The Daily Beast Podcast - The Time Trump Practically Begged for a Dinner Invite w/ Jon Karl

Episode Date: November 23, 2021

Reporter Jon Karl, ABC’s News Chief and Washington correspondent, as well as the author of the book Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show, has quite a few tales from both Mar-a-Lago and the White House, but one stands out to New Abnormal host Molly Jong-Fast: the time Trump practically begged for an invite to the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. He dishes on that story, and others, in this episode along with Danielle Moodie, host of the podcast WokeAF and Democracyish, who does not hold back when asked about the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict and Daily Beast reporter Matt Fuller, who breaks down what’s in, and what the Senate will likely slash, from the Build Back Better Act. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

as well as the author of the book, Betrayal, The Final Act of the Trump Show, will talk to us about all his up-close and personal dealings with the former disgraced game show host turned president. Then the Daily Beast senior politics editor, Matt Fuller, will talk to us about the implications of the passage of the build-back Better Build. But first, we have the host of the podcast,

Woke A-F, and Democracy-ish. Danielle Moody. Welcome to the new abnormal Danielle Mooney. Thank you for having me. We're so excited to have you, and I want to start by talking about the written house trial. What was your feeling? I had tweeted probably a couple of days before we were waiting for the verdict to come in. And I will be honest, I did not follow this trial the way that I followed Chauvin or Zimmerman or the previous trials before. And the reason for that is because I knew where this was going. Teenage, white, rage-filled man with AR-15 deciding that they're going to protect property and do what others won't do, I mean, it just screamed white evangelical Christian patriot. And I knew that, you know, given this country's relationship with white rage, that the likelihood of him being convicted was going to be slim to none. And that was based on, you know, Judge Schroeder originally, just from his opening, not even in being allowed for the prosecution to refer to those that were murdered in cold blood by Kyle Rittenhouse as victims, but it being okay for the defense to be able to refer to them as looters

and rioters. So from there, he set the tone of exactly where this trial was headed and what we could expect. Is it a profound disappointment as this country has been for the last several years? Yes, but it is not a surprise. I was really upset when the trial happened, and I was. I was really upset when the trial happened, wrote to a friend of mine who's a congressman who's Hispanic. And he was like, I'm not surprised at all. But he said something which I thought was interesting, which was he said you didn't used to see cases like this. And I wondered if that was true. I don't know. I mean, did he mean it in the like, it never would have made it to trial a couple of years ago or that, you know, because I'm like, we've seen cases like this throughout history and, you know, recent and, and, you know, and past history.

we've seen cases like this. I think the idea that it went to trial and it was televised. I mean, I can tell you this, within my own household, right? My mother is Jamaican, right? Right. Migrated to this country in the early 1970s. My dad, my stepdad is white, you know, born and raised on Long Island, right? When the verdict came down, my parents have two very different reactions often, right? My mother who is a creature of MSNBC, see end of Twitter and her daughter's podcast. Right. You know, text me as the verdict was coming in and my phone is ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, you know, she's just like, whatever it is that you're doing, I want you to hold on to joy. I do not want you to ride this verdict out. Do not let it deter you

from what it is that you're currently doing. She didn't even know what I was doing, right? But she's just like, that's what she said. My dad, a few hours later, at the end of his workday, text me and he's just like, I just don't understand. I thought that he's just like, I thought that he's just like, he would be convicted. And I said, what made you think of that? Right. And he was just like, well, I mean, the evidence, like, he was caught on video. He had an AR-15. Like, how is, how is that okay? And I was just like, he's a white man in America with a gun-loving country, right, that hates people of color. So I don't know why you had expectations of anything else. But just within my own family, It was the one where my mother knew what was coming and she's just like wanting to protect her daughter.

And my dad, who doesn't want me to be, you know, steeped in cynicism, you know, is like, I just don't understand. And I'm like that, that in and of itself is America, right? People of color knew exactly what was coming down the pike. They knew exactly what to expect and how to emotionally and spiritually and physically protect themselves and white folks being shocked that like this system is unjust. Right. I do think that's fundamental thing is that white liberals don't have the history. Mm-hmm. The thing I was struck by too online was the celebration. People are dead. I guess they don't think killing people is bad. But like personally, I would like to never kill someone. I mean, who can even imagine how traumatic that must be?

And the guy who was an EMT can't work anymore. I mean, what is to celebrate? This is the thing that I want people to actually be focused on. So I'm so happy that you are bringing attention to it, which is just how far gone and how much Republicans have devolved. Not only do you have the Matt Gates is, right, saying, hey, come an intern, right? Let's just understand that, like, regardless of the cesspool that Congress and Washington, D.C. is right at this moment, congressional internships and fellowships used to be prestigious. I was a congressional fellow with the congressional black caucus. It was an honor to work on Capitol Hill, to work on behalf of the American people.

For Matt Gates, who just in his own right is a disgusting predator, but to say like, oh yeah, I'm welcoming this murderer in. Because regardless of how the judge ruled and how the jury ruled, he's a murderer. He took people's lives, right? Into the congressional fold shows you where we are. And then you have Paul Goser, right? putting up a video of celebrating the murder of his colleague, which wouldn't even be tolerated at an effing Walmart, let alone like should be something that we deem acceptable for a member of

Congress. And so the fact that we have become such a nation that is not only divided, but that is so steeped in violence should be an alarm to everyone that Rittenhouse is not going to be the first or the last that we will see. And because of this verdict, you will see more and more people, more and more white, rage-filled men, deciding that they are going to be their own liberators, deciding that they're going to be, you know, this throwback to cowboy justice in this country, where they're going to be their own race mob and take matters into their own hand. And that should scare the hell out of everybody. Yeah. And I mean, I also, I just want to say one thing when we talk about, Matt Gates. Matt Gates is still under FBI investigation. So, like, a normal person who's under FBI

investigation and also deciding to hire a murderer as an intern is really something. I'll actually defend Matt Gates, Will. We all know he's got a golden retriever braid. He heard underage and crossing state lines, and he went and fetched. I think, Daniel, you were making a really good point. I, you know, had a really disturbing talk this weekend with my friend who's a mother of three and she, over the last few years, has been adamant at going to protest. And she's like, I don't feel safe going to a protest anymore because I can't have my girls grow up without a mother if I get shot. And I really do worry that protest is one of the last mechanisms we have in this oligarchy that we're living in, that this is really going to diminish the really healthy growth in our protests that we've had. over the last few years. I mean, but to that point, Jesse, I would say this, that, you know, we've also become a culture where it is not out of the norm

for people to be shot at concerts, right? Or to be stampeded or trampled. And people still continue to go to concerts. Now, while I do believe that everyone, right, needs to remain on high alert, like make sure they're protected, make sure that people know where you're going, right, when you're deciding to go out in protest, to do so in groups, to pay attention to the surroundings around you,

you know, have your information on your person, right, in the event that you were picked up or something, you know, horrible goes wrong. But, you know, our country is just one that is violent. And until we recognize that, like this, it's a reckoning, right? Like there were more guns that were sold during 2020, right? That we're in quarantine. What are you doing? Right, creating an arsenal, but there were more guns sold then than in 2019, right?

And 2018, the years prior. So, you know, our country is violent, but I hope that this is not a way, right, that the written house verdict is not a way to deter people from exercising their first amendment right, right? Which is the right to assemble and organize. Let's talk about the Veep because I actually wrote a piece for Vogue a while ago about how, like, I felt that the VEP was getting really just the Hillary Clinton treatment the way AOC does. And then last week we had like a VEP versus Mayor Pete news cycle, which was sort of like the same people were saying Biden wasn't going to run again are sure that Trump is. So, okay, I mean, Biden is president.

What do you think like the media coverage is and where are you on this? I had said right before that news cycle started that I wanted to put the vice president on a milk carton. Because after the initial rollout of the vaccines and, you know, doing these press conferences and the campaign, we hadn't seen or heard from her. And, you know, I kept asking other, you know, other black women. I'm like, is this a strategy? Like, is it because we are in this cycle of rabid white rage that? they are afraid to put the vice president out front and afraid to utilize her in the ways that her skills are best showcased. Because here's the thing. She was the attorney general of the largest

state, right, in the country. Like the most important attorney general outside of the U.S. Attorney General outside of New York is California, right? We have a band of criminals. Right. that need to be prosecuted in order to restore integrity and faith in our institutions, right? And why is it that the woman that ran on prosecuting the case against Donald Trump hasn't been let to prosecute the case against Donald Trump, right? That hasn't been, you know, talking about the neglectfulness of, you know, the bannins of the world to decide to show up for subpoenas. That hasn't been talking about why we need to restore faith in our institutions and secure our democracy. moving forward and voting rights that apparently was put in her wheelhouse. So I'm confused about why the former Attorney General of California and why, you know, this brilliant person is being

sidelined. When we were in the midst of the bar confirmation hearing is when I thought that Senator Kamala Harris was at her best, right? She was cutting through the BS, cutting through the nonsense for people that don't have law degrees, right? And making. it apparent that this man was going to contort himself as a way to make sure that he could skirt the law when he was confirmed. And I'm like, why isn't that razor sharp, laser-focused Kamala Harris allowed out of the gate? And again, is it for us to pretend that Joe Biden didn't, you know, have a black woman, an Asian Pacific Islander woman as his vice president? Are we made to forget about her as a way to protect her? As a way to protect her?

or as a way to position her because I will tell you that there is no protection or positioning for 2024. If we make it there, I myself will like, we'll buy us all the cases of champagne and like pop those bottles because I don't think we're making it there as a democracy, right? And again, like going back to what you said, Molly, with regard to, you know, the Hillary Clinton treatment, I think that this desire to pin administration officials against one another with Paris and Buttigieg is just a distraction, right? Like we need to be collectively understanding the moment of urgency that we are in. For the first time, I think they just stated a Guardian article that America has been listed

on the list of backsliding democracies for the first time ever. Like, I don't really want to hear about the infighting or the made-up infighting to get clicks. I really want to focus on the fact that we have a cult, a white supremacist, cult that is taking over everything from school boards to city councils and state secretaries to thwart our elections. Like, I want to be focused on that. Yeah. No, no, I think that's right.

To your point to Danielle, which is an amazing point about how effective she was during Barr. The other things she was really effective was attacking Joe Biden in debates. Yep. Kamala Harris is a no-nonsense person. She's a no-nonsense legislator. And people had said, well, why don't you just use her? Like, the Democratic Party has lost moms.

No, they haven't. They have lost white women in 1952. Right. Like, let's like let's stop pretending that we're going to send her out to go like be the empath in chief. When I don't see her as that. I see her as a firebrand, as a warrior, let her do that job. Because that shows the people that stood out in a pandemic to vote that we are serious about restoring our democracy and not pretending that all as well. I mean, I actually think she can appeal to women voters that are white or black. Like, I think she's tough, but she's also, you know, she's mama, right? She's going to announce a historic $1.5 billion investment to help grow and diversify the nation's health care workforce and bolster equitable health care in the communities that need the most. I mean, that seems like a no-brainer, right?

Yeah. If we hadn't noticed anything in, you know, in 2020, in this health pandemic that we're still living in is the fact that those investments need to be made. Right? And I think that, you know, again, we need to be championing our wins, right? And where our focuses

and the fact that Democrats actually work and have policies and want to get things done. But we need to also do that by making it very clear that Republicans don't. They don't have any policy. They have no ideas. And they have no desire to move this country forward. And so we need to be able to do both those

things at the same time. Right. And show the legislative accomplishments and claim them because otherwise Republicans, well, not Democrats. A hundred percent. Yeah. What's interesting about her is that she really gets the Hillary treatment, even though she's completely self-made, right? She came up through, you know, Hillary, they were saying, well, it's Bill. It's not her. Whatever. And then maybe, you know, she didn't get elected. She got appointed. The vice president is getting the same kind of stuff. And it's just, I find it really depressing. I just find it depressing that the media, the mainstream media has no nuance. Right? When it comes to women, when it comes to people of color, when it comes to anyone that is out, that functions outside of the white, male, wealthy, you know, straight paradigm, that there is just still,

I mean, 30 years past Hillary Clinton. And I'm talking about Hillary Clinton from the beginning and the treatment that she received for saying, I'm not a pie baker, right? Like that's, this is, this is not what I'm doing, that there is no nuance that's here. And we allow the media to get away with it. Yeah. No, I think that's right. Thank you so much, Danielle. Please come back.

Oh, my God, I will. Thank you guys 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 Soladad 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. John Carl is ABC News's Washington Chief Correspondent, as well as the author of the book, Betrayal, the final act of the Trump show. Welcome to the new abnormal, John Carl.

Thank you for having me, Molly. I'm so excited to have you because I was reading the book. It's so interesting. There's so much stuff in here. But also, you went down to Mar-a-Lago. I mean, this is the guy who rails against the media. Wasn't he suspicious? He's got this way about him.

He's always had. He vilifies the press. He attacks reporters, viciously personally attacks reporters and news organizations. and then turns around in courts and tries to charm reporters because he thinks he can. And he thinks that we have as short an attention span as he has. But I mean, I remember that there was a particularly vicious attack that he leveled on me in the middle of one of those coronavirus press conferences last year where he called me a third-rate journalist and said I was never going to make it. And he was scowling at me and pointing at me.

And he actually called on me again in the very same press conference. So, you know, way you. I'm like the first person ever who's going to talk about Paul Gosar right away, but I really want to talk to me. Paul Gosar is not all there? Well, you know, I can just say that that's what one very prominent Republican who was defending him during that, you know, during that debate over his censure and committee removal had told me and told me on multiple occasions as this, as the events, you know, unfolded. said, oh, man, he's just, you know, he's just not there. And they defended him. It is amazing.

And you see this. I mean, this is one of the few things you really see that's bipartisan is like, for some reason, people, like, want to keep their crazy or, like, sort of addled electeds in both parties. And I don't, I don't get it. It might have been slightly different. I don't know how much different if the censure resolution was simply a censure. We condemn Gosar and what he did. And it's on, you know, fitting of a merri-con.

The thing is the Republicans had the committee removal to lean on and say, well, that, you know, I mean, it's not up to Speaker Pelosi to tell the Republicans who gets committee assignments. Would you want a guy who's not all there on committees? So that's why I think it would have been an interesting strategically if Nancy Pelosi had simply made it a censure and then put the challenge on McCarthy. Now, here's a guy that's been overwhelmingly censured by the Congress who has done all of this. You're really going to give him committee assignments? There is certainly an interesting balancing act with McCarthy and Meadows and these sort of, and Jim Jordan, and this group of like congressional Republicans who are trying to keep, I mean, Meadows doesn't have power, but to keep power and be Trumpy, but not too Trumpy.

Yeah, and watch Meadows because he does have power in that he is very much still has Trump's here and he's very, very much. still doing everything he can to ingratiate himself to Trump the person, Trump the various organizations. And I will tell you that Mark Meadows will do everything in his power and he will try to do it without making it look like he is doing it, but he will do everything in his power to derail Kevin McCarthy's journey to the speakership. You already saw some of this publicly, where he is saying, boy, wouldn't it be wonderful if Donald Trump were put in as speaker? You know, you don't have to be a member of Congress to be Speaker of the House. And, you know, this is, this was not done as an anti-McCarthy thing, but it was.

He was presenting it as a way to drive the Democrats crazy, but it's really a shot at McCarthy. Right. People have been telling me they think it's more likely that there be a Jim Jordan speaker than McCarthy speaker. And I'm curious if you have that sense. Jim Jordan is an interesting case study in all of this because Jim Jordan, you would have thought would have been the one that would take McCarthy out. You know, somebody thoroughly, you know, enthralled with, you know, Trump loves him and, and he's been out there and he's, you know, he's Freedom Caucus man and all of that. But McCarthy, if you look at it,

for the last couple of years, McCarthy made a decision to keep Jim Jordan close, even closer than a friend. And Jim Jordan is, you know, and McCarthy, by all signs, have a very strong relationship. And I do not believe that Jim Jordan would be the one that would cross and defy McCarthy. I do not think that at all. McCarthy made sure Jim Jordan had a prominent position on the Judiciary Committee at every turn has made sure that Jim Jordan is taken care of. And I do not think that is where the betrayal will come from. This is actually McCarthy's what he has going for him, is he may have a hard time getting to 218, which is what you're going to need to become speaker, unless the Republicans just win massively a huge, you know, huge majority.

But who else can get to 218? Who else can stand up against him? And I don't see a clear candidate. One person suggested to me, Tom Emmer, the, you know, the head of the National Republican Campaign Committee, it was leading the efforts for the midterms. He's kind of a, you know, almost in a, in a hastert mode, not seen as a threat by anybody. and if the Republicans win, he can take some credit because he was the head of the NRC. But, you know, I don't, I've seen no indication that he would do it either.

So I think that's the big thing. You might have some of these, you know, these folks like Gates or a Marjorie Taylor Green or or on the outside of Mark Meadows, you know, try to go against McCarthy. Of course, you would have, you know, if Liz Cheney gets reelected, she's not going to be supporting McCarthy. There may be a few others on that side. Probably not. But there could be, but there's no real alternative.

Right. And I think that's an important point. What do you think like about Trump going and getting all these people to run against the people he feels have wronged him? I mean, strikes me that you see Mitch McConnell and Trump on a kind of collision court. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, he's, Trump is thoroughly focused on the past. And McConnell and, and, you know, McCarthy and the House Republicans are focused on trying to win in 2022. But Trump only wants to do it in the context. of the past and getting his revenge. And it was interesting to watch the dance in Georgia where McConnell did not want Herschel Walker to be to run, made it clear he did not want

Herschel Walker to be the Republican nominee. Trump goes in there, gets all behind McCarthy, kind of scares away anybody else who would get in there. And now, you know, McConnell's, you watch, he's going to support Herschel Walker because there's, you know, Trump won the pre-primary primary. Right. And then there's a question in a couple of purple states like Ohio, whether the Trump, but the Trump candidates are largely very flawed. Yeah. And, and you know, Republicans have actually, and you know this, because you've covered it, Republicans have done a really tremendous job in the past of blowing it in Senate races, where everything was aligned for, you know, major pickups and states for everything. And then they, you know, they get a guy like Murdoch.

they get you know yeah the the dude in missouri what was his name again oh god Todd Eakin Todd Eakin you know they so Republicans uh you know the the the what's her name um in in Delaware the the witch yeah no no I know they get Christie yeah yeah oh Donald yeah yeah so Republicans that they've been down this path before now they have Trump helping right it's going to get worse so if Republicans don't win the Senate this time around it's it's it be because of, you know, once again, flawed candidates losing in states that they really had a chance to win. Some of these Republican primers are so insane. They're microcosms of the national presidential Republican primer.

You've got to run as far as you can to the right. Or, you know, and is it the right? It's not even a traditional left right. It's the Trumpiest, as you know. It's not ideological in the old-fashioned way. Or at all. Really? I mean, there's no ideology.

It's the ideology of Trump. But I'm curious, you've covered this for a long time. time and I was listening to you on Stelter before this and you were saying you didn't think Trump was going to run again. That, of course, made my husband very relieved because he's very anxious about this. But I'm curious to know what you're thinking there is. This is my read of him and I fully acknowledge that I may be wrong and that others who are much closer to Trump say he is going to run. But I don't buy it. I think that he wants us to believe he is going to run. I don't think he wants to go through it again. I think he would go through the campaign again. I'm not sure he

would be president again. Trump's entire brand, his entire life has been built on the notion that he's the guy who wins. I win, I win. We'll be tired of it. Even through his bankruptcy, he portrayed himself as the richest guy around and the ultimate business genius and winner. He does not want to face the prospect of losing again. And it's also his focus. His focus is on 2020. And by the way, He's selling the Trump International Hotel, a few blocks from the White House. I don't think he's going to go through with it again. But again, I'm not saying there's no way he's going to run. I mean, he may run.

I just, I put it at like, you know, 40% chance he runs, 60% chance he doesn't. Right. And erratic is the brand. So it's impossible to know. I mean, it could be. But I also do think, like, he wants to make money. He wants to make money. And the grift is incredible.

The fundraising around all of it. of this stuff. It's incredible. It helps being a potential candidate to do all that fundraising. There's no question. I think it's interesting, actually, on both the Democratic and Republican sides, seeing the dance around, you know, is Biden going to run? Is Trump going to run? And, you know, of course, the White House is sending out signals. Well, of course Biden's going to run for re-election. But, you know, you have no shortage of Democrats who look in the mirror every morning and think they see a president and would certainly not want to run against Biden, but want to be in position to run

if Biden ends up not running for whatever reason. And then on the Republican side, that decision is everything. And how many of, you know, who's going to step out and run until Donald Trump has ruled it out? I think there will be some of them that do. But there are many, like, you know,

Nikki Haley has explicitly said she wouldn't run, you know, against Donald Trump. There's a lot of people watching for those decisions to be made. And the one thing I don't think, we'll see as a Trump versus Biden rematch. Oh, interesting. You think that just there are too many factors. Yes. How worried are you about democracy? I am worried. I tend to be more optimistic and believe in the strength of our institutions. But writing this book frankly freaked me out as I went back and looked at everything that happened and reconstructed and reported in depth on a kind of almost

the day to day what was happening in 2020 to realize that I think we were really closer than that I realized, I think that any of us realized to losing it all and that we were saved in part by the heroic and brave actions of people that you would never have thought would have been heroic or brave. Like? Well, and also actions that were actually totally ordinary, but because of the pressure that Trump had put on these people ended up being brave. The most high profile and obvious is Pence.

And the second most high profile and obvious is Brad Raffensberger in Georgia. But these Republican leaders in the states, Trump was really pushing Republican leaders in each of those states that he was contesting to convene the legislature, to have a vote and to send, you know, somehow throw out the Biden electoral votes and send Trump electoral votes. And they all said no. I wouldn't be surprised if the January 6th committee will. reconstruct this moment. But one of them that sticks out to me was when the Michigan state legislative leaders, the House and Senate state leaders, came to visit Trump. They were summoned by Trump to the Oval Office. I think the date was November 30th, late November. And he and he ordered them. He told them, you've got to come and you've got to do this. You know, imagine that.

You are pro-Trump Republican leaders in a state where rank and file Republican voters, the people that are your constituents that put you in office, thoroughly believe in support what Donald Trump is saying. And he brings you into the Oval Office and he makes this demand and he's very public about making this demand. And, you know, you tell him no. I mean, what if those states had done that? What if they had, you know, sent in illegitimate ballots? What if, what if Penn said, you know, said, we're throwing out Pennsylvania, we're throwing out Wisconsin, we're throwing out Michigan, you know, voila, you know, Biden no longer has a majority. He had no authority constitutionally to do that. But what does Nancy Pelosi pick up her gavel and

start banging it? And then what? Oh, they go to the Supreme Court. Okay, great. The Supreme Court and what army enforces their decision? We would have gotten to, I think, the place we needed to be. But I think there could have been much, there could have been bloodshed. It could have been, it wouldn't have all happened neatly and peacefully on January 20th. Yeah. I mean, that's what to me, and, you know, we had Timothy Schneider on here. We have a lot of academics and intellectuals who study authoritarianism and the sort of slide into it. And that is what's really scary. It's like a lot of times an unsuccessful coup precedes a successful one. Not always. And like, you know, America's very different than a lot of those countries, like a lot of those places haven't ever

had democracy or they had it for a short time. I mean, but it's still, it's nothing you want to mess around with. No. What's really more profoundly troubling is that you now have a solid segment of the population that doesn't trust our election system. And because of some of the changes that are being pursued, you know, by Republicans at state levels, you also have a good chunk of, you know, the other side of the political spectrum that doesn't, it is not going to trust election results either. And, you know, our system depends on we may have brutal campaigns and, you know, vicious political divide that is deep. and hard to overcome, but the election happens and the results are accepted. And there's an agreement that we will fight in the next campaign. But if we're creating a system where the results are not accepted and we get to a tipping point where a majority is not accepting the results, it's deeply troubling. Whenever you write a book like this, obviously there's some things that you're shocked, people aren't asking you about, especially a book this thorough. Is there anything you feel

like people haven't been asking you about that we can discuss? Yeah, there is one. It's, It's not central to the theme or anything, but it just, it was kind of one of the stranger things I ever experienced and I wrote about it. It was Donald Trump bringing me into the Oval Office, talk about the White House correspondence dinner. Oh, good. Do tell, please. I'm so glad I asked. And this was the day after Super Tuesday. So it's in early March and the pandemic is, you know, is really starting to rage.

We have, you know, the outbreak in Washington States, but we're not quite there yet. We're days away from like a, from like the shutdown. He brings me into the oval, well, I get brought in by, by his staff into the Oval Office, along with two of my White House Correspondents Association colleagues. They say, wait, well, we'll get him. And I'm, and the three of us are sitting there alone in the Oval Office for like several minutes waiting for Trump to come. And we're definitely being filmed, right?

What's going on here? And he comes in and it's clear that he, I had not invited him to the dinner. I had not gotten around to inviting him yet. And in fact, I was unsure if I was going to invite him. On one hand, every president since Warren Harding had gone to a White House correspondence dinner and had always been invited. Trump was the only one that hadn't been there yet. But on the other hand, you know, he had declared the press, the enemy of the people. And, you know, did we really want to have them at the dinner?

So I hadn't made a decision. I had already locked up the lineup. We had Keenan Thompson of SNL was going to be our kind of massac ceremonies. Yeah, Hassan Minaj was going to be the main entertainer. And it was a really, you know, very excited about it. It sounds like you're making it very hard for him to say what he says about grading Carter's parties. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, Trump comes in.

And he's clear he wants me to beg him to come, and I'm not going to do that. But anyway, the weird part of it is. It's really bad. He keeps suggesting that he's very open to coming. And all I say is, look, if you decide to come, you know, that's fine. We'll welcome you. If you decide not to come, we will respect that decision. But I'm not going to, I'm not going to even like, I haven't even asked, you know.

And he finally turns to Zeke Miller of AP, who was then the vice president of WHCA. And he says to Zeek. Jonathan, what is it with him? He's like my son. Do you love your father? I don't know. Well, of course he loves his father. Kids. I mean, that's exactly what he said. He was comparing me. At first, for a flash, I thought he was comparing me to Don Jr. maybe not be. No, but he was comparing me to Barron. And like I said, not of unshattering importance, but just as just, just rather bizarre. What do you feel like the relationship between Pence and Trump is like now? When I had my interview with, Trump back in March and he said those terrible things where he was defending the people that wanted to murder Pence. Right. It was striking. Even in that very conversation, he spoke fondly of Pence.

And I was told he had just reached out to congratulate Pence on the birth of his of his grandchild. So it's a little bit like how this conversation started the way he deals with the press, you know. But he's clearly remains consumed with bitterness about Pence. failing to do what he wanted him to do. And I think the interesting question is, is what does Pence say in the coming months about his own presidential ambitions? Does he decide he's going to run, regardless of whether or not Trump is ruled out running? And the January 6th committee, I expect, will have primetime hearings over the summer. And I know for a fact that they will want to hear from Pence. And does Pence decide that he is willing to speak? And does he speak? And does he speak

about what happened on January 6th. And, you know, comments so far have been very mixed. They've been small, they've been short. You know, one hand he said he was proud of what he had done. On the other hand, he said it's just one day. But does Pence decide that once and for all he needs to have a break with Trump if he's to have any political future because he's not going to have it with Trump? Pence must be scared, right?

Scared of what? What all these Republicans are scared of, like the death threats and the stuff you get when Don Jr. comes after you. I mean, he must be scared of that. I mean, he has to be. They all are. I mean, it was, to me, I interviewed Liz Cheney right, the day that she was removed from her leadership post. And so now she's no longer in the Republican leadership. And to see her having to walk around Capitol Hill with a security detail. It is frightening. And I once asked Trump, and I recounted this in front row at the Trump show. I had a meeting with him in the Oval Office back in 2018. And I, said to him, aren't you concerned that people are somebody, some crazy person is going to take your words seriously, take them literally, both literally and seriously, when you say the press is the enemy of the people. This conversation happened just after the shootings in El Paso and Dayton.

You know, I mean, I was really kind of pleading with him. I was worried that somebody's going to take a shot that a reporter somewhere because they're going to, I mean, if you believe that they're destroying your country, which is what Trump says is happening, because of the. The press, I mean, you're going to act on it. And his answer was chilling. He said to me, I hope people take my words seriously because I mean it. The press is the enemy. And I was like, you know, we're just, you know, just after those mass shootings.

But it's like you can't comprehend it. Thank you so much, John Carl. This was so interesting. I hope you'll come back. Thank both you. I appreciate it. It's great to talk to you. And I hope to see you soon.

Matt Fuller is the Daily Bee senior politics editor. Welcome back to the new abnormal Matt Fuller. Thanks for having me. We want to get really nerdy here. I know how to do that. Some have accused me of being a little too nerdy before. Before the written house verdict came out and completely pushed it out of the news, Democrats had an enormous legislative victory on Friday,

something that a lot of people didn't think would happen. They B, B, B, B, past the House. Yeah. So this is what was supposed to be a 1.75, trillion dollar bill. We think it's probably over two trillion, over 10 years, but the Congressional Budget Office says this will actually only cost $367 billion, and that's before another, what they estimate, $207 billion is recovered from IRS, greater IRS enforcement. Their Democrats plan to fund the IRS at higher levels. That in turn ends up more than paying for itself

because you get people actually having to pay their taxes. Over 10 years, the calculation is only $160 billion for a $2 trillion bill. It might even be better than that. The White House thinks that those IRS enforcement provisions are more like $400 billion. So you have a $2 trillion bill that might actually lower the deficit, lower the debt over those 10 years. And they accomplished most of that through a lot of these corporate tax provisions. There's a whole host of changes, but basically making corporations pay at least 15%. There's some new taxes on income over $10 million and $25 million, a lot of those sorts of changes.

But who will think of the billion? The billionaires seem to be still doing okay. It's the difference between a G5 and a G. No, I'm just kidding. I don't even know what I'm talking about. Talk to us about a few things that are in the bill. Yeah. So, I mean, there's the top line numbers that I think people are pretty familiar with. That there's over $550 billion for climate change. A lot of that is tax credits for electric vehicles, new grid things. The government is getting electric vehicles. There's $400 billion for childcare and universal preschool. Those have been long been priorities. There's $150 billion for affordable housing, $150 billion for Medicaid's home care program, which mostly helps elders and the disabled. How popular is the universal pre-K stuff?

Very popular. Here's the whole thing with this bill is we heard Republicans ranting and raving, Kevin McCarthy going on for eight and a half hours about the evils of this, you know, the socialist agenda and everything. But if you actually break down and you go piece by piece, these are very popular programs, right? Like go to any Republican and say, do you think there should be universal pre-K? I think generally they're going to say, yeah, that sounds pretty good. Or, you know, do you think you have family leave provisions? Some of them are going to say no, but then you start to introduce the fact that we're one of the very few countries in the world, not just civilized countries, but very few countries in the world that don't have family leave.

Right. And we're talking, you know, very basic things. But, yeah, I mean, there's a ton of things that are so popular in here. We could get into the health care provisions and the ability, the prescription drugs to negotiate better drug prices for Medicare. There's also this very popular portion of capping what diabetics can pay in a month for insulin at $35. Right. That seems very popular. You have to be insured to get that $35 cap. It applies to Medicare, first of all, and then it actually would apply to basically the co-pay for people on private health insurance. this whole thing will have an effect on the actual insulin market.

People who are paying the $1,000 for a box of insulin, a lot of them are actually end up acquiring insulin basically through a black market. Insulin is not something that's prescribed. You will take 40 units per day. It's sort of a sliding scale, and it depends on what someone's blood sugar is, what they've eaten in that day. So people end up with surpluses and deficits of insulin all the time. Usually deficits.

It'll sort of create this. system where insulin itself is the price of insulin is going to go down dramatically for people. I want to just get back to insulin for second. Will it also cover insulin for Medicaid? With Medicaid, you really, there's very little co-pays already. If you're on Medicaid, you're probably basically getting your insulin for free anyway. With Medicare and this, I mean, these provisions really are about making sure that people aren't paying these astronomically high prices for insulin of like $100 copays every month for two or three types of insulin. Because that's the other thing about this is when we say $35, we should be clear,

there's still a lot of actual costs associated with being diabetic. You could have a long-acting insulin for 35. You could have a short, fast-acting one, an intermediary insulin. You'd have, you know, the needles or pentops that go along with it, all the things associated with actually testing your blood sugar. There's still tons of costs. But what we're saying is insulin, which has just gone crazy over the last few years and it will really last decades. This is a problem that we've seen over now, really 100 years. But it's a crazy cost, and these people are incurring it every month time and again. I'm depressed about people not being out of Ford insulin.

I got distracted by my depression about this. Also, talk to us about the climate provisions, like what they are. Because I feel like it's electric charging stations, it's tax credits for e-bikes. Yeah, so a lot of the climate is tax credits. There's renewable energy tax credits. There's carbon capture tax credits. clean electricity production and investment credits, clean fuel tax credits. There's just a whole list of these tax credits.

And that's really the way they're trying to address climate change is basically incentivizing people to switch to cleaner energies. That can be expensive. This is literally the most expensive item in the bill at 550. I think it's $555 billion is what they actually calculated at. It's not direct money per se. It's really, it comes back to corporations and individuals, investments in the tax credits that you get. And then there's, you know, the things that people are really going to cling to are the electric vehicle tax credits. And there's obviously investments with sort of switching to a smart grid and these supercharger stations and all those things that that's the things that people are going to see.

But truthfully, a lot of this is focus on businesses and trying to get them to use cleaner energies. Right, which is really good. And remember, there have been tax subsidies for coal and for oil and gas. I mean, this is not an unusual thing. It's just a sort of change in the way we do, you know, in what we use, right? Yeah, I mean, we make decisions all the time about what we want to incentivize. And I would also say to use a little Milton Friedman, right, the conservative economist, he talked a lot about there.

There's two instances where the government should be able to step in. One is to break up monopolies. And the other one is to make sure that when there's instances of neighborhood effects, right so someone smoking and secondhand smoke you should be able you should you know that's infringing on your and your freedoms too and that's true with the environment and the energies that we choose right we choose gas that that has effects on the neighborhood there are neighborhood effects to that right exactly and coal gives you asthma i mean we had somebody on here that you wouldn't people wouldn't have asthma if it weren't for coal and for some of the oil and gas if only someone could remind

conservatives about this about this uh whole covid thing Right. Yeah, there seem to be neighborhood affects that. It's so weird that there's a public health issue, yeah. So talk to us about where this bill goes now. Well, this is the tricky part. We're now it heads to the Senate where it's going to have to be there. So they added in a lot of provisions that they know are not going to make these so-called bird bath. This is a rule that it basically, if it doesn't really affect the budgetary impact of the bill, then the Senate Permanentering. and can strip it out and subjected to 60 votes, right? You're the normal filibuster rules. Named after Robert Byrd, not our greatest Democrat. West Virginia's finest. It heads there.

The dynamics in the Senate really haven't changed much. You still have Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema not signed on. Basically, I would say whatever could pass in the Senate is going to have to be drastically stripped down of a lot of things, including a lot of these climate. change provisions probably. Right, because Joe Manchin doesn't like climate change provisions, because he's from West Virginia, and so we're all at his mercy. And also makes money off of coal and oil and gas. Yes, the environment is very much at the will of Joe Manchin, of one Democrat, and then the sort of whims of Kirsten Cinema. Right. And Kirsten Cinema says

she's pro-climate, but anti-any taxation of the wealthy, oddly, right? No one knows. is where Kristen Cinema really is at, including Kristen Cinema. I really think this is just like where the wind blows on any given day. We very rarely hear substantive criticisms of the bill from Kristen Cinema. We hear a lot of wishy-washy. I'm not there yet. I don't know. Well, but you really don't even hear that. She just doesn't respond to reporters. Whereas at least Joe Manchin will sort of lay out his issues with the bill and the overall post tag and the climate change. His issues suck. Yeah. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it. Right. We wouldn't want to do that. Yeah. So there's real questions about whether or not this can still pass with them, whether or not they'll ever get there.

But basically, Democrats in the House and progress is particularly sort of, I don't want to say held up this bill, but they definitely wanted to make sure that it passed concurrently with the infrastructure bill. That was sort of their piece of leverage. And at some point, they decided, you know what, we just have to pass this thing. And we just, we have to kick it to the Senate and let Joe Biden do his thing. They didn't want to be the problem children of, you know, passing a democratic agenda. And, you know, they just, they just made that calculation. At this point, that calculation looks okay. Certainly they got what they wanted.

They passed the bill out of the house at the same time, or roughly the same time, about two weeks' difference. But it worked. It passed. And now it's, you know, it's a Joe Biden, Joe Manchin, Kirsten Cinema problem. The issue there is, you know, that dynamic has not changed much in months. We, you know, we've been sort of Democrats are just banging their heads against the wall here, watching these two senators just sort of position themselves in the middle of, I don't know, and, you know, who knows if I'll ever get there. And we let's take a strategic pause or whatever. Just don't know where that's, that's going. That seems bad.

Bad is one of those words. Right. I mean, not to be too, you know, in the weeds here, but that seems bad. Yes, and the good and bad, the 30,000 foot take, that seems bad. I think there's a lot of frustration from Democratic colleagues that are feeling like, hey, this is a major achievement for us. Hey, look at the individual provisions in this bill. You could look at any piece of this bill and say, wow, what a popular provision. And I think there's a lot of people who'd argue, wow, wouldn't that have been great if Democrats had just passed an insulin bill or just passed a climate change bill or, you know, affordable housing bill. The problem is you can't really do that because you get one shot with this reconciliation. package. You get one bill to reconcile the budget and the spending. And so they've got to kind of package it all together in this one huge piece of legislation. And that's the difficulty. And I think that for the longest time, Democrats define this bill by its price tag or, you know, the reconciliation bill. There was all sorts of weird names for a bill back better. Still seems like a weird bill. People have made this point before. But if you just packaged it as

the insulin bill, right? Right, right. Right. Right. How can you vote against insulin? Yeah, I mean, I just think, right, they've struggled so mightily with the marketing of this bill, and any one provision would have carried this better than some, you know, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, B, Fett, REC, all these acronyms and the price tag of the bill, that has not done Democrats any favor, whereas, individually, go, you know, go provision by provision of this bill. I think it's very difficult for any Republican, for Kevin McCarthy to get up there and rail for eight and a half hours against making sure that people don't pay more than $35 a month for insulin. Those, these are immensely popular provisions and policy changes. And frankly, you know, Democrats, because of the nature of this bill where it was just, everything was sort of slapped together all once. They're

trying to get their entire agenda in this bill. It became very difficult for them to sell it to the American people. Right. I saw a Republican being like money for doulas, money for doulas, how dare they get money for doulas? And as someone who did not have a dula myself, like that is actually very much a dula is a sort of non-medical but still very important birthing involved person who can birth, lots of babies, and is also much better at connecting with women of color. And so because we have this crazy high maternal fetal morbidity rate for women of color, like, this is something that the government must address. And like, this is money that is,

could be extremely well spent. So, I mean, I do think they're going to have to sort of explain these kind of things. Yeah, I mean, another great way to market this bill would have been just the pro-family bill, right, or the pro-health bill. And there's a ton of provisions, and chiefly the child tax credit. Again, I think even Republicans are sort of loath to criticize the child tax credit. And we saw this action on the House floor where the ranking Republican on the budget committee, Jason Smith, he's criticizing Democrats for only including one year of the child tax credit. And Tim Ryan, this, you know, we may remember Tim Ryan from running for president. Yes, I can't remember him. Yeah, you know, my guys from Youngstown, you know, they,

bring the lunches of the bail. Tim Ryan gets up there, and he's apoplectic. Like, our one-year child tax credit is one year more than your child tax credit. So, like, how are you going to complain about this? Like, oh, they only did one year for that child tax credit. It's like, yeah, that's one year more than what you're doing. Republicans have chosen some sort of goofy criticisms of this bill that clung on to cling to the price tag. But again, we're not even really talking about, honestly, about the price tag

because the congressional budget office says this is really a amount of to $160 billion over 10 years, which is $16 billion, which, you know, look at the Pentagon budget at like $800 billion. This is, you know, one big ship away from carrying the cost of the whole thing. It's been an incredible debate to watch. And I have been sort of mystified by how Democrats have been handling this one. You know, again, Democrats are their own worst enemy. But the child tax credit is super popular.

And it's also, this will also expand Medicare, right? Yeah. So expanded Medicare. There's actually still some expanded Medicare. Medicaid. You had states that didn't expand Medicaid, even though they could have under the Affordable Care Act. This would basically anyone who was under the poverty level in one of those states like, let's say, Idaho or any of those Republican states where they had governor is taking a stand, you could actually get on Medicaid. You have the better subsidies. We subsidized the Affordable Care Act a little bit better during the height of COVID. That's extended out some further amounts. So there's a lot of health care provisions in here. There's a lot of money for that. And by the way, if they don't pass this bill, there's definitely, these are sort of cliffs that are coming up. We had been providing this money because of the pandemic. And, hey, look, we're still in a pandemic.

We still have a lot of people dying in a day, a lot of new cases. And, you know, that money's going to go away soon. I'm so depressed. Thank you, Matt Fuller. This was great. I'm actually not that depressed. I'm just a little depressed. You should be depressed, but maybe hopeful, but also, I don't know, just like sort of in a maze.

like a maze, like that, you know, the Chris, Christmas Cinema and Joe Manchin might hold this up over some weird, you know, contentions. Yeah. Or also somebody's, you know, yeah, no, it's true. Thanks for joining us. 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 one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin 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. Jesse Cannon. Molly Jung Fast. Do I even want to know? Fuckery. There's so much fuckeray. This is true.

So. Much fucker right. I fuck that guy, you know, he's often defended his actions as it's just a part of being Italian. Yeah, that's never a good. Former Governor Andrew Cuobo. First off, there is a report that said, like, oh, yeah, like the last report that we put out that he was a sexual harasser. Well, it's even worse than you thought. Governor Hansy was a little bit more than Hansy.

He was a kind of a pest. But then there's this other funny thing that happened, which is that, really. Rolling Stone is now reporting that Governor Cuomo forced staff to work on his $5.2 million vanity book instead of dealing with COVID. Didn't we know this, though? We had suspected this, right? We had suspected this. This is the confirmation.

And like we also, you know, when they weren't covering up COVID deaths, they're working on his book of how great a job he did. And, you know, like what I really want to say about this too is we had a really, really good segment on recently about that with Brian Klaus, about how we. elevate the wrong people to power. Oh, that's right. This is a very good lesson of that when you have a last name, this is not a fucking qualification.

This guy was a horrible person the whole time. We elected them three goddamn times, almost four. And I say we, since we live in this state, but like we have to start evaluating how we choose our leaders. And this guy was just repugnant the whole way through. And we got to get a clue in America. Yeah, all right. I'll let you have it.

I don't disagree. You get a hearty, fuck you from both of us. Mine is the Trumpist think tank. A Trump think tank is actually an oxymoron. It's a group of, and there's a Daily Beast article of it, MAGA Institute honors sheriffs who defy laws they don't like. Because what good is an authoritarian government without sheriffs that are willing to do your biddings? We're watching the slide into authoritarianism right before.

our eyes and it's being funded by think tanks. Thank you very much. I'm going back to my little pineapple under the sea. It's crazy to because like what they talk about that they're not going to enforce our like pandemic restrictions, vaccine mandates, gun laws. Gun laws. And it's like so funny that the party that loves to say we're running on law and order is now increasingly just like, no, we're running on our authority to handle things.

Like very sheriff Joe Arpaio prototypes. Yeah. Yep. And it really is getting fucked. That this is the litmus test in the Republican Party of like, you'll listen to Dear Leader if Dear Leader comes back. Yeah, they are right to worry about democracy as our way. Pro-Trump think tanks, oxymorons, and also, fuck you.

Strong jumbo-shimp vibes. That's right, jumbo shrimp, burning snowflakes. Not going to happen. 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.

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