The Daily Beast Podcast - This Marjorie Taylor Greene Wish Could Start a Civil War

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

Eli Merritt, a political historian at Vanderbilt University and author of a book entitled Disunion Among Ourselves: The Perilous Politics of the American Revolution, joins this episode of The New Abnormal to share what would cause a civil war today, and no spoilers but it relates to Marjorie Taylor Greene’s succession wish. Merritt also tells TNA podcast co-host Danielle Moodie three reasons why the Founding Fathers were supportive of slavery when they could have phased out the practice much earlier (besides racism) and how their reasons for keeping it ties back to what’s going on today. Plus! Like usual, the hosts reacting to clips opens up the show. 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. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new

abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Eli Merritt, who's going to talk all about their new book Disunion Among Ourselves, the Perilous Politics of the American Revolution. But first, let's have some fun. All right, are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clip us. Do it. So Zach, Triszo from the Daily Beast has found an amazing clip from a documentary on Roger Stone, who you may know as Trump Whisperer of 40 now years, where he first says what he wants the cult to think when he's talking to a crowd and what he wants them to think about Mr. Trump.

Then he talks about the reality of how he deals with Trump. And I got to tell you, too, this made my day. I want to talk to you about Donald Trump. Someone who is a force of nature in himself. someone who marches to his own drummer, someone who is not handled, not managed, not controlled. A man who cannot be bossed and cannot be bought, which has made him one of the greatest presidents

since Abraham Lincoln. I have a 40-year record of being able to convince the big man to do what's in his best interest. that's in his best interest. He's not easy to deal with. It's complicated. He resents any implication that he is handled or managed or directed. You have to say, remember that night we were in Buffalo

and you gave that speech? God, there had to be 10,000 people. The biggest crowd they'd ever seen. And you said X, Y, and Z, the place went crazy. Remember that? I don't know where you came up with that line, but it's one of the best things you got. Yeah, like, I'm going to use that one again.

Doesn't fucking matter that he never said it. It doesn't matter. It's time-consuming. But it works. I did it for 30 years. Chefskis. That's dealing with a narcissist 101. Yeah.

I think pretty much anyone who's ever had a job in a workplace understands that. I mean, come on. I mean, every day here, Jesus. No, but seriously, but Jesse, remember the clip you did last week? That was really good and I got a lot of really good feedback on it. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, the big man.

That's all I took from the big man, you know? See, personally, when he called him a force of nature, I just thought of two words that Trump says often, big dumps. Yeah. I just thought about nuking. Force of nature. I heard shit storm. You know? Like.

No, but I mean, look, for real. Look, I think it's great that Roger Stone is on tape saying this. But this really is one of those things where it's like, well, no shit, man. I mean, like everything you know about Trump makes this incredibly obvious that that's the way you deal with him. So I just really like it because it really. does show just so starkly back to back the manipulation these people do to the crowd and then what they do when they're behind the scenes. Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, 100%. Priceless ones. Yeah, absolutely. Really who gave Trump political ambitions. It's really. I mean, it's just, it's wild. The way the, I've never seen human beings contort themselves and debase themselves so much for another person.

Like Donald Trump, Donald Trump is their. cult leader, you know, he's a force of nature. He's a man of God. He's this, and he goes. He's just like, are we talking about the same fucking dude that was on The Apprentice? The same dude? Same dude that called his daughter a piece of ass? Like, are we talking about the same guy? That's your Jesus? Got it. Funny enough, it also happens in this movie as they catch Roger Stone calling Ivanka an abortionist and saying that he'd love to fight Jared, which I'd pay good money for it personally to watch. I would, yeah, if you made that at like an MMA thing.

Oh, yeah. I would pay-per-view the hell out of that. I mean, for whatever they're at four, whatever terms they got steel cage, I'm paying pay-per-view. I actually think Roger Stone would kick his ass. I think most Nats could kick Jared's ass. Okay, well, speaking of crime machine Republican politicians, Ken Paxton, a human crime machine who was impeached by the Texas legislature shortly after retaped last week. Well, he's so egregious that even after impeachment, he went on Steve Bannon's human skin tag

Cafe. I'm sorry, Stephen Bannon's War Room. That's what he calls it. And here he admits some pretty interesting stuff about the 2020 election. It's certainly critical to my state. And that's why we fought off these 12 lawsuits. We had them in Houston. We had them in San Antonio. We had them in Austin. We had them in the counties where you'd have the most liberal judges. And it was a concerted effort nationally with lots of money going into it. And just knowing that we had 12 losses that we had to win. And if we had lost one of them, like we lost Harris County, Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas. Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million. Those were all illegal, and we were able to stop every one of them.

Had we not done that, we would have been in the very same situation. We would have been an election night. I was watching election night, and I knew when I saw what was happening in these other states, that that would have been in Texas. We would have been in the same boat. We would have been one of those battleground states that there were counting votes in Harris County for three days. and Donald Trump would have lost the election. He did lose the election, first of all.

So, right. And if we count votes, he loses the election. So, yeah. Got it. There's just, like, there's two really interesting things here to me. One is this goes back to like, there's no quiet part anymore. They just say it now, trying to claim that all those votes that they didn't count were illegal. I think, you know, we all know that's, there's a 99.95% chance.

That ain't true. But now they just. straight up admit that they're not counting votes. And the other thing is, this is a guy who has, as Jesse, as you pointed out, has just been impeached by the Texas House and is about to face a trial in the Texas Senate where his wife is a member. So that's interesting. His way of rallying people to him is not to claim he's not guilty, but it's to say, look at all this shit I did for you, Trump people. He knows that that's enough. People like Steve Bannon and people like Donald Trump, et cetera, don't care if he's guilty. All they care about is, was he loyal to them? And so he's

running around the country doing these national interviews instead of, you know, trying to fix shit at home, where he's basically just saying, hey, this is all the shit I did for you. You need to stand by me now. And none of it is like, oh, I'm innocent. Because he ain't innocent. And everyone knows he's not innocent. None of it matters. Yeah. Like they don't, they don't care about the truth. They don't care about people's vote. Like he would have lost the election. Just listening to that, we're three years from that, from that election. He did not fucking win.

Like, I don't understand why it's impossible to wrap your mind around that. I actually think what he meant, though, was that Trump would have lost Texas if they didn't suppress the 2.5 million mail and balance. Ah, okay. Well, then that makes sense. You know what, Jesse? No. Really?

I don't know. Am I reading it wrong? That's how I read it. No, probably not. But I refuse to give him the. benefit of the doubt. That's true. The reason I give him the benefit of the doubt, though, is, you know, like, one of the things, there is a lot of evidence of voter suppression that Beto could have sued for, and he chose not

to because he wanted to get all of, let's see, he did not really make it to the primary. So never mind, like, he could have actually done good for fighting this in Texas since there's a lot of evidence for it, but, you know, political ambitions over party, I guess, sure. Anyway, I think this is all the more telling why Democrats should really get some lawyers down to that state and really fight a little harder. If somebody who has this much data as the AG knows that that would be the case. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, totally agree. The main reason I disagree with you or at least refuse to give him the benefit of the doubt on this that he meant the election in Texas is that he's talking to Steve Bannon.

And he knows the audience. The audience for that show somehow believes that Trump won the election in 2020. So I just refuse to give any of these assholes the benefit of the doubt anymore. 100%. All right. Well, we have one last clip, which is one Jesse Waters, who we've discussed many times before as a fucking moron. And he's trying out for the conspiracy theory position at Fox News, meaning Tucker Carlson's vacant position.

So let's see how his audition's going. I think he would just rip the stitches off Joe Biden in a general. But then the FBI'd probably destroy them along with the CIA. I'm sure the Pentagon probably has a picture of him stacking up Iraqi bodies in a Baghdad prison cell or something like that. Either that or they'll probably tap his phones. It worked in 2016. You don't think they're going to play dirty with Ron DeSantis? They're going to get Disney.

They're going to get Black Rock. And they're going to get these defense contractors. And they're going to burn this man to the ground. It doesn't matter who the nominee is. They are going to torch the SOB. And now no other Republican nominee can be. not as bad as Trump. Think about it.

If Trump is a racist traitor slash rapist slash rebel, can you have the left come out and say, well, he's not as bad as Trump? I mean, you can't say, well, actually that sounds pretty good. He's not as bad. It has to be absolutely worse.

I just think it's amazing that they get fucking laughs on rape. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, like these people are so fucking despicable that like all of the things that Jesse Ward is just said at the end, every single one of those things is true about Donald Trump. Every single fucking one. Oh, they're going to say, no. You know who said it?

The fucking courts said it. Not just random people walking around on the street of saying these things about Donald Trump. They're just, you know, my God, I don't know how you listen to these clips on a regular basis, Jesse, but God bless you. The amount of dead space that has to be inside your skull to somehow think that the CIA and FBI are full of leftists? I know. And the Pentagon, you know, they're too woke. They're too woke. The woke general.

It's just unreal. There are people at that table on the five with him who are not stupid enough to believe the shit. They actually say, Jesse Waters is. And, you know, I've long said. He's the dumbest person on cable news. as I always have to point out, that's a big pool to pick from. He believes this shit.

He is that stupid, but I don't know how these people dress themselves. Maybe they don't. There's no way they can tie shoes. There is no way they are capable of it. Velcro. Yeah, it's got to be. The one thing I'd like to point out of his stupid is he also said, just like they did in 2016, I'm like,

are you acknowledging that when James Comey said the Hillary Clinton thing, that that was the FBI and CIA trying to throw the election? You're kind of fucking up your point here, mixing it up, Chief. Oh, my God. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Eli Merritt, who is a political historian at Vanderbilt University, and is also the author of American Commonwealth on Substack, and is author of a book entitled,

Disunion Among Ourselves, the Periless Politics, of the American Revolution. Eli, welcome to the new abnormal. Great to be with you. Your book comes out this month. And I always enjoy when I have the opportunity to speak with historians. Because I think that one,

you obviously have a greater breath and depth of this country where we were. And your insights really help us to understand our current political climate, but also where you think that we are going based on where we have been. I want to open up with this question you know, with regard to the American Revolution, with regard to the fact that in recent years,

we've heard politicians, particularly on the right, talk about America being in this kind of cold war or a cold civil war, a nonviolent war. And you actually have covered, and in this book have covered the American Revolution and the actual understanding of the Civil War and of the American Revolution. Can you talk to us about how you understand the way that politicians use war references and kind of the ideological breakdown that we are having in this country? And then how it in the past has resulted in an actual, you know, governmental breakdown and turned into actual war. My first response to that is looking today at discussions of civil war. and I think reckless calls like Marjorie Taylor Greens for a national divorce. I think that these developments are the product of a lot of things.

One is our state of polarization with some underlying race issues there. And also critically, I think, demagoguery. I think these are used for purposes of attention getting and making the news. While also there is, I've talked to many people. There is an underlying fear that the state of American affairs, our domestic affairs today, could lead to some sort of disunion and civil war. I think that's more of a feeling than a threat right now. I don't really see if the problems we had were very geographical, I would feel more concerned. But I think it's reckless and dangerous the way we're using it today.

Very, very different. The subject of the book, as you know, is the American Revolution. Very different then because you had 13 colonies and then states coming together. that each felt very independent and sovereign in and of themselves, they had the sense that what would be natural is for them to coalesce into not one United States, but into two or three separate confederacies based on geography, based on economy, and based on the different systems of labor and the crime against humanity, mainly in the southern colonies that was taking place. So then when they spoke of disunion and civil war, it was a true threat.

that is really one of the things that my book, this book, Disunion Among Ourselves, focuses on, is some things we get really wrong about the founding of the nation. And one of those things is the sense that this nation was inevitable to start with. It was really not. And the main thesis of the book is that the 13 states held together for many reasons, but the most important was if they separated, if they tried to separate into what seemed like more natural nations or confederations, North and South or New England, Middle and Southern, they would have fought civil wars over commerce, finances, and land.

I view these as very different threats or demagogic statements today versus the period of the revolution leading for the next 86 years right up to the Civil War when what they had forecast did actually happen. I think that it's interesting because when you say it is not necessarily concentrated where we are right now in terms of geography. And yet, when we're looking at the map, for instance, and we're seeing where the demagoguery and the really cruel and hate-filled policies are coming from, they are concentrated in the quote-unquote red states in this country, in the south, and in states like Texas and Florida and Alabama and Mississippi. So we know where those places are. And I think that with regard to the commentary around war that is casually thrown around, I

one of the things that have people on edge and I'd love to get your thoughts on this is the fact that it seems as if the weapons in this country, the weapons of war, the AR-15s, the love of guns, the ability to carry them and use them whenever and wherever is also concentrated in these same red states. And so is that perception wrong in the feeling that there is not necessarily the organizational makeup to have a quote-unquote war? But even the threat of it and how we have this ideological kind of authoritarian way of thinking in line with a massive amount of guns leads us to this place of feeling like, are we in a real pressure cooker? Or is it just the appearance of one? Yeah, I think very importantly, we can distinguish political violence from civil war and what leads to civil war.

You're right. And what you're saying is, obviously, any enlightened person I agree with the concern you're expressing over the proliferation of guns in the country, and particularly in red states or southern states. And you are right to say that there is some geographical component, obviously, to the liberal and conservative divide. I think what we have to remember is this difference between political violence, which is happening now. And I think we'll continue to escalate as long as we stay polarized and we practice demagoguery. again. But we have to remember that period from the American Revolution to the Civil War, it was actually not determined yet whether the secession of a state or states from the union was actually legal or constitutional. The Constitution doesn't state anywhere that if you get, you know, tired of this country or you disagree policies of the country, you can withdraw. The things that the Civil War accomplished were the emancipation of enslaved people and also the fact that disunion in civil war were not going to be tolerated in this country. It became established by fact that this was not a course of action that would be tolerated by the federal government.

So I don't see, we could talk through scenarios like we've done that before. Some scenarios that could lead to secession would be the first movement towards possible civil war. Otherwise, I think we're just going to be in the situation of political violence. And I don't mean to say, hey, it's just political violence. That's a terrible thing. But again, we can go deep. if you would like, but the way the United States would get to what I would view as civil war in the way the founders feared it and what actually happened in the 1860s is if one or more states actually seceded from the Union. That's what might call civil war, just as it did in the 1860s. Speak to us about what led to the American Revolution that then would precede the

civil war. What was the climate in the country at that time that got us to this, breaking point. Yeah. The American Revolution came about because the 13 colonies, they were started in the early 17th century, and they had reached a state of maturation in the British Empire, where, frankly, they did not want to be treated as second-class citizens. That's one of the best ways, I believe, to understand what happened and why we had the American Revolution. It was It was the culture and the climate, no matter where you went in the British Empire. You are colonies, you know, stick to your role and don't attempt to put these demands on us, such as, well, we actually would like to have representation. We want to have a representative government,

and therefore we need to send our elected representatives to parliament. So that is somewhat the climate, and this had obviously been going on for years and decades. There had been a period of strong civil disobedience beginning in the 1760s. Then, of course, we had the Boston Tea Party, and that's actually much less interesting than the way the British Parliament responded to that. To stay brief, they responded with four very authoritarian acts of parliament. This is what set off the American Revolution in which they continued for another year or two to resist through economic civil disobedience. That didn't fail.

Americans, including African Americans, were murdered at Lexington and Concord, and that triggered the whole series of events that eventually led to independence. Yeah. So then the question is, what is it that we get wrong? Because I feel like as a country, you know, you have one side of the other. There seems to be what I find to be a very dangerous romanticism that we have, one, about the founding fathers in general and the founding of this nation that is also couched in the erasure of what existed here prior and who existed here prior. But then also this sense of, I guess, righteousness around it that's like, innate into what makes us American. So I do. I want you to really, I guess, break apart what has kind of led to our distortion of self in a way by our misunderstanding of history. That's a great question. And the way I think of what you're saying and what is actually so important is what we get so wrong about history is when we polarize history, I think that one of the greatest dangers for us is when our human minds get folks.

focused on impassioned or righteous thinking about the past, such as we believe in simplistic explanations of the past and of history rather than complex explanations. And I'll explain one example of that, which I feel is one of the important contributions of the book. The main thesis of the book, as I've alluded to, is that the founders, the white founders and the Continental Congress in the 1770s and 1780s were a living in what we can call a shotgun wedding. That is, they more naturally, it would have been more natural to break apart into separate Confederacies, but they could not because they would fight civil wars over numerous

things. So let's look at one of the effects of that, which if we practice complex thinking about history, it is remarkable. Why did the founders of the United States, supposedly enlightened folks dedicated to equality and liberty, why did they perpetuate slavery? It was so hypocritical and so criminal, why did they do this thing? And so this is what I'm getting at in terms of the way we should look at history. I'll give you three explanatory models rather than just one. And my wish for our nation and for citizens is that we would have mature minds where we can take in and work through the cognitive dissidents of understanding, wow, it's really complex.

So one of those models for why the founders perpetuated slavery is the explanatory model is that they were racist. They were white supremacist. I really think that's entirely irrefutable. So that's one answer. Another is they had inherited themselves an economic system in which slavery was entrenched in terms of the livelihoods and profit-making of both Southerners and Northerners. And the last here, again, is what I call in the book the survivalist interpretation of the founding period. And in this case, the survivalist interpretation of why the founders perpetuated slavery is what I expressed earlier. If one or more of the northern states had said, look, and many felt this, look, we do not want to embark down a pathway of a government with these southern states

unless we can agree on a plan to abolish the slave trade and to come up with what would have been a gradual plan for emancipation of enslaved people. What would have happened if they had done that? We know from the evidence is one or more of the southern states would have seceded from the Union, remarkably, this could have been the 1780s instead of the 1860s. And they would have formed separate confederacies, and they would have killed one another. And so in some ways, one of the factors, I'm not saying the entire explanation for why the founders perpetuated slavery is this, but one reason is they prioritize their own self-preservation and survival of the white folks, the white founders, over a plan to do what was obviously

so right from the perspective of human rights and humanity. which was at the least to come up with a gradual plan for emancipation. So that's the way I like to look at history. And I actually feel if we look at history in that broad, complex way, it actually matures us. We are less polarized and therefore we can cooperate better together. So let's fast forward now, Eli, to where we are. Because there's something in what you just said that I really do want to unpack, which is that these slave owners and slave states were so focused on the preservation of white

supremacy, that they did not have a plan moving outside of that agenda in terms of the deepening of our humanity, developing other economic systems that did not have the slave trade at the center of their economic universe. But it was about the preservation of white supremacy. When I see what is happening right now, and I know that I am not the only one, that there are actually, I will hope millions of people that are seeing the same thing happen, which is that we are watching the erasure of the contributions, the existence of people that are not white and male and straight and powerful and wealthy for this preservation for the comfort, as there is a legislation that passed in Florida, for white comfort. And what we're seeing, at least what I experience is that

there is not a plan that the Republican Party, as it stands right now, has for this country other than the erasure of everything that is not white, that is not male, that is not straight, that is not white evangelical Christian, at the expense of the stability and the health of our democracy. Talk to me about how, am I seeing things in the looking glass as like a mirror of what you just mentioned, but with less skill? No, with equal skill. You know, history is on a a continuum. So I do believe that it continues. It doesn't sort of have abrupt beginnings and endings. So, I mean, you bring up the Republican Party. I guess you had to do that. The Republican party is in a state of sickness right now. There's just simply no question about that. And there are

many reasons for that. And of course, the influence of Trump is part of that. But also, we also know that the United States is right now on the crest of or pushing forward a wave of progress for true equality of people of color in the nation. And so this does, of course, threaten white Americans who do not look upon that as the great opportunity of our country today. They look upon it as a threat. They look upon it many, we know these ideas of white replacement, etc., as a loss to white people or the legacy of the nation as being a white nation. So this, the fight that many African Americans began during the revolution, many fought for liberty. There were 5,000 black Americans who fought in the American Revolution. And then onward and onward through

the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation. That was just the beginnings, obviously, of equality. We're still working on this, I think. And the Republican Party, it's hard to speak about it, for me rationally because it has become so irrational. But I believe it's either has to go extinct or somehow it has to find its way towards enlightenment and out of the state of incredible threat that it finds itself in today. Again, the recurrent theme I like so much as you know is demagoguery. Demagoguery is poison in democracies. And so we look at Fox News.

We look at Donald Trump. We look at Marjorie Taylor Green and some others. People are followers. These fears are being stoked from on high. And that's the great tragedy I believe today. And I absolutely and totally agree with you. And I think that it is really important, one, for people to understand history, not in the sanitized and whitewashed way that it has been shared, but in the way in which you have been able to go into depths in your writing, both on American Commonwealth on Substack and also in your latest book, Disunion Among Ourselves.

Eli, we will have to leave it there for today, but I would love for you to come back and continue this conversation because I think that it is a really important one that maps out where we are headed. Great to be with you. Thanks for doing what you're doing. 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? Check out our comedy podcast. The Last Laugh and our star studded 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

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