The Daily Beast Podcast - Town Hall Sh*tshow Was a Truth Window into Trump

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

On the night of the duelling townhalls, Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson recorded a special episode of The New Abnormal as a desperate Trump delivered a wild performance that virtually served as an ad for Joe Biden. Two guests join the show to sum up the state of American politics right now with Jay Michaelson, legal affairs columnist at The Daily Beast, Rabbi and editor at 10% Happier, on hand to run down the latest from the Amy Coney Barrett hearings. And audience favorite Hank Gilbert, who is running for the Texas first congressional district against Republican Louie Gohmert, is back to share the unprecedented election buzz he says he is seeing in Texas. Gilbert says he can’t believe it took so long but Texans have finally realized that “this narcissistic bastard” is bad for America and they’re ready to vote him out. “People are excited. I’ve never seen this type of atmosphere before,” he said.   Trump seemed to be doing his best to show viewers himself that he was not fit to be president during the NBC townhall, says Rick. “You had Trump with one leg on the ground, leaning over, hunched over, glaring at Savannah Guthrie like he was a mad man, like he was about to flee the scene of a crime. And you had Joe Biden sitting in the chair, legs crossed, hands gesturing, talking smoothly and calmly.” “When he wouldn’t answer the QAnon question, all I could think was, ‘Does Joe Biden need to report this like an in-kind contribution?’ This was fucking crazy,” Rick said. “This shitshow was a truth window into Trump.” He had, at least, managed to directly criticize white supremacy after failing to do so at the presidential debate, which just confused Molly: “Wouldn't it be more of a no brainer to disavow QAnon—the Democrats eat children—than white supremacy? His supporters are already racist.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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, bestselling 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.

Hey, Molly Junkfast. Hi, Rick Wilson. Can we talk about Sugar Daddy's? Oh, please. Let's talk about Sugar Daddy. If you were Donald Trump, your big Sugar Daddy, of course, is a wee bald man who speaks with a heavy Russian accent, and, well, speaks Russian most of the time. But who would you speculate would be the most important Sugar Daddy in Donald Trump's life right now?

Rupert Murdoch? Why, yes, it would be Rupert Murdoch. And I don't know if you read this morning on the pages of The Daily Beast that Rupert Murdoch is reported to be disgusted by Trump's handling of COVID and is predicting a Biden limit slide. Can we talk about Rupert Murdoch? Fuck Rupert Murdoch for being disgusted by Trump's COVID response. I mean, fuck him. Like, you put a reality television president in the White House and now you're mad that he can't actually president. I mean, fuck you. I mean, we're really like, oh, well, we didn't. think he'd be quite so terrible. We just thought he'd destroy the federal government. We didn't think

he'd really destroy the federal government. I mean, fuck him. Well, I just have to say, the deliciousness of Donald Trump being abandoned by Rupert Murdoch should not be underestimated. I mean, if he really does, that's the other thing. Like, this is the day after the New York Post ran a story that is not fit for a bird at the bottom of a bird cage. That it was so batshit ludicrous that even the New York post. Do you notice they assigned like a reporter who had previously been a booker for Hannity and had no bylines before that day? It's like, you take it. Yeah. Anonymous red shirt. So, I mean, I have to wonder, I mean, not to be paranoid here, but I have to wonder, Murdoch puts out this very obvious smear piece. And then the day after, he's like, I'm very

displeased with Trump. I mean. I'm sure part of it is him trimming a little. little bit. But remember, you're dealing with Donald Trump here, who thinks that Rupert Murdoch owes him, not the other way around. So I just found that that, that to me, was a story that had a lot of deliciousness in it today because I want to go back to Rupert Murdoch for a second. I never agree with Donald Trump, but Donald Trump has made a lot of money for Rupert Murdoch. Yeah, he has, but, and I've had this theory for a while, from 2015 through 2018, early 2018, Trump needed Fox. But I think he's broken the audience so much that now Fox needs Trump. And it's interesting that you would see Rupert knowing that the audience of his network loves Donald Trump more than life itself, as is

witnessed by there attending his dumb rallies without masks. Look, Donald Trump's enterprise has to have a lot of moving parts working at the same way at the same time all the time. And in the last two weeks, if Fox is in any way off agenda, it's going to cause him an enormous degree of mental upset. Trump got all this earned media, but he got media. He got eyeballs for media that there would not have otherwise been. So it was a Faustian deal on both sides. Well, I mean, look, CNN made the same deal, though. Jeff Zucker made the same deal.

Right. But the interesting thing now is that the country, their view of Trump has fundamentally changed, that the entertaining part of it in the pre-COVID world is gone now. It's not entertaining anymore. It's not funny or cool or interesting. It's just disturbing and horrifying. Right. Tonight, Donald Trump is going to go into that town hall with Savannah Guthrie thinking he's going to entertain and be and do his act.

And I don't think he's going to do that act in the same way he could have, even a few weeks ago before his COVID diagnosis. Speaking of Rupert Murdoch, Molly, I mean, I think the big October surprise yesterday went over like a wet fart. It really was one of the most floppiest flops of this clumsy clown show because it's no secret Hunter, but Biden had drug problems. But Rudy's like strangely provenanced mystery laptop coming out of nowhere that they're acting as if it's going to be Hillary's emails 2.0. I mean, they ran into two enormous roadblocks today. One is both Twitter and Facebook had a complete cockblock on the whole thing.

It was just like, nope, you cannot retweeting those links. Sorry about that. Not on our platform because it's from, as Twitter said, this material appears to either emerge from a hacked or stolen device. Right. And the Maga World immediately went off agenda. They broke down instantaneously. And suddenly their whole thing was, oh, well, now we have to talk about big tech.

Right. And this was not what they did in 2016. They moved as a pack. They were like pack animals. And they were absolutely on it like crazy. But this time, they got distracted immediately and went into their secondary argumentation space, which is Big Tech and the liberal media hate us. Even though, of course, Facebook is Donald Trump's bitch.

You know, the top 10 pages on Facebook are Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Danny Bing Bong, Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin, et cetera. I mean, the story was a non-story and who cares about Hunter Biden and the president employs like five of his kids. I mean, who cares? Hunter's not going to work in the White House. Hunter lives in L.A., Hunter has a substance issue. Like, it's just a dumb hell to die on.

But my question is, do we think it was intentional, though, to pivot? Because, you know, anytime these Republicans get censured. No, no, no. It was because the story flopped. It was because the story was a complete fuck-up, and it didn't work. It didn't get the traction. I mean, when you looked at the – I had somebody to compare the way the Hillary email story took off versus this story, which is this is their same play at about the same time.

And it absolutely had one 20th of the traction on social media and elsewhere. And the degree to which Rudy was trying to be the savior of the Trump campaign here, it just, it came over as he's like the worst possible messenger now. And he's changed his story. In the course of the morning, he's changed his story on where the laptop came from and how he got it. Was it legal? Was it left? Was it somebody else gave it to?

You know, these guys are flailing. They've really screwed the dog on this one. And I will also say, at the same time, there's been a lower sub-theme of the guys in 2016, the Cernovich's and Alex Joneses and Pesobiacs, all these idiots. They're trying to bring back the Biden health argument again. Right. And it's just not getting any traction. It's not working.

Well, I think that you have, it was interesting was they had a, the dementia thing was like their big thing was that Biden had dementia. and that he was barely functioning, and that's why he never did rallies. But when you saw him at that first debate, and Trump was a mess and he was spitting, and he was, it's hard to make an argument about the other guy's health when you just got out of the hospital. When you were wheezing and coughing, and although Donald Trump is a golden god, a perfect specimen of a man, he weighs 185 pounds of pure muscle and his six-pack abs or a thing to. behold, he's not the picture of health, and he's looking worse and worse, honestly. And even before COVID, he was very shaky and, you know, the ramp story, the water story, all these things.

This was not a guy who looked like he was in fighting trim. Since you have access to all the secret Lincoln data, what are you seeing? Mike is seeing that the cement is starting to harden in a lot of these places. And the drop-offs that Trump has had and his numbers are not being undone. There was a little bit of a pity bounce. Okay. We talked about that on the last episode, about two points worth. But the slippage is now getting bigger.

There was a long time, what we call a boundary layer, okay, where the lowest Trump could go is about 43, 44%. He's now under that boundary layer, and there's another one that we thought was going to hold at 39, 38, 39%. Well, now we're looking at places where he's dropping into the 36,

35% range. That's crazy. Okay, that's like, immediate family members named Trump voting for the guy. This is a low, low boundary. So the cement is hardening. Some Republicans have come home in some states where they've made their choice. Part of that is that North Carolina is a good example, where Biden is still lagging. It is a state with an awful lot of non-college white dudes, which is Trump's strongest and singularly strongest demographic. But we're also seeing the drop with women in this country has been mathematically extraordinary. And we've come out of the field in a bunch of states where women are just,

it's, there's, it was, for a long time, it was about a 20 point differential with women between Trump and Biden. In our swing states that we analyzed in a round of polling, we came out of, let's see, yesterday, early yesterday, it averages 27 points. What states? Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, Arizona, Florida. Is some of that, like, he's been so shitty to Governor Whitmer. Is some of that because of that? She's popular in Michigan. And, of course, the fact that Trump sort of laughed off the murder conspiracy and kidnapping

conspiracy by these fucking boogaloo's. It certainly did not help to improve his position in the state. I think Michigan's out of the question for Trump now. I think Wisconsin is one in six for Trump now. It's slipping away quickly. Ohio and Pennsylvania are still going to be battlegrounds, but in Pennsylvania, there are three areas of Pennsylvania. The Philadelphia Metro, the Pittsburgh Metro, and in the middle of the state, what they call the T. The T is the strongest possible Trump country. It's Alabama with coal, okay?

The Philadelphia metro area, we've done a lot of work with African American voters there and African American ministers there, similarly in Pittsburgh. Those areas are breaking very, very strongly to Joe Biden right now. The T is still in Trump's hands, and that could be a decisive thing. But I'm feeling like Pennsylvania overall is moving in the right direction. Florida is moving in the right direction. Trump is losing some senior votes off the top. If he loses about two or three more. Do you think Florida is doable?

I think Florida is the hardest target. Yeah. Because it's so expensive. And even with Joe Biden having $300 million in the bank right now, Florida is still expensive. But it's, you've also said it's not just expensive. You said there's a lot of fuckery there. There's, yeah. Look, the Republican Party of Florida is the best Republican Party.

in the country for fuckery. Right. I know. I helped build the fuckery machine. Yeah. So that, so is it worth? You said 10 points. Oh, believe me, it's worth it.

Right. It's so worth it. Now, some good news out of Florida we're starting to see in key counties. I got some polling back from an outside person in some key counties. We're seeing that the Republican crossover. Oh, so first of all, the Democratic crossover to Trump in these key counties in Florida that we monitor. That's Hillsboro Seminole, Volusia, Martin. Charlotte, those are some bellwether things for a certain part of my model that I like.

We're seeing Democratic crossover to Trump riding at about 4 to 6 percent, okay? That's always happens. There's always a little bit of, that's the statistical average. We're seeing Republican crossover to Biden in those counties at between 12 and 17 percent. Oh, wow. Now, the problem still is the Cubans are going to come out because they're convinced that Joe Biden has a black beret in his briefcase, and he's ready to seize the means of production and open the death camps for all capital.

I just want to point out that you always say that in Florida you have to be 10 points ahead. You have to be 10 points ahead. I tell my Democratic friends this all the time. My friend Steve Shale, Steve always points out that in the last 30 years of presidential elections, if you add up all the Democratic votes, all the Republican votes, the difference between them is 30,000 votes. Florida is going to be tight no matter what we do. Unless Biden takes some of that $300 million he just raised and dumps it into the great state of Florida tomorrow, which, you know, Florida can burn money like a bonfire. There's 10 media markets, three of which are in the top, top 15 nationally. It's a crazy expensive place to do business.

But what do you think about Texas? Look, Texas is still a long shot, but the numbers are slipping. There is no reason why a Republican president should be only two points ahead in Texas right now. No reason whatsoever. That's crazy town. And now through the magic of time travel, we will take you to after Rick and Molly have watched the town halls of Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Here we are back with you. Yes.

seamlessly, one might say. If you will. Through the magic of television. So what town hall did you watch tonight? Well, we had a big screen up here in Lincoln Project HQ in our glittery-due studio. And by glittery, I mean, it's just completely fucking improvised. We watched, we had a two-screen, but we had the audio on Trump, the physical appearance of the two men. You had Trump with one leg on the ground, leaning over, hunched over, glaring at Savannah Guthrie like he

was a madman, like he was about to flee the scene of a crime. And you had Joe Biden sitting in the chair, leg crossed, hands gesturing, talking smoothly and calmly. And every time there was a commercial break, we'd flip the volume up on the Biden channel on ABC. And he was just like being a president. Americans probably tuned into Trump, but they also slow down to look at car crashes. The Trump campaign had a statement afterwards, which I think is important to read. President Trump soundly defeated NBC's Savannah Guthrie in her role as debate opponent and Joe Biden's surrogate. Well, also, you're trying to win suburban women. Does this seem like the best tact?

President Trump... No, seriously. Are you fucking kidding me? Wait, it goes on. Your dog's upset about it. This is them happy. President Trump masterfully handled Guthrie's attacks and interacted warmly and effectively with the voters in the room. What?

We've sort of figured out why suburban women don't like him, huh? You mean because he's a dick? I mean, you're trying to win. Why don't women like him? Let's see. He's a raging, misogynist, sexist, asshole racist fuckwit. Was that it? Town hall, town hall, sorry.

What was your moment where you thought, what planet does this guy live on? Well, when he wouldn't answer the Q&on question, all I could think of was, does Joe Biden need to write like a report this? is an in-kind contribution. This was fucking crazy. He should never have gone in that room. It was insanity. How about Trump saying that $400 million isn't that much to owe?

It's not Russia. It's not Russia. But also, it's a very small amount of money. I mean, what do you even say to that? You don't because it was Donald Trump confessing not only to his, the fact that he only paid $750 in taxes in 2017, but also the fact that he owes $400 million to a foreign entity. So you could say it's not Russia all day long, but that just means the next question is, all right, Donald. Is it Switzerland? Is it Argentina? Is it Belize? You know, we could go through

the alphabet. I liked it when he said, I'm treated very badly by the IRS. I have to say, Donald Trump's confessional nature tonight was truly a delicious element of this whole thing. I mean, truly. The other thing that I thought tonight was kind of stunning is he wandered into the pre-existing condition fight, which he's already been taking enormous political damage on. And I know for a fact that his pollsters have been trying to beat into him over and over and over and over and over and over again to keep talking about pre-existing. They know how badly it's bled him out. I wrote about this in my first book and then my second book in about a gazillion article since then. But he's such a dummy that he's saying things like, well, we're dismantling it.

But we'll do pre-existing later. Really? Oh, really? Tell me more about your infrastructure plan, Donald. The problem with him is that he can't stay on message, right? I mean... No, he's a moron. But so he disavowed white supremacy, which was, I was, you know, he's not done that before.

But then he couldn't disavow QAnon. I'm just curious, like, where in his head it goes, like, wouldn't it be more of a no-brainer to disavow QAnon that Democrats eat children than white supremacy? which his supporters are already racist. Neither of those answers was hard. Right. Both of those answers were, of course, completely fucked. Right.

He couldn't make himself do the right answer. But, of course, he did run back to his safe space in his snowflake den of Antifa. Right. Radical Antifa. Radical left on Antifa. Yeah. You know, the beautiful thing about it is this shit show was a truth window. into Trump, okay? He wasn't in any way able tonight to even take the slow pitches over the plate.

It was astounding. 2016, those last five weeks, he stayed on message. I mean, he's never been a genius, but he was able to sort of not say anything too nuts, and they took away his phone. And you thought, well, I mean, I didn't think that, but there were women in the suburbs who thought, okay, let's just try this. Now, I feel like all of those controls are all. Off. Correct. There's no one running the campaign specifically anymore. I mean, look, Bill Steppian spends his days in his office staring at spreadsheets and weeping quietly at the money that Pascal stole and they can't find. Where do the money go? So the stories range from about $50 million is missing

to about $170 million is missing. That's some Vig. That's a lot of money. And by the way, I just want you guys to know, the campaign finance reports are due in a very short time. And the Trump campaign has not filed one. They're due at midnight. What does that mean? It means they don't want to show how little money they have and how much money they've spent. But they're going to have to, right? They have to.

Yes, it's required. It's required. Since they blow through norms all the time, what, I mean, it's like, is it like ignoring a subpoena from the Supreme Court? I mean, what can people do? Well, look, there's nothing people can do. It'll be an FEC complaint that it'll take years. It'll grind on forever and nothing will happen. So he really cannot. He can just ignore it.

Well, he has to file by law. I predict the filing will be filled with creative accounting. Let's put it that way. Like you saw there were some congressman, Republican congressman who had some credit card fee accounting and things that looked a little nutty. I think the whole question that's going to be ahead of us tonight is, does this help or hurt Donald Trump and help or hurt Joe Biden? And I think there is no question that Donald Trump tonight, it was a self-inflation. wounded wound and it was it was high order stupid but he's desperate he's going to keep doing

desperate shit because desperate people do desperate shit do you think he'll participate in the last debate i believe that donald trump will come to the opening of a phone booth jay michelson is a rabbi legal affairs columnist at the daily beast and an editor at 10% happier jay what the fuck is going on that's really profoundly stated i know right i watched three days of that fuckery and one of our former colleagues, Justin Miller, who's now, was my editor, is now at New York, was just like, what the hell do you think is going on? They have the power and they're doing it. You don't like it. And you're, so you're writing an article. That's basically what's going on. They have the power. You know, they have, you know, we all think we're pretty cynical, but literally, like, when they

all swore on a stack of Bibles like Lindsey Graham, like, you know, you can quote me on it. We're not going to do it. And then they do it. It's kind of like, even that, I found myself shocked at my own capacity for being disillusioned. I was like, wow, they really have no principles whatsoever. But, you know, if you thought that like whatever, half a million babies were being murdered every year, maybe you would do that too. I feel like we sometimes, like, those of us in the normal camp of the universe, forget what it's like to be a religious fundamentalist, you know, and... Lindsay Graham is not a religious fundamental. No, but he depends on them for his career. Something more sinister, yeah. And I think, you know, there's, so that's part of it.

The dark money stuff, which I've written about and which Senator White House talked about, is real. I mean, that is actually part of it. And that's part of the same. I think, like, there's kind of a thought that these sort of folks, you know, people are like, oh, they're like homophobes or sexists. They're not. They're jihadis. Like, these are the folks who want to create the Christian nation that they think we used to be. And they're going to do whatever they can to achieve that objective.

I thought Sheldon White House was really great. I'm just a big fan of his because I think he's, you know, You know, he looks like an old white guy, but he talks like revolutionary in a certain way. That's my goal, too. That's all of our goal. Did you find there to be more grandstanding? My sense was there was a lot more grandstanding because this is all of Fetacompuy. Yeah, totally.

And I don't even blame them for grandstanding. I mean, at least that's like trying to make something out of this ridiculous charade. what I found way more insufferable were the pretences of confirmation hearing that we heard from the Republican side which was just like first of all there was the ridiculous you know would you be a fair judge

what musical instruments do you play that kind of crap but like that it was at least more collar-wain like there was like a facade that like we're actually probing her ideas or anything like that that's what was the most so I found like the more overt the grandstanding the better and I think you know White House

was the most overt. And it was just like, okay, I got 30 minutes. I'm going to tell America about this bullshit. And I'm totally on board with that. I think it was interesting the Times had a take on Kamala Harris, like being way more restrained than usual, which was in its own way grandstanding, right? Like she was like, okay, you're going to give me 30 minutes.

I'm going to seem calm, reasonable, and presidential. And because this is a stupid hearing, and I'm not even going to try to, like, cross-examine this person. Who do you think was the most insufferable Republicans Senator. I found Josh Holly to be the most insufferable because he was kind of lying through his teeth while pretending to be more pious than God himself. I mean, this is basically like a choir boy grown up, you know, but he's not, right?

He's not a choir boy grown up. He's just as cynical and as manipulative as Graham and Cruz and the rest. And yet he's like affecting this fake piety. Like, oh my God, religion. freedom. Oh. You know, it's also like, I mean, so not to get like in the policy weeds for a second, but, you know, for for 150 years, not even 200 full years, religious freedom under the Constitution meant basically one thing, which is government can't fuck with you and your religious belief and your religious practice, not just belief, but practice to government. And we didn't live up to that when it came to Native Americans or to Mormons or to others. But that was the principle. The idea was that. the government was going to leave you alone. No one ever used that term to mean you can take away someone else's rights if you have a religious freedom. Never until the last 20 years, right? Until

Hobby Lobby, until masterpiece cake shop, until this whole movement, which arose mostly as a backlash to gay rights and gay marriage, but not entirely. And this whole idea was already rejected. The first time this religious freedom thing came along was in the 60s around segregation. And segregationists said, I have a religious belief. It says right here in the Bible, God separated the races on the continents, the different continents, and therefore I live by that, and I have a religious reason why I have to keep my restaurant or hotel or school or whatever segregated. And it took a while for that to finally filter through, but eventually to the Supreme Court, but eventually it did. And by 1980, that idea had been totally struck down. Everybody understood at that point that no, I mean, even if you have what you are saying is a sincere religious belief, you don't get to take way somebody else's rights. And so for, you know, Josh Hawley and others to get up there and, like, sing this bullshit song about religious freedom being under attack in America, which they know is not true. Like, they know, they may feel oppressed, but they understand the difference between, I don't know, a Muslim prisoner wanting halal food and that same, you know, Muslim driving a taxi

and saying every woman who gets in this taxi must wear, you know, a veil. Like, they know that, but they're pretending that they don't know it. So that's why I found that the most insurferable of all. I like your opinion, but it's wrong. The worst was Lindsay Graham. You know, I feel like he's so jumped the shark that I was just there. I was there for it. And you just truth has nothing, has no meaning.

And he knows like he's boxed himself into a corner. Like I don't know what he thought when he heard that RBG actually died, whether he had an oh shit moment or whether he immediately went straight to like, well, how am I going to spin this to get what I want? But like, you know, and his sanctimonious bullshit on the Democrats, the Democrats are the Democrats are that. I mean, he literally just wanted to like punch him in the face. And I respect him to that.

Him complaining about dark money has to be the great, you know, where he was like, well overturned. Well, he complains about homosexuality too, right? I mean, he's used to this. Like, he's been doing this for 60 years, you know, the lady does protest too much. But he was like, maybe we should overturn Citizens United. I was like, oh, yeah, that's you definitely going to be. doing that. Yeah, that's your campaign platform.

Yeah. Okay, this is the question of anyone who watch these hearings. Does DiFi need to go? Yeah, I mean, it really, I'm actually not, I haven't been that much of a critic of hers, to be honest. No, me neither, but

watching that. No, yeah, it's funny, like everything that Trump says about Biden was true about Feinstein and Patrick Leahy. It was just like a lehy, he did better actually. He did better than she did. You know, the letter a couple of days. The first day he was really off, I thought. But I don't know if anyone really was watching these hearings. It's a shame that the worst people were up first because of seniority, right? You had to wait

until the afternoon to get to Harris and Booker and even Klobuchar. I thought Klobuchar was really good. Yeah, I mean, she's the only one who got a rise out of Barrett, which was worth it. Yeah. Like, who cares? That's another way of like, okay, this hearing is meaningless. I'm going to see if I can piss you off. Yeah. I want to see what you really are like. And we all know that, look, nobody gets to be as successful as Amy Coney Barrett. without that, right? Yeah. Right?

And there's like a gender element, too. It's like, she's like going to pretend to be like this cuddly mom who have this, you know, seven kids or whatever. Like, no, come on. You're up for this because you're a shark. We all know you're a shark. And so for me, it was really, I liked seeing that, you know? And the fact that Club of Shark could, like, piss her off enough that she got angry.

For a moment, there was like one brief moment of sincerity. And that, to me, was like the only one in her entire three days of performance that was at all sincere and I loved it. I thought it was interesting. I mean, DiFi talking about how great her kids were. Can I jump in about DiFi? Is this a thing? Do we have to say DiFi now?

Oh, all right, all right. Jump the shark. Okay. I'm with you that this is a today years old thing. Okay. Senator Diane Feinstein from the great state of California, who is 800,000 years old. I think the moment when you know it's time for retirement as a politician now is when Google starts your auto.

complete the first thing as age. I have never been so critical of her, but the thing that got my backup so much today was her, and she did this all three days, where she was like, and your children and children, and Leahy did it too. My children are grandchildren. I mean, fuck you. Like, I have three kids. Like, it doesn't do anything.

It doesn't make you a better person. And the whole idea, it's just such a sexist trope, this idea that the more children, and you have, you're more of a sort of conservative or you're more of a woman or you're, it just, I found it in region. Oh, totally. And I actually was just reading up for the, I just did a MSNBC hit about the dark money thing. And Leonard Leo, who's like the mastermind of this kind of network of the federalist society and judicial crisis network, he, it turns out, bought this, I think it was $17 million house or

something like that. He bought this like lavish country house on the coast of Maine. And he was called on it. And he's like, well, this is to accommodate. my large family. Like immediately like, oh, oh, you have a large family. Oh, that's good. Thank you for repopulating the earth.

I went over to see this friend of mine who was talking about how actually Amy Comey Barrett is the conclusion of the Federalist Society that they've done it. Like they've found a woman who's so young, who they can put on the court, who is absolutely, you know, like in a way Gorsuch wasn't, like Gorsuch has turned out to be. sort of a more creative. I mean, I know he isn't great, but he's turned out to be sort of more creative. And Kavanaugh is, even though he's on the court, he's so tainted by all of his. Comey is really like exactly kind of the federalist ideal. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think that's pretty astute. Right. I mean, Kavanaugh's a rick. Gorsuch as a weirdo, but

Barrett, you know, she's mother Teresa. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I think it was interesting. Like, the question that didn't get asked, so I did a piece of like 10 questions to ask Barrett. So I reviewed all of her opinions that she wrote as she's written as an appellate court judge. In her two years and seven months of Supreme Court. Come on. I'm trying to show what an often journalist I am. I read all three of the opinions. There's not a single case that she voted on, that she voted on the substantively liberal side. So, you know, my substantively liberal is like, you know, so like Roberts does this all the time. Like Roberts votes to a rebel Obama care. Like, yeah, but he did it for

fundamentally conservative, judicial conservative reasons. But that was the substantively liberal result. She never, not once. In the whole three years, like, as she once, you know, come down like, oh, well, I'm a conservative, but on this case, you know, maybe we shouldn't deport the immigrant or something. No, it was, oh,

deport the immigrant, screw over, you know, the black people, screw over the gig workers, screw, like, there was not a single. So this myth that she's like, you know, the principal well, I'm just very principled. That's just like, it was true of Scalia, too. People gave Scalia way too much credit.

Oh, way too much credit. He also just wanted. He wanted the cases to come down the way he wanted, and that's it. And she is like him, but I think that's a great point. I mean, she's him, but female. Well, you said it in your piece, right? Most anti-woman woman ever. Yeah. And I think that's right.

I mean, that is where she's going to go. But they so did such a good job of intimidating thanks to DiFi and her ill, you know, her ill, her ill-phrased remark the last go-round, you know, nobody wants to be the die-five saying, like, the dogma lives loudly within you. So they scared all of the Democrats from, like, mentioning anything about religion. And I don't mean that she's in People of Praise.

I don't think people of praise is really that bad. I don't think it's a cult. I don't think it's the Handmaid's Tale. But she's written herself on how her very extreme religious piety impacts her role as a judge. And no one was able to ask her that. Right.

The death penalty. decision. Like the one thing the Federalist Society might not be pleased with is her anti-death penalty stance, which is because she's a Catholic and we're not allowed to talk about that. She even backpedaled on that, though. I mean, she basically was like, well, as long as it's, you know, not about one particular sentencing somebody to death. Like, I couldn't sentence someone to death, but I'd be on their appellate. So I wouldn't be doing this. A lot of people seem to be saying that her nomination is already court packing. What's your take on what the Democrats should do about that in response?

That's my case. No, I mean, yeah, I get the idea. I mean, court backing is correct me. First of all, progressives, whatever Democrats, need to get away from this term court packing, right? Court packing is a term of derision. I'm not, if I had a good substitute for it, I would have already written the piece.

I'm still thinking about, like, what that is. But it's not court packing, right? And this is a perfect example of why that term is not helpful, right? What they're doing is like supremely unjust, right? They stole a seat from Garland. So they've stolen two Supreme Court seats and the third one is filled by R. So this is not packing. It's like demolishing or destroying or polluting.

Maybe we should call it court cleansing. Right. So I don't think it's helpful to like say, well, they're packing because now we're packing to overcome their packing. Like let's just say they've destroyed the legitimacy of the court and we're going to restore some semblance of it. You know, I am in favor of doing that. I think Biden's not saying anything because it's not playing well at the polls, partly because of this rhetorical framing. But mostly people just don't really think we should do that.

But, you know, there's no alternative. My piece this weekend, which, you know, I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about yet because I don't know when this bears is going to be about, you know, term limits, but term limits now, not delaying the onset of term limits. So that would put Thomas off the court right now, put Breyer off the court. Mm-hmm. Delicious. So let's do it.

Let's do it now. What would be your term limit? For some reason, 18 years has kind of circum, like, that's become the kind of consensus. It's an odd number, so it's not going to always, like, always interfere with election years. The proposals that are out there have it synchronized. So, like, you start at a certain time and then you phase it in so that there's always one confirmation thing happening every couple of years. Mine would be messier than that, although you can still play with it. But let's do it now, right?

So we could go have nine. But, and because it's Breyer and Thomas, there's not a, like, we're throwing all the Republicans off. right? It's just, you're going to get two new justices who obviously would be Biden appointees, presumably. So that's the, but I do think it's interesting what people get hung up on. I mean, as a, you know, former law student law professor, nine is not a magic number. And they're actually kind of good, wonky arguments for why you would want more. Like the Supreme Court, people don't really know this because it's not, it's low profile stuff, but they drown in like a lot of minutia. there's like a lot of not just the death penalty cases,

but there's just like a lot of like generic stuff that the Supreme Court has to do all the time. I don't know. Having 11 justices might actually make sense. It might actually be helpful. So I think this whole, the sort of clutching the pearls over court packing is just more tactics.

And the stakes have to be lower. I mean, that is really the solution. Like this is two high stakes a battle that you're thinking about literally somebody who'll be on the court for potentially 40 years. Yeah. That's ridiculous. And that was never intended by the founders. So, you know, back to originalism.

If we think about what the founders were thinking, they were thinking that these people, these men would be on that court, these white men, these white men with property would be on the court for 15 years. So let's get back to that original intent, which is like 15 years. Thank you so much, Jay. This is so helpful. I'm so glad we got to do this. Sure thing. If the Titanic's going down, we're going to be in the String Quartet together. 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. dot the Daily Beast.com. Hank Gilbert is running for Texas's first congressional district against Louis Gomer, as well as being one of our audience fan favorites.

So we're pleased to welcome back Hank for Texas. Hi, Hank. Hi, Molly. So you're being brought back because you are a fan favorite, and not just because my life's ambition is to crush Louis Gomer. Well, I appreciate that. I've never been called a favorite before. I've been called a hell of a lot of things, but not a favorite.

So tell us what your race looks like. Tell us what's going on in Texas First District. What's happening? I tell you, this is something that I've never seen in my lifetime. First day open and polls open for early voting. Tuesday, there were lines out the door in every polling place in every county in this district. As a matter of fact, the place that I normally vote at on the first day, I'm usually one of the first five to vote at my location, every election.

And it just so happened I could Monday because of the first. I had to go around to every county that day. But when I walked in the second day, all the women there at the polling place asked me what was wrong. They almost called me yesterday because I wasn't there. But they told me that they got as many early votes on the first day of early boating at that location than they normally get on the entire early voting period in any election. So, I mean, that's how many people are either excited or fed up or ready to get this done in this basically rural district of Texas to, to me.

make change come November 3rd. Have you had what I've heard about under Abbott of like less drop boxes or closed polling places or any of that? Not as far as the closed polling places. As a matter of fact, I know in my particular county here, they added two early voting locations, but we do have some rural counties in my district that only have one polling place for the entire county in early voting. But as far as drop boxes, now that's not something really that we have in this district. Those are mainly in the districts where you have big metropolitan areas like Houston or Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, where they have those drop boxes. Most people here just take them to their local county elections office. How is the enthusiasm on the ground? Oh, people are excited. Like I said, I've never seen this type of

atmosphere before, even in 2008 when President Obama was running. I didn't see the type of enthusiasm that I'm seeing now. people have just made their minds up. I think the majority of the people in this district have long decided the way they're going to vote. There still are some persuadable people out there. We've been working on a group of about 180,000 of them now for going on four weeks with targeted messaging and such. But our race is a little different.

I think on the presidential side, they pretty much made their mind up and are just ready to get out there and make change because, you know, as well as I do, this narcissistic bastard we have in our house in Washington has a, uh, has completely changed our world, not only here in America, but our standing throughout the globe. And I believe that, you know, it took three and a half years, you know, there's a lot of slow learners, I guess, within our midst, but it took almost four years to realize that a movie star slash con man slash whatever other adjective you want to put in there is just not going to work to move our country forward and help the people of the U.S. So I'm curious about what your message has been to those persuadable voters. Well, we have based on, we do a lot of targeting, and I have a guy that has made this his life's work as far as trying to figure out people and what resonates with what type of people.

And I know this particular target group that we're working on, we're putting out about a dozen different messages to them based upon their shopping habits or their religious habits or what have you. But it all pretty much boils down to the fact that Louis Gomer, number one, has been totally ineffective as a representative for this district. He's done nothing to advance anything that would help the majority of the people of this district. He spends a lot of his time jet-setting all over the country and all over the world, mainly, on special interest junkets and things like that. We've highlighted the fact that he was in the Ukraine at the same time Rick Perry and Rudy Giuliani were. Not serving the interests of Texas' first district in the Ukraine. Well, no, supposedly he was there on a Baptist conference.

The problem is when they took a picture of the conference attendees, he wasn't in it. And then a couple of months after he returned from that conference, of course, you know, you have to file an annual ethics report in May every year in the 300,000-plus mortgage on his home that he'd been crying about for years that he was going to have to sell if people in the district didn't start supporting him magically disappeared and was paid off in cash. So that's a message that resonates with a lot of people. That and the fact that in his campaign finance reports, he's paying for about six or eight Netflix and iTunes accounts and OnStar navigational system, auto insurance for his personal vehicles,

condos and shallots and chalets and different resort towns in Colorado, all of which I don't believe are covered under a necessary campaign expense. I'll say, how do you explain to people who have never voted Democrat? How do you talk to those people? The same way that I talk to you, Molly. I just don't beat around the Bush and tell them why it's in their best interest that they really stop and think about how they're voting. Everybody here my age or close to my age grew up as Democrats. And a lot of these people tell me that, that have been voting Republican for the last 20 years. They say, you know, I grew up just like you, a conservative Democrat. I said, I know you did. Either that or you moved here from somewhere. I think they understand that they've been sold a bill of

goods. When I talk to these evangelicals, they understand that their religion has been hijacked for power. And I think they're seeing that more and more on a daily basis. And a lot of them are starting now to peel off and look at my race. A lot of these people understand that their values don't align with the values of, I don't know what you call it, Trumpicalism. Trumpism. The retaken of the Republican Party by Trump. And even those Republicans who are truly lifelong Republicans, understand that the party that they see now is not the party that they've ever been a member of. And I encourage them. I mean, I tell them all the time. I think

we need a good, moderate Republican Party. just like we need a good moderate Democratic Party. If you go back through our history, when we really moved this country forward and we did the most good for the people in this country, was when we had two moderate parties that could fight like cats and dogs over particular issues, but at the end of the day, come together and pass something

that work for the majority of the people and then go out to dinner together at night. That left. Ever since we elected President Obama, that has gone in large part because it's systemic racism and everything else. We've got to get back on a normal key and a sense of normalcy to try to move this country forward. And heaven forbid, Uncle Joe and Kamler are going to have a hell of a time because it's going to take years to correct the crap that this current administration has broken. And we've got a lot of allies around the world that really need to know that we're the America that they've known for the last 20, 30, 40 years and not the America that they've seen for the last four.

There's an article in the Times today about all of these people slipping below the poverty line. Do you see that anecdotally in Texas's first district? Oh, yeah. We're second in the district. We're second in the state in the highest number of percentage poverty. We're also second in the state in the highest number of most uninsured Texans, which Texas leads the nation in the most uninsured. But here's what a blow in your mind, Molly. Yet a lot of those people still keep voting republic, you know, and I'd never have understood that.

And I've even had deep discussions with people. I say, you don't have a pot to piss in or a window to chunk it out of, but you continually vote against your own self-interest. And it takes a while to get that, to make that message resonate. But I think people are coming around because when you explain to them that the reason you don't have the ability to get insurance or you don't have the ability to seek medical treatment is because our state is sending hundreds of millions of dollars of money that they could have had through Medicaid to other states because we refuse to take it. Your leadership's telling you

you're not important. You don't need that and we don't need it for you. And Louis Gomer backs that. Louis Gomer's 100% behind doing away with the ACA. And when I tell people that your vote really matters because with seven days after election day, the Supreme Court, which is now going to be stacked 6 to 3 against Democrats, is going to vote on whether or not the ACA should remain in existence. I will guarantee you it's going to be gone, which means that this new administration, we're going to have a monumental task of rebuilding a health care system that includes all American. But what I tell people who aren't that concerned with the ACA, why they should be, well, let me tell you what's going to happen to your own insurance. I don't care if you're on a retiring type insurance or insurance through your

employer or private. What's going to happen come January 1 after the ACA's gone, after the lowest common denominator for insurance is gone, all these major insurance companies are going to jack up their rates back to pre-ACA levels. So you're going to see your copay increase, your deductible increase, your premium increase, and your coverage decrease, because they will have the ability to do that without constraint. Don't say the ACA's not important to you because it is. It's going to get in your ass pocket too. So, Hank, I saw one of the things you're doing is this Hank show where you're talking to your constituents. I was curious if there's anything that really shocked you that you've learned talking to them so far. Well, I think, I don't know

that it's so much as what shocked me, Jesse, is what shocked them, is that someone who's running to represent them will actually talk candidly to them and listen to their concerns and talk about the issues that affect them. Now, we're having one Thursday night at 7 o'clock of Facebook Live Hank's show, and it's going to be probably the last one that we have in this cycle, and it's going to be the most serious one, because we're going to talk about fundamental differences between me and my opponent and why they're important to you, almost like a state of the union type address. Because it's just something people need to hear and to erase those misconceptions that people may have about Democrats in general and understand that there's somebody who's willing to work on

their behalf for the majority of these people and put their interests first above party. You know, I'd never have been a big party person as much as I've been a people person. There's times and places, I guess, for party type things to be important, but not nearly as much when it comes to the lives and livelihoods of people. And that's what I think people need to understand is the fundamental difference between me and my opponent where he falls in line with the party and kisses all the ass and rings that he needs to, even though they've basically kicked him out of the caucus because he's so crazy. Me, on the other hand, I'm going to support an author legislation that's going to help the people in my district. and I'll support anyone else's that does regardless of which party they belong to, and I'll fight like hell anything that don't help my district regardless of the party. Because at the end of the day, the purpose of the party is to raise money. The purpose of the legislators are to legislate and represent the people who sent them there, whether they voted for them or not.

How do you feel the campaign is going? I think it's going great. We've outraged him at every quarter. He's basically lost his financial support. I think on his last quarterly report he showed a little over 70,000 cash on hand. but I really wonder how much of that is true because in that report, he had several bank charges, which makes me think that maybe he doesn't have the money in there that he says he does. But our report closed.

We had almost four times as much cash on hand as he did. And we're up on TV. We've been on TV now. Start at the beginning of this week on network and cable. We've been on Hulu and YouTube now for going on five weeks. We've run in a very robust digital campaign, phone banking. and texting, putting out lipsticks to these targeted areas that are constituents that we're trying to reach. As far as I'm concerned, we've done almost all we can do, but there's still some things we can do

if we can get additional funding. How big is Texas's first district? Because it's really rural, right? Right. It's composed of 10 full counties and two partial counties. God, I don't know right off the top of my head how many square miles, but I'm sure you could put the city of Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, all the major metros within the district, inside the district. I know I traveled the entire district Tuesday to deliver signs for polling places in the round trip, put a little over 400 miles on. Wow. So, I mean, it's a pretty massive size, but it's the only standalone, heavily populated rural

district in the state. And that's why it's imperative that I win this race, because then in 2022, all the major metro areas plus this district will elect Democrats up and down the ballot. on the statewide elections. So talk to us about what people can do to support you removing Louis Gomer from Congress. Sign up and volunteer or donate or give us words of encouragement or whatever they feel necessary is going to help get the job done. We're still wanting to put another ad up on TV and trying to raise money for that.

Also, we're enlisting volunteers from all over the country to phone bank and text and everything else to make sure we get the people out to the polls that we need to. to make this thing happen. Thank you so much, Hank. You're amazing. It's just awesome to have you. Who is your fuck-that-guy? My fuck-that-guy is the strong, bold hero, Ben Sass.

Ben Sass on a constituent call came out and said, oh, he kisses dictator's butts. He spends like a drunken sailor. He sells out our allies. The way he treats women. He mocks evangelicals. Well, guess what, Ben? you've fucking known this for years. You know why you've told everybody you know about it.

You've known this for years. You've known this from the get-go. And you sat there and you still voted to exonerate him when he was involved in the impeachment where he committed crimes against this country. You sat quietly until the barn door was wide open and all the horses were out. And now you think you're going to get away with going out and saying, oh, well, you know, he's a bad guy. This does not wash off the stain, Ben. I'm sorry. I used to like you a lot. lot, but this is some chicken shit. And I think you need to really reconsider whether you need to be in office because you don't have the moral courage God gave the common rat. Do we, is this the second Republican to turn on Trump who wasn't there? Well, there's the Martha McSally saying she's refusing to say she supported Trump just saying she supported tax cut. Martha McSally is a dead man walking. She's going to be asking people if they're interested in a beautiful three-two split-level rancher in Maricopa County soon rather than being in the Senate.

Ben Sass is really planning to run for president. I'm sorry. I am, this is something, and Ben knows it full well. He said these things to many, many, many, many people in the last four years. He's told many people the same things. And he still sat there, quietly folded his hands. And every excess of Donald Trump, he sat there and said, okay, well, I'm just going to keep quiet. I don't want it to tweet about me.

You know what? Fuck you. That is a moral vacuum. And there are a lot of other Republicans. There are some of these guys. It's like the idiots who love Trump for real, the small percentage of them. You almost respect them more because they're just stupid.

Right. They're just morons. This guy knows better. He knows better. And he's known better from the start. And all of them are in the same bucket. Marco and Ted and Josh Hawley and all these idiots. They've all known this stuff from.

the beginning. Yeah. You want to know who my fuck that guy is? I would love to know who your fuck that guy is. After watching three days of Amy Coney Barrett hearings, there's only one person who you can have as your fuck that guy after this. It is, it's Lindsay Graham, who is just who spent so much time complaining about Jamie Harrison and how he was outraising him and how he wanted to overturn citizen. United. And it was just sort of amazing and also very excited about taking away a woman's right to choose. Very, very. Well, the things that excite Lindsay are not things that normal people find exciting. 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 episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the dailybeast.com slash podcasts.

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