The Daily Beast Podcast - The Real Reason Why Trump Is Trashing Kimmel and the Oscars

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie discuss Donald Trump’s Jimmy Kimmel Oscars diss. Then, Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor and substacker Robert Reich is here to talk about the State of the Union, economic populism and the rise of Trumpism. Plus! Host of the Undistracted podcast, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, tells us more about Senator Katie Britt's rebuttal to Joe Biden’s State of the Union address. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Then we'll talk to the host of the podcast, Undistracted. Brittany Packett Cunningham will tell us about Senator Katie Britt's rebuttal to the United States State of the Union address, as well as white woman's role in sustaining white supremacy, and what the Biden campaign can do to invigorate. its younger voting base. But first, let's have some fun. So the Oscars were this past weekend, Danielle, and normally it wouldn't be something that we cover here on the new abnormal. But there was a little bit of politics injected into it. I guess in the latter half of the show, host Jimmy Kimmel got up, and he read something. He didn't say what it was at first. I think he said, I just got a review, is what he said. And then he read a post that turned out to be,

something that Donald Trump had put up on Truth Social. I'll just read a little part of it. Has there ever been a worse host than Jimmy Kimmel at the Oscars? His opening was that of a less than average person trying too hard to be something which he is not and never can be. Then he says, get rid of Kimmel and perhaps replace him with another washed up but cheap ABC quote unquote talent, George Slopinopinopolis, and whatever. And then Kimmel said, okay, now see if you can guess which former president just posted that on Truth Social. And then he said, well, thank you, Donald Trump. Thank you for watching. I'm surprised you're still up. Isn't it past your jail time? Brilliant. That is a good line and credit to whichever one of the writers wrote it. And the crowd went nuts, as you would expect. And as a lot of

people pointed out, Donald Trump, he wants more than anything to be sort of accepted and lauded by groups like the Academy. And because he's not, he spends his time trashing them. And the fact that everyone in that theater was laughing their ass off at Kimmel's reply, could not have felt good to him, I would think. I'm sure it didn't feel good to the walls at Mar-a-Lago either covered in catch-up. You know, those poor walls just brutalized. In between his time hanging with Hungary's favorite dictator, Victor Orban, who he was entertaining while watching the Oscars.

I mean, it's just so pathetic. You know, I know that it's so lost on us because we've been in this haze of Trumpism and fuckery for, like, close to a decade. now. But the very idea that a former president of the United States carries on in such a matter with such like trivialness. We have multiple wars happening right now. We have like, you know, one of the most important elections, not just for this country, but for the, you know, global democracy happening. And this is what Donald Trump is doing. And this is who the Republican Party holds up as like, this is the guy, this is our savior. It's just so fucking embarrassing.

and how they continue not to be embarrassed, it just goes to show you that you cannot. You cannot, friends, shame the devil. So there you have it. Yeah. Elon Musk couldn't get through the Oscars without posting something stupid. He wrote on Twitter, winning an Oscar now just means you won the woke contest,

which is just the dumbest thing in the world. And he said later on, he said, when an award is diluted, everyone knows, including those who received it, and it no longer commands respect. You mean like how he no longer commands respect? Yeah, exactly. And you had Vivek Ramoswamy saying something about American History X is an all-time classic that wouldn't even earn a nomination if it were made today. For those who don't know,

American History X was a movie starring Edward Norton, and I think if I was a ball. And it was about a young skinhead, a neo-Nazi, who eventually realizes that he was wrong. I don't know what part of that Vivek thinks couldn't be made today or couldn't get a non-aq. nomination today? I mean, the message of that movie was that Nazism is bad. Oh, so it didn't register. It's like it didn't register with him. Yeah, I don't know if he watched that movie and thought, wow, these Nazis look cool. I'm not really clear on that. It's so funny. These are all the people who have spent a lot of time yelling about politics, infecting their art. And all they do is post their political stuff about art. It's super annoying. And I say this all the time. They're just so

fucking weird, Danielle. They're just so pathetic is what they are. Do you know what I'm saying? And I just, I hate the fact that we continue to like wonder about the things that they are championing out loud. Like they love Nazis. They love strong men. Like everything that we think of as collective like outrage and disgust at historic events and behavior, like the Republicans are like, no, that's our guy. That's our, you know, that that's what we're emulating everything after. And every tweet, every truth post, every bullshit that's, every bullshit that's.

they put out there is evident of what they want. So for the rest of us to continue being like, oh, I wonder what they're thinking. It's like they're fucking telling you. You love Nazis. All you're missing is like is the hand salute. Yeah. Speaking of fucking weirdos, we're not done talking about Alabama Senator Katie Brits. Absolutely bizarre response to the state of the union speech last week. An interesting thing that has come up thanks to journalist Jonathan Katz, a guest on the new abnormal, I should add. He looked into a story that she tells a lot and that she told in this weird, bizarre, GOP response. And it was, the story she tells is about a 12-year-old girl who she says was raped by drug cartels in Mexico. And she tells this story as if it were,

had something to do with Joe Biden's border policy. And Jonathan Katz went ahead and dug into this. And it turns out that the story in question, first of all, took place during the administration of a guy named President George W. Bush. You may remember him from such classic hits as the Iraq War and mission accomplished. I'm fairly certain he was a Republican. I'll have to double check that. I'm fairly confident in saying he was a Republican. And this woman, Carla Yacinto Romero, actually testified before Congress in 2015 and talked about how. how this had happened to her a decade earlier. And Katie Britt took that story and tried somehow

to turn it into a takedown of President Biden. And the woman herself has now come out and she has slammed, as Politico put it, she has slammed Senator Britt for inaccurately using her story to supposedly highlight Joe Biden's immigration policies. So Senator Kitchen Katie is just beyond a liar caught in a horrendous lie. But what I do want to draw people's attention to is the feminization of white supremacy. And using Senator Kitchin' Katie as this softer face with this diamond QVC cross with the huffing of the breath and the shirt just buttoned down to there as a way to appeal to white suburban women is disgusting. I'm like, if I'm a white woman, I'm thinking, wow, this party thinks so fucking little of me

and the things that will get me like, oh, put her in a kitchen, you know, women love that shit. Have her be breathy and like have some type of weird sex appeal while talking about a horrific crime that didn't happen in the decades that Biden was even vice president of the United States, let alone president. And it just shows us that without real investigative journalism and people that are willing to do the actual fucking work and not just take these Republicans at face value, we never get to the truth. But for the past fucking close to a decade, we've just been taking what it is that they say as if like they're beyond reproach. And because she's a woman and she's

young. Without Jonathan Katz having done that investigative reporting and posted it on TikTok and it going viral, what would the rest of mainstream media be doing? Elevating who they see as the new Republican star and putting her, you know, as a face off between Marjorie Taylor Green, understand that they are two fucking heads of the same coin that believe and support the same egregious white supremacist patriarchal fucking policies. Just one has a better outfit than the other. The mainstream media just continues in all honesty to fail. And when we start talking about the banning of social media apps, I'm just like, is it really

about where the apps are coming from or the information that is actually coming from the apps and reaching the people? But, you know, Kitchen Katie, bye. Bye. I hope that was the beginning and the end. We'll see you on the gindle side. of things. Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it's unreal, and it's just, I've had this theory for a long time that it's sort of like if your cause is just, you don't have to lie about it. And we see this time and time again, look, I'm not absolving the left. There are people on the left who lie to, but it has become part and parcel of conservatism, circa 2024, that it is fully okay to lie in order to draw people to your side, whether it's to scare people or whether it's to reassure them if you're lying about something being better than it is. It's almost like a plank of conservatism now, like a basis, a foundation of 2020s conservatism, that all this lying is okay in the service of like what they view as quote unquote a greater good.

And I really am just struck by it because, again, if things were as you say they are, you wouldn't have to lie. And the fact that you have to lie. And she lies like she lies, she lies about every single part of this. She says it had to do with the drug cartels. It did not. She makes it sound like it was President Biden's fault. Obviously, it was not. She makes it sound like he had something to do with the border. It did not. This didn't happen at the border. So every single part of this was an outright lie. And she sat there and had absolutely no problem lying to the faces of America, however you want to put it. I mean, this was, you know, on national TV. And she has absolutely no problem with this. And yet I am sure, if you ask her, she thinks she is a very

moral and upright person and probably describes herself as a good Christian. I'm fairly certain one of the Ten Commandments has something to say about lying, and I'm not sure that it says thou shalt do it. I think there's a knot in there. I don't know. Maybe they're using a different version of the Bible that takes out the word not. It's just it's absolutely unreal that there is no floor lying to them is just nothing but a tactic and they are completely okay with it and it just it needs to be called out every time it happens and thanks to jonathan cats for doing the legwork on this and like you said getting this story out there and big heads up to him or big kudos for publishing on ticot because i think he's close to my age and we don't we don't tend to post on tic top so good for him that's not true

andy that is not true because i'm on tic ticac and i see a lot of people older than me on TikTok. All right. I guess I'm in the wrong TikTok. Speaking again of people who just lie and can't seem to shut the fuck up, Donald Trump, once again. So after posting a bond of $91 million in the E. Jean Carroll case, case number two, where he continued to defame her, this motherfucker, I swear to God, it is beyond me.

So now Donald Trump following posting the bond goes on squawk box on CNBC and libel's E. Jean Carroll again. I mean, it is like if I'm Robbie Kaplan, I don't even go home. I just stay in the court clerk's office just waiting to hand in fucking paperwork at this point. Right. And so George Conway, who we could say a whole lot of things about, I'm not going to because we don't have a lot of time. But what he did post on the broke down Twitter was this. He said, quote, the fact that Trump libeled E. Jean-C. Squawk Box is highly significant for procedural reason in addition to a substantive one. Where E. Jean to sue Trump just for the speech he gave in Northwest Georgia the other day, she probably would have had to sue him in the U.S. District Court for Northern District of Georgia,

because of where the lies happen, right? But now, because he went on the TV in an interview, which is anchored in Manhattan, she likely may now sue in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, one of our favorite districts, and the case would once again be assigned to Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, who the two prior cases he produced,

which now have resulted. in the $88.3 million in damages. I mean, Conway lays it out clearly. If, again, if I'm Robbie Kaplan, I'm just like, can we put in DJ Callet and another one? Like, just run it through. I think at some point we are going to get to the bottom of the question of just how rich Donald Trump is because all his money is going to go to E. Jean Carroll. Because he's not going to stop doing this. You know, this will be the third time. Well, the original. and then one more and now this one. I don't even think when he loses this one,

assuming she files suit, she may just be done with all this. But if she files about this, he's going to lose again because he clearly said what he said. He can't stop. He absolutely cannot stop. And, you know,

I really do think we are going to find out just how many billions or hundreds of millions or tens of millions, whatever it is at the end of the day that he actually has. I think we're going to get that actual number because all of it is eventually going to be transferred to the bank accounts of one E. Jean Carroll. And I sort of have a feeling that she'll make better use of that money than he ever has. Look, she's on a run and I want to see it through to the finish line. Keep it going. You don't get up from the table when you're on a winning streak.

It's hot. When the dice are hot, when the cards are hot, when you've got 14 and you're pulling sevens, you do not leave the table. And you don't let anyone else leave the table. And that's exactly, you're right, that's exactly the kind of streak she is on now, where she basically just can't lose. Robert Reich was Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center. He's written approximately 900 books, I think, the latest of which is the system,

who rigged it and how to fix it. And somehow he still finds time to publish pretty much daily at his aptly named substack, Robert Reich.substack.com. He joins me now. Robert, thank you so much for being here. Well, thank you for asking me. Absolutely. So I want to start with your thoughts on President Biden's State of the Union speech. On your substack, you said you'd give him an A for content, an A for feistiness, and an A for energy. Tell us why. Well, you know, I grade a lot of papers, and I've been teaching for 41 years handy. So I naturally give grades. I thought it was a terrific speech. He does have his speech impediment. Sure. He was worried about that. I was worried about him

slurring some of his words and maybe speaking a little bit too fast. I think he did. But it was quite an extraordinary performance. And as you know, State of the Union addresses are performances. He showed exactly what he needed to show. That is that he is not too old. That is energy. He's combative. He's feisty. He was willing to take on Republicans in the room. there sitting in the House chamber. And I thought he did remarkably well. It was a very good speech also. You know, I want to talk about your A for content. I'm wondering what in particular jumped out at you where you were like, oh, that's really good and not as like a, you know, a line or back and forth with the Republicans, but in terms of the actual content. I think he did extraordinarily well on what I think

of as economic populism. That is going after big corporations, say they have to pay their fair share, going after the billionaires. They have to pay their fair share, being specific enough to say, well, billionaires really do have to pay a minimum income tax of 25 percent, and corporations have to pay a minimum of 21 percent. And yet the billionaires are paying 8.2 percent on average for the thousand billionaires. There are in America. And the corporations, many of them, are getting away with not paying any taxes at all. This is unfair to the middle class, working class, and we can do so much if we do get this tax revenue. This, Andy, is a very basic Democratic capital D argument, but it hasn't been made as effectively by Democratic presidents

as I thought Joe Biden did. I want to come back to some more about Biden's speech, but because you took us down this road, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit. You have also on your substack, what at least is so far a nine-part series, a great nine-part series on the origins of Trumpism. And in your latest installment, which is titled, The Old Left, the New Left, and the Left Behind, you talk about the Left behind. And I think that's so important. And it's who the new left that sort of arose in the 1960s left behind. And you're talking here about the non-college working class and how the Democrats took them for granted. And that seems to tie in to what you're saying about what you liked about Joe Biden's speech?

Yes, let's be clear that only 40% of Americans have a four-year college degree. 60% do not. Now, it's very easy to forget that. If you're living in Washington, D.C., among the precincts of the leadership elites, and in New York and in San Francisco and Los Angeles, you know, you're surrounded by very talented people, most of whom have college degrees.

But the reality is that, Most of America doesn't, and among those who don't have college degrees, are many people who are living paycheck to paycheck, 70%. These people do feel with justification that they are left behind, that nobody's paying attention to them, that they're basically in flyover country. They used to have labor unions to represent them, but labor unions, which represented 35%, percent of the working class, of 35 percent of all workers in the private sector in 1950s, in the 1950s, now representally six percent, Andy, six percent down to nothing. So these people really need and have assumed there was a political party behind them,

and yet the Democratic Party has really drifted away from the working class. It's not just the white working class, it's the entire working class. The Republicans put on a show of being for the working class in recent years, starting with Ronald Reagan, even starting with Richard Nixon, but it's been a show. In point of fact, they are all about giving tax cuts to the very wealthy and big corporations, their patrons. And so who is it? Who is there for working class Americans? The 60% without college degrees, who are feeling. that nobody is listening to them because nobody is listening to them.

You know, the system has been so overwhelmed with big money, with corporate welfare, with all sorts of ways of paying off and bailing out the banks and giving contracts, no-bid contracts out to military contractors and getting subsidies to every big, big industry, business. I mean, even Obamacare who was based on subsidies going to the pharmaceutical industry and to big medicine. Well, you just go on and on and on with this and you see that there's been over the last 40 years a tremendous move of wealth and power to the top. And this is not lost on average working people. They see it. You know, the game is rigged. Big money has rigged it against them. And there's a lot of anger out there.

When I was Secretary of Labor in the early 90s, mid-1990s, I'd go out to, you know, the Rust Belt, so-called Rust Belt states and the Carolinas and the Midwest. And I would hear their frustrations. And when I went back in 2016 and talked to them and their children, their grown children, those frustrations had really shifted into anger. Yeah. And who comes along to exploit that anger? A man with no principles, a man who has no idea what's been going on, who is really anti-intellectual, anti-college, anti-science, Donald Trump.

And he says to them over and over again in all sorts of ways, I'm speaking for you. I'm there for you. A simple cursory glance at his history shows that he is about as anti-worker as it gets. I mean, this is a guy who doesn't even pay the people who do work for him. Oh, no, he's shafted his contractors, he's shafted his laborers, he's used bankruptcy. to shield himself from having to make whole. A lot of people who work for him, including, you know, the Trump casinos in Atlantic City. I mean, yes, he's a, you know, he's anti-worker, but he's anti-everybody. He's just pro himself. No, for sure. I'm curious, do you think that Joe Biden has, I don't know, at least partially righted this ship? I mean, he talks a lot about being a big union guy and all that stuff.

And look, he stood on the picket lines with the UAW last year. Do you think he more so, than any other recent Democratic president sort of gets it at least? Yes, certainly more than Carter or Clinton or Obama, all of whom talked a good game about workers, but really when it came down to labor law reform, for example, they didn't do anything. When it came to raising the minimum wage, it was a hard lift, honestly. I can tell you from personal experience to get Joe Clinton to do that. I think Biden, in his heart of hearts, really cares about average working people. Being on the picket line was not something that he did lightly.

I mean, he really felt it. I think Biden, the problem in a way is that when you have so many working people who are so frustrated, angry, fed up, don't trust politics, when somebody comes along like Trump, who puts on a show of being a strong man and being their voice, You go back to Mussolini, go back to the Vimar Republic in 1934, people can become very attracted to these fake strongmen if they feel like nobody else has listened to them for years. Yeah, absolutely, which leads me to seven months ago or so you posted a video on your YouTube channel asking the question, is Donald Trump a fascist? Can I guess what the answer is? You don't have to guess.

I mean, obviously, look, we use these terms loosely. But I wanted to distinguish in that piece between authoritarianism, and which the press has been using more and more about Donald Trump as an authoritarian, and fascism, which is an extreme form of authoritarianism. One of the key facets of fascism is the traditional male-dominated warrior and society organized around the male warrior. That is really what fascism is about. it's also about nativism and an extreme form of a racial purity.

You know, when Donald Trump says about Mexicans, they'll infect the bloodstream of America. He says he doesn't. He doesn't know that he's quoting Hitler. But what he's doing is using fascist language. Yeah, absolutely. And along those lines, you wrote a really good piece about Jim McDermott and why his story is so important right now. Can you go into that a little bit? A lot of people I come across who have been in, in God, government opposing Donald Trump, even one or two journalists who are very loud about their opposition, they have told me in recent months that they're worried about vengeance. And not just Donald Trump's

vindictiveness. I mean, he talks about taking vengeance on, you know, the Marxist and his critics and blah, blah, blah, but also his followers. One of them said to me recently, you know, it only takes one crazy person, one crackpot. Look what happened to Paul Pelosi. And I hear this, and I've been hearing it more and more. Jim McDermott, one of my favorite Democrats who had been in the House for quite some time. He was a friend, and he is now living in France. He gave an interview to the Washington Post in which he said that he also hears a lot from his colleagues, members of Congress, Democrats, who wonder whether they should, if they can afford it. Think about having a, quote, safe house, unquote, outside the United States.

United States if Donald Trump becomes elected. Now, that to me, it moved me, it touched me, because I know Jim. He's a doctor. He's a very compassionate person. And for him to hear what I've been hearing from his colleagues in the House of Representatives was a kind of a warning bell went off. This is what fascists do. This is what we know. Stalin's reign of terror was worldwide. Stalin didn't do it just in the Soviet Union. And that's true. I'm also. I'm also. I'm obviously of Putin. We have to worry. We have to worry about this. Yeah, absolutely. I want to shift gears a little bit before we go, because I think it was in the same post where you wrote about President Biden's State of the Union speech. You talked about what you call your, quote, utter failure advising

Democratic presidential candidates. Talk about this history. It starts in 1984, right? Yes. I just found it fascinating. I published a book that I don't know how the publisher did it, but got, I think it was Newsweek magazine to call me, the Democrats' new guru, which inflamed a lot of the real gurus, the much more talented gurus that were around. But anyway, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Immediately, Gary Hart called me and wanted to sit down and talk about his presidential campaign, which was eventually he ran in 88 again and was sideled by monkey business

as you were brandy. But then Walter Mondale and I had a lot of talk about this. What I stressed with Mondale and with Hart, and then with Dukakis in 88, who also contacted me, was that we needed to have an industrial policy in this country, which accelerated the movement to the new economy, but we couldn't leave the working class behind. We had to figure out ways of enabling them to be part of this new economy. That was the basic theme, and I never really got it. I got through to anybody.

Dukakis was so enthralled with the new economy, as was Gary Hart, and Mondale was so tied to the old economy. that the idea of the transition, helping the transition, was not really something that I got through to anybody. Actually, I finally got through to Bill Clinton, an old friend. He felt his hands were tied in 1993. I guess that's just the way the political system works, unfortunately. Last question, I was going to ask if you had any prognostications for November, and then you went ahead and wrote a piece that just popped up on your substack this morning called

the case for nauseous optimism, which is such a great phrase. Andy, I'm a nauseous optimist when it comes to the election because I'm nauseous because I just the idea that there is any possibility that this monster called Donald Trump could actually become president again, turns my stomach. But I'm optimistic because I see so much going on that is encouraging, not just Biden's speech, everything from the new advent, the new unionization of America, the number of workers who are actively engaged. engaged in a new union movement to women of America who are becoming so politically active, 60% of my students, students across the country in college are women,

which means that the future leadership positions are most likely to become women. They are so charged up, young women especially, rightfully, appropriately, about limits on reproductive freedom. And you have the inevitability of America becoming a much more multiracial society because California is already a majority minority. And all of that combined with the reality that only about 28% of Americans are Republicans and that number is dropping. The Democrats have a chance. and Joe Biden has a chance not only to win and win both houses of Congress, but actually to do something about this festering wound called a working class that has been overlooked and basically forgot. I think Biden will do it in his second term. Robert, thank you so much for

joining us. This was an absolutely fascinating discussion. And your substack has become one of my favorite reads just in the last couple weeks and I've been going back and reading the older ones. You're just, you're a very engaging writer and obviously I really enjoy what you have to say. So I encourage all our listeners to go check it out. Robert, thank you again. I really appreciate you coming on. Well, thank you, Andy. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal activist, writer, educator, and the host and executive producer of the podcast, Undistracted, Brittany, Packnet, Cunningham. Brittany.

Hey, hey. It is wonderful to be in conversation with you. It has been a very long time. I know. It's been too long with you. I want to get your thoughts. It has now been a couple of days since the State of the Union. More importantly, since the Republicans' rebuttal to the State of the Union, where

they used Senator Katie Britt, who I refer to as. Kitchin Katie to place a different face on the Republican Party and Republicanism. Yeah. I want to get first your reactions to just the new face that they were trying to put out and then we'll unpack what we have later now discovered as just a bevy of lies that were told in her rebuttal. I mean, I don't even know if she's a new face, right? The spotlight on her may be new, but white women have always been custodians of white supremacy.

This is not a new task. Not all of them have chosen that role. Thankfully, some of them have decided to divest and to move in fundamentally different ways. And yet, white women who have chosen that role have always served a particular function in sustaining, upholding, perpetuating, birthing, teaching the culture, systems, and institutions of white supremacy, patriarchy, and otherwise dominant cultures. And so I think what we saw in that response was not necessarily a new face, but a new spotlight on an old face in trying to appeal to a bevy of white women who have been sparked by the culture war that the GOP has invented in order to be able to organize the Katie Brits of the world

in order to be able to call them into casting their votes and engaging in labor for the GOP, only to, of course, one day be dumped by the GOP. That's always the end of that story. What's wild to me is that, to your point, all of this political theater that the Republicans do is trialed and tested constantly, where they pick. You know, we can go back. I mean, I'm not going to go all the way back,

but we can go back to Sarah Palin, right? And John McCain, if not for a Sarah Palin, I don't think that we would have seen the bevy of white women being paraded out, cleaned up, diamond cross in place as the face of republicanism. And what I find is really the stark contrast of the white, toxic, masculine male that they all have fallen in love with and rally around, whether it be Trump or others, this toxic bravado, right? And then they pair it, though, with this pseudo-softness of the moms for liberty. You know, we just bake cookies and cupcakes, but we hate the gays and we hate the trans people. And we're going to do everything that we can to put a target on their back.

It's the pairing as well that really gets me. It is the pairing, right? Because what that enables is a particular response to the future that progressives wants, right? So really she put me in the mind of a lot of people referred to Handmaid's Tale, obviously with the choice of the green color shirt. I thought even further back to Birth of a Nation where we're seeing this kind of the OG of racist films, right? It is a it is a silent film and the images speak more than a thousand words. And you see this damsel in distress, a frightened, scared, terrified white woman running from a black brute not only being rescued by. a white man, but ferociously defended by him against said brute, right? So what that intimates then

to these kind of brutish white men that you're talking about at this point, right, the DeSantis's, the Trumps, these white men who come on with such incredible naked aggression, it calls back to that moment, right? It calls back to the requirement that, you know, as I said earlier this week, the 11th commandment of evangelicals is to protect white women at all costs. And so, not only are you supposed to stand in between the white woman who has no agency and is in fear for her life, you're supposed to stand between her and the brute, but you're also supposed to brutalize the animal. You're also supposed to brutalize the thing that is attacking her. And that has to come with a level of force and violence that is integral to this party. I mean, we were reminded of that

on January the 6th, but it's certainly not new. It is always the hammer that they have used to drive their point home. And so as a white white, white man in that space, one needs to be equally as protective of white women and the future of white children as one has to be violent toward anyone and anything. We can see as the aggressor against that. And so that violence will manifest in language. It will manifest in imagery. It will manifest certainly in very literal physical violence.

It manifests in police violence, right? And the using of police and military as a tool of this violence. But all of that is part and parcel with what we're talking about. And I want to make a clear distinction because when I talk about white supremacy, I'm not talking about the KKK. I'm not talking about neo-Nazis or even the white citizens council. I'm talking about systems of white supremacy. So systems of oppression. And I'm talking about white supremacy culture that to Beverly Daniel Tame's point is like the air we breathe.

It is a smog that gets into everything. And so the way we think, the way we operate, the way that our politics are structured, the way that we treat one another is also steeped in that. and part and parcel with ensuring that white supremacy culture and white supremacist systems are the law of the land is enforcing that through violence. That's what colonialism is. That's what the destruction of indigenous land and peoples was. That's what the transatlantic slave trade was. That's what we see going on in the Middle East. These kinds of repeated behavior, that's part of the reason why, that's the major reason why Haiti is so destabilized in this moment.

So when we look across the world, we see the legacy. of white supremacist violence, but people have been convinced that it's not possible to happen in America. And yet, that's how this country was founded. So there's no reason why it can't make a nice friendly return in the face of Katie Britt and a nice violent return in the nomination once again of Donald Trump. Everything that you just stated are beyond facts, you know, like taking us through history back to present day. What do you make the Biden campaigns, decision to even with the state of the union, but also with the announcement of their, of running for the second term, of using democracy as the theme that they are running on, given what we are

seeing that is unfolding in the Middle East, given what we are seeing that is unfolding in Haiti. And I think I, you know, I watched recently as an analyst said, you know, with regard to Haiti, that, you know, what would be nice is if for once, for one time. in Haiti's existence, if they were to get to choose their own goddamn leader, that would be lovely, right? Wouldn't that be something? If there was not the United States putting their hand and foot and body on the scale of taking away self-determination from the Haitian people, which they've done since they fought for and had to purchase their independence. And so I wonder what does it say and does it land in the way that it should, given the stakes that we are up against in the United States for the Biden campaign to run on democracy? I mean, Danielle, this is the question that I hope the administration, that the campaign that the entire party is asking themselves every day, what does it mean to say that we are the party that believes in democracy and then goes out every day and proves it, not just in word, but indeed.

I think there's a reckoning that if they're smart, the party is doing in the face of 101,000 uncommitted primary votes from Democratic primary voters in Michigan and tens of thousands more from the Super Tuesday states that followed. I mean, that's free consulting. It would be malpractice for the party not to pay attention to the point that's being made to them that says, look, we're intelligent voters. We understand the difference between a primary and a general, but we also understand that we should have well within our grasp the ability to send you all a message in a so-called democracy,

certainly to the message, certainly to the party rather, that is promoting democracy as their message. And I think that in that reckoning, the party has to ask themselves, what are they willing to do between now and then, now and November, to not just not be Trump, but to be the exact opposite. I mean, we just saw the headlines that came out where Trump made it very clear that the future for Gaza, the future for occupied Palestine, the future for the West Bank is even worse under him, that the Muslim ban will be reinstated under him. So under no circumstances can this man become president again. And yet, there is a real false choice that people feel like they have on this particular issue. If it is taken 30,000 murdered Palestinians, so many of them children,

pregnant women, newborns, people who are currently being starved to death, if it takes all of that, and months and months of protests and Aaron Bishnell sacrificing himself. If it takes all of these things in order for the scale of the destruction to simply be acknowledged in the state of the union, right? People are experiencing a deep frustration with that that comes from a very legitimate place that can't be condescended to. And it is not enough to say, well, I'm not the other guy in order to solve for that. I also, you know, when I think of democracy in America, I'm always, always going to think of

black people and black women. And Daniel, you and I have had this conversation many a time, right? There is no greater purveyor, protector, or creator of democracy in America than there is the black person and in particular the black woman. And so if black people are finding themselves having difficulty with a party and with a stance on Gaza inside of a party that we have long committed to and been the backbone of, then that should send the reddest of flags, right, to say that people who understand in their DNA and in our bones what genocide looks like, what systemic oppression looks like, and don't want to give ourselves

over in tacit approval or support of that anywhere around the world. If we are even questioning whether or not we're going to choose the ballot or the couch, then you have to not only make the promises, but do your level best to make those promises come true before November, right? So it It cannot be that we see just a six-week ceasefire and then return once again to the violence and destruction and death that we've been seeing over the past five months, right? It cannot be that we don't get to the beginnings of a lasting ceasefire until the summertime, right? Because how many millions of people will be displaced by then? How many millions of people will have been starved to death by then? How many hundreds of people have been massacred over trying

to get their family flower by then? And so in claiming democracy, one must always stand up for it and fight for it abroad and at home. And I think what that means is ensuring that it's more than a political appeal, that it's more than a political tagline, that it's more than an electoral promise, that it's something that is seen and felt by people otherwise, the kind of enthusiasm and excitement that you need to get to the polls for you in November, very simply will not be there, whether or not you are as bad as the other guy. I mean, I think that is where my deep concern is, is that people are absolutely justified. And I think it was important to send up that flare to the Biden campaign in these primaries with the vote of uncommitted. Yeah. You know, because I think that it's important. I think that it's important that politicians have to earn your vote and pay attention to your needs and what matters to you.

particularly when you are saying that you are here to once again save the quote unquote soul of this nation, right? That we can't do or believe in what it is that you're saying when we are doom scrolling on a regular basis and can't avert our eyes from what it is that we are seeing. My last question for you is we have roughly seven months and I am like you and I'm sure many people on the edge of my seat because seven months is not just about whether. or not America continues to try and perfect this union in a democracy that is deeply flawed. But it is also about whether or not democracy prevails globally. Because if Donald Trump becomes president again, he is ceding not only Ukraine, but Europe to Putin. He is going to back out of NATO and who were once our allies will become our adversaries. And so how does the case get made about the existential threat not only in this country, but that American voters are in many ways holding the fate of global democracy in their hands?

There are a couple layers here for me. One is that I don't just want Trump to lose. I want Democrats to win by having earned that win, right? I want Democrats to win by governing in ways that are deeply antithetical to the practices and ideologies of the American GOP, to your point, not just for the benefit and sake of Americans, but for people all over the world, whom, for better or worse, American influence weighs heavily on them, their futures and their governments. I'm also really clear that at the end of the day, what we have before us is an opportunity. You know, my friend Kayla Reed, who is one of the

most brilliant strategists and organizers that I've ever met in my entire life, she says we don't vote for our faves. So voting is not actually about a candidate. It's not about them being perfect. It's not about a perfect platform. But rather, voting is about setting the conditions for our fight. And so when we frame it in that way and we look at the struggle for, liberation that will continue no matter who's in office. Then there is an argument to be made about how we set the most favorable conditions or even, dare I say, the least unfavorable conditions, right? Knowing that, what that means then is that if the argument is going to be made, one, we have to stop condescending people to that argument because that is a terribly ineffective

strategy. I don't know about you, Daniel, but the last time somebody told me to do something because they said so I definitely didn't do it unless it was my mother because she took the fear of God of me and that was a totally different experience but you know these these those kind of arguments that posit that people who are struggling with this choice are either under-informed or dumb or lack compassion or are selfish especially when many of these people are young people of color disabled people queer people not only is that insults. it's ineffective, right? I would rather be effective than be proven right. And so, so if the argument is going to be made, one, that's not when we can, we can condescend people into, two,

if the argument is to be made that we set the best possible conditions for our fight, then we have to stop lying to people that the voting booth is where that begins and ends. So much of the disengagement that we're seeing with this process is not because people are apathetic, quite the opposite, actually, but rather because there is a lack of trust and legitimacy in the institutions that are supposed to be democratic in this nation and stand as models for the rest of the world about how democracy can operate in all of its flaws. So if the Supreme Court isn't trustworthy because there are ethics violations all the time and a number of people on the bench have credible sexual assault and harassment allegations

against them. And the Congress is not credible and viable because there are actual known proven liars who are able to get elected and then get ejected and then sit again at the state of the union in George Santos on the same night that he said that he's going to run again. And Marjorie Taylor Green can sit there for the state of the union in a Trump 2020 hat and yell obscenities at the president. If that institution is not legitimate and the White House is not legitimate because somebody just scammed their way there, but a few years ago and is trying to scam their way there again, then what is the point? If models are not legitimate, then we have failed, not just with little D democracy, but big D democracy.

And so a lot of people's disengagement is because they're looking at these institutions saying, why would I put my trust in an institution that has yet to prove itself trustworthy in this moment when we need it to be so now more than ever? I also think that if the argument is going to be made, we have to actually require that our elected officials are the public servants that they say they are, meaning that if the poll numbers come back and the majority of your base and the majority of Americans want a ceasefire, then there's no reason why you shouldn't be responsive to that with urgency. If the argument is to be made, again, it has to be made not just in word, but indeed. I mean, it has to equip and enable people to feel like we're actually practicing

the act of democracy, that we're not going to get it right every single day, but that I can actually raise my voice on the things that matter to me, my community and my global neighbors, and actually not only be heard, but have my voice impact the decisions that are made for my in the globe's future. I will say this because we're going to have to leave it there today, but I think that what is incredibly important is that it isn't just about what America says or what the American president at the time says. It is about what they do. And can we trust that what they say and what they do will align with who we want to be. Brittany, thank you. Thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. And I hope that you come back and visit us again soon.

Talk to you soon. I'd love to. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Danielle, kick off what is sure to be a bombastically fantastic week. Not bombastic. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Who's your fuck that guy? All right, we are starting off the week with the Kansas Republicans. Folks, you have probably seen a video that has now been going around on social media, where the Kansas Republicans held a fundraiser and decided to, for a fee, allow their attendees at Johnson County Republican Party fundraiser to use a bat or their legs or their fists to, attack a mannequin of Joe Biden and with a t-shirt that read, Let's Go Brandon on it. Now, people will look at this and some folks will be like, oh, ha, ha, ha, ha, whatever. Let me tell you why it's not ha, ha, ha, whatever to me.

Because the Republican Party is a training ground for domestic terrorists and white supremac. This is like a training camp for insurrection January 6.2.0. And I will tell you that throughout the history of these United States, black people can't even so much as organize around liberation, around freedom and justice without being fucking tapped or killed by the state, whether that be the FBI, the CIA, and others, and labeled as domestic terrorists for doing nothing other than fighting and organizing for freedom. These people, these Karens and Shads, are beating up in public and being videotaped a mannequin of Joe Biden and it's all good and fine, knowing that these same groups of people attack the Capitol with zip ties and built a fucking gallows and all the things. When are we going to start looking at the Republican Party for what it is, which is a breeding ground for white domestic terrorism? and Christian national fascism instead of just, oh, isn't this a funny thing

that the fundraiser is doing? So for that reason, the entirety of the Kansas Republicans, the Republican Party, and Donald Trump for fomenting a culture of violence, are my fuck those guys? I was thinking about this.

Remember when Republicans were really outraged at Kathy Griffin? Ah, yes, yes. You know, because she had, she had a, there was a picture taken of her or whatever.

was holding like a fake, obviously, severed head of Donald Trump in her hand. And they could not have been more outraged. And suddenly all these people who are raging about cancel culture, wanted her canceled left and right. And here we are. I don't know, eight years later, I don't remember exactly what year the Kathy Griffin thing was, but it was pretty early on in the Trump stuff, I think. And here they are beating the crap out of a mannequin with Joe Biden's face on it. And it's just really interesting to me how that's okay. And the Kathy Griffin thing was way beyond the pale. And I don't know.

If I didn't know better, I would say that they're all a bunch of hypocrites. But it can't be that, can it? Oh, no, it couldn't possibly be. Yeah. Oh, fuck those guys. So, Andy, how are you kicking off this fabulous, glorious week in America with your fuck-that-guy? Well, my fuck-that-guy is an old standby by the name of. Elon Musk. As the media has sort of started reporting, in the last week, he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago,

and, you know, he says he's not giving any money to Trump, which, you know, probably has something to do with the fact that between the way he's destroyed Twitter's value, et cetera, he probably can't afford it at this point, even though he's still a multi-billionaire. As Bloomberg noted in a piece headline, Musk increasingly puts his thumb on the scale for Trump's GOP. What Musk is doing is he's using Twitter to spread ridiculous lies about Joe Biden, about Democratic policies. As Bloomberg points out, among other things, he baselessly speculated, as Bloomberg put it, that Biden took Adderall before his State of the Union address. Over and over, he has been a proponent of the Great Replacement Theory and talks about how the

Democrats want to bring people in here simply to harvest their votes. Bloomberg puts it, he is pretty much going all in on Twitter without actually saying that he's supporting Donald Trump. He's going all in in supporting Donald Trump. And again, I'm reminded, like I was with the Kathy Griffin thing, I'm reminded of the New York Times piece that feels like it wasn't that long ago, maybe a couple years, that talked about how his politics, Musk's politics were quote unquote complicated in an effort to not, you know, call him what he actually is. There is absolutely nothing complicated about Elon Musk's politics. They are what has become just sort of bog standard maga conservatism. As I said, he's been touting the great replacement theory for a while now.

It is amazing how sort of stupid he is. I don't know what other word there is for it. And I don't mean that in an IQ sense. I'm sure he has a very high IQ. He's also functionally stupid. And he just, he posts the most ridiculous things that are just flat out false. And he's very credulous. He'll read as long as it's not from the mainstream media. If he sees something anywhere else, whether it's just some random right-wing person on Twitter or, you know, some dubious or shady right-wing journalism outlet, he will repeat it without taking five seconds to check to see if it's true. And that's stupidity. There's no other word for that. So it's very clear what he's doing. He wants very much for Joe Biden to not be president and for Donald Trump to be president.

and he is doing everything he can on Twitter to try to make that happen. So if you read in the past, in the upcoming months that Elon Musk has not, you know, supported anyone for president, don't believe it. He's doing exactly what you would do if you were supporting Donald Trump for president. So for that and a number too large to count, fuck that guy. I mean, I'm just going to push back on one thing. Okay. I'm not sure his fucking IQ is as high as you think it is.

I really am. I really am not. It says that you were probably sent to the best schools with the emeralds that your daddy extracted from, you know, the mines in South Africa during apartheid in which you were enriched and all of that. But just go in a private school and having access to money, don't make your IQ high. So fuck that guy for a number of reasons. I agree with that. I also think, I mean, IQ is a stupid measurement. Exactly.

You know, I say this, by the way, as someone who has never had their IQ measures, so I have no dog. Well, we don't have to because it's off the charts. Well, there's that. I mean, the test can't contain me. Amazing. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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