Your family's lives, your friend's lives, your own life. I mean, that's a huge psychic. And again, to all of us, to people who suffered physically and financially, you know, got sick and God forbid died, but also to all. of us who are watching this and feeling helpless to doing anything about it. And of course, his reaction to Black Lives Matter, the fanning of more racism, the use of troops against protesters, that's also moral injury inflicted on all of us. And I think just like watching

this debasement of government, right? It's like for four years, do you remember when he first replaced Obama on television? And it was like that sense of like, oh my God, this is just embarrassing to watch. Yeah. And then we live with it for four years. You have to look and you have to listen, but it makes you ashamed to be looking and listening. And for our fuck that guy,

I want to go all the way back to when maybe some of you weren't even listening yet to episode number two where if you've heard this before, you might have questioned if the podcast was going to keep going by what happened at the end because I thought we may have lost Rick Wilson. On every show, folks, we have a segment

called Fuck That Guy. Why fuck that guy? Because at this moment in time, there are people who are still being shit human beings to other people. There are still people every day who are exploiting the COVID crisis, who are doing the wrong thing, who are doing things that actively hurt people. And you know, and it would be easy to make Donald Trump the fuck that guy every day, but I'm not. Today's fuck that guy as somebody you've never heard of. He's got named Mike Gula, and he used to be a very powerful Republican fundraiser. Well, Mike Gula, and we mentioned him earlier in the show, not by name, was Martha McSally's fundraiser, and he was doing a whole bunch of other races this year for Republican senators and congressmen and governors. Well, he sent out an email to his folks today saying, I quit, and I'm going off to do something else.

Well, Mike Gula has formed a business called Blue Flame. What is Blue Flame doing? Somehow, they've got an inside track on all kinds of PPE, N95 masks, and other gear, and they're selling it. You'll be amazed to find out two states and local governments and the federal government. somehow this highly connected Republican fundraiser walked away from a business that, frankly, is a very lucrative business to take on selling PPE based in part on his connections with the White House and the Republican apparatus. So Mike Gula, fuck that guy. All right. And my fuck that guy is not a guy, but a woman. And she really made herself a star yesterday when she was interviewed by Anderson Cooper had some of the greatest expressions I have. ever seen on a television anchor ever, including him, like, putting his face in his hands under his glasses. As Las Vegas mayor, Carolyn Goodman, she wants Las Vegas to reopen. She doesn't understand where all the virus nonsense is about. And then she wants the casino floors to reopen, but she also

said that she would like to become a testing site for what happens when you reopen the economy, and that she would like her city to get the placebo for that. the medicine. May the odds be ever in her favor. They're not. And speaking of that, our next segment is One Nation Under a Pandemic, where we talk about how to stay sane, safe, and help our family's friends and neighbors and country get through this. So my One Nation Under Pandemic today is that even though we're all trapped in our house, my 16-year-old, who's a sophomore, did in fact publish a piece today in the Washington Post about how... Did it call for a violent, Socialist Revolution against the oppressive capitalist overclass?

You know what? That's quite enough out of you, sir. That's right. Yes, my 16-year-old hasn't killed anything yet, but he did write this piece, and it is in the Washington Post, in the Outlook section, about how Zoom high school classes should have past failed grades, and it's in the Washington Post, which means published piece. Oh, oh, my God, Rick, are you alive? I'm alive. Was that thunder? That was lightning striking very close to my. My home.

Jesus Christ, you have... The sky is a bright green outside. That's a good sign. Can you move? Have we talked about this? Yeah. You have mentioned it. I feel like it might be time to live in a city with an airport.

We should hurry because my lights are flickering and the wind is blowing like insanity out there. 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 the 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.

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