The Daily Beast Podcast - Too Many Dead Capitol Cops for Josh Hawley to Pretend He’s Innocent

Episode Date: January 12, 2021

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) just can’t understand why everyone wants him to resign. He put out a brave tweet calling for the “violence” to end after a mob he helped incite laid siege to the Capitol, and his “woke” publisher still gave in to “cancel culture” and axed his beloved book. Now people won’t stop going on about his objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the blood-soaked wake of the riot. To offer the senator a bit of clarity, co-hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast talked to Pennsylvania’s truth-talking lieutenant governor, John Fetterman. Fetterman, who’s faced his own challenges from Republicans who refuse to accept the 2020 election’s outcome at home, had a few choice words for Hawley and his erstwhile political ambitions on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Plus, New York University professor and “Pivot” co-host Scott Galloway on exactly how much credit we should give Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey for kicking Donald Trump off their platforms. “There’s blood on your hands, Josh Hawley,” Wilson says. “...You begged and pleaded to be the favorite of Donald Trump by continuing with this fucking lie, that inflamed, these conspiratorial lunatics, and they came down there.” Wilson also calls BS on appeals for political unity if there aren’t going to be any resignations first—Hawley foremost among them. “All those excuses and this false and shallow horseshit hypocritical appeal to unity and reconciliation,” he says. “Yeah. OK. Quit first, motherfucker. And then we'll talk.” Fetterman had a direct, searing message for Hawley and his fellow GOP “objectors.” “Your supporters drove you from your very chamber. And after all that trauma, people were shot and people died, you still were so hell bent on exploiting this for your own political advantage. After all that, you still got up in front and continued to tell what you know are lies,” Fetterman says. “You know, [Hawley] went to Stanford and Yale law. He knows better than anybody that this is all garbage. And this is the point. And that’s what makes him so reprehensible. You know, I don’t care what your political beliefs are. If you’re willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your, your soul is dipped in dog shit. I don’t know how else to say it.” Then, NYU professor Scott Galloway joins for a discussion about Twitter and Facebook taking away the president’s social media accounts. “There is nothing noble. There is nothing patriotic. There was nothing civic in Zuckerberg or Dorsey kicking these people off of their platforms,” Galloway says. “This is them trying to wallpaper over their delay and obfuscation. People who get DUIs typically have driven drunk 200 times before they kill a family or they’re pulled over. Wow. And these guys have been driving drunk and all of a sudden a family got killed. And now they’re sorry… They deserve zero fucking credit for doing the right thing at the bottom of the ninth inning.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers.

Hi, Rick Wilson. Hi, Molly Jong Fast. How are you? I'm good. There was fuckery. There's been so much fuckery over this weekend. And I have to get this out right now, everybody. Right this minute, I have to get this out.

Let's go. Any motherfucker who says, oh, we now need peace and harmony and unity and comedy, and everything needs to be sweetness and light, and we all have to get along. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.

Fuck you sideways. You lying, snake-bellied motherfuckers. These guys are playing the refs. They are doing everything they can to now pretend that they're so innocent. There's blood on your hands, Ted Cruz. There's blood on your hands, Josh Hawley. There's blood on your hands, Ron Johnson. There's blood on your hands, you stupid twit, Marsha Blackburn.

You fucking idiot, lured them down there. You begged and pleaded to be the favorite of Donald Trump by continuing this fucking lie that inflame these conspiratorial lunatics. and they came down there. And now, folks, since our last show, we know a lot more about what was about to happen. Yeah. They were about to murder people. They were about to kill people. They beat a cop to death with flagpoles and a fire extinguisher. So fuck you. You don't get unity. You don't get a sense of moving forward past this unfortunate moment. Fuck you. I'm telling you, Molly, I am lit the fuck up about this. Let's talk about this for a second. In the Senate, the worst offenders are really Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and then Ron Johnson, who's sort of spread disinformation, and then there's sort of the Marsha Blackburn and the Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama Senator. Christy Heights from Alabama. No, from Mississippi.

She'll go for anything that has an R next to it. I mean, certainly Cruz and Holly have to go. Here's the situation right now. Both Cruz and Holly come from a state where if they were eaten by wolves tomorrow, their governors could easily find a Republican replacement of equal conservative strike. Hopefully not one that's a goddamn fucking filthy insurgent traitor seditionist seeking to overthrow the United States government. But that's just me. Tell us what you really think. Yeah, I know.

I know. This is going to be that episode, the rage episode. I truly believe that if Ted Cruz, and I know laugh along with me, if Ted Cruz had one iota, of honor, dignity, or character, he would recognize what he's done wrong and quit. Of course, he wouldn't be Ted Cruz then. If Josh Hawley had one iota of character or honor or dignity, he would recognize what he's done and quit. But these men, if I may call them men, these creatures are so low, they are so pathetic. They are so purely political in every way that they, with blood on their hands,

have gone out and tweeted and made statements, oh, our thoughts and prayers are with the lives of the poor police officer who was beaten to death by the fucking people that you motherfuckers stoked up, that you fucking people did. These people understood what they were doing. And let me tell you what would have happened. I'm sorry, I'm just on a rip today. Let me tell you what would have happened if they'd been successful. Okay. If that group that Officer Goodman led away from the Senate, if that mob that was stopped by the officer who shot the crazy QAnon lady who was jumping through the window to get into the private speaker's area. Right. If they had found those people they wanted to find, mobs do what mobs do. Mops are an animal. They're out of control. Watch the video of them beating a police officer to death with flagpoles and a fire extinguisher. Watch that video. Those aren't people anymore. They're animals. If that mob had gotten what it wanted, if that mob had gotten into the building and gotten into the places where the members were hiding for their lives, if that mob had reached them and killed them, you know what Josh Hawley would have said?

He would have said, oh, this is terrible, this is horrible. And then there would have been a but. But the media is so much worse. But the lying libtard stole the election. But my economic insecurity of my followers, it's terrible. And all these people have been so mean to Donald Trump. That's what would have happened. And you can just, you could hear the dripping cynicism,

the unbelievable, boundless degree of cynicism in their tweets and their statements this week. and they would have excused anything that happened. I mean, they feel like they're in a little bit of trouble right now because a failed coup is a bad thing for the coup plot and for the supporters of the coup. And they're worried now that eventually it's going to come back to haunt them. If there's campaign people or their staffers or their friends or their social media friends,

there's going to be a tie back to them somehow. They're worried about that. They're scared about that. And they're scared that America's not, oh, I don't know, pro-mob murder. Right. But that mob wanted something. It almost got it. And no excuses now for saying, oh, well, you know, that wasn't us.

That wasn't our president. Didn't call. You can't say Trump caused that. I don't know. All those excuses and this false and shallow, horseshit, hypocritical appeal to unity and reconciliation. Yeah. Okay, quit first, motherfucker, and then we'll talk. This has been a message from Rick Wilson's raging spleen.

So, Todd does, will the Lincoln Project get involved in, like, taking out ads and shaming these people and reminding everyone of their part? We're already taking the fight to them on a number of fronts. Josh, tune in back home in the next couple days. You'll enjoy it. You too, Ted. And Ron Johnson, I hope, too, because he's up for a election in two years. Well, Ron Johnson's about to face a recall in the state of Wisconsin. And I can tell you.

How? Well, it's one of the few states that has a legal recall provision. vision where you basically do a ballot initiative and you can vote to recall somebody. Can they do that as special? What are they going to do? Well, stay tuned. But right now, the smart lawyers are giving us the roadmap on that. But Ron Johnson is a particularly egregious member of the Trump coterie of fuckwitz and is a particularly egregious member of the Russia cover-up plot and of the Hunter Biden laptop bullshit. Oh my God, it's going to blow white open.

You know, okay, whatever. And frankly, every single one of these people that was a member of that last clack of the deadenders who were going to still object on the floor, even when they knew there was a raging, angry mob descending on the Senate at that moment. And look, this is not the West Wing, okay? This isn't even House of Cards. But at some point, even people you dislike, you hope they have a moment of moral clarity. If they have a moment where they say, man, I am being a fucker. I got to stop this. I talk.

But you know, they won't. Right, which is why you guys have to. And which is why we'll be here to poke the bear. And I will say this, there is a growing campaign in this country. And we've done some of it. Other people are participating now, too. There's a growing campaign in this country by corporate America on two fronts. The first front is very simple.

It is that the people that are leading this insurgency and the super PACs that support them and the institutions like the NRCC and the NRSC that support them, there is now a growing sense in corporate America that that's not a question you want to have to answer at a shareholder meeting. Are you, hey, did you back that guy who wanted to overthrow the government by letting a violent mob come in and murder members of Congress? And the second tier of that, which has caused a gigantic shit show on the right, is that the people that have empowered. Donald Trump ordinarily would leave a White House job and go out and become, I don't know, head of communications for, you know, Uber or the legislative affairs director for Ford Motor Company, or they'd go into a nice couple of board positions. So they'd be given speaking contracts to go out and speak to 20 corporate audiences a year for 100 grand a pop. All these things, right? All these, all these beautiful payoffs for working for shit wages for four years, you know, 20 hours a day with no days off.

Okay? Right. There's an increasing sense now in corporate America that these people are poison, that they are deadly, deadly poison, that they are equity killers, that they are brand killers. And I assure you that is something that, especially the tier one people, look, I don't care about some GS9 who worked in the labor department. Okay. Right. I care about the John Kelly's and the Kaylee McInney's. What about Kelly?

Well, made a bed. Going to have to lay down in it. I think Uber Ross actually is dead, so I think that'll be it. He may be dead, you know? But Steve Mnuchin, as an example. Steve Mnuchin is very much a lot. Jerry Cohn as an example. Yeah, exactly.

I've heard, by the way, I heard a rumor. It's a very good rumor. It's not really a rumor. It's actually intelligent. Let's hear it. Steve Mnuchin has not been in Washington for over a month. I'm sure. Why would he be? He was back in LA for a couple weeks, and then he was over in Israel for a couple weeks,

and I heard he was in New York recently. So Steve Mnuchin is, he may be still trying to spend people on the, oh, I'm going to stay because, you know, I can help keep things under control when it gets really crazy. Let's say your efforts are working, and we really see a mass boycott of the ability for Holly and Cruz to fundraise for the party, since the Senate's so much about fundraising, Does that become a thing where expulsion dash them being pressured to resign? Do you think there is a play there or is that fantasy? The majority of their fundraising individually comes from online donors.

These are the things that we're talking about are the major donor checks, the big pack checks, you know, for a half a million dollars to the NRCC, or $200,000 to the NRSC, or the group that make a little news here, the Republican attorneys general, Association has a dark money pack. You've probably seen the stories about it. They were involved in organizing the insurgency in Washington. They were basically like the

Huala bankers who funded Al-Qaeda. What about Jenny Thomas? You know? Or not as much? Look, open secret. Jenny Thomas is fucking crazy as a shithouse rat. Everybody in D.C. knows it. Okay. So I'm not excusing

her. I'm just saying, you know, I don't think Jenny Thomas have organizational umph to do things like that. Like the Republican AGs do. Right. I'm not comparing her directly to the two types of mass killers. Like a spree killer does stuff on an impulsive natures. A serial killer like plots and plans stuff out.

It's more ritualistic. Some serial killer was behind this thing. Somebody with a bent of mind that allowed them to start organizing this. And remember, I'm going to go back to those people. knew where the parliamentarians office was, which is not an easy thing to find. It's not something that's evident or obvious. Listen, I'm telling you, I think I've said this to you before. I've been in the Senate hundreds of times in my life, in my career, hundreds of times. I couldn't find the parliamentarians office. You put a gun to my head. Okay? This was an organized event.

There was something underneath this that is, I think, will be made more explicable as the arrest start to roll up. And by the way, if you're an oathkeeper, I would either, I'd plan to make sure the dogs get put in the kennel before the feds arrive. Do we know what Turning Point USA's involvement was? Because they definitely were promote, I mean, we saw Charlie Kirk was tweeting about it and promoting about it. And mysteriously, he deleted those tweets, didn't me? Yeah, it's shocking. Charlie Kirk, the Uber, uber duchin, Fure of the Trump-Insel Woffen, had those tweets out there and suddenly pulled them down.

I don't know why. What? Did you get cucks, Charlie? What happened? What do you think now? Democrats have sort of made a deal that in 24 hours, if Mike Pence doesn't do the 25th, then they're going to impeach again. Well, I think that, I think, frankly, I would have brought Congress back into an emergency session Thursday night.

I think they're back. No, I know. They're back now. I would have brought them in Thursday. I would have held this thing 24-7. I would have ground it down. I would have made every Republican vote on the record. And I would have raised the political pain level so that everybody knows who they are.

And so now, because they're dumb, the Republicans had one guy object to a unanimous consent request. So tomorrow they'll be back. When you hear this, it'll be today. There will be a unanimous consent request. It will fail again. they will have to take a voice vote. It will succeed. They will then proceed with the impeachment thing. That's going to take about a day of debate.

It will go to the Senate. Mitch McConnell will kill it. Right. Maybe. Maybe. But no, actually, not maybe. Not maybe. You think for sure. No. I think positively Mitch McConnell will kill it. You know why?

Why? Mitch McConnell does not want to be murdered. But I don't know. Murder is a thing now with these people, as you know. No, I know. So, you know. And I will tell you this. obviously because of our prominent position as Trump antagonists, the death threat TikTok on the Lincoln Project folks has been up through the stratosphere this weekend.

And the congressman from Michigan who admitted, I'm sorry, his name is, I'm gaping on his name right now, who admitted these Republicans are sticking with Trump in part because they fear for their lives. Yeah, I saw that. If you fear for your life and you can't vote against the dear leader, you're not in the Republican Party. you're in the bath party. Yeah. I mean, never be the first guy to stop clapping when Saddam is speaking. That's a bad way to live, guys. That's a bad way to live.

You got to, you got to, you know, think about whether or not the predicates of your political wife started out with, I would just love to be in a party in elected office where I fear that if I say something wrong against the dear leader, one of his fanatic, knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing mocks will come up to me and pop two in the back of my head one day. It's not a good party to be. Yeah. It's not a good party to be in at all. Scott Calloway is the host of the podcast Pivot at the Professor G. Show,

as well as being a professor at NYU Stern University and the author of many great books on the intersection of business and tech. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Scott, for joining us. Very excited. Thanks, Molly. So, our first question is really about Trump being banned from Twitter and Facebook and Uber Eats and Spotify.

Spotify. Bibo, Club Penguin, Zanga, Myspace. We open the door. We open the door to Rick Wilson fuckery, and it always happens. What is your hot take on this? Well, okay, let's be clear. Let's give credit where credit is due, and that is Jack Dorsey kicked Donald Trump

and his hateful, vindictive, insurrectionist content off of the platform 1449 days into his 1460-day tenure. So if I were to come home and find my, 17-year-old son, and I have a 10-year-old son, but I'm pretty sure if I came home in seven years and he was vacuuming the living room after I'd been gone for a week, the first inclination would be to applaud him and recognize his efforts, and then I'd immediately recognize that this likely meant he had a 7,000-person rave at the house where he was selling Molly and Crystal meth. And that's what's going on here. There is nothing noble, there is nothing patriotic,

there is nothing civic in Zuckerberg or Dorsey kicking these people off of their platforms. is them trying to wallpaper over, their delay in obfuscation. People who get DUIs typically have driven drunk 200 times before they kill a family or they're pulled over. Wow. And these guys have been driving drunk and all of a sudden a family got killed and now they're sorry. So I think they should be held accountable. I think it's a sad state when we're looking to 30-something part-time CEOs or people who can't be removed from office to met out justice for an insurrection. It says a lot of bad things about our society, but be clear. Be clear. Zuckerberg didn't kick Trump off of Facebook and Dorsey didn't kick Trump off of Twitter. Stacey Abrams kicked Trump off of Facebook.

They deserve zero fucking credit for doing the right thing at the bottom of the ninth inning. How fucking loo you, brother. But how did Stacey Abrams do it? Because these people woke up about three days ago and recognized that the people chairing the committees that oversee their sectors are now Democrats. Right. And that the unholyest alliance of the last decade between Zuckerberg and Trump, which went something like this, let me continue to spew venom and misinformation and I won't break your ass up. Let's shake on it. I mean, that was the most obvious and unholy alliance that's taken place. And now Representative Sicilini is going to chair. He is chairing the House subcommittee. The most productive subcommittee hearing we had was chaired by a Democrat who asked real questions,

and rightfully pointed out and showed up with evidence and receipts saying you've committed antitrust. The other thing that's very exciting here, and I think it's part of healing, you can't heal without accountability. And there's going to be a lot of discussion talking about how no sooner had these folks could they take the furniture away from barricading the doors to the Capitol. Representative Gates gets up on the floor and starts spreading more misinformation. And it's not even that he's stupid. He knows he's spreading misinformation. So, okay, what's the accountability there? What is the accountability for these organizations? If you look at Twitter, I apologize, I'm hopping around a lot, but I'm going to hopping mad right now. We love it. If you look at Twitter, all right, their stock was at 55, seven years ago. It bottomed to 24. Trump got elected, and immediately over the course of the last four years of slowly began a march back to 55, he's booted off of Twitter and the stock declines 10%, which means, and Jack Dorsey and the board know this, They created a platform and a for-profit engine based on hate, based on misogyny, based on bigotry,

and any business that has an economic model based on that sort of inscivility deserves to be shut the fuck down. And these people deserve no credit. They should absolutely be held accountable. All the legacy board members and the CEO of those companies should not only resign, but they didn't put Capone in jail for murdering. They put him in jail for tax evasion. Facebook has been colluding, cartel pricing. There needs to be a perp walk in social media. Scott, I think you could not be more right about their motivations. They immediately saw, oh, God, what are we going to do now? We have to throw somebody over the back of the sled

so the wolves don't catch us. And this idea that it was some sudden revelation of civic virtue didn't happen during any of the other incitements or Charlottesville or anything else, you, loot, we shoot, or any other provocation. It came when they realized that Mitch McConnell was now minority leader Mitch McConnell. That's right. That's right. And the notion, and all these Republican senators taking to meet the press, a senator to me, who I like, and I think is a reasonable guy,

and it's kind of the, I would like to think the moderate that I aspire, to support is saying, well, he crossed a line. We didn't see this coming. Didn't see this coming? Get the fuck out of here. There were people on Twitter and Facebook organizing to kidnap the governor of Michigan. There was a woman run over by a car at UVA. I mean, what do you mean you didn't see this coming? Everyone saw this coming. So you're at a trial. You've killed a family in a minivan for drunk driving. Yeah, you didn't mean to kill that family, but boss, you are in trouble. You are criminally liable. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's really a good point. Can you explain to us what Section 230 is? So this was legislation passed in 1997, actually got Democrats, Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon, one of them that said that no interactive or nascent interactive platforms should be liable for the content posted to those platforms. And it was meant to provide cloud cover to nascent smaller firms to promote innovation. And I think,

the intention was the right one. These were budding platforms that didn't want Rupert Murdoch putting them out of business, right? So they gave them protection. They are now the most powerful entities in the world, and they constantly use this as cloud cover to let ridiculously harmful things that pervert our elections, antitrust behavior, job destruction, and then on and on. And they use this as this blanket coverage. It is outdated. It's like giving your eight-year-old, who's now 24, the same coat. The legislation is totally outdated. And then the people, people misunderstand what it is. They say, Trump says, let's do away with it. Well, if you did away with it, it would probably hurt really extreme left voices as more, excuse me, extreme right voices more than it would hurt extreme left

voices. And it would create chaos. The comments section on the New York Times.com would probably have to shut down if they remove 230. But there are carve outs. There's carveouts for sex trafficking, and they're likely should be carve outs for things around health, things that might incite violence. So it needs to be modified, but it has been so perverted and people don't understand it, and it's been to become a political football. But loosely speaking, it's been cloud cover that's outdated and given these quote-unquote nascent platforms get out of jail-free card when they should be liable for some of the real damage they're doing on their platforms. The irony of Trump calling for the end of 230 makes no sound. It's rich. But Scott's point, though, is exactly right.

This has become the greatest get-out-of-jail-free card of all time. If the Chamber of Commerce had gone to carve out a business liability exception somewhere, and they got one one thousandth of what 230 does, they would think that they had the greatest triumph of all time. Well, look, Rick and Molly, if we said we need to organize against John Travolta. He's a threat to society. He's going to make Battlefield Earth Part 2. That's right.

That's right. It's coming. Greece 3 is coming. So look, and all of a sudden, people start showing up at his house and damaging property. we would be liable. If we said incorrect things that inflamed and that incented or motivated violence, they would reverse engineer it to this media property and we would potentially be held liable. There is no reason these firms should have a greater level of protection than any other media company. And they say, well, wait, it would be impossible to monitor this bullshit.

We're talking about the realm of the profitable, not the possible. There was an analysis done, I think by the Atlantic of the New York Times that showed that just 37 accounts on Twitter were responsible for about 70 to 80 percent of the truly ugly misinformation that could lead to violence. It's a long, yeah, it's a long tail. It just wouldn't have been that hard. It isn't, this is not about the impossible. And everybody says, well, they let it turn into an argument of they're trying to,

they're trying to squelch left or far right voices. Nothing. I know these guys. They don't lean, they don't lean red. They don't lean blue. They lean green. And the problem is they've pitted everybody against each other such that they They can slow roll it out and continue to do damage to the Commonwealth because the bottom line is in a capitalist society, when you're a billionaire, your kids have access to better schools, better health care, you have access to a broader set of selection mates than you deserve and you get to go do really fucking cool things.

And when you get to do those things that blurs your vision, and we're used to be government stepping in and saying, sorry, boss, what you're doing here, whether you're killing it and whether you're making a lot of money, you can't continue to pour mercury into the river. you can't continue to put out faulty medication. In this instance, we've decided, no, there are our new Jesus Christ. They should not be subject to the same scrutiny as every other fucking company has been subject to over the last hundred years. So Trump is against 230, but smart people should also should be for 230, but sort of making it more modern. I just think it needs to be updated. Doing away with it would probably create a level of litigation, right? Yeah, litigation, a lot of platforms. As usual, it would hurt the small and medium-sized guys that just don't have the resources to deal with this. It needs to be modified and updated. And the government is supposed to be smart. We have a lot of regulation that is nuanced and smart and a lot that isn't. But it needs to be updated. And people above my pay grade should be thinking out, what are the carve-outs? How do we apply it? Is there an exemption for companies that do say less than a billion dollars in revenue, recognizing they don't have the resources to police the platform? is there, I think there needs to be some, what I'll call variable standards. I mean, this is something I'm trying to do, and that is I have a lot of shitty takes on stuff.

And I recognize that as my followership and influence has grown, I tried to be more thoughtful about having fewer shitty takes, recognizing they can do more damage as your influence grows. So if you have 10 million followers on Twitter, there should be a greater level of scrutiny and standards for you. And it just wouldn't be that hard for these guys to implement that and some regulation that says, you know what, when you have people on the platform that have tens of millions of followers, you know who they are, and we can directly correlate those 10 million followers to organizing to kidnap the governor, you're in deep shit. And until we get the algebra of disincentives down,

it's going to continue. Right. And look, and some of this with the major carry, with the Facebook scale people and Twitter, Facebook scale people, this bullshit of we could never monitor, oh, we've got everything so, so nuanced. They can find a fucking DMC, DMCA copyright violation in a nanosecond. 100%. It's what they're incentivized to find. And that's because there's a regulatory penalty to them if they keep hosting copyrighted material

that is posted illegally. It doesn't take a super sophisticated AI to track words like, let's go kill the governor. If I play four seconds to stay in alive in one of my opening videos in Prop G on YouTube, I got a notice and they take it down. I can target on Facebook households

in Short Hills, New Jersey, that have a teenager who recently got his driver's license, but they can't figure out when people are organizing to kidnap the governor. And these people aren't even hiding it. So, yeah, we're talking about, again, the realm of the profitable, not the realm of the possible. These companies, when it's raining money, your vision and your citizenship gets blurred. And to a certain extent, we're the ones that have failed to elect the leaders and impose the same standards. If General Motors was allowed to pour mercury into the river, they would continue to do it.

because even if they did want to do it, they would be putting themselves at a disadvantage versus Ford or Chrysler who continued to do it and could charge less further, K-Car or whatever. So it is up to us to elect people who will actually implement. This is what government is supposed to do. They're supposed to foot externalities to taxation and regulation, and we have let these guys go on. We have let this fire rage for way too long. Scott, what are you looking to see a Biden administration do in terms of regulating tech and is reversing net neutrality back to where it was in the Obama era, one of the things?

I don't understand net neutrality. What I will say, I was a fan of net neutrality. When you turned it back, I thought the sky was going to fall, and it doesn't appear it has. So I don't know if net neutrality is the issue we all thought. But in terms of what should be done, the first is the most accretive, the greatest tax cut that it could be given to Americans right now would be to quintuple the budget of the DOJ and the FTC and go through big tech, big pharma, gag, big food, and break companies up and oxygenate the marketplace. There's too much concentration of power, which leads to bad place. Look where we are now. We are now turning after an insurrection

that first since 1811 or whatever it was. And we turn to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and beg them to med out punishment against our president. That's where we are, right? Please, please shut his account down. So clearly tech has too much power. Antitrust. Right. Oh, it's not just tech. It's ag. cross everything. It's insurance, the clustering of all these firms and the aggregation of all this power and all these firms. And I say this as a market conservative, they have used regulatory chicanery and tax advantages to accumulate market share that is now, you know, it doesn't matter that ConAgra has 87 brands. It's all fucking ConAgra at the end of the day. That's right. And until, so the first is antitrust. The second is I do think we have to align incentives without. outcomes, and that is, if you look at what's happened over the last, since the pandemic, there's a reason why America has handled this so poorly, a variety of reasons.

But I think one of the reasons America has let Trump get as far as he's gotten and let the pandemic rage as quickly as it's raged is that the one percent that speak to the top one percent billionaires speak to the senator an average of every three months. That one percent, someone worth $100 million has more than a hundred times the influence of someone worth a million dollars. And those people, the last nine months, has been cocaine and champagne. If you're in the top 1%, the pandemic and Trump have met more time with your family, more time on Netflix, and your wealth has exploded. So there's no real incentive.

There's no sense of urgency to do something about a tyrannical fascist or a pandemic. When you know what, I just seem to, the more infections and the more outrageous tweets, the richer I get. And this is the dirty secret that we don't want to talk about. and that is the shareholder class that has an outsized level of influence is living their best lives. So we're going to have to figure out a way where, okay, if Elon Musk adds the GDP, adds the GDP of Hungary in the last eight months since the first infection, then maybe we should do away with capital gains tax exemption. Maybe if the rich are getting so fabulously rich, not off the pandemic, but despite it, then maybe we should do what Reagan did and do away with a lower tax rate for the wealthiest who are best. benefiting here. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that you should punish them or Robin Hood them,

but you're going to create, you're not going to have a full-throated capitalist response to the pandemic or to a tyrant unless the incentives are there. And right now, there's been a disincentive. I would argue, and it's a different talk show, that the pandemic has been used as cloud cover to borrow $3 trillion from future generations such that we can juice the markets and take the NASDAQ up. And I think it's damaging for our society. No question. So, Can you explain what's happened with a little bit about what's happened with Gab and Parlor? Well, yeah. So my co-host on Pivot did an interview with the guy who runs Parlor and it horrified everybody.

And again, there is a certain level. There's a lot to unpack here. The fact that one company can basically shut a company down overnight, Amazon basically shut down Parlor overnight. And you might think that's bad. Because at some point, Amazon makes bad calls about media and liberal or conservative views. So that's bad right there. But this notion that it's a violation of First Amendment, my understanding of First Amendment, and Rick and you and Molly probably can forget more about this, I'm ever going to know, but basically it says Congress can't prohibit anyone from saying what they want in the town square. But it doesn't mean private companies have to give platform. It doesn't mean that freedom of speech equals freedom of reach. And they've used that as this kind of false flag or false narrative that these companies that, oh, you're violating the First Amendment. Twitter has doesn't have any responsibility of First Amendment. Amazon Web Service doesn't have any responsibility to ensure. parlor. Now, if Amazon can start shutting down companies and putting them out of business with 24 hours

notice because they are too dominant, I think that's a separate talk show. But back to Molly, where you said what needs to be done, we need to do away with what is infected, I would have called the far left with this bullshit fucked up version of wokeness called both-sidedness, where we've decided we need to understand these people who are left behind by America, these people who show up at the capital and are angry, these people who loot and destroy property. We need to understand that. Fuck that. At some point, Conservatives used to talk all the time like, oh, we need to restore shame. It's a necessary social function. Well, no, we also need to restore accountability and punishment. We won't until we realize that it's the only thing that's going to, pain is the only teacher in politics.

It works really well. So I'll just give you an example. The next time someone calls you and says, hey, Rick or Molly, I can get your kid into UCLA if you give me $50,000 to give to the tennis coach, you're hanging up that phone. because guess what? Aunt Becky did a perp walk. So the algebra of disincentive, the algebra of disincentive has been implemented and it is very effective until, until a senator or a

congressman has matching funds or something taken away because they got on the floor and they spread misinformation. No sooner within they were able to take furniture away to barricade the doors and they knowingly spread information until we start putting people in jail, until the board of social media firms are kicked off those boards unceremoniously because they knew what was going on, nothing's going to change. Nothing's going to change.

Right. This was really great. Thank you so much, Scott. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the

next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only beast inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com to become a beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. The DailyBeast.com.

John Fetterman is the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and who has an impending United States Senate run coming. And Giselle Fetterman is both his wife and the owner of the free store. And today they're going to talk to us about what's going on in Pennsylvania. Have you announced running for Senate yet? I haven't. just exploring it. But in 72 hours,

just mentioning that I'm looking at it, we raised over half a million dollars from 15,000 donors from every state in the country and 63 out of 67 Pennsylvania counties. It was just, you know, insane. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, I mean, so yeah, I'm, if nothing else, I'm just like, thank you everybody. Tell me about the fuckery, because it sounds like Pennsylvania's got a lot of stuff going on. Can you explain to our listeners what exactly is happening in the Pennsylvania State House? Absolutely. What happened was we had, what we always have every four years, is half the Senate is up for re-election. And the day in question last Tuesday was really what I

call picture day, quote unquote, where it's perfunctory and ceremonial, where families come in, and the swearing in was never in question. And it was always like a rare bipartisan day, if anything, both parties have members being sworn in. So the Republican majority announced that they were not going to swear in one of the Democratic senators who was a, was admittedly a close race, but was certified, no different in terms of credentialing than all of the other senators from either party. And then also the Supreme Court of our state affirmed that ruling. And they said, we're not seating them. And I was like, what do you mean you're not going to speed them? Like, How can you not see the democratically elected official?

And, you know, I preside over the Senate. So they were going to proceed with that motion. And I refused to entertain that motion. And I kept pushing back, I won't do it. I won't do it. They did the one procedural move that they could. And they created a motion where they voted me off or out, basically. And that's what they did.

Can they do that? They can in the sense that they can do the motion. I could have remained in there physically, and I could have turned it into a very chaotic scene more so than it already was. But my purpose of doing what I did was is to draw attention to the fact that what they're doing and to give Senator Brewster the opportunity to be seated, which he was given the opportunity, but they ultimately rejected it again. And my quote is, they said, well, you broke the rules. I'm like, well, you broke the law. Right. You know, I'll break rules any day before I would ever break the law, which what you did.

And that was a foreshadowing to the kind of chaos that you saw in Washington because that morning, I had a group of 200 angry Trump voters and protesters underneath my office balcony protesting. And just, I still don't know why. That could have easily gone the same way that it did in D.C. Like, you know, we didn't have any extra security or anything. You're in a really split state. Yeah, down the middle. Yeah.

And you have a really sort of weaponized Republican Party, not unlike the rest of America. What is your secret? Well, I don't know if I'd call this here, but I'm just not afraid to tell and stand on the truth. And, you know, if you think that someone should work for 725 an hour, you know, vote for the other person. If you think that, you know, someone from the LGBTQI community should be treated like a second-class citizen or third-class, then vote for somebody else. If you think that we should, I mean, just you name it. I just believe in being very forthright. And that seems to resonate.

And the point is that it's not a political issue. It's the fact. It's true. And we shouldn't be arguing about this. I mean, there's plenty of policies we can argue about. But these are, I think, fundamental truths. Yeah, I was reading something today where a lot of these Republican congressmen in the House were saying that they were worried about voting for the election results, even though they knew what Trump was pitching was wrong. They were scared for their families. What's your take on that? I understand, you know, kind of being owned by your caucus. I get that. And, you know, you know what's professional wrestling, quote unquote, versus like serious sedition.

And to be fair, you know, there were members of the House leadership and the Senate leadership in Pennsylvania that never crossed that line. But there were members that did. In fact, one of the state senators, Doug Maastriano, was actually involved in the capital situation. Yeah. And, you know, this idea that you didn't have to take it as far as you did. I mean, you can, you know, do the folding chair over the head and the rake to the eyes. But at the end of the day, you can always wink, wink, or pull back. but eight out of our nine Republican congressional members voted, and they know more than anybody that they're lying.

And that's what's so disingenuous. It's one thing to be sincerely committed to a belief structure, and then it's an entirely other one to say, I know I'm lying, I know this is disingenuous. I'm either pandering or, you know, like, you know, it's just, it's disingenuous and dangerous. and you saw what happens when enough of that accumulates what happened on Wednesday. Do you get scared for your safety? No, never. I don't care what happens to me. You know, it's just my family.

That's all I care about is my family. If the end comes, for me, that's whatever. It's just my family. And that's all I care about. So explain to our listeners what the free store is and how it operates. Sure. So the free store was born because, you know, when I came to this country as a young immigrant, we were dumpster divers.

and we you know all our furniture came from the curve on both garbage day and those experiences allowed me to see how much excess there was in both retail and how much waste and how disposable things were and I wanted to create a space where those items could be distributed for families in need at no cost like a really kind of beautiful organic dignified experience you know I know with my history that if you go to many food banks and other organizations, you have to prove that you're hungry. You have to provide your taxes. You know, it's a really dehumanizing experience.

You're already going through something, and now this place is asking you to prove that you need it, and we don't believe in that. So our work is really, you know, it's a trust system. You come in, and if we have what you need, you're welcome to take. We always have things like formula and diapers, which are really important to families, but also clothing, shoes, accessories, toys,

these toys. We're 100% volunteer run and we're really efficient. We're solar powered. It costs very little to do what we do. We keep tons out of a landfill. Did you mention this that you've actually never been paid a solid? You're a hundred percent volunteer. Right. I'm a hundred percent volunteer. Never in nine years. Wow. We just have, it's this place where not only we're giving things out, but we're connecting with families. We're learning what's going on. And we're able to support them because they trust us. You know, so it's a really unique and special experience at the free store. Do you think you can scale that up to be in other places in Pennsylvania?

Definitely. We have. We've opened. We've helped other groups open in other locations. I'm speaking to someone in New Jersey now. He's trying to do one in several other states. There are good people everywhere and there is excess of goods everywhere. You know, when we're open, we serve about 100 people an hour. We've been able to essentially eradicate food and clothing and security for all the families that we serve. And I know this can be done in other places as well. So I'm always, I love the calls where they're like, help me open a free store. So cool.

I love those calls. So how have you seen this transform the community? I think a lot of people may hear this and they go, well, okay, that sounds nice. But how does it actually affect the world around you guys? You know how it's transformed the community? Because not one single child in the Braddock area has ever had to. go without formula, diapers, clothing, a car seat, you name it, because of her efforts. And that means everything. She serves hundreds of people, you know, every day that the store is open.

And, you know, I was mayor for 14 years and I never did anything on the magnitude of consistency and benefit that she accomplished just by that simple idea that, that, you know, things that are perfectly good, but just would otherwise get thrown away or not repurposed, can enrich the lives of those that need it most. And it doesn't cost anybody a dime. And it saves landfill space. Yeah, that's amazing. I said he loves me. Well, that's a good thing. We just got to get this off my chest. And then I'm going to shut up. No, go for it. That's why you're here. I was skeptical of her idea when she came to me, you know, years ago. I was like, really? A free star? And, And the fact that it would go on to be such a fundamental transformative part of the very fabric around here.

And that I know, without a doubt, children have clothes, babies have formula and diapers and things. I didn't believe it before she did it. And now I just evangelize about it. That's amazing. They will ultimately seat that Democratic senator, right? I honestly don't know. perhaps they're more inclined to after the calamity in Washington, D.C., that it's just like, you know what's ironic is they literally passed a law that would prohibit me from hanging weed and LGBTQIA flags on my office balcony.

And they literally voted me out to eject me from it because I insisted that they seat a democratically elected senator. but they are not, they haven't censured the senator on their side that was a participant in the Capitol Hill uprising, you know, like what world do you compartmentalize at that level? I mean, do you get the sense, and I read this this weekend, that this idea that Republicans are all of a sudden, I'm not all of a sudden because I think this is the accumulation of a lot of stuff, but that they have sort of taken this anti-democracy stance? Yeah. Well, I mean, it's only anti-democracy when it involves.

involves a Democrat winning. When they win, it's like democracy, baby, we love it, you know? This idea that, you know, it was rigged for Biden. It's like, well, you were on the same ballot. Well, the voters love me, so I know my race is true. I mean, it's just disingenuous. And every molecule of it is steeped in just insincerity and cynicism and this anti-democratic obstinance where they know more than any,

you know, Donald Trump knew more than anyone that the election was free, full, and secure. And that's what makes all of this so vile because they knew and they are the ones that gave rise to this. Since you are like really on the ground on the state level and you're in a state that's really a state that's really, you know, everything, right? The very far, right, the very far left. What do you see as a way out of this? If we don't, then we're going to come apart. we have to. I think it's the doctrine of assured mutual destruction at this point if we continue down this path. I mean, what you saw on Wednesday was like a miniature civil war. I mean, it's like the idea that

people would storm the capital and try to overturn an election result exclusively on a lie is extraordinary. And, you know, I said weeks and weeks ago that they need to de-platform Trump. He is not, this is not a free speech, First Amendment issue. If I'm screaming fire in a theater that I know is, there's no fire, I am risking a catastrophe and a calamity. You have eight weeks of that and that just accrued, accrued, accrued. And then the match was thrown and boom, there you go. So I think it's great that they de-platformed him, but you're about two months too late. This idea of saying, you know, the election was rigged and then they put a, this is distrified.

You know what that is? That's a label on a pack of cigarettes. Everyone knows that, you know, like, you know, like, it's like that doesn't stop anyone from smoking. You know, like they should have deleted those texts, you know, every tweet that came out, you know, instead of that, that ridiculous blue label. And that's more than anything allowed this to spiral and, and it was just, I mean, it was inevitable, inevitable. Do you think now that, you know, Trump doesn't have a microphone right now except briefings. So how worried are you about the next 10 days? I'm not. I'm not worried. I think the vice president knows because he was thrown under the bus. You know, that was one of the last things Trump did before the riot was he threw his own vice president under the bus. So I think, I think it was made abundantly clear to him. You so much as dot the wrong tea and cross the wrong eye, you know, say, hello to 25th Amendment, you know? Yeah. And I think he understands that. And I think the only reason why nothing will happen is because his own, you know, vanity is in tatters and he doesn't want to be

the first president in history to be removed by the 25th Amendment. Do you think that can happen if Trump keeps going? Yes, right? I do. I think he fully, I think he fully understands that. And if you're Mike Pence, your political career is, you know, already gone anyway. What do you have to lose on it? And all of those awful people like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz that that simped for him so hard and thought they were going to get out in front in 2020. They incinerated themselves politically because, I mean, my goodness, like that picture of Holly, you know, shoving up his fist in the air. I mean, that's ballgame. Do you think there's a world in which Holly and Cruz, and also, I mean, Ron Johnson is another one, are held accountable for this or censured in some way?

I don't think they will be. Can you just imagine the fact that your supporters drove you from your very chamber, and after all that trauma, people were shot and people died, you still were so hell-bent on exploiting this for your own political advantage. after all that, you still got up in front and continued to tell what you know are lies. You know? Like he went to Stanford and Yale law. He knows better than anybody that this is all garbage. And this is the point. And that's what makes him so reprehensible.

You know, I don't care what your political beliefs are. If you're willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your soul's dipped in dog shit. I don't know how else to say it. In our one segment, fuck that guy. Rick Wilson, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a fuck those guys. Fuck every single person from Donald Trump all the way down to the lowest bootlick in his campaign, to the goddamn interns in all those cases.

They all built this. Every Republican who has quietly whispered, oh, you know, I don't like him, but I have to blah, blah, blah. They're just, it's intolerable. It's insufferable. Their behavior is what led to this, to five people being dead, to five people being dead. And what is truly repulsive and overwhelming about this is also that not one of them feels a real sense of guilt to the point where they're willing to go out in public and stand up and make the cut and make the case and say, you know what? I was wrong.

I should never have endorsed him. I should never have voted for him. he's insane. He's going to launch nuclear weapons on Peoria this week, and it'll be brighter than the thousand sons, and I'll have to come out here because I'm afraid of him. Right. And I just want to say one last thing. Once again, I want to remind all the Republicans who have quietly whispered in my ear and Stewart and Steve's and Reeds and everybody else says, I just can't tweet. I just can't do it.

He'd tweet about me. He's off Twitter, you chicken shits. Get the fucking job done. Fuck those guys. Mine is sort of like in your umbrella of fuck that guys. Mine is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy, you went from in 2015 saying, I think Trump, you know, Putin pays Trump and Roerbacher to being Trump's biggest toady and sycophant. And still, you're sleazy, you're voted against democracy, and you have to be out.

You're my fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. Who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly Jongfest, and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next.

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