The Daily Beast Podcast - The One Sentence Republicans Need to Stop Using

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

As former President Donald Trump endured one of his worst weeks yet, Republicans have been on our TV screens taking aim at everyone else—but themselves. On this episode of The New Abnormal, hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy talk Trump and the sentence Republicans need to stop repeating. Then, Tim O’Brien, senior executive editor of opinion at Bloomberg, joins the show and reveals what he finds most compelling in the “ridiculous sideshow” that’s emerged in the wake of the search: “which is that he’s being unfairly targeted and that this is political. Also, Dr. Iman Alsaden, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Great Plains, talks about what it’s like in post-Roe America. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. First, we're going to be joined by Dr. Aman al-Sadden, who performs abortions in Kansas.

And they'll join us once again to tell us about what they're seeing on the ground there. Then we'll talk to senior executive editor at Bloomberg, Tim O'Brien, who's an expert on all of Trump's legal woes, and he's going to tell us what he's seen there. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Johnfest. I don't know if you can know this, but. Republicans now. They want to defund the FBI. No.

Yes. That's not possible. The back the blue crew no longer so backing of the blue. They instead are quite mad at the blue because they're president, who is still president, in their minds, there was a raid or a logo, happened right after we finished taping last week. Thanks a lot, FBI. Perhaps this was all a conspiracy against us. Yes. You know, finish the tape, do this incredible interview of one Charles Schumer, and then minutes later, the fucking FBI raids Mar-a-Lago.

I'm not saying that they're out to get us, but... Truly, we are the victims here. Unequivocally. A few things I'd like to say about this. Donald Trump has the warrant, the search warrant that was executed, and his lawyers have it, and he could release it today. He could just tweet it out as he has with many documents in the past. Yes, 100%.

They could easily make this public. They obviously don't want to because that would stop all the people from claiming that, number one, that they don't have the document, and number two, that they don't know what this is about. And the theater on the right now is unbelievable. Starting with their big talking point that they all, independently apparently came up with, which is like everyone on Fox News, every Republican member of Congress on up, is if they can do this to the president, think what they can do to you. First of all,

he's not the president. And it would be nice if they would stop saying if they can do this to the president. They didn't do this to the president. They did this to a private citizen who happened to have been the president. So they're not doing this to the president. The president is Joe Biden. Right. The FBI did not execute a search warrant on the White House. Let's get rid of that right away. And anyone who says that is, you know, completely foolish. The idea that, like, if they did this to Trump, they could do this to you.

Like, Trump has done so many very crimey things. Of course. The fact that nothing has ever happened to him at all ever is a sign that actually this kind of thing almost never happens to wealthy white men. Right. And, like, the fact that they do. did this is a sign that maybe it won't happen to you, that maybe justice, well, I don't know if it's a sign that it won't happen to you, but it's certainly a sign that if you do a lot of very suspicious stuff, like leave with 15 boxes of classified information, and you flout the law

enough, sooner or later, someone might tell you you can't do that anymore. Yeah, especially as the New York Times is now reporting that a bunch of months ago, that they did get a subpoena for documents that the feds thought he had with him at Mar-a-Lago that he had fell to turn over. And so the fact is they gave him a subpoena and they still have reason to believe that he had more stuff that he did not turn over. Right. There may be a mole in the White House.

A lot of people are saying it's barren. I am not saying it's barren. I don't think nobody is saying that, Molly. Nobody is saying it's barren. But dark baron rises. Dark baron is rising. Yeah. If it were baron, no one would blame him.

But yeah, I mean, there is some speculation there might be. A mole in the White House, who that is, no one knows. Not the White House. Mar-a-Lago. In the winter White House. Yes, in Mar-a-Lago. The search is exactly what it needed to be. And it was done purposely while Trump wasn't there.

And while I believe the Mar-a-Lago itself was closed, They did it as to be as sort of, you know, you could only be so inobtrusive when it's the former president. But everyone on the right is like, look what they're doing to him. Look what they're doing to him. This is all politics. It's like they went out of their way to make sure he wasn't there to make sure they were as minimally disruptive as possible. I mean, let's face it, they bent over backwards a lot more for Trump than law enforcement would have done if it were you or me. So, again, the whole, if they can do this to Trump, they can do this to us.

Yeah, if they wanted to search my apartment, they wouldn't have waited to make sure that I didn't have guests there first. I mean, they could show up anytime and I wouldn't have guests, but they don't know that. Well, they probably do. How do you know they're not here now? They probably are. I'm fairly certain my cat is a mole. Yes, exactly. But, I mean, no, and they didn't wear the FBI jackets.

Right. We've come to one of these moments where reality and the right are diametrically opposed, right? We have reality. He took all these classified boxes. He said, go fuck yourself. They subpoenaed to get the boxes back. They got some of it back. They were told they didn't have all of it back.

They got now this surveillance footage from Mar-a-Lago and more things they got. The reality is, like, they got. a lot of stuff. What this means, no one knows, right? Nobody really knows. Is it a larger case? Is this just presidential records? We don't know. No one knows. Right. Right. And speculating makes us all look like assholes because we just don't know. But ultimately, the right is behaving in a way that does not match what has happened. And I think that is clear. Absolutely. And it's, look, that's what they do. So it's, I guess, not much of a surprise. But to see people who are on like the House Judiciary Committee and things like that who are supposed to be, you know, in positions of responsibility,

just out there shouting out the most just completely untrue stuff. Look, it's bad enough when it's the Jesse Waters of the world and people like that. You sort of expect that at this point. And I mean, I am, as an aside, I'm laughing at the whole, there was a thing a week or two ago about Murdoch had soured on Trump. And I just laughed at that because that is clearly not the case on Fox News. News, which is the only part of the Murdoch Empire that matters. I'm sorry, Wall Street Journal. Right.

You're really breaking it to them. You just don't have the reach of Fox News. Fox News is full on in Civil War mode now. You know, this is the worst thing that has happened to the Republic in our history and all this stuff. And it's just, it's absolutely pathetic is what it is. But it goes back to, and, you know, we've talked about this before. They constantly have to be victims.

They have to be, everything has to be a plot against them. And this comes from the top. This comes from Daddy Trump, you know, who is the biggest victim in the history of the United States. And we had, I think it was either Eric, I think it was Don Jr. But it might have been Eric saying that like the Trump family has been through, you know, this country has put the Trump family through more bad stuff than any other family in history. It's like none of you deserve any of the success that you've had. And for you to sit here and say that you've been put through hell by this country is just, it's absolutely unbele.

It's like, it's beyond belief. As someone who has benefited from some of the similar situations that the Trump family has, I mean, obviously my family is not criminals and they're not, you know, depreciating the assets of their real estate to take a tax right off. But I did come from like a parent who was successful, et cetera. you are almost always given special treatment. Like, and especially the Trumps. I mean, those guys fucking, like, you know, the idea that you could go up there and weep about how hard your life is when you've never, ever done anything. Like, you've never had a real job. It's, like, pretty spectacular.

And the thing I'm always impressed with these guys is, like, nobody ever, you never see Eric, like, being like, well, he went to private schools. My parents were rich. I never really had to do anything. You know, like, you never see him at all. like any kind of self-consciousness. Like if that were me, and again, I don't come from money like the Trumps did, but like, you know, I would be like a little bit like, this is really a con. Yeah, and it's like at least be self-aware enough to know that it's a con and, you know,

just sort of at least admit it to yourself and so then you can stop pretending otherwise to others. This is far from the subject now, but Don Jr., Eric, they have accomplished nothing in life. They have no discernible skills that I can tell. And yet they're both wealthy and have all the other trappings of success that the American dream is supposed to promise everyone. And they still sit there and act like they're victims. Like, at least just shut the hell up. Right.

And just be like. Yeah. Just shut the hell up. Don't act like you're a victim when literally everything has been handed to you your entire life. That's Donald Trump also. And that's why to circle back to. actual story. When something like this happens to Donald Trump, there's this absolute outrage and

like this, this sense of how dare you, do you know who I am? Right, right, that there should be special rules. Yeah, which is sad enough coming from the Trump family themselves, but to hear all these sycophants and bootlickers on, on Fox News and throughout conservative media, going along with it is just, it's so pathetic. It's as the kids say, it's very cringe, my. Yes, it's very cringe and it's also just absolutely very, very, very silly. So the Trump family very stressed out, Marjorie Taylor Green, very fierce. Oh, the one thing I was going to say, which I think is an important thing to realize is that most of the sort of grownups in the room, the Mitch McConnell's, have not. come to Trump's defense. The people who have come to Trump's defense are people like Marco Rubio,

who's running for re-election and Ted Cruz, but not the sort of more, I don't want to say intellectual, but the less sleazy members or the less openly sleazy members of the Republican Party, which leads me to think that this defending Trump is a way to play to the base and not necessarily a, like, these other people may be, like, they may be keeping their powder dry for a reason. I think that's probably true. I think it is hard to come up with a word to sort of separate the Mitch McConnell's of the world from, like, the Kevin McCarthy's and the Ted Cruz's of the world. But I know what you mean. Right. McConnell is not a stupid man.

He's just an evil man. He recognizes reality. Like, that's one thing he does do, even though his beliefs are disgusting. But I agree with you. I think the fact that someone like McConnell is not out there is letting us know. Look, we all know that the FBI did not go to Mara Lago on a whim. Right. And the FBI did not show up with a bunch of backpacks that were pre-filled with evidence they were going to plant.

Wait, they didn't plant evidence? I mean, that's the craziest thing I've ever heard. We know this because we all know Donald Trump is guilty. And you can be as far left or as libertarian as you want about law enforcement. And I'll probably agree with you. But we also, we know that this search was properly vetted. And we know that they would not have done this if they didn't have, I would think, fairly solid evidence that they were going to find stuff. Right.

And the fact that they left with a bunch of boxes of stuff. And a manifest of what they took shows that, yes, there was stuff there that they needed to take. And, you know, the New York Times has an article. I think it's, is it Maggie Haberman, I think? Maggie Harriman and a couple others wrote a piece. And there's a line in there that basically says, some senior Republicans have been warned by allies of Mr. Trump not to continue to be aggressive in criticizing the Justice Department because it's possible that more damaging information related to the search will eventually become public.

Can I just say that, I remember so well where I was when James Comey held that press conference. And I remember thinking like, this is going to hand Trump the election. Yeah, I just remember saying it's over. Yeah, that's what I thought. I thought there's no way she can ever be elected now. Like, they have just. Yeah.

And, you know, they never even fucking filed charges. They were just like, you know. And then him being like, I would feel terrible if this cost her the election. Thanks, buddy. Yeah. All right. I'm cutting you guys. if you can't talk badly of resistance hero James Kobe, you're here.

He sucks. Dr. Amman al-Sadden performs abortions in Kansas. Welcome to the new abnormal Dr. El-Saidan. Thank you for having me. We're so happy to have you. And I wanted to just talk to you about what it's like in this post-row America. I have to say I get chills when I say it. Yeah, it's pretty dystopian except it's reality, unfortunately.

Yeah, so things, I mean, we had a huge victory in Kansas last week, which was helpful and hopefully can be used as a blueprint to help guide the rest of the country to get back some abortion access and get back some reproductive rights. But, yeah, I mean, in my region, which again is Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and then Western Missouri, we were already sort of in this post-row reality even before Roe v.A got overturned. Because of Texas, right? Well, because of Texas and then also Oklahoma actually stopped. We actually stopped providing services in Oklahoma after Governor Stitt signed SB 1503, which was the six-week copycat from Texas. And then as soon as we were going to restart services under six weeks, he signed another bill that was House Bill 4327, which was a total ban on abortions. And so we had already stopped services there because, you know, to comply with the law. We were providing in Kansas and Arkansas. Now, in Arkansas, now in Arkansas, Arkansas, the day that row fell, services were interrupted. There were many patients that were scheduled that day. I don't know if you know this, but there's a two day. You have to have a visit for day one. And then on the second day, you return and get your abortion as a patient in Arkansas, which is in the hopes of getting you to change your mind. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That's all these laws are designed. So, you know, it's like because people that drove six hours didn't think long enough about how they wanted an abortion. They need another. 24 hours to do that. So great. Yeah, but you can walk right out with an AR-15. You can definitely get a gun whenever you feel like it, no problem. And also the other thing to speak to that for one second is, you know, abortion providers, unlike most doctors, sometimes we have bulletproof vests. Right. Because zealots. You don't want to get killed. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't really want to get killed. I'd like to die natural death someday eventually. Because it's body armor, like you need an account and like, verification to get a bulletproof vest. So you can walk into a Walmart and buy a gun,

no issues, but you cannot get a bulletproof vest as a medical provider without having like an account and verification that through a security company, there's like all these hoops to jump through. I almost fell on the ground when I learned that. I mean, I almost passed out. I almost died. My unnatural death. One of the things that I think has been really interesting, I thought, and I interviewed you and I interviewed a lot of people about what this, and I a lot about, you know, for that whole year between Texas and the Supreme Court overturning row, I wrote a lot about what I thought it would look like, what overturning row would look like. The thing I've been the most surprised by really is the doctors in hospitals who

refuse to treat. I find that rather surprising as well. I don't want to knock, you know, any of my colleagues. But I think we're allowing the government too much to do. define what an abortion is or what a pregnancy is or what a viable pregnancy is. A topic pregnancy is not a viable pregnancy. It's like so far away from the realm of abortion. I mean, there's no topic pregnancy that can ever survive outside of the fallopian tubes. No, yeah, no. You know, I just find it wild that we're allowing the government to so heavily impose abortion, pregnancy, like what the definition of those things are rather than we're the medical establishment, right? Like, we define what those things are. Like, our sort of

bodies define what those things are, not the government. So I think we're just allowing the government to, like, step on our toes a little bit too much when we have the situation where people aren't treating ectopic pregnancies and people are hesitating about treating miscarriages and hesitating about delivering life-saving care. I mean, that's not a good look. Yeah. It's pretty shocking. Actually, Rob and Marty came on this podcast. She wrote this book, the handbook for, I'm sure you know who she is. She wrote this book, the handbook for Post Row America. And she told me that when a lot of these women will go to the hospital and she's in Alabama. So again, it's not the same as being in, you know, a sort of more urban area. But she said that the doctors won't treat if they think you've had any kind of,

you know, that they just send you home, which is, does seem like a, that seems like it will end with women dying. Yeah. I do think that the medical community, we all need to just defend what we know. you can treat abortion complications, you can treat ectopic pregnancies, you can treat miscarriages, you can deliver, follow up abortion care. Like these things are all allowed in states, even where abortion is prohibited. So we just need to like step up and accept that and start doing that as a whole entire medical community. And then the concept that there's someone who's undergoing an emergency that wouldn't deliver care to a patient, that's completely against all the principles of being a doctor. I would hope that those people, I don't know, don't exist.

I don't even know what you say. How have you seen things change since the Supreme Court? Well, like I was saying before, in Arkansas, we had to stop care that day. We had to reschedule all of these patients like to Kansas or whatever their closest abortion clinic was. The staff was crying outside and vaping a lot. It's hard to tell people that we like can't provide. Yeah.

Everyone was vaping. It was like a vaping festival. It's hard to tell people that we can't provide. to them. Like, it's hard to be the person that's actually saying no. And the staff was tasked with, like, calling all the patients and telling them that, hey, we can't provide your care. These are your options. So we've seen this, like, sort of immediate change. And then, you know, it's now normal to see multiple people from Texas every single day when I'm in clinic in whatever Kansas clinic I'm in that have either driven 10 plus hours to get to us or have flown from Houston, Austin, Dallas. I mean, this is normal. now. It's the new abnormal. This is the norm. We are constantly every single day seeing people come from all over the place, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi to get care that should be available to them within their communities.

I just can't imagine how traumatized I would be if I needed an abortion having to add on this travel issue. It does seem to me like, and again, that abortions are really safe. and they're safe in a way they weren't in 1973, right? Totally, totally, yeah. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, so, you know, people, I think what you're getting at is sort of like post-row narrative, right? Yeah, exactly. So people remember the before times, before 1973, septic words, people trying to do procedural abortions on themselves or on other people in not safe manners.

So we're beyond that now, which is so amazing, right? we have the abortion pill. So Miphyprix and Mesaprostal are going to be, I think, a lot of the ways that people without access to abortion will be accessing abortion. And I think you'll see people do more and more of that, either through the internet or, you know, border crossings, or the fact that self-managed abortion is so incredibly safe. And every time it's been studied, it's shown to be incredibly safe just as clinic abortion care is. The fact that people are going to be accessing that more will mean that there will be less of this like septic abortion coat hanger narrative. However, the problem with denying people abortions and making abortion

so vastly and accessible throughout certain parts of the country is that the people that are most disadvantaged, the people that are of the lowest economic status, are going to be the people that have trouble accessing abortion and therefore can't access abortion. And guess what? Those people are the least healthy people in our country. They need the most intensive medical care usually when they're pregnant as a large group. And I do think eventually, and this will take years, it's not going to be like something immediate, you know, eventually you will see an increase in the maternal mortality rate in these parts of the country where abortion is not accessible because, you know, wealthy people are always going to

be able to access abortion no matter where it is. People that are of low income, people of color, you know, these are the people that are going to be most heavily affected by abortion restrictions. And so those are the people that are going to have the most complicated, medically complicated pregnancies and the most dangerous pregnancies for them. Right. And also, I mean, a lot of these states have very high maternal fetal death rights. Absolutely. Yeah. These Republicans are setting themselves up, right?

We had a really good documentary filmmaker on here. Tanya Lewis Lee, who talked about how women of color are, you know, three times or four times more likely to die in childbirth. Yeah. than white women and these are the people who are being denied access to care. Yeah, I mean, that is a very, very problematic situation that the anti-abortion legislatures throughout the country have created for themselves and the Supreme Court has created. There's no, we don't have the programs in place. We don't have the implicit bias training.

We don't have the social and welfare programs in place to improve on that as quickly as we will need to in order to ensure that, you know, there won't. be such a spike in maternal mortality rate. But that's my expectation is to see that. And that's really, really devastating in a completely different way than the pre-Roe situation. It's interesting because it's like I do feel like overturning row has created a slew of really tragic circumstances that are sort of not exactly what we thought they would be. Tell me what you mean. What I mean is the doctors who refuse to treat and the women who will do. die who wouldn't have otherwise carried a pregnancy because they were worried because they'd had

five kids or whatever because their uterus was, you know, I mean, I know for me, just speaking, I never talk about my own situation, but I had these very large twins and my doctor said, you know, you cannot take it, you cannot have any more pregnancies. You can't have any more pregnancies because your uterus, it's just dangerous for you. Yeah, it's tired. Right. I have to assume there are other women in the rest of the country who've had doctors say things like that to them, would have gotten an abortion, but now can't. Yeah, absolutely. That is super problematic and will lead to a lot of bad health outcomes.

And I do think like there will be in, you know, it's going to take a long time though. That's the issue, right? Right. Like how often do they report returnal mortality rates? I don't know. I'd have to look that up. But it's not going to be like in a year, you know. Right.

It's going to be, there's going to become, I think, a large, a large disparity between places that have easy access to abortion, perhaps for Medicaid. pays for it, so abortion is essentially zero cost to the patient, versus these places where the state is so large and it's so hard to get out of, like, for example, Texas that, you know, there's going to be a lot of people that can't afford or can't manage to leave the state to get care. And I think you'll see that gap widen, like, over as the years go on, as they keep reporting the maternal mortality rates and you can look it up state by state. But I don't think it's going to be apparent super quickly. And so the Republicans kind of have, you know, like a little bit of time to get their shit together, but it's going to take a lot.

Yeah, and they don't want to. And we know that won't happen, right? These are not the people that support social welfare programs. Right. Like, oh, schools, you know, they don't want to teach critical race theory, like actual history. They're like, we want to teach white people history and math and whatever, creation. Yeah, exactly.

I'm curious, are you seeing, like, we saw in Texas, a woman get arrested when she, you know, and there was an arrest for a stillbirth. Like, are you seeing that kind of thing or no? There is a woman in Oklahoma that we all knew about in prison for manslaughter. Her name is Brittany Pula. She's a native woman. And she had, I think, a 15 or 17 week, like some mid-trimester, IUFD. She also happened to be using methamphetamine.

She was put in front of a jury and they convicted her of manslaughter. So she's in prison for four years now. And this is a great example. And then the Lausel thing, the Lausel case in Texas, it's like, these are people that are not white people. They're being persecuted for pregnancy outcomes. And that's exactly what Republican lawmakers say they're not going to do, right? They're like, we're not going to arrest the pregnant woman. Like, we're just going to put the doctor in jail.

But the problem is that in order to actually make abortion stop, you either have to criminalize the doctor or the patient. Like this vigilante bounty hunter stuff, it's really hard to enforce, as we've seen. And like, but what's easy to enforce is like, oh, you were at this clinic at this time and now you're not pregnant anymore. Right. You must have had an abortion. Or like, yeah, criminalizing doctors. So that is, I mean, that is something that I massively worry about. And it's also something that all the anti-abortion people are like, that's not going to happen.

We're not going to do that. But the thing is that, like, it's already happening. Well, they've already scared people, right? So doctors won't treat. Then it doesn't even matter because these women are going to die. Are they going after? It seems like there are some places where. these white Republican men know so little about the female body, they are going after IUDs and

morning after pills. You know, there was an instance in our area where a major hospital system said they're not going to offer emergency contraception. Right. To rape victims? To patients in general on the Missouri side because they were so worried about the laws of Missouri. We all know that emergency contraception is not an abortion. So they reversed their position after I think they received a lot of backlash, but it is these sort of uninformed decisions like this and like reactionary decisions that are dangerous for patients. And that's how these things get conflated. And that's what I was talking about at the beginning where like, we're just allowing the government to control what the definition of these things are by like making these changes. And like that's not okay.

Like I'm a doctor. I get to decide what's an abortion and what's not an abortion. Like after all, I went to a lot of school about that. So I think by like just like giving the government so much, I don't know, I don't want it to sound like I'm going to like break the law, but giving the government so much credit for knowing what they're talking about, which they don't, which they definitely don't. That's problematic. Like, we need to reclaim and take control of that narrative of like, we are the medical community. We know what an abortion is. We know what an abortion is not. And like, we're going to practice medicine in the way that we were taught and learned in medical school and residency. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And fellowship for some highly

achieving people. Are you seeing people where they've taken risks with their own house, where they've tried to do stuff that has hurt them or no? I have not, personally. I hope that I won't. Yeah. Yeah, you know, it's possible. And it's, you know, the anti-abortion lawmakers are making it more probable that, like, we will see something like that, unfortunately. I mean, it's just absolutely beyond the pale. Yeah, it's sick. Yeah, it's really depressing. Thank you. so much. I hope you will come back. Yeah, anytime. I always like talking to you. Well, the feeling is

very mutual. Thank you. Tim O'Brien is Senior Executive Editor of Opinion at Bloomberg. Welcome back to the new abnormal Tim O'Brien. Molly J.F. So we find ourselves once again back

at the storied Winter White House Mar-Lago. Which we should remind people as a club because he couldn't afford to keep owning it. And he still runs it as a business. And he basically rents a room there. Yeah. At the Winter White House.

I mean, we know that Trump has been served a subpoena or not a subpoena of warrant, right? A search warrant? Yeah, because they already served him a subpoena to force him to return like 15 boxes of National Archives records on national security grounds. and then apparently the National Archives and the FBI and the Justice Department presumably got word that he didn't return everything. They had suspicion that it was significant and classified and that he wasn't going to turn it over via subpoena.

So they went to a judge and they said, this is what we believe is in a safe at Mar-a-Lago and we want to get our hands on it because it's classified information and he shouldn't have taken it. And he's ignoring our subpoenas, or we're going to execute a search warrant, which they did. Is there a mole in Trump's private club in Palm Beach in August? Is there a mole there? And who is it?

You know, the dramatist in me wants it to be Melania. There's no way she's in Florida in August. Right. You know, but somebody told the feds that there was a safe there because that wasn't common knowledge and became even more common knowledge because in Trump's tragicomic way of communicating with the world, he told everyone that the FBI broke into it. his safe when he issued his own release about it. But yeah, clearly there's somebody either who was involved

with his transition from the White House to Mara Lago or who works for him currently who gave this information up. I think what's more compelling is this ridiculous sideshow that's emerged in the wake of the search, which is that he's being unfairly targeted and that this is political, which of course no president and no U.S. citizen is above the law, and this is a common legal practice and a prosecutorial practice. and the Justice Department and the FBI are enforcing the law. And the idea that somehow Trump shouldn't be subjected to the same loss as everyone else is ridiculous. If he wants to prove they had no reason to go down there and break into his safe anyway, he can release the search warrant and the contents of what they took from the safe.

And I suspect he won't because the list probably includes a number of class-eyed items plus porn videos and a stack of rubles. Why would he want that to become public? So here's a question for you. What is in Al Capone? I mean, Donald Trump's safe. I don't think it's billions and billions of dollars. No, I don't think so. And it's clearly something he doesn't want the world to know about or he would let the world know about it. He could end this argument now and he doesn't want to because I think he's embarrassed by what's in there. And it serves his purposes to have this debate go on about whether or not he's being unfairly targeted.

Obviously, there's a lot we don't know here. But what do we think? I think you'd have to rewind and say what kind of. kind of classified documents, would he not want people to see or to become part of the historical record? You know, everything that's said in the Oval Office is classified, so it's a voluminous number of documents and topics. But I just wonder if some of it has to do with some of the things he got impeached around, having to do with trying to strong-armed Vladimir Zelensky, Ukraine's leader, into digging up dirt on Joe Biden prior to the 2020 election. You know, in any of that documentation that might undermine the arguments that his party and he made for why he

shouldn't be impeached. But I really don't know. I think it's speculative right now. It seems like there's been a lot of tightening of, you know, you've got two of Pence's people going in and talking a grand jury. You have some Trump's people going in. I mean, it definitely feels like they're coming for something, right? Absolutely. I mean, I think there's now unmistakable evidence, you know, in the public realm of the DOJ. And, and, you know, in Rudy's case, it's, it's, you know, prosecutors in Georgia more, most recently. But that, you know, there's been grand juries, a federal grand jury convened to look at, at this whole issue around the creation of fake electors and pressure placed on Mike Pence to not certify the electoral count. So it looks like Merrick Garland's Justice Department is,

is finally, its wheels are finally moving. And the debate now, I don't. I don't think the debate any longer is really did Donald Trump break any laws, or is there enough evidence to investigate whether he did. It's whether or not Garland can convince a jury that Trump broke the law and what the consequences of that should be if he does. Everything else is noise. And there's such chaos right now and a lack of clarity about what the value in the political debate and blah, blah, blah, blah. But we're a nation of laws. and laws were created to so order out of chaos and to keep all of us and our most base instincts in check, less they get out of control. And this is a moment when you want people who enforce the law to just stay by their lights and play their jobs and not enter in or listen to the political and social noise.

The thing that a lot of people I talk to in my world, the sort of debate going is, is this just the presidential records? Or is this more? Why does it matter? Because to me, this is just one moment in the larger pageant of the prosecution, impossible prosecution of Donald Trump. And it's possibly the least consequential stuff. To me, everything related to trying to stage a coup around January 6th is more substantive. Right.

But I mean, the question is like, Merrick Garland doesn't do something like this lightly, right? Oh, right. Yes, I would agree with that totally, Molly. He is such a by the book's prosecutor and legal thinker. I don't think he would do this without thinking about the ramifications. I think they should think about, though, being better explaining these things after the fact when messaging around it gets taken over by Trump, then Fox News, then the MAGA wing of the GOP, and they're able to characterize it as banana republic shenanigans. And the Justice Department has sort of left a void in how to care.

characterize their own legal action. One of the things we're seeing out of Trump world, and I'm curious what you think of this as someone who has actually, like, has been in the Trump ecosystem. I've been in Mara Lago with him in Melania. Oh, God. I'm sorry. There's a lot of, like, you made us hit you kind of stuff, right? Like Jason Miller said yesterday that Trump, that this has made Trump decide he was going to run.

And he wasn't sure he was going to run before. but now he was sure he was going to run because this was all Merrick Garland's doing. Can you explain to our listeners like this is sort of a Trumpy thing to do, right? Yeah, to play the victim, right? Well, and also just to say like you've done it. Like you're a victim, I'm a victim and now I'm going to get back at you. Right. You've tried to enforce the law and now that is causing me to want to run again. And by the way, this is coming from the Law and Order Party, right?

The GOP. Right, exactly, exactly. And they're saying, gosh, we don't like this. You're enforcing the law. I think Trump has been finding various reasons for wanting to run again, not because his heart is in it, but because, one, his wallet is in it. He makes good money off of the possibility. His ego is in it because he stays center stage in the media spotlight. And thirdly, now his legal survival and his personal survival are in it, because I think he thinks a presidential run will insulate him from the long arm of the law. That has to get tested. I'm not convinced that's true. You know, I think he still polls really strongly and he still is a magnet for

GOP money. That's been softening. You know, he doesn't have a golden touch in any of the nominees. He's backed in other races, candidates. He's backed in other races. But there is an age-old Trump yarn that the family always spins about being unfairly targeted and we will get back at you. It started with Fred Trump, Donald's father, who got investigated for housing fraud at both the federal and the state level. And it ended his... career as a builder. And the narrative inside the Trump family wasn't that Fred Trump did anything illicit. It was that, oh, big institutional government wouldn't let dad get rich and took away his way of making a living. And Trump himself used this for years against Ed Koch when he was mayor,

against Wayne Barrett when Barrett was investigating him as a reporter. And then more recently, Judge Curiel, Robert Mueller, and now Merrick Garland. And the reality is this is a guy who gets into serial trouble because he's serially lawless. But he's developed a narrative that works in terms of responding to it. And people like Jason Miller have absorbed that, I think. Yeah, Jason Miller is like, I mean, he's practically a member of the Trump family at this point. He makes a living off of it. He'd be broke otherwise.

Right. I mean, almost all these people would be broke otherwise, right? Yeah. It's either they're craven because they want the money or they're craving because they think they can turn him to achieving their own ends. But it's never because they're in it. for ethical or value-driven reasons, I think. One of the things that I saw today was this,

there was actually a piece about how Republicans are, have really gone so far from policy. And it did remind me of Trump's 2020, the Republicans' 2020 platform, which was on an index card. Which there wasn't a 2020 platform. Oh, right. There was, index card was 2016. And then 2020, they just gave up.

2020, they were just. like, nah, you don't need a platform. And I think that's indicative of how they've decided that the best path to power is, which it's no longer around classic conservative, you know, policy points like lower tax as a conservative court and a hawkish foreign policy. It's around sensationalized cultural issues and white nationalism and explicitly racist and conservative cultural touch points that they know motivates a big portion of that. party. So it's about abortion and wokeism and anti-immigration and race and and everything but policy, which is why. And that, so, you know, Mitch McConnell saying we're not going to bring a

platform to this party is a recognition that that's not how they acquire power anymore, I think. There's been a lot of writing this morning, or I've read a couple of things about this, that the mainstream media has had a lot of trouble figuring out how the newest side, not the side, because obviously we never do anything wrong on the opinion side. But it's also easier for us on the opinion side, exactly. Much. But on the news side, there's been a lot of trouble. Certainly with the titling and also with some of the sort of, you know, the more nuanced

stuff about how do you sort of talk about this raid without talking, without perpetuating a Republican narrative. why is it so hard for us in the mainstream media to get this right after so long? Well, one, I mean, I also think that, you know, the media needs to be attuned to the power of language and it wasn't a raid to begin with. It was a search. Right. And Trump called it a raid to begin with to make it sound like it was a bunch of bootleggers who ran in through his front door, you know, to take away its candy.

And I think sometimes the media is slow to recognize that they're propagating certain terms that have a power in it of themselves. I would say raid in this one is one of those. And I made that mistake too, frankly, by the way. I think one of the first things I wrote, I used the term raid, and then I thought about it. But I think the larger issue is that Donald Trump is a habitual liar and sensationalist and conventional media norms around covering someone who lies all the time. And then as a network of people around him who immediately after an event also lie and use the same talking points.

If you have to cover that event, one, how do you cover it by? telling the truth, which is that they're misrepresenting what occurred and they're trying to propagandize it, which is the correct way to cover it as opposed to Trump says this, but law enforcement says that. Right. And around someone like Trump, that's not a useful construct. It's amazing that we're still having this problem after such a long time, but I do know that I, myself, too, we're very reactive with our language and sometimes we just have to slow down, I guess. And it's very hard, I think, for classic beat reporters, because you are trying to get information from the inside of institutions. You don't want to become beholden to them and just have

proximity to power as a way to get stories. If you're completely distanced from them, you never learn what's going on. If you're writing on a daily basis, which a lot of newspaper reporters have to do. And just the nature of the job makes it hard to always have the perfect construct for the analysis. And I think people who don't do beat reporting don't understand that. And the conclusion is the reason these stories look the way they do is because the report is in the tank or the reporter isn't sufficiently critical. When the reporter is trying to put a construct around a story that gets towards the truth, even if that construct is flawed, which I think it is.

Oh, that's such an important, important point. Thank you so much, Tim. Thank you, Molly. It's always fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. Wait, I have to get something to eat. No, I'm just kidding.

Okay. Is it segment time? It is our segment. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is? I do. It's rare that we get to. to council members, right? You really have to be a piece of shit to get, for us to go in our national political podcast down to council members.

And it's even a lower, or should I say higher bar for the Salt Lake City County council member because, okay. I mean, right? Like, I flew in that airport. It's a great airport. But I love Salt Lake City and don't get me wrong. And Evan McMullen is my buddy. But I'm just saying it takes a lot for us to pluck a city council member up for our ire. But today we have Dave Alvard.

No one knows. He says that fetuses, by the way, I love white Republican men have the greatest theories about fetuses. They are all right there. I mean, like they must just spend all their time thinking about fetuses, right? Like you're like, what are you doing, honey, thinking about fetuses? So he says, and again, I had been wondering this myself as someone who's had three children, that fetuses are not part of a woman's body. Now, again, you are thinking, well, they're in your body, so aren't they?

But no, sorry, guys. Luckily, we have this white Republican county council member to tell us what a fetus is. It's not part of the mother's body because the umbilical cord and the placenta do not connect directly to the woman. As someone who has had now placentas and umbilical cords connected to my utercus, I would like to say that they do in fact connect to the woman with my second set of kids. I actually, they couldn't even, it was a whole thing. And they're quite connected.

And the more times you get pregnant, the more connected it gets. And so in fact, you are a fucking idiot Dave Alvord of the Salt Lake County, counsel, go fuck yourself, you fucking idiot. You left out the best part, though, because after he says the baby is not part of the body of a woman, and then he says the umbilical cord and placenta do not directly connect to the woman, his next sentence is, the baby floats inside the woman. Yeah, it's like a hot tub. It's like they're in some sort of zero gravity situation.

And I think he's thinking maybe of the end of 2001, a space odyssey. Maybe he had just watched that when the big start. child baby comes back to earth. But I did some digging for you, Molly, because I had a feeling you would pick this guy. It turns out he is not an OBGYN. Really, I'm shocked. Because I was sure that a guy like that, such a fucking idiot, would be a doctor. But no. I just wanted to make sure that you and our listeners knew that he is not a doctor, Dave. So he is, uh, he is simply a doctor, dip shit. Yes. Not a doctor, just a dip shit. Uh, tell us. Andy Levy, who is your fuck-that-guy?

My fuck-that-guy is a favorite of yours. He's from the Commonwealth of Virginia. He is, I believe, as of a couple of years ago, or maybe one year ago, he's the governor of Virginia. His name is Glenn Yonkin. Oh, tell me more. Does he wear a red fleece vest? He wears a red fleece vest, which sets him apart.

So you know he's not one of those, you know, he's not one of those MAGA crazies. He's just a, he's just an. ordinary Republican, you know, just a meat and potatoes Republican who would never do anything bad. And except it turns out that he made himself a lot of money back in 2020, close to $9 million worth of stock from the Carlisle group that he was the co-chief executive of. And that's on top of the $54 million in compensation he got from them in the two years. prior to that. He's just somehow he did such a good job

that he got all this extra money. And he didn't have to pay taxes. And he didn't have to pay taxes on. I mean, yeah, you know, I mean, it's important for people with multimillion dollars not to have to pay taxes because, God forbid,

wealthy people fund, roads, bridges, education. I mean, that's not what they're supposed to be doing. Yeah, I mean, it's so, no, I mean, These people are, like, if you are so committed to destroying the federal government, perhaps you should not be serving in it. You would think, but that's not how this country works.

Apparently that is not what the founders intended, Molly. Yes. As a strict constructionist, I know that you want everything to be done the way the founders intended. Of course. I'm a textualist. Yes, you are. My understanding is the founding fathers intended for people to get very, very rich.

as part of their political lives. Yeah, that's my dream. It's not so much about serving the people as it is about getting served. Anyway, so yeah, fuck that guy. He is just another Republican hack, and there's nothing good about him or moderate about him. He's just a bad dude. Fuck him. Yeah.

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