The Daily Beast Podcast - The Women of Trumpworld May Have Blown Their Shot at VP

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

Semafor politics reporter Shelby Talcott joins The New Abnormal this week to discuss the state of the 2024 race. Plus! A conversation with author Joshua A. Douglas about his new book, “The Court v. the Voters: The Troubling Story of How the Supreme Court Has Undermined Voting Rights.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

What an excellent show we have today. Shelby Talcott, a politics reporter at Semaphore, is here to talk about the potential Trump VP picks and the chaos surrounding them. Then voting rights professor at the University of Kentucky Law School, Joshua Gordon, joins us to talk about his new book, The Court versus the Voters, the troubling story of how the Supreme Court has undermined voting rights. But first, let's have some fun. All right, Charles.

Today is episode 420, I've been told by Seamus, and I'm going to make you feel like you spoke something with what I'm about to play you. Silence of the Lamb. Has anyone ever seen a silence of the Lord? He's a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last thing?

Excuse me, I'm about to have a friend for dinner. Is this poor doctor walked by... I'm about to have a friend for dinner. But Hannibal Lecter, congratulations. The late great Hannibal Lecter, we have people that are being released into our country that we don't want in our country. What? Does that have to do with silence of the, so for the late great Hannibal Lecter, a number one is a character from a movie, not an actual person. And used to have a friend for dinner and then you transition into immigration.

What? Oh, there's so many things there, Dan. Danielle. Don't forget a wonderful TV show. One of the greatest ever do it. Oh, yeah. A fantastic TV show. Yeah, the late great thing is weird for so many reasons because if you're talking about the actor, Anthony Hopkins from the movies. He's still alive. He's still alive. If you're talking about the character, he ain't died. I mean, I know that's like nitpicking when you just get to the rest of it. But he's been doing this for a while, like bringing up Hannibal Lecter. And I think we might have even talked about it a while back. He said he claimed that Anthony Hopkins liked him. Or did he claim that Hannibal Lecter liked him?

No. He actually made the distinction and said Anthony Hopkins. I don't know that he's capable of making that distinction anymore. This was, you know, as he continues, the great sundowning, as I like to call it. Oh, shit. I'm not really sure that he knows the difference anymore. But yeah, he loves comparing migrants to Hannibal. lector and yeah, I don't know.

I tell you, the scariest part about all of this, aside from the fact that I wish that we were high while we were listening to that, because it would make more sense, would be the fact the chuckling of the audience. Like, do they think that he's a comedian? Like, that's the thing. Like, they laugh at everything. And I'm like, is it a nervous laughter? Is it like, he's so funny.

Ha, ha, ha. Look at the boss. Like, it's the. laughter to me that is so sinister and scary, because I don't even know if you pull them aside what was funny about that if they could tell you. But, you know, let me not let my intellect soar as we try and make sense of nonsense. Yeah, I can't answer that, which I'm actually kind of thankful for. Yeah, I am too. But, you know, referring to the character of Hannibal Lector as a wonderful man is, I mean, it's a take. It is definitely a take.

It's a take. Speaking of wonderful men, Danielle. You are not coming with a wonderful man next. But please, go ahead. Let's talk about two of your favorite Supreme Court justices. Okay, great. Let's start with Justice Clarence Thomas. I know you're a big fan.

You've made that very clear in prior episodes. On Friday, he was giving a little conversation, giving a little speech at a judicial conference, at a luxury resort, of course, because it's Clarence Thomas. Where else does Clarence Thomas go? He only knows luxury. Yeah.

He's not happy, Danielle. He's not happy, I think, with people like you who spread what he calls the nastiness and the lies about him and his wife. Oh. He very much does, he thinks the culture in D.C. is horrible. He thinks that people giving him shit for taking luxury trips and. and yacht trips and whatnot paid for by billionaires. He thinks it's horrible that they would have the nerve to do that.

And all I kept thinking was, well, there's one way to make it all stop. Hide it better? Because he's certainly not going to fucking stop. But please. I was going to say resign. Oh, oh, yeah. If being you is so bad because of your job, find a new job. Mm-hmm.

I mean, it won't, you know, the benefits won't be as good. That's the problem. You know, it's funny. I can understand why he's upset, right? Because when my parents would cut my allowance, I would be upset too. And maybe that's what it is that Harlan Crow is pulling back the strings to his wallet because he's, you know, under so much scrutiny. But Clarence Thomas doesn't give a fuck. He hates D.C. so much. Maybe that's why he takes so many fucking trips. You know, he just got to get out of town because he doesn't like the scrutiny. So he orders up the PJ and heads over to whatever luxury. fishing trout resort that he joins Harlan Crow and his buddies at. He does not care what we think about him. He's so detached from the reality that the rest of us live in. And unfortunately, the thing that gets me about these justices is that they're not made to be uncomfortable. Their life is built on cushion. It's not as if they're being protested everywhere they go. It's not as if like, oh, Clarence Thomas can't sleep at night because there are always people rallying out front of his home.

not me trying to give suggestions, but, you know, there's an idea, is that he should be made to feel uncomfortable. And I wish that they actually were, but they're not. They just don't like that their polling is not as good as it used to be. But here's an idea. Maybe don't make decisions and do things that harm our democracy and the American public and make us question whether or not you should have lifetime appointments because you're a bunch of fucking grifters.

It's an idea, but, you know, go off. Yeah, I don't think that Harlan Crow is cutting his allowance. I think what he's upset about is that people are mocking him for being a 75-year-old man who gets an allowance. I mean, he sits there and he says, in Washington, people pride themselves in being awful. It's a hideous place as far as I'm concerned. And he says all these things about all the nastiness that he and Ginny have had to put up with. Well, you know what? Ginny, don't foment a coup and maybe people won't say nasty things about you.

And Justice Thomas maybe recuse yourself when cases. come before the court that have to do with that attempted coup that your wife helped set into motion. And people won't say nasty things about you. There's absolutely, again, this is the ideology supposedly of personal responsibility. And there's absolutely none of it here. And again, this is what we almost always see when people complain about cancel culture. It's how dare you criticize me? That's what it comes down to.

It's basically it's do you know who I am? And who are you to criticize me? That in their mind, that is cancel culture. And that to me is not, it's like because they want to be above rebuke, right? Because they sit on this panel, these nine black robes that have at one time were looked upon. People revered them, right? In order to ascend to this type of, to even be considered for the Supreme Court, you were thought to be above reproach. But now, right, over the past however many years, I mean, Clarence Thomas, we were warned about Clarence Thomas

How many decades ago were we warned about him? Four, I think. Four decades ago that we were warned about this man. And it is just over the last couple that he, I think, has gotten so emboldened and that we begin to look and question because of the decisions that they're making and how they're making them. So it's this Supreme Court that have put themselves in the spotlight because of their behavior. And the fact that, oh, they won't even bother to come and sit before. the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer any questions. Justice John Roberts, like, no, I got it.

I'm good. I don't have to show up. We'll write a new ethics report. And that's how we'll investigate ourselves. We got it over here. Don't worry about us. And I'm like, that's why people don't trust you because you don't even feign to care about transparency. Yeah.

No, absolutely. I guess I misspoke. The Thomas confirmation hearings were in 1991. So technically it's been, I guess, three decades, a little over three decades. But getting to your point about they don't want to be criticized or whatever, at that same conference again at the luxury resort, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, your third favorite, Justice after Thomas and Alito, he did, he almost kind of shrugged off the crap that the court is getting because he says, well, you know what?

It's kind of always been like this. He decided that a great comparison that he could make was the Warren court of the 50s and 60s and decisions that they issued such as Brown B. Vort of Education. And he said, hey, those decisions weren't popular with a lot of America at the time, but the justice is stuck to their principles. And, you know, now those decisions are the fabric of American constitutional law. So to be clear, Daniel. Mm-hmm. Please. Lay it out for me.

Because I'm not sure that you get this. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Justice Kavanaugh is saying that decisions like Dobbs and stuff like that are comparable to Brown-B-vort-of-education. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, which is also next up in their docket to overturn. Right, exactly. Kavanaugh is on some bullshit with this statement.

What did he say precisely? He said in reference to the Warren court, quote, what the court kept doing is playing itself. sticking to its principles. And you know, look at all those decisions, right? They were unpopular. They were unpopular because a majority of the white American Republic did not want integration. That's why they were unpopular because we had the National Guard being called in to protect little black children from integrating all white schools. in the American South.

That's why those decisions were unpopular. Not because you decided to take away rights that had been set for 50 plus years from women and people with uteruses. He is on some absolute bullshit. That court received scorn because of the expansion into equity and the American dream for the masses outside of just white Americans. What this court is about is restriction and oppression. That's why the people don't like you.

So I think that he's confused, but maybe he just had more beer that he loves so much. Yeah, it's such a weird thing to hear him talking about these landmark decisions because if there's one thing we know about the current court is they're always looking to overturn those landmark decisions. I mean, we saw it with Dobbs overturning Roe, which, by the way, Roe was part of the fabric of America, didn't stop them from overturning it. He doesn't seem to grasp the difference between expanding rights for more people and restricting rights for certain people. And the chutzpah to sit there and compare what the Roberts Court is doing to what the Warren Court did, it's absolutely unbelievable. And it gets to, man, these people really do.

live in a bubble, don't they? Mm-hmm. They live in a bubble, but they also just don't care. This is feigning to care. This is them trying to rewrite history because they're getting bad press. The fact is, again, I continue to say that the American people need to be rallying against this Supreme Court. They are absolutely out of control.

This next term that is ending in a few weeks, we'll see what other rights that we once had that they are getting ready to overturn and the cases that they are hearing where right now, as we record, they're debating on whether or not a president can shoot their political opponent and get away with it. Like, that's where this court is

and what it will be remembered for if in fact we have history books in a few years, right? If in fact you're able to Google and they don't take that right away from us of information like they're trying to do in so many different facets. And so it's just,

the both of them, it's very clear that they actually are listening and see the headlines that coming across all the time, but none of them are shamed. None of them are actually leading from a place of the law, which is what they were put on that bench to do. Those decisions are already made before opening statements even begin, because they're doing what they've been paid to do. They've doing what they've been brought in to do. And the fact, I continue to say that we have no recourse. We have to wait for one of them to die or resign. That's our recourse right now. Or for a Democratic president to get enough courage to decide that they're really going to push for the expansion of the courts. That's where we are. Well, I've just been informed that we need to move to the pitoes. So thank you,

Jesse, for that lovely turn of phrase. But what we're talking about here is it seems unbelievable, but then again, I guess it doesn't, given the world we live in now, the new abnormal. Well, let's talk about Mississippi and Missouri. These are two states that are trying desperately to keep the marriage age as low as possible. Missouri currently has a legal age of marriage at 16. That's been raised, actually, since 2018 when it was 14. Mm-hmm. Mm-mm-mm. There is now a bill that would ban child marriage in Missouri that is being blocked by a Republican. who say, hey, there's nothing wrong with child marriage. One of the reasons they're giving for this is they're saying, oh, the government needs to mind its own business.

The government needs to stay out of people's lives. Danielle, any thoughts about that? None. Just like, what? The fucking audacity here is outrageous. The audacity to say that government needs to stay out of people's lives. so that your pedophilic ass can be marrying an underage girl. And by the way, this entire push that Republicans are having around child brides

is one of their other ways to combat abortion. Let's not teach about safe sex. Let's not have comprehensive healthcare education for our kids in schools because that goes against their fucking religion. But they believe that if a child gets pregnant at the age of 10 or 12, or 14, then the right thing to do is to marry them off. The backwards fucking logic that this Republican Party is working with, it's like, you know that little do-do on NBC where it's like, the more you know, it's like the more

they learn, the more repelled they become from that information. There's no penetrating here. And so the party that wants to literally shrink government so that it fits inside of a uterus, the party that wants to be in same-sex couples and trans people's bedrooms and in their locker rooms and in bathrooms wants to tell people to stay out of their personal life so they can marry a fucking minor. Anyone find the irony in that, the hypocrisy in it, just the despicable nature of this Republican Party. And just so we know we've played clips, or I should say Jesse has made us suffer through clips, right-wing podcasters who are talking about

marrying 16 and 15-year-old girls, basically setting up grooming that you should be able to be in your 30s and marry somebody that is 15 or 16 years old. This whole like in-cell, woman hating, controlling, misogynistic, patriarchal bullshit, like this is all part of their larger fabric of suppression and subjugation of women and girls in this country. And it is sick. And people need to connect all of the dots that are happening here that they are throwing out. I'm out done. Yeah. What the Republican Party is doing to kids in too many states to even list at this point is so criminal and so immoral, you know, whether it's putting them to work in factories, making it so that they can get married at 14 or 16 or whatever. It's so

gross. And when I said it's unbelievable, it's like you really would think that the one thing that we could all agree on is that kids should be protected and that that's sort of a legitimate function of government. But we'd be wrong in thinking that. Like their ideal child is a married 12-year-old who works, spends the day working in the factory, and then comes home to their spouse. It's just, it's absolutely unreal. And we see this time and time again, whether it's young children not being allowed to get an abortion after being raped. It's with everything. I could list weather's until I could run out the clock, basically, but I won't. It's just unreal. And this is spreading from state to state, states like Mississippi, states like Missouri, states like Arkansas,

this is the party, by the way, that loves to throw around the slur groomer. And then you look at what they actually want, and that's what they want to be. They want to be groomers. They want to groom kids to get married, to work in the factory, to have their dinner on the table. This is who they are. And at a certain point, more attention needs to be paid to this. And Danielle, you were saying before we started recording that you do see it a lot on social media, the outrage toward it, but you don't really see it in a lot of the mainstream media.

No, because I think that these things are getting lost in the shuffle. Because all of this attention is being focused on Donald Trump, being focused on, you know, all of his court cases, being focused on all of these judges that are, you know, doing his bidding. And we're not paying attention to what the Republican Party as a whole, as, you know, is doing to our country, bit by bit, state by state. What did Steve Bannon say? Flood the zone. We're going to take over village by village, city by city, state by state. This is what they're doing. And it's shit like this that is getting overlooked until it's elevated, like what just happened in Arizona with the 1864 law.

That's finally being overturned. But without that outrage would have just gone on notice because all eyes and all spotlight is on Donald Trump. But what the rest of this party is doing is dragging this country, kicking and screaming back to the dark ages. And it's terrifying because it's the banning of books. It's abortion. It's IVF. It's child marriage. It's child labor laws that you just mentioned. It's all of these things, these protections that were put in place because the more we understood as a modern society about children, about their. needs about who we wanted to be as a country, we created laws and policies that would help us advance. And everything about the Republican Party is about regression.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal politics reporter Shelby Talcott from Semaphore, who is covering Trump and National Republicans. Shelby, your latest piece, which went up on Monday, entitled J.D. Vance visits Trump trial Tim Scott may be next. Is this the new VP test? I can't express the absurdity of this, but talk to us about what you are calling essentially a reality TV show production at this point. Yeah, well, thanks for having me. And I think the big thing around who Donald Trump is going to pick as his vice president is that there's all of these news articles and all of these sort of tests that are coming up for the VP hopefuls and who's in and who's out on the list, who's up and who's down. And the reality is that only Donald Trump knows who he's going to pick at the end of the day. And he doesn't even really know at this very moment who that's going to be. But what he does like is the media speculation. and he likes the drama of it. And he likes all of the sort of public speculation that we've seen over the past few weeks.

He enjoys seeing people vie for it. And he enjoys seeing these VP hopefuls on Sunday shows defending him. And so we're seeing all of that play out very publicly. And that's intentional. You know, one of the things that struck me, too, was recently Tim Scott being asked very directly, will you accept the results of the, the 2024 election.

And he needed to be asked that question, I think, at least three times and did not answer it and said that Donald Trump will be the 47th president of the United States. On top of being his staunch defenders and showing up at this trial where just to remind folks, Donald Trump slept with a porn star, paid them off with hush money, not because he gave a shit about what Melania thought, but because he did not want voters to know. And in audio recording said, this is going to be very, very bad for the election. Part of this test is also whether or not they're going to, I guess, I don't know, agree to our peaceful transfer of power. If this is just now a thing of the past that we just lie about whether or not elections are fraudulent,

what is your take on this kind of obstacle course that he is laying out for potential VPs? I think the big thing that I've seen when you talk about, for example, the Tim Scott commentary and other incidents, you know, whenever a VP hopeful these days is asked about the situation around January 6 and the people who have been arrested as a result of it, is the people running for vice president understand that in order to remain. as a vice presidential candidate, they need to keep Donald Trump happy. And so that's sort of what we're seeing, right? With Tim Scott, he knows that Donald Trump

does not even want to admit that, yeah, there is a reality in which he might lose. And so you're seeing Tim Scott as a result talk about the 2024 election with that sort of rhetoric, with the sort of rhetoric where, no, it's not even a possibility that Trump could lose. so we're not even going to discuss that. And so a big thing with vice presidential hopefuls is what are we doing to make sure that

we're on Donald Trump's good side. Who do we have on the list right now that we're looking at and folks that you're paying attention to? The main people I'm paying attention to right now are J.D. Vance, Doug Bergam, Tim Scott, are three of the big ones. I think Elise Stefonic is still in the mix. Marco Rubio, although, of course, that could get complicated. And then I think the question there is Marco Rubio is from Florida.

And so does Donald Trump want to deal with the potential headache that that could pose? But I also want to note that while these are the names that I'm looking at currently, it could be different next week. And it could be different a few weeks from now. I remember a year and a half ago when I talked to people close to Donald Trump way before there was ever any serious vice presidential list in play. And most of them thought in that moment that he would pick a woman. And so that sort of changed now, but maybe it changes in another few weeks. If right now, for instance, we're looking at what you named are three top men and one of them being a black man, the other two, being white. What do you speculate is the move now towards another man as a vice president versus a woman?

We thought that we saw also potentially on that list was Christy Nome, but, you know, killing a puppy makes you. unfavorable to a majority of people with hearts that actually have beating hearts in their chest. So she's off the list for right now. But what do you think the move now is between the benefits of having a male counterpart or a woman counterpart? Yeah, I think it's safe to say that that Christy Nome is probably off the list at this point after her book tour. The one thing I will say is when I talk to people close to Trump and people on Trump's campaign,

is there's not universal agreement at this point that the vice presidential pick needs to be somebody who is going to help Donald Trump in terms of getting voters that he does not already have. There are a number of people in Trump's orbit that think at the end of the day, voters aren't going to vote based on who your vice presidential pick is. It's news for a day or two and then people just don't care that much. And if Donald Trump's going to win, he's going to do it because he's Donald Trump, not because he picks J.D. Vance or Tim Scott or Lee Stefan, I guess, is running mate. So I think that is part of the calculus now in terms of why you're seeing, you know,

three men as three or four men as the top contenders at this point. But at the same time, each of these men could help Donald Trump in their own way, right? Tim Scott, for example, has pretty high favorability ratings with suburban women and black voters. So he could bring in a sect of voters. Marco Rubio could bring in Hispanic voters. So they do each have their own sort of push, depending on what you're looking for. But does Donald Trump end up picking somebody because of that or because he just likes that person personally?

I think he's leaning towards the latter. Because the reason for picking Pence, for instance, was to appeal to white evangelical Christians. His devout religion, quote unquote, squeaky clean look made people think that the possibility that there would be some type of adult in the room, right? Yes. Yeah. And so now I look at it. And what we know is that if there is going to be a Trump 2.0 administration, there are no adults

left in the room. The only people that are going to be in the room are going to be sycophants and those that want access and proximity to power. In looking at the list, Jady Vance to me, I mean, I hate all of them. And I could rattle off the reasons as to why, but I don't need to because I think the people people that listen to this show feel the same. But Jady Dance, to me, is someone who really seems to love the spotlight. And I wonder, is part of being liked by Donald Trump needing to show some charisma and television presence, but also is it important not to outshine him? Yes. I think that is

very important from all of my conversations about people who have known Donald Trump for years. He likes people who are good on camera and who have that charisma, but he also doesn't want to be outshined. And so there is, you know, the risk of, you know, for example, when thinking about someone like Carrie Lake, Carrie Lake is very media forward, maybe too much so, you know. So there is that risk when you're looking at vice presidential candidates. There's sort of a balance that they have to strike between being very charismatic, defending him going on the news, being forward talking while also not being so much so that they become the story over Donald Trump. I want to look at some of the women that were at one time on the list as well, and then one notably

who is missing. What we saw following the state of the union, we saw them roll out who I refer to as Kitchen Katie, Senator Katie Britt. And, you know, she was supposed to be this sort of off-spoken, attractive, appealing to white women in her kitchen. Do we think that if there were to be a pendulum swing, again, we have less than 200 days, but there's still a lot of time. And given how Donald Trump makes decisions, it could happen. You know, we know it needs to happen before convention, but we also know that normalcy is out the window. What do you think would be the appeal of having somebody like Katie Britt on the ticket? Well, I think, as you said, I do think when I talked to people close to Trump after her state of the union response,

there was sort of a universal cringe reaction to that so that doesn't help her. But picking somebody like that could help theoretically tell voters that, you know, listen, we have a woman on the ticket, a Republican with a woman on the ticket. That would be really big. And that's one of the reasons that a year and a half ago, when I talked to Trump aides and people close to him, they were thinking that it had to be a woman. So I think that's really the biggest thing. But I also just think, you know, she's younger. She's sort of the future generation of the Republican Party. So it could show that that Donald Trump is not only focused on the next four years, but also building out the party beyond him.

That could be enticing to voters. And then, right, she's a young woman with a family. She might be able to get those suburban moms into the Republican Party. So there's a lot of potential benefits to picking somebody like her. And then notably off the list. So like we talked about Christy Noam. She didn't do herself any favors. Lord only knows what she was thinking with that story of cricket and killing her dog and being tough. I really don't know what she was thinking there. But she's off the list. Carrie Lake, I think overstepped or overstayed her welcome. She's off the list for the moment. Nikki Haley outlasted every other candidate in the field.

There are a good amount of people that were still casting ballots for her, even though she had ended her campaign. What do you make of the fact that Donald Trump hasn't brought Nikki Haley back into the fold, nor has she openly endorsed him yet? I think there's a few things here. First, she sort of represents the old school republicanism. that a lot of MAGA Republicans and sort of new Republicans really dislike. And so I think one of the reasons that Donald Trump hasn't brought her into the fold is because two people in Donald Trump's orbit, she's not really viewed as a Republican anymore.

The second reason is, you know, they had what became a very contentious relationship. As she continued to refuse to drop out and continue to become more aggressive in her rhetoric against him, that's something that he is not going to easily forget. She is not going to easily forget the comments he made about her. And as, you know, Trump people will tell you, they'll say, you know, we said some stuff about her. And that's hard to put back in the box. And I also think if Nikki Haley did the outreach like Ronda Santis did, they would be much more willing to sort of forgive and forget. But there's no sign that she's going to do that.

And so for that reason alone, Donald Trump's team is certainly not going. going to come sort of begging. They expect her to do that. There's a number of reasons. But first and foremost, it's because she's just not viewed as somebody who is in line with what the Republican Party has become under Donald Trump. Do we think that she has Liz Cheney herself then? Is she fully excommunicated? But I mean, the difference between her and Liz Cheney is that Liz Cheney has come out and said staunchly for years now, how dangerous Donald Trump is. She's making it a point. of any of her public narrative and interviews that she is doing to drive that point home. I think that Nikki Haley is in a better position than Liz Cheney because there were Republicans

that decided to go with her. It wasn't a large swath, but I think that when we're looking at elections that are won these days by thousands of votes, you know, she didn't walk away with nothing. Do we think that she stays on the outskirts and kind of builds her power and, potentially endorses a Biden or she just stay silent? It's an interesting question. I would be surprised if she comes out and endorses Biden because she's made it very clear that she's not a Democrat.

She doesn't want to run as an independent. She is a Republican. She is conservative. So it would surprise me. I think what's more likely to happen is she just stays quiet. But the broader question of sort of what does she do next and does she have a role in the party is a good one because it does seem like after she dropped out, there is that looming question over what does she do next? Because she's not sort of welcome in this new age republicanism that Donald Trump has built for the party.

And so she's kind of this lone horse. At the same time, there are a number of people who agree with her, right? She's still getting these sort of protest votes in these states. To me, that indicates that there's just going to be a sect of Republicans. Republicans like her who feel like they don't really belong to the party anymore, but they're certainly not willing to go over and switch parties or become independence or become Democrats. And so they'll continue sort of pushing to convince the broader Republican electorate to return to more traditional republicanism. Well, then on that point, Shelby, is it possible that these would be the

folks that would sit out from the election? These Nikki Haley voters, because, you know, let's also remember too, that when Donald Trump was finally anointed as the Republicans, you know, top candidate, that he said he didn't want those voters, right? So he came out and pretty much said, you know, not welcoming these people into the fold. If you're not with me from the beginning, I don't want you. Are these people that, you know, you could consider as a possibility that they just don't show up? Yeah. And I think it's interesting because Trump said that and then Biden essentially said the opposite. And so Biden's. campaign has clearly been making a bid for these voters, I do think a number of them could stay home.

I think some of them will certainly vote for Biden. Some of them, a smaller group might, you know, hold their nose and vote for Donald Trump. I think a lot of these sort of Nikki Haley would be voters are just really unhappy with both of the options. And when people are unhappy with both options, they're much more likely to just, you know, not vote at all. Right now, just on Earth one, the electoral interference slash hush money trial is happening. And we have Michael Cohen on the stand. What if any impact is this happening in Trump's orbit? Trump's orbit is sort of taking this trial day by day.

As I have been told ad nauseum time and time again, there's no playbook for sort of running a campaign while also fighting multiple legal problems. And so everything that Trump's campaign is doing, is sort of novel and it's new and it's like throwing something at the wall and hoping that it sticks. And to be frank, they've been successful, right? In the primary, the indictments only hardened his support. The question is, what does it do in the general? So far, you know, I've been surprised to see in the polls that this trial isn't really making any sort of impact. Does that change

once an actual ruling comes down? Maybe, but again, we don't know. So Donald Trump's team, I think, a little bit overwhelmed at times with how much they're having to deal with running a, you know, full-time presidential campaign while also having to deal with lawyers and to deal with being in a courtroom multiple times a week, et cetera. So it is sort of a day-by-day, survive, get through this kind of mentality. It's interesting. We'll have to see because the one thing that I think is important for people to understand it, while it hardened, right, his most ardent supporters, it's not expanding the electorate. And so you can't just win with your hardened supporters. It's not going to be enough.

So I think that folks need to keep that in mind. Shelby, really appreciate you making time for the new abnormal and for this conversation and rundown. We'll have to have you back to see where the VP reality show lands us next. Thanks for having me. The Supreme Court of the United States is anti-democracy and anti-voter and has been for far longer than you might think. So writes Joshua A. Douglas in his excellent new book, The Court v. The V. The Voters, the troubling history of how the Supreme Court has undermined voting rights. The book is out today, and Douglas, who is the Ashland Spears, Inc., distinguished research professor of law at the University of Kentucky Law School, joins me now to explain. Josh, thank you for being here. Thanks so much for having me on. Absolutely. So what's interesting about the book is you say right off the bat that the nine decisions you write about might not seem that bad in isolation.

In other words, each one may not be good, but we can survive them. As you say, we still have elections and the declared winners still take office. But you also point out that these cases are interconnected in a way that paints a broad and dangerous picture. And that picture is that at every turn, politicians have won and individual voters have lost. So obviously that's a bold statement, but I think what's important about the research here is that the cases are interconnected, and it's not until we look at them holistically. You know, a lot of people understand the court has been kind of anti-voter in some recent decisions, and people have heard of things like, you know, Citizens United or Bush v. Gore. But, you know, I point to this arc of 40 or 50 years where the court issued some opinions that no one's ever heard of, but that laid the foundation for. for today's under protection of the right to vote. Yeah, absolutely, which is what makes the book such a fascinating read. So let's talk about the first two cases that you write about, Anderson v. Sellebreasy in 1983 and 1992's Burdick v. Takushi, because together, these established what has come to be

known as the Anderson-Burdick Doctrine or Anderson-Burdick balancing test. And this is about how states have to balance the burdens and benefits of their ballot access laws, right? Yeah, basically. And what's different about these cases is that before them in the 1960s, the Supreme Court had strongly protected the individual right to vote by essentially requiring states to provide evidence that its voting laws would not harm voters and that it had a really good reason for regulating the election in this way. Anderson and Burdick begin to pull back on that. But by, as you say, creating a balancing test in which, states get a lot of leeway to regulate their elections as they want with much less judicial oversight.

And the interesting thing is that the Anderson case, which involved, for those of us old enough to remember, John Anderson, who ran for president as an independent in 1980, the actual ruling was favorable to voters. But as you say in the book, it was Justice Stevens, in his decision, sort of opened the door to everything that comes later. Yeah, you know, I don't think that Stevens could have predicted or did predict what the test that he laid out would do. So Anderson won that case. The court ruled that a state cannot have a restrictive ballot access law for independent candidates.

That is a really early filing deadline, essentially, for independent candidates for president. But instead of applying that very heightened review, what the lawyers call strict scrutiny or that very strong judicial test, Stevens created this balancing test where he said, no, we have to weigh the burdens that a law might place on voters with the state's interest for a law. And then in that second case, you mentioned Burdick versus Takushi from 1992. The court furthers that test and really let states get by with a generalized assertion of, you know, let us run the election as we see fit. And interestingly, Stevens actually dissented in Burdick. So he created the test in 1983 in Anderson.

and when he sees the court pushing it further and further in the verdict case, he actually is in dissent. Okay. And then we jump to 2008 and we have Crawford v. Marion County Election Board. And this case involved voter ID in Indiana. And again, it's Justice Stevens writing to uphold the law and says it only placed, what, a minimal and justified burden on voters? Yeah. And, you know, what he said in that case, and this really began the state's crafting and acting stricter and stricter. voter ID laws. He said the plaintiffs hadn't provided enough evidence that Indiana's law would burden voters, would make it hard for an identical segment of voters to participate. And on the other hand, the state could simply assert its concern about election fraud or its desire to have stronger election integrity. And the state there didn't have to provide any evidence that there was

actual voter fraud in the system that they were trying to prevent. It was just the kind of specter of voter fraud. So you see the balance goes way in favor of the state now. The thumb is on the scale of requiring plaintiffs to provide a lot of evidence and basically letting the state get a free pass without having much evidence of what it's trying to do. Now, I think there's some reasons why Stevens wrote that opinion. He was, I think, trying to ward off even worse decision in which the court just upheld all voter ID laws. The opinion he wrote, at least left the door open future challenges. But it is a further example of how the court is crediting a state's interest in election rules and, you know, making voters jump through a lot of hurdles to make their case.

You point this out. You take these three cases together. And again, this is where the beauty of the book is showing how all these cases are, as you say, interconnected. In the 1960s, as you've said, there was this strict scrutiny and it was sort of the burden was really on the state to show why they had to do what they were doing. And these three cases seemed to shift sort of the whole idea to now it's the voters who have to show why the burden is on them. That's absolutely right. And I call these three cases combined Anderson, Burdick, Crawford, the ABC trilogy, where it's not even almost a balancing test anymore that's equal at least. It's plaintiffs, voters, you have to show a ton of evidence of the harms that a voting law will cause. While states, you just have to say kind of a bland assertion of we're trying to prevent fraud or we think this is going to lead to smoother election rules and the court will credit that. And these cases have been cited a ton now.

And it again, places a thumb on the scale of politicians. the very people we should not trust to enact election rules because they're, of course, self-interested in creating laws that will make it easier for their supporters to vote and harder for their opponent's supporters to participate. It struck me while reading it's sort of like a bait and switch. The way it started out is one thing. And then suddenly it's like, oh, no, you, the voters, have to show why this sucks for you. Yeah. And what's interesting here also is that the court is not being explicit or has not been explicit in terms of what it's done. I think each of the cases kind of build on each other to create a system that, you know,

credits the state and it makes it harder for the voters. But the court's not coming out and saying, you know, we're anti-voter. Instead, it's resting on, well, the state needs to run its elections as it wants to, without probing whether that actually makes sense for a fair and equal democracy. So talk about Citizens United. And as you note in the book, Citizens United really built on a 1976 decision, Buckley v. V. Vallejo. I think everybody knows that Citizens United really opened the floodgates for corporate expenditure in elections. How does this tie into undermining voting rights? So I think of Citizens United as a

voting rights decision in many ways, because it's really about who has the strongest voice in a democracy. Yes, Citizens United Open the door to corporate expenditures. The other thing it did in terms of the law is rejected this notion that Congress or the states can try to root out corruption between candidates and their donors, a broad form of corruption. Instead, it adopted a very narrow idea of what can be corrupting. But the result is that it's the wealthy interests that have the greatest say and kind of above the voters' rights to direct democracy. So although Citizens United is a campaign finance case, And the other thing I should point out is I think that decision has had a lot of discourse in the public, but maybe not everyone fully understands what the court actually said.

You know, for example, the court didn't say in that case corporations are people, even though that's kind of what I think many people think of it as. In fact, the law has been that corporations have fictional personhood for decades, you know, for things like, well, you can sue or be sued. And, you know, we think only people could be sued. Well, corporations have kind of a fictional personhood. So the case doesn't stand necessarily for corporations are people, and it doesn't stand for just that money equals speech. That's that 1976 case Buckley v. Vallejo.

But I think perhaps what it did is more dangerous because it gives corporations and unions and entities like that greater say, greater ability to have an outsized voice in political discourse by again narrowing the definition of corruption and making corporate voices. louder or the ability to have them be louder than individual voters. Look, a lot of people, like we said, know about Citizens United. And the other case that you write about that I think pretty much everybody knows about is Bush v. Gore from 2000. And we all know how that affected that election. But talk about the longer term ramifications of the decision here. It's not a stretch to say that it led to a lot of what we saw from Donald Trump after the 2020 election. Is it the whole notion that Bush v. Gore is what really opened the floodgates to... suing when you don't like the outcome of an election? I think that's right. I think now basically

no election is ever over on election day. Now, of course, you know, elections are not technically over until the election officials certify the results several weeks later. But we usually know, you know, the declared winner, the media projection. But now there's this notion that, well, if I don't like the results, I can sue. And that wasn't really a thing so much before Bush v. Gore in 2000 that essentially ended the 2000 presidential election. And one thing I do in the book is I trace from every major election since 2000, there's been a post-election dispute in the courts. In 2004, it was Washington state's governor election. 2008, it was the U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. Now, of course, these elections were all close, just a couple hundred votes out of millions cast.

But Bush v. Gour led to the idea that you can always litigate the election in the courts. Of course, we saw that to disaster results in 2020, an election that was not close. And yet Donald Trump filed, what was it, over 60 post-election lawsuits to try to challenge results when, you know, those cases were all thrown out. But through the country into turmoil and one of Trump's arguments essentially was that the courts can do his bidding, I think Bush v. Gore gave birth to that idea that post-election litigation is almost now a routine part of campaign strategy, at least in closer, pseudo-close elections. And there's two cases that you talk about in the book that deal with the

1965 V. Rights Act. I want to talk about those because they're kind of unbelievable. In 2013, you had Shelby County v. Holder. This is a case where in my reading, it looks like basically what the court did here was say, hey, look, things have gotten a lot better than 1965. We don't need the same standard of protection that we had back then. Without recognizing that it's those standards of protections that made things better since 1965. And to me, it was like, it's like you're wearing a jacket in the Arctic and then saying, hey, I'm not cold. I can throw away the jacket.

Yeah. And, you know, Justice Ruth Bitter Ginsburg in her dissent used a similar analogy. And I use that analogy for the title of the chapter in which she said it's like throwing your umbrella away in a rainstorm. Yeah. Because you're not getting wet. Now, it's true that there aren't as many direct literacy tests or, you know, tests where you ask black individuals to tell you how many bubbles that are in a bar of soap.

Horrible things that used to occur. Today, the type of discrimination in voting is a little more subtle, but that maybe makes it more dangerous, what we refer to as second generation barriers. Things like voter ID laws that we talked about, where studies show that many minority individuals have a harder time obtaining an ID in states that have a strict photo ID requirement, redistricting maps that loot the strength of minority voices. These are second generation barriers to the ballot box. And the Voting Rights Act Section 5 system was putting a stop to them before states could implement them.

Now without that there, we see states, you know, putting in force laws that harm minority voters. And in fact, there was a recent study that showed that the turnout gap, that is the turnout rate between white voters and people of color has increased. That is, you know, people of color are voting at a lower rate. rate in those states that used to be subject to this pre-approval requirement since the court's decision in Shelby County. So we actually see the unfortunate results of the course decision. And as you write, this decision basically said, hey, we should trust elected officials in the states to do the right thing. And this, it seems to me, at least, continues that sort of through line we were talking about earlier where the burden is sort of really no longer on the states to show why they shouldn't have to

do this thing anymore. And it's just sort of like, well, if the state says it, we have to trust them. Absolutely. That is the through line that I think weaves together virtually all of these cases. I've referred to it as undue deference to states. We're simply deferring to the state politicians to decide election rules. Now, you might say under a theory of federalism that, well, maybe that's okay because if you don't like the rules that are being put into place, you know, the familiar frame of vote the bums out. But what about when the bums are enacting rules to make it harder to vote them out. That's exactly what you're seeing here.

So that's why this undue deference, I think, is so dangerous for democracy. If there's one area where we should scrutinize state politicians more, it's on election law, where they have every incentive to not do the right thing. And the other case that deals with the Voting Rights Act is Bernovich v. Democratic National Committee. This was in 2021. And the court ruled there that state voting restrictions don't necessarily violate the voting Rights Act, even if they disproportionately burden racial minority groups. And you say that to reach this decision, and I'm quoting here, Justice Samuel Alito made up the law. That's a really strong

statement. Show your work. Yeah. And not one that I would make lightly. But here, this case involved Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which applies nationwide and says that states cannot enact rules that have the effect or impact of harming minority voters. And you had evidence here in this case that the laws in question in Arizona about ballot collection or ballot delivery, as well as out of precinct voting so people who show up at the wrong polling site, had a disproportionate impact on minority voters. But Justice Alito rejects the challenge for the court. And in doing so, he says to make a case, plaintiffs have to satisfy five guideposts, he calls them. And he just makes up the law. He comes up with five things he thinks plaintiffs should have to show.

Things like, is the voting law similar to one that existed in 1982 when Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act, or at least amended, that is, amended the 1965 law? Because if the law was in place in 1982 when Congress amended it, then it's still being used today. Well, then I guess it's okay, irrespective of whether current conditions have changed the way the law operates. He says, you know, if there are other easy ways for voters to cast a ballot, then the the laws that harm minority voters maybe aren't so bad. I don't see that anywhere in the text of the law.

So you want to talk about activist judges. You know, we think of an activist judge of, you know, imposing their own view on the law. You know, there's hardly even any citations in that section of the opinion where Justice Alito creates these five guideposts and every single one of them make it harder for plaintiffs to make their case. Absolutely amazing. But I want to talk, at least briefly, about what you get at at the end of the book. which is what can we do about this? And you say you see three paths, which you say have to be taken simultaneously. What are they?

Yeah, so I'm an optimist by nature. I never want to end things on a negative note. And I think it's, you know, our democracy and we can and should take hold of it. So I offer several reformed. One is to try to avoid the court altogether. I write about what I call the grand election compromise, which are four principles that basically everyone should agree on. And those are that it should be easy.

for eligible voters to cast a ballot, that the system should prevent fraud where it exists, that voters should be educated, and that the losers should accept defeat. I think these broad principles are ones that everyone should agree on and should be the starting place for any voting rules. But I also think we need court reform. Now, I'm not talking about hacking the court. I think that's probably a bad idea because it's just a political tit for tad. If the Democrats do it now, then the Republicans might do it when they're in power. Instead, I think we need meaningful reform that can reduce the importance of the identity of the justices and elevate the importance of the law. And so things we could do include have the justices sit on panels, just like the

courts of appeals do. Maybe you could increase the size of the court a little bit, maybe to 13, and then have seven member panels randomly selected. You can also have the lower court federal judges sit by designation on the Supreme Court, just like they do, you know, district court, federal trial court judges, sometimes hear cases on the court of appeals. Same thing. Appeals judges will go have a trial experience. Why not let those judges occasionally sit on the Supreme Court, again, in a random way? We're not going to eliminate all politics or ideology from judicial decision-making, but maybe that can lower the temperature of the Supreme Court nomination fight, as well as, you know, make it more about the law. And then the third one is term limits for the justices have an 18-year term

limit for justices so that there's a regular rotation of who sits on the court. Yeah, absolutely. That last one in particular seems so necessary. The book is The Court v. The Voters, the troubling story of how the Supreme Court has undermined voting rights. Josh, thank you so much for being here. I hope a lot of people go out and buy this book because I learned a lot from it. That was great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the conversation. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy, how are you kicking off this week with your Fuck that guy.

Daniel Moody, thanks for asking. You're welcome. I am going to start with a quote from Donald Trump who said what Biden is doing with respect to Israel is disgraceful. If any Jewish person voted for Joe Biden, they should be ashamed of themselves. So he is not my fuck that guy for today. Yeah, he could be, obviously. But my fuck that guy is going to be the guy who quote tweeted him and said, Trump right again. And that would be Senator J.D. Vance.

Vance then went on Dana Bash's show State of the Union on Sunday and basically reiterated everything he said. She said, so you agree with Donald Trump that usually vote for Joe Biden should be ashamed? He didn't quite say yes because he is, if nothing else, a moral coward doesn't even have the coverage of his awful convictions. But he said enough to make it obvious that his answer is yes. We're reaching a point where every day we see another right-wing whack job trumpeting their support for Israel as somehow being pro-Jewish. It is not. In some cases, it's overtly not, i.e. the religious right-wingers who want a strong Israel to bring about Judgment Day, because they believe that's a condition of Judgment Day being brought about. And we saw that a lot in the counter protests at some of the universities that got infiltrated by these, or in some cases, were actually composed of these right-wing Christian nationalists. And then there's the other ones who just, it is so bizarre to me that one of the biggest anti-submitted tropes that we've had in this country is the dual loyalty of Jews, that Jews were not fully loyal to America because they were loyal to Israel.

This has been a right-wing boogeyman for God only knows how many decades, probably going back to the foundation of Israel. And now all of a sudden, these same folks are out here telling Jews, you need to vote for Donald Trump because of Israel. In other words, telling them, hey, I don't care what your thoughts are on America. You need to support Israel by voting for Donald Trump. Uh, bitch, that's what you accused us of doing for the last century. untruthfully, by the way. And now you're saying we, you want us to be that boogeyman that you created. So I just, I honestly can't take it anymore from these people. And they don't care that they're being completely hypocritical. There's very little purchase in saying to them, hey, you're kind of being hypocritical

here. They do not give a fuck. Jews need to be aware of this. And they need to be a lot more aware of it than I feel like some of them are because I see some of them out there defending these people on the right or breaking bread with these people on the right because of support for Israel. As we always say, you lie down with dogs and you're going to wake up in a Christian nation. These people, I don't know. I have no idea what that means, but I stand by it. These people do not want Jews to exist. Whatever they want to say they want a Christian nation. They want a Christian world, but, you know, first and foremost, they want a Christian America, not a Judeo Christian America. They want a Christian America. So it really, I was going to say a noise, but it's worse than that. To any of my co-religionists out

there who think these people are your allies, you need to wake the fuck up and join us in saying, Fuck those guys. 1,000%. The enemy of my enemy is not always my friend. No. And I think that people need to understand largely how you are being played and pit it against your own community as a divisive tool. And I also want folks to understand something, too, about white supremacy.

White supremacy right now is in a place of, let's call it manifest destiny, right? where their numbers are shrinking, hence the push around repealing abortion, forcing white women to carry babies, their numbers are shrinking. And so this is how they look to widen their tent. But the fact is that when and if the fascist and white supremacists win, Jewish people will not be a part of that tent, my friends. You will not. So you think, just like the Vekramaswami found out, like what they really fucking think of you and Ann Coulter was bold enough to say it to his face, they will not fuck with you once they have power, right? So they use you in order to expand their numbers and look somehow, quote unquote,

diversified or less anti-Semitic. And then once they are done, you will be in the trash. That is what they do. So wake the fuck up. Fuck that guy. All right, Danielle. Let's close out this day. Who you got?

Oh, okay. Well, I'm very excited because I haven't gotten to use this term in a minute since her disastrous state of the union. But somebody can't stay away from the fucking spotlight. So Kitchen Katie is back. Yes, friends. The Republican U.S. Senator from Alabama, Katie Britt, who famously scared the shit out of Americans with her whisper campaign as her rebuttal to the state of the union. has now come up with what I think that her staff and her probably thought was a catchy new name for a bill that they have out there. Andy, it's called moms. Oh. That sounds, you know, nice enough, right? A little bill named moms. Yeah.

Well, let me tell you what it stands for. The more opportunities for moms to succeed. Oh, again, that sounds nice. We know that we have maternal health issues, particularly as it pertains to black women in this country, that one out of five may die in childbirth given the racism in our health care system. We know that maternal health is really low for low income women and women of color. So maybe that this is something like that that will help people. Just kidding.

Kitchen Katie doesn't give a fuck about you or your health because this is what this act proposes, according to the Guardian. To establish an online government database called, quote, Pregnancy.gov listing resources related to pregnancy, including information about adoption agencies and pregnancy care providers. Aha. But get this. You can't include in this piece of legislation that she wants to put in there,

anything that refers to performs in due. or councils in favor of abortions, which means that it would eliminate a large swath, according to the guardian, of OBGYN services and sexual health clinics. You know the people that actually know about your reproductive health and the people that you go to because they're called, what is that word, doctors, not a bunch of fucking religious zealots that do their best to perform some type of off, off, off, off Broadway show when they set up these fake-ass clinics that terrify women into not getting an abortion or seeking the medical care that they need. This is what Kitchin Kady is proposing. And while they say that this isn't a real database, like they're not going to track women, but there is an ability for women to take some type of assessment on,

a third party where they would collect your information. So Kitchen Katie is going full throttle into the Handmaid's Tale role that she's been called in for and wants to create a database, not for those that own guns, because she's definitely against that, but for those that could potentially be giving birth. What could possibly go wrong here? Absolutely everything. And for that reason, Kitchen Katie is my fuck that guy to start off this week. Yeah, this is absolutely incredible. And my first thought was, of course, you know, any woman who enters their information into this website and agrees to be contacted by government officials to follow up, which is one of the things it will supposedly do, is absolutely insane. But that's uncharitable because the fact of the matter is there are going to be,

a lot of women in this country. If something like this comes to pass, which hopefully it won't, but there are going to be a lot of women who don't know the backstory and who are legitimately looking for help and help they probably can't get in their local community in a state like, oh, I don't know, Katie Brits, Alabama. And so they're going to be online looking for resources and looking to take care of themselves and to inform themselves. And they're going to see that, oh, look, there's a government site called Pregnancy.gov. Well, it's a government site, so it must have factual information, and it's probably everything I need. And they're going to go to that site, and they're going to use it. And, you know, if they don't find what they're looking for or whatever,

they're going to enter their name and contact information so that some kind of government official, I'm incredibly unclear as to who this would be, would call them up and talk to them. It's not enough to just say, oh my God, who in their right mind would use a website like this, sponsored by Katie Britt, if they're looking for information, health-related information, reproductive health-related information. Because the fact is, you and I are knee-deep in this stuff every day and paying the price psychologically, I might have. But most of the country is not and shouldn't have to be.

In a more perfect world, you would think you would say to yourself, oh, a website called Pregnancy.gov, again, must be a great resource for information. And you're not going to sit there and go, well, who sponsored this bill and who created this. And they're all just little

propaganda efforts aimed at, as you pointed out, into creating more handmaids. And so, yeah, fuck those guys. 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 a friend

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