The Daily Beast Podcast - The One Lie That Will Get George Santos in the End

Episode Date: February 3, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, The Daily Beast politics editor Matt Fuller talks to us about what could bring down George Santos, then Judd Legum, who writes the Popular Information Newsletter, tells us what’s going on with Ron DeSantis in the schools. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

First, we'll be joined by Daily Beast Politics Editor Matt Fuller, who's going to talk to us about what's going on in that crazy, wacky place we call Congress. Then we'll talk to Jud Legham, who writes the popular information newsletter, and he's going to tell us about all the fuckery with Mr. DeSantis in the schools. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy, it is another day in America, which means another day in hell, where Florida, once again, shows its entire ass. But, you know, all jokes aside, the war that Ron DeSantis is carrying out against black studies, against freedom, against equity, against education, against books in the state of Florida isn't something, as the New York Times said, oh, look at Ron DeSantis, building his brand. he's building American fascism. And now, to boot, the college board has bowed to his white supremacist grievance of taking out every single reference to black feminism, to queer black people, to black lives matter in their quote unquote now gutted AP black history curriculum.

I cannot believe the college board did this. I thought that they would be the purveyors of education, but maybe they're just the purveyors of testing. What do I know? But the fact that you are allowing Ron DeSantis, his white fragility, his obvious white supremacy, to dictate what children in the state of Florida are able to learn and understand about black people, black culture, and how the practices of white supremacy and racism embedded in the fabric of this nation, going back to the quote unquote original sin of slavery, which apparently we're never able to talk about. Education has always been weaponized as a way to keep white people complicit with white supremacy

and to keep black people's contributions completely detached from American history. And the college board just said, check sounds good to us. Yeah, it's a way to keep people ignorant, I think above all else, which you would think is the opposite of the point of education, but maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way. I don't know. I do want to say, I guess, the college board takes issue with the way some of this stuff is being portrayed, and they claim that they substantially completed their revisions weeks before Florida's objections were shared. That's a quote from them. A bullshit. Okay. Sorry. I had a excuse me. Yeah, I just want to get it on the record that that's what they say. I guess stuff that was in the

pilot course that has been gotten rid of for the actual course are units about intersectionality and activism, black feminist literary thought and black queer studies. First of all, intersectionality is such a, I know it's a long word, but it's a pretty basic word with a pretty basic meaning. And I don't, like, I don't know how you can argue that there's anything wrong with it. It simply means that there are intersecting struggles among different people. in this country, among black people, among queer people, among other minority people, among feminists, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That is just, that's just an obvious statement of fact. Like, that's, I don't even understand why that's an issue. And so to remove stuff about that is

really weird to me. It's just, they're now listing Black Lives Matter alongside black conservatism as a sample course project, as if those two things are in any way equal, or are in any way representative of actual black lives in America. It's just very, very bizarre. As you said, it's not bizarre that Ronda Santis wants this because this is what he wants. He wants all those things you said. He wants ignorance spread.

He wants people to not understand a lot of things about this country that are just demonstrably true. It is not in the least bit understandable that the college board would do this. And I don't even give a shit if they did it without Ron DeSantis's input. They shouldn't have done it, period. I guess it would be mildly better in the sense that they didn't bow to a specific political

pressure, but A, you can't convince me that removing the stuff they removed was bowing to political pressure, whether it was directly from Ronda Santis in the last few weeks or just an overall sort of vibe from the right in this country that they're responding to. And other than the fact that it would be mildly better, it still sucks. And it's still wrong. And it's still, it's, you know, apologies for the word. It's whitewashing history. I'm so mad about this education shit and all the stuff that's going on.

And it's so bad for this country because it's just going to produce a generation of people who are ignorant of the truth. And that is bad for everyone. There's just no world in which that's a good thing. And this is, you know, this is the point. What we have to understand is that there's no way to talk about black American history in this country, which is, in fact, American history. should have always been taught as the intertwining richness of America's founding, America's being, America's industrialization, because all of it comes at the foundation of race

in this country. But there's no way to talk about the black experience and not talk about white violence. There's no way to talk about the civil rights movement and the struggle for black liberation and not talk about white terrorism and how it persists. There's no way to talk about the racial wealth gap in this country and not talking about the social wealth gap in this country and not talking about a system of redlining. There's no way to talk about ghettoized communities and not talk about those that are celebrated like urban developers, Robert Moses,

who was a notorious white supremacist and created a highway system in order to keep black and brown people in ghettoized areas, create imminent domain, cross highways through predominantly black neighborhoods. Like, there's no way in order to have this conversation in an honest way

when you are going to essentially redline, sections and just black out and white out the things that make you uncomfortable. It doesn't just end here. This is what I want folks to understand. So whether or not you're shrugging, you're saying, oh, I don't want my kids learning about queer people. Guess what? There have been queer people in this country and on this planet and in this world since the beginning of time. You wouldn't have had white people be able to talk about their beloved. I have a dream speech that Dr. Martin Luther King did at the March on Washington, because guess what? The March on Washington was organized by a black queer man, right? So like, let us, you know, recognize that this is an attack on America

as a whole, on what it means to live free, on freedom and liberty. This is not the movement of a democracy when you begin to jail librarians and take books off of bookshelves and gut curriculums for other people's safety and comfort. You tell the fucking truth unless you're afraid of what that truth will produce, which is critical thinking. And then a generation of people that start to ask the question, why? Why has it been this way? Why have we moved this way? Why has progress been so slow?

Why have we told people to wait? Why are certain communities privileged over others? And Ronda Santos doesn't want that question asked, because there is no answer outside of white supremacy and white privilege. So long as you have a population of people that are unconscious, that you can then fill their minds up with fear, then you can control them and you can have them be afraid of their own shadow because it's black. Then you can do whatever the hell you want, but this is not where it ends. This is the beginning. And this is what they will do if Ron DeSantis becomes President

DeSantis, they will nationalize this shit all across the country where you won't be able to go on an Amazon or Barnes and Nobles or anywhere, not your public library anywhere to get books. We'll start having to smuggle them in from other countries. Think about that. Yeah. And it's a little weird that you ended on that because what I was going to say was this is the kind of shit that we grow up, at least white people grow up to believe that this is the kind of shit that happens in other countries.

It doesn't happen here. And that's why to my mind, there's nothing, you know, there's nothing more anti-American than not letting people learn the history of a, America. And you are not proud to be an American if you are covering up the history of America. You are ashamed of America. Again, by the way, I'm not advocating for being proud to be an American or ashamed to be an American. You do what you want. But don't go out there and pretend that you are proud to be an American and you're a big time patriot. While at the same time, you are covering up stuff that happened in our nation's past. And that continues to happen to this day. Honestly,

I know it's hyperbolic, but it's not dissimilar from Stalinist Russia or Maoist China or Hitler's Germany or any other country that is ruled by a despot. That's what dictators do. Dictators don't want the truth out there. Dictators want stuff that makes them look good. And that's exactly what DeSantis, that's the road he's going down. And it always makes me think, you know, I had a, what can only be described as a very good public school education. and then went to an Ivy League college, et cetera, et cetera. Why am I learning about the Tulsa Race Massacre from a superhero TV show on HBO? Like, that's insane.

And I mean, I'm, I mean, part of it's on me, although I'm, you know, I'm fairly well-read, but somehow I had literally never heard of this thing, this huge event in American history. Never heard a peep about it in any school I was in. And I'm sitting there watching Watchmen on HBO and learning about it. this and I'm like, holy shit, this really happened and I start doing research, obviously, and I'm reading up on it. How the fuck am I not taught this? And that's what they want more of. They want more of that. They want more incidents that can be pushed aside or can be lost to history if they have their way. And we have to say no fucking way to stuff like that. We cannot allow it to

happen. And this is what I say to people, you know, who feel like they are super hopeless and they don't know what it is that they should do, run for school board, run for city council. Whether or not you have kids in the school system does not matter, right? They have created an entire far right-wing activist agenda to get people to overtake school boards, to get Republicans and MAGA to overtake school boards to do just this in every single school district across the country. There's no collective pushback. We're not on a slippery slope. We're in a downward fucking spiral. And it's only going to get worse. Couldn't say it any better than that. So let's talk about, there's a couple of things going on with regard to violence and political violence in this

country. We had, we don't know a lot of details yet. A councilwoman in New Jersey was found dead in her car shot. And we don't know yet if this is part of this sort of wave of political violence that we've been seeing this country. But it's obviously undeniable that it is part of the wave of violence that we see every day in this country. Republicans in Congress had what they thought, I guess, was a great way of bringing attention to the violence in this country. And that was wearing lapel pins in the shape of an assault weapon. There are photos of George Santos, the much-beloved representative from Long Island slash Brazil, Andrew Clyde from Georgia, and Annapolina Luna from Florida, We're wearing the pins.

They are so clearly on the side of guns, on the gun violence issue, much in the same way. Like, I'm not surprised they're not wearing pins in the shape of the COVID molecule. Because they are, that's another thing. They're on the side of COVID. They've been on the side of COVID. They're on the side of guns. And they are just, they never seem to be on the side of, you know, people. You know, why don't they just wear a lapel pin of the shape of an atom bomb?

Why don't they just wear the lapel pin in a chalkout? of one of the children's bodies in Newtown. Why don't they do that? Because that is essentially what the Republican Party, what the Freedom Caucus fucking faction, thinks is a good idea. That weapon of war has been used to gun down people in movie theaters, in churches, in synagogues,

in moss, in schoolhouses, at concerts, in malls, in supermarkets, all across this country. There are families that are a part of a club that they never want to be a part of. There are children that we're teaching active shooter drills as if that is fucking a normal way to grow up.

Bulletproof backpacks go through the roof in sales every single back-to-school season. And the representatives that are voted into Congress that are supposed to be the voice and protect their constituents, close to 80% of people when polled, say that they want gun reform. But the Republicans tell you exactly what they want, more violence.

This is during the same week that again in Florida, GOP lawmakers decide that they're going to put up a bill after another mass shooting that happened this week in Florida. That, oh, we're going to do, you know, everyone who's of legal age can conceal and carry. And guess what? No training necessary. So books are more dangerous than guns to be removed from the shells. because God knows what will happen.

If your children, oh, I don't know what it is, read, but guns are safe. So let's flood the streets with them. And instead of pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States, which is what they replaced this little assault weapon carve out with, they're pledging allegiance to mass murder. Yeah, you're right. I mean, this is for them, it's, I don't know if it's a symbol of patriotism or at this point. I don't know if it's a symbol of religion. It's unreal.

I guess I should point. I think it's an AR-15 now that I'm looking at it. Just put a pin of the Green Reaper on your lapel. Like at this point, it's just, and I didn't even realize this is, Rashida Taleb tweeted out and pointed out that it is, this is National Gun Violence Survivors Week. So that makes sense. So that makes sense.

Just absolutely unbelievable. I guess Corey Bush also pointed out the same thing. It's just unbelievable how they really do worship at the altar of these weapons. and I served in the military. I fired M-16s, and you have to respect them. You don't have to worship them, and you shouldn't worship them. At their best, they're a fucking tool. And the tool that they're used for is violence.

In war. In war, right. And to be wearing that on your lapel, like, that's how you define yourself by a weapon of war. I cannot get into that mindset. And, you know, again, like, even if you enjoy. sport shooting or whatever. And look, I like going to gun range. I mean, it's been a long time since I've done it, but going to gun ranges can be fun. That's fine. I don't worship guns. I don't understand the gun worship culture. It is, it's sick. The thing that I want to add to this, Andy, because you're

talking about this from the, from the viewpoint of being a veteran, from the viewpoint of, of sporting and all the ways in which like are normal, right? Are normal to understand the context in which guns would be used, right? This is not what these people are doing. What do you think would happen, right? What do you think that the headlines would be if the people who were wearing those weapons of war on their lapels happened to be of a different faith than Christian, happened to be of a different race and ethnicity other than white? What do you think that the headlines for the New York Times and the Washington Post would be if it had been the squad, quote unquote, wearing lapel pins that were in the shape of an AR-15. You think that they would just say like, oh, look at them. You know, that's their

constitutional right? Well, first of all, Kevin McCarthy could probably have them arrested. I just want to point out, you know, you can't have the Grim Reaper pin because that's Mitch McConnell's nickname. And that you're a fan of his. And, you know, he's not a good, Trump's good side right now. Fair enough. Folks, I am very excited to be joined on the new abnormal by the Washington Bureau chief at the Daily Beast, Matt Fuller, to make sense of what I am referring to as the House of Horrors that is being led by the Fisher Price Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy, in my humble opinion, Matt, so much has happened this week. And I want to start with the man whose name can't be removed from the headlines if we try, which is George Santos.

George Santos has recently decided to remove himself from the two committees that he was appointed to in saying that he wants to have his name cleared and not be a, quote, distraction. And so until then, he's not going to serve on the committees. Tell us, you know, again, what that signals, right? and why, essentially, he was able to say, oh, this is my decision, why Kevin McCarthy didn't make it his decision, you know, to look like a leader. And what we think about, like, what's the vibe with Santos on the hill? Well, George Santos is definitely a vibe. So, first of all, I just think we should be clear that, yes, George Santos, quote, removed himself or, or as he likes to say, actually recused himself from his committee assignments.

But that's really a technicality. He even said that, you know, he met with McCarthy Monday morning, early Monday morning. And it's, you know, generally how this happens is there's a conversation that goes something to the effect of. And George Santos has basically confirmed all this. Either you make this decision or I'll make it for you. And for everyone's benefit, certainly for George Santos' own benefit, I think it's better for him to say, I made this decision to, you know, responsibly remove myself until my name is cleared, as if that is going to happen. anytime soon. Well, the funny thing is, is I want to know which name he wants cleared because he goes by a couple. Yeah, I guess we've got that going for him. Look, George Santos is a complete

distraction for the Republican Party and for Kevin McCarthy. Sometimes that's probably a good distraction for McCarthy. He's certainly taking a lot of the media arrows right now that McCarthy might have taken. But yeah, Santos, this is just like a three ring circus, clown show, whatever, you know, choose your metaphor. Every day, he's. He manages to make news in some way. There's some new lie that's exposed. There's some bit of news that comes forward, whether that's on the campaign finance beat, which we've been very hot on his trail on.

Certainly something, it looks like he could just absolutely go down for just for that. I mean, his campaign finance violations are actually quite significant. There's still tons of questions about where he got this money. If it actually were his money, if this is embezzled money, these are all just sort of left hanging out there. And frankly, I'm not even sure that George, Santos knows all the answers to these questions. But certainly we know the Justice Department is looking into it. Generally speaking, when you have actual active investigation, that's kind of the moment where leadership on Democratic side and Republican side say, hey, you need to step back from your committees.

There is some precedent for this. Last Congress, we had a member who had to step aside from his committees and was actually convicted, Jeff Fortenberry and later resigned. But generally, when there's an actual investigation, active criminal investigation going on, members, back from the committee. So, you know, Santos made the public relations move and said, I'm stepping back or whatever. But clearly this isn't just his decision. Yeah. And let me ask this because I think that it's worth the clarification because there are just so many lies in his web to untangle that when we're talking about the campaign finance, particularly that the Daily Beast and you have been reporting on and investigating, tell me the dollar amount that we're talking about

and what the suspicions are. They're not proven yet, but there's suspicions of the money. his campaign finance being mishandled and him paying out his campaign through his business. Yeah, there's actually a few pots of money here that are really interesting. So in George Santos' his latest campaign, he looks like he donated a substantial amount, almost close to a million dollars. And there's a couple loans, particularly that are really curious. One of these loans was a $705,000, quote, personal loan to his campaign. That, quote, personal loan at some point, which was signed off by one of his treasurers, his original treasurer Nancy Marks, at some point, I believe it was just last week, that box that says it was a personal loan

gets unchecked, okay, which just sort of raises all these other questions. Now, the campaign treasurer might be saying, well, I can't attest to the fact that that's a personal loan at this point. I don't know the source of that money. And because I have a criminal, I have like an actual legal responsibility with criminal penalties attached to it if I am signing my name to this, swearing that this is true. I'm going to uncheck that box because I can't verify that it actually was his personal funds. That's the sympathetic version, I think, to George Santos. Another version, and this treasure has completely recused herself.

She has left his organization, is no longer his treasurer. They struggled to find a treasure. They finally found someone who seems to have zero experience as a treasurer. And I can promise however that much that job is paying, it's not enough. This could get entangled in a lot of legal responsibilities. but we just don't know where that money came from. George Santos has never really made that much money according to his financial disclosures. Then suddenly he starts making money about two years ago.

Some of that might be this DeVolder organization. Some of it might be coming from this Red Rock Strategies, which is seemingly this political group that Santos sets up. Ostensibly, I'll just throw in in allegedly. People could have been making donations to Red Rock strategies. And basically, it becomes a black box. and Santos just sort of takes that money and gives it to himself and says it's a personal loan. The reality is we just don't know, but it all looks extremely fishy.

Yep. These are financial crimes, which are usually pretty easy to figure out. People are pretty good at solving those ones because they can look at money in and money out, money out. Clearly, Santos has some real issues where Mother Jones did some great reporting where they found people who were just sort of made up that were maxing out to his campaign. They talked to people who were, who were maxing up to his campaign that said, I never gave him money. I certainly didn't give him $2,900. There's a lot of questions here.

And there's a lot of pretty serious crimes that could be involved. Look, George Santos, it's been a very entertaining clown show, all very funny, lying about your resume, all that. Lying what your resume is not a crime, right? It's very dishonest and politically, it's sort of its own suicide. But lying on FEC reports, making up donors, potentially taking money from one pot and putting it into another pot. All that is very damning. And that's actually the thing that's going to probably get George Santos in the end. It's not going to be saying I worked for Citigroup or,

you know, I went to Brough College. Or I played volleyball or my mother died in 9-11. My mother died in 9-11. Like all that stuff, it's very entertaining. But this is the serious stuff. And at some point, he can't run and hide from this. We know he's a habitual liar. You really can't trust anything that George Santos says. But you can't lie on it. FEC reports, and they will get you for that. This, to me, is the part that is fascinating. The other stuff, like you're saying, is just, you know, like soap opera, like reality TV nonsense.

But, you know, with the FEC stuff, what do we think that the timeline is? Does this catch him before he serves out the full two-year term, potentially? And if so, what kind of jeopardy does that put Kevin McCarthy in? Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a betting man, so I'll stay certainly. Yeah, okay. Let's ante up. Tell me. I'll give you an over-under if you want. But I would bet that George Santos is not serving on his full two-year term.

I think this is going to get pretty serious pretty quickly. I do think he could be indicted in weeks, maybe months. Wow. I don't think it's years. This is, again, when you're dealing with financial crimes, they can subpoena bank records. They can look at these documents. And again, it's money in, money out. We don't have subpoena power.

So it's much tougher for us as journalists to go into this game. but federal authorities do, and I don't think it'll be very difficult for them to make a case if there was actual malfeasance. And at this point, with so many unexplained questions, you have to start assuming that there's a real problem here. It certainly looks like there's a real problem here. I think this is the thing that George Santos ultimately goes down for. And yeah, it is a problem for Kevin McCarthy. First, purely just on the vote number. Right.

He has a slim, slim. Yeah, very slim margin. And yeah, this is also a seat that could very easily swing back to Democrats in a special election. That's a problem for him. But as you said, yeah, the optics of this are terrible, right? George Santos has become this three-ring circus. And every day he makes news. And I just think he's not a great representative for the Republican Party.

And certainly if Republicans want to come into the majority and say, you know, we're cleaning up Washington. We're cleaning up the swamp. George Santos is about as bad of a standard bear as you can find. Yeah, he's about as clean as dirty mop water. You know what I'm saying. Exactly. That ain't it. So staying in the House of Horrors for a minute, another just jaw-dropping pitcher came out this week

as well, which is that of members of the Republican caucus exchanging their flagpins for pins of automatic weapons. Yeah, AR-15s, yes. AR-15s. Matt, I don't know. about you, but I can say that we just went through how many mass shootings at the beginning of January within a week. We had another one in, and I believe, an area of Florida. We have a council member that was gunned down that we still don't know the details of in our car in New Jersey. There have been so many

shootings and so much death. What message is this sending? And obviously, you need to be completely a political ostrich to think that this isn't sending some point to the American people. Yeah. Well, look, if you're a Democrat, I think you should welcome the AR-15 pins on your Republican representatives. This is not a popular political message, okay? This is not a winner to use a term. We've already used it.

This ain't it. Americans are not going to be pleased with this. They're not going to be impressed with it. It is not funny to people. it is funny in the insular world of Republican politics where a lot of these members live. By the way, George Santos is one of these members wearing an AR-15 pin, credibly. He is not from one of those districts where this would survive, and yet here he is, wearing an AR-15 pin.

Now, I don't think this is the thing that's going to bring him down again, but Republicans branding themselves as the party of AR-15s, there's not a better political message for Democrats than probably that because so many people are tired of mass shootings, because people just are just disgusted with gun politics in America, presenting yourself as the extreme option, that's never a political winner. And I don't know how Republicans fell into this, but clearly a lot of these members come from very Republican districts where the people who brought them into power are super Republican and believe in A.R. 15s and think touting your AR 15 is funny. A lot of this comes back to this culture of own the libs. fact that Democrats and liberals are so triggered by someone wearing a gunpin, it's funny to them that people would get mad about this, right? And yet it's so stupid politically because if the 22 midterms taught us anything, it's that people are exhausted by this sort of culture war

politics, this sort of purposefully dumb politics where you embrace the furthest portion of your party's rhetoric, that's not a political winner for them. I really think they're making a big mistake on this one. Speaking of the culture wars, I kind of want to sidestep out of the House of Horrors down to the state that I call just Black Mirror, which is Florida. Look at a lot of place, but Florida seems the most appropriate one for that. Right? Ron DeSantis is really cooking up something special in this state where books are considered more lethal than concealed weapons carried by people who are not required to. to be trained, right?

GOP legislators put a bill up in the same week that there was a mass shooting in Florida. And we have the college board cowing to the, what I will say, is the whims of a white supremacist and fascist. So Ron DeSantis has not declared that he is running in 2024 yet, but he is a likely candidate. What do you make of the decision?

decisions that he's making in Florida and how that is going to play out on the national stage and does his special brand of fascism play out on the national stage? Yeah. Well, I think this is, you know, Ronda Santis is actually a really nice encapsulation of, again, this phenomenon that we're just talking about with these gunpins. First of all, Florida truly is its own nation at this point. I couldn't say it's part of the South. I don't know what Florida is. But clearly there's some weird politics going on there. It's definitely a red state at this point and getting redder. So, you know, Ron DeSantis, I think, is living in this little feedback loop.

It's all culture war. It's all, you know, the same sort of own the libs mentality, trigger people, do whatever you can to push back against the tides of cancel culture or whatever. This, again, this isn't a winner nationally. It may be a winner in Florida where it is, we're truly a red state. But I just don't see this as a winning formula for him. And Ron DeSantis, he has to do something to shake up the dynamics of the Republican presidential primary here.

As unpopular as Donald Trump is right now and sort of seemingly. But is he, is he, Matt? Is he really unpopular with the Republicans? No, I know. That's the thing is he's in a better position than he was in 2016. He's got about 48% approval. He's in the lead greatly. He's basically you can combine every other candidate out there.

It's better than, you know, Ron DeSantis is 31%. and the rest of the field. Look, Trump could use the same playbook he used in 2016, which is he sort of divide the vote to some extent. He's got a lot of support in the Republican Party. And DeSantis has to do something to present himself as the more conservative option, the more triggering option, the lulls candidate, the LOL, look how triggered they are. That's his lane. And look, I covered the house very closely. I remember Ron DeSantis back in the day, walking the halls. And he always just sort of seemed like he was pissed off and just set up like a sour Puss face and everything. He never wanted to talk to the press. He just wasn't having a good time.

I don't know if this is the real Rondosantis. You know, will the real, real Rondasantis please please stand up? Yep. I just don't know what he is, what he stands for. He clearly is someone who is power hungry. Yep. Which, you know, that's a popular position in the Republican Party. Republicans above all right now respect people who can win. It's really grown to this biker gang mentality of the strongest guy who can win. And Trump, for the longest time, he had that mantle. And right now, DeSantis is trying to take it. He's trying to trigger the liberals and whatnot.

I don't know if that's a winner nationally because that's not what we saw in 2022. The midterms sort of proved that people wanted a bit of a return to normalcy and, like, people talking about smart solutions, not people going to the most extreme parts of their base on the Republican side and the Democratic side. DeSantis' first battle is to win a Republican president. primary, which is a very different voter base than the one that would come on a general election. So he's making a gamble right now that, look, I've got to run to the right. I've got to actually probably go further right than Trump.

I've got to be the more conservative, quote conservative option than Trump. And then once I have the Republican nomination, maybe I can run to the middle. I don't know if that's his calculation. I don't know what Ron DeSantis truly stands for because I just don't think anyone knows what that guy stands for. He stands for power. And when he was in Congress, he stood for having a congressional members pin. That was my true impression of that guy. And I covered him and the Freedom Caucus and those folks very closely. Ron DeSantis is a founding member of the Freedom Caucus. He helped write the mission statement for the Freedom Caucus. I know he's a conservative guy. I also, my impression of him was

that he was a very libertarian guy. I don't think you really get that in his current stuff. It's all just this sort of empty culture war stuff that's meant to piss liberals off, which is. is all very funny to, you know, him and his, his Ron DeSantis crowd of giggling acolytes. They're a wild bunch. And I got to say, heading into the presidential election, this podcast is going to need a liquor sponsor because I just am not going to have the wherewithal to get through a four-way race as it stands so far with Trump, a DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence, I mean, and whatever other cuckoo bird is going to come out from the bushes. It's just not.

Maybe it will be another bush. Who knows? I think this bad ass should come up with an official drink for every Republican candidate. Yes. Oh, my God. Yes. And there's plenty of opportunities here to sprinkle in some great cocktails. I love it.

I love it. Matt Fuller, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. Really appreciate you. Yeah, thank you. On January 23rd, Judd Legham reported on his website, Popular Information, that school teachers in a Florida county had been told to remove or cover up all books in their classroom libraries until each one could be vetted, or they might risk felony prosecution under a new state law. Judd joins me now.

Thank you so much for being here, Judd. Oh, thanks for having me. So I know this story has grown since you first hit Publish. There was a response from a Florida state official. The Washington Post belatedly picked it up eight days later. I do want to get to all that. But before we do, can you walk us through your original story? What exactly is going on down in DeSantis land?

Is this part of the state government's despicable efforts to keep LGBTQ stuff out of schools? Is it part of their equally despicable efforts to sanitize and change how American history is taught? Or is it kind of both? It involves those two things. But principally, it's about another law that was passed. in March that set the criteria for selecting library books. And it had a couple of what seemed like innocuous provisions. One is that these books from now on needed to be selected by media specialists, is what

they're called in Florida. Other people would call them librarians, but in Florida, they call them media specialists. Okay. And secondly, that all of these books needed to be cataloged and searchable for parents. It was a transparency measure. So for many months, schools didn't really know what to do. They didn't really know how to execute this and how to make sure that they were conforming to this policy. What do they do with their current books?

How do they do new books? The response by many schools was just to stop buying books. books, period. So a lot of schools have been on a freeze as they tried to figure out how to comply with this new law. But towards the end of 2022, the Florida Department of Education did a couple of things. They passed a rule that said, when we say libraries, we mean also classroom libraries. So that was important. And then secondly, they created this media specialist training that gave instructions to media specialists for how they would select the books because there were new restrictions on that as well. And this all came to the four in January. That's when

the training was issued. So my report involved the reaction of one school district, Manatee County. This is now happening in other school districts as well to different degrees that sent out a memo to principles that was then later distributed to teachers. And the memo said, you need to remove or cover your classroom libraries immediately until we can conduct these reviews. And the reason why they said they needed to do that was because classroom libraries in Florida, and this is typical around the country, are not put together by librarians. In fact, there's no money for them at all. They're sort of these passion projects by teachers who get donations. they bring in books from home. They're trying to have a selection of books in the classroom that can

engage students. But because none of this ever involved the librarian, all of these books were now considered unvetted. And therefore, according to the training that was produced, according to this memo that was sent out to principals, and according to the school district who I talked to before this story, teachers who failed to comply with this could be subject to penalties, including losing their job, but also including a third degree felony. And just to give you an idea of how serious this is, other examples of third degree felonies in Florida, another example is manslaughter. So that's what we're talking about. We're not talking about a light charge. And the training itself says air on the side of caution. So it was a very serious threat. And these teachers, they weren't happy about it.

I heard from teachers who said they were crying as the, and students, by the way, who saw their teachers cried as they're putting away these libraries that they've worked on for years through their blood, sweat and deers to put together just to try to help their students and having to cover it up with paper or put it in boxes. And that's kind of how this story started. That's absolutely amazing. So you mentioned these media specialists, which are what Florida calls, I guess, school librarians. So they have to go through this new training and then they will be able to know exactly what books can and cannot be allowed. Like, as you said, right now, they're erring on the side of caution, the teachers. So basically anything that's not the book equivalent of God bless

America, I assume will not be allowed to be given to students, which I feel like is kind of what DeSantis and his people want. But do we have any idea of like any of the specific books that won't be allowed or the specific types of books? Well, even if you took this trading, you might find yourself confused about which books are allowed and not allowed, and that's on purpose. Right. The highest penalty, this third-degree felony, would be applied if you are giving students access to pornographic materials in the classroom. And so you might think, oh, well, that's no big deal because a 10th grade teacher is not

going to have Penthouse magazine in their classroom library and therefore what a teachers have to worry about. That's kind of the view in what Florida officials are saying. But what they're not telling you is that the right-wing activists who are really pushing this policy, groups like Moms for Liberty, they were in the room and pushing the Florida Department of Education as they were producing this training. There are other people with other ideas who were in the room, too. They weren't listened to as much. Are defining pornography as Pulitzer Prize winning novels by Totey Morrison. Right.

You know, they're defining, they're giving a much broader definition of pornography than the legal definition. And so you could say, well, they could take it to court about, you know, you might be charged with a third degree felony before that happened and have already lost your job, had your teaching certificate revoked, and are in jail as you're making your legal arguments. So I think it's reasonable that teachers didn't want to take that risk. The other thing, and this goes back to, you know, where you set this up is how does this relate to the parental rights and Education Act, which is known as don't say gay, and a stop woke act, which limits discussion of different racial issues.

How does it relate? Are books that cover those topics or that would violate those laws if they were in the classroom? Because by the text of those laws, it's really limited to classroom instruction. But does that apply to library books? The Florida Department of Education will not say. And the trainee does not say. But it does try to muddy up the waters.

it does say that you can't have a book that would lead to unsolicited indoctrination. And then it lists as examples of indoctrination later in the training, all the themes in the Stop Woke Act, the themes in the don't say gay bill. So it's not settled, but if you're telling teachers, well, you might have a third-degree felony and err on the side of caution. And it might be that these books that have LGBTQ characters or have frank discussions, of systemic racism violate the rule, you can see how these books might be eliminated. In some cases, these school districts, Manatee County, which was the subject of my report,

on an administrative level, are already removing these from the main libraries in schools, just removing books with LGBTQ characters for, you know, on their own to try to comply with this law. So it's very confusing and part of that, I think, is the point. Yeah, no, exactly. And the whole, as you brought up the air on the side of caution thing is, of course, wants to be charged with a felony. So if there's a book that they're not 100% sure of, they're not going to take the chance. And it's hard to blame them for that, you know, the teachers themselves. Let's talk about this little, it's a little bit of a firestorm that you set off. You published this piece on January 23rd originally. You then tweeted about it. Twitter slapped a

community note on it, claiming to add context to your original tweets that sort of watered down your points. And then Florida's Education Commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., gave an interesting interviewed a National Review and said that you were reporting was, quote, fake news from media activists too lazy to read Florida law. But it turned out you had receipts that were long enough to make a CVS manager jealous. And you immediately disproved the so-called context that Twitter appended. And then you wrote a follow-up piece at Popular Info, rebutting what appears to be just about everything Commissioner Diaz told National Review. Yeah. And part of that was because I was very careful, believe it or not, when I first published this story and that I first learned about it because I was hearing from

activists and teachers that this was going on, that they were required to pack up their libraries. And I could have said, okay, well, I've got six teachers telling me this. It must be true. But I actually waited until I could actually talk to the school district and confirm 100% that this was the policy. And I did. So I wasn't worried that this was fake news because I had heard directly from the school district. The issue that Manny Diaz, who's the commissioner of education in Florida, is trying to say is,

well, this isn't really necessary. You're only going to get a third-degree felony if you distribute pornography. And we talked about why that's a little bit of a red herring. Of course. And also, anything else we would deal with administratively. But that's actually a really big deal, because the administrative process, a penalty associated with that, is losing your license. So you lose your job, you would lose your career if you violated it. And the other thing he said was that, hey, teachers can just exercise common sense. Just look at your library, see if there's anything you think is in a gray area. Not sure exactly what that means, but you know, see what you think. And set those aside for the media specialists and everything else can stay on the shelf. But if you actually look at

the training that the media specialists were given, that all the school districts were given, so they know what the job of the media specialist is, it says every single book in a library, and that includes classroom libraries, must be selected by a media specialist. So that means until you get the media specialist to sign off on every book in your library, it should not be available to students and you subject yourself to all these penalties. He can go to the National Review and present another more permissive version of the rule, but that's not going to be very helpful for these teachers, especially when you consider that they are under attack by a very loud and aggressive group of activists who are looking to levy

charges and accusations against them. That's amazing. And along those lines of the activists, you know, you mentioned this was in Manatee County. Who are the Manatee Patriots? And what are, I absolutely cannot believe I have to say this phrase. What are the woke busters? Yeah. Well, part of the issue here, you know, in addition to the fact that everything is very confusing is this just takes a lot of time, right? So the process would be a teacher would go through their library. They'd look up each book in the online library catalog. And if that book happened to also already be in the library, it could remain on the shelf because you would know then that a librarian had approved that same book. Anything else would have to be set aside. And the school district recognizes

that, hey, these teachers don't have any time to do all that. Like, they're at the middle of teaching classes. These are people who are completely overworked and underpaid anyways. But they said, oh, don't worry. We're going to bring in volunteers to help you with this into your classroom. And so who are the Manatee Patriots? It's essentially the latest iteration of the Tea Party. There are a group of far right activists who are claiming that teachers are trying to groom students or indoctrinate them with leftist ideas. And they are soliciting people to fill these volunteer slots to get themselves into the classroom and to, you know, to eliminate wokeness and to identify all the problems and all the laws are being violated.

So this is not something that you could see as a teacher you would welcome these folks into your classroom because they're really, these are folks that are out to get teachers. They've decided that teachers are the enemy and so that's what's going on. But I will add that this group, in addition to being very hot, to teachers is also quite influential in Manatee County, which is a fairly conservative county in Florida. And in fact, just this week, the chair of the school board went and spoke to this group and attended their meeting. So it's a very, very difficult situation for teachers. I think that's the real takeaway. And it's not surprising that right now, Florida is dealing with a teacher shortage because if you were somebody who was thinking of a career, this might not be the

morass you want to get yourself into. Yeah, I wouldn't think so. Do we know what the chair of the Manatee County School Board, and as you point out in one of your pieces, he happens to be a DeSantis appointee. Do we know what he said to this meeting of the Manatee Patriots? No, unfortunately, I was trying to get someone in there to see if I could to see if I could figure out what was said, but I didn't. But I think that I do know from my discussions with the school district that these are folks that are in regular contact with board members. And in fact, there are board members that are members of this group. Manatee County has in their school board, it has the chair who was appointed by DeSantis and then it has two other board members who are among the 16 school board members that

DeSantis, in a very unusual move endorsed in the last election. So in one of those members at least is actually a member of the Manatee Patriots group. So it's a very influential group, especially right now in the county. So here's the thing I'm confused about. So Manny Diaz, the education commissioner in Florida, says that, you know, well, the schools don't really need to cover up their books. They're overreacting. They're doing all of this. But I'm assuming that order came from this chair of the Manatee school board came from the school board in the county. And this is, these are DeSantis's people. This is his guy. Yes, this is a county that actually was working quickly to try to implement DeSantis' vision. And this is what resulted.

Once they saw that this created a firestorm, they've been in the process of first denying that it was happening at all. That turned out not to be true because it was happening. Then they said, well, it wasn't necessary. And then they just keep on kind of backtracking and trying to protect DeSantis. But yes, these are DeSantis people. and they were doing this because this is what DeSantis wanted to be done. He wants these books, books with LGBTQ characters, books that are written by Tony Morrison, other kinds of books out of the schools. Is there any world in which all of this isn't creeping fascism that

honestly doesn't even feel all that creeping anymore? I don't think so. I think the interesting thing is that there haven't been more lawsuits filed because there actually are fairly robust protections, even for students as far as what kind of books they can read and what they can have access to in libraries. I mean, I guess it hasn't been going on that long. We've really just seen this in January. It's only the beginning now of February. So maybe it's coming. But yes, I think this, what's going on is way over the line.

But right now, they seem to be, they seem to be getting away with it. Yeah. I mean, that is the truly scary part is that they're getting away with it. And there are people who defend them. And there are places like National Reveillance. few, which is supposed to be, you know, an intellectual standard bearer for the conservative movement who seemed to be on their side, which is super troubling. Judd, thank you so much for being here.

I hope our listeners head over to popular.info and sign up for your reporting, which has been truly invaluable here and on other issues as well. Thanks again, Judd. Thanks, Andy. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Who is your fuck that guy for today? You know, because we are equal opportunist.

right and that fuck that guy can be a state it can be a man it could be a woman it could be a non-binary person in this case it is that woman who i cannot stand her voice her whole fucking being her vacuum carrie lake carrie lake has recently got herself in some trouble you know because she can't seem to drop the fact that she is a loser and that she lost her election So in one of her attempts, I guess, I don't know, to get this recall to happen, to get a new election, she decided to tweet out 16 voter signatures in an image this week. And according to the Democratic Secretary of State, Adrian Fontes, this could potentially be, oh, I don't know, illegal. This is what is said by Tammy Patrick, the chief executive for programs at the National Association of Election Administrators and former Maricopa County election official.

Quote, the Arizona statute is very clear about when and where a voter signature can be shared or replicated or reproduced or put online or used in social media. The answer to all of those things basically is never and not and it can't be with a very few exceptions. Carrie Lake may have tweeted herself into oh, I don't know, a crime. Patrick's opinion of the Lake Tweet is this. When I read the law, it looks to me like that's a felony, end quote. Under Arizona law, according to News 12, they say that the records containing a voter

signature shall not be accessible or reproduced by any person other than the voter. This is a violation of the law is a class six felony that could actually carry jail time. I mean, I'm waiting for all of these motherfuckers to be put in orange jumpsuits and marched into prison for a whole host of reasons. But this one may actually take

the cake because she just can't let go of being a loser and having lost the election like a normal person and just go back and figure out how to win next time. No, no. She won't give it up. And now, you know, Andy, I don't understand. You can run for office

but don't have to know anything about the laws. Like, you can run for all this and never have read the Constitution. We ask more of people coming into this country to take tests, to show their allegiance and show their understanding of America. We ask nothing of our elected representatives or those that want to be elected as representatives. It's amazing. It truly is. And she is going so far that I am worried for her that the Mar-a-Lago invites are going to dry up. Because I think at a certain point, even Trump is going to be like, oh, man, she, she cray. I mean, she wields a good vacuum so he could, you know, employ her as housekeeping.

That's true. That's true. I mean, she does definitely have a second career ahead of her third career, I guess, since she was a news broadcaster at one point. But I'm just, like I look at the current Republicans and she may be the most straight up crazy of all of them. And that's obviously saying a lot. I don't know.

Are we just talking about those at the state level? Because I got a bone to pick with you. Yeah, okay. I'll go with that. But I don't mean like has the worst views of anyone. I just mean just in terms of sheer the crazy factor. Like she is just out there. And I mean, she is still harping on this election.

Like literally nobody gives a shit. Nobody gives you shit. I don't think anyone in Arizona gives a shit. You never hear about this election at all, except when she's making. some batshit crazy statement. Everyone knows she lost and literally everyone in this country has moved on except for her. It's wild, man.

You're going to pull this election from her cold dead hands. That's right. With that Vaseline on the lens, your hand's going to be too slippery to pull it. Andy, who is your fuck that guy? So my fuck that guy is someone that I feel like it's been a long time, maybe since we honored him with our fuck that guy, maybe too long. And it's the senator from Texas slash Mexico, Ted Cruz. And he introduced a bill that he's introduced before to prevent senators from serving more than two six-year terms, which, you know, okay, you say, well, that's not unusual. You know, there are people who believe in term limits.

Ted Cruz is running for a third six-year term. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So he's voting against his ability to run for a third term? I guess. But this goes along with, he tweeted something. out that I guess was part of an appearance he did on Maria Barter Romo's show. Back on January 29th, he tweeted, if we got career politicians out of Washington, D.C., there would be a lot less

corruption in the swamp. To which I replied, I accept your resignation. Because if you look at, I mean, this is a guy who, granted he took five years off to go be the Solicitor General of Texas, but before that, he was a policy advisor for the George W. Bush administration. And he's now been a senator for 11 years. And, you know, he has spent basically the large percentage of his adult life in the swamp. And it's always those people who are sitting there saying, well, we got to get these career politicians out of Washington. You're a career politician, you fuck wad. I mean, I just, like, I don't know what else to say about you. He's just, I hate him so much because he, and I've said this before, he knows what he's doing. He's smart. He's not, he's not a stupid person.

He knows what he's doing. He doesn't believe his own bullshit. And in my mind, I've decided that that is worse than the people that actually believe their own insane bullshit are the people who don't, but who do it strictly for some kind of political gain. So fuck that guy. I'm glad he's back. I've missed him on this segment. Oh, my God. It's just the stupidity abounds.

But, you know, welcome back, Ted Cruz. Welcome back to fuck that guy. I think it's just another thing of that. He's always a coward. and he can't just say outright that he wants to quit his day job to go full-time with podcasting and be as glorious as us. Exactly. Exactly.

Coward. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded. The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

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