The Daily Beast Podcast - The Worst People on Facebook Now Want to Ruin Real Life

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi folks. This is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Chongfast, a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. We take the issues seriously. Ourselves, not so much. Our world has been turned upside down.

Starting point is 00:00:34 On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we get ourselves out of it. Hi there, Molly Chunkfast. Hi, Rick Wilson. How are you on this fine and beautiful morning? I'm good, Rick Wilson. How are you? I am prospering, thank you.

Starting point is 00:00:48 I'm full of joy at the beginning of impeachment trial week part two, Electric Bugaloo, The Forbidden Dance. I just mashed up two 80s bad movies. How are we going to get Democrats to call witnesses? This is a difficulty that my Democratic friends often have a gap between what we call fronting and bloodletting. It's so gory in Rick Wilson. You don't lead the hog into the slaughterhouse and just let it sit there. Oh, good.

Starting point is 00:01:15 I was hoping there would be an animal murdering analogy going on. Continue, yes. You know, Molly, there's a difference between murder and slaughter. Oh, yes, for sure. I always say that to myself, in fact. Every time you're on one of your blood rampages. I'm like, is this a slaughter or a murder? Right.

Starting point is 00:01:35 The need to call witnesses in this case, I think, is evident. I do know some of the thinking that some of the Democrats believe that the video evidence alone, the experiential evidence alone, is sufficient to communicate the depths of this situation. And by the way, none of these people have any fucking protection at all. Right. Don Jr. and Rudy and dipshit Mo Brooks. Actually, Mo Brooks may be able to decline it because he's a member. Yeah, I was going to say Mo Brooks as a member of Congress. But there are a lot of these people.

Starting point is 00:02:04 You know, I would like to get a feeling of the moment. Yeah. And I would like to get these people under oath. Because first off, it would be important for the historical record. But secondly, we know they are all lying liars who lie. Yes. We know that every one of them would go, well, I don't recall. I don't remember that.

Starting point is 00:02:20 I don't have any recollection of the president screaming out, you've got to fight. You've got to fight or you lose your country. That's not even a Trump imitation. That's just some random imitation. So please don't count that against my weekly quota of bad Trump imitations. But I also think ultimately, Republicans need to be forced to vote against democracy. Well, they've already told us very clearly. They're going to vote in favor of the following thing. And by the way, you all can call it whatever you want, Republicans. You can say it's whatever you want to call it. But what you're voting for is the decision to, illegally attempt to seize and hold power by inciting an armed group to storm the capital. What you're voting for is a rash of conspiracy-driven insanity that you stoked and caused and fed and energized over and over again. And what you're voting for is to undo an election by way of

Starting point is 00:03:18 disenfranchising tens of millions of African-American voters. Molly, you know this. They're going to come up, they're going to give these speeches like, the work of the country won't wait. How dare they impeach Donald Trump, a retired businessman living in Palm Beach. Right. It's not even vaguely credible, but here we go. They're all going to act like Donald Trump is like an orange Hyman Roth. He's a retired businessman living in Palm Beach. Right.

Starting point is 00:03:46 He lives on a pension. And it's all bullshit, and they know it. They will be suddenly so very, very, very, very. very motivated to get things done in Washington. They'll be super motivated to rebuild bipartisan unity. And by bipartisan unity, they mean there's no chance that they're acting in good faith because they're not. Right. Right. Right. And I think that's fundamentally the issue. Will Democrats stand up to them or will Democrats let this go? They ought to. They didn't know in the last five years that political theater captures the audience's attention. When will they learn it? Right. No, it's true. I mean,

Starting point is 00:04:28 I think of Benghazi. Benghazi wouldn't have mattered to anyone unless Republicans made people care about it. Made 74,000 hours of hearings about Benghazi. Somebody once pointed out to me that the Benghazi transcripts of the hearings are roughly longer than the entire corpus of Proust. I'm like, hmm, how very exciting. I mean, that's the thing. But, I mean, Democrats have this chance to make people care about the fact that we did not have a peaceful transfer of power. That democracy, well hanging on, is in no, you know, is not in great shape. And, I mean, I just think about what's happening right now in Myanmar where the coup, where the military has taken over. You realize, like, we have four years.

Starting point is 00:05:19 This may just be a break. in Trumpism. I think one thing I want to tell my friends, I say this a lot. And a very good friend of mine the other day said, would you please not keep saying this because it scares the crap out of people? But it's true. It's something in Applebaum, I think, said originally, the bad guys only have to win one more election. And that's the ballgame. They understand now where we are in our society. They understand now that if they get a competent Trump, if they get a smart Trump, if they get a Trump who isn't burdened by his own, like, syphilitic incompetence, that they will, in fact, be able to execute a Josh Holly.

Starting point is 00:06:00 Oh, yeah, a Josh Hawley. The overthrow of the system of government that our founders set out 240 plus years ago, and they will replace it with an authoritarian status regime. They would have done it this time. They just weren't very good at revolution. No, I mean, that's what I think is. scary, and I think Democrats need to realize this could just be a break. This is the interwar years after World War II, where there's a lot of discomfort.

Starting point is 00:06:27 You know, the Germans hate what the French and the Allies have done to them. And the after World War I, they think it's unfair. They don't like it. They're unhappy about it. But they knew for the first, you know, 15 years after the war ended in 1918, they couldn't go out and go on the attack again right away. But they rebuilt and they rebuilt quickly. And they started, you know, they started becoming, you know, prepared for the next round of horror. And by 1939, they were tan, rested, and ready, and off they went again, you know, into the Sudatan land, and then off we go. The end of Trumpism is not in sight. It is going to require a lot more hunting down of the ringleaders, organizers, funders, operators, donors, et cetera, in this space before, you know, people get to rest easy and start,

Starting point is 00:07:18 fighting over like, well, should it be 22 parts per billion of carbon in the atmosphere or 21? Let's figure it out. Fight it out. I say this a lot. I'm just not a policy guy for one thing, and I admit it. I admit it freely. I love policy people. You're great.

Starting point is 00:07:31 Y'all are brilliant. I love you. But right now we're in a box where if you fuck up democracy, policy doesn't matter. If the republic is broken, nobody's going to be talking about policy at all. It's one of the little troubling at this point that there are many, many Democrats who have waited a long time to get back in the policymaking game. And there's a motorcycle gang out front with torches and guns and pitchforks. And they're going to storm the house if we don't, you know, put up a fence. But instead it's like, well, let's repaint the kitchen first. And I know, I know my

Starting point is 00:08:05 Democrat friends are going to, you know, jump up and down. But y'all, these people are still out there. And there's a terrible reality here, too. Do not underestimate the fact that the margin in the Senate means that if one Democrat gets COVID or dies of a heart attack or gets struck by lightning, we're back to a situation where Mitch McConnell is running the game. The objective here, in my mind, to keep the pressure on the impeachment side is in part because it sends a lesson to the Republicans about how painful it's going to be to be associated with this guy going forward. Yeah, I think that's right.

Starting point is 00:08:45 Pull one out for Gateway Pundit, the stupidest fan on the internet. And I say that even though someone just mentioned to me that Bill Mitchell is actually still alive. Let's talk about Lou Dobbs. It happened on Friday night. The Friday Night Massacre. It kind of was, right? America's most trusted newsman. America's voice of sanity, Lou Dobbs.

Starting point is 00:09:10 Yeah, what happened there? A $2.7 billion lawsuit happened. But I have bad news for Fox in the management there. Just throwing Lou off the sled does not stop the wolves. They're right behind you. And what they're trying to do is say, okay, well, listen, Lou's 300 years old. We're going to dump Lou and hopefully they'll think we're reforming our ways and, you know, blah, blah, blah. The problem is, Frow Ingram, Fish Dick Boy, Sean Hannity, the curvy couch crew.

Starting point is 00:09:38 Everybody else at Fox also was out shouting up and down, Dominion voting machines, run by Hugo Chavez's poltergeist. Yeah, once you take one of them, you can't, you can't stop, right? I'm curious to know, do we think that getting rid of one of them is sort of an omission of copability? I happen to believe it is, but, I mean, Fox over the years has settled many, many, many, many, lawsuits, as we know. I mean, they've settled a lot of lawsuits.

Starting point is 00:10:11 Right. So many lawsuits. Well, mostly on the idea that they are, in fact, an entertainment service and not a news service. And they say that rather frequently. Right, except if you're watching it and thinking you're getting news. Right, except when you're watching it, Tucker has managed to duck a couple of lawsuits prior by saying, I'm an entertainer. I'm only here as a traveling circus clown. Watch me dance.

Starting point is 00:10:37 Dance, monkey dance. but these other networks that are also living in fear of this lawsuit, they are not yet firing people. They're trying to do things like that ridiculous disclaimer on Mike Lindell's 47-hour propaganda film on OAN this weekend, which essentially said everything but this has made a point like leprechauns who were taking mescaline in the desert and who among us hasn't taken mesclan in the desert. But I think also the issue with this is like with Michael Endowell he seems to not understand what kind of trouble he's in right I was reading there was a really good article on the beast today about how Mike they're no longer

Starting point is 00:11:20 selling the my pillow in any of the my venues and my shops but there's also the question right I saw yesterday Michael Steele was on television saying representing he's a spokesman for one of the for I think smartmatic and he was saying like we have haven't sued him yet, but we certainly could. You know, he's making it very easy. I think they're letting him run out the rope. I mean, they're letting him run out the rope a long way. And that's okay.

Starting point is 00:11:53 You know why? Because these people, as we know from one of the key characteristics of Trumpism, they're not smart. No. Because, look, Trump does have a kind of animal cunning about PR and about himself. But most of these people are just like, I mean, the aforementioned Bill Mitchell and the aforementioned Jim Hoff, both of them have no clue about the risk they put themselves under by basically becoming propaganda arms of this organization on the Trump side. It's crazy. So it was rumored that the president was involved in potentially becoming a profit sharing of a parlor. And now there's a big investigation about this as rumors are that he's going to start.

Starting point is 00:12:36 start his own social network now. What do we think of all this? My favorite game this weekend I saw on Twitter, people were making up names for Trump's social network. My favorite was, okay, stupid. Many of fascists. Grabber with no E. It's a delicious moment because the story essentially says that Brad Parzcal

Starting point is 00:13:01 went to parlor and said, give us 40% of your company and Donald Trump will sign up. Now, I'm no attorney, but this was apparently happening while he was president. And if you think that Brad Parskow took an offer to parlor without saying, Hey, Bose, what do you want me to do? I should I say, I hope Brad wears his dress flip-flops to court because I suspect this is going to be, he's going to be deposed on this one rather sooner than later. I don't know. It just seems incredible to me that we're not going to see, you know,

Starting point is 00:13:35 everyday crimes being unrolled from this administration. It is rather remarkable, and I do think we are going to see a fair number of criminal charges coming up based on the 6th of January, first off, which, by the way, the FBI, they're not fucking around. They are rolling and patrolling. Explain to us what you mean. They are treating this case like a major national security case, which I happen to believe it is. They are arresting people that have been exposed for being part of the attack. They are going after the leaders of the conspiracy. And I have to say, I think it's delicious. I think it's fabulous because there's nothing here that was more central to Trumpism than the idea that no one's

Starting point is 00:14:18 ever going to get held accountable for anything. And these people thought, oh, nothing can happen to me. I'm going to storm the Capitol. And the ones that were organizing it, Ali Akbar, Alexander, Rodgersstone. What's his real name is Ali? Well, I don't know what his real name is. He called himself Ali Akbar for years. Now he's calling him to Ali Alexander. I believe he's going to change it soon to Ali McGraw, because he's going to be on the run. He should not dare touch Ali McGraw. She's a national treasure. She's a national treasure. These people quite clearly thought that nothing could go wrong with organizing a rally meant to violently overthrow the government. But here's a question for you. These people already were seeing these defendants

Starting point is 00:15:01 are saying, well, I did it because the president told me to. I did. it because he said we should. There was a robocall from Republican attorneys generals. Correct. I mean, this is like these people weren't told to do this. This rally was explicitly meant to send a violent mob to the Capitol to overthrow the United States government. Let's not put too fine a point on it. It wasn't called the Let's Rally for Democracy thing.

Starting point is 00:15:32 It was called Stop the Steel. And the speakers went up there and told the audience, you got taken for a ride. They cheated you. They stole the election. The president said to you, go get them. And looping background on the impeachment question, this is why you're being impeached, Donald. Right. Because you're in this case, it's not because you're an asshole. It's because you directly ordered people to go do this. And you are surrounded by people who were in communication with you in the days beforehand, who were arranging this rally, who were arranging these. riots who are organizing these activities. And, you know, the FBI moves slow, but when they move, they move like a huge joggernaut. And it's going to roll over these fuckers. And it is not going to end the way they think it's going to end. It is going to be bad for a lot of these people. Wouldn't those people's testimony be helpful in this presidential impeachment trial? No question. The problem is, well, and look, a lot of them said it on the record. Right.

Starting point is 00:16:32 The president sent us. We're here because the president told us to be here. That wasn't equivocal. That wasn't some, you know, mysterious, like, elliptical, you know, QAnon-style message. Look, he held his hand up at 3 o'clock and 3 times 3 is 9. He literally said, do it. Yeah. And look, this isn't, you know, this isn't very podcast-friendly.

Starting point is 00:16:54 But there's a story in the New York Times on Sunday with an animation of cell phone pings from the Capitol. And as the speech ends on the west end of the mall, people basically charge down to the Capitol in droves, in thousands and thousands of people. This guy lit the fuse. And look, they're not going to hold Trump to account. Well, Republicans aren't, but maybe Democrats will. Democrats, I think, will. For our Republican friends out there who still listen, this is one of those votes. like the Iraq war or Obamacare, that you never escape.

Starting point is 00:17:38 You never escape it. And if you think the tide isn't turning, you're not paying attention. Trumpism is still a threat and will be for a long time. So I know that's why those guys are afraid. But the rest of the country is done with this bullshit. Tell me why you think that. Well, we're seeing it in all the survey work right now that, and these aren't numbers like, oh, it's like, these aren't like 5148 numbers.

Starting point is 00:18:01 Now it's like 75, 25. So you're seeing the bulk of human America is paying attention. They're not happy with this. They don't want more. They don't want any more of this. This is not a cheerful thing for them or a good thing for them or something they consider politically affirmative about the country. They want this to be over.

Starting point is 00:18:23 And they want Trump to be punished and held accountable. And political violence isn't popular. I mean, that's the thing that's kind of amazing is when you poll people, about this, people don't like their government being overturned. Like, that's not a partisan issue. That is just, people don't like it, which I guess is good. I mean, horrifying, but good. Right, right. No, it really is. And the fact that we have to say, hey, political violence is bad, shows you how degraded America has become in the era of Trump. Kelly Weil is a reporter at The Daily Beast, and today she's going to talk to us about some of the

Starting point is 00:19:00 craziness that's happening on the right. This is one of these, pieces that this piece I read this morning where I was like, what? I just couldn't even believe that A, elected officials would do this and be that it would be okay. Can you talk to us about multi-level marketing scams and how elected officials are doing them? Sure. So multi-level marketing scams are those parasitic posts that you see all over your Facebook. It's your friend from home saying, hey, I just got a great deal on vitamin supplements. And if you give me $50, I'll send them to you, or you can go into business with me and become my associate and then you buy the multi-level supplements from me and then you sell them to your friends and then you give me your profits. So it's

Starting point is 00:19:54 like that. It's something that you're not legally allowed to call a financial. cult, but golly, does it sound like one? So those are real. There's one called Dutera, right? Yeah, Dutera is a huge one. Dutera sells essential oils, which are just absolute snake oil made up things. They smell nice. And because they smell nice, people say they can cure cancer. That's a huge one. I can just see myself losing Facebook friends as I speak in real time. But that's a big one. And unfortunately that was one that a politician recently had someone come and make a sales pitch for during a political meeting on preventing COVID. That is insanity. Explain to me who this political person was and are there no rules against us? So this was a newly appointed state representative in

Starting point is 00:20:50 Kansas. At the time, he was a county level commissioner. So that's where this meeting took place. Effectively, what he did is he, during a council meeting on COVID, he brought in someone from an essential oil company to make the pitch about how these products can help you and your family and empower you to live the healthy, you know. But in answer to your question, no, I don't think there are any official rules against doing that. We've just been coasting on people not doing that. That's been kind of the unspoken expectation. It's not to bring in a multi-level marketing. Let me to introduce the

Starting point is 00:21:31 On Becoming a God in Central Florida legislation. Yes. Oh, God, that show is so good. It's just the most insane thing I've ever heard. I feel like it's sort of in my writing, I see a lot of what I feel like is Facebook leaking into the real world. So, you know, that's been Q&ONON.

Starting point is 00:21:47 I have a book coming out about flat earthers. But this was a real, oh, wow, this is exactly the tenor of my Facebook page. And now it's in it's in a county hearing. It's a yeah, it was a real what moment. Kelly, one of the things Molly and I always discuss off air is like where we see these radicalizations and why these pockets of the country keep turning more red. And you had a really interesting thing about how you could see

Starting point is 00:22:17 where some of the people rioted at the Capitol on January 6th came from and how it related to the proud boys. Can you talk to us about that? Yeah, absolutely. So there's the this study that came out, basically tracking cell phone data of capital rioters. And something that it found was interesting is, yeah, people came from districts that voted for Donald Trump, but more so than someone coming from your really predictably red neighborhood. It was red neighborhoods that neighbor blue neighborhoods. So it was people who felt besieged by their Democrat peers, basically. It was people who felt like they were uncomfortable. attack that they felt correctly or not that, you know, everyone around them was after them, right?

Starting point is 00:23:03 Exactly, right? Like a Biden supporting satanic, what have you, whatever they're reading about on Facebook. It's interesting to me, because I've seen other evidence about this. And I even saw, I've seen this in like places in Pennsylvania where you'll have like one town where people are, you know, all these kind of thin blue line flags. And then, you know, the house next door will be, you know, Obama stickers. So I'm just curious to know, you think that this kind of conflict drives radicalization? It's not the only factor, but there is emerging evidence showing that it helps. And basically, it's intergroup conflict, right?

Starting point is 00:23:45 It's why people who are going to join the proud boys, for example, they don't genuinely care about, oh, conservative ideals and, you know, limited government and they're not actively involved in that. People who join groups like the proud boys, they want a brawl, right? They are getting involved in this because they are imagining themselves as warriors on this mythic quest to take down Antifa or, frankly, whoever they feel like punching in the nose. That's a powerful emotion for a lot of people, especially people who don't feel particularly enfranchised, even though, as we see, a lot of the people participating in this are of extremely

Starting point is 00:24:28 enfranchised groups. But the feeling of somebody is out to get me is a really compelling argument for a lot of people to get involved in violent movements. Jesus. It seems like it's actually proving that Jonathan hate, righteous mind thing, right, that these people are all just a reaction. They think this is what's going to elevate them in society and then they end up arrested and they're not very elevated in the society. Yeah. I mean, One thing I keep coming back to is all these people thought that they were Trump's special little warriors and he was going to pardon them individually. And look at him. He's hanging out in Florida. He's golfing. He doesn't care, you know. So that's a, the prophecy has failed in that respect. Yes. Do you see other areas in which Facebook has sort of weirdly become real life? Oh, I mean, with these lockdowns, I feel like Facebook for a lot of people is sort of the primary mode of communication. Now, not everyone is on Facebook, but especially a lot of older generations, I think, are very involved in it. I see it a lot actually in local community pages.

Starting point is 00:25:34 To give an example, I was looking at a page, local news site about my, you know, 5,000 population hometown. The main restaurant there closed down for a COVID exposure or something. And people were saying, you know, this is tyranny. We don't have to do this. someone was posting an image macro in the comments with the where we go on, where we go all, Q and I'm like, oh my God, like, this is about the salad bar. Like, this is not a reasonable response to what happened, which is the restaurant's going to close.

Starting point is 00:26:07 They're going to break out the Lysol. They're going to scrub it down. But it was, yeah, you really see this Facebook language. Well, that's its native environment. But you really see the conspiracy theories and the atomization. the disconnection from real people and how you would hopefully behave in a real life setting, that just vanishes on Facebook. And I think with so many people using that now as their main means of communicating, it's spreading. Let's talk about the crew that shut down the LA vaccine

Starting point is 00:26:38 site, because that is an amazing, I mean, and by amazing, I mean horrendous story. Can you talk a little bit about that? Yeah. So I think it was the weekend before last, there was a large vaccination event at Dodger Stadium in L.A. And some people temporarily shut it down by gathering about 50 people outside, waving signs, kind of marching in front of the gates. And police shut it down because I said, we don't know if these guys are going to storm the site. We don't know what their problem is. But a lot of the people participating were longtime figures in that scene. There were some people who had been outside the Capitol. There were people who were involved. And there were people who were involved in these anti-mask raids where they would just go and run into a mall and

Starting point is 00:27:27 demands that the Aldo clerk serve them just really, like genuinely, in my opinion, sociopathic stuff. And they just all came together in this terrible little fusion to, you know, stop people for half an hour from getting the COVID vaccine. I'm sort of surprised we haven't seen more of that. There was something this weekend as well about people hassling I think health care workers outside one of those sites. I haven't seen anyone else shut it down successfully. Thank goodness. And hopefully that event was sort of a warning.

Starting point is 00:28:02 Folks know that they're going to be out there, know the precautions to take. There's so much not just outright anti-vaccination sentiment, but vaccine hesitancy latent in this country, that there's a lot of leniency for that kind of behavior, I think. Jesus. That is not good. Thank you, Kelly.

Starting point is 00:28:23 Thanks for having me. Hey, folks. If you haven't heard, every single week, we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker, or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media, like Jim Acosta or Solanadad O'Brien.

Starting point is 00:28:42 Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes it's just Molly and I shooting the shit. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice. by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles.

Starting point is 00:28:59 To become a member, head to new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com. That's new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com. They're trying to take their careers to rehab, but we're saying no. Hey, Molly.

Starting point is 00:29:17 What? Hey Molly. Yes, yes. Are you going to be in D.C. anytime soon? I am. You know, you might want to drop by the Heritage Foundation. I hear they have... But they love me there.

Starting point is 00:29:27 I'm very popular. I'm sure you're extremely popular at Heritage. They have a new guy at Heritage. Is it hang Mike Pence? I mean Mike Pence? Well, actually, that's Heritage After Dark. That's hung Mike Pence. But Mike Pence, erstwhile murder victim of Donald Trump,

Starting point is 00:29:47 who managed to escape the noose. He's got two things everyone has in America now, a seat at the Heritage Foundation table and a podcast. They were going to hang Mike Pence and no one cares. No one gives a damn. I mean, that is kind of depressing, isn't it? Mike Pence right now should be thinking to himself, I need a change of life. Right.

Starting point is 00:30:10 I'm out of here. I'm going to go to Goa. I'm going to be the granddad, you know, sitting on the beach, expat style. I'm going to chill. I live in a grass hut. He should get away, far away. That they seasoned their food too much for him to survive. there. Yogurt is so spicy.

Starting point is 00:30:29 They wanted to hang Mike Pence and no one cared. Not on the left, not on the right. Like, think about that for a second. Let me stop being facetious for a moment. I have contemplated what would have happened if the mob had found Mike Pence or Nancy Pelosi or any other person

Starting point is 00:30:45 wearing a congressional floor pen. Because I assure you of one thing, Americans do not know by face anybody in Congress except four or five of the top people. I've seen this a hundred times in focus groups where they're like, what do you think of the job? Congressman Santiago is doing. Oh, he's great. He's so good. I really like, he's very, there's no Congressman Santiago. It's a true question. But I think about what would have happened if the mob had found Mike Pence because one would have screamed in that mob. As mobs do, he betrayed Trump. Right. Kill Mike Pence. And then, look, they'll probably live in a stack of bodies because the Secret Service would have opened up. Okay.

Starting point is 00:31:25 you know, if they had found Nancy Pelosi or AOC or Steny Hoyer or anybody, anybody, if they found Rob Portman, if they found Pat Toomey, if they found Chuck Grassley, those people could have been killed, and I don't mean could have been killed. Mops do what mobs do. Mobs are creatures of emotion and passion and the moment and a disconnection from consequence and reality. And it's a difference to you know, a pack and a pack hunts, a mob scattered all over the place and it moves quickly and it moves emotionally. There were some packs in there hunting, too, these Oathkeeper guys and some of the proud boy types. But mostly that mob was ready to kill Mike Pence. To kill him. How do you wake up every day if you're Mike Pence now and think, man, I should stay in

Starting point is 00:32:12 Washington. This is a safe place for me. I mean, I have to say I'm not a big Mike Pence fan. And by not a big, I mean, I think he's the worst. But I do think the idea that no one cared, when they wanted to hang him and that there was literally no one defending him is kind of Graham. You and I talk almost every day. I have never heard you once say, wow, someone should hang Mike Pence by the neck until dead. Never one time. I missed it. If you mentioned it, I just missed it over the last five years. But this guy was about to be murdered. Right. And Washington Heritage is getting a ton of blowback from hiring him from the Magas. Wait until Trump here is. Wait till Trump here is a about it. Wait until Jason Miller comes in in the morning and regurgitates like a mama bird vomiting

Starting point is 00:33:00 into its baby bird's mouth, what the news he wants Donald Trump to see that day. And he's going to say, well, Mr. President, the traitor Michael J. Pence is now at the Heritage Foundation. And Trump will, of course, order a limited nuclear strike. Realize he won't. Trump versus the Heritage Foundation is going to be a kind of fun. Oh, yeah. But he'll realize he doesn't have the codes anymore. And then he'll call other people. Then he'll be a become distracted by the guerrilla channel and, you know, lather, rinse, repeat. Sheldon White House is the junior senator from Rhode Island. And today we're going to talk to him about dark money and what's going on with impeachment. I feel like mandatory first Sheldon

Starting point is 00:33:41 White House question is dark money. Yeah. Can we, so can we do that first? Yeah, totally. I feel like this is your, like, Kehotin quest of, like, getting rid of it and talk to me about what you're doing now that Democrats have the Senate. It's been hard to talk about because Trump was such a flagrant, flamboyant assault on democracy and dominated the airspace so much. It was hard to address the creeping, insinuating dark money problem. It's a little bit like somebody comes into the ER and somebody stuck a knife in their head, but they also have cancer. And you've got to treat both illnesses, but the knife. stuck in the head kind of dominated our attention. So I've been trying to focus on dark money

Starting point is 00:34:30 primarily because it's what's behind climate denial and why we've been such a failure on addressing the climate problem. And second, as I look at the court packing effort by the Republicans, I see the same dark money interests behind it. And now we've got this creepy case coming up at the court that has caused virtually every creepy Republican dark money organization to flock in as an amicus Curiae, which to me is kind of a warning signal. So explain what it is to our listeners, if you can. Sure. So this is Americans for Prosperity Foundation versus Bacera.

Starting point is 00:35:06 Americans for Prosperity Foundation is the so-called foundation associated with, guess what, Americans for Prosperity, which is the Koch Brothers political manipulation and attack group. So it's like the Daily Caller Foundation, right? Exactly. And Becerra is there kind of nominally as Attorney General of California. And the technical question is a very, very small one, which is what information can the IRS share with state taxing authorities about 501C donors? Really small question. Right.

Starting point is 00:35:40 But what's suspicious about this is that more than 60, big, dark money organizations have all showed up to file briefs urging the Supreme Court to take this case up. Wait, why? The reason is that dark money groups are starting to assert that they have a constitutional right to anonymous donors. And that's exactly what eight to one citizens united blew up. But time has passed. New judges cleared by the dark money apparatus have gone on to the Supreme Court. And they're starting to make this claim. And Becerra is a case in which the court could either determine that there is a constitutional right to dark money

Starting point is 00:36:21 or take a few steps up the early rungs of that ladder. And obviously it creates a very, very dangerous prospect for democracy if big special interests are allowed to run covert operations at will against government. I feel like you have this fundamental problem of this very conservative Supreme Court. Yeah, I'm not sure that the court is giving the American people a fair shake. when you can count off, as I have, 80, 80, 8-0, partisan, 5-4, you know, narrow decisions by the Roberts 5, the narrow majority, that all 80-0 gave wins to very identifiable big Republican donor interests. It's hard to say that there's not a real tilt at that court for the big donors. And when you look at the role of big donors in putting so many of those justices onto the court, the whole thing gets a kind of,

Starting point is 00:37:17 unfortunate circularity. And now comes the Bacera case, right? The court the dark money built is being asked to create a constitutional right to dark money. What could possibly go wrong? What is the recourse for this? If we know that we have a super conservative Supreme Court. Yeah, I think the first thing is to blow the whistle and make sure that they know that we're watching. I think a lot of those 80 decisions they got away with because nobody paid attention and they figured they could just run up the, you know, run the tables. And then when we started paying attention, you know, they've calmed down on some of the more public and extreme things that we were worried about. So I think attention matters. The other thing that matters is solving the problem of dark money around

Starting point is 00:38:03 the courts. Right. There's absolutely no reason that you shouldn't know who's really behind an emicus curiae who files a brief in your case. And the fact that you don't, that there are false front groups that are allowed to file these briefs without disclosing who is really behind them is, I think, a big gap. I think if you are going to run tens of millions of dollars in TV ads to run political campaigns supporting the confirmation of Supreme Court justice, we deserve to know who you are, specifically so we can tell if you have business before the court, among other reasons. So there's a lot that we can do with transparency around the court as well. So you talked about how this related to climate. You famously did 279 speeches

Starting point is 00:38:47 on climate, why have you stopped? Because I think we're there. That's great news. I think the Biden administration is absolutely serious about passing a big climate bill in this Congress. I think that our colleagues have woken up to this problem, certainly on the Democrat side and even some quietly on the Republican side. And I think the behemoth of corporate America is starting to stir and beginning to give a hoot about climate in Congress. and that will help with Republican recruitment. So I see the pieces moving towards getting at least one very significant climate bill,

Starting point is 00:39:26 perhaps in two tranches, perhaps in the infrastructure tranche, and then a second tranche afterwards, maybe after Glasgow, the next Paris Agreement meeting, international meeting, when we get a stronger sense of where the world is going and how we need to support that. So I just feel very positive right now that after years, of anxiety and despondency about what we were doing on climate. This is kind of the moment. And there's no point holding a candle against the darkness when dawn is breaking.

Starting point is 00:39:56 So I stopped the speeches and now it's work, work, work. We don't need to wake up. We need to work. We need to get it done. So let's talk about COVID relief because this bill is huge. Where do you think we're going now? What is your sense? Can it get passed during the trial?

Starting point is 00:40:12 I think that would require the agreement of Mitch McConnell. to make that work. Right, which seems unlikely. Which seems unlikely. But what we have just done is to open the doorways to the various committees to draft legislation that comes then back to the Senate floor, privileged to pass with only 51 votes. But we still have to prepare that legislation. And there has been broad agreement, I think, between the House and Senate Democratic leadership about where the money needs to go and what should be in the bill. But there's also plenty of room to fill in details. I think this is going to be an informal process rather than a traditional committee markup, but I think it's a real process.

Starting point is 00:40:59 I'm hoping that some Republicans will join. I've been inviting Republican colleagues if they have things they want to talk to us. And then we get the big bill and we bring it back to the Senate and force a vote. And I think it's going to be hard for every single one of my Republican colleagues in the Senate to vote against a bill that salvages the finances of their counties, of their cities and towns, that gives the $1,400 checks to low-income folks who are suffering terribly in this economic situation. So, you know, we'll see. Maybe they will draw up as a phalanx and just uniformly say no. But I don't think the American voter is going to be very pleased with a party that can get together

Starting point is 00:41:41 and jam through stuff on reconciliation when it's really cool for big corporations. and very, very rich people. But when it's relief like this in the middle of a pandemic for regular Americans, they visibly turn their backs. I don't think that's a good look. Do you think Democrats have a messaging problem? Democrats want to pass this relief bill to give people money, right? There should be a no-but-like, everyone should want this, right?

Starting point is 00:42:07 Yeah. Well, I'd say two things. First of all, we are a little bit like a bumblebee when it comes to messaging. We go from place to place, and there's no really persistent theme, whereas the Republicans are like, you know, minors drilling for ore. They know the half a dozen things that their big donors really want, and they will push and press and pitch an issue until they've made at least their base and much of the public want it. And they're persistent and they're narrow, and they have, you know, really talented Madison Avenue type people who are guiding their messaging. and we're much more episodic and it doesn't hold up as well. But the difference I think here is that at the end of the day,

Starting point is 00:42:50 when people start getting the $1,400 checks, when law enforcement officers and EMTs and firefighters are seeing their city manager saying, okay, layoffs are off, we got the money from the federal government, we're good. You know, those things really matter. And it's pretty hard to be outmessaged when you're making. a real difference to people actually experience in their own lives. So I think we win this not on the messaging, but on the results. I wonder, though, if what Republicans have done has worked for them in a certain way. Oh, totally. Right? I mean, you have people protesting who are saying, you know,

Starting point is 00:43:30 Trump cares about me and Republicans, and of course, right, and they clearly care about big corporations. So, like, I always feel ultimately Democrats feel that because they're the good guys, they'll eventually win. And if the last four years have taught us anything, it feels like the opposite is true. No, we are customarily outplayed. Look at the estate tax, right? Like 1% of 1% of Americans are ever going to pay the estate tax. And yet because that 1% of 1% heavily funds the Republican Party, the Republican Party has spent years convincing ordinary Americans that this is a death tax that is going to take away their business or their farm. which is complete nonsense, but they've spent, you know, a decade or more selling that proposition,

Starting point is 00:44:16 and it has sunk in. Think of the people fighting against the Affordable Care Act because they didn't want the federal government involved in their health care, and they were on Medicare. Right. Or they were a veteran getting care from the VA, which is about a socialized medicine as you're going to get, and veterans in Rhode Island at least really love it. So, yeah, they're good at it, and we always need to improve. But I think on this question, the actual results are going to be so compelling that I think, A, it's going to be hard for Republicans to vote against the bill at the end of the day, and B, the results will pour through the economy and into people's lives in ways that really do show that somebody made a

Starting point is 00:44:57 difference for them. It's interesting. I still think you guys need more aggressively, you know, kind of. I totally agree. I've lived with this for a long time. How did we lose or even tie on climate change, for Pete's sake. You've got one of the crookedest political operations ever run up against us, which we've never bothered to really fully out. And you've got basically every known scientist on our side, the costs and the warnings and the threats and the concerns are everywhere, including in fairly conservative places.

Starting point is 00:45:30 We just have never been able to organize ourselves to effectively pound that message home. Yeah. So let's talk about the trial, because I feel like this actually, relates to that question. Where are you with this? What do you think it's going to happen? My two sense are that I'm anxious. The Democrats are going to go through this too quickly. Well, we do, I believe, want to move on to actually doing things. If we spend two months quarreling over impeachment, the American people who have other needs are going to be very frustrated. But I do think that the House deserves an opportunity to present its case fully and to take the time

Starting point is 00:46:13 that they need and then Trump needs the time or his lawyers need the time to make their case back. And this is a story that needs to be told. And if it's the case that Republicans are politically predetermined that no matter what the evidence, they will not vote to convict Trump, they just can't do it politically and they won't do it politically, that makes it actually, almost a little bit more important that the House managers put the record before history of exactly what the case is. And then history can look back and make its judgment about people who took an oath to render a fair decision and made a purely political one because they were frightened of former President Trump. Yeah, that seems to be my takeaway is that we were in this

Starting point is 00:47:04 situation. And again, it feels, and I would love you to talk about this a little bit, like, we did have a transition of power, but we didn't have a peaceful one. No. I mean, the founding fathers were very, very concerned about the executive branch and the legislative branch needing to be a check on the ambitions of a chief executive who might abuse power to stay in office. And so they created all these constitutional checks to, protect against that. And here's this key check in which the Congress of the United States certifies the elections to show that the incumbent has lost and is gone and is out and a new president is coming in. And at that moment, the chief executive calls a mob together in Washington,

Starting point is 00:47:55 D.C., says he's going to go with it up to Congress, sends them up to the Capitol building, and tells them to be wild and to be strong and to be aggressive and that the fate of the nation depends on how forceful they are. And the next thing you know, we have something we've never seen since the British burned the capital in the war of 1812, which is the capital taken over by a hostile force. I worry that even though the guardrails held this time, they may not hold next time.

Starting point is 00:48:28 Yeah, you've got to remember what a flawed person, Trump is, in so many ways, but he was able to catch that thread in the American public that propelled him to where he is today. If he was slyer and smarter and more determined and figured out how to, you know, play the game with a little bit more finesse, you know, the difference could have been significant. Yeah. How did we not win this election by 100 million votes? I think that's the big question is, can Democrats and will Democrats do things to protect the guardrails of democracy? Well, I think we're sending a very strong signal that once again, the democracy protection bill in the House is HR1.

Starting point is 00:49:17 And in the Senate, it is S1. And we've got a big battle on our hands over those bills because they are the bills that are going to be probably hardest. to do by pure reconciliation. Right, because they're not budget. So it makes it hard to do with a simple majority, which means that the Republicans are in a position to filibuster and block those reforms, which means that we've really got to be prepared

Starting point is 00:49:43 to work hard to build the case for those reforms and enlist the American public with us and exhibit to the American public some of the foul mischief that has taken place behind the dark money screen and, you know, win our case. Democrats too often believe that we are right and jump straight to the remedy, but as a long-time lawyer, one of the things that I know is that before you can ask for your remedy, you've got to make your case.

Starting point is 00:50:11 And even when you know you're right, you still have to make your case. And this is a place where I think we must and can make our case to the American public, but it's going to take effort from the Biden administration and effort from us in Congress. And we have to, you know, move public opinion on this. We can and we have to. Thank you so much. This was so great. Good to be with you, Molly.

Starting point is 00:50:36 Thanks so much. My fuck that guy is once again, returning, returning favorite, Kevin McCarthy. Oh, yeah. He's such a coward. Kevin McCarthy this weekend was one of many Republicans who were blaming Nancy Pelosi for the Trump mob that attacked the Capitol and saying, with Antifa, you know, and they just, their hatred of Trump is what inspired the left-wing mob to attack the Capitol. Get the flat fuck out.

Starting point is 00:51:06 Yeah, that was nuts. He's in the shittiest possible position politically right now as the House Minority Leader. He's going to be in the larger minority position very soon because what he's doing is not helping rebuild his party. It's making it more unlikely to recapture some of these suburban seats they need to get a majority ever. So you do you, boo. My fuck that guy is up for re-election in 2022. America's favorite, whatever the hell is wrong with him, I don't know. Russia Ron Johnson.

Starting point is 00:51:42 Russia, Ron Johnson will not quit. There is another individual who just... He blamed it on Nancy Pelosi. Yeah, who just can't stop himself. Right? I get it. These people now, they have like a sort of, An incantation they use all the time now.

Starting point is 00:51:58 Antifa, Antifa, Antifa, Socialism, Antifa, Antifa, Antifa, and Tifa. You know, and they repeat it over and over again at every point. It's like, hey, this is an RBs, sir. This is not about socialism or Antifa. It's about the people that you are living in terror of coming to kill you, and Mike Pence and many others. Just admit it. Just own it.

Starting point is 00:52:19 Fix it. But he can't. He can't make himself do it. Is McCarthy kind of the biggest cowardice? going because he not only was like Marjorie Taylor Green did nothing wrong, right? And she's sorry if she did what she didn't, right? That was last week. He also was like, Liz Cheney is great and she is sorry for what she did.

Starting point is 00:52:45 Right? So, I mean, he is basically just a complete coward. Yeah, look, Kevin McCarthy is profiles in chicken shit writ large. He is afraid of his own base. He's afraid of the, of the, you know, 40, 50, 60 cuckoos who believe that Matt Gates is going to be the next minority leader. And by the way... We're all going to die, by the way. He's working very hard to be the next minority leader.

Starting point is 00:53:12 Do you think he will be? I think he's got a good shot at it. And I think Kevin doesn't understand it. I don't think Kevin understands what a vicious little shitbird he's dealing with. Because, of course, Kevin is not... What's that word? we keep coming up with, oh, he's not smart. But he's not as dumb as Mark Meadows, right?

Starting point is 00:53:29 Throw a broken toaster in a sack of hair, and that's Mark Meadows. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new Abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks in the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm at Molly Jongfast, and he's at the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode.

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