The Daily Beast Podcast - The ‘Pissed Off’ Kansas Women Who Told Abortion Foes to Shove It

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Levy, along with host Molly Jong-Fast, discuss the conservative state’s rejection of the anti-abortion measure after nearly 60 per cent of voters dismissed the move. Then, Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of Media Matters, debunks a study by Nielsen media research claiming that the top rated news show among Democrats between 25 and 54 is Tucker Carlson. The study says that in total debut viewership, Fox news grabs 42% of Democrats. Also, The Daily Beast’s congressional reporter Sam Brodey discusses how the Senate and Congressional map is changing to a more optimistic map for Dems. 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 Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. 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. And 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. This is a great show today. First, we're going to be joined by Angela Kurosone, who's, of course, the president and CEO of Media Matters for America.

He's going to talk to us about this talking point about how many Dems watch Fox News that we just didn't think smelled right to us. Then Daily Beast congressional reporter Sam Brody is going to join us to talk about what's going on with all these primaries as well as what's been happening in Congress. But first, let's have some fun. Andy. Andy Levy. Molly, Molly, John Fass. I can't tell you the joy I have about this Kansas vote. It's partially because Kansas did actually that all these women, 70% of the people who registered to vote after the Dobbs decision were women,

pissed off women. So I'm delighted that these furious women went and said, Kansas get out of my cooch. Can I say that? You just did. And I'm delighted for them, and I'm delighted for these women. But I am also delighted to see the pundant class so wildly wrong when they told, I mean, I have to tell you, that Friday, June 24th seared into my mind when Roe was overturned, Dobbs was overturned, Dobbs was decided. It was, Casey and Roe were overturned.

It was like one of these things where I was, I was. so devastated and I went to my usual news sites and were greeted with pieces such as abortion might not be the wedge issue it used to be Sarah Igers-Flores because after 50 years of abortion politics sorting voters maybe there's no one left to lash back oh there's a lashback baby. So I'm happy to see a lot of pundits, a lot of right-wing pundits who were anti-choice, get their heads handed to them. And also, they're very mad. I mean, there's a certain person who's not very famous in real world, but who is Twitter notorious called Baseball Crank. Baseball Crank is melting down. Yeah, we learned a couple of things here. One is women be

voting. And we also learned that conservatives have a coastal elite problem. So you have people like The Baseball Crank and Eric Erickson and people like that who are outraged by this Kansas vote, which is odd because I thought they were all state's rights guys. But it turns out, as usual, states rights never means what they claim it means. States rights is like just what they say when they want something to get overturned by the Supreme Court. Yeah, it's something they say when they want. somebody's rights to be taken away. So baseball crank was upset and he talked about how horrible the voters of Kansas are. And Eric Erickson thought that the ballot measure itself, the wording was perhaps too complex for the average Kansas voter because obviously people from Kansas are really,

really done. They're just a bunch of hicks standing around with a piece of straw between their teeth. I would like to mention that because I have written about this recently, the amendment was called, and you tell me if this isn't stacking the motherfucking decks, the amendment was called value them both, which sort of placed a blastula on the same moral plane as a fully grown adult woman. Value them both. Or a 10-year-old female child, yeah. Right, a 10-year-old child bearing birth machine. But yes, very fucking annoying. It's always these white Republican men who are just the most devastated about abortion. They just...

Yeah, I know this isn't true, but it's almost like what they really want is control over women's bodies. It's almost like that. Like, that's really what they want here. But I can't say that because they claim that's not the case. But look, so this thing passed almost 60%.

It was 59-31, I think, something like that. That's pretty damn huge. Like, I don't know that I thought. it was going to pass by that kind of margin. It's gratifying, and I'm glad it did. I guess the question now is, because it's not enough, particularly you have a personality like mine, you can't just sit back and say, oh, well, that was good. You have to say, okay, but is this good going forward? Is it going to be hopeful? I think it's good. It's really good. It means people are galvanized and furious. And if that's happening in red states, that's happening everywhere.

I guess the question is, and you might probably know you can maybe answer this for me, because you are far more studied on this issue than I am, is Kansas red state comparable to an Alabama or Mississippi red state? But that's okay, because Alabama is the most anti-choice state there is. They're very anti-choice, but it doesn't matter because this is not, Democrats aren't going to ever win, or at least they're not going to soon win Alabama, and they don't need to, right? They need to win suburban voters, and those are the women in Kansas.

What I think is, I think, look, the way I felt was, The day that Roe was overturned, I got 10 million emails and phone calls. And I saw on Instagram, those were just from Pelosi. That's right. People who never opposed about politics in a rage, right? I saw that there was in my little anecdotal circle a lot of fury. And I wondered why the mainstream media was just treating it like business as usual. And I think people on the conservative side were excited and they thought, like,

Maybe people don't care about Roe anymore. Maybe this fight is over. They had it for 50 years. They don't know what it was. A lot of the issues about, for example, in 1973, you had women with septic abortions in, you had hospitals that had these wards of septic abortion wings because women had had these bad abortions. Now it's a very different situation. We have abortion pills.

So I think some of these conservatives thought that this problem would go away and people would just magically at babies, or they didn't give a fuck. More likely they didn't give a fuck. But what I think a lot of us didn't foresee, including myself, were these situations where you would have doctors refused to treat women, which was originally why in 1973 they did this wide abortion where they said everyone could have abortions period, paragraph, because you had doctors who didn't want to treat miscarriages. You had doctors who refused to treat pregnant women. You had doctors going to jail and all of that, you know, it's in some ways it's these women were not given. The way that Roe was decided, it wasn't decided on equality, right? It was decided on privacy.

And it was decided that way because it wasn't about women being equal. It was about doctors not getting in trouble. It was about protecting the status quo in its own strange way. So I think a lot of these conservatives got very psyched and thought they would like sneak one by the goalie and what they didn't realized was that the stories that we're going to start coming out were these stories of these women who couldn't get care, right? Which is women who having miscarriages and can't get a DNC. I mean, that kind of thing. And then I also think they didn't realize like that once they had gotten this overturned, they then would have to deal with actual abortion policy. And they weren't prepared for that because they don't give a shit. No, I think you're right. And I think that those stories, the horrific stories that we saw in up to and including the poor little 10-year-old girl who got raped. Where the Wall Street Journal called it a story, too good to be true.

Too good to be true, right, yeah. Too good to be true. But also, as you said, the stories of the women who were forced to, they had to carry a non-viable fetus for extra days and suffer pain because doctors were too scared to do the abortion until a certain threshold was met that they thought would not land them in jail or whatever. And I think when you see those stories and conservatives have tried really hard to shoot down those stories and to blame those stories on the doctors themselves and stuff like that. And I think you're right.

There's a reason that conservatives don't want those stories circulating. And it's because it's really hard to hear those stories. And even if you're, look, it's hard enough as a man to hear those stories and think, my God, this is what women are going to have to go through. But I think I would imagine for women hearing those stories, even if they're sort of on the, well, I think abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. Or personally, I'm pro-life, but it's not my. But I think you get people like that sort of in the center who hear those stories and can easily imagine that being them or their daughter or whatever. And suddenly they're like, oh, this is not what I signed up for or this, and this is not what I wanted when I said that, well, I think abortions. should be a last resort or however they feel about it in their own head.

So I think you're right. And I think it's a really, really good point that all those horror stories that started coming out and really maybe played a role in Kansas and will continue to play a role across the country. And that conservatives will try their absolute best and will basically do what they tend to do, particularly these days, which is lie and make things up and blame the victims and stuff like that, but they will do whatever it takes to try to minimize those stories, but I don't think they're going to be able to because the stories are just too horrific. And they're true. They happen to be

true. So it's hard to fight against that sometimes. For sure. I mean, this is one of these situations where winning is losing for Republicans. And I don't think they understand that now they've done it, right? You have no reason to ever vote Republican. I mean, the people who were pro quote unquote life. I mean, I don't I don't know. I just think that ultimately, for them, this is a whole batch of problems they didn't even see coming. And I love to see it. I hate to see women suffer, but I love to see Republicans in disarray. And the results of this are terrible. But this is what they wanted and they got it. So. No, absolutely. And look, pretty sure we've talked about this on the pod, I've been Mr. There's a huge red wave coming in November. And even I'm now like, maybe not. And it could well be that this was. was the turning point that six justices maybe cost the Republicans' majorities, at least the Senate, if still not sure about the House. I mean, also the Republican Senate candidates are terrible. There's absolutely that.

It's not like they're running like these great, brilliant people. No. But you know what? They've done pretty well in the recent past by not running great candidates. So as much as I agree with that, and I do also think that they're my. be this sentiment that maybe, hey, we don't want these guys passing a national anti-abortion bill. Right. I mean, that's certainly true. And more people turned out in this primary, this Kansas primary, than any primary ever for Kansas. So clearly, choice is an issue. I think so. And to have people

like Mike Pence and others saying that they want a federal law. Suddenly, they're not state rights guys, of course. I mean, we could do hours on how hypocritical they're. are when they talk about state's rights. But the fact that they're already talking about a federal law ending abortion all across the country, I think that coupled with these stories that we've seen may be a difference maker in November. I do want to say, like, it is amazing to me that we're in this period right now where there's like a ton of legislation going on. Biden killed this terrible terrorist. So it's going to happen in reconciliation if it happens. But The Biden world seems to have maybe negotiated.

Again, it's still got to get through cinema, a prescription drug plan. There's infrastructure. There's climate. There's killing terrorists. It does seem to me, and again, I understand that Biden has these bad approval ratings, but it does seem to me he's doing a lot of stuff. Yeah. I mean, look, recently there's been some stuff going on, and I don't know if maybe COVID

has given him superpowers. I mean, right? I mean, it works in the Marvel and D.C. worlds when, something bad happens, radiation or a bite from an animal, you get powers from it. Yeah, it's what happened to me. And he says, you know about these things? Can you answer this for Molly and I? When you get those new powers, do you get a new name just as he's got dark branded as a new name?

You don't get it. I mean, you have to figure that out on your own. But don't you get eyes that glow? You do sometimes, depending on the powers. Absolutely, absolutely, particularly if your powers are of a dark nature. I mean, I have fire eyes, but that's just because I'm always. eating on the podcast. No, I am not always eating in the podcast. Maybe less eating and more eye drops, more eye drops to cool the fire eyes. Anyway, the joke is the meme universe, the internet.

You can find this in our non-existent show notes, has embraced this idea of dark Brandon. Anyway, so Brandon, so dark Brandon, ergo, that is all. Well, yeah, look, I mean, it's funny. The funny part is sort of the Democrats or whatever sort of reclaiming the Brandon thing. Right, exactly. It's a rebranding. And, I mean, that itself is just kind of funny. And look, he's done stuff lately. He killed Al-Zawahiri.

And although I've been told that because nobody on TikTok cared about that, it doesn't matter. They don't care about that. Yeah. I feel like most people on TikTok aren't old enough to vote. Probably, so. I don't know. I'm not sure that it matters. I recently learned about pink sauce, so I'm a little behind.

But yeah, I think all of us unfortunately learned about pink sauce. But look, I think it's the dark brand and memes are fairly funny. But gas prices are going down. Some of it is not him. Some of it is gas prices go up in the summer and then they start coming down towards the end of the summer. No, but that's not what's happening here. This is gas prices manipulated by Russia.

I mean, but they are going down, yes. Yes, but my point is he got blamed for things that weren't his fault, and now he's maybe getting credit for things that also probably aren't his fault, yes. Right, exactly. Which is fine. I mean, that happens to every president. But he also, look, if this environment bill goes through, if cinema, her asking price from her donors was too high when they didn't come through for her and she ends up voting for it, that's a good thing. Killing Al Zohiri was a good thing. So let's see what happens.

But I think the important thing here is still that it's sort of the Democrats reclaiming Brandon. Yeah. And I mean, I think this is a moment of Democrats taking awful Republican trolling and sort of giving it their own spin. For example, we saw that woman, Olivia Giuliana, who was on this podcast last week, she has continued to raise millions of dollars because Matt Gates said she wasn't attractive enough to impregnate. I mean, so like there is a sense in which. Democrats are actually starting to like hit back. And dark Brandon would be that, of course, probably very unlikely that members of the Biden administration know anything about these dark Brandon memes. But it is like a weird phenomenon of being so uncool, you're cool, right? No, absolutely. But I think you're right. The bigger point here is that in sort of reclaiming this,

the Democrats and the left are doing what Republicans in the right usually do, which is take things like and destroy their meanings. like woke and stuff like that. So it's nice to see people on the left sort of doing this sort of a taste of your own medicine. Oh, you, because you couldn't, I mean, for such a long time, the whole Brandon thing was just so annoying on the right. Because it was just lame.

And it was just, they were all doing it and it just got really boring. And I mean, I think Federman has been a really good example. I was going to say he's one of the few. I do want to see Pearl Jam record a song called Federman based on their song that was called Better Man, and I don't know why they haven't done that. Molly, that wasn't for you. Angela Curasoni is president and CEO of Media Matters for America. Welcome back, Frequent Flyer, to the new abnormal, my friend, and now I'm going to get your wrong, your name wrong.

There you go. That's it. Angelo. Thank you. Molly and I both took pause when a recent guest cited this study. as justification of why you go on Fox News. And the study just didn't smell good to us because it says the top rated news show among Democrats between 25 and 54 is Tucker Carlson.

In total day viewership, Fox News grabs 42% of Democrats and 50% of younger independents watch Fox all day. Debunk this for us. So we thought who better to ask about if this is real or not? So I know this study. The study comes from Nielsen Media Research. And whoa, are there a lot of problems with this? And I just want to start by saying that at the top, there is not anyone in the actual industry that takes this seriously. All right. So that seems important.

It is like the industry standard from, say, the 50s, 60s and 70s. Obviously, a lot's changed since then in terms of consumption habits. But essentially, here's where that study comes from and why it's really, really, really bad. So basically, they're Nielsen, which is the TV ratings company. The way they work basically is they send out these random solicitations to people. asking them to put a piece of material in their house, a box, basically, that tracks their consumption habits. And then on top of that, they ask them to participate in like these surveys and other things. And they basically give you $10 a month if you do it. And so it's like, you know,

big payout. And in total, they have about, they claim to have about 40 to 42,000 people that have these boxes. In reality, the number of actual people using it is probably generously, maybe half of that. So let's even be like, let's even give them 20,000 people. Yeah. So let's say basically all of this data is worked off of a box with 30,000, we'll even just give them, we'll split the difference. 30,000 boxes is what they base this off of. Here's where it gets a little bit spotty and why that number is completely and totally not credible. And I understand the sentiment and why people are, why some interested parties, especially a group of consultants these days that increasingly advocate for going on Fox News, want to use that stat. But the truth is it actually does matter a lot

for people to know why this is wrong for a variety of reasons. So basically, here's how it works out. Nielsen knows that their data is kind of spotty. So what they do is first, just like to get the ratings, right? And this is where you get to the second data set, which is like the Democrats. Well, they do a series of modeling called extrapolation. And basically what they do is they say for every one person that is in our Nielsen box that has a Nielsen box, today we're going to say one equals 100. But by the way, that number changes all the time. Tomorrow, one equals one million. Some days, one equals 500. Some days, the number is different depending on what second data set they have you identified as. So, for example, if you're a rural box, one equals

100. If you're a city box, one equals five million. For the same show. And that's how they get the ratings. Yes, they extrapolate. That's why I'm saying it's really unsurious. I know that like most people take TV ratings and like, oh, the ratings and that's it. I get it. It's the data set that's available. But the reality is that it is a really, really, really, really rough estimate. And this is why that data, so that's partly why the numbers are so wild, right? Is that what ends up happening is that Nielsen is oversampled in rural areas. Right? They know this. They know that the participants in the box, there are more rural Nielsen boxes and Nielsen boxes. Cities obviously tend to vote more democratic. Nielsen knows this. So when they

create their models, they change the ratios. So one rural box might equal 100 viewers. One city box may equal 100,000 viewers. And again, it literally changes day-to-day show-to-show, and they don't disclose it. The only thing they disclose is that they've changed. the model that the model changes that fluidly and dynamically. Like, it is that prim. And here's the thing. The Nielsen Media Research is sort of a separate company that uses Nielsen's data. They're obviously the same connected, but they use their separate entity. They obviously have to sell stuff, right? So they actually do the worst form of modeling, which is that they only use one data set, this one block. They extrapolate, which is what I was saying before. Now, that just gets you,

your ratings. Then they have to put other data on top of it. They guess. They literally guess. Well, the average ratio of Democrat. Oh, there's a Democrat in the household, so we'll count it as a Democrat. Yeah, the people in this geographic community tend to vote Republican, 80%. So we're going to sample our sample. We'll say 80% of the boxes in that town are Republican, 20% are Democrats. It's really that in percent. It's all guessing. So basically, when people say, and I could literally talk about this for hours. I know, but my background, I literally do the ad stuff. Like, that's my my, I was to do media matters and that's my real job. But like, what got me into all of this was corporate advertising work, right? And sort of using corporate advertising as a tool to sort

of adjust what was and was not acceptable and sort of try to eliminate some of the perverse incentives. So I got really deep into this. And the reality is that it's not, it's not, it's not considered reliable for viewership. It is absolutely not, considered reliable for ideology. There's not a single entity that would accept that as a reliable benchmark. Nielsen ratings are bullshit. They are. They really, they really truly are. They're a really rough snapshot. They're not even like, they're not just like a stick figure drawing. They're like the abstract stick figure drawing that like, you know, an 18 month old would draw, right? They're sort of like, you can kind of figure out where the pieces are. So my fellow Democrats are

not sitting around watching Tucker Carlson. No, no, they're not. I mean, in the few that are are either hate watching or lying to themselves. Right. Or they're Republicans. Yes. And the data really is radically oversampled. And they know this. And what I would say is that also, if you're Nielsen, right, you have a vested interest. And Fox aggressively promotes these data points because it looks good for them. It helps them, you know, increase their advertising rates.

This is partly why I've been so deep in this. And carriage fees. That's correct. And so there is a little bit of an incentive to make sure that your numbers are modestly balanced. They actually do oversample. What will end up happening basically is they'll say, okay, we had 60 Nielsen boxes watching Tucker tonight. All right. So five of them were in places that tend to vote Democrat.

Those equal 100,000. And then the other boxes are 800. That sounds right. I'm not kidding. I'm not even being sarcastic. Right. Quite literally how they do it. And so if you're making big decisions about where to advertise or in theory, if you actually

were, you know, trying to make real strategic decisions about making, you know, about consulting, you would realize that you should take this information with a grain of salt. So that's not the short of it. Obviously, that's a lot of like Randy Wendt. But the truth is that that is, it's a really unsurious data point that is not accurate at all. But I understand the sentiment. But is it still the standard in which people get ratings? Yes and no.

I mean, a lot of other places use their own models and their own data points. They use they'll use Nielsen as one feed. There's two ways that you can do this sort of like predicting. One is called extrapolation, which is that you take one data set, right? And then you just like do all the stuff I was saying before. You sort of draw all these inferences and conclusions based on that one data set. Interpolation is when you say, okay, I'll use more than one dataset and try to sort of line them up and make slightly more precise data sets. So to your question about the ratings,

a lot of minute by minutes, which is when you look at your ratings in real time, are sort of like done through interpolation, which is like they'll say, okay, we get some meals and data, we get our own data, we know what our streaming is, we kind of add it up, they have a formula, and they mostly use that for themselves and then maybe some marketing work. And then if you're a major media buyer, and by major, I mean companies that are spending a billion plus dollars in advertising, you actually, you do your own. You have your own system. Yes.

Yeah, so that makes more sense. Totally. It is all nonsense. And that is the bottom line. And if CNN wasn't always owned by a cable company or often owned by a cable company, you would have actually seen CNN out there much more aggressively fighting the Nielsen ratings because I think that you can make a really strong argument based off of the way that the data works out, that CNN actually has more viewers.

And Fox actually has slightly less viewers than they say, according to. to Nielsen's ratings, but CNN just doesn't care enough to fight, and they don't want to deal with, like, the monopoly arguments that come from that, because again, they've always been, but traditionally been owned by a carrier up until recently. But now that they're owned by Discovery, I bet you watch. In the next year or so, you're going to start to see a lot more aggressive pushback from Discovery on chipping away at what Nielsen is saying the number of viewers are on CNN, and they're going to start releasing their own data to basically show that the numbers are wildly being, like, deflated. Very interesting.

So another thing we wanted to ask you about was John Stewart went on Newsmax and Fox News. Fox News, you went on the more serious, again, to say serious, it's still wildly skewed. But Newsmax, I mean, John Stewart is probably the biggest guest to ever go on Newsmax. What do you think of that? I think it's okay sometimes. I like to win. Right. And I think that the thing ultimately is that I also understand that elections or policy fights are about,

are about, I mean, I'm a campaigner. I'm an organizer. And sometimes you have to engage in ways that are atypical or out of the sorts. But the difference maker there is that there's a really clearly stated objective, right? And there's two things I would say about John Stewart's point. And I think he's really careful about this. One, every time he does these appearances, and they've been a couple, he never validates the spin or the core claim the network makes about itself. He never starts from the premise that somehow they're legitimate. Right. In fact, he always makes it clear in the segments that they're really not. That's important, actually, because it means that it loses some of its punch and its power from a business perspective. It's hard for those channels to point to

that segment as validating what they're saying. And then the second thing is like they're really limited. They're for a very precise and specific purpose. And it's to build a little bit of pressure on one very clearly understandable thing in which they're obviously hiding it from their own audience, in which they know their audience will move on it if you can get them out there. They're hyper-confrontational.

They're just effective, and it's not the go-to. He's not doing it for attention, which, by the way, is just to be clear, that's the argument that Democrats have, which is like, if I go on clocks and I give a killer answer,

a bunch of people are going to retweet me and I may get some donations. It's like, yes, maybe that is true, but you go on, you know, hat and hand. Right. And you're giving them credibility versus John Stewart who's saying, you guys are clowns, but I'm coming on here to talk about something real. And then he spends the whole time debunking anyway.

Correct. And I'm not just like shilling for him. It's like there's just a limit, right? If that was his go-to every time he had an issue, I would say, oh, okay, that's a problem. But he's not appealing to them because he's saying they're so important and so powerful. What he's saying is that in this case, I can achieve a very specific limited purpose. It's cost benefit. And that's always what I've argued for with Democrats, too, is that make, do the cost benefit.

And if you're not willing to do that cost benefit even, then that's a problem because it only, that's where my critique comes in because I don't think a lot of times they realize that they're doing more harm than good. That's the first thing. And I'm not trying to be nasty about it, but like there is a group of consultants out there that understand that it's, first, it's easier to get your own people booked on Fox News. I just want to say that. Right.

It's pretty easy to get booked on Fox News, right? It's super easy. Yeah. If you're a Democrat, especially one that has even a little bit of pop, they're so desperate for them that it's a lot easier to get your clients. And the other thing is that it's unconventional, so you get a little bit of pop of press after. Right. And then the third is, and this is the dirty secret, is that Fox's, like, contributor contracts are, like, the most lucrative in the business. Right.

They have to be. Yeah. I mean, Roger L. used to use it as a, you know, Democrats in particular, it'd be like an audition for them. They understood that we'd get massive. payouts, and you can easily make $200 grand for just a couple of appearances a month as a Fox contributor. And so a lot of times it's just a really, if you can sort of make it clear that you play a specific role, you will be rewarded with a really fantastic contributor contract. And I understand that

individually. It's just big picture, a lot of times I feel like Democrats get played and don't realize if they are to go on Fox, at minimum, I wish they wouldn't constantly pretend that Fox is somehow more legitimate, which is often what they end up doing. And so, yeah, I think John Stewart sort of was a good illustration of how you could leverage some of these terrible people. You know, if there was a bunch of puppies, for example, in a burning building, you know, and some horrible right winger, Alex Jones, you know, and Charlie Kirk, you know, and Charlie Kirk. Any next thing you're going to help me get these puppies out. I'm like, yeah, come on. Like, let's get these puppies out.

I'm not sanitizing Alex Jones and Charlie Kirk. It's like, there's some puppies burning and I can get them out if you help me. You know, that's kind of how I see John Stewart is like sometimes you use terrible people and, you know, in no way is that the same as sanitizing them or enabling them. Yeah. The truth is that he is a, right now, at least, he's a single issue pundit. So it's a completely different thing than if he were a political candidate or he were a journalist. Right now it seems like last week, Fox decided to air three hours of Mike Pence's speech

and zero hours of Donald Trump's speech. And when confronted with this, Fox News, from what I understand, I was told, they were clear that that was intentional. What the fuck is going on? I know. Everyone's talking about this. And I'll say this. That is a good question.

I think some of the narrative around this is maybe a little bit too overblown. And people are a close Fox watcher, I would just point out that it is an intentional decision. But it was an intentional decision made two years ago. They made this decision two years ago. Fox stopped carrying Donald Trump's rallies two years ago as a matter of rule. On the other hand, they moved all of his rallies over to 100 percent lives. streaming. There's literally a YouTube, which by the way, will get more viewers than they would if it was just on the traditional Fox show because of the way that the streaming thing works out. So is that Fox Nation?

No, that's their YouTube channel was live streaming his rallies. And there's literally a playlist on the YouTube channel, former President Trump where all they do is highlight his stuff. That's the first thing. So my only point is, it is correct that it was an intentional decision, but it was a decision that was made about two years ago to stop carrying his rallies live on air, that's something that they decided to do. It is true that there is clearly a little bit of softening in some ways at Fox, but it is much more akin to what was happening back in 2016. Here's the benchmark. In 2016, there were people on Fox that were actively attacking Donald Trump while he was during the primary process. That is definitely not happening now at all, period. At best, you can have silence and not actively advancing him.

They leave Ron DeSantis' name off of polls sometimes that they're showing so that he doesn't look stronger than he, like, they don't show his performance. They don't show, like, that is just a fact. That is one thing. I understand in the context of everything, and this is worth keeping in mind, Fox is in a barrel right now with this billion dollar lawsuit that they're dealing with. They consistently lose major decisions in these cases. I think people need to remember that all of these Fox executives are in the process of gearing up

for depositions where they're going to be sitting down for three to six hours and answering some really hard questions on video. So we're talking about the Dominion case here, right? Yes, that's right. And so the only thing I would say is that people are right, there is something kind of happening, but it's not a turning on Trump covering their asses. It is.

And the other thing is that it's also back to their factions, which is that some parts of the network are going to be much more aggressively pro-Trump than others, Laura Ingram, Sean Hannity, 100% pro-Trump. Other parts of the network are going to be kind of neutral or in the middle, but they're not going to be anti-Trump yet. None of them have actually turned on Trump, and that's the bellwether. When they start to attack them, that will be the indicator. And the last thing I would just say is, and this is the scary thing to keep in mind,

and it's deliberate, is that this is the first time in almost 30 years, that Rush Limbaugh is not the single largest get-out-the-vote operation in the country, that he is no longer that he's not the titular head of the Republican Party. Tucker Carlson is actively trying to play that role. And I think that a part of that, which he's doing hand-in-glove with the Murdox, is, you know, they're just kind of, they're exploring their options a little bit. That's how you build power, right? You make them come to you. And if you want to, if you want to define the contours and the narrative going forward, Trump understands the

negotiation. This is a negotiation. So I understand it. I think people are right that there's something kind of fishy there, but I think it's being treated as a little bit too pro-con, as opposed to these are bad people gearing up for the next thing. And right now, Tucker wants Trump to be much more clearly in the white genocide, white nationalist camp. And this is a part of building political power, both to cover their, partly to cover their asses because of the Dominion thing, and also partly about building political power and shoring up their role as a major decider in who actually gets to win the primary.

This is all about power. And it's not entirely about them being anti-trump. That was super fascinating. Jesse will agree that I was right to keep you longer. Clearly. From now on, I get to make all editing decisions. Hey, hey, hey. Thank you so much. That was totally interesting. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. I was going to talk to guys.

Sam Brody is a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast. Welcome back to the new abnormal Sam Brody. Yeah, thanks for having me back. Very exciting. Lots of excitement. August is generally not a very busy time in the house in the Senate. This is very, very unusual. They should all be on Martha's Vineyard right now, and they're very grumpy that they're not, but big things have to happen. So, oh, that's so hard. I feel for them. Maybe they'll make some money on stocks. That was just a mean, mean joke. Nobody listened to that, especially candidates we'd like to have on the pod.

So talk to me about what's happening. There's a lot of interesting stuff, but the first thing I want you to talk to us about are these wacky and wild Tuesday primaries? Yeah, absolutely. One of the biggest primary days of the season, I think the first place that jumps out at me is Arizona, which is a state that I've spent a bunch of time in and have reported on. And if you needed a proof point that like Donald Trump still has huge sway in the Republican Party, I think Arizona is ground zero for that. So not all the races have been called, but Carrie Lake, who is Trump's candidate for governor, is one of the leading evangelists of the big lie, a former TV anchor who has just kind of done a full mega heel turn. She's on pace to win and on pace to beat her rival who spent like $15 million

basically to try and make a competitive with Kerry Lake. So Trump is already claiming that as a huge win. And then just down the ticket, I mean, for Attorney General, and Secretary of State, Trump endorsed candidates won. And so I think it's really like what's coming into focus is if these Republicans win in November, in 2024, you're going to have committed followers of the big lie running Arizona's elections. Right. So if the Republicans win in Arizona, we won't have free and fair elections in Arizona ever again. I mean, I would like to believe that these folks would back down and catch like the dog that caught the car or whatever, but you can't assume that.

You can't bank on that. have to take them seriously and literally. So these are folks, and I really want to stress, like, Carrie Lake, this is not, Arizona is not Wyoming. This is a purple state. And in these kinds of situations, you're accustomed to seeing on the right, a competitive primary in a tough state, and the winner will move to the center, make some gesture that they're interested in winning over people who are not partisans. Carrie Lake did this press conference yesterday where she's just kind have doubled down on her playbook of casting down on the elections, blaming the media, all that kind of stuff. And so it's going to be a really interesting test case of just how well

non-Trumpy voters take this kind of rhetoric. I have to imagine it's not well. And I think one dimension of intrig that is just really something to watch and is so fascinating is that the Democratic nominee for Governor Katie Hobbs is the Secretary of State. Carrie Lake has court Katie Hobbs to be thrown in jail for overseeing the 2020 election. So those debates are going to be pretty good. Jesus fucking Christ. Let's talk about Kansas because I was right and I like things where I was right. Don't we all?

I mean, by the way, I was right. Rich Lowry. I know you're a listener. Just kidding. He's not. You are fucking wrong. And so would Sarah Igers Flores. Hate to see it when far right fascists don't get their wishes coming true.

But so anyway, I didn't just call Rich Lowry. of fascists. I called other Republicans fascists. So talk to me about Kansas. What can we extrapolate? Yeah, we just had a piece today on it that I think gets into the nuance a little bit. I think top lines, I mean, this is obviously really good news for Democrats and pro-choice folks in general. And I think it's not even so much that like obviously the important thing, this was an overwhelming defeat of abortion rights restrictions in a very red state. But something that stuck out to me that I've been thinking about is some people crunch the numbers of voter registration in Kansas after Dobbs. Huge spike, and it was 70 percent. 70 percent women. And so I think you can parse a lot about

this result. One of the things that people in Kansas told us is like, look, this was a really specific question. Like abortion was literally on the ballot. People were voting on whether they wanted to protect this right or if they didn't. And that's going to be a little murkier when you have candidates for Congress or for governor or whomever who maybe one is pro. abortion rights and others anti, but there's this whole other matrix of issues and things that voters are engaging with to make their decision. And so the folks in Kansas say, look, this is just proof that an overwhelming majority of voters, either a left, right or center, want to protect abortion rights. That's the lesson. And that's a valuable lesson for Democrats, but there's some heat,

maybe a little overheat to the idea that this somehow is going to, like, is going to save the Democrats from midterm disaster. Right. We don't know. We don't know how it's going to go down. So let's talk about what's happening right now, because there's like 10 million different bills being passed. Give us a sort of 4-1-1. Two days ago, Burnpits, we had like a ton of different weird bipartisan bills. Can you just talk us through it? Yeah, it's, I mean, you step back and realize like, shit, this has been a very, very productive stretch for Congress. And so you had the passage of high-tech manufacturing bill that was really one of Chuck Schumer's, like, top priority.

like overall of this of this session, the chips bill that's going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into American semiconductor manufacturing. That was bipartisan. That's a huge deal. The expansion of health care for veterans. Like I've heard it talked about

as one of the biggest healthcare expansions in America, period. Even up there with Obamacare, admitting Sweden and Finland into NATO, a lot of big bipartisan votes. Important stuff. Can we just for one second on the NATO bill? Only one person voted against it, right?

That's right. That's right. My man, Tom Cotton, Josh Holly. Sorry, Josh Hawley. Yeah, Tom Cotton was actually, he didn't drag Holly by name. But Cotton was on the floor earlier in which he sub-tweeted Holly. He said there's a senator who voted no, who voted to admit another country to NATO. And so I'd like to hear what changed. Yeah, what did change?

What changed is I think Holly is very savvy at finding areas in which he can distinguish himself politically. I think there's several senators who are going to run probably in 2024 for president on the Republican side. And they're looking to distinguish themselves from one another. And I think Holly, I mean, I hate to say this. I think it was have savvy politics on his party is going to pass. And there is a segment of the Republican base, the Tucker Carlson Republican base, that knee-jerk is reflexively opposed to anything that kind of smacks of Western cooperation

and kind of the long-standing rules-based order of diplomacy. So, Paul, he understood that he was going to own that lane if he voted now. And he's catching heat for it. But if he does run, this is going to help him. So that's super interesting. Now we're at reconciliation, right? Right.

So that's the big thing. And I would expect that Democrats move forward. If all goes according to plan, I think by Monday, they would like this to be passed out of the Senate. So cinema has. Cinema has objections. and she has questions as far as I understand it. And she has no taste, but yes.

To back up, Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin basically struck this deal. And I think no one has said this explicitly, but clearly the bet was that once Manchin was on board, everyone else would get on board. The pressure would be squarely on cinema to go along. I think everyone bet that cinema would just do it. Again, I'm not saying anyone explicitly made that bet, but if cinema showed us anything, it's that she loves to get out the word. She's a bad dresser and she's unhinged.

I said it, you didn't. So basically, like, cinema has not publicly said anything. What we know about her stance has come through press reports. And so we know that she is, again, I don't want to say like opposed, but she is skeptical of the provision that Manchin wants in there to eliminate the carried interest loophole, which prevents hedge fund people for making money. Yeah, donors won't like that. Yeah.

And cinema, I think, is private equity people really like her. And so she has concerns about that. And she has concerns about the overall. It was reported that she was asking questions about the corporate minimum tax that's in the bill that is the single biggest revenue raise over in the darn thing. I think like $100 billion. So, I mean, this isn't like kind of sniping around the edges. No, this is the whole thing.

This is the whole thing. So it's hard. I think some people looked at the kind of tenor of the reports around cinema. and went, you know what, actually? Like, she may be there. If this is what she's saying about this stuff right now, then she's going to get there, and she's just sort of arm twisting

and seeing what she can get on the way out. But I think all bets are off. And if anything in this process has taught us anything, it's that anything can happen when it's all up to one center at a certain point. Tell us what else people should be watching for. There are still, like, a couple more primaries in this endless primary hellscape.

I know. Let me pull up the schedule really fast. I like lose track of like where, well, I'm going to Wyoming next week to go on the Liz Cheney. He's going down with a ship, or at least it looks that way. It seems very likely that Liz Cheney will lose her seat. Yes. So I'll be checking that out. That's on August 16th. Another one that I think is really flown under the radar, and maybe we'll get another chance to talk about this, is New Hampshire. Senate has a really late primary. September 13th. Maggie Hassan, the incumbent Democrat in New Hampshire, was once thought to be one of the most vulnerable,

not the most vulnerable Democrat on the ballot. And like the Republican field is super weak. The governor Sunu Kyi declined to get in. There's kind of this sort of car people who are fighting it out, not raising very much money. And whoever wins is going to have like six weeks to basically run a campaign. And so that's one to watch there. I think who comes out of it would be important. But wow, that seems like that. She got very lucky. She got incredibly lucky. Democrats have sort of been blessed this Senate cycle. They have. I mean, they have no business being in the conversation here, really, if you look at the national indicators, I think the House is going to be really, really bad for Democrats. Well, the House is redistricted already. It's 162 safe Democrats versus 191 safe Republicans. So the math on the House is almost undoable.

But for the Senate, each one of these Senate candidates is just one is worse than the next. Yeah, I mean, when you have Republican donors saying I saw this story earlier in the week that, they have a path to the Senate majority without winning Pennsylvania. I mean, you're really, you're starting from a bad place that they have to keep that state. They have to win Georgia. They have to win Arizona. They can't be spending $10 million in August to bail out J.D. Vance at a state that Donald Trump from that eight points.

I mean, it's crazy. And so the Senate's weird. I mean, I think you could have a situation where Democrats lose like 30, 40 seats in the House. It's not out of the realm of possibility. And keep the Senate and maybe even pick up a seat if things break a certain way, because these races are weird, the Dems will have money, and weird things can happen when you get candidates who have some serious flaws. I have to tell you, I'm so, so impressed with Herschel Walker.

And by the way, I mean, in Arizona, Blake Masters, I mean, just, I don't know that Blake Masters can beat Mark Kelly. I'm really fascinated by that because thinking of Vance, the other kind of Peter Thiel protege, like, he's a pretty known quantity. Like, he's sort of a famous guy. like Blake Masters is like a totally unknown quantity in Arizona. I mean, he's run, he's raised some money. Right, from Tio, yeah. From Tio. I mean, Teal has come in and sort of boosted him through outside spending and all that. There's a lot of room for Arizona Democrats to define Blake Masters

in a way that there's way less room with J.D. Vance. And the DSEC Senate Committee cut an ad that ran yesterday. So, I mean, they had it ready to go for Masters winning. And just repeating his comments where he said, yeah, we got to cut off Social Security where he talked about just he uses just really, really like, I mean, I can't remember a candidate for a major office in the Swing State who's used harsher language than Blake Masters and just replaying that, saying that he thinks that Democrats are demonic stuff like that. And it's just Mark Kelly is raised a fortune and is going to be running those ads day after day for the rest of the cycle. And I forget how much money Masters left off with, but he's got a lot of catch up to do. Can we call this Republicans

and disarray? I mean... I feel like it's so bad to go on the show when you're just like a normal reporter who doesn't want to be bullied into saying your opinions, but I so appreciate you joining me because you are a very good-humored

and good-spirited individual. Thank you. No, it's always fun to come on. Andy Levy. Molly John Fest. Let's go, bitches. Wow. Host and work environment. Let's go, Andy.

You can tell we're recording this on Molly's birthday. It's not my birthday. I'd be weeping if it were my birthday. Okay. So my fuck that guy for this week is Glenn Greenwald's best friend, Alex Jones. He didn't really even do anything this week. It's more that he's getting fucked. I'm sort of cheering that on.

And basically, he's been in this civil suit against Sandy Hook parents. And the best thing that's come out of this so far is that his attorneys apparently accidentally sent the entire content of of Jones's phone to the attorneys for the Sandy Hook parents. This has opened up some interesting things, including the fact that Jones lies under oath as easily as he lies on the air. And other stuff like that, I've seen some rumors, some speculating that maybe the lawyers didn't do this accidentally. I don't know that I'd buy that just because that just seems like a one-way ticket to disbarment if you get caught. So when you're Alex Jones and you're hiring lawyers, you can probably assume they're not, I don't even know how. to say it. They're not sending their best, is a polite way of saying that. So anyway, I'll wrap this up

quickly because we have a special thing to do here. But Alex Jones, now and forever, fuck that guy. Okay. So I know the listeners love fuck that guy more than anything. But we do have, as we joke all the time, we only have one segment, but we do have an annual segment we do. For my birthday. Every year, Molly gets a cameo for me for her birthday. Last year was Rudy Giuliani, which made a very big splash. So I had to try to out do myself this year. I'm scared. With the listeners don't know, one of Molly's many

charming personality quirks is she talks about having no friends and not getting invited to parties and you look on her Instagram and then she's at a party that night. That night and every night. Literally nobody likes me. This is a constant trope of our conversation.

So I wanted to get some advice on how she could get invited to more parties. So who better to ask than Alan Dershowitz? Oh my God. Look at him. Hey, Molly. Don't worry about not getting invited

to party. Stick to your principles, stick to your views. That's more important. It's more important to be consistent and to be principled. You'll get friends. Your friends will support you. Real friends, not fair weather friends. And remember, as my shirt says, it's the Constitution, stupid.

And you're defending, I'm sure, the right principles and the right issues. and so keep at it. Keep at it. Being nonconformist, I'm glad you like for a first of the fortune. My son helped to make that movie. I also enjoyed it very much. It was a fun project, and I hope you continue to do great things. But don't worry about parties.

That's a very small part of life. Good luck, be well. Oh, my God. I am without speech. I was amazing. I do have to point out one last amazing detail. I put this in at about 5 o'clock on Saturday afternoon. And by 9.50 p.m., he sent it back to me because no one invited him to a party that night.

On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studied the Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

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