The Daily Beast Podcast - The Perfect Storm Battering Ron DeSantis in Florida w/ Nikki Fried & Ian Dunt

Episode Date: August 6, 2021

“We are in a crisis and this governor is raising money off of anti-Fauci merch and going to other states to do fundraisers,” Florida Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried says of Ron DeSantis. Also in the episode, Ian Dunt—editor-at-large of Politics.co.uk, host of the Oh God, What Now? podcast, author of How to Be a Liberal—talks about Boris Johnson’s COVID fiasco in Britain, where he hosted a reopening celebration just as the Delta variant spiked. Dunt goes deep on the Tory government’s creeping authoritarianism and the U.K.’s new Fox News-on-the-cheap, GB News. Finally, Molly and co-host Jesse Cannon are joined by veteran New York Democratic guru Hank Sheinkopf, who explains why there’ll be even more chaos if Gov. Andrew Cuomo is removed from office over his harassment allegations—and whether AG Tish James can succeed him as governor. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Today we have an excellent show where, well, let's be honest. We're going to focus on a host of terrible characters we regularly visit on this podcast. First, Nikki Fried, who's Florida's Agricultural Commissioner and is running against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for his seat is going to talk to us about how he's leading Florida to disaster. And then we're going to talk to Hank Scheincoff, a veteran Democratic operative in New York. And he's going to tell us about what's next for Governor. Cuomo. Then our fuck that guy will address the latest in fascism and braces of the right wing. But first, we're going to talk to one of our favorite guests. He's going to tell us all about

Boris Johnson's failures in the UK. He's editor-at-large of politics.co.uk, host of the Oh God What Now podcast and author of How to Be a Liberal, Ian Dunn. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Ian Dunn. Thank you. So you still have your bad president. Yeah. How's it going? Not good. It's a bit of a fucking mess here. So, I mean, the government is catastrophically inept and almost everything that it tries to do. And unfortunately, you know, that would be a problem at the best of times.

It's certainly a problem during COVID. And we just over and over again seeing these just serial misjudgments made. Essentially because there is a wing of the Conservative Party which operates either as a sort of lockdown skeptic wing or it's more extreme as a sort of COVID-sceptic wing of kind of sort of, sort of half-brained proto-libertarians. I don't think they really understand what libertarian actually

is a philosophy, but they're nevertheless sort of totally inhock to it. And it has just pursued us in wave after wave of unnecessary deaths. I mean, at this point, you could say tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths have taken place because of this government. And then when they're not dealing with COVID, they're passing some of the most draconian authoritarian legislation we've seen in this country for decades. Well, let's just walk it back here. You guys have the Delta variant. You've had it for about a month longer than we have, or at least you've had it as the predominant strain. So that sort of ripped through the UK pretty recently, right? Yeah, I mean, that was the result, by the way, of that serial ineptitude.

So we have a red list, right, of countries that aren't allowed to come to the UK, or, you know, you have to go stay for sort of two weeks in a hotel. Now, when India first announced the Delta variant, the British government took three weeks after that before it even considered putting India on the red list. And then what it did was it put Bangladesh and Pakistan on the red list, but didn't put India on the red list. And the reason for that was that Boris Johnson, fresh from Brexit, is going around the world desperately trying to get trade deals.

And he was about to go off and meet Modi. He thought, well, I can't put it on the red list because that's going to get in the way of us getting a trade deal. And during the ensuing weeks, Delta took hold in this country. Now, you'd be predictable to anyone because, of course, you know, Britain and India have very, very deep links is a huge amount of population in either country who live in both places. So it was obviously going to be one of the first countries to be here. And it did. Over those weeks, it took root. And this was being warned of at the time. I mean, by over and over again, by public health experts, by opposition politicians, by journalists saying, what are you doing? Why are you allowing this to take place?

And yet they did. It was weeks after that that they put on the red list, by which time it was already transmitting in the community. So for months now, we had Delta absolutely rampage its way through the population. And then just around that time, Boris decided to have a reopening celebration. Yes, exactly. All of this, you know, cheered on by the right-wing press. I mean, not enough is said in this country of the way the right-wing press have operated like some kind of conspiracy theory Facebook group, just pumping out these demands that we open up lockdown, that we get rid of restrictions over and over again. And that's mimicked on the Tory benches. It's kind of weird, you know, I mean, after seeing Brexit, seeing the response of people towards Trump, towards Bolsonaro,

who was the various sort of nationalist, they've supported all this authoritarian agenda. Now they come out and they sound like liberals. It's all suddenly about freedom. When you listen to them, it's not actually personal freedom that they're interested in. And in fact, you've never seen these guys speak out about, you know, for women having abortions or the effect of drug laws on ethnic minority. Certainly not. Right.

Yeah, yeah. Suddenly that kind of personal freedom couldn't give a fuck. What's interesting is really what they mean is business. Their liberalism is the freedom of business. And as soon as companies got closed, as soon as shops got closed, that was the line that they absolutely would not cross. And that's the record that's going out with throughout. Of course, this sort of hilarious caveat,

and it's not very hilarious, is that in a place like Florida, Ron DeSantis is actually fighting with cruise lines not to allow them to have vaccine passports because they actually don't really care about business. They want businesses to do what they want. a business tries to like protect themselves against COVID forget it then you're out how many newspapers does mordock own in the UK i thought you guys were a little better off yeah i mean it's a

question of degrees right so we've got uh yeah so he owns the sun and the times in the UK right and the times is like a real newspaper like the Wall street journal yeah that's it's actually that's a very good comparison and it's actually pretty independent from him i mean it does the times there's lots of really very good reporting it doesn't really follow his line although at a it is supporting Boris Johnson in a way which is frankly baffling when you see what the coverage of him it has in between elections. Right. The son is much more Rupert Murdoch basically. You know, it does what it's told.

The sun does it? The sun is like the New York Post, but does the sun have naked pictures still or no, have they stopped doing that? They kind of got rid of that. I mean, they make up for it. It's classy. Lots of sort of, you know, shots of celebs in their bikinis on the beach or, you know. So, I mean, it's still, you know, it's, it's, it's. It's more a quality.

It's salacious, yeah. Yeah. But you guys don't have a Fox News. You have Sky News, which is really very different. Yeah, so this is the big difference between the US and the UK, I think, in terms of media, which is that there's a requirement for impartiality on TV, on TV news. And the newspapers are savage. They go their own way.

They're very ideological. But on the TV, it's slightly different. Now, that is just about starting to change. Because apparently, our only relationship with the US is looking at the stuff that you guys catastrophically fuck up on, the most. most. Welcome. We suddenly decided, oh, we're in the middle of a cultural war.

Maybe we should extend that to every single part of our media experience. And they've trying out something called GB News, which is supposed to be this kind of, it kind of like a watered down UK Fox News. And, you know, right when we're going to stand up against the metropolitan lease, you've fucking heard this script many times before. You know how it's not very good. I mean, I was kind of scared, to be honest. I thought it would succeed, but you put on. It is cheap.

It is amateurish. They kind of wanted to avoid the Fox News label. So they're trying to appear kind of fair. But then that feels like it's not giving the nativist right what it wants. And it's certainly not looking people like me, what we want. So at the moment, it looks like that early embryonic experiment that's fair. You know, what's an interesting thing about Fox News, which I think that people don't realize, you know, we write about it.

We talk about it. It's such a large part of our culture because it is. But when you watch it, it is actually quite amateurish. Like, there are chirons or. misspelled, you know, they'll get people on for interviews and they have no idea who they are. I mean, even like, you know, one of the reasons I think why Tucker Carlson is so dangerous is because he's smart. But John Hannity is just like amateur. I mean, half the stuff that goes on there, you could almost see it as parity. I think the problem is we Americans are just,

we're not as smart as you guys. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, if you want to test that out, If you think Fox News is amateurish, I urge you to go online now and have a look at GD News. But it is like a children's play of what Fox News is. It's like a children's nativity play of horror. And has now, by the way, fallen into its own sort of contradictory propaganda because one of the presenters decided, the England football team took the knee during the recent Euro's Cup. Right, exactly. Taking the knee gets them very upset, right?

It gets them very upset, right? But it really changed the cultural debate here because, Everyone supports the England football team, and everyone, you know, likes to think of themselves as anti-racist. So it actually put the right in the wrong position. Now, one of the presenters on GB News then said, oh, I'm going to take the knee, you know, maybe I'm comfortable with this. What happened? Instantly, there was this internet attack on him, and the station dropped him. So just hours after these guys were babbling on about council culture and the intolerant left,

when one of their presenters does something independent mind, is like, oh, off you, fuck me. Right. I'm glad it's international that the cancel culture thing is all lie that really is just a facade for do what we say. Can we just take a minute here to talk about you have a really terrible

British presenter. He's so terrible. He's almost an American. Pierce Morgan. Did he get rehired? I love the idea of someone being so terrible they're almost American. Sorry.

Again, he's written a book on council culture on you've got to hear views that offend you. At one point, he became so unhinged on the mark of the above. I think it was the weatherman on the program. I just saw that funny out. He just sounded like a lunatic. Like, what are you talking about? And he actually stoned off and wouldn't come back.

So now, again, just another indication of just how up they are for the great battle of ideas. You know, cornerstone of liberal civilization. Now he's churning away. And he is, he was quite notable for his absence on G.B. News, actually, when it was announced, we all sort of thought, oh, he's going to go on there. And what he's very good at is creating viral videos by being very aggressive online.

You can imagine this sort of thing. His absence is probably, if I'm honest, as despicable as he is, probably one of the reasons that it's really failing to get off the ground. Oh, interesting. Yeah, the thing that I'm curious about in the UK is, can people see through his obsession with Megan Merkel? And remember, he also, this last week, he wrote a piece about Simone Biles. Do people put together the fact that this old white guy keeps attacking women of color because he's a fucking racist? Or do they just think like, oh, it's a coincidence.

All these women that get under his skin. Do they put it together? They do, they do. And that is a common attack. I mean, he put out a tweet today going, I've gone through my previous articles, God knows what that was like. And I put together this sort of typical proof that I'm not a racist because I've attacked this many white men and this many black women. And you just sort of think, well, I mean, even on your own sort of infantile mathematics, that shows that the percentage of black women you've attacked is far above the national average.

So, you know, feel free to carry on. I mean, I just, when he, when he started going after Simone Biles, I was like, why is this any of your fucking business? Like, just leave it alone, man. I mean, I do think this is something that happens with UK and US, which is there's a feeling that you have to have a take on everything, you know, that. that you can't ever walk away from a take. Even people, you know, even sort of people on our side of the aisle.

Do you find that? I mean, I feel like the most liberating thing in my life as a writer and as a pundit is that I don't have to have a take on everything. Yeah, you're 100% right on that. And you know why people get themselves into such a terrible bother? A young journalist died the other day, Aguador Dornposter, who was the sort of Guardian journalist. And shortly afterwards, this more right-wing commentator wrote a tweet, which is just this really just, I mean, not politics is just on a basic human level, just basically going, you know, I'm sorry she's dead, but on the other hand, ha, ha, ha, she's gone to hell. And you just think, like, my God, man,

like what the fuck happened to your moral foundation that you would ever find yourself writing such words? And I suspect that a lot of it, in these kind of instances, comes down to, they sit there, there's an event, and they think, well, I must offer my words on this particular development. And so they end up coming out with this kind of spiteful garbage. I think a lot comes down to this basic fact that we just don't know when you can allow things to play out without your participation. It's true. Now, let's just get back to the authoritarianism, because you have this interesting, you have a country with a lot of Russian authorities who have moved there, right? The sort of the people in, you're very connected to the sort of Russia-Kiev

world because of your location. Talk to me about, are you seeing authoritarian tendencies in Boris and also, this is like an annoying two-part question, but like we had a week of Tucker Carlson talking about how great Hungary is and how amazing the, you know, authoritarian dictatorships are. Are you seeing that and are you seeing this kind of like love affair with dictatorships? Yeah, well, so I think these two questions are part of the same process, right? I mean, Victor Orban in Hungary is the prototype. He is the totem from which all the guys around the world, when you look at sort of, obviously you look at Donald Trump,

when you look at the Brexit movement, when you look at, you know, even looking at Modi or Salvini in Italy, they all follow the same basic model. You talk about the will of the people. You act like you're the one that can mystically channel this will of the people, which is essentially a sort of ethnic idea. And you then define anyone who questions you, whether they're liberals or black,

matters activists or anyone else, are sort of enemies of the people or traitors to the country, and you start to dismantle the separation of power within the state, that obviously by this virtue of this narrative, it's something that gets in the way of view as the encapsulation of the will of the people. So you attack the courts, you attack the press, you attack the parliament. And that is exactly the process that we have seen in the UK. I mean, you guys have seen it obviously very, very dramatically,

you know, at the turning of the year just after the election. Now, we have seen that in a form of a series of pieces, of legislation, which have attempted to dismantle the separation of powers, which have tried to attack anything that potentially challenges the government. To take protests, for instance, right, Priti Patel, this quite staggeringly draconian home secretary who we've ended up with, even by the standards of that office, which are very fucking low indeed, has just passed something called the policing bill. One of the things the policing bill says is that they can essentially introduce restrictions

on a protest, which includes basically closing the protest down, you know, making announcements is closed down, and if you don't follow them, even if you haven't heard those announcements, you can be put in jail. Now, these restrictions can now be imposed if any police officer suspects that a single passerby might be alarmed by the noise of the protest. Essentially, this is the silencing of protests. And this bill was carried through explicitly because of Black Lives Matter and extinction rebellion protests. We'd see the same process taking place in the court. Two weeks ago there was a bill against judicial review, which essentially allows citizens to take the government to court, trying to dismantle judicial review, stop it from functioning. We see the same applied with asylum law, an attempt to criminalise. It just happened recently to criminalise anyone who offers help to someone to claim asylum, a provision which could include, by the way, the charity boats like the RNLI who operate in British waters, saving asylum seekers from dinghies when they capsize in the ocean.

in terms of criminalize them with jail sentences. So over and over, the legislation you see, it is absolute, pure, undistilled, 100% Victor Orban stuff. Except can you drive your car into protesters in the UK? Because in the US, you're allowed to do that now, which strikes me as not great. I should never discuss politics with Americans because they cannot want to pull the trump card on how to shit things like that.

I mean, I'm just saying, like that. That's a Florida thing. We don't have that in New York yet, but like, that's pretty good. Do you see any world in which, like, any of this gets, like, the Labor Party, like, where are you with Brexit? Like, what is your political future as a country looking like? Not great. So, look, the Tories maintain a really stubborn poll lead. They've done that really by taking their sort of 30% core conservative support and then adding on to it sort of working class, socially conservative vote. who previously backed Labor, but now on cultural issues

are supporting the Conservatives. And that is a real winning coalition that they've assembled there. However, there are some cracks. The polling is quite weirdly volatile. So we had an instance with a man called Dominic Cummings, who, if you haven't heard of him, you should try and continue that process

and avoid your mention. He was played by Benedict Cumberbatch in that Brexit film. I do like Benedict Cumberbatch. But yes, I agree. I do, too. I do, too. He's played better.

roles, I imagine, and lesbian ones. So he got caught last year in the middle of sort of lockdown. He was, you know, senior advisor to the prime minister and really the brains behind Brexit and the Prime Minister's election strategy. He got caught taking, you're going to fucking love this. He got caught taking a trip in a car with his family to a place called Barnard Castle when it was against the rules. People said, what the fuck are you doing? You know, you impose these lockdown rules. Everyone else is staying at home. Why are you traveling around? And he said, I'm not making this up. You can check it. He said, he'd had COVID. He was worried he was losing his vision.

So he put his family, his wife and children, into a car, and decided to test his vision by taking a journey that would take, I think it would take about half an hour, 45 minutes. That is an extraordinary thing to have said. Now, when that happened, the polling became very volatile, suddenly of a very sudden Tory decline in support. A year forward, we're starting to see that process again, a quite sustained decline in Tory support. So although it looks bad now, there is some evidence that the volatility of the polling, just these guys are beatable. But I've got to say, that is, you know, that is me at my more optimistic. The sun's out today, which never happens.

So maybe I've just got a funny brain. Who is the head of the Tory party right now? And is that person more slightly more electable? Oh, the Labor Party? Yeah, the Labor Party. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah. His name is Kea Starma.

He's more electable than Jeremy Corbyn. I mean, Jeremy Corbyn was a communist anti-Semite who refused to sing the national anthem. So you can imagine not a particularly, you know, electable for Labor. Yeah, I kind of felt like you guys were starting from behind there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was just a symbol of a nation just falling apart under its own idioccies, really. I mean, that's the point we just think, fuck. I mean, I do love my country, but they're really testing my ability to maintain that proposition.

So now there's Keir Starman. He's a former barrister. He's very intellectually impressive, quite forensic and he's thinking. He's really, I mean, the great gift he's given to British political life is he is fully challenging the anti-Semitism that took root in the Labour Party. And it's meant as much as people on the far left deny that it was there, they deny it over the voices of the Jewish Labour members who said again and again, this is what is happening.

And it is unbelievably finitioned. So he is tackling that head on. What he isn't, you don't want to go for a drink with him. No, but that's a real problem with a candidate. If people don't want to be their friend, they don't want to vote for them. So this is, and you see the thing is it's hard for me because I am also, you know, a North London liberal. So I do want to go for a grip with him because I think it's very interesting talking to

Barrister's about technical policy detail. Right. So that's a bit of an issue, especially when you're up against Johnston, because there's no, I say this from a deep place of resentment and hatred towards Boris Johnson. But we haven't had someone like him since Tony Blair, which is just the public really do quite like them. They want to see more of them. And on that basis, when you're up against him, when you are this kind of, you know, kind of boring, you know, policy, you know, decent-minded man with integrity and policy detail, that's really fucking hard. And that's the struggle that here is happening right now.

Yeah. Oh, so interesting. Will you please come back? Of course. Anytime. It's a pleasure. If we don't all die, please come back. Hey, folks, in case you don't know, we do a special bonus episode every single week

for Beasted Side Members, the Daily Beast Membership Program. This week we have a special episode with Carol Lenig and Philip Rucker. Co-authors of I Alone Can Fix It, and they're going to tell us about what was some of the stuff they haven't discussed that's in their book. So please be sure to not miss this special bonus episode.

To be able to hear it, along with all our past bonus episodes, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. Nikki Freed is Florida's Agricultural Commissioner who's running for Florida Governor against Ron DeSantis. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Nikki Freed. Thanks for having me. I'm thrilled to have you here.

Florida has become, unfortunately, for you, the central focus, and you are running for governor. What the hell is happening with DeSantis? You know, I wish I knew. You know, typically he follows polls and follows what the sentiments are, you know, to the very far right of our state, but he's even dropped 10 to 15 points in the polls in the last two weeks. I don't really understand what's going on. Every single time that he opens his mouth, I just am more flabbergasted about what comes out of it. You know, yesterday he was blaming immigrants for our COVID cases and for our hospitalizations, which is, you know, just, again, him hitting one community against the other, and it's not even true. And yelling at the president, who's all he's trying to do is try to be helpful and to give support and resources. But, you know, this governor has always been a hands-off approach. We knew that from last year. If it wasn't for our local governments and if it wasn't for

our, you know, our different corporations and local businesses, this is what we would have seen last year. And so now that our school boards and our local governments and our businesses are completely handcuffed about what they can do, so we're seeing cases rise and death tolls increasing and hospitalization increasing and people at capacity at hospitals, parents scared about kidding and their kids back into school next week. So we are in a crisis and this governor is raising money off of anti-Faouchi merch and going to other states to do fundraisers. It's really quite amazing. So the thing I want to talk to you about just because school is coming back, he has a mandate to defund schools for having mask mandates. That's just nothing but a Fox News talking point, right?

I mean, can he actually do that? Will he do that? Yeah. You know, not only was he threatening a special session, which I think that the leadership in both the House and the Senate said, we're not going to go that far. But he was threatening a special session to actually come in and mandate that they can. couldn't. But meanwhile, in our Constitution, the power of the health and wellness of our kids is given to our school boards. It's in our Constitution. And so what he's done is saying, look, if you put together a mask mandate for your community, you're not going to get funding.

And I call that authoritarian dictatorship. And unfortunately, the school boards don't know what to do. And so the governor isn't hurting our school boards or hurting our kids when he makes these statements. And he had just, and I hear from parents and from school board members, and I hear from board members and from teachers all over the state who are scared and don't know what to do. So right now you have 10,000 plus people in ICU beds. Are you going to run out of ICU beds? I'm hearing from a lot of our hospitals that they're at capacity and they're seeing more and more ICU beds and they're turning away non-emergency procedure patients. They're putting in additional parameters again on visitations into the hospitals. I hope we don't run out of ICU beds, but even just

regular beds, you know, for people that need to get there for, you know, for whatever reason, car crashes, you know, just heart attacks, are going to have problems getting in. There was a young woman who I met a few weeks ago who has a heart condition and she said that she has been going into the hospital because she's having problems and they didn't have a bed for her and they had her sleeping on a couch. That's what's happening here in our state. I was talking to another doctor, a physician down in Broward County. And I was like, what's going on? He was telling me that his nurse was feeling sick and he can't keep up with the appointments. And so she's home and he's doing his own blood work and drawing blood on his own.

And because he's overwhelmed and trying to just, a general practitioner, just trying to keep up with his own patients. It's a problem. Now, one of the real big problems in Florida is that you have a pretty low vaccination rate. I mean, it's in the 40s for the general population. it's higher for people over 80. But can you do anything when you have a crazy number one and number two in the state legislature? Look, that's why I'm going out every single day and doing my press conferences and giving information to the people and going on to TV stations both nationally and statewide and giving

the plea to the people of our state to go get vaccinated. Please do it. If we're not going to do it for yourself, do it. do it for your parents who got vaccinated, do your grandparents, do it for your kids or having to go back into school who may be too young to get vaccinated yet. Do it for our health care workers who have, for the last year and a half, have been out there every single day risking their own lives to save hours. So we live in a society that we aren't, we don't live in our own isolated world. We go to schools and we go to food stores and we go to the mall and we go to,

restaurants and to the gyms. And so we live in a community. And so I go back to like the Ten Commandments, love thy neighbor, you know, and that's what we're asking people do is to understand that they're part of a bigger society and do their part. Go get vaccinated. And so what I can do is just constantly be that voice of reason. I'm not calling on anything besides, you know, your own choice. But please, please, go do what to write for yourself and for your community and for and for the people around you. Speaking of authoritarian, overreach, one of the things that Ron DeSantis is doing currently,

which is just insane to me, is he's fighting with the cruise ship industry. Can you talk about that a little bit because aren't cruise ships a large part of your economy in Florida? Yeah, it's a huge part of our economy. I don't understand, you know, this Republican Party of today or maybe it's just the governor. You know, everything that I've ever been taught about the Republican Party

from growing up, I always say my dad is a diehard Republican, My mom is a diehard Democrat. I block my dad on social media. You know, but it's so, you know, so I have been taught to know what the Republican Party is supposed to be standing for. And that's less taxes, less spending, smaller government, local control, and free market. Right. And so when the cruise line industry, who is a significant impact into our economy here, not just bringing tourists in, but also just the amount of jobs and development that, we have based on the cruise line industry. And if the cruise lines are saying, look, we want to

protect our employees. We want to protect our patrons, the people that are coming on to our ships. And it should be their decision. If they know that they create, you know, it's either a mask mandate or vaccine mandate for if you're going to come onto the ship, if they know they're going to lose 10 to 15 percent of patrons, that should be their choice. Right. That's up to them. And unfortunately, more and more people that I hear says, look, if there's not going to be a vaccine, I'm not going to go. So you're going to see the opposite impact. And so this governor, again, has just dug in. He never admits when he's wrong or willing to pivot when it's not backed up by what the people of our state is. It's his way or the highway and retribution if you don't follow

his lead. You know, those are types of things that I hear about in Latin America and communist and countries. It's my way or the highway. And I'm going to hurt you if you don't follow my rule. Something I really want to talk to you about is Democrats have this opportunity with Florida. You are a really good candidate for governor. Val Demings is a really good candidate for senator to beat Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio is not that popular. He's like, you know, he's a, you know, I mean, I don't know, whatever. The only thing worse than what happened to the Trumpy candidates is what happened to the weirdly, like, sort of Trumpy candidates in the Republican Party. But my question for you is so much of winning Florida is about messaging well against, you know, what is happening in Cuba right now, you know, with the government in Cuba. America has a chance really to get involved in, in, I mean, I don't know.

I don't really understand how America can help in Cuba. But clearly, there are a lot of people hurting under communism and Democrats really need to take that messaging to constituents. Can you talk to me about that? Sure. You know, I've spent, you know, one, growing up in Miami, my back neighbors, friends that were Cuban, I heard all of their stories growing up. I, you know, my back neighbor, her parents, she came over from Cuba too as well as with her parents. So I visit her parents on Kayaocho, who never spoke any English and just understood kind of

the sacrifices that so many of our Cuban Americans, you know, had to go through in order to have a better way of life for themselves and for their families. And so what we're seeing is, you know, this Communist Party that is running Cuba that really has become dictators, you know, and we know that. You know, we've had the embargo on place for 60 plus years. The ruling class have had 60 years to figure out how to take care of their people. And they've chosen not to. And so what we've seen really is the last couple of years because, quite honestly, under an Obama administration, you know, provided access to the internet and tried to open up some of those airwaves. And so you saw, you know, since June 11th, I believe, the people of Cuba going to the streets and protesting and

demanding democracy, demanding a better way of life. And I think that it's been an accumulation of because of COVID, that there hasn't been a response that people are dying, people are sick, people are hungry. And so they're protesting. And it's imperative that we, as a country stand in unison, but it's not just us standing there. It's utilizing the power of the White House and the power of America to get the international community on board. I've spent a lot of time of the last, you know, since the protest started down in Miami, talking to Cuban leaders and from all walks of life, talking to a lot of the artists who were the ones who really jump started at this last round, the artists that both here as well on the island,

really empowering the people and empowering the people here in our country to stand in unison and in unity. And so it's important now that we take their message and make sure that we are as an international community putting additional demands on Cuba to do right by their people. And that is creating a democracy. And opening up democracy in Cuba is the way forward. And I know from my conversations, you know, there's a lot of new ideas. I was speaking to another huge Cuban influence or down in South Florida yesterday of other ideas to really hit on the financial backing of a lot of this regime and finding creative ways to kind of unravel because we don't know what's going on there. We don't know, you know, how many people are being put into prison for speaking out and protesting. But this is something that we've got to

stand strong on. We've got to call out communism. It's not working, obviously, in socialism over there is failed policies. And we've got to be working with our allies across the world to be demanding these changes in Cuba. It strikes me that the most important thing right now at first is to make sure they have internet. Is that right? Yeah, and there's conflicts that I'm hearing of whether or not they actually have internet again. What I think I've been told from the information that we're getting is that internet was down for two days. It has been back up. The situation is the fact that the Cuban government has blocked social media, which is what, as we all know, social media is a fantastic tool to organize me. Look what our march for our live kids were able to do through social media.

And change happens when you can talk to as many people. And I think, and getting stories back. You know, we were seeing stories coming out from Cuba because people were able to post on Instagram and Facebook and other social media venues. And so that, from my understanding, has been blocked is that social media avenues. And so that is, something that we've got to be focusing on and figuring out if there's a way that we can go around the Cuban government and get that access back to the people. And certainly that would be a helpful tool to organize and keep this fight going on the ground. Like it seems to me like there's a real authoritarian playbook for Republicans and a state like Florida where already DeSantis has

sort of gone in there and made it harder to vote. Are you worried that DeSantis will try to cheat and that you won't have a fair? Well, you know, I have, I know our Secretary of State. She and I actually went to undergrad and law school together. I know her ethics and her morals that she is above board and that she doesn't play those games. And I hope that she's got the courage and the strength that if any of that type of behavior is seeing that she will fight back, you know, she was a judge previously, has our bar license and certainly is going to jeopardize her future career for him. I'm hoping. And so it is going to be just something. imperative that our supervisor elections do everything possible. And, you know, but we also know the

narrative. We know that, God willing, I received the most amount of votes and I am declared victorious that this governor will do the same thing we saw from Trump and will try to challenge the validity of the elections and make people believe that there was a problem with the elections. I mean, we saw that even in our last legislative session. We had no issues whatsoever with our elections here in Florida except for the Republicans cheating by creating ghost candidates and funneling money to ghost candidates to run to siphon away votes from the Democrats. But yet in 2021 legislative session, they had one of the most egregious voter suppression bills that we've seen across the country.

And so they're going to find every way around creating open democracy and giving everybody an equal opportunity to have their voices heard and make it easier. You know, the only way that democracy works is when the people have access to the polls. And they're doing everything possible to claim, quote, unquote, you know, integrity of the election. Well, there was no problems with our 2020 election. And so this is just a mask for voter suppression. And we know that Democrats across the state are stepping up. They're educating the electorate. They're talking to supervise of elections to figure out ways to make sure that this election is run smoothly and that they're working around the new rules and changes. But it's going to be on the the people to recognize that what they tried to do was to silence your vote. And the only way to overcome that is by voting in masses like we've never seen before. And I know the people of our state are going to stand up against this dictator that we have here in our state and say enough is enough. We just want to get back down to just normalcy. And people who are going to run and rule and govern our state by morals and ethics and not play this partisan politics that really

hurts so much of our state. Is there anything else on the national media that we should be looking at? Where else can I start? I mean, the last two months of our state between increases of COVID cases, we have red tide that was devastating our West Coast again. Can you talk about the red tide a little bit? Yep. So red tide is a natural occurring in our waterways that creates a bacterial coming from off the coast. The problem is that humans have been exacerbating the situation. And we saw that in 2018, and that's from all types of nutrient runoffs from our land, from just pollution of the waterways. And we had about in, I want to say March or April, a spill in one called in Piney Point that

was, it was called a gypsons stack where it was from a phosphate mining company that stores all of its leftover toxic waters. And there was a spill that came out from Piney Point. tiny point, which dumped 200 million gallons of toxic water into the bay. And we and I, I and experts had predicted that red tide was going to come earlier, was going to come more severe, and was going to come more north than it had been previously. And that's exactly what happened. And unfortunately, I, you know, both myself and local governments in those communities, asked for the governor declare a state of emergency so we can utilize state, federal, local resources, experts. And instead,

said, governor went out to the area and said, it's not that bad. Well, you know, I've talked to a lot of our, you know, aquaculture and industry out there, our fishermen, our local businesses, our restaurants, our hospitals, and who are having to shut down or have to take less patrons or people just not not going because of the smell of the toxic and seeing of the dead fish that are coming up onto the shorelines. So dead fish are not good for tourism, is what you're saying. Not good for tourism. No, nope. And not. good for even, you know, homeownership prices, you know. So, so that was a major issue. And I was out there earlier this week. And I've been out there a couple times, too, doing our part and talking

about clean water and what we can do to really clean our waterways. So we had that issue. And of course, we had the devastation of what happened down in Miami at Surfside. And so I was down there as well for two weeks. heartbreaking. It was like a perfect storm. We've had deregulation of our condos. We've had deregulation of our condo boards. We've had deregulation of inspections, not seeing anything of hardening our coastlines. We see salt water intrusion coming through, and it was a perfect storm. And unfortunately, again, our governor's claiming it was an isolated incident. And I'm sorry, I still get daily pictures of residents all over our coastal community who are sending me pictures of the same type of water coming through in their garages and are scared.

and we need to be proactive and take this as an opportunity to fix those laws and make sure that something like this never happens again. So we have been all eyes on Florida. And then, of course, the Cuba protests, what's happened in Haiti, we have a tremendously large Haitian community. So we are in an interesting situation here in the state of Florida and unfortunately void of leadership as our governor is eyeing 2024 presidential is spending time all across our state, across our country, excuse me, fundraising, going to Alec conferences and pushing anti-mask rhetoric and selling merchandise on his campaign website, which basically says, don't vouchee my state. And kuzis, which talks about how could I be drinking a beer with a mask on, again, just not the right

messaging for our state. Yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. Well, I hope you'll come back closer to the election. Thank you so much, Nikki Fried. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you for having me on today. Hank Shienkopf is a veteran Democratic consultant and crisis manager in New York politics. Welcome to the new abnormal, Hank. Well, thank you for having me here. I'm very grateful to be with you. It's like New York politics for a minute is the center of the world. It often is, frankly, you know, because what happens here affects the world. And right now we are the world because Andrew Cuomo made himself the world during the COVID crisis.

Andrew Cuomo, there's no one who wants this. person to stay in office, right? Well, that's not exactly correct, Molly. I mean, he has, you know, when Richard Nixon went through the Watergate experience, I think the nation wanted him gone at about a rate of close to 80%. I may be exaggerating that in the polling data, it was pretty significant. If you look at the numbers, even I think the last couple weeks, Andrew Cuomo's job performance was still rated at about 50%.

And only 59% of the people, according to data, one him gone, the newest poll by Marist. That's not overwhelming. If he doesn't step down, he's going to get impeached and removed, right? Okay, well, you know, we've had a chief executive of the country who was impeached twice. Big deal. You know, I think the public's kind of glossed over that. What the opponents need to do is keep talking about what it is that he has done, what the report shows. And they also have to hope that the district attorney in Albany County, which is the most likely spot, will indict him and arrest him.

And then there's also New York and Westchester. If they do, let's see, it takes a long. time to build the case. The findings that the Attorney General, Attorney General Lettisha James put together, you know, have been given over to those prosecutors. But Albany County is the first place of activity. You know, indicting someone for these things, they're taken down the governor. I was, I've been there. I've been at this movie where it helped when a governor was, had to resign. Details, please. Jim McGreevy. I'm, I was called in that morning. I did the PR. Clips are pretty clear. I, you know, I worked on that. And it's not so simple to remove a governor and to

live with the consequences of it. And things do get messy. So the legislature is looking for a way to get out of the trouble they think they're going to face when in fact, it might not give them exactly what they want. How could it not give them exactly what they want? Because they'll have more chaos in some ways. There'll be a complicated governor's race. The legislature probably believes on the assembly side that the progressives, the DSA people, as in Democratic Socialists of America, who bested them in primary contests last year will somehow be cited by this, which is not the case.

When you're building a social movement, you're less concerned about winning electoral contest than you are about winning future electoral contests and having more people stand up for what you want. So they're missing that one. The Democrats in the state senate will look and say, well, you know, this means that the Republicans will have less to fetch about

and less to beat us up with that we can hold on to our majority, which they're going to hold on to, the majority anyway, they might go down seats. But what will happen here, if crime continues to rise, and once Andrew Cuomo has gone, that, that steaming pot on the stove that he's been keeping the cover on, which is that top of that. And what you'll see is more concerns about crime and probably in escalation. There's some changes. Wait, why would there be an escalation in crime? Because the bail reform is a real issue in New York

State. We have people, some of them arrested 75 times who are running that around the streets and shooting people. You know, the legislature is not going to want to deal with that. There'll be nobody in the bully pulpit of the governor's office. He's already talked about and hinted that changed part. So that's one. Crime. And the real issues of crime will suddenly pop up again.

You've had a crime increase throughout New York State. But you've had that everywhere. But you've had that everywhere because of the pandemic. Correct. Part of it's the pandemic. And part of it is we have more guns on the street and people shooting each other. Right. But New York doesn't have more guns on the street than Florida or Texas.

Well, New York. has more illegal guns, I would bet for capital. Florida, you can get them. But my point is, I mean, wouldn't the math be Cuomo's out, the lieutenant governor takes over? Well, it also with this impeachment move in the assembly, isn't that a big threat to him? It's a threat to him. And I said publicly some time back, unless you indict the guy, it's going to be harder to get him out of there. But going back, so he takes his hands off the pot, at the top of the pot, the top of us flying,

people suddenly see the problem, which is real budget issues. real Medicaid problems that are, you know, hardly hard to solve. The city of New York is in serious financial trouble. I mean, crime is up, all these things. Suddenly not be focused on any of the sexual harasser. So you think Cuomo is actually good for Democrats? This is something I have not heard. No, I think they're in a difficult position.

I don't think it's about FOMO's good or bad. And what you find, and you both know this, I mean, when there's a sense that things are out of control, which crime is reflective of, things are out of. control. They can't be managed. Republicans tend to do better, and Republicans tend to do better in midterm elections. Yeah. So, I mean, are you saying that you think it's going to be the Andrew Giuliani governorship now? Nah, not Andrew Giuliani. Zeldon's the watch because he's from the suburbs. Yeah, but Zeldon is like so stupid. I mean, my Chinese Crested is smarter than Zelda. You're very funny. It's true. I mean, I, it's New York. It's not North Dakota. I mean,

I mean, we don't want our governor to be a complete and total moron. Well, you know, Zeldon is a very good political operative. And the Trump thing will dissipate once if things get out of control here. You know, he's a Trump guy. He's a very Trumpy guy. It'd be very less important than the chaos that is here. I mean. But how can a congressman from, you know, Long Island?

I mean, how does that make you? I mean, yes, he's more qualified than Andrew Giuliani, but that's not a huge stretch. I'm a Democrat, but I'd make this, this kind of analysis. I'm just making analysis. I'm not taking value judgments about it. I can tell you what I really think we won't be permitted to be on the air. Right. We'll be off and this will be done.

No one will listen to you anymore. Some might, they like pretty colorful language and crazy behavior. That's our brand. Yeah, it's okay. But anyway, go on, yeah. Yeah, George Battacki was a state senator from Peakskill, right? Running against the three-term governor named Mario Cuomo, who beat him. So, stranger things have happened.

Al Damado, when he ran for U.S. Senate, was a supervisor from the town of Hempstead on Long Island. I mean, you know, anything can happen in a crazy time. I wouldn't hold up Demado. I mean, Pataki, at least, I mean, Demado is really, was, you know, ended up that. I don't think anyone wants that. I mean, Pataki, at least. You know, people are crazy. We don't know what they want until they get in the bony booth and until things are, you know, until we get it, until we know what's going on.

a particular time in history. Voters respond, let me, you know, is the guy who lost the mayor election. I didn't do the campaign, thank goodness, in New York City. And he said to me, I said, Tim, what happened? He said, look, I just wasn't what they wanted at this time. Right. We don't know what people are going to want next year.

But do you see a good Democratic candidate for governor? There's going to be a line around the block. Right. But Patricia James could follow the Andrew Cuomo mode, which is, which is he was the attorney general who watched this, Spitzer leave office. Spitzer was terrific. He said, to those who much is given, much is expected. Okay, this is not, when did we talk? What is this a Shakespearean play? And he's up and walked out the door, you know, after getting caught with a with a hooker, which is okay. I mean, you know, people live there all life. I was going to say in Shakespeare, they had invented the concept of sleeping with prostitutes with your socks on yet.

I was just, I literally wanted to bring up the socks thing, but I didn't want to seem anti-feminist. Well, so what happens? there was Andrew Cuomo was the Attorney General, Leticia James, the Attorney General. The Governor left. Spitzer got in trouble. Cuomo gets in trouble. Hulco becomes Lieutenant Governor. She was weak. They think Patterson was very

weak. Somehow Patterson make him believe he can't run. He has a scandal with an aid. He doesn't run. He has a scandal. Guess what? So suddenly the Attorney General shows up, one named Cuomo. He makes sure that the Democratic Convention State Committee will not

allow anybody else on the ballot. Good move, right? And here comes the governor. So why can James do the same thing? I don't know. Well, she said it's like she can. Yep, she can. A lot of people want to draw parallels between what happened in the New York City mayor's race where we elected in a primary, a Republican. It strikes me as a lot of stuff went wrong for progressives. A lot of this stuff went wrong for progressive was just the wrong moment. I'll tell you why. I said that Adams would win. I'm the idiot that predicted Trump would win.

God will punish me for that. I predicted that in May of 2016. Yeah, was that the year? And I said that in January that year that he would be the Republican nominee and people wanted to throw sticks to me, which is good they did some of them. Then in the question here, so getting back, you know, in predicting things, well, what are we trying to find out? I mean, I always thought Adams would win because he had a constituency. And people knew him in Brooklyn and the Bronx and Queens.

And they were excited about him. And they knew who he was. And I thought those people would come out for him because he had been his Brooklyn Borough president. And he knew the voters. And you know, with the Democratic primaries, it's very much the people who vote in Democratic primaries. That's true. You know, that's true. And ranked choice voting complicated.

Although the pundits who say rank choice voting is wonderful, why question of sanity. I'm not even sure. Does rank choice voting do anything? It doesn't seem to do shit. It definitely does something. Come on. It does.

It does something. It reduced the cost of elections, as we've seen, right? Not necessarily by getting rid of the runoff. So that's true. That's valuable. Right. I think it makes things much more complicated, but going back to Adams and we'll come back to the rank choice.

I thought from the beginning that Adams would be the nominee, and I'm not involved with him in any way professionally or otherwise. And I, for the purpose of non-conflict. So I look for this as that Adams, why? Because the crime thing, you know, even liberals don't like guns pointed in their faces. That's number one. Number two, in New York City overall, what we saw in that race was three distinct social classes. The professional class, which lives in Manhattan who voted for Garcia. That's who I voted for. The progressive class, which lives somewhat on the Upper West Side, but large, but a lot in the brownstone and gentrified Brooklyn, okay? And then we saw everybody else. Right. And they voted for Maya Wiley.

The progressives voted for Maya Wiley, but the blue collar world, which is largely black African-American and Caribbean American, voted for Eric Adams. They are very much like the people I came from the white, blue-collar working class people of the city who voted for the conservatives on a more regular basis are people with their values. Ed Koch was a classic example. Rudy Giuliani was an example. And Mike Bloomberg to some extent. Although Mike Bloomberg, in his re-election,

when it was in his re-election, I think 2005 versus Freddie Pereer, the then-Ber president of Bronx, or the former then-Ber President of Bronx, that he got, let's see, 70% plus of Caribbean homeowners in that election, which is fascinating. You know, so the city is going through another demographic shift of significant consequence.

it is becoming younger and whiter. And if you know that work itself out with the votes that Maya Wiley and got in some of the votes that Garcia got. The thing I was struck by was that photo right after he got elected of him at Reyes was Bo Diedel and Castamettees. It wasn't the best idea. But, you know, there's a certain amount. I wouldn't, you know, have Bo Diedel, a retired cop, kind of interesting your character, John Casmetis, very, very successful guy who started out. made a very rosy picture of these two characters. I know I was going to say,

Bodido, and then Casamettees, have you ever been to Gristidis? Yeah, I have, actually. And the first time I met John Cassidy, he put in context. He had a supermarket on the west side, and he was sitting upstairs looking through the,

I was there with him, and, you know, you could look through the slot upstairs to see he was stealing in the aisles. I mean, that's the first thing. I'm just an analyst. I'm not a judgeer. Oh, I'm a judge who had an analyst.

But, you know, that was not the best, photo to produce. It's kind of the victory tour Eric Adams' take, and that was one of them. They was accepted by some people with a lot of money, and he still likes being around ex-cops like Bodhita. Okay. In the restaurant that some people would wonder who operates

and why they're there in the middle of East Harlem with limousines parked outside. Well, this was very interesting. Thank you so much for coming on. Please come back soon. Any time you'd like. I had fun. I hope you enjoyed it. And we'll witness the end of Western civilization together. Yeah, let's hope.

What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Tsubisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. And now it is time for our one segment.

That's right, Molly. It is time. The segment when we talk about those of you who have disappointed us, who have let us down, who have been not doing their best. Who has been doing their fasciest, Molly? I would like to talk about a man who puts the fun in fascism. You know, he used to put the fashion in fascism when he wore those little boties. Tucker Swanson, fish stick, McCartian, waspy, terrifying, only smart person at Fox News who's going to destroy society as a whole has taken his show on the road.

And he's picked a natural place to go and broadcast. which is Hungary. Molly, let's be honest here. Huge summer in Hungary before the pandemic. Come on. Let us just say that he is being paid to give a speech by Victor Orban's. Well, he's not being paid by the government, but he is being paid by some kind of, you know, convention, a sort of Hungarian CPAC.

I mean, you know, he may also be renovating a kitchen. But he's super excited about fascism. He wants his viewers to know. that there's this great country called Hungary where they don't allow immigration. They do all of the things that American, all of the things that American democracy are so famous for, like nothing

that American democracy is supposed to do. And he did, he said, Tucker Carlson said that he went to the Hungarian border and saw order and clarity, declaring that Orban's wall works. Carlson also, when talking to Hungarian officials on the border, he told them he found it embarrassing to be an American. There's an interesting thing that I think as we're talking about here, which is that Fox News has convinced its viewing public that there's a terrible crisis on the border. Now, is there a terrible crisis on the border?

I mean, it's sort of about the same as it always is. This is more just like this is one of those things that remember Republicans think they can win on. And so they win on it, you know, and they bring it up during the midterms, and they bring it up during times when they think it can help them. So the idea is that basically this narrative is that Joe Biden is letting migrants in so that Democrat, so they'll vote Democratic, which, again, it's hard enough to get citizens to vote. They're not going to get these guys to vote. But okay. And it's not how it works. And it's not easy to vote.

And the whole thing is completely nuts. But so Tucker Carlson is taking this one step further and wants everyone to know how exciting and fun fascism is. Victor Orban, you know, kills critics. His country is not all that different from Cuba. It's a complete disaster. So Tucker Carlson wants to do it. But what it seems like, which is really scary, is that Fox News is just now shopping fascism in the hopes of making their audience decide that that's something fun. Yeah. Speaking of our least favorite fascists, my fuck that guy is one Santa Monica Gerbils, Stephen Miller. Also a fascist? Yes. And this is the funny thing. So he spoke at this young conservatives convention just yesterday. Whenever they're behind closed doors amongst their people, they say things like, oh, it was great. We were mean to those immigrants.

Oh, we made sure to ruin their lives. And then once they're on TV, it's like, we're just protecting the borders. Oh, we're polite buttoned up policy people. When really at the heart of everything they do, it is always that thing of that they know the media will treat them as the polite and buttoned up people if they talk that way when they're on TV. But they get away with all this shit because the media only responds to what they say on public that they can pull from news clippings instead of what they say at these conventions behind closed doors. Yeah. Well, fuck. San Monica Carballs.

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