The Daily Beast Podcast - These Are the Five States Competing to Be the Biggest Trans Haters

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Erin Reed joins us to talk about the extreme measures taken by states targeting the trans community. Then, Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood discusses the rise of anti-Semitism and radicalization in the county after his recent troubles. 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 pretty 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 Cannon, 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.

Aaron Reid, who writes the Arid in the Morning Substack, joins us to talk about the Montana GOP banning Zoe Zephyr and the other extreme measures the legislature has taken targeting the trans community. Then we'll talk to Sheriff Michael Chitwood of Alusia County, Florida, about the rise of anti-Semitism and radicalization in the county and his recent troubles with it. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy, what fresh hell do you want to end the week with? Let's start with the lovely and talented Supreme Court of the United States. I like to refer to it as SCOTUS. This week we saw that the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee,

Richard Dick Durbin, sent a request to Chief Justice John Roberts that he appeared before the committee to, answer some questions about ethics on the court. Chief Justice Roberts said, now he basically said, nah, son. Or who go and check me, boo? What he did was he put together a whole letter that talked about how rare it was for such a request to be made. And then he listed pretty much every time it had been made and then said, it was sort of like, here's all the times it has happened. And then it was like, and therefore, I will not be appearing before your committee, which is like, okay, well, that's one way to do it, I guess. But I guess his point was that it was the times it had been done

in the past were for more like little questions of, I don't know, like nitpicky, procedural, bureaucratic things. And not like, what the fuck are you overseeing there? So he has declined. I have no doubt that Dick Durbin will quickly issue an actual subpoena. I'm kidding, of course. There's no way he will do that. So the thing. Well, separation of powers. You can't have the separation of powers. There's also a thing called checks and balances. Yep.

And people never want to talk about checks and balances. They only want to talk about separation of powers. I sort of thought the whole idea of checks and balances was that when one branch gets a little loco, another branch can step in and say, you best check yourself. That's the check part of balances. That was, I believe, the actual quote from, I think it was James Monroe, who said, you best check. yourself. I think it was in Federalist 224. I have begun to realize and believe that checks and balances is just about their bank accounts. It has nothing. It has absolutely fucking nothing to do with anybody being checked. It's like, oh, let me check my account. $500,000 for a trip. Yes,

it did hit. Like, give me a fucking break. The reality is everyone who is either in in a robe is a member of Congress, was president of the United States, is above reproach. They can do whatever the fuck they want. There is no such things as checks and balances because, like, to call them ethics violations, I think is to really not put the kind of weight that is on what it is that Clarence Thomas has been charged with, but has been investigated over, oh, that's right, not investigated. I just mean, you know, looked at by a bunch of journalists. Because the fact that you have,

Clarence Thomas should have recused himself from January 6th, knowing that his wife was on the roll call sheet and didn't, knowing that he is sitting really pretty with multi-billionaires who have a whole vision for a white evangelical future of this country. This is who his bestie is. The fact that Neil Gorsuch, Apparently, Andy, your good friend, was able to come off of a piece of property in Colorado

that he wasn't able to sell for two years. But nine days before he's sworn in to become a Supreme Court justice miraculously, he comes off of this property in Colorado. It's just, I mean, the grift, the lies, the like, no one's going to check me attitude. It's wild. And to know that Dick Derby, has within his power to absolutely issue a subpoena, but we know that Democrats aren't going to use the power that they have. Like, they're just going to back off. I wrote a strongly worded letter, and that's enough. Look, just because unlike Supreme Court justice, I do believe in full disclosure. I may have gone to college with Neil Gorsuch, and he and I, with two other people, may have started a newspaper together there. I have not spoken to him in, I think decades is an accurate way

put it. So that is my full disclosure there. They can issue a subpoena. They won't issue a subpoena. We are starting to see Ed Markey, Democrat from Massachusetts, has called for Clarence Thomas to resign. That makes it officially a handful of lawmakers who have called on Thomas to resign. That includes Richard Blumenthal in the Senate and AOC and Ilana Omar in the House. I don't know how much bigger of a handful we're going to get out of this. This seems to be one of those cases where, look, ultimately, they can't force, no one can force Clarence Thomas to resign except maybe John Roberts. And even then, I kind of doubt it. But also, I don't think he ever would. But, you know, I feel like we've talked about this before. John Roberts is supposed to be this guy who cares very much

about his place in history and wants people to talk about the Roberts court and all of that. and this is what he's overseeing. And he suddenly doesn't seem all that concerned, again, with the shit that's going on on his watch. Let's just say it. I mean, he's the chief justice. You know, I'm not saying he's supposed to be looking over Thomas and Gorsuch's shoulders when they fill out their disclosure forms.

But all this happened on his watch. This is the Roberts court. And if he really cares about, you know, something like that, because right now, his place in history is, yeah, you're the guy whose court turned a whole bunch of women into criminals and let some women die and come close to death in states because Roe v. Wade was overturned on your watch. Oh, and also you had the whole ethics thing. And that's pretty much your legacy right now. If I were him, I don't think that's the legacy I would want, but I'm built different. So I don't know. I mean, look, I don't think these motherfuckers care about legacy because

we're not going to have history books that are going to lift them up in any type of way. They're all going to be banned. And so what we'll learn about this Supreme Court is how they were crusaders for patriotism and justice, and that will come out of the state of Texas. So there you go. We don't need to be concerned about legacy. But from one toxic work environment to another, you know, I don't know why anyone is quote unquote floored or shocked by revelations that Tucker Carlson, the now unemployed and former golden boy of Fox presided. over a toxic bro fucking anti-Semitic anti-woman misogynist culture. Like, why is anyone shocked by this?

Like, why am I like, oh my God, he could have never. I don't think I've seen anybody actually shocked by this. I think it's more, look, again, this is like, like when you find out that all these people were lying to their viewers and that they privately knew that the election in 2020 was fair and square. I don't think anybody was shocked by that. It was just like, okay, here's the evidence of what we thought all along. And I think it's, you know, it's kind of the same thing here. I don't think anyone is particularly shocked by this. You know, I've said this before, like Justin Wells, who was, I guess, Tucker's EP, who was also let go. I vaguely knew him when I worked at Fox,

and he was just this little dweeb of a guy. And it's just so funny to me that he became like this all-powerful shithead. I mean, that's the only thing that shocked me was when I found out that Justin Wells had become Tucker's EP. We've seen reports now that Fox kept a dossier on Tucker, an oppo file, as it's called in the business for opposition research, and that they've basically told Carlson, you know, if he speaks up against the network or comes after Fox in any way, they will release that. It seems like a lovely place to work, Andy. I really don't know why you left. Like, it seems totally, it seems totally psychologically safe. It seems like a really warm family. and loving environment.

I just, I don't know why you're still not there. It's weird. But that's the thing is that, like, that was not shocking to me. Like, I did see people go, oh, my God, look at this. And I was like, I would bet money. They've got one of those on every one of their on-air people and senior producers. I think anyone that knows, particularly like Irina Burganti in the communications department, this is exactly the kind of thing she would do.

And this would, it would probably be her favorite part of the job. job would be collecting this information and plotting on how to release it. This would excite the hell out of her. This is the thing that didn't surprise me at all, but it is still like sort of amazing for this to come out. And it seems pretty well sourced. I mean, Rolling Stone had an article written by Diana Falzone and someone. They cite eight sources, eight people familiar with the situation. That seems like pretty good info. And we'll see how this plays out. And we'll see if Tucker really goes after the network. I kind of think he won't. So I'm curious here. Let me just take a walk with me, shall you? Sure. Donald Trump and Fox News are like hand in hand, right? Donald Trump doesn't

become president of the United States without Fox News. Donald Trump cannot run without Fox News. And I'm wondering, does Donald Trump now knowing what the world knows that the Fox organization has a opo file on Tucker. Tucker puts out a very bizarre video following his firing where many people are speculating that he could run for office, that that could be his next move is to enter into the 2024 presidential race. Does Fox team up with Trump against Tucker? And say like, so we got something for you. And, you know, because many people, including myself, have said that I believe that Donald Trump has a dossier on every Republican. I think that he has every bit of dirt on lock on these people, not to say that they're not in charge of their own shit talking, their own disgusting

ideology, but I do believe that Donald Trump does have info on these people. But does Fox team up with Trump against Tucker if in fact he were to jump into the race? There is absolutely no way Tucker Carlson is running, at least not in 2024. I wouldn't say never. But man, I don't know. Running for president is a lot of work. And you got to actually go out and meet people and travel the country. He said that since his time of being silent for all of two days, he's opened his eyes to how nice and kind people are. And I'm like, no one you know is nicer kind.

So I don't know who you're talking about. I don't know. There were a lot of, a lot of white nationalists and people like that on Twitter really opened up. with stories about how Tucker reached out to them and had kind words for them. I think those are the people he's talking about. I don't see Tucker running. But look, if he does, yeah, I don't know. That's a really funny point.

I just don't see it. I don't see Carlson running against Trump. Like, I just don't see any way he does that. The thing that I think is really interesting is that a lot of these right-wing personalities outside of the bubble that they've created for themselves where they are God, they, as characters, they don't translate into the mainstream. But I'm like, you know, Tucker Carlson has what Ron DeSantis doesn't have. He actually has charisma. He, whether I think he's a piece of shit or not, he can command a screen. Whereas Ron DeSantis is, you know, I want to check his pulse. Maybe he should

borrow the exclamation point from Jeb just to give him some judge. I'm like, if Tucker Carlson wanted to, I'm like I could see his poll numbers rise well above Ron DeSantis. My take on this is I think he would much rather be the person who has the president's ear and not be the person who has to crisscross the country and kiss babies and do any of that sort of on the ground dirty work. I think he would much rather be, you know, a senior advisor to the president, sort of almost like a Steve Bannon type figure. That's what I would see him being more comfortable doing than actually doing the grunt work of running a campaign and getting out there.

And I could be wrong. And it could also be that, you know, as Trump has kind of shown, you maybe don't have to do a lot of that retail politicking to be the presidential nominee anymore. You can just, you know, you can just go and do and hold huge rallies, which, look, I am absolutely sure. Carlson could get, you know, thousands of people to show up to hear him speak. He is an absolutely toxic person with horrific views. He's good TV, as you say.

He can command a screen. He can hold people's attention. He can lead them down path that he wants to lead them down. You know, I could absolutely see him doing that part of the job. I just, I don't know. I just don't see Tucker getting icky, which is what you have to do, I think, still to run for president. I think you still have to get down in the actual muck and get dirty yourself rather than just telling other people they need to get dirty while you sit in your home studio in Maine. I think he's much more comfortable with that.

We shall see because, you know, stranger fucking things have happened. A lot of people say the reason DeSantis is running now is it's the lesson of Chris Christie that he didn't take his window when the window is right. But I would argue Tucker's smart enough to see that this is not the time right now is going up against. Trump would do very, very bad things to him. Mm-hmm. I think that that is right. But I don't like, there's just something about even a Trump-Tucker ticket, remove Pence, bring in Tucker Carlson.

No, no, he's too loyal. What are you talking about? They look, they tried. I mean, they did. Right? Get in the car, sir. Come, tell us some jokes in front of this gallows. Give us some gallows humor, sir.

I cannot see him running in 2024. I just don't see it. I mean, he is, again, as toxic as he is. Tucker is a smart person. And he knows that this is not the time. The Republican Party is not over its love affair with Donald Trump yet. All Tucker has to do is look at Ron DeSantis right now, which, and of course, it's early. DeSantis isn't even a declared candidate.

Things could change. but you look at every poll has Trump's lead over DeSantis growing. I think Tucker can look at that and say, yeah, this is not the time. And if he does want to run, you know, he's a young guy. He can wait four years, can wait eight years and see what happens. And I would not be shocked if, God forbid, if Trump were to win in 2024, I would absolutely not be shocked to see Tucker in that administration. If Trump wins in 2024, we're doing.

this broadcast from Guantanamo. So that is not a fucking option. Pirate radio. Literally. Yep. Erin Reid is an independent journalist who is without a doubt one of the most essential voices out there for keeping abreast of the latest efforts by anti-trans activists to chip away, if not eliminate the right of trans people to, well, exist.

She publishes the excellent newsletter Erin in the morning at Substack, where, among other things. She tracks anti-LGBQ plus legislation around the world. Erin, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. So let's start with what happened to Zoe Zephyr, what is still happening to Zoe Zephyr, the first openly transgender person elected to the state legislature in Montana. On Wednesday, she was banned from the Montana House after a week of not being allowed to speak, all because she told Republicans that if they voted for some truly hateful anti-trans legislation, quote, I hope the next time there's an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands. I guess first talk about this legislation, Erin, which has now,

in fact, actually passed. Absolutely. And for full disclosure, Representative Zephyr is also my romantic partner. I just want to disclose that up front. The legislation in Montana is particularly harsh. Montana has passed and has heard at least 12 bills that target the community this year. Now, the bill that Zoe, Representative Zephyr, was speaking on, was SB 99 in Montana. And this essentially withdraws all transgender youth, anybody under 18 from gender affirming care. So puberty blockers hormone therapy, et cetera. Doesn't matter if they've been on it for a long time. It's a complete ban.

Now, after making that strong statement against the bill, they refused to let her speak for three straight days after. Basically, every time she punched in her light, they wouldn't call on her. And they never alleged that she broke any rules because they never actually held her account. the first time she tried to speak on another bill. It was actually another anti-trans bill, SB 458, which removes transgender people from 40 different areas of code in Montana. So removes protections from birth certificates, driver's licenses, death certificates, bathrooms, everything.

It's basically like an omnibus anti-trans bill. And not only did they not allow her to speak on it, the bill itself erased trans people by and large. And so it was kind of this weird, symbolic, terrible. thing. So first they silenced her, then they just outright banned her from coming to work, basically. Can we hope that the eventual fallout from this is similar to what we saw with the Tennessee three? In the last 24 hours, I've seen her on every major news network, both in the United States and even in the UK. I know that she was on BBC and I know that she was on a number of other outlets. And so I think

that she is getting her message out there and trying to silence her. All they've done is give her a bigger megaphone to let people know what's going on in these state houses. Because a lot of people don't really follow state houses that much. People don't really follow state politics that much. But I can tell you that these are the front lines of democracy and these are the front lines of where these issues get debated and addressed and the talking points get developed. And so I think that giving her this platform and she's such an eloquent speaker on the harms that these bills cause, I don't think that Republicans have done themselves any favors. You know, I'm sort of over the whole, oh, isn't it ironic, the hypocrisy thing? But the fact that it was the Montana House Freedom

Caucus that wanted her silenced? Yep. I mean, that is just so particularly rich that it was this group that calls themselves a Freedom Caucus that wanted to take away her right to speak. And we've seen this on a number of bills this year. You know, there are Republicans, for instance, that claim to be champions of free speech that will then tell teachers that they have to misgender their trans students, basically compelling their speech. We see this in online environments where you have somebody like Elon Musk coming into Twitter and claiming to be a free speech champion and then suddenly clamping down on so much speech on the platform. And so like this is not super surprising because I too am over the

other hypocrites thing. I think that they lean into this and they know it. Yeah. I mean, they just look, they don't mean what they say when they say they're for free speech or for freedom or whatever. So they certainly don't mind being called hypocrites. It's all some kind of sick and twisted game to them anyway is the way I sort of feel at this point. So talk to me again about this bill. You mentioned that it would stop. Even people who are on certain medications would no longer be allowed to take them.

Talk about how dangerous that might be. Absolutely. So whenever you were trans and you are on medication and, you know, you've transitioned, you've been taking your hormones for a few years, getting pulled off is traumatic. It hurts, you know, medically, like physically and mentally. You know, like, for instance, if you're going to take somebody who's 17 years old in Montana and who's been on hormone therapy for three years, and suddenly you basically have the legislature coming in and practicing medicine and saying, nope, you got to pull them off. There's no individualized medical decision making here. Then that 17-year-old transgender girl will suddenly go through menopause, essentially.

My God. And then likewise, you know, you have the psychological aspect of things because you have gone through your teenage years. And you said, okay, I've made it. I'm transitioning. I'm good. I'm going to turn 18 and everything's going to be good. And then all of a sudden, bam, you pull them from their hormones. It's a very traumatic experience.

And as a trans person myself, I've been through, you know, I've had to go without hormones before. It sucks. It's not something that you ever want to have to do. And to force that onto kids and to essentially take away the rights of parents and doctors to use their expertise and their family decision making in essence to support, you know, a Republican agenda to target trans people, I think, and to score political points, I think, is a very cynical power play. And I don't think it's going to work. Yeah. And it's just yet another example of Adam Serwer's now famous phrase, the cruelty is the point. I mean, it really does

seem like they sort of get off on, like you said, the power trip and being able to do this and inflicting cruelty and pain on people. Exactly. We booked you like a week ago, and I was like, just book Aaron whenever we can. There will be 800 million things to talk about. And, you know, I was not worried. I was not worried about there not being, unfortunately, you know, stuff like this in the news. But I want to ask you about something you have on your substack, which is what you call an anti-trans legislative risk map that color codes the states with the darkest red states being the most risky to the darkest blue being the least risky. Is it me or is this map not at all that dissimilar from the electoral map? It isn't all that dissimilar.

There are some minor differences, though. And they're small, but there are differences that are worth pointing out. You know, we see places like Kansas, Wyoming, Alaska. These are pretty staunchly Republican states. However, they also have a little bit of that independent, moderate streak still going for them. And as a result, you've seen, for instance, in Wyoming, you haven't seen any of these anti-transvils make it through. And then Wyoming is, you know, I think it's like 90% Republican. Right.

And then likewise, in North Carolina, there's an interesting. thing going on too. If you look at my map, you'll notice North Carolina as low risk in my map. And that's because this all started eight years ago in North Carolina. They had the bathroom ban, which made news all over the world, and it caused companies to pull out. And as a result, North Carolina has been shell-shocked on this. You know, they've not been willing to push anti-trans legislation because they know where this leads. And I think that they learned their lesson, but a lot of these other states have not learned their lesson. And if you look, you know, just today, there was a Fox News poll put out. So done by Fox News organization, the polling output is independent, but they are still

under the Fox News umbrella. And it was something like 86% of people that respond, it said that laws targeting families of transgender kids are a major problem. And, you know, so it was like only 14% of people thought that, you know, we need more laws that target trans kids. And I think that Republicans are very much overplaying their hand on this. And we see in recent elections in Michigan, and the GOP chair there essentially stated that he thought that we lost this election in all three houses of government because of all of the anti-trans ads. We saw in Wisconsin, the Supreme Court race, just now. They launched a million dollars in anti-trans ads against the Democratic choice for the Supreme

Court there. She overperformed. She won by 11 points, and that was supposed to be a squeaker of a race. Anti-trans politics are not playing well. Yeah, I mean, that it definitely does seem to be a cause for optimism. Obviously, it sucks that we have to go through this in every state. not every state, but in a lot of red states before we get to the point where it reaches like a North Carolina thing where they're like, oh, no, we tried that. It doesn't turn out well for us.

But I do want to talk about some other states. On Wednesday, you wrote a piece saying Texas could be the next state to end most adult trans care. And you noted that the day before on Tuesday, the Texas Senate, had passed what you refer to as one of the most extreme pieces of legislation aimed at gender affirming care. What makes it so extreme? Is it because it dropped the pretense of being all about the children? Yeah. So what we have seen is an increasing willingness to target transgender adults recently. Just a couple weeks ago, the Missouri Attorney General, Andrew Bailey, released a letter that

stated that any doctors that were prescribing gender affirming care would basically essentially have to stop for most trans adults. Like, for instance, they created this catch-22 process where if you have anxiety or depression, they have to be cured before you can start gender affirming care. But also, you have to have severe dysphoria before starting gender affirming care. care. Severe disphoria will cause anxiety and depression. Oh my God. And so it created this, it created this catch-22 to where basically it like bans it entirely. And then not long after we saw, you know, what happened with, with Texas passing a bill that essentially would close

down almost every clinic in the state that provides trans care. And this is borrowing off of the anti-abortion movement. This basically pulls from that movement where they used very similar laws. They were called trap laws. And these are called targeted restrictions on abortion providers. We are seeing the exact same playbook utilized against gender affirming care clinics and gender affirming care at large. That's unreal. And it also seems like also on the model of abortion bills, it's this same sort of tattletale type thing where they want people to turn in trans people or families of trans people and stuff like that the way they did with abortions. Yeah. So even in Missouri, they launched a form. They launched a form that was essentially a transgender concern form. And people, you know,

people saw that. They very quickly reported a lot of concerns about the law itself, about the attorney general, and about all of the terrible anti-trans things going on in Missouri. And so, you know, like we are seeing an increased willingness and to use tattel-tailing methods. I know that in South Dakota, I believe, it might have been North Dakota, one of the Dakotas, they had a law that utilizes a bounty system, very similar to the abortion bounty system, where every gender clinic that you report that does gender affirming care for trans youth could be sued and essentially you can get a bounty. Now the bounty didn't get paid to you, it got paid to the state. But like if you turn people in. And so yeah, like we are seeing, again, this is borrowing from the anti-abortion movement. And we're

also seeing this increase in other ways. So, you know, last year of Missouri, they were about to pass a law that was going to ban going out of state for abortions. In the meantime, Idaho then introduced a law that would ban going out of state for gender affirming care. We're starting to see that again this year. Idaho just passed a law that makes going out of state for an abortion of crime, and Indiana, as well as Mississippi, as well as Kentucky, passed laws that make aiding and abetting gender transition to crime. Now, this even applies to therapists. So if you go to a therapist and that therapist uses your pronoun, an overzealous prosecutor could then say, oh, well, they were aiding and abetting gender affirming care. And so that's

where we're at right now. You know, they're starting to target other people, anybody that affirms trans people. Right. Oh, God, it's absolutely unreal. So what are the states at the top of your risk list. And where does Florida, Florida seems to get a lot of coverage because of Ron DeSantis, but where does Florida actually rank for you? Florida ranks very high for me. There are a few states that seem to continually be trying to one up each other to get to the top of like the worst states for being translist. And those states are right now Florida, Tennessee, Montana, and Texas. All four of these states, it seems like every time one state does something really harsh, and I'll also add Missouri now since their attorney general is banning adult care.

But it seems like all five of these dates, each time one of them does something really harsh, another one will then jump in and try to one up. I'll give you like a really good example. Florida, they just recently pushed forward a bill that would make accusing somebody of transphobia, racism, sexism, or homophobia, defamation of character worth $35,000 in fines. And that's just for an accusation. Now, here's the kicker. You cannot use their scientific or religious.

beliefs to prove truth of your claim that they're being racist or transphobic or homophobic. And so, like, basically they're just like, yeah, if you accuse somebody, then we're going to charge you $35,000. Like, this is ridiculous. And I think that most people see how ridiculous it is, but the far right of the Republican party has just completely gripped the party in some of these states. Yeah, that seems slight problematic constitutionally, but I know they don't care about things like that, but it seems like they might run a foul of the constitution there.

to me. Absolutely. You know, you mentioned Florida, and I want a couple of weeks ago, you brought to my attention the fact that a group called Equality Florida had issued a travel advisory, basically telling LGBTQ plus people to avoid non-essential travel to that state. I cannot think in my lifetime of something like that actually happening. I will be visiting Florida in June to give a speech to a pride rally, one of the pride rallies that is still being held this year. I know that a number of pride parades have been canceled. However, I know that after July 1st, if their bathroom ban passes there, I can't go to Florida. This bathroom ban that they're passing in Florida right now essentially states that if you're trans

and you go into a bathroom, a cisgender person can say, leave. And if you don't comply with them, then you basically get arrested. And it kind of like creates this second class citizenship thing going on. where like cis people have this inherent power to compel trans people and point them out of bathrooms and like you have to subordinate yourself to them. It's debasement. It's terrible. And the things that I think about are like, yeah, I'm not going to travel the Florida willingly, but like, what if I'm on a flight and they have to make a connection in Florida? Right. It's hard. I mean, thank God we don't have an analogy in this country to the situation you just talked about where a certain kind of person

couldn't use the same bathroom as another kind of person. It would just be terrible if we an example in history to look at to see how awful that was, but I guess we don't. Yeah, that would be very terrible, I guess. Yeah. Before I let you go, I have said before that as a Jew, I find the rhetoric and actions from the right regarding trans people to be the most analogous to straight up Nazism, the dehumanizing language, what seems like the urge to erase or to wipe transgender folk from the face of the earth, et cetera.

But look, I'm a cishead male, so I want to get your take. on the state of things for trans people in 2023 America. Do you think it gets better, as the slogan says? Or are you just very pessimistic, somewhere in the middle? What do you think the future is here? I think it's going to be a hard next few years, but I do think that it gets better. I don't think that Republicans are going to stop doing what they're doing. And I think that as long as they control some state legislatures, the states are going to do terrible things.

There are some states that are getting better. And there are states that are passing legislation that protects trans people. And I'm seeing culturally, you know, a movement of people that are willing to stand up for trans people in their communities. And I think that on the long arc of things, I do think that we are going to find liberation and a place for equality. It's just going to be a fight. It's going to, it's going to be hard. It doesn't, none of this comes easy. But I was around for the gay rights fight in the 2003 or 2005 time. I remember 32 states passing anti-gay marriage amendments.

It looked bleak then as well. But people didn't stop fighting and the culture kept on moving forward. And I think that that's the one thing that gives me hope. Yeah. I mean, those of us who are old enough know that this is pretty much, it's like a reboot of that, of the anti-gay panic that this country went through. You know, I hope you're right. And look, another thing I've also said before on the show is, you know, I have nieces who are

in their, you know, late teens or early 20s. I just sort of look at them in the ease with which they talk about having friends who are non-binary or who are a lot of things. It's just to them, it's just like, oh, yeah, they're an NB. And then they just move on with whatever they were saying. You know, and it's just, they just have an absolutely fluid use of the language. And it's a shrug of the shoulders for them. And so I just, I hope that my nieces, in this case, I hope are representative of their generation.

And that, you know, things, as you say, it may be a long, dark period for the next few years, but that ultimately things will get better because young people aren't going to put up with this nonsense. I truly believe that. I do truly believe that. Things are changing. I love the acceptance that the younger generation seems to have. Nobody is born with hate. That's a learned thing. And I feel like if there's one thing that we can be very proud of of our kids and like of our young adults right now, it's that they have not learned how to hate. They haven't learned how to hate trans people and queer people and gay people. People from my generation, I'm a millennial, you know, just to age myself a little bit. And I know that like we had to grow up in a time where there were. were many homophobic slurs that were thrown about on the regular. I mean, I know for trans people, if you go to watch any movie earlier than 2011, any comedy, you know, there's a 50-50 shot that you're going to get a random transphobic joke. And like, we're moving past that as a society. And I'm really happy that the younger generation right now, they are pushing forward on this. Erin, thank you so much for being here. Your newsletter, Erin in the morning is an essential read.

I encourage our listeners to rush out and subscribe to it. When I say rush out, I mean, on your computer. It really is, if you want to stay abreast of what's going on across the whole country, you can't do any better than reading Aaron in the morning. Erin, thank you so much again. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Fever Dreams is a Daily Beast podcast, taking you inside the rights push to retake power, from the Maga Acolytes to the straight-up grifters. They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast.com. or dreams to check it out.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Sheriff Michael Chitwood, who is the sheriff of Belusha County in Florida and has made waves. Video has gone viral in talking about extremism and hate that has shown its face in your county but is mirroring what is happening around the country. And Sheriff, in your press conference that you gave, you pretty much brought it to the doorstep of extremists who we know have a tendency to hide behind their screen names, to hide behind their screens. But after your press conference, you received several death threats. And at least there have been, I believe, three arrests that have been made. So I just want to talk to you.

The first question that I have is, in that press conference that you gave, you just seem to have had. it. I want to know what was truly the breaking point for you to be so very clear about this crisis that is arising in your county but across the country. Yeah, thank you very much for having me on and thank you for that wonderful reduction. I think you have to go back to Charlottesville. When you had the incident in Charlottesville and the president of the United States says there's good people on both sides. That was a wink, wink, nod to which extremism that it's acceptable. And it's never acceptable.

What happened on the weekend of the day 10th 500, I guess it was around February 18th, that Friday at Saturday night is it was like a home invasion occurred in my community. Wow. These outsiders came in. They were dropping these hateful leaflets with wood ships that were simulating rat poison about exterminating the Jews. They dropped them on doorsteps of Jews and non-Jews. But they put a palpable fear in the community because we had seen this before, but it was a local person who was responsible for it. And they were able to make an arrest on it. But this we knew what they did was they have a projector where they projected on the facade of the Speedway during the Saturday night race night before the 500 that was scrolling all of this anti-Semitic message. And it made it look like the Speedway was scrolling it.

Wow. Yep. So the next day on Sunday, you know, I instructed my intel folks. Who were these people? And what we discovered was they were this GDL, William Defense League. They have been doing incidents like this all over the state of Florida. They were up. I think it was in November at the Florida, Georgia game, which is a really big college football game up in Jacksonville. They did the same thing with the message scrolling across the outside of the stadium. I discovered the two days prior. It did the 500. So our incident, a couple of the members had stalked two Orthodox Jews and shot them outside of a synagogue at L.A. Another one was awaiting sentencing for firebombing synagogue. And I was like, man, our community's got to know what came in here this weekend and what we're up against. It's not shocking. The reason why I say that is because when we had the former twice impeached president of the United States, not only in 2017 say that there are good people on both sides when you have a group of white supremac extremists that are marching down a city street, talking about the replacement theory, talking about Jews will not replace us. Fast forward to the

presidential debate with telling the group of the proud boys and the oathkeepers to stand back and stand by. Then fast forward again to the insurrection in January of 2021. What we are seeing and what we have seen, Sheriff, is this embrace and this acceptance of extremism in this country, of the rise of hatred. And I just want you to talk about how this embrace and this escalation are running side by side, where you've seen difference in the past, where there have always been extremists. But I don't think that they have received a rolling out of the red carpet in national politics in the way that we see now? It's the violence. Because if you go back and look at what occurred in the synagogue in Pittsburgh, the same chat rooms that these clowns are in, this 4chan and all these

neo-gotsie chat rooms, they're inspiring these active shooters. You know, the synagogue in Pittsburgh, the grocery store in Buffalo, a mass shooting at the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, the shooting of the Black Church in South Carolina, when they get you in these chat rooms for 20 hours a day and endopterate you, these hate groups have loaded the gun and they put it on the counter in front you and say, do something about it. And then you have these marginalized individuals go out and commit mass murder. I think that one of the problems, you know, you tell me that I have seen as the mainstream media has, you know, retold these stories, is that they do it as if they are siloed events. They do it as if these shooters are quote unquote lone wolves. Can you talk about,

you know, again, you just made the connection, right? These people are sitting in these chat rooms. They're being indoctrinated. They're being told that they need to fix it. As Donald Trump pointed to the Capitol building on January 6th, he said, go take your country back. Can you talk about the way in which they are being indoctrinated and that it's a danger to us to talk. about these as siloed events. It is a danger because this is a theory that's out there. It's like recruiting for a gang. You know, these hate groups are filling a portion of people's lives. They feel wanted, they field in power. They feel they're like-minded, and then they act on it. The organizers don't get the guts to grab the gun and go do that, but they certainly know they can recruit people,

fill them through of these lies and hatred, and then turn them loose on society. And I do want to to make one thing really, really clear for me, when you talk about the media, you know, there is no such thing as left-wing or right-wing extremism, in my opinion. Extremism is extremism. You burn a gas station down. You loot a store. You fire a bomb a police car in the name of social justice. That's extremism.

You want to wipe out people because of their race, their religion, their ethnic background, or their sexual orientation, and that's your plan to wipe them out. That's extremism. It all belongs in one basket. and it needs to be attacked the same way. It's destroying the social fabric of our country by letting these fringes extremes slowly eat away at the center of the country.

Just my two cents. What does disruption of this rise look like? Ten years ago or more at this point, the FBI had put out a report that was largely ignored about the rise of domestic terrorism in this country. We don't even have laws really on the books to prosecute domestic terrorists in the same way that we do foreign terrorists. So in your mind, you know, what is the responsibility of law enforcement and also those that are

legislators in this to stop to quell the rise of extremism here? Yeah, we are so far behind on the internet and what is allowed that we're way behind the curve. But I'll give you an example of what I see is the first step toward it. House Bill 269 that's going to get signed in the law here any day or didn't get signed in this morning is basically a law that it gives us another tool in the toolbox to attack any Semitism. When these hate groups show up in neighborhoods, they come up to your doorstep and drop a flyer talking about exterminating the Jews. That's now a felony. You're on private property and you drop a full anti-Semitical email. It's a felony.

It's felony trespass. If you get a bullhorn and you get it, you shove it in somebody's car window and start screaming anti-Semitic. remarks and you want them to die and you're just basically stalking these folks, that's now aggravated stalking. It's a felony. If you use that projector to shine eightful messages on private property, it's now a felony. If you follow somebody who's walking down the street, you're dressed, say, as an Orthodox Jew, and you get behind them and you start to berate them, again, that's aggravated stalking. So I think this is the first bill to start to combat and give law enforcement some peace to at least make arrests and identify these guys. And, you know,

their felony convictions, it disqualifies them from carrying a firearm. Not that it matters, but that's another study. They get caught with a firearm and they're convicted felon. There's a whole much other ways to tackle them. So the legislature and when the federal and state levels really have to look at this and say, we have to combat this. We have to give law enforcement the tools they can use to attack this. A lot of the deputies responding and taking these reports were like, well, you know, it's free speech. Right. There's a fine line between

free speech and action. And hate speech. You know, you can stand on the corner of protest, Mike Chitwood all you want. He's anti-First Amendment. If we ever take power, he's going to be tried for treason and hung. It's another thing to say, we have to shut this guy up, and I'm going to fly down to Florida and put a couple of bullets in the back of it said to shut

him up. That's the complete difference there of free speech. Now you're committed a crime and you're getting locked up and brought back to Florida. I do want to talk about the fact that not only have we seen a rise in hate speech on the internet, in hate influenced violence towards marginalized communities, but we've seen also sheriff arise in violence or threats of violence against politicians, something that has not, I mean, obviously we've experienced through the history of this country, assassinations of presidents, attempted assassinations of presidents, assassinations of political leaders, civil rights leaders. Now we're seeing threats against poll workers. We're seeing threats against school board members.

We're seeing threats against the clergy and law enforcement like yourself. How should we be one talking about this and what should be done so that the good people are not fearful to even throw their hats in the ring, to even volunteer to aid in election and vote counting? That is a great question. And I think it goes back to your earlier comments. When you blur the lines and when you say you need to have violence, if you disagree with somebody, whether they're a Democrat or Republican or a poll worker or a clerk, if you disagree with their message, it's okay to use violence.

And once that genie was let out of the bottle, I don't know how you get it back in there. I don't know how you get it. I mean, when you've got, you know, a Fox News contributor saying that January 6th, it was mild matter tourists who came to the Capitol, you know, and sadly, there are people that sit there and believe it. I mean, I watched what happened. I tweeted about what happened.

I called on the president immediately from my tweets. He's got to shut this down before somebody gets killed. It was too late. Somebody got got killed. But when you have that, I don't know how you put that genie. back in the bottle once you've now allowed a cold for violence. Violence is okay. Once you say that, game on and how do you get it back in? I don't know the answer to that. Yeah, this is, I think, the place, you know, we talk about every election being consequential. We talk about the importance of

people voting. But this is the first time, I think, for many people, particularly young people, where they are seeing threats of violence against those that are standing in line waiting to vote, where they're seeing not only policies that are trying to suppress people's individual freedoms, but that are literally putting a target on their backs. And so for you as law enforcement, that is also receiving these threats, your family was receiving these threats. What message do you have for lawmakers? Like your job is to enforce the law.

What message do you have for lawmakers as we're seeing, this escalation in online threats that can very easily, and we've seen very easily, turn into real-world threats. Yeah. To get to your point about the real world threats, when you get into these shooters chat rooms, they made previous threats. They gave a blueprint of what they were going to do. It just said nobody was monitoring it.

And they did it. Lawmakers have to lead. All the anti-Semitism that's been grown here in central Florida in my community, it's on the rise. It's up, I think, three times what it was four years ago from the incidents that are occurring. But I got a lawmaker here by the name of Webster Barnaby, who during a hearing about trans folks' legislation, about bathroom usage or whatever it was, he goes on this tirated that when the folks are getting up to speak and calls them imps, subhuman. I mean, he just goes off on a tangent. And I'm sitting there saying to myself, do you not realize? and he's a representative from this county.

Right. Do you not realize what the Jewish population is going through, and now you're going to demean these people and put a target on their back? Are you out of your mind? And I'm thinking of myself, here's a guy who's representing us in the state capital who goes off on a tangent.

I mean, you got a super majority. Whatever you want, you're going to pass. Do you have to rub their face in it and then put a target on their back and saying they're subhuman beings? You know, you don't recognize their right to do. exist. Wow. And that's an elected legislature. And sadly, how many of them just think come out like he comes out? But think the same way. Think the same. And they're sublimitably

going to do what they need to do. So, you know, they have to leave. They have to remember what they're there for. You know, everybody says, well, I'm elected and represent everybody. You are. Yeah, you got, you have, you know, you're, I don't use the term agenda, but you have your ideology here. But you have to remember something. You're still representing. It's like me in law enforcement. You know, my job, when you call 911, the 911 operator says 911, what's your emergency? They don't ask your party is. They don't ask your rate. They don't ask anything. Ask what is your emergency? Because our job is to send professionals to deal with your emergency. That's what our job is. And I think that that should be the way the lawmakers, but I know I'm

probably spitting in the wind here. But that's what they should be doing. Okay, I have my ideology. But remember, people are people just because I disagree with you. Doesn't mean I have to annihilate you. The last question that I have for you, Sheriff, is about law enforcement. You know, one of the things that I think was very startling to folks as they were following and have been following the kind of the fallout since January 6th is that there were active and former law enforcement that were a part of the insurrection. There have been many that say, yes, you know, we have bad apples. What do you think needs to be done in order to make sure that,

those that carry a badge, that those that are supposed to be protecting all people in their community are actually trying to protect all people in their community, regardless of whether they look like them, love like them, pray like them. I have to tell you, we hire from the human race and there's no X-ray machine that I could look into your soul and see, are you a racist, are you a bigot, are you a thief, or are you corrupt, are you brutal? I can't. You know, We do psychological exams, we examine your tattoos. I think we do a really good job, but I can't get into your soul. I don't know what's in there.

Like I said, we check every tattoo gets examined. You have tattoos and everybody has tattoos. We examine everything that you got on your body. You want to know what you're putting there. We're into your social media. We put a high premium on our psychological exams. But having said that, I still have hired people in my career who have turned out to be disaster areas who looked really good on paper. And then when they got out there on the street,

they were terrorists is what they were, for lack of a better term. And that's like any profession. We can try hard. I mean, I can tell you, I've been fortunate. We have our own police academy now. I don't have to rely on somebody else to train my people. So our folks are trained on our culture, our culture of de-escalation, our culture of service to the community, sanctity of human life first. We make sure that every single brand-new recruit goes to the Holocaust Museum over in Tampa. And it's twofold. It's number one to learn about our history and learn about anti-Semitism that it's running around. But it's also to learn how law enforcement was corrupted in Nazi Germany to help propel their missions forward.

The new generation coming and have to understand that, that we play a role in this. And if we side, if we take sides in this thing, if we say it's okay, it's good extremism. It's good. It's countering the bet what we determined to be bad extremism. and you allow that to go unchecked, it's Nazi Germany all over again. Because we don't do a good job learning history. No, we don't. No, we don't. Sheriff Michael Chitwood, thank you so much for the work that you were doing for the light

that you shined on what is happening in your county and what is mirroring what is happening around the country. Really appreciate you making the time for the new abnormal. Thank you. I just hope that some other law enforcement leaders and legislatures get in line and realize there's an opportunity here for us to really shine the light on this and roll it back. Absolutely. Thank you. Andy Levy.

Daniel Moody. Andy, we've had a hell of a week. How are you leaving us with this ending's FTG? I'm going to leave us with the guy whose rocket blew up. But not because of that. I sort of don't join in the crowd laughing at that because it was a test flight and things happened on test flights and whatever. But it is going to be Elon Musk.

And it's going to be, unsurprisingly, for something he said on Twitter, the site he is slowly but surely running into the ground. Tim Poole, who is, if you're lucky enough not to know, is like a right-wing YouTuber who, I think if you put a one in front of his IQ still would be in double digits. He tweeted, I think we should ask ourselves why so many young people desperately want to be someone else instead of themselves. And it's a, you know, it's an anti-trans thing. It's dumb. It's whatever. But Elon Musk, who is the official reply guy, as they're known on Twitter, to all dumb right-wing grifters, he replied, if you are taught to hate yourself,

you will want to be someone else. And I read that. And I'm like, first of all, you have a transgender child. Did you teach them to hate themselves? But beyond that, this is a This motherfucker wants to put chips in people's brains. He's got this whole company, Neurlink, that is, you know, trying to get approval to put computer chips in people's brains. And it kind of struck me, you know, there's a thing called transhumanism, and it's a science fiction concept that there are some people, you know, who take it seriously. It all has to do with basically, it's sort of unnatural evolution, if you want to call it that. It's finding ways to, quote, unquote improve the human body, improve the human mind. You know, it gets into cybernetics and a whole

thing like that. And it's a weird little thing, but all right, it's a science fiction concept. But it's very weird to me. I've noticed that a lot of these people who seem to tout transhumanism, which Elon Musk certainly does, and putting a computer chip in people's brains to supposedly make them, you know, smarter and stuff like that is certainly transhumanism. For some reason, they are very opposed to transgenderism. And it's incredibly bizarre. they're clearly not opposed to body modification and they're clearly not opposed to people, you know, changing what they were given at birth. But for some reason, it really, like, it scares the hell out of them when people are like, hey, I think I might have been born the wrong gender, or at least outwardly facing. And I want to correct that. And so I look at this shit and it's like, okay, none of these people care about being hypocrites because they're not capable of feeling shame. And, you know, certainly someone like Elon Musk, like they don't really have an ethical system that would allow them to see, oh, I'm being a hypocrite about this. That's bad. That part of the brain is missing. Maybe he needs a chip to replace it. But to watch these people, Elon Musk, who was out there sort of on the forefront of this, then spouting nonsense. Like if you are taught to hate yourself, you will want to be someone else. That's just, it may be that I'm of all the sins of Musk. Like, this may be pretty low down. the list. I think I'm just rapidly approaching last straw. My camelback is breaking. And so when I

saw that, I was just like, I really was. I was just like, you motherfucker. Like you, you literally are putting, you're killing chimps by putting chips in their brain because you want to figure out how to do it for humans. And this is what you're out there saying. So that's, just fuck that guy so hard, Daniel. You know, I hate Elon Musk so much for so many different reasons, but I will say this. My dad asked me, he goes, Danielle, I noticed that you lost your blue check. You know, isn't it worth it to pay the $8? I swear to God, I swear to God. Isn't it worth it to pay the $8 a month?

And my response, and I, you know, I love my dad and, you know, want to be respectful. But I was like, I will never pay that piece of trash eight. fucking dollars a month for a goddamn thing. Yeah, fuck that guy. I don't even have the, the breath left for him, but yeah, go to hell, Elon. So, all right, and this week for us, Danielle, who is your fuck that guy? You know, it's one of our favorites. It's one of our Hall of Famers, if you will, who should just be enshrined and chiseled in to the Mount Rushmore of Fuck That guys. Marjorie Taylor Green. And you'll say, Danielle, from what pile of shit, are you picking out of the things that she has said this week?

Well, let me tell you. In a hearing, which I don't know why this person is still allowed to sit on committees, in a hearing where former guest of this show, Randy Weingarten, who is the president of the American Federation of Teachers. In her testimony was talking about why she had recommended, I believe it was COVID policies for the classroom. Marjorie Taylor Green finds herself on one of her fucking tangents where she says, Andy, that adopted or parents through marriage aren't real parents because they're not biological. She went on to look at Randy Weingarten and everyone in America, by the way, who is either has been adopted, is an adoptive parent, is a step parent, is a step parent, is a,

any type of caregiver to say that you are not a mother unless apparently you carried said child. I got to tell you that of so many things that Marjorie Taylor Green has said, I mean, it's just you look at her. There aren't words enough for the things that I would like to call her. And this is what I said on Twitter is that any time, dear listeners, anytime that you think that you are not qualified enough or are smart enough to go after the thing you want in life, remind yourself that this piece of fucking trash

is a member of Congress, that people voted to put this woman in office, that we have representatives that are losing their ability to speak, to debate gender affirming care in Montana, gun reform in Tennessee. And this woman is a member. of Congress and remains with an open mic is fucking beyond me and tells me that our system is so broken beyond repair. The Republican Party should be embarrassed, but they have no shame.

So she is not only a member of Congress, but she is one of the people that Kevin McCarthy gave life and heir to and is now basically his deputy speaker of the House. There are not of enough fuck that guys fuck that woman fuck this person to infinity that would suffice how i feel about marjorie taylor green what's amazing about this is she's so dumb that she probably only thought that what she was doing was scoring points quote unquote because randy wine garden is is gay And so she thought what she's doing here is taking a shot at gay marriage and the idea of gays and lesbians and any LGBTQ plus people raising children. And she was probably too dumb to even realize that, you know what, there are a lot of straight couples out there who have adopted kids. And they're not going to look at what you just said and like it.

But she is just that stupid. And just that much of a bad person, she probably doesn't even think it's true for straight couple. She probably thinks straight couples adopting is fine. And she honestly, I don't even think she realized what she said. And I'm only giving her the benefit of the doubt because I believe she's that stupid. She is that stupid. It's not much of a benefit of the doubt.

But it's like when a two-year-old says the sky is yellow, you're like, well, you know, they're two years old. What do they know? You don't go, oh, my God. Maybe she's a test subject for Elon Musk's chip. Who knows? You know, we have no idea. I don't know what's going on in her head, and clearly she doesn't either.

If she is, I can understand why he's keeping it secret. 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 and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studed The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast

subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.