The Daily Beast Podcast - The Nonexistent Afghanistan Plan That Might’ve Saved Biden’s Ass w/ Tim Miller

Episode Date: August 31, 2021

MSNBC political analyst Tim Miller joins Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal to discuss Biden’s weird, new callousness with Afghanistan and Matt Gaetz’ troll-y brother-in-law. Plus, Dr. Howard Dean, former governor of Vermont and former head of the DNC, has some strong words for the judge who is making people take horse medicine. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have an excellent show. Former Vermont governor and former head of the DNC, Howard Dean, is going to join us to talk about COVID as well as how the Democrats win. But first, we have writer-at-large at The Bullwark, host of Not My Party on Snapchat and a political analyst at MSNBC. Returning favorite, Tim Miller. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Tim Miller. Hey, Molly. I would rather be nowhere else. than new and abnormal.

Well, we are happy to have you. We got some complaints this weekend that new abnormal was not normal enough or abnormal enough. So you called in the relief pitcher? You called me out of the bullpen to bring the crazy. That's right. All right. I'm ready. Jim Jordan is very good at ignoring crimes.

Yes. I feel like that's ultimately, like we will remember him as someone who has been spectacular. ignoring crimes. And the armpit stains. There's no jacket, but those two things, I think probably, yeah. The jacket thing, I think the jacket thing, and you tell me if I'm right here, because I don't know so much about men's fashion, and my husband thinks I don't know anything about men's fashion, but he doesn't wear the jacket because he thinks he looks taller without the jacket, right? You think taller? Oh, I don't know. I think that it makes him feel like he's a man of

of people. You know? I think it's a working man shtick. I don't put on that Jose bank jacket like these squares. I'm just a

wrestling coach covering up crimes. Can I hypothesize as somebody who's known a few wrestling duches in their time? And I don't want to imply that all people

who like wrestling are duches. I love some people who like wrestling, but they do tend to be very proud of their distinct body shape. Right. I think that this is

a wrestler body pride. Like his shoulder. Like you think he thinks he has prominent shoulders, traps? Packs. You think he thinks he has, Pax? He does not have Paxi. I think he does. I worry that we've gotten a little far afield here.

I loathe be the person to tell us to concentrate on what we were talking about. First for everything. Yeah, exactly. So Politico reported this weekend that Matt Gates and Jim Jordan called Donald Trump twice on January 6 panicked, trying to get him to calm down the crowd. What are you guys thinking of this? First of all, Jim Jordan did say earlier on that he had talked to Trump on January 6th. Yeah, remember he had that really awkward interview with like a, it was like a local Ohio reporter who was like 12 years old and was not asking hard questions.

He was just like, so when did you talk to Trump? And Jim Jordan's like, hold on a I'm going to, I'm going to. So, yeah, I mean, it's been a while because for a while that there was something here. That's true. My question is always like, why do they want us to know this now, right? Why did Matt Gates tell Politico this now? Or someone in Matt Gates's office? Yeah, it doesn't seem like an obvious Matt Gates thing to want to do, right?

I mean, isn't Matt Gates's whole brand now, like going full MTG, going full insurrection? So, you know, it is hard to speculate, right? I mean, look, there are a lot of people that have always secretly hated Trump. I don't think that Matt Gates is in that category, but there could be people that he's told that are in that category. Right. right, that are kind of doing a double bank shot. You know, Matt Gates has got some buddies in Florida who like want Ron DeSantis to be the president. So they're doing a double bank shot. Maybe if we, you know, leak against Trump here, this will help weaken him. I mean, that could be it.

Could simply be a staffer trying to save face, right? And it could simply just be, you know, and there's an Occam's razor explanation, right? Like Matt Gates and Jim Jordan have a big mouse. So they might just be talking to other people who told him political. You know, I don't know if there's a grand strategy behind this. I think that, to me, the most telling thing about all of it is that literally everyone, even the most sociopathic members of the House Republican caucus like Matt Gates and Jim Jordan recognized that the president had committed a just an absolute unacceptable abdication of his responsibility that day. And that this was a severe crisis and that something needed to be done to stop it. They needed to press the red button and say, be normal for one second,

Mr. President. Even they saw that clearly. And yet, now six months out, eight months out, literally everyone in the party is acting as if it is nothing, as after it was if it was not a big deal anymore, like that we need to just move on. People need to stop being obsessed with it. And I think that's the most telling part about all this, that I don't know that it will have any political impact really on Trump or Gates. And it might, it certainly is going to mean that Gates and Jordan will have to testify, but my guess is that they'll, you know, be clowns and, you know, put on the clown makeup and do whatever Trump wants them to do when they testify. But I just think it's an important insight that even fucking Matt Gates saw this clearly on January 6th.

Right. Imagine that. Matt Gates, who decided to post a picture of himself next to his wife now, Ginger Lucky, with her mouth agape, asleep next to him. Well being investigated by the FBI for sex trafficking. I don't know if it's sex trap. Being investigated by the FBI for some kind of nefarious female activity still posted a selfie with his wife. Do you know Ginger's husband?

Or Ginger's brother, Ginger's brother, I mean? Palmer Lucky, no. Yeah, really weird guy. Really weird guy. One of the weirdest lunches I've ever had was with Palmer Lucky. He invented the... Oculus. Oculus, yeah.

And then he funded, like, in 2016, he was one that was, like, funding the troll army. the mean troll that was backing Donald Trump's candidacy in the primary. It was like a Reddit army of trolls that were being paid by Palmer Lucky. It's a very interesting, weird family dynamic there. The Gates and Lucky merger is concerning. That's pretty sleazy. You know how they say you're often attracted to traits of your family? It sounds like what she sees him is the troll within her family.

Yes, that makes a lot of sense from the ginger side. I don't get that from the Matt's side, Matt's dad is kind of great, actually. It's just a really normal guy. I was the president of FSU. It's unclear to me what happened there. But yeah, that does make sense. Maybe Ginger loves the troll. Is it unclear to you?

Because I get the, like, fucked up son decides he's going to, like, make daddy proud by being even, you know, being even worse. Do you know what I mean? Like, I get that. Like, I think I've seen sons like that. That's true. There's a really great, I'm going to, like, just take this kind of weird. direction. There's a really great Tim Noah article that everyone should read about the Bozell family.

And maybe the Gates family is like the Beauxel. The oldest Bozell actually made money building things. And then the next Bozell was like with William F. Buckley and was a little crazy, but like at least kind of a serious scholar. And then you had Brent Bozell. It was like a total hack. Like me, you know, me, anti, you know, you know, everything the media does is bad. Conservative hack. And then now the youngest Bozell was arrested for Bingham. It's like a slow deterioration of every son trying to outdo the father. This could be that with the Gates. The failed son prophecy.

Right, exactly. I mean, there is an incredible, incredible group of fail sons. The fails on prophecy is a good potential podcast title. Let's just mark that off to the side. The failson prophecy is basically what we lived through for the last five years. That's true. I mean, like Donald was mad that he never was a security. as his dad and Donald Jr. terrorized the rest of us.

The reason that we are all still here to have this podcast is because Fred Trump didn't love his son. Because that deep hole inside Donald's, like, chest that made him want to be loved, like helped him walk us away from the brink a couple of times. I often think about it. I don't think we've ever discussed in this podcast that Joe Biden is the first president in decades that has had a good relationship with their father. I'm sure Carter had a good relationship with his father. Carter is still decades.

W and HW weren't so terrible. I think they were terrible, but they loved each other. Right, that's what I mean. Like, their relationship wasn't so terrible. I think once W. got in there, there was some, you know, some tensions. For example, I'm going to hire as my secretary of defense, the person that hates you the most in Washington, dad, and then he's going to get us into a stupid war. So, I think that created some tensions.

But I think before he got in it. That's probably a good place to pivot. Tim, you've been talking a good deal about Afghanistan, writing about it at the bulwark. Could you give us your take on what's been going on there? Uh-oh. It's going to be some oranges. Some fruit is going to be thrown at me. You are still a conservative, so.

I am. Boy, I understand the desire to get out. We've been there for 20 years. Some of the young men that dies and women the other day were barely alive, like, when this war started. And, you know, so I understand that folks had had, that it didn't run its course with the American public. I understand that, you know, getting out of a place like Afghanistan is never going to be, you know, clean pickings. And there are always going to be some issues that you bump into. This has been particularly messy, though. And I just, I don't think that you can look at it and say that the Biden administration did everything that they could to make sure that this pull out was as unmessy as possible.

I just don't, right? Like, I think that, you know, we've known for a while that the Taliban was encroaching. I think that if you were decided that we were going to get out, you know, if it was true that Biden was like, we're leaving on August 31st no matter what, no matter how bad it gets. Then to me, the military and state department needed to have changed their strategy to figure out how to get as many people out as possible, you know, while the Taliban was encroaching. And now I know that a big part of this was Gandhi. Donnie said, please don't do that, Mr. President, please don't do that. I'll lose my authority if they see their mass evacuations.

But then that motherfucker just disappears. And like in the middle of the day on his lunch break, and he just runs away. And so then once that happens, you know, they had a really short window there between then and when the Taliban came in. But it seems to me that it's like, okay, we got to pull the red cord here and say, everybody get the fuck out of Afghanistan, like as soon as possible, right? And it just didn't feel like that urgency was there. Obviously, they're dealing with the pandemic.

You know, the last president left him holding the most epic shit sandwich available. And I just don't think there's any way to look at it besides the fact that it was messier than it needed to be. I think that Biden's best argument is that because of the deal that Trump cut, you know, we couldn't have maintained the status quo. And so I put this on Trump and Biden. I just, I don't know that we couldn't have, right? Like, if you roll back the clock now before Biden to the middle, to two years of. ago. Was having 2,500 people there really that big of a deal? I just don't know that it was. And that is maybe where my, you know, Neocon, you know, American flag sunglasses might put me at odds with some of the

listeners. But I just, I just don't think it was. And I guess that my main thing is, if we decided that it was, then our number one priority needed to get as many of the people that helped us, as many of the women who went to college, as many of the citizens out of there and somewhere else as possible. As far as I'm concerned, we should take a quarter million of them. And it just didn't seem like they did that. And that's really frustrating for me. See, I have not been a huge fan of the Biden foreign policy triumphant for a while because I feel like they seem to make mistakes that they are too qualified to be making. But, I mean, the reason why there weren't a lot of Americans killed was because Mike Pompeo negotiated with the Taliban that we were going to get out. So and the, and I also think ultimately really what has

shifted is the public sentiment on this war is on the right and on the left. People do not want to be in there at all, period, paragraph. So as much as, you know, it was not, I mean, look, I'm not defending them. I don't doubt mistakes were made. Of course, it's hard to say mistakes were made when you look at the administration that came before where mistakes were made every minute of every second of every day continuously, and sometimes they were so bad, you didn't even know if they weren't intentionally making mistakes to prove a point. So, I mean, I feel like we're, I feel like part of it is just like readjusting to normal, right? Like a normal administration making normal mistakes versus a catastrophe, you know, trying to undermine democracy at every point. Yeah, look, I'm not

putting on a red hat over here, over this. It's a disagreement. It's a disagreement I had with Biden when he was running. There were a couple of those, by the way. Obviously, I'm a former Republican. Right. Biden has been consistent on this since, and here's the thing, Biden was probably right back in 2009. I think this is the frustrating part about this. I think Biden knows he was right back in 2009. And he was the only one in the Obama administration that was like, we should get out when all the generals wanted Obama to surge.

And Obama, you know, I think Biden felt like Obama was pushed around by the generals a little bit and doing the surge. And I think given what we've seen in the last decade since, Biden probably is right to think I had that one. And now that I'm in charge, I'm going to do what Obama. did it. I understand that mindset. What I don't, I just, I just think that what I loved about Biden is that he's so empathetic and that he, he talked about carrying my human rights and American and the American ideal and what kind of positive impact American can play in the world. And I feel like this action has been kind of callous, right? That it's like, we're just going to kind of leave all these people to get screwed. And we are, you know, going to kind of do it in this haphazard way. That is the thing that that leaves me feeling, you know, with a bad. taste in my mouth, despite the fact that, you know, it isn't, I'm not running for the exits of the Biden presidency or anything like that. And I also worry, by the way, just politically speaking,

I don't know that we're out of it. I, I'm worried that the Democrats feel like, oh, you know, the Biden administration feels like, okay, well, we pull out August 31st and by mid-September, nobody will care about Afghanistan again. I worry there are to me stories of Americans who are stuck there, horrific things happening. Like, this could be, have a political impact, in addition to the human impact, you know, that lasts for a while. Right. No, I mean, clearly, but the reality is Americans want it out. I mean, that is the ultimate truth of it. I mean, the thing I don't like is the right-wing narrative. Americans are kind of dumb, though. I mean, like, Americans want all kinds of crazy shit. They're like, they're like, we don't

want to cut taxes, but we want, you know, college to be free. I don't know, like, if you just, like, if you just did everything that Americans wanted, I mean, that's like the dumb populism that, like, you know, that I know that I've, you know, a lot of us have pushed back. I mean, yes and no, right? The public sentiment has shifted. We are no longer a country that can convincingly sell democracy elsewhere. We can barely keep it alive at home. I wonder if, you know, when we talk about Biden's empathy,

some of the empathy is that we need to fund America and that we lose so much money over there and we lose blood and everything. And if the empathy is unfortunately putting, quote unquote, America first. I just think he can't say we got to stay in there at this point because the die has already been cast. I get that. And the big policy thing, by the way, had we had a relatively orally exit, like, I just, I could have stomached it. I would have disagreed with it. I would have come on this podcast and disagree with it. I just, you know, you hear these stories of people that are helping us and they have their, you know, their face against the fence. And, you know, they had risked their lives to help us. And, you know, there was this once I was watching this video of this kid who was 17. And, you know, he's. He had a visa, but it just hadn't gone through all the way, and he had a flight. His fight was supposed to leave on Friday. And then that asshole, Ghani, like, left the country for the Taliban to come.

And so he couldn't get on his flight because the city collapsed. And it's like, God, that kid would be a great American. And, like, we should get, you know, this is my, like, bleeding heart, like, you know, USA, neoconism. And I think that the military guys, by the way, to the most part, not all of them. For the most part, they want to go help get more people out, you know. And so I just, I feel like the execution of this has been a little. bit of, we're going to do what we can, but, but, you know, we're out by August 31st, and that date is the most important thing. Like, to me, it's like, I don't know. I feel like you would have support from the military, for a mission that's like, okay, we're going to push into town here a little bit and get as many people as that.

Maybe that's not possible. Maybe that's not possible. I, you know, so I don't, I don't want to do military strategy. I just mean political. The one thing that I would say is we did have Jason Kander on the podcast, who is a veteran who worked in this sort of anti-corruption unit in the Afghani government. And he is really one of my favorite thinkers and talkers and I wish he would run for office. He said, you know, this is a really, really bad situation. And you can't start, the reason why you can't start getting people out until the city falls is that if you do that, you cause the city to fall. It hadn't occurred to me that that was what was happening. But you really can't start evacuating people until you know it's a Fed accompli because otherwise you cause it. And this is why it's on Trump, too.

You know, and this is why it's on that asshole, and I hate to let them off because here's the thing. That's, I guess, true in a week's timeline, right? But it's not really true in a half-decade timeline. I mean, and really more than that, a 13-year time. I mean, like, every president for the last three elections has run on getting out of Afghanistan. So, you know, if we were just slowly but surely, you know, like, you know, filling, you know, getting those visas filled out and bringing out a thousand people a month, you know, for, you know, for the last sex years, like then that would, you know, that would have made our job a lot easier here this year, right? And like, you know, obviously Trump and Gallum Miller shut that. He completely

shut out all refugees. It made it as hard as possible. And then Biden gets in and he's got the, you know, he's got this. And this is why like the rush is frustrating because it's like maybe if Biden had more time, they finally were getting the visa stuff back online, but like a month before the city falls, right? And so that's all frustrating. It's very hard to get into what happening when we have such a limited view of what's really happening. So, Tim, you are a California resident. There's a recall election happening in your state right now. Can you tell us about what you're seeing there? I learned my lesson in 2016 to not tell liberals to wet the bed because in 2016, I told everybody that Hillary Clinton would beat Donald Trump from jail and that they didn't

stop worrying about it. And it's all good. There's no way people are going to vote for this moron. Don't tell anyone you said. I was not, well, it's on Google. And it's like my worst Google hit. If you Google me, it comes. Actually, don't Google this, because every time someone clicks on it, it stays at the top of my Google. So hopefully it'll just disappear from the internet. We need to unsanthorum that for you. Yeah, thank you. I whiffed on that one, all right? Such is life. You know, we all make mistakes. You don't know to them. So I don't want to make the same mistake with an overconfident comment here in California. I will say this. I think that some of the media coverage of the recall has been a little breathless. I think that folks want

this to be close because it's interesting. You know, I think that there have been some close polls and that I think rightly worries Democrats and Democratic strategists should be concerned, having Larry Elder, who is like a talk show host, who's a madman as the governor of California. Right. Like, this is not an Arnold situation.

This is not an Arnold situation. This is like having Don Jr. as the governor of a state, basically. So there's a good reason to be concerned. That said, if you look at the polls, this is only an issue of enthusiasm. Democratic voters are kind of meh on this right now. Republican voters are like, hell yeah,

Gavin Newsom is making me put on this Nazi slave mask, and I'm going to get him out of there, and I'm pissed that the Democrats won everything last year, and we're going to get our revenge, et cetera, et cetera. So if you ask Republicans, are you going to vote? They say, hell yeah, 10 out of 10. If you ask Democrats, where do you think you're going to vote? Let's go for 1 to 10.

They're like, eh, six. I've got to surf and yoga, and, you know, we're going on a little vacation, and I might not do it, or the, you know, the working class Democrats are like, I'm busy. You know, I've got, you know, I've got to make it to work this week. Okay.

But in California, everybody gets mailed a ballot. So this was actually a good reform that the Democrats made, that maybe these national Democrats should start looking at. What are some reforms that we can, we can put through to combat the Republican, you know, obstruction on voting rights if they're not going to pass these big bills like HR1? What are some other things we can do? Vote, everybody gets a mail in ballot. I just refused to believe in a state that Gavin Newsom, he won by 20 something, between

20 and 25 points, you won by over 2 million votes, that that's going to happen. And this feels to be like an inverse of when everybody got excited about Beto. And like at the end of the day, Texas was still Texas, you know? And like at the end of the day, California is still California. Texas was changing. So that's where the, you know, the limits of this metaphor are. California is not really changing the way Texas is. But, you know, the math is just really hard. I think the governor will end up being okay. Democrats in California need to vote and tell their friends to vote because that's what this is all about right now. It's not about people changing their mind about, you know, you know, you know, leaving the party. California is not going red anytime soon. Like, it's all about

the enthusiasm gap. You know, folks seem to vote. If he does lose, it will be because Democrats turn out and it will be the most insane example of like a non-plural, a non-maturedarian democracy that you've ever heard of. Because he's going to end up getting 48 or 49% of the vote on the first question. And then Larry Elder will get like 18% of the vote on the second question and become the governor, which would be madness. Yeah. I mean, it's really, really, really, really, really scary. And I think that I hope it doesn't happen. Yeah, I mean, the worst case scenario is the Feinstein scenario too, right?

You know, and this is, you know, where Elder wins, then Feinstein has to retire because of health issues or whatever. And then he gets to appoint a senator and then Mitch McConnell is a majority leader again. So, I mean, these are really high stakes. I think that, again, to my point, though, I think that the high stakes of this, I'm just starting to see anecdotally being here a lot more. more like, hey, hey, friends on Instagram, like, sent your ballot in, you know, like, the kind of thing that you don't, like, sometimes see in, in, out here, you know, I've been out here

when there have been a lot of elections that nobody cared about, right? Because it was like, at the end of the day, does it really matter which of these two Democrats, like, it rins this runoff for a turn, right? And so I think that the enthusiasm we got might be changing. We'll see. But, but that, I mean, that's, that's really what this all comes down to. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news.

You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal. com. The dailybeast.com. Dr. Howard Dean is the former governor of Vermont, as well as the former head of the DNC. Welcome back to the new abnormal Dr. Howard Dean. Thank you for having me. Well, we wanted to start with the horse deworming medicine. Yes or now? Since you Or a doctor. This is medical malpractice, and anybody who engages in this should lose their license.

As one did just in Ohio today, should be kicked off the bench as soon as possible. Is this a trajectory of anti-science America? I mean, how did we get here? We got here because of Trump and because of populism. The country has gone mad. Luckily, this only represents a very small number of people. It has always been crackpots and quacks. With social media, of course, people are much more aware of them.

They're boys, I mean, look at the history 120 years ago where people were peddling all kinds of stuff for rheumatism and all this kind of stuff. This is the descendant of that. But it's dangerous stuff. I mean, I'm sure you're aware that 70% of the calls of the poison line in Mississippi are because of Iverminton use. You would think they would have gotten it out of their system with the malaria drug. Well, there's going to be acts and crackpots in every performance. In factions. Guy in Arkansas is busy giving it to all the prison inmates. Right.

But judges, I mean, this doesn't say much for our judicial system when a local judge in Ohio can order somebody to give iburemectin. I mean, this is insanity. This is like my presiding over a trial without a law degree. Right. No, it is completely insane. And it says speak to the conviction, though, that these people have. Well, I actually think it's an illness. Tell me. I just think there's deeply psychologically wrong with people who cling to believe. like this. This is not about ivermectin. This is about some horrible psychiatric problem that they're solving by these kinds of very firm, unshakable belief. Yeah. From my sense, and again, I'm not a doctor and I haven't been governor yet. But it seems to me that Biden has done a very good job with the

pandemic, all things considered. I think he's done a great job. I really do. The problem, of course, is Delta, which is proving every day to be more and more dangerous. I, I wish I had better news, but I think we are headed to a place that's not that different than it was last academic year. I'm very, very concerned about this. Delta is proving worse every day. There's more and more kids in ICU's and they can't be vaccinated. If it were me, and I say this not as a public health expert because I'm not, although I follow it very closely, I would probably, I think I'd want to discuss this with FDA and CDC, but I would move now to make the vaccine. vaccine available to two-year-olds and above on an emergency basis. Yeah. It seems like half the country is working against us because we do have these governors like DeSantis and Abbott who are still actively working against masking.

That's a small minority of lunatics and who are really in it for their own politics. People like Asa Hutchinson, look, there's not much I agree with Asa Hutchinson. He's a real governor, though. And, you know, he admitted he made him a mistake. is trying to do the right thing. And I think, no, I do not think most Republicans are crackpots, but, of course, the ones that are get all the publicity. I mean, we're seeing governors trying to do the right thing a little late, like Kaye Ivy. We're seeing it now. But Texas and Florida are big states. Yeah, but those guys want to run for president. And apparently they don't mind if they kill a few people in their own state in order to do so. Here's a theoretical question.

I'm curious at how many people do you have to kill before it starts to hurt you in a Republican primary. Well, I don't know about Texas, but in Florida, just it's under 50 percent. And it was, I think, almost 70, you know, two or three months ago. Now, we have to put up a decent candidate. I mean, you know, the Democrats have not been star achievers in terms of running great people who should be governor of Florida. We've got, we can't beat somebody with nobody with somebody who's run nine times before. You also have this experience working in the Democratic machine, too.

So I'm curious to know what you think about. You know, there is COVID, and I don't want to sound craven here because a lot of people are dying. But is this a political opportunity for Democrats? Well, it's a political opportunity because the Republicans made it to a political opportunity. Eventually, crazy doesn't win. Right. I mean, you can say all outrageous things. And Trump won once because of that.

It's not going to happen again. Now, you know, could a DeSantis win? I don't know. A lot of people could get the Republicans. Republican nomination because the Republican Party is now controlled by what I would call the Taliban faction of the Republican Party. But I don't think there's enough votes to win. I mean, the reason that Raphael Warnock and John Ossop are in the Senate, A, they did run great campaigns, but B, Donald Trump put them over the top. Yeah. There were just too many just said, I cannot do this.

This guy's a fraud and a Charleston, and we can't have this anymore. And that's going to be even greater. And I just think it's a mistake for Abbott and DeSantis to think if you get the nomination, you'll deal with the problem with being a crackpot later on. It's going to be too late by that. Yeah. It strikes me that there is a sense in which there is part of the Republican Party that has decided to go as crazy as possible. Like the Matt Gates and the Marjorie Taylor Green's. You have all this history of, you know, you ran for president a while ago. Do you ever think things would get this bad? No. I think the future in the United States, I really do. I mean, look, we're not, we're not as exceptional as we think we are. We're all human beings, and we're seeing really unattractive flaws in human beings right now. And, you know, I just spent the morning on a call with some people from the Republic of Georgia. They're going through something similar. They have a whole group of politicians that think they're more important than the people they serve. And that's the prescription for the end of democracy. Yeah. Maybe I didn't think this, but I hoped that when Trump would get defeated, that there would be a sense in which things might come back to balance. And it strikes me that this has not happened. I think it hasn't happened. It's a lack of courage. I mean, in the political world, there are too many people, and they seem to be concentrated in the Republican Party, but that's not always been the case. There are too many people who put themselves before the country. And there are damn few. I mean, there's 10 Republicans that voted to impeach Trump, I think, the last time around. Yeah. Well, that means that there are 40 Republicans who don't have any courage and don't think they, you know, or else they're crazy. And I choose to believe that most of them are not crazy. I mean, I think people like that guy from Wisconsin isn't nut. But, you know, most of them are. Right. Right. Russia, Ron Johnson. Right. There was video today of minority leader McConnell. I can't say it enough saying that he was really surprised that Republicans don't want to take the vaccine. Is he not smart? I mean, He strikes me as smart and craven. How is this possible?

All McConnell cares about is himself, period. It's never about the country with McConnell. I mean, when you are the leader of the Senate and you say that your only objective is to make sure the sitting present doesn't get anything done, that pretty much speaks to who you are as a human being. And the loyalty to the country plays no factor in McConnell's statements whatsoever because he doesn't have any. Right. But he must have seen this coming. I mean, don't you think? I have no idea. I can't speak for McConnell. Yeah. But I mean, we have a real vaccine problem in this country. Well, we have two vaccine problems in the country. One is the people that won't take it. That's actually getting much, much better.

Right. I mean, actually the best testaments, thanks to the networks, is people on who have been vaccuposers begging on their deathbed to have their loved ones take it. Right. And that's been, I think, incredibly effective. I mean, K.I.B., which he said, was incredibly effective. When you have real leaders, it's incredibly effective. Ivy has bona fide credentials as a real conservative in the most conservative state and country. When she says, this is a matter that we can blame on the anti-vaxxers, that gets people's attention. That's real leadership.

And we don't see much of that in the Republican Party because they're all afraid. Yeah. I just don't understand. And they're all scared of what? Remember for months and months and months, we read pieces where it said, like, Republicans are afraid of Trump's tweets. Now what are they scared of? There are no tweets. I don't know. You've got to ask them. I really, I have no idea what the hell there's the matter with these people. They just have given up on America, I guess. One of the things that we're seeing a lot of pundits attack Biden for is the withdrawal in Afghanistan. The implications, the implications. The implications. is that this would somehow have gone better under Trump? No, look, the Republicans are being political.

I mean, they don't know anything about this. I mean, they have a lunatic for the gun for the chairman of chief for four years. Right. A little more planning ahead of time might have done some good. So, but I don't think he's any attention to anything the Republicans say because it's all about their politics and it's never about substance. Do we, do Democrats have any shot of keeping the house in 2022? Oh, sure. Absolutely. Of course we do. It strikes me that the redistricting was not as bad as Democrats feared it would be.

Well, we don't know yet because there are going to be places like Florida and Texas, which are controlled by the right-wingers. Right. Who knows what they'll do? I mean, some of the districts in North Carolina are just a preposterous joke. But, you know, New York will probably do the same thing. I expect at least DeFantic to be undistricted. Yeah, that's pretty fun. Well, it's funny, but except that they're going to play the same game as Texas is.

Right, but at least Stefanik is the number three in the Republican Party. So they're going to have to find another woman to go along with their lunacy. Well, I don't know what they're going to do. I'm not worried. I mean, I can't pay attention to Republican politics. I think they have nothing to offer the country. Yeah. Howard, one of the things I think a lot of people wonder from a messaging thing is like, you know,

you were at the head of the DNC for a while. People wonder why they don't connect the whole party together more as Democrats, the way the Republicans do it, especially in post-January 6th, that seems like a winning message. Do you have any thoughts on that? Look, Republicans are built differently than Democrats. I always teach this to my classes. Politics is a substitute for war, or a clause that's set war is war by another means. The Republicans are well suited to war because they're top-down disciplined.

They don't think for themselves they take orders well from the top guys, and they're incredibly disciplined. We're not. We're all smart. We all think we're smarter than we are. And so we're all willing to fight with each other. We don't get on board easily. And we're going in lots of different directions. We're sort of a true product of democracy in all its messiness.

So it takes a long time for Democrats. Democrats are going to have to have more voters all the time because there's always going to be Democrats who go off and vote for Jill Stein or, you know, don't vote or all that kind of stuff. That doesn't happen in Republican politics until you get somebody like Trump in the White House. And then there are Republicans who just go, I just can't do this to the country. But, you know, I mean, a lot, there have been a lot of mistakes in terms of presidents that have been elected by Republicans, but they are much more disciplined than the Democrats are. And that's because politics is a substitute for war.

Is there a way in which Democrats could be more disciplined with their messaging? Like, a good example is this weekend there was an edited video of Biden that went around and they were like, see Biden is sleeping with the Israeli prime minister. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's rephrase that. Sorry. Nice, Molly, nice. That's going to make, that'll make CNN tonight. I'm Erica John's daughter, right? I hope you're going to leave this in the podcast.

This is too good to. Yeah. But there was a video of Biden, a fake video that was edited that made it look like President Biden had fallen asleep during a meeting with the Israeli Prime Minister when, in fact, he was just looking at his notes. That is something that I feel like Democrats don't push back on things like this because they sort of take the high road. And it strikes me that if Democrats don't push back on all of this diff's information, Republicans will rewrite history this way. Well, actually, I think that Biden is doing a great job in that regard. That's what you just described is what a mistake for

We can't read it every ridiculous thing. Now, we can't let it go unchallenged. But I thought that was well handled. Somebody, you know, they got up and said the video was a fake. It's not true. And Biden is vigorous. Now, Biden shows that he's vigorous all the time. There was also a piece that said that Biden didn't go to the Air Force base to

who said it was just a lie. And they're going to lie. That's what they do as part of their DNA. So what you do is you refute it and you move on. And the people who want to believe it, so it doesn't take. So this is not convinced. The people who are running around saying, oh, Biden fell asleep in the meeting with the, they were never going to vote for Biden.

They're just, you know, propagandists and saboteur. So I think I have elections be about he said, she said, or what aboutism. Do you think Democrats should be doing more messaging? Yeah, but I think Biden does a good one of this. He sticks to the messages Americans care about. And what Americans don't want to see is what Trump did is to get involved with every little thing all the time, with stuff all the time. What Biden talks about is the future of the country, our patriotic feelings, what we owe to each other, and how to rebuild America.

People don't give a damn about what Trump on his taxes. And Biden shouldn't be talking about that. And he's not. And I think that's a good thing. Do you, but are you surprised at how much public sentiment has shifted in the last 20 years when it comes to Afghanistan? foreign wars? Not at all. I think people want to get the hell out of Afghanistan. I think this is, look, I am upset about what's going on in Afghanistan because I think this is going to be a positive for Biden at the end. He was the one that got us out of Afghanistan. Right. I mean, he's doing

something that's very popular on both the left and the right. I think it's very popular. 62% of all the public thinks we ought to get the hell out. Most Republicans think we ought to get the hell out. When we're talking about sane, sensible Republicans, majority of the Republican Party is not crazy. It's just their officeholders are craven. Right. That's what I mean by the Republican, the Taliban wing of the Republican Party, Jim Jordan and Matt Gates and people like that.

They're basically extremists. I do not think the majority of the Republican voters are extremists. But even someone like Lindsey Graham, who was sort of went with the wind, is now anytime anything happens calling for Biden to resign. But who gives a damn what Lindsay Graham says? Nobody takes me seriously. Are you hopeful for the midterms? Yeah, I am. I think there's a good chance we're going to take the Senate.

I think the House is 50-50. And I don't care what the inside the beltway punts thing because they're usually wrong. I think we can pick up Ohio. I think we can pick up North Carolina. I think we're going to pick up Wisconsin. And there's about three other states. I think Pennsylvania is another one. Yeah. And I think we're going to hold Nevada.

As someone who really has their ear to the ground in Democratic politics, are there any politicians that you're excited about who are young who you feel like our listeners should know about? Tell us. Hell yeah. I tried to get Chris Murphy run for president and he wouldn't do it because he'd get two small children. But he ought to be president in the United States someday. Then there are all kinds of young people on the farm team that are coming up who I think are absolutely great. Thank you so much, Howard. Will you please come back soon? Yes. Only if you run that tape about the same. I'll run it. I'll run it. That is so great. You will definitely get 9 million tweets about that. And your popularity will go right up to this. Howard, thank you so much. It was great. Thanks. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers,

orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts, or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse Cannon. Molly Jong Fast.

What's going on today? Another day. Some more fuckery. Another reason to have hostility towards people who, quite frankly, suck. Yeah, that's what we do here. The end of the show. I feel like this person disappoints you always. If I lived in Wisconsin, I would make it my mission to retire this asshole.

Agreed. His name is Ron Johnson, and he sucks. A.k.a. Russia Ron Johnson on this podcast. Russia Ron is doubling down on his anti-vaxxer rhetoric. Again, I would think that you would not want to kill your constituents. But perhaps I am mistaken. I think you're just not a Republican in this day and age, because that seems to be the thing they're into now.

Ron Johnson, he is saying that the horse do you want to, warmer ivermectin. He says that multiple podcasts and radio appearances this week in which he pushes ivermectin. Now here's the deal. We have a vaccine. Then we have, and I know everybody was mad at me because I mispronounce that last week, so I will pronounce it correctly this week, monoclomal antibodies.

So we have both a vaccine and a quote-unquote cure, and yet still Ron Johnson is pushing the fucking horse dewormer, which we're trying to keep people from taking. And so for that, I say, fuck you, Rush Iran. Ugh, the worst. The worst. Well, my fuck that guy may be one familiar to a listener since I think she's also a reoccurring character for me. It's one Christed sit above Arizona.

The occasional Democrat. You know how shitty you have to be to be a Democrat that gets fuck that guy in this. This off of it? Yes. Well, I often think of when Kristen wore that rig that said fuck off on her finger, because that's what she's doing to progressive activists. We're trying to convince her the right opinion, which is that she needs to let up on the filibuster and stop with this grandstanding bullshit about the budget is too high. And realize that the Democrats are going to lose and they're never going to be able to regain power if an authoritarian comes into power unless she lets up. But so now she's not allowing people from the working families party to lobby her.

There's been over 50 activists arrested outside of her office. And she's basically giving them that fuck offering and just going to brunch and doing her thing. And for that, I think it's kind of repulsive that a Democrat is being that hostile towards any of her constituents. And it really is a thing that you just have to wonder what else is going on behind the scenes with her since this behavior is so disturbing. She really isn't a brunch. I mean, listen, I can't knock that because that'd be very hypocritical of me. But she is, like, quite obsessed with brunch and also running marathons, which nothing wrong with that. Molly, I live in Brooklyn and in the heart of brunch land.

Brunch country, as they say. Yes. If I really take the stand on this, I'm going to be in a lot of hypocrisy trouble. That's right. Good point. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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