The Daily Beast Podcast - The Wild Backstory Behind Trumpworld’s Newest Toadie

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

This week, The New Abnormal introduces you to a relatively new face in the pantheon of Trumpworld toadies: Steven Cheung, Trump’s principal spokesperson and de facto enforcer. Plus, a conversation with New Republic staff writer Melissa Gira Grant about a largely forgotten 1873 law, called the Comstock Act, that could be used to outlaw virtually all abortions across America.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

What an excellent show we have today. The New Republic's Melissa Gira Grant joins us to break down the Comstock Act, a 151-year-old law that the right is looking to as a Hail Mary for a full-on abortion ban. Then we'll talk to author and journalist Michael Sokolop about his recent piece for Mother Jones, how Trump's 2024 campaign became a bloody cage fight all about Trump. which details the many quirks of Trump's campaign manager Stephen Chung. But first, let's have some fun. Well, it seems as if we may have some type of movement on background checks and gun sales,

vis-a-vis the Biden administration approving the expansion of background checks at these gun shows. So one of the biggest, I think, conversations that we've had for quite some time is, that a lot of sales of guns happen outside of these gun shows, as well as inside of these gun shows. And so according to the New York Times, the Biden administration has approved what they are labeling the broadest expansion of federal background checks in decades in an attempt to regulate a fast-growing shadow market of weapons sold online at gun shows and through private sellers that has contributed to gun violence. They go on to say that the new regulation, which is, of course, likely to face legal challenges that I'm of course certain that the Supreme Court will say, bring on the guns, could add as many as 23,000 federal dealers to the 80,000 already regulated by ATF, an underfunded division of the Department of Justice that already struggles to monitor sellers.

So yay-ish, I guess, Andy, like it's the broadest expansion, but because of our current makeup of justices and their overturning of gun laws that we've seen here in New York and in other places that have tried to regulate, apparently states rights don't really matter if you're a blue state. But are we cheering this on or no? I think we are. And, you know, I say this as someone who is not super. anti-gun, but I do think, you know, we need strong regulation. It seems incredibly ridiculous that for so long we've had this, you know, you can call it a loophole, call it a double standard, whatever you want. But if you have to do background checks and you have to do a lot of stuff as a licensed gun shop owner, the idea that you don't have to do similar things if you set up a booth at a gun show is insane.

And I think in this instance, this is the most that the Biden administration could do to try to get rid of this loophole, this double standard. Because look, Congress is never going to act. We know that. Maybe we give two cheers, not quite three, but we give two, maybe two point five cheers for something that is a good idea and should make a difference. And as you said, look, yes, this is absolutely going to be challenged in courts. and yeah, God knows what will happen at that point with the way the judiciary is in this country these days. But you can't do nothing because of that possibility, I guess, is the point here. So that's what I mean when I say this is the Biden administration doing basically all that it can possibly do unilaterally to try to get rid of this double standard.

And without a Congress that's going to do anything and with the court system that, again, God only fucking knows how they're going to rule on this. but you can't throw up your hands and do nothing because we don't know what the courts are going to do, so let's not do anything. You can't do that. So I think good job by the Biden administration here. And then we'll have to see how it plays out and it may end up sucking. But at least on this thing, we can say that's not the fault of the Biden administration. Well, damn, Andy, the longer that you spoke on this, the more that my cheers from two and a half stars went down to half a star. because I mean, shit. Like basically, what you laid out is the truth.

Because we have NRA-backed benches, judicial benches, that are making the decisions about this country, not based on the violence that they are seeing in front of them, but based on arbitrary vintage laws from a time when there weren't more guns than people in this country. You know, every time I see any administration, which is largely a Democratic one trying to make advances in this space, it's like I don't want to bother applauding because we know where it's going to lead. I think that basically what Republicans want in this country is like a person goes into labor, which they're forced into doing so,

and instead of giving the blue or pink or striped beanie, we give that baby an AR-15. Like that's basically how things are set up in this country. And so any type of resistance, pushback regulation that is put in place to limit the proliferation of guns gets overturned. So like I guess bravo to the administration for trying their damnedest in a situation that we know is never going to go the way that a civilized country would move. Yeah, exactly. Look, we know there are states where when you turn 14, you are, like you said, you're given a. an AR-15 and sent to work at the factory.

But that's the reality the Biden administration is dealing with here. And I think given the reality that you laid out, at least they're trying and at least they're doing something. So I'll stick with 2.5 cheers. Okay. Speaking of trying. Speaker Mike Johnson, you know, I wonder if he wakes up every day since he was voted in a speaker and just looks in the mirror and says, fuck.

You know, like if that's the first thing. that comes out of his mouth because, you know, I think that he must have one of the shittiest jobs in the country right now. He is a lion tamer with no whip, no chair, and no ability to actually tame the members of the House Republicans. It's wild. They had this surveillance bill that, you know, the FBI and others are telling us are so incredibly important to our safety. We need this in order to be able to defend ourselves. And you know how Republicans love defense. Like I thought that they did.

But apparently 19. And here's the thing, can we in the media stop referring to these fucking magites, maggots as like as conservatives? Like stop giving them this like euphemism of respectability that they don't deserve and don't have. So these 19 magas, 19 Trumpists. broke with Speaker Johnson, this is according to NBC News, and his leadership team, and voted down a rule. The vote was 193 to 228 to stop any procedural vote on this surveillance bill and any debating at all. So he can't pass a fucking thing. He can't get anything done. And I just note out to Democrats in the House, do not save this motherfucker. Stop offering.

Republicans a lifeline. I know that you want to believe that you can be the adults in the room and show that you know how to govern. Let them hang themselves. They have the majority. They don't know what to do with it. Let that continue to be the narrative in the media as opposed to Democrats come in to save the day because no one will remember that. And particularly on this bill, because Section 702 sucks. And the MAGAs have it right for one. You know, this is one of those weird occurrences, sort of the horseshoe theory where the extreme right, someplace where I disagree with you here is, I think being opposed to extending 702 is the conservative position. And I think that they are actually acting as conservatives here. Their motives may be completely screwed up because, of course, Donald Trump posted on his dumbass truth social, which we'll talk about in a bit, that he wanted them to kill FISA because it was used against him.

I don't even think that's true, by the way, that it was used. used against him. But even if it was, I don't care. But Section 702 is completely horrible. It allows warrantless surveillance on Americans, and it needs to go away. And a bunch of Democratic people in Congress have been working to try to get rid of it, or at least to try to install much stronger safeguards in it. People like Ron Wyden, who have been just doing Yeoman's work on privacy issues, you know, in Wyden's case throughout its whole career. So I am very glad. that Mike Johnson is facing this right now. And absolutely Democrats should not bail him out because Democrats should be taking this as a victory. Unfortunately, a lot of them aren't because there are a lot of Democrats who love the surveillance state and who believe everything the intelligence community tells them, even though the intelligence community routinely lies, which is what they're doing here about how important it is to fight terrorism to be able to warrantlessly surveil Americans.

it's I think the technical term is load of crap. It's a term of art. You can look it up if you don't know what it means. But yeah, look, Mike Johnson has a lot of problems, and there are things that are truly problematic, like not being able to get money to Ukraine. But this, for me, is actually, this is a win. And if the MAGA idiots,

if the only thing that makes them vote the right way is Donald Trump telling them to vote that way for the wrong reasons, then I'm okay with that. Well, that is the only reason why they vote anyway at all. I agree with you in terms of the carte blanche, I guess, is that the right term that we provide to the intelligence community to just, you know, do whatever they want, like do whatever they want. And then we gave them that right, like since what, 9-11, right? For our own protection, right, we gave away our privacy. You know, it began with the Patriot acting moved on from there.

And what they have told us in the line that they have fed us is that this is for your own good. It's very 1984-ish. We surveil you to protect you. And but, you know, I wonder for aside from this piece of legislation for Mike Johnson, how many failures does he have to have in order for them to actually put up a real vote to get rid of him? Because it's embarrassing. And they continue to embarrass him.

And I'm just wondering, do we think? that he makes it a year? No, it's a fair point. I don't think either of us is going to cry if he doesn't. Marjorie Taylor Green wrote this. This actually shocked me. She wrote a five-page letter criticizing him and, you know, maybe a staffer wrote it because I find it hard to believe that she can even write like five paragraphs. So a five-page letter? I mean, I don't know. Maybe she did it in like 72-point font. But no, look, he's been in office what? He's been speaker, what, like six months since limp gavel Kevin got tossed. And it's been, you know, since day one, he has not had control of his party in the house. And we talk about this often. You know,

Nancy Pelosi, who I have many disagreements with, the one thing about Nancy Pelosi is she had control as speaker, as a house minority leader, whatever. She had control of her people. Kevin McCarthy did not and Mike Johnson does not. Also, he's a horrible. person. So, you know, if he doesn't last a year, that's fine with me. And also, every time that we see just how inept the Republicans are at governing is, I think, good for the country. So keep on, keeping on, I say. I don't know how long he's going to keep on, though. We'll keep on watching. Speaking of things that may not be keeping on for too long, Donald Trump's stock. This man may go down in history. I mean, he is going to go down in history if, in fact,

we have books and websites and open ability to educate ourselves nonetheless. Donald Trump may go down in history as like the number one grifter. Everything that this man has put up from hats to sneakers to the Bible to now his truth social stock is all a way to get out of jail free. It is all a way to pay off his debts, to pay off his lawyers. and once again, Truth's social stock, which went public, was said to be worth billions of dollars, began trading at $78 and has now folks dropped to $36. And actually, I think that the last time it was viewed, it was below $35.

I just looked at it's at 33.42 right now. I mean, so this. This stock was evaluated up against, I don't know what exactly. Like, I'm not a finance person, but if there's only one person readily using your app, how does the app get evaluated at $12 billion? I don't know. Because legit, Donald Trump is the only person that uses truth social. When you see cable news putting up different social media posts,

the only person that they are putting up is Donald Trump. Trump's post on truth social. So again, like, you want to talk about the motherfucking benefit of the doubt over and over and over again? If it was anybody else's app, what do you think that the evaluation would have been when they went public? They wouldn't have gone public, first of all. So we know that he only did this as a way to give him the opportunity to sell his, I think he has 78 million shares. So he owns, according to independent, 60% of Trump media. And the idea would be what? To have all these shares, dump those shares, and then have the money to pay off your lawyers? But wouldn't that send your business into a downward spiral? You tell me, Andy. Am I missing something? I don't think so,

but I am the last person in the world who should be explaining anything regarding high finance or even low finance for that matter. This is gutter finance, so I think you're fine. I still don't understand. It makes absolutely no sense to be. True social has, I think, around 2 million users, which maybe, you know, you might think, oh, that's actually a lot. Twitter, which is dying, has 450 million users.

Mm-hmm. Facebook has, I'm not even sure, has almost 3 billion users. Mm-hmm. Two billion users is a very small social network. The idea that I don't understand valuation or any of. that in 2023 Trump Media, which owns Truth Social, had a net loss of $58 million. Right. So it is beyond me how a company that lost $58 million can be valued in any way as positive,

let alone as wildly high as Trump media was. It makes absolutely no sense to me. And like you said, there are two million users on Truth Social. I couldn't name one of them other than Donald Trump. Like, for all intents and purposes, it is his little public diary. I'm not on Twitter anymore, but I see tweets all day. Tweets are quoted in news stories from hundreds and thousands, if not millions of people. I never see anything quoted from truth social that isn't a Donald Trump, all caps, rant.

Like, that's it. That's what that site is as far as the world is concerned. So how it was valued high, I don't understand it all. I'm sure there are Wall Street people who can explain this to me and I'll listen to it and go, yeah, you just made that shit up. Correct. Which I feel like is most of what Wall Street does anyway. I want to quote this article in The Independent from Jay Ritter, a finance professor, let him do the explaining to us from the University of Florida. He said, quote, this is a very unusual situation.

The stock is pretty much divorced from fundamentals. So let me just break that down for the average. person. What he means is it don't make no fucking sense. Right. Like, that's what that means. The evaluation of 14 billion, which is what Wall Street had it as when it came out, doesn't make any fucking sense. And he added that the closest comparison, which we've talked about on the show, would have been the so-called meme stock, such as game stock and AMC, which rose during the pandemic amid a push from retailers. But he says, he goes on to say that he believes that Trump media is likely worth, hold on to your hats, folks, about $2 a share. Yeah. And I mean, that's a weird way of phrasing

why GameStop and AMC's stocks rose during the pandemic. It wasn't a push from retail traders. Well, I guess it was. But it was the retail traders were people on Reddit having a laugh. I mean, that's literally what did it is the people on Reddit got together and we're like, hey, let's, you know, this stock is in the tank. Let's, uh, let's start buying it and push it up. And that's what they did, which, you know, exposes exactly how Wall Street and the stock market work these days. But also, I mean, you got $2 a share. I mean, and it's at 33 as we're recording this. Trump is not allowed to sell any of that stock for six months, for six months since it went public. You know, unless he can find a way to weasel out of that, which God knows if anyone can, he can, and he'll somehow get away with it because that's been the pattern throughout his life.

Unless he finds a way to weasel out of that, you know, all this money that he supposedly made from this IPO is going to be completely gone. I don't know what I wish. I wish he would go away. But like I just, I wish he would go away. But I really do hope. I want to see this stock. not at $2. I want it to be $99.

Like, has that ever happened? Has that ever happened on Wall Street? I want the stock to be $99. That's what I'm rooting for. 99 cents stock for a dollar store president. Mm-hmm. Come on. Could an 1873 law be used to outlaw virtually all abortions across America?

That's the fear of many supporters of reproductive rights. Joining me now is Melissa Jira Grant, who's been writing about this at the New Republic. She's also the author of Playing the Hore, the Work of Sex Work, and the co-director of the documentary, They Won't Call It Murder. Melissa, thank you so much for being here. Hey, thanks. We're, of course, talking about the Comstock Act here, which has recently reared his ugly head in conservative circles, which includes Congress, the Supreme Court, and of course, Project 2025, which we've talked about numerous times on this podcast. Before we get into what's

going on now, can you give us a quick explainer of what the act is? Yeah, absolutely. So, So the Comstock Act is named for Anthony Comstock, who was a guy who came out of the Civil War, if that gives you a sense of the time period that we're looking at here, very angry about the, believe it or not, dissemination of pornography on the battlefield, which, you know, the 1860s is not very sophisticated, but it bothered him immensely. He lived in Brooklyn, actually. He came back to New York, very secure in his identity as a moral crusader. He busted up saloons. He went after photo studios where erotic photos were being shot. And notoriously, he went after abortion providers, specifically women. He seemed to have a real sense of outrage about women who dared to, you know, have sex and not be punished forever for it by having a child they didn't want to have or being made public mockery.

He enjoyed making public mockeries out of people. And he leveraged this into this New York Citywide organization. called the New York Society for the suppression of vice, had a lot of rich backers, including some. And now I think we would think of them as sort of being on the Christian right, but that's not really how they would have thought of themselves at the time. These were guys who were really, you know, upset, I think, about changing gender norms and gender values. They were upset about how easy it was to get information about birth control and abortion.

There would be ads in the paper. I mean, abortion was not illegal yet across the entire United States at this point. point in time. And they were upset about white women not having enough babies. They were like very concerned that there were too many immigrants and the wrong immigrants coming to the United States. This is, you know, coming on the heels of emancipation. And there's a lot of sort of white elite anxiety going on that, you know, we can definitely see some parallels with that today too with the Christian right. Anyway, Congress gave Insleecomstock what he wanted in 1873 past the sweeping anti-obscenity bill. And the thing to kind of know about it,

that is tricky because we don't really think of these things this way as under the umbrella of obscenity, Anthony Comstock placed abortion, contraception, pornography, cross-dressing, prostitution, anything that sort of violated what we're coming to be the white middle-class sexual norms. And it's wild to see actually how reviled he was in his time. You know, like when he died in 1915, he got a New York Times front page obituary. making fun of him. Wow. It's specifically

talking about his recent appearance in a New York courtroom at the trial of William Singer, who's the husband of Margaret Singer, who went on to found what became Planned Parenthood before violating the Comstock Act for disseminating information

about birth control. And it names the various people in the courtroom who openly mocked him and laughed at him, and it suggested that actually his early death, he was a victim of his own crusade. Yeah, that's absolutely amazing. So we've got a truly awful 151-year-old law named for a truly despicable person that's now suddenly, once again, the toast of the right. And this is possible in

large part because of the Dobbs decision that eliminated Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, right? Yeah, I don't really have a sense of Comstock Act coming on the radar of anti-abortion groups or the broader kind of white Christian evangelical right before Dobbs. It's possible that, you know, it was a gleam in some people's eyes, but I think Dobbs sort of put pressure on the anti-abortion movement to figure out what was next. You know, they were not going to pack up and go home and declare mission accomplished. That was never going to happen. You know, they, I think the reason that they honed in on the Comstock Act is because the Comstock Act has provisions for making an illegal to use the mail to send any object or instrument or drug that could be used for an

abortion. And when you look at sort of the post-dobs abortion access landscape, we see immediately that medication abortion sent through the mail is essentially filling the gap. You know, that is ensuring people in no access states continue to have access. It's also like, it's a very different paradigm, you know, like you're not going to protest outside a clinic and shame people out of having an abortion. What you're doing is like, you know, trying to reinsert yourself in a different way of having an abortion. Now people are having abortions at home. You don't even know about it necessarily. You don't have to go to a clinic. They don't have a place to protest. They don't have people to shame. And also, there's a lot more autonomy involved in medication abortion. You know, you don't necessarily

even have to go to a medical provider. You know, the FDA had relaxed some regulations around Mivacristone around the time of the pandemic. They made it dispensable via telehealth. That really pissed them off because then that removes the moment that people have to get, you know, forced pseudoscience, quote unquote, counseling to talk them out of having an abortion. Like Mipapristone with or without Dobbs was completely undermining their anti-abortion way of doing politics. And I think that when they saw that Comstock, you know, gave them a pathway to say, oh, actually, mailing pills for abortion is already illegal because this law is on the books. They seized on it. And, you know, it has been fascinating and horrifying to see how quickly it's sort of like went from something that was kind of fringy with these like

anti-abortion activists in Texas like mark le Dickson who you know paled up very quickly with Jonathan Mitchell who is one of Trump's lawyers as well to pass these like comstock or minces in different rural counties in Texas and then from there we see it pop up in project 2025 and then from there we see it at the Supreme Court it's only been about two years I think that it has managed to get to this level of prominence. Yeah, and it was just last month in the Mepha Pristone case that we saw that at least two Supreme Court justices, Thomas and Alito, seemed to be big fans of Comstock, don't they? Yeah, it was really a curveball, I think, for folks, including some folks who work in, you know, abortion and policy. The Mifipa Pristone case that's before the court right now is, is pretty narrow

in some ways. You know, it's really about a group of anti-abortion medical providers in a sort of hastily incorporated group called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. They incorporated a friendly jurisdiction in Texas where they got a great ruling last year saying that yes, the FDA had aired when the approval of Pristone originally in the year 2000 and then also in subsequent sort of, you know, changes to how it could be dispensed legally, which allowed telehealth. And it was a messy case. It never should have come to a court, but lodged in this messy case, you know, alleging that the FDA exceeded their authority by dispensing this allegedly and definitely not dangerous drug, they also invoke the Comstock Act saying, well, the FDA should have known that they were violating the Comstock Act by allowing McStone to go through the mail.

And that was an argument that the lower court thought was worthwhile. I mean, if not Judge Kessnerick on the Northern Texas District Court, if he hadn't sort of given the imprimatur of a legal decision of the Comstock Act, even though he's like, let all kinds of ridiculous. going to get through that courtroom. That helped this get to the Supreme Court in the state that it's in. And, you know, it's worth saying right now Mitha Pryston access has not changed in the United States and that even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of these anti-abortion doctors, that it will only roll back the approval of Mipa-Pristone to the pre-COVID era to 2016. It's not good.

I mean, that there's unnecessary medical hoops that people would have to jump through in order to obtain the drug. they, you know, would have to appear in person in clinics, which we know is, you know, a great burden on very many people. Abortion by Mitha Pryston would become more difficult to access and easier for anti-abortion groups to kind of, you know, funnel people seeking abortions into the gauntlet they want them to run to get an abortion. So Mivapristone in this case sort of like reopened some possibilities, I think, for the court as well, right? Like, well, what are we going to do now? I mean, we can't make abortion like more illegal. we've already opened that door with Roe putting aside for a second this whole bogus argumentally letting the states decide. Like they know what they did when they did that, which was essentially, you know, allowing the most restrictive anti-abortion bans to go into effect, including the what we see now in Arizona. So Thomas and Alito are, you know, just deeply in the tank, I think, for this sort of anti-abortion ideology, whether it's through religion, whether it's through the ways that they've come to. power and the powerful people who supported them, you know, Leonard Leo, all of the dark money that sort of made their lives, made Clarence Thomas's life certainly easier and more enjoyable at the

expense of the rest of us. And I think abortion rights groups had been, they knew Comstock was lurking in this case. It didn't like turn on Comstock. Constock was just sort of a supporting player and a supporting argument. And the Supreme Court is not being asked to rule on Comstock. Like, that's not technically part of this case. However, it didn't surprise me when it came up because I think part of the larger project here in the Supreme Court is part of this project is, you know, knowing that after Roe, the outrage after losing Roe, it's not politically possible for them to have a federal abortion ban. It does not seem like it's possible. There's no path to that. But if they are able to sort of turn on this specious argument from this like formerly niche group of anti-abortion activists out of Texas,

if they can like reactivate Comstock, then you do have a national abortion ban. You didn't have to go through the legislature. And I am certain that at some point in the next few years, like the question of Comstock is going to come back to the court more directly. So this is sort of a dress rehearsal. This is an opportunity for them to get some language and, you know, an opinion or a dissent about whether or not Comstock should be enforced. the good news, if there's any good news here is, like, they still seemed very awkward about

even, like, saying the words, Comstock Act. So when Alito first asked his question about it at oral argument, he referred to the statute by its number. And, you know, those of us who've been following this, I think, like, recognize that number right away. And to her credit, the government's attorney, the Solicitor General, like immediately reframe the question and said, oh, Comstock, you're asking about Comstock. And then that was sort of like a moment of recognition, which is, that's huge, too. I mean, I don't think the press was thinking. about this. For sure.

And now people are sort of primed to look for it and to see its power and its destructive potential as a national abortion ban that's just sitting there for whatever president wants to, you know, instruct the Department of Justice to begin enforcing it. Yeah, for sure. I remember interviewing, I think last year, Jennifer Wright, who wrote a biography of Madame Ristel, who was one of New York's, you know, most famous slash infamous abortionists. and she ended up being arrested by Anthony Comstock. And I remember thinking at the, you know, at reading the book and thinking, man, I haven't heard that name or the Comstock act in a long time.

And like, wow, what a sort of, you know, a horrible thing that was, but also like what a blast from the past. And now, as you point out, this has basically become the strategy of the anti-abortion, the anti-reproductive freedom elements in this country because this would immediately put into motion what they, likely couldn't win into Congress, meaning an effective federal abortion ban because it would both get rid of the ability or make it very difficult to get Mitha Pirstone. But also, if you're banning stuff from being mailed that has to do with abortion, that can be a very wide category. That can include all the equipment that abortion clinics use, et cetera, et cetera. So you make it very, very tough for there to be any abortions in America, if I'm looking at this correctly. I think that's a fair read.

You know, and some of the legal historians and legal scholars who've been looking at this, you know, like Mary Ziegler, like David Cohen and Rachel Rebuschay and Gerdaunley, you know, they've been publishing quickly for academic standards, I would say, in the last few years a number of papers like investigating like what of the Comstock Act could actually be enforced, you know. There is some debate about, you know, amongst the legal community of just like how enforceable is the Comstock Act really? the Department of Justice currently is of the mind that, you know, you cannot use the Comstock Act to go after Miffa Pristone even because Miffa Pristone has many uses and you don't necessarily know that it's being used for a quote unquote illegal abortion. So like they're trying. I mean, I don't know. Like I don't know how compelling that argument would be if it ended up in front of a court. But the sad, difficult reality is, is this law has festered on the books for 151 years. And there hasn't been motion in Congress to do.

anything about it until I think the last time was the late 1990s when it came up in the context of the Communications Decency Act. You know, the other thing that Comstock bans, not just the instruments and devices needed for abortion, but also discussion of it, you know, sending information through the mail. And so, you know, Henry Hyde, the architect of the Hyde Amendment barring federal funding for abortion, he decided that he needed to update the Comstock Act in 1996, 1996, to include the internet. And honestly, like, that's what I thought they were going to do. I thought they were going to come after abortion funds using the Comstock Act. I thought they were

going to come after, you know, all of the speech online, you know, in the wake of Dobbs, people just desperately trying to get information out there to fill in the gap of these clinics that have closed and providers who are gone. And in fact, like, their plan was like much bigger. They're going for the whole thing. And I think that speaks to how deeply we need to repeal the whole thing. You know, even. And I No, I know, I know. Every time I talk about this, people are just like, well, look at Congress, look at Congress. It's like, it's true. I don't think anybody honestly thinks that, you know, a repeal of Comstock is imminent given the makeup of Congress and the way things stand. However, I think that it is the only thing that will get us out of this bind is to get this thing

off the books entirely. Yeah. And because as you point out, you know, the Justice Department may right now think what it thinks, and that's the Biden Justice Department. And God forbid, if Trump wins in November, which is, I don't want to say it's likely, but it's not unlikely. And he installs a conservative attorney general. And then that attorney general gives guidance saying, you know, yeah, we read the Comstock Act as requiring a ban on the ability to mail the Fristone, etc. Then you're in this position, which is exactly where the anti-reproductive freedom people want us to be. I'm with your argument on trying to repeal this thing. And I think you make this point, it might clear the House. It's probably not going to clear the Senate, but get all those people.

on the record as saying they support this because we've seen electorally that positions like that don't generally play well with the American public. We already have 145 Republican members of Congress on the record saying that they believe Comstock is enforceable. They signed on to an amicus brief in the Miffa Priestone case. I've started contacting them. And, you know, of the, I think I'm only like 5% through the list. So I take that for what it's worth. But I went to some of, you know, the more high profile members who said that they believe the Comstock Act is in effect to day and should be enforced against Miffa Pristone. That included Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Katie Britt, the newly-assafel.

Katie Britt, Elise Stephanie, Lauren Bobert. I forget the whole list. But, you know, no one got back to me. No, when I asked them specifically, it's the same question that I had asked anti-abortion activists who were protesting outside the Supreme Court during oral arguments in the Miffa-Priestown case, who were like literally carrying signs with the text of the statute of the Comstock Act on that, which I never thought I would see in my whole fucking life. So I'm like going up to these like people who I found out were born after the year 2000, you know, so like after the FDA had approval of a Prestone and asking them like why enforce this now? What is this about? And you know, do you think people should be arrested under this and they just won't accept it. And I do think that that is like, that's the end game here. Like this, you know, all of the sort of post jobs hand wringing around, you know, weeks that abortion should be banned at and like what's a moderate ban? And oh, how are we going to, you know, allow people to have exceptions for.

rape and incest, which we know in practice don't work for people. They're not meaningful. We've heard so many really awful stories of people trying to take advantage of those quote-unquote exceptions in their state and not being able to. The end game for the anti-abortion movement who is pushing Comstock is this. People who have abortions should be jailed. Period. They cannot run from that. And they should not be allowed to run from that. And I think that's why it's been especially frustrating to watch the way that, you know, Trump's supposes. reluctance to sign a national abortion ban being held up as like evidence of some sort of, you know, belief or, you know, I mean, I don't think people think it's like a sincerely held

belief. I think that we're like hip enough to know that this is an electoral gambit and that he's going to say whatever he can say to get elected. But that's not the right question to be asking Trump right now. Would you sign an action from abortion ban? The right question to be asking him is, would you direct your Department of Justice to begin arresting people who have abortions through enforcing the Comstock Act? Yeah, absolutely, 100%. And hopefully, not that I have a ton of faith in most of the media, but hopefully we will see that going forward. Melissa, thank you so much for being here. Your reporting on this has been absolutely essential at the New Republic. And I'm very grateful that you came on the show to tell us what's been going on. Thanks again. I'm glad. Thanks. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal.

Michael Sokolov, who is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and the author of five books, including The Ticket Out, Daryl Strawberry, and the Boys of Crenshaw and Drama High, the incredible true story of a struggling town, a brilliant teacher, and the Magic Theater. He is also the author of an insightful, scary, terrifying piece. at Mother Jones entitled how Trump's 2024 campaign became a bloody cage fight. Michael, you bring to light in your piece a what I'm going to refer to for myself, a new Trump character that I knew nothing about. There are names like Stephen Miller, Bannon, folks who we have come to know over the

last seven years. Stephen Chung, however, who is the focus of your piece I did not know about, and now I wish I didn't know about him. Tell us about Stephen Chung and why it was important to focus your piece in Mother Jones on him. Well, first of all, Daniel, I sort of apologize for bringing Stephen Chung into your life. But I think Stephen Chung is important. for a few reasons. One is he's pretty smart on a certain level. And the reason you don't know him is he works in the background. He's not a guy that wants to be on TV. He is not someone who wants to build on his role in Trump world to do the next thing. He is a full-on Trump disciple. And he is dedicated to Donald Trump. And his job is to echo and amplify the words of Donald Trump.

and to use his own words, which, you know, you may have seen or listeners may have seen and not known that it was Chung, but, you know, when he starts calling Trump's opponents, you know, like Chris Christie a weak bitch or Nikki Halley, you know, a bird brain, you know, all this crazy stuff. That is Stephen Chung. And it has an appeal for sure to one person, the so-called audience of one. that's Donald Trump, but it coarsens the whole deal. It is a further coarsening of our national dialogue. And he is good at it and, you know, worth examining who he is and why he's at this. So Stephen Chung is, I think, an unlikely politico. Your piece gives us some insight into his kind of periphery in politics, wanting to kind of be in the mix. He had worked, I think, on the McCain campaign. He had been in and around Republican politics, but never quite in the mix. He leaves politics and goes to a very non-political space where he becomes the director of communications and public Affairs for Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Talk to me about this and how Stephen Chung is kind of born in this space and how this world of ultimate fighting championship overlaps with Trump world. Well, Chung was like a normal political operative and not at a particularly high level. He was one of, you know, hundreds or thousands of mid-level political operatives who went from campaign to campaign. He was known as a hard worker, but he didn't run campaigns. He was useful. He was hardworking. And then he becomes the media person, chief media person, communications person for the UFC. And the UFC is a brutal, you know, evolution of combat fighting. And, you know, the thing I think about is boxing has some rules for some modicum of decency. In the UFC, you can, you know,

take somebody to the mat. You can, you know, knock them down, and then you can get on top of them and you can keep beating on them. And, you know, that's pretty much Chung's specialty in the political world. I mean, just because you're down doesn't mean he's not going to keep sliming you. But anyway, the other thing about his work in the UFC, though, he's working for Dana White. It's a big business. Dan of White's a big Trump booster. And this was an elevation for Chung. I mean, it's a serious job. It's a $6 billion organization in the UFC. So he can, comes to the attention of Dana White, who's a Trump buddy, and he becomes, you know, a more high-level operative in the UFC. And then he goes back to politics with Trump in 2016.

You know, while I never like to kind of, I guess, talk about people's appearances, there is something that is really telling about the men and the women inside of Trump world, whether it is Donald Trump's attorneys, his comms people, they have a certain look. The women, for a lack of a better term, look like a redux of Stepford wives. Blonde hair, heavy makeup, the lashes, very thin, what Trump's ideal looks like. The men look very brutish. And you said it in your piece, he looks like he could be the henchman of like a major villain in Marvel. Talk to us about this kind of, it is because it's both in physicality, but also in his media persona, this toxic masculinity, this bravado, this crassness. Talk to us about that.

Well, look, it's impossible to ignore the way Chong looks. He's a pretty scary looking dude. He's probably around six feet. He's got to be well over 300 pounds. He has no visible neck. He's got a shaved head. And he plays it. You know, he's the heat. And Trump plays it.

You know, it was said to me, and I think this is right, that Trump casts the people around him. And you just got into that. You know, the women look like Stepford wives or Fox News anchors. And he likes the men to have this, this rough look. And Chung, you know, nobody looks like Chung and Trump world. I mean, Chung looks like the end. enforcer. And I think Trump has cast Chung as the enforcer. And even though he's off the radar in terms of

who people know in Trump world, that is the role he serves. I mean, you come after Donald Trump. This guy is coming after you. And, you know, as in the UFC, once he knocks you down, he's going to knee you in the head. I mean, there are no rules of political engagement as we used to know them that Chung will not violate. You know, the weird thing is, and we can get into this, you know, in person, that's not the guy he is. But as a wordsmith, you know, there's an extreme brutality and coarseness and grossness to what he sends out into the political universe. It's so interesting now to understand how our tolerance for what you've just referred to as the grossness in our politics has happened, where there used to be, I'm not too old,

to remember there was this thing called, what was it, Michael? Oh, decorum, right? There was this thing that you expected from your political candidates, from your representatives, from the president of the United States. When Donald Trump became president as he was running for that office, we saw daily, if not hourly, the political norms with which we have guided our lives and American democracy go out the window. When you can refer to a political opponent as a weak bitch and then have Politico and other outlets verbatim, write that quote, and provide no insight and analysis into,

wow, this is disgusting and gross and unbecoming of X. It just has become par for the course. So talk to us about how Chung, with his UFC, knock them down and keep pummeling them, how that approach has, I think, forever changed and shifted our political discourse. I think you're right in everything you said. And, you know, Danielle, you may remember it wasn't that long ago that I believe Barack Obama wore a... Come on.

...in suit or a brown suit. And he was criticized for, God knows why, for the, you know, that wasn't presidential. It wasn't becoming. Now we've got Chung, who will probably be the communication. director in a second Trump administration who posts a picture of Joe Biden. It's a normal picture. Biden looks his age, but there's nothing beyond unusual. You know, there's nothing unusual about it beyond that. Post the picture. And the caption he puts on it is, help, my diaper is full. That's gross. And, you know, to call Christy a weak bitch, you know, there's always a misogynistic

aspect to it, you know, to call Nikki Haley calling her birdbrain and saying, is she just fucking stupid or, you know, all this stuff, it's awful. I mean, there are parents all over America who tell their kids to not bully people online. I mean, this is online bullying. I mean, you know, has it changed things forever? I mean, Trump has changed everything forever. You know, that's for sure. But I don't see the Biden campaign. I don't see other Democrats echoing this exactly. Politics is certainly a rough sport, but I don't say it exactly. But, you know, four more years of Trump, this is where we will be at. And, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to write this story from Mother Jones when they asked me to write it is, I think there's a danger in

normalizing things. I think it has to be noted just simply how gross a lot of this stuff is. And this is where we'll be, you know, for the next four years and worse, honestly, where every opponent is not just someone to disagree with, but someone to bury and defame. You know, in your piece to that point, you are quoting Brian Lanza, who is a GOP operative, and you wrote this. Politics has always been a rough sport, Lanzah notes, but there used to be an accepted terms of engagement, as in boxing, whose marquees of Queensberry rules enforce at least a modicum of decency. And, you know, while Democrats have not, I guess, disbts. decide to agree on these new rules of engagement that Trumpism has created. Michael, do you think that it is to the detriment of Democrats that they continue to try and

be the adults in the room when they're the only adults in the room? You know, I think on some levels, it may be to their detriment. I don't know, honestly, how many points there are to be scored with the kind of language that Chung is using. it certainly excites Trump's base of young males and males in general and people who are really angry about the deep state and, you know, people who are just angry, right? I don't see him scoring points with persuadable suburban women with this kind of language. I don't see him scoring points with, I hate to say normal people, because we have some high

percentage of people in our country right now who believe in fantasies. So I can't see the Democrats resorting to this kind of language and scoring points with it. I mean, there are other questions about rules of engagement that maybe are up for grabs. Maybe it's putting out really deceiving AI stuff, which I'm going to assume that the Trump campaign will have no compunctions about doing. And, you know, should the Democrats put out really, you know, funky AI stuff, too? I mean, I don't know. I think there's probably points to be scored in a really unethical way in that. But, you know, I mean, I can't call, I can't see Joe Biden calling somebody a weak bitch. That's not going to get him anywhere. So this is specifically Trump. But it also is, the broader thing for me is not politics.

The broader thing for me is just the forcening of our entire culture and country when the leader of a country and his chief spokesman engage in this kind of stuff. What makes me so, I guess, alarmed about the reveal of this character, of this, of this character that has been in Trump's orbit, Chung, for quite some time, is that unlike the other people who have become, for better or worse, household names, he has no desire, Stephen Trump, He has no desire to be front and center. Like we're not going to see him as we have other people bounce from inside of the Trump camp and onto cable news, onto Fox, onto dancing with the stars, right? And so because of that, do you think then, Michael, that Stephen is even more dangerous and what he's doing is even more insidious?

because one of the questions that you pose or that is posed in the article is that people who you interviewed, other reporters that deal with him, you know, say they don't even know if he believes what it is that he says, whether he believes that the election was stolen or he's just doing the talking points, but either way, like, it's gross. Either way, like, if you believe it, I guess, that, you know, it still makes you terrible. But if you don't believe it, but you are advocating and, you know, promoting that kind of rhetoric, then it makes you even more insidious and dangerous. And so I wonder, because he doesn't have what seems to be this self-serving desire for wealth and power, is he then the sharpest disciple? Because all he wants is what Trump wants.

I think that's a great way of putting it. He is a true disciple. I think that what he's doing right now, It's going to be very difficult. No Fortune 500 company is going to want him, you know, coming aboard. I think there are a lot of even Republican campaigns will not want him coming aboard. You know, this is the last chance corral for him. It's Trump or nothing. Maybe he could go back to the UFC, I suppose. But, you know, that makes him a person with no limits, maybe no morality. And, you know, when you look back at the last Trump administration, there were people who were known as guardrails. And, you know, you can agree or disagree with Bill Barr, the former Attorney General's, you know, values and what he did, or, you know, any number of people, you know, Jeff Sessions, who used to be a senator, you know, these were people

who had a career before Donald Trump and expected to have a career after Donald Trump. So you could imagine there was an exit that they were going to get off at if things were just not normal is the wrong word, but, you know, if they had a line they wouldn't cross, I think when you're a true disciple like Chung is, you're not going to be a so-called guardrail. You are less likely to have limits. He's ride or die with Donald Trump. And I think the other reason I want to write this story is he's not alone. You know, these are all the ride or die people with Trump now. And it's frightening, I would say. I agree. I'm, you know, I said to you at the start, I'm both angry about your piece because it gives me more things to keep me up at night, but also

grateful for it because I think that what folks have to understand is that Donald Trump is not the only one whose back is up against the wall. Four indictments, 91 charges, it will all go away if he becomes president of the United States again. But for everyone around him, when you have a sea of people with nothing to lose, I think that that's when people have to understand just how dangerous of a situation that we're in. And Michael, I'm just, I'm really appreciative. for this piece that you wrote because I think that it kind of puts a even finer point on the story of the 2024 presidential election and what we're up against. So I really appreciate you making the time to join us here on the new abnormal folks. The piece is how Trump's 2024 campaign became a bloody cage fight.

Just ask his incendiary spokesman Stephen Chung. It is up at Mother Jones right now. Well, thanks for having me. I enjoyed talking to you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How were we rounding out this stupendous week in America with your fuck-that-guy? My fuck-that-guy is someone that I think last, I guess it was Sunday,

I put forth as my, and I think Jesse did as well, as my pick for who Trump's vice presidential selection is going to be. It's Christy Knoem, Governor of South Dakota, Queen of the Makeovers. Mm-hmm. She is barred from roughly 10% of the land in her own state. And you might be asking, well, how is that possible? Mm-hmm. And the answer to that is Native American tribal leaders. And earlier this week, as our own Justin Rorlich reported at The Daily Beast, this Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council voted to formally banish Nome from its reservation because she has made various statements about how Native American tribal leaders are in cahoots with Mexican drug cartels. And she has yelled at Native American parents for not being involved enough in their children's lives,

etc., etc. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is the third Lakota tribe in South Dakota to banish Nome. The Agualla Sioux did the same thing back in March. and the Cheyenne River Sioux did it earlier this month. And there is no criminal jurisdiction for the state of South Dakota on Native American reservations in that state. So she has basically been told that if she sets foot on any of that territory, she will be trespassing. And this to me is, A, fantastic, and B, absolutely hilarious. To be clear, my fuck that guy here is Christy know, not these Native American tribal leaders, tribal councils that are doing fantastic work here,

I think. You can look at everything that she has said about Native Americans and not a shock. It mirrors everything that racists say about black people. It's nice that, I mean, the circumstances that have led to it are horrible, but it's nice that at least the Native Americans have their own land where they can literally tell this dumbass governor of the state, you cannot set foot on these lands. If you do, you will be evicted for trespassing. And I love that so much. And she is an absolutely horrible person. And she can make over her exterior as often as she wants.

But her interior will still be rancid. So fuck that guy. Amen to that. I kind of want to see her get arrested. That would be awesome. So let's make room for that. God, and those teeth, anyway. All right, Danielle, close out this, as you call it, stupendous week with your fuck that guy,

which I assume is a really, really uplifting story of hope and compassion. No, Andy, wrong show. Wrong show. We don't do hope here. We cover politics. Is this not the old normal? I wish that I had something good to share, but I just want people to pay attention. There is a place, a state that you will not find me stepping fucking foot in.

And it is the state of Tennessee. Because I don't know what the fuck is happening in this place. It is a bastion of fuckery. And this bill that they have passed, Lord, if you are LGBTQ, if you have queer kids, I honestly think, folks, it is time to pack it up. And I know that that is coming from a place of privilege to say, it, but Tennessee is dangerous. So this is what they have done. Tennessee on Monday, according to the Hill, I can't believe that this is not making more news, so I'm happy for us to make the news here.

Tennessee passed a bill Monday that will allow potential parents who are anti-gay, anti-LGBQ to adopt and foster LGBTQ children. Let me say that again. Tennessee has passed legislation that makes it legal for abuse to happen in the state of Tennessee. Because if you are anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-queer, and you go and make it your business to adopt a child that you know is LGBTQ, tell me what the fucking purpose of that is other than to try and, what is it, pray the gay away, beat the gay away, electrocute the gay away. What are we trying to do here? What is the state of Tennessee trying to do here? So it goes on to say that under the bill, under this legislation, that the Department of Children's Services, DCS, is prohibited from deeming parents unfit to be child's guardian based on their own religious or moral beliefs regarding sexual orientation or gender identity.

Before this legislation, if you had a religious objection to LGBTQ people, LGBTQ children, you were not permitted to adopt said child. Now they have reversed this legislation and they have the Department of Children's Services discount your quote unquote moral objection. So what they have done, again, folks, is legislate child abuse. I do not understand. Like, I just do not understand where the fuck we are. It is reprehensible. It is heinous.

It is cruel. It is despicable. It is disgusting. And Tennessee just keeps looking at Florida and saying, hold my beer in the battle of who can be the most anti-gay, the most anti-gay. the most anti-trans, the most Christo-fascist. So for that reason, these motherfuckers in Tennessee get my absolute 100% fuck all those guys. Yeah, this is so gross.

I always think of this stuff, and I always think of it in terms of we hear so much about, well, it's a religious belief. We have to respect that. No, we don't. We have to respect it to the fact that, yeah, you can believe whatever the hell you want. It's not illegal to believe that gay people or trans people or queer people or whatever are less than. I don't have to respect that belief. I picture this as if someone believed, well, which there are people that do with. If people who believe in white supremacy for religious reasons,

it would seem fairly clear that they should not be allowed to adopt children of color. And if you were to say, well, no, that's discriminating against their religious beliefs, which is exactly what's happening here, someone would look at you and say, but that's crazy. If you have a bunch of white supremacists adopting a black child and teaching that child and raising that child to believe that they are inferior or less than human or just less than white, or whatever, you would say, no, we can't allow this. This is the exact same thing. But somehow we've allowed this religious belief, this religious homophobia to be accepted in large swats of this country. It's absolutely disgusting. And, and, you know, I am very tired of being told that we have to respect religious people's

beliefs when those beliefs are discriminatory and hateful. And I just, I do not have to respect those beliefs. Fuck those guys. Mm-hmm. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with you. the friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. 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.