The Daily Beast Podcast - The Sneaky Way the Supreme Court Will End Abortion Rights w/ Elie Mystal

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Not if, but when. “By this time next year, we will be talking about which way the Supreme Court chose to functionally end abortion rights in which states. That's going to be the conversation a year from now,” Elie Mystal, The Nation’s justice correspondent, tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “That is just what's going to happen.”But here’s the thing. The Court’s conservative majority won’t come out and say that’s what they’re doing. They’ll be sneaky about it. Then, Anne Nelson joins the show to talk about her book Shadow Network: Media, Money, and the Secret Hub of the Radical Right. And Andrew Zimmern talks about how he and his fellow star chefs helped convince Washington to rescue the restaurant business when the pandemic threatened to end it. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes it's just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Today we have some amazing conversations. First, we have Ann Nelson, the author of Shadow Network, media money and the secret hub of the Radical Right, who's going to talk to us about the network of shadowy right-wing groups offering legislation in our country. Then we'll have chef Andrew Zimmernon, who's the host of Bizarre Foods as well as MSNBC's What's Eating America. And he's going to talk to us about the state of food politics.

But first, we have returning fave, the nation's food. magazine's justice correspondent, Ellie Mistal. Hi, Ellie. Welcome back, back, back to the new abnormal. Hi, Molly. Thanks for having me. I'm just here luxuriating in my decision to be a last Catholic that feels like really wise foresight on my part.

I know this will be a big surprise to a lot of our listeners, but I am actually not a Christian. And so it all like seems the same to me. Someone once tried to explain to me like the difference between. Catholicism. I mean, I know, you know, the general differences, but... Cathal, he's big. Right. It seems to me that American religion and even religion around the world is not having a very good time of it, and that perhaps they shouldn't be alienating the one person who's at all

interested in them. The thing that gets me about this dust up, right, is that the Vatican, and when you talk about the difference between, like, Catholicism and Protestantism, like the Vatican kind of comes into play. Yeah, exactly. And so the Vatican is telling American Catholic bishops, y'all, slow your role. This is not what we do. And the American Catholics are like, no, screw that. We hate that Biden guy.

It's just we have the first Catholic president in 50 years. We hate them, though. We hate them. Well, it's interesting because it is, you know, the Pope and Biden are more aligned than the American. Catholics. Again, you're supposed to listen to the Pope if you're Catholic. That's like literally, like rule like three. He's the big boss, right? He's the big boss at the end of the game. Just for your listeners to be clear, like Joe Biden has not had an abortion. Of that I am,

I am very confident. I'm also like, have a high level of confidence that Joe Biden has never paid for an abortion. Yeah, I have a pretty high level confidence about that too. Or performed an abortion himself. Now, that should be enough to be a good Catholic, right? Like that is you living your faith in a way that makes sense to you. All Joe Biden is saying is that he is not going to impose his religious beliefs upon other people. That's the whole thing. Why would you deny a sacrament to a person who is living their life as you want them to, but simply not willing to go out and force others to do that? Like what's the upside of that? And that's why I say, to me, it comes down to some kind of grift because there's no theological reason for them to be doing this.

Right. Well, it definitely is. And I think that the idea here is that he's not allowed to be a Catholic. I mean, it's just, it's so preposterous. But then I'm curious to know, like, if you look at the Supreme Court, the really religious people on the Supreme Court are Catholic. Oh, yeah, the Supreme Court's a low-key Catholicocracy when you look at it, right? Or Jewish. There's only one Protestant on the court, I believe, Gorsuch.

And he was raised Catholic, if I have his religion right. But yeah, most of the conservatives are Catholic and kind of very hardcore versions of that. And there is a thought in my head that I wonder if the bishops are doing this to also pressure the Catholic justices ahead of next year where, you know, Spoiler alert, they're going to take away abortion in some form next year. Oh, yeah. That's coming, man, in October. That is just what's going to happen. They're going to argue in October. And by this time next year, when you have me on, this time next year, we will be talking about which way the Supreme Court chose to functionally end abortion rights in which states.

Like, that's going to be the conversation a year from now. So that's coming. And I do wonder if the Catholic bishops are organization are kind of seeing that play out and just wanting to put as much pressure on the Catholic justices as possible on this issue. That actually makes sense because this letter really came apropos of nothing. Yep. And I'm always a little suspicious of things that come apropos of nothing. Do you think, I'm curious to know, since you really know a lot about the Supreme Court, a lot of A lot of people think they're going to and make it a state by state, like red states can take away abortion choice. Do you think that's how it's going to go?

Or do you think they'll, like, really overturn row and be like, because they can do whatever they want. Making it a state-by-state calculation is overturning row. Right. Like, I don't think that they will take the political heat of writing down and thus we overturn row v. way. That's not how it's going to legally play out. And I think that unfortunately, a lot of the mainstream media will miss the headline because of it, because they won't overturn Roe by saying, we are overturning Roe. What they will fundamentally do is overturn the logic of Roe, right?

The logic of Roe, and this is, you know, I feel like people, even people who are pro-choice have kind of missed the boat here. The logic of Roe is that the state has a legitimate interest in the state. the health and safety and whatever of an unborn child after that child is violent, right? After that unborn fetus, collection of cells, baby, whatever you want to call it, after that thing can exist outside the mother's body. So the mother doesn't have to like pay for it in blood and nutrients. After that thing can exist outside of the mother's body, the state then has a legitimate interest in making sure that thing is healthy, happy, blah, blah, of course, it doesn't ever put money behind that legitimate interest, but that's a different point, right? The key

distinction in Roe is viability. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which is our more updated abortion law, that says that prior to viability, the state can restrict abortion rights and access as long as it's not placing an undue burden on the potential mother to have access to her constitutional rights. Now, what undue board burden means is kind of different. Everybody, Republicans think almost any burden is not undue. Democrats think most burdens are undue. Yeah.

Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. But the way they're going to overturn Roe is by obliterating that fetal viability standard. And so they're going to say that states can place a burden on abortion rights whenever they want. One week, two, week, three weeks, whatever. Whenever they want, they can place a burden on abortion rights before fetal viability. And then they'll say whatever restrictions they can think of are not, in fact, undue. Right. So they won't directly overturn plan parenthood.

They'll say, we still have to have undue burdens. and they won't directly overturn road, they'll still say that people have a right to abortion. It's just that the state can place an undue burden on that right before fetal viability if they want. Right. So they'll open the door to whatever the fuck the conservatives want, which will then completely screw women, as always.

But I just want to go back for a minute and talk to you about this weekend because it does seem to me that Republicans are having a hard time landing a punch on Joe Biden and are so, because he's so white and old and Catholic that they're sort of trying to get sneaky about the ways they do it. Is that, do you see that at all? I don't know. When you say landing a punch, like the problem with that, I think, with that frame, is that it assumes that we're both watching the same boxing match, right? And we both kind of understand reality as it is. When that's just kind of not true. Republicans are talking in an ecosystem that bears a little resemblance to my world or what I believe the world

actually looks like. They're having a conversation that exists for an hour, a night on Tucker Carlson's show, right? And so it's really hard to assess whether any of these blows or landing or punches or like, because they're not, they're not, they're not trolling in reality with the rest of us, right? Right. Right now, the most powerful person in the Republican, party is Tucker Carlson, right? Yes. Like he's the one that sets their agenda. If Tucker complains about something,

the next day, Republican senators are complaining about that same thing. Not because their constituents said it, but because Tucker said it, and they assume that if Tucker says it, eventually their constituents will care, so let's get ahead of that train. Right. He sets their agenda.

What lands and what doesn't land, it's just hard to understand when the agenda is being set by a TV show host. An opinion TV show host who has once argued, who had lawyers argue that no one takes his opinion seriously, and so he shouldn't be liable for things that happen. I mean, can you imagine if the Democrats said that? Can you imagine if, like, the Democrats were like, oh, what does Pat Sejax say tonight? Let's see what we got to do. That's where they are.

Yeah, I mean, we're basically there. But so Ben Smith, one of the media columnists at the New York Times, had a piece this on Sunday. I'm sure you read it where he said, basically Tucker Carlson's secret weapon is that he has this very chummy relationship with a lot of elite journalists who use him for sources. Yep, I saw that. Yeah. So basically, democracy dies in DMs. I don't know when we're going to learn our lesson about access journalism. I would have thought we learned, we should have learned a lesson and put like this.

I learned the lesson that access journalism was going to lead us to ruination after the second Gulf War, right? That was a war started by access journalism. Wait, back it up a little bit for my dad who might not know what you're talking about. Right. There was never, there were never weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Never. That was made up. That was made up.

And by a certain New York Times journalist. who kept feeding information to the New York Times, which kept reprinting that information uncritically like they were the press office for the Pentagon. That's how that war got started, folks. If Judith Miller didn't tell us the lesson that this is how we start wars, because the same thought process that went through, that went behind the lead-up to the Gulf War

is the thought process that went behind the election of Donald Trump. It was the same thought process. And once again, journalists reprinting press releases uncritically, journalists carrying the water of normalizing and legitimizing patently crazy stuff is how we got to Donald Trump. So we didn't learn after Iraq, and we didn't learn it after Donald Trump, and it looks like we're not going to learn it again. And the Ben Smith piece about Tucker is just another kind of data point

in the fear of how broken mainstream media is when it comes to access journalists. You know, what strikes me about that piece is that there is a problem when we consider ourselves, you know, you and I happen to be on the opinion side, but we're still as legitimate as anyone else. But what I see with a lot of journalists is that there's this phenomenon of being too cool to care. And when you're too cool to care, then you are just, you know, sort of a nihilist the way Tucker Carlson is. And you don't care ultimately. But, Molly, why don't you say that that is a particular problem of white male heterosexual

journalists? Yes. Yes. Yes. Because being too cool to care is legitimate if you can't be hurt. Right. Right. No one is that's right.

Like they act like they had nothing. to lose because they don't because there's no version of America that takes from them, right? There's no version of America that limits their rights and freedom. There's a reason why, I don't want to name names, but there's a reason why Substack is calling unto itself a host of white male straight journalist, right? Because the thing that they're most afraid of is this thought that one day, they might not be able to say everything they want to say while still getting an endorsement from Nike, right? Like that, like, cancel culture is their biggest fear because that's actually taking something from them. Their right to piss people off with no consequences, right?

That's what they're worried about. The rest of us are worried about our basic rights, whether we can go to the grocery store without being shot, whether we can start a family, whether we can adopt into starting a family, which is something Supreme Court ruled against last week. They're real concerns that the rest of us have, that these white male straight journalists just don't, don't have. And so they don't report, they don't report about it. They don't talk about it. They're not concerned about it. I think it's this nihilistic obsession with the takes for the takes sake that is really like ultimately the biggest thing hurting journalism today. But I want to talk to you about this decision. So it's a decision that basically Catholic charities don't

have to allow gay couples to adopt children. Yeah. So this is Fulton County. versus City of Philadelphia. The issue was that a Catholic charity was one of the screeners for the city for potential foster couples, right? And the Catholic charities, Catholic Social Services, said that it would no longer screen same-sex couples. Because there are so many foster parents want, want to take children who are troubled. The city of Philadelphia said, well, that's discriminatory. So you can't be one of our screeners. Yeah. And the Catholic charity said, no, no, no, you have to let us. have to let us be part of the state-run operation, because if you don't, that's impinging on our free exercise of religion, which is a bad, crazy argument. That's not a great argument,

but this is the argument that conservatives are now using to take away gay rights. The fundamental thing people need to understand is that the new attacks on gay rights, it's not 20 years ago. Conservatives are not attacking gay rights frontally in terms of, like, gay rights. people shouldn't have rights. They've lost that battle. So the next battle, the next front for them is to not say that gay people shouldn't have rights. It's to say that religious people shouldn't have to respect those rights at all if their God tells them that bigotry is demanded, right? So that's their new tactic, and that is the tactic that unanimously was upheld again. It's not the first time it's been upheld, but it's the first time it's been upheld unanimously by the Supreme

Court, in this case, Fulton County, Fulton versus City of Philadelphia. Now, when I say unanimous, I'm doing, I'm doing a slight disservice because while technically yes, the decision was 9-0, that was not it, there is not nine, there are not nine people on the Supreme Court who agree about this issue at all. If anything, that decision was one, two, three, three, in terms of the ideological split in the case. It's kind of complicated. I wrote about this in the nation, about why the liberals kind of went with the conservatives on this issue. But the fundamental point is that there was a way to make the Catholic charities win that kind of only made the Catholic charities win in this case. And then there was a way to make the Catholic charities win

that would have made kind of all religious objectors win all the time when it comes to discriminating against gay people. And the liberals chose the safer option of just giving, kind of giving the baby its bottle in this one case while preventing the more extremist conservatives from kind of changing the law kind of going forward in a much more deep and irrevocable way. That's why they did it. It was a little bit of strategic voting, a little bit of horse trading went along. So it's not like, you know, Sonia Sonomayor suddenly thinks that gay people can't be foster kids. That's not foster parents. That's not what happened. But it does show that there's a, the conservatives are kind of talking amongst themselves,

and the liberals are just kind of being drug along for the ride trying to pick the least bad out of terrible options. Right. It's like we're in the bad place. We are totally in the bad place. When it comes to religious attacks on LGBTQ rights, this is going to be the next 20 years. this is how they're going to be doing. And we've already seen it, right? We saw this in Masterpiece Cake Shop, where the fundamental argument was that the baker had a religious right to deny public accommodation to people

because he objected to their sexuality. We're going to see this in trans cases up and down our system. This is their way. They're going to, they've weaponized the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Think about it. What free exercise is supposed to mean is that, I can do what I need to do without the government bothering me. That's the most simple form of it.

And really, America was kind of unique in the 1800s as for being a country that had such a free exercise clause, right? But free exercise was never meant to trump otherwise neutral secular laws, right? You can't say my free exercise of religion means that I get to shoot people. That's not right. No, you can't shoot people. I don't care what your God says. You can't stone people to death. That's not what we do, right?

What the conservatives have done, again, with respect to gay rights, is to try to warp the free exercise clause into a defense of bigotry. And that's a battle liberals are going to have to fight for the rest of my life. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. That seems great. So just really quickly, we're waiting on one more big case this term. Because, you know, Supreme Court upheld Obamacare for like the third time, right? Supreme Court did this horrible thing against gay rights, but we're still waiting to see how it weighs in

on voting rights. In Arizona, there's a case in front of the court that we expect to be decided this week about whether Arizona's voter restrictions, not the crazy, stupid 15th recount they're doing right now, but restrictions they had in place before the last election, whether some of those restrictions are going to be allowed to stand. Now, I think it's, again, with this Supreme Court, I think Arizona's going to win. The question is how much they win by. And so this, just like the gay rights case, this could be another situation where, where kind of Roberts and Connie Barrett and alleged attempted rapist, Brett Kavanaugh, will have some kind of moderate conservative position, whereas Alito and Thomas will have some kind of extreme conservative position. And the liberals will have to choose whether or not they

sign on to a bad voting rights decision or let Alito make it a terrible voting rights decision. And decision, but that's what we're still waiting for this week. Yeah, that sounds great. We're definitely in the bad place. I mean, thank you for making me feel slightly worse. We should expand the court. I know, we should. What you want for me?

When you get six conservatives there, like, that's the ball game. I can't. It's just so horrific. Anyway, thank you so much for joining us. This is great. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Hey, folks. If you haven't heard, every single week we do a special bonus episode. for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news.

You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com. That's New Abnormal.com. Anne Nelson is

the author of Shadow Network, Media, money, and the secret hub of the Radical Right. Welcome, and the new abnormal. Thank you. Good to be here. Why don't you start by explaining to us? Basically, it's like, it feels like something out of the Da Vinci

Code. There are a network of conservative radio stations and then conservative donors and then conservative policy shops that are all connected. Can you sort of explain this to us? Yes, absolutely. The way I unfolded in Shadow Network is that while a lot of Democrats were living in cities and on coastal areas, in the meantime, in the middle of the country, there were these entities that were pushing. back against the reforms of the 1960s, civil rights, women's rights, you name it. And in 1981, they decided to exploit Reagan's victory and come together and found something called the

Council for National Policy, which would advance their policies and their interests. Basically, their policies were anti-LGB, anti-abortion, pretty much anti-civil rights and integration, based in fundamentalist Christianity of the South and the Midwest. And they joined forces with oil interests from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. And that's the Koch brothers, right? Well, the Koch brothers have played very nicely with them. They've cross-funded each other's organizations, et cetera. But there are various oil interests that have been deeply involved, as well as the DeVos family

of Michigan, the Amway region. and they networked in a way that the Democrats have never replicated. So the messengers craft the messaging, the radio stations, and now the digital platforms broadcast it. And they use this to take power in states that basically the national news media hasn't been looking at. Yeah. So let's, why don't you give us an example of a state where the legislature has picked up

a bill that comes from this consortium? Well, okay, so the bills are often crafted by Alec, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which is run by a member of the Council for National Policy. And for example, you have this replication of what's called the heartbeat bill across many states right now, which imposes such severe restrictions on abortion that it basically eliminates women's right to choose. Right. And this comes from, this heartbeat bill came, It was originally originated in Ohio. And what they do is they craft a bill where they think it's going to be a sympathetic state environment in the legislature and the courts and the state house. And then they leverage across state borders. Another example comes from my home state of Oklahoma, which decided that they would pass a bill that's been signed into law that says that if you run over a protester for a Black Lives Matter protest, for example, it's not a crime. Right. And that is also an Alec bill.

Those are, so there are different kinds of bills that we've seen pop up in all of these state houses, like the running over protesters bills, the heartbeat bills with these fetuses that don't have hearts yet. There's the anti-trans bills. I mean, there are a couple of different sort of, you know, a couple of different culture war issues that these guys have picked up. But I'm curious, like, I want to walk it back a minute because this is all very complicated, or at least it is to me, this National Council, you actually know a bunch of the people who are on here because even though the membership is super secret, you have been able to find it. Well, what happened was that the Southern Poverty Law Center accessed and published their 2014 directory. And I worked from that writing my book. And, oh, it had some great names.

it had Steve Bannon, it had Kellyanne Conway, and all of these people leading into the Trump. And Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk appears in 2020. So what happened between then and now is that a couple of ACE researchers, one of them's named Brent Alpress, found a way into their online systems, a legal entry point, and downloaded their more recent membership. and they've been published by two investigative centers, the Center for Media and Democracy and documented.

So they also published their meeting agendas and videos where they lay out their plans for stealing the election in 2020 and beyond. So explain that to us. So this is an organization that, as I said, has very closely related moving parts. The strategy, the media, the ground game with their organizations that go door-to-door canvassing, all run by members of the Council for National Policy. So National Rifle Association, Susan B. Anthony List, which is anti-abortion.

And they coordinate. And in their meetings, starting in 2019, they said, oh, Trump may not win the popular vote. So therefore, he has to win the Electoral College. And we are going to try the following measures to win the Electoral College. A few months later, their meetings show that they're saying, oh, he might lose the electoral college. So we need to pressure the state legislatures. Right. That's pretty crazy right there.

Yeah. Like that moment where they're like, he might lose the electoral college. So let's just override democracy altogether. Absolutely. And one of their leading members, the lawyer, Clita Mitchell, was on the call with Trump where he's pressuring Brad Raffensberger from Georgia to, quote, unquote, find 11,000 votes, right? Right. I remember that. So and Clita Mitchell is quite nutty. I mean, from what I've seen,

what I saw, you know, on television and read about her. And she is like a very high up member in this group. Oh yeah. She's a very long-term member. And I would say that we underestimate these people at our peril. Because what they do have is access to state. level pressure. So they are able to say to their membership of over 400 strong. And we're talking about a lot of big money people who donate big money to local campaigns. Like who? Well, the DeVos family to start with. The DeVos family has bought several campaigns in Michigan, including the one that crippled Michigan's labor unions with the right to work law. They were all over that. Scott Walker, the governor of,

Wisconsin, who has been a conduit for Coke money, did the same thing in Wisconsin, crippling the political activities of Wisconsin labor union. We saw what the effect of that was. And then you've got various oil interests that come into it. So there are these donor consortia. Some of them are fundamentalists like the National Christian Foundation. Some of them are through Koch Brothers, Coke Empire, donors trust. So a lot of it's dark money and a lot of the donors work through these conduits.

So when they want to pressure state legislators, well, you know, in some of these swing states, there's not a lot of other money flowing around. So they've got undue pressure. And they also have a majority of Republican state houses to work with. Right. You're an academic. So how did you get involved in this? Well, I grew up in Oklahoma and I came east to college, but I go back to see family at least once or twice a year. I was driving to Walmart because that's what you do in Oklahoma and turn on the radio and found this fundamentalist radio station that was overtly political. And I knew something about nonprofits and how you're not supposed to be campaigning for it against a candidate if you're a tax exempt. So I started following.

that. And I thought it was just basically this local radio preacher. And then I found out, no, this was part of hundreds of radio stations across the Midwest and the South. And the message that was coming out was extraordinary because his preacher, it was a calling. It was saying, if John Kerry wins the presidency, he will make heterosexual marriage unsanctified. I'm like, what? Jesus. You're like, how would even do that? Well, you know, but you're talking about people who are not reading the New York Times. They believe what they hear on the radio. And this woman was like, I've been married to my husband for 40 years. You mean, we won't be legally married? And it's like, no, ma'am, you've got to go out and vote. You know, I thought, okay, wait a minute. I got to look into this. So, and that's how you got involved in this

story to begin with. You know, as a journalist, you see a thread and you pull it and then more That's why you come out. And that's how it was for a few years. And when Trump won the election, I was like a lot of other people watching the returns expecting a Clinton win the way the New York Times had told me she would. And then I was like, all right, I got to dive into this. Do you think that Democrats have anything like this? No, I know they don't.

There are several reasons. One is that the Koch brothers developed a state-of-the-art data platform for political data that integrates consumer data. And then they networked it across the country to their chosen candidates who can use it with their door-ded-door canvassing. So they've had this competitive advantage where if you knock on a door, you know, the guy is a member of the NRA and he's afraid of Democrats taking the guns. The next door is a Catholic housewife, so you talk to her about abortion, right?

So you have these two messages. And you leverage that to tailored social media messaging, right? the Democrats have not networked their data across the country. They have not subsidized it the way the coax have. They have not networked it into grassroots canvassing. So even though they have a majority of public opinion for their policies, they've been at a deficit in terms of their campaign tools. Right. Makes a lot of sense. It strikes me with all of these local state issues. What I see in the Republican party that seems so seamless and what you've written about in your book and what I think is so like incredibly important for the listeners to understand is that you have you know you'll have

something like an anti-trans bill or and then you'll see messaging I want you to tell our listeners what you told me the other night about how exactly this information and these news stories get dispersed because you had very specific platforms and where they go from one to the next. Can you explain that? Absolutely. I mean, it functions like a corporation doing advertising, right? So you've got the marketing people focusing on a message and finding buzzwords that are usually not true. Let's say the term partial birth abortion. This was invented by their groups, focus group tested, and it is not a medical term. It does not exist. But It is such a visceral image that they found that it evoked emotion.

So then what they do is take this idea and take their surrogates, whether it's Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council or they have a whole stable of spokespeople that appear on their media as well as on Fox and Sinclair News and others. And they repeat these terms. and it's another form of the big lie, because if you repeat this often enough, people absorb it. And then what you get in these states are people who are voting against their own self-interest. They're voting against public schools for the kids. They're voting against clean air and water because they feel that the only issue on the table is to stop partial birth abortion, which doesn't mean.

Right, right, right, which isn't even really a thing. I mean, we spent an entire, you know, it's been an entire two-week news cycle on critical race theory, right? Which is not, you know, and that's the biggest, you know, danger facing American children, critical race theory. None of these people could tell you what the fuck it is. Oh, it's, it would be funny if it weren't so serious. So you asked about the media platforms. One of the media platforms that was founded and is run by. a council for national policy member is a daily caller.

So who runs that? So a CNP member named Neil Patel co-founded it. And he's... With Tucker Carlson. With Tucker Carlson. Yeah. And Tucker Carlson, I believe, sold out his interest, but Patel remains. And Ginny Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas.

That's right. He's a so-called correspondent where she profiles other... members of the CNP, such as Charlie Kirk of TPU, Turning Point USA. What's amazing, it's so funny with Ginny Thomas and Cleita Mitchell, these are two of the absolutely craziest women I've ever seen in mainstream, you know, profiled in, you know, in mainstream media in any possible way. So it's fascinating. Continue. Sorry, I didn't interrupt you. Well, and I think Cleedon Mitchell is very sharp and obviously very strategic because they it accomplished a lot in terms of voter suppression, and they've done it very quietly.

Ginny Thomas and Charlie Kirk, who were canned in hand quite a lot, both posted social media in support of January 6th. And I should add that when pressuring the state legislatures and pressuring local election officials like Brad Raffensberger didn't pan out, they moved from Plan A to Plan B to Plan C, Plan D, and you know, plan F was January 6th and the march on the Capitol. But I should also add that right now they've moved on and they are positioning themselves for the midterms in 2022 to change the election laws in enough states that they can take over Congress and cripple the Biden administration, regardless of the outcome of the actual

public opinion and the actual intended vote. Right. With the caller, so you'll see something in the collar, which doesn't have a huge circulation, but the caller feeds other right-wing media networks. So can you explain that? Yes, there's an incredibly extensive ecosystem. And you've got, well, for example, Charlie Kirk has his YouTube channel. Salem Media is run by two very prominent members of the Council for National Policy. They distribute content to over 3,000 radio stations in the United States. And then they've got their own network of digital platforms, which include Red State and PJ Media, etc. Then they've got Facebook distribution channels, right? And beyond that, we're seeing evidence that there's some interrelationship with QAnon. There's an interrelationship

with KUNON, but even besides that, they're feeding the Fox News opinion shows every night. Yeah, Fox is a pretty faithful chronicler of their platforms. But I should add another really important component. For decades, they've been building relationships with fundamentalist churches. So Family Research Council, which is a core organization in the CNP, has this organization called Watchmen on the walls. And they claim to have tens of thousands of member pastors. And if you look at their website, they give you materials that you're supposed to download and then they put them in their church bulletins in the sanctuary, which include voting guides, right?

They tell people in their churches how to vote. They give them sermons to deliver from the pulpit. They give them videos to project. in the sanctuary. The thing about this is that they also, in terms of the data, download church directories and direct social media at the members of the congregation they feel will vote Republican. And other messaging will go to suppress Democratic votes. So the key here, and I've taught classes at Columbia on digital media. And, you know, a lot of times the Democrats go with kind of a social media slackivism approach, which is, you know, how many likes did we get?

The secret sauce in this is to get people in their real-life organizations and communities to exert peer pressure. So it's one thing if somebody on your Facebook group likes or not likes, if somebody in your church looks you in the eye and says, you've got to vote against partial birth abortion, it's incredibly effective. Well, also, if your pastor is saying, like, you know, trans people are going to take over the world if you don't take away their rights. Absolutely. I mean, that is very powerful. And it is a really, there is no democratic equivalent.

No, I think the Democrats have believed that if they came up with enlightened policies, the public would notice and vote for them. I wish the world worked like that. Me too. All right. This was amazing. Thank you so much. I hope you'll come back soon. I'd love to. Thanks so much.

Thank you. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be willing to the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power.

Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Chef Andrew Zimmern is the host of Bizarre Foods and MSNBC's What's Eating America. Welcome to the new abnormal Andrew Zimmern. Hello.

We're so excited to have you. I think of you as someone who is like in that spot between politics, in a way and food. I like to describe it that way. I usually call it civics because then I avoid political arguments with people I don't want to have political arguments with. But that's sort of a fib. I use civics as a bit of a cover because I think that policy is the love language of our time. And if we don't actually make things policy and turn things into laws, we're not going to fix the problems that are out there.

I think my personal journey is really what cast the die and certainly making the MSNBC series What's Eating America solidified it. A bunch of us about 10 years ago, and I'm talking about, you know, people who were at the big kids table in the food world. Tell us, tell us. Tom Colicchio, Jose Andres, a bunch of others. We were all standing around a party at South Beach One and Food Festival. This is eight, nine years ago. and maybe 10 years ago. And we had all, we all had the same experience, which was we were doing dinners, we were

cooking at gala, we were speaking at events, and they were raising hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they were pouring those hundred thousands of dollars into buckets that had million dollar holes in the bottom. And it really wasn't changing anything. And it reminded me of Michael Moore in his first movie where he's shouting, I think, at the GM or Ford building. he's standing outside screaming at it. And it felt like we were tilting at windmills.

And everybody decided in their own way that we were going to try to, you know, that it really was policy needed to be changed in America. You know, the farm bill need to be re-labeled the food bill. We needed to address hunger and waste with the power of law behind them. We needed to increase snap with the power of law behind it. We needed to increase access. to healthy food with the power of law behind it. And so everyone went on their own way.

Now, Jose probably most famously, certainly most famously, not probably, started World Central Kitchen, you know, was nominated for Nobel Prize last year. So he's... Not bad. He's done very well with that, check. Tom started a pack

and got really involved on Capitol Hill and is one of the most cogent and informed voices on policy that we have in the food world. Wow. He can talk about, you know, state legislation in Arkansas, as well as he can talk about hunger issues in Long Island, New York. And he has done a ton of work in that arena

with several different groups that he has founded. And Tom and I are both co-founders of the Independent Restaurant Coalition that started 456 days ago. Yesterday, we learned we were 455 days old. You know, our goal there was, to literally singleness of purpose was to actually get money from the federal government to all the independent restaurants of the United States. And so when PPP came out, we helped fix that. We sent representatives to meet with then President Trump, you know, along with Earl Blumenauer

and a whole bunch of others across the aisle, Senator Wicker of Mississippi, Senator Sinema, Dean Phillips of Minnesota, a bunch of others created what was the Restaurants Act that ended up becoming the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. We needed $120 billion. We got $29 billion. And now we're we must get the federal government to refill that coffer with those horrific lawsuits that have come from three different groups, all insisting that people of color and women. women and small business owners should not be prioritized against the big restaurants. And it's something that we really insisted on. But answering your first question, I am a storyteller. So I decided that I was going to start doing a different kind of food show.

So I actually changed bizarre foods a little bit against the rules. You know, the last couple of years of bizarre foods were stories about the Underground Railroad and the insurrections of the 1850s during the border wars between K. Kansas and Missouri and how they apply to today's racist environment that we live in. And I really tilted everything I did towards civics and politics and then wound up doing that big award-winning series on MSNBC. And so now that really informs everything that I do because I believe we are at a crisis, an existential crisis point in global history, whether it's with climate, our personal health,

hunger, anywhere you look at it, things are not good and need fixing, and I'm not sure we have people in the right seats to do the fixing. So to your question about the money for restaurants, the biggest business in America is the U.S. government. Within that, I think it's the Defense Department, is number one, both in bodies and people. The number two business silo in America are restaurants. We represent five percent of GDP. we are, we represent a trillion and a half dollar industry. We, when we lose, you know, I think it was a Q4 2020, we lost $200 billion in revenue. Right.

You know, obviously that's in wintertime, you know, the spring and summer and when it's warmer in different parts of the country, people were able to eat out and restaurants did some business. But the fact is, is that opening the doors on all of them now doesn't make up for the year plus of lost revenue, the incredible debt restaurants took on. So even though your neighborhood restaurant may look crowded tonight when you walk by it, everyone is desperate for dollars. So we created, along with some incredible politicians from both sides of the aisle. This restaurant revitalization fund, Senator Schumer helped push it across the line with the Biden administration. It got put into the CARES Act at the last moment, and it set aside, we asked for $120 billion, we got $29.

So we knew we had to get it refilled. The SBA administered, and the SBA has been fantastic to work with, the small business administration. That's actually who you submit your forms to, and they dole out this $29 billion. They got $65 billion worth of applications within, I think, the first 10 days. One of the small little pieces of this wonderful legislation was that the people who had been hurt the hardest disproportionately were going to get first bite at the money. In other words, rich white guys with restaurants get out of the way, people of color, the physically disabled, women-owned businesses, all we're going to have first bite at the apple, prioritized. And of course, I think one of the suits is out of Texas. Oh, and so they sued you for discrimination?

Well, no, they're suing the government saying you are discriminating. The money should be applied for freely. So the Independent Restaurant Coalition, as I said, of which I'm a very active founding member, we have no horse in that fight legally. Our singleness of purpose, the only thing we care about is refilling the coffers because there's $65 billion in applications. If the U.S. government throws another $35 billion into the coffer, Everyone who applied can get their money.

And then we'll deal with the next wave of people who need money, but at least we'll get that taken care of. If we don't, we are facing a real serious economic problem because there's a false kind of bubble with everything opening where this little mini boomlet economy where people are feeling good is actually not working for everyone. And I believe there's another 10, 15 percent of restaurants that will close because they're not getting this money. We've already closed, I think, 20% of restaurants we've lost. And it's the number two employer in the United States. And it's the only employer that, well, it's the number one employer of single moms, first-time job seekers, last-time job seekers, depending on whose data you look at, the number one or two for new arrivals in this country, of returning citizens, people coming out of jails and institutions. These people are not going to get a job at the investment bank tomorrow that we need restaurants. And they're the lifeblood of our communities. Look at the supply chain going in, wine, vegetables, trucking, napkins, whatever it is. And they pump 92% out the back door. They're like banks. We just take the money for a while and put it back out there. Restaurants are a magical, magical piece of business in so many ways. And if we don't take care of them, we are really, really, really in trouble.

It's interesting because I live in Manhattan, close to where you grew up, and many of our restaurants are gone. Yeah. And there will be people who step in, who have money, who are going to seek opportunity. What I worry about most is not restaurants from the Upper East Side of New York or Shaker Heights in Cleveland or Beverly Hills in L.A. Those spaces, people will come in and they will raise that. That will get taken care of. What scares the crap out of me are all the little restaurants that do. you know, $700,000 a year where dad is cooking and mom is running the register and the kids are waiting tables. And I'm kind of exaggerating to make a point. It's the restaurant version of the roadside fruit stand with the freckled face kid that looks like Huck Finn and his overalls.

How do you get money to those restaurants? The RRF did that because we were prioritizing the people who needed it the most, right? Small restaurants, restaurants run by people of color, women-owned businesses, et cetera. There was a long list, you know, veteran-owned restaurants. You pull all those out, and what's left behind are restaurants run by people who can wait in line a little easier. And so these lawsuits have been an absolute disaster, and I hope that these are taken up quickly by a higher court and dismissed. And more importantly, we want the Biden administration to throw 35 more billion dollars into the fund, essentially rendering the lawsuits, neutering them because we're just going to give the money to everyone who's applied. We don't have to prioritize anyone. Talk to me about food waste, because that's another thing you're working on, and I'm curious about them.

Yeah, you know, food waste is a big issue. Frequently people cite one figure. They say, oh, we waste 40% of America, but 25% of Americans are hungry, so if we just waste less, we can feed everybody. It's much more complex than that. The vast majority of food waste occurs pre-consumer contact. In other words, between the growers, in the case of vegetables and fruits, and the wholesaler. So we have to do a better job of supply line distribution. so that a lettuce field in Salinas Valley doesn't get plowed under because there's no boxes or people to harvest it.

So what does that mean? That means we got to fix our immigration problem because everybody who's, you know, 60% of fruits and vegetables are grown in one place in central California and everyone there is an immigrant and half of them are illegal. So we have to fix our immigration problem in order to start addressing this wholesale law. We have to protect the supply chain and take better care of our goods. We have to have supermarkets that aren't throwing away perfectly good food just because it's blemished and they think it doesn't look good sitting out there. We have to teach people that ugly food is good food. We have to have people in America.

I gave some tips the other day on one of my presentations for a supermarket chain that if everyone in America just took out one of the United States, shelf and one bin in their refrigerator, they would shrink their space in their fridge by about 20 to 25 percent. That would decrease their waste almost automatically. America has been sold supersized refrigerators. No other country in the world has big refrigerators like ours. So people like to load up for the week, and that means they waste a lot of food. And the manufacturers of the friages love it, the supermarkets love it, the food companies love it, because we throw away food and buy more. We have to have realistic labeling and freshness dating. Yogurt lasts way longer than the dates

that are on the label. My husband and my father-in-law believe that that's a conspiracy. I believe so too, and I can actually point to the day and time that it happened, but that's perhaps for another episode. If you keep a pad near the garbage can and just write down every piece of food that you throw away, at least you'll know, are you throwing out all leftovers from dinners? Maybe you need to to eat more of them. Are you throwing out fruits and vegetables? Well, maybe you need to buy less or cook more of them. So, you know, educating yourself, I mean, those are the two big tips for people in the home. But food waste is a massive, massive issue that has so many tendrils going into it. And if we wasted less food, then we would be able to target more of what we're able to keep to those that are in

need. But the hunger issue, the number one thing we should do for hunger is simply in large snap. You know, snap, you know, for every dollar that goes out, it brings a $1.87, I think, into the community. It is of benefit. Can you explain that a little bit? So the government gives somebody a food stamp is what we used to call it. It is food stamps. I just hate that word. Yeah.

But what's it stand for? Supplemental nutritional assistance program. You get a chit, you go, you get a pound of lettuce, right? Right. But that pound of lettuce, the money that goes to the supermarket, into the farmer actually multiplies. It's sort of an econ 102 issue. So most people don't understand that when that money goes to pay the bills, the people who take it in are, it's a profit center for them. That head of lettuce represents profit. So they're able to put the right amount of money back

into their system. The other factor that contributes to this plus up benefit is when you have people who are using food stamps for food, then they're able to spend their cash on other things when they have it, right? And also, they don't starve. Well, most importantly, most importantly. I mean, look, the bottom line of all of this, and I know that I'm not just preaching to the converted, I'm preaching to someone who has helped convince me of this in other areas outside of my areas of expertise. You know, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, my mentor here in Minnesota, always said, we all win when we all win. That's not socialism. That's called humanism, right? In American 2021, it's criminal. It's almost genocidal when you look at the fact that there are so many

different groups of Americans who are disproportionately affected by this. I mean, just look at what's going in the indigenous American communities. It's the same thing that's happening with the vote. You know, look, it's not voter suppression. It's voter exclusion. It's not food insecurity. It's hunger. we have to start using the right words for these things and we have to get change. Political will has to be there. We have the skill to solve all these problems in America. We just don't have the political will. And I think it's vital. I'll give the plug one more time. Vital for our representatives on Capitol Hill and D.C. to refill the coffers of the restaurant revitalization fund. And anyone who wants to learn more about this, please go to Independent Restaurants dot com, where you'll read all about what the IRCR

organization and our nonprofit is up to. Hi, Jesse Cannon. Hi, Molly Jongfast. So, it's an interesting, you know, it's been an interesting weekend, and I always look to members, former members of the Trump ecosystem

to really be assholes, but this really takes the cake. And Now, you'll remember Dr. Ronnie Jackson. He was Trump's physician. He was the one who said that Trump aced a cognitive test, and he's very sharp and very intact. That was Ronnie Jackson. So now Ronnie Jackson, he then took that, you know, he was a sort of Trump propagandist.

He was able to parlay this into getting a very bright red Texas GOP seat, as we are not surprised. So he is now, he has basically the same job as the dumbest member of Congress, one Louis Gomerert. That's the French. So Jackson, now that he's lied for Trump and also now serves in Congress, he has decided that he's going to call. And remember, there were also allegations. The reason why he didn't end up overseeing the Department of Veterans Affairs was because there were allegations of misconduct. and bullying, intimidating staff, and making inappropriate sexual remarks. Though, of course, in the Trump administration, inappropriate sexual remarks is called, like, hello.

You know, they're very... Tuesday. It's called a Tuesday. That's right. They're big into inappropriate sexual remarks. Jackson, of course, denied it and said it was a political hit job. Sure. Whatever.

You know, yeah, right. So anyway, he decided that now he's decided he's going to target Biden with the same things that we're the same allegations that were targeted Trump. But, you know, the irony here is these allegations towards Trump were largely because Trump would do things that were crazy, you know, man, woman, TV, dog, cat, right? So Ronnie Jackson has now decided that he's going to come at Biden with what Democrats came at Trump and what Trump has said about Biden all along, which has made Biden actually just appear, I think, much more eloquent because, you know, the buildup was so negative. So, anyway, he has written a letter. He wants Joe Biden. He's concerned. He's convinced that he doesn't

have the mental capacity, the cognitive ability to serve as our commander-in-chief. That's what Jackson said. And Jackson got some of the really the dumbest members of Congress to sign off from this. He's also targeted Dr. Anthony Fauci. And so for all of this, I say, Ronnie Jackson, fuck you. And also, are you a worse congressman than Louis Gomer? I mean, is it possible that there's a is a new worst member of Congress. I don't know. Wow. This is a real big turn in the chapters of this podcast that you're considering this. Well, I mean, I think Louis Gohmert can be the stupidest and then we can make, you know, and Ronnie Jackson can be the most evil, but there's still time. We'll see how this plays out.

Jesse Cannon, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is somebody who the national stage may not be familiar with, but unfortunately I've had to get to know even more well throughout this New York primary for the mayor that thankfully ends tomorrow. Thank God. But it is one Eric Adams, who is one of the frontrunners of the race, who is now saying because Andrew Yang and Catherine Garcia, both former guests of this podcast, have formed an alliance that this is voter suppression and disenfranchisement. And Jim Crow. And Jim Crow, of course. I find this really, really bad because in a time where Republicans are basically trying to cast aspersions on every

future election, the fact that just because two people have decided to outmaneuver him, he's going to now sow doubts in the system, is what Republicans are doing, and it's what is going to make this democracy die if people don't have faith in our elections. And when you just do this because your personal brand is being damaged, it's disgusting craven. And it also shows me that my thoughts have been right all along. Eric Adams, you should have been running in the Republican primary the whole time and not in the Democrat one because that's what you talk like on that debate stage every time. So for that, I say, fuck that guy. He's also the frontrunner.

Yeah. He's also very likely come Wednesday going to be our mayor. Hey, man, I just want to say, Eric, that was Jesse's pick and not mine. And please don't come after me with the terrifying rat traps where they drown the rats and alcohol. 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. We'll 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-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.