The Daily Beast Podcast - Truckers Resurrect Bananas Theory About Trudeau’s Real Dad

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

Truckers part of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” have co-opted a conspiracy theory about Justin Trudeau’s biological father, which Canadian author and frequent New Abnormal guest Jeet Heer tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast all about on Tuesday’s episode. Plus, Molly and co-host Andy Levy run down the “terrifying” political candidates who billionaire Peter Thiel is backing and Imani Perry, author of South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation, makes the case that the South should be a source of inspiration. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes it's just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Jeet here, who's a columnist at the nation and author of The Newsletter of The Time of Monsters, will come talk to us about how his home of Canada is going just as crazy as America. Then we'll talk to Amani Perry, who's a professor at Princeton University, as well as the author of South to America, and she'll talk to us about her new book.

But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy Molly Jong Fast I don't know if you know this but there was a sporting event this weekend I do know this I may be the only one on this podcast that knows it but I do know it okay it was football

and it happened in California which was good for them because they need the traffic there were lots of amazing pictures from it including a picture of Jeff Bezos's arm that looked like a ham Okay, that I didn't see. You didn't see that?

No. His arms are enormous, like, he-man. Sorry. Half-time show, very triggering for the right. Well, yeah, for some on the right anyway. It was boomers, like Sean Spicer and Charlie Kirk, that really had the biggest issue with it. Charlie Kirk born in 1994, I think.

I'm now being told Charlie, Charlie Kirk is 28 or something like that. God, Sean Spicer, not even that old either, really. I know, I know. But they're just, they were born boomers. I mean, we talked about this,

you know, with Ben Shapiro. But so Charlie Kirk tweeted that the NFL is now the league of sexual anarchy. This halftime show should not be allowed on television. Yeah, I'm worried about sexual anarchy. It's just how, how, how can you be 28 years old and your brain work like that?

Like it's one of the saddest things in the world. And it wasn't besides, so the halftime show was, it's probably not an accident that the halftime show was tailored for boomers. Black entertainers. Well, no, it was black entertainers. But it was also tailored for our generation, of which I am the very young.

Yeah. I mean, it was really aimed at Gen X and like, I guess, elder millennials or whatever. Which is us. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I thought it was the best halftime show since Prince. So I was called for it. But it wasn't,

Even that, like, it wasn't that sexually explicit or adventurous. It was like, it was something that even 10 years ago would have probably been considered, you know, not out of bounds. So it was just hilarious to watch Charlie Kirk get his, you know, his corset in a bunch or whatever. But I feel like with all this, I mean, the New York Post ran a headline this morning that Snoop Dog smoked weed right before the star-studded Super Bowl in the 2020. to have him to. Wow. But it's like an opportunity. Remember, I mean, yes, it's funny because it's bad and stupid.

But remember, this is an opportunity for right-wing media to try. You know, they're always trying to gin up the base. So here are like some really impressive and really talented and really, really famous black performers. So this is for them, you know, everything is an opportunity to be raised. Yeah, absolutely. And, I mean, look, first of all, weed is perfectly legal in Los Angeles. Who cares? I mean, even, look, even if it were illegal, who cares?

But, oh, Snoop, you know, smoked weed before he went on stage, really? You mean, like, I'm sure no one in the stands there was drunk at all. So it's like, I mean, Snoop put on a good show. Like, if you had put on a bad show, then you can say, hey, you know, maybe lay off the weed before the show. But Snoop lives on weed, and he put on a great show. So it's just, but again, it all does, it all goes back to race in cases like this. I mean, Sean Spicer tweeted, I think it was dear NFL, who is, this show for?

Not you, buddy. Not you at all. I mean, yeah. I mean, I think they're always sort of testing if this is an opportunity to be racist or do something terrible to a black performer. And I mean, we saw for Janet Jackson, like, there have been times when the right

wing cancel culture has been able to really derail people's careers. Yeah, absolutely. And Molly, we were talking before we started recording this, that other than Charlie Kirk and, and Sean Spicer and the New York Post. The reaction wasn't that bad. It was almost like reflex. Like he was like, oh, I have to post something.

I have to be outraged at these black performers. There were women showing their stomachs. Right. But it wasn't like, like I don't even know, you know, probably he doesn't even really care, but it's just such reflex for these people now that they just have to do it. Can't you let people just have fun and watch the Super Bowl

and watch the halftime show? Like, why do you have to be like this? At 28. He's 28. Well, because he's been able to turn this into profit. What is interesting, speaking of Charlie Kirk and people who suck, Donald Trump, I don't know if you've heard of him, he was as a president for four years. So there was a lot of reporting about Mitch McConnell turning on Trump. Now, here's the thing about Mitch McConnell.

He's good at what he does. I mean, he's death of democracy, but he's good at what he does. So we're seeing a lot of reporting that says that Mitch has turned on Trump. He would only, this kind of reporting would only be happening if Mitch was telling reporters he was turning on Trump. Right. Like, there's no world in which this happens without somebody in that office being like, you know, we're fucking done with Donald Trump. And so there's a lot of reporting. And a lot of the reporting speculates that it's been enough.

It's been enough of Donald Trump. Okay. What years it? I mean, 2015 was enough of Donald Trump. Fucking 20-202. Really? It's enough. I mean, he's ruined democracy.

No peaceful transitions of power. Three Supreme Court justices. Texas is practically a police state. Oh, yeah. Now he's had enough. No, he hasn't fucking had enough. It's the polling. And I'm listening to, I'm reading these articles,

and I'm listening to pundits on television and say, well, Mitch McConnell has finally had enough. Mitch McConnell is not a fucking enough. He just sees which way the wind is blowing. And Andy Levy, more importantly, if you look at this polling, which is in our dock, Trump is just in polling free fall and discuss. Well, there's a couple of things here.

One is like you don't get to help create Frankenstein's monster and then all of a sudden say, oh, I've had enough of Frankenstein's monster while he's out there. I'll depart from the book here, you know, because Frankenstein's whatever. It's not a perfect analogy. The idea is you enabled him for all these years and now all of a sudden you're like, oh, I've had enough. Well, it's too fucking late. he's out there. And I agree. I mean, he's not polling that great right now, but I'm a little leery of that

stuff and wary of, I still think he's the easy frontrunner for 2024. Right. No question. Yeah. And I mean, so Mitch McConnell can be, you know, over him temporarily or whatever all he wants. But it's, you know, the, the ship that that ship has said, Mali. It's an expression I just made up. I've never heard it before. But also, Mitch McConnell knows he can't win the suburbs with Donald Trump. Again, I just, I hope that's true. I just, I don't know, I'm so cynical about this.

I just think there's no world in which Mitch McConnell is operating out of a greater good. I agree that right now Mitch McConnell believes that he cannot win the suburbs with Donald Trump. And I'm just not sure that what he thinks is true now is going to be true. two years from now or, you know, two and a half years from now. That's what worries me. And on top of that, you've got Republicans in a bunch of states making it harder to vote, etc., which is not aimed at making it harder for Republicans to vote. So it's like a 2024 election could be decided on the narrowest of margins. And I'm just super cynical about the idea that Trump is going to drag down the Republican Party. Because it's his, I still think it's his party.

and I think Mitch McConnell, even though he is reading the tea leaves, I think maybe he's being a little premature. Again, I hope not. I hope he's right. Maybe the first time in my life I've ever said that I hope Mitch McConnell is right. But I really do hope he's right in this case and that Trump is becoming a drag on the party and they'll jettison him. But every episode of this podcast, we talk about the little Trumps, the Matt Gates and the Marjorie Taylor Green and the Jim Jordan and all those people. And they're not going anywhere. So I just get really cynical and sort of wary when they say, oh, well, Trump is polling badly. Also, polling is not a good indicator. Yeah, like a lot of people.

After, you know, 2015, 2016, thinking there's no way Trump could get the nomination at first and then thinking, well, there's no way he's going to win. And then, hey, wow, I was wrong. So I, you know, I tend to temper my predictions these days. Well, no, I think that's right. But I think, like, ultimately, it's, you cannot. assume ever that Mitch McConnell is operating from a place of anything other than self-serving. Oh, no, we 100% agree on that. He's not saying that out of, you know, he's not going, oh, well, I don't like these things Trump is doing now. No, he has, Mitch McConnell has no moral

center. So it would not be possible for him to think like that. It's probably his best quality. I'm just kidding. I have to say it is fun that today on Valentine's Day, he took credit for electing Susan Collins, who he hates, and who outperform him by 12 points. Happy Valentine's Day. Right. And now I know. Miley, you made a really good point this weekend when the media talks all day about the idea Biden not running again and is polling being bad, but really they are really silent about how bad Trump's polling is with us now. Yeah, we really probably need to move beyond polling, but we don't have anything else beyond polling, so we are stuck with polling. But yeah, No, I mean, it's crazy.

And the idea that Trump is the air apparent, and that's why we talk about him, but somehow we don't talk about the fact, you know, those 538 polls have him down 10 or 13 points. It's kind of flabbergasting. And actually, believe it or not, the way that I even realized that Trump's polling was so bad. And I read, you know, all the stuff that I'm supposed to read was because Jesse makes me watch Bill Maher every Friday night because he hates me. And I watch it every Saturday morning on the Peloton and want to die. And I was watching it this Saturday morning. And he was going on and on about Trump's polling. And I thought, wait, how did I not know about this?

And so that is how Jesse tortures me. I know you were just talking about what do we do going beyond pulling. One of my favorite concussed essays I ever read is about how Elon Musk's neuralink will allow us to do accurate polling because we could. I actually harvest. Great. But first it has to get past killing all those monkeys that apparently is happening right now. Oh, man. I do not want an Elon Musk in my brain in any possible way.

But if you, I want to get the Elon Musk neuralink and then go into the metaverse. Yeah. So I can get some brush and disinformation because that. Yeah. That just sounds amazing. That should fix everything. But Molly, I do think like going back to the serious point. I do think that sort of what I said is maybe the reason that you're not seeing a lot of the Trump polling in the press.

It's sort of like we have been conditioned correctly, I think, to not trust the polls particularly where Trump is concerned. Right. Team Trumpy did say that they lie on polls and that that's sort of their thing. So it's certainly possible that his polling is worse. But I just think that it should be offered as a possible explanation and not just completely ignored. For Mitch McConnell. From Mitch McConnell. It's not even a possible. It's the explanation. I mean, you're absolutely right about that. Speaking of billionaires who are scary, we were talking about Elon Mush, anyway, that makes me think about this reporting this weekend, about Peter Thiel, who is working on a slate of super terrifying candidates.

He has this very libertarian view that is a little bit like, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Blade Runner or Waterworld, but. Basically, when you're paying for your oxygen, you'll probably be paying him. And his candidates are Hillbilly Elegie. Thank you for nagging me to buy that fucking book. And also another super libertarian, very attractive, zero body fat white guy in Arizona named Blake something. And all of these candidates are very, very fit, Blake Masters. I can't say anything else because I don't want to get sued. Well, look, what we have to hope is that the rest of Teal's candidates poll as well as J.D. Vance is currently polling in Ohio, where I believe he's behind somebody else.

Besides Josh Mandel, the Orthodox Jew who is going to deliver the Senate for Republicans in the state of Ohio. Mandel is leading, but Vance was like in fourth or fifth in the poll that I just saw over the weekend, and he was behind, like I think he was polling at 8 percent. and there was a blanket like anybody else or somebody else was pulling ahead of him. So we really just have to hope that Teal picks his candidates, you know, as well as he picked J.D. Vance and then we'll be safe. But yeah, your bigger point is right. I mean, we've just entered this stage where it's just the billionaires have figured out that they don't have to be like just behind the scenes anymore pulling the strings.

They can get right out there and openly. try to get their guys elected and it's going to work in some, at least some cases. And it kind of sucks that they figured that out. Or maybe it won't. I mean, it's worked for the coax, but the coax built a whole movement, right? The coax weren't just one guy. They like built this whole kind of pyramid scheme of giving to shitty Republican candidates who killed democracy. But that's just my opinion. No, but you're right. But like Teal and those people, they don't want to put that kind of time in. Right. And, you know, the Coke thing. was like over decades and whatever.

But these guys, they want results now. So that's when you get, you know, oh, here, J.D. Vance, here's my money. And I'm just going to give money directly to these candidates. And you're right. It may not work as well as the Coke thing did because the Coke thing took the time to at least, you know, play to the grassroots

and sort of make the grassroots their own to a large extent, going back to the Tea Party and whatever. And Teal and those and these guys, they just, they're a different breed. And they're these, you know, the tech guys are a different breed. They want results like, you know, in an hour. Yeah. Yeah, I'm shocked.

They're not playing the long game here. They want this shit done and they want it out and they don't care how many coding errors there are in it. And, you know, if the car is going to run over innocent people and stuff like that, they just want it out there. Including the government. Yeah. No, absolutely. So in this race, I just want to get into this for one second. The Trumpy candidate is Jane Timkin, who's extremely attractive.

I'm not implying anything. And J.D. Vance and then the frontrunner is Josh Mandel, who's run, by the way, has run for everything forever and ever always. I also want to point out, though, that I love the reporting that Peter Thiel is funding all this from sales of NFTs. Oh, Jesus. Well, that makes sense. Yeah. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien.

Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you, you'll support the beast's fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com. Jeet here is a columnist at the nation and author of the newsletter for The Time of Monsters. Welcome back to the new abnormal Jeet here.

Always good to be here. Canada is in the international spotlight yet again, or at least this once. That's right, that's right, yes. Canada has proven that the United States is not the only home for diluted Q&N believers who want to storm a nation's capital. There's at least two countries with this issue. Right. Let's talk about this. So the freedom truckers, which are like the, you know, sort of the beloved mascots of the polite far right, the Fox News hosts, are snarling your traffic. That's right. That's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's, the beautiful thing about trucks is that you don't actually need a lot of them to do a fair bit of damage.

I mean, as anyone who's maybe ever driven a vehicle on the road knows, large rigs take up a lot of room and are very obstructive. In two key places in the sort of city of Ottawa, which is the nation's capital, there's maybe like people are talking about hundreds of trucks, but they're not all these kind of like big trucks. I mean, a lot of them are actually just, you know, like pickup trucks. But they've snarled up the downtown. And also more crucially, until last night at the Ambassador's Bridge, which is between Detroit and Windsor, which is actually like one of the key arteries, maybe the key artery of NAFTA. It's like where the automotive industry between Detroit and Southern Ontario goes through. Because a lot of like, you know, American auto parts are made in Canada. To have that thing flocked for a week is kind of a big deal.

We're talking about like hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah. What is it like where you are? because a lot of Canadian cities are very snarled, right? Yes and no. I mean, I think that there were attempts. I mean, that's actually kind of the interesting thing, because there's been a kind of police failure at a few spots.

I think Ottawa, as I mentioned, the Ambassador's Bridge. But, like, you know, there were attempts to bring in these rigs into Vancouver and Toronto and a combination of more effective policing, blocking off certain roads, ticketing, and more crucially, like, citizen activism kept that from happening. I mean, in Vancouver, you had a lot of cyclists who just went on the road and, you know, like, blocked the treks themselves. And actually, that's something we're actually seeing in Ottawa as well. Like, last, yesterday, throughout the day, there was an attempt to bring in more rigs downtown. And a group of citizens, I mean, they basically organized a flash mob near our neighborhood called the Bank and Riverside.

And they had, like, you know, more than 1,000 people come. And the police were actually telling them, you know, don't do this. These are counter protesters. The counter protest, yeah, there was a counter protest, which was incredibly effective in like it basically, you saw like a mobilization on both sides. The counter protest like stopped the trucks trying to come in, right in dead in their track. And then you saw the leaders of the convoy, the freedom convoy, put out a message like saying, you know, well, we need more trucks down here, which kind of fizzled. Eventually, the trucks were kind of like turned back. And this counter protest, which is done by citizens, was done in defiance of the police.

Let's say the police were saying, well, we're on top of this. This is like a police matter. They're trying to disperse the counter protesters. And this actually happened, not just in Ottawa, but in sort of Kingston, Ontario, which is halfway between Toronto and Montreal. They were like people trying to come in. Again, not so much with like the big trucker rigs, but with like you sort of pick up trucks to do their own little convoy.

And a citizen activist like stopped it, again, in defiance of the police. So I think one of the patterns that we're seeing is in the places where things got messed up, it was really police failure at the best and perhaps a more sinister possibility is police complicity. That, you know, a lot of these areas, it could be that the reason cops didn't do anything is that they themselves are sympathetic to this cause. And we have seen this before, right? Yes, yes.

You know, with January 6th, there was some sense in which the police were sort of holding themselves back. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. No, no, I think that it's kind of a big issue. And I sort of like underscrap. I mean, I think everyone in Canada, like, it's just very striking because, you know, we have like sort of indigenous protests, quite a few over pipelines, environmental protests,

anti-globalization protest. And those ones, the cops are not like, you know, like Mr. Nice. Like there's always like a kind of heavy police presence, police brutality. And it varies. Like I said, I think in Toronto, the cops did a relatively good job. But perhaps because the city council was like on top of things and push them. them in other places, you know, like you're basically seeing the cops not doing anything. I was a remarkable video I tweeted out yesterday where like this cop had been hit by one of the

sort of convoy protesters, you know, just like nicked a little bit. But then he goes up and says, you know, don't hit me again. I saw that video. I would ask your listeners to imagine like a circumstance where like, you know, like a cop in America gets hit by a driver and lets them go away. and perhaps they'll maybe make it more vivid. Imagine if the driver were African-American. I don't think it would end the same way.

Yeah, I think the issue of policing is like a huge one. But the counterpart is, you know, citizens getting upset at this have kind of, you know, worked their own way towards counter-protesting, which has turned out to be, I think it's the turning point in all this. I think what happened yesterday at Riverside and Bank in Ottawa is the Stalingrad. of this pathetic movement. It's like where they were definitely turned back. I should mention, like, you know, to get the Stalingrad analogy somewhat consciously

because the freedom trucker convoyes are very much into this stuff. There was a release of some of their online chat rooms, and there's a big discussion. Castro was a Jew. And one reason behind that is that they think that Fidel Castro is the actual biological father Justin Trudeau, our prime minister. Fidel Castro was the oh yeah, no, you can say this is online.

Ross do that of the New York Times. I tweeted this out and he says, well, you know, there's some theories that are bit out there but have some plausibility. Yeah, yeah, no, no, it's just a big thing on the Canadian right. And so some parts of the American right that Justin is the biological son of Fidel because there's these photographs of when Justin was born of Fidel on a state visit holding just a... And people do like, no, no, no, but I mean, you should be like, I think the real connection here is that.

Everything is very stupid. Fidel is Justin's, Trudeau's father, and that you are the bonded concubine. Yes. You're a Korean leader. Well, that is clear. Therefore, like, you're all kind of related. Yeah. Oh, no question.

I'm going to be Queen of Canada very soon. Oh, I think he's the Queen of Canada. Did you not know that? Part of the truckers is this woman. I think Rulana, she has proclaimed herself the Queen of Canada. She's a QAnon figure and has a following. She says she's the Queen of Canada and the Commander-in-Chief and has called for a disillusion of the government. She declared martial law, right?

Yeah, she declared martial law. Who among us? Why didn't you send this to me, Jesse? You know, Molly, I think of you as being so online. Why would I ever send anything to me? Yeah, but I didn't. I miss that. How did I even miss this? It was so good.

I'm sitting to you afterwards. Yeah, yeah. So, so, so, I mean, I want to underscore this. A lot of the leaders, I mean, maybe some of the followers of the trucker movement are just people upset of mandates. But you can listen to the interviews that the trucker leaders, the organizers have done. A lot of them are into sort of QN stuff and do have their own, like, you know, theories. And especially sovereign citizen stuff. I think that's the other point of intersection.

And they believe that there is like, that the current government is illegitimate. But they're coming to Ottawa. I mean, their demand is not just. just like and mandates and, you know, let us cross the border without being vaccinated, which I have to say, like Justin Trudeau has no power of that. Right. Isn't that Ford?

That's America's business, right? Right, right, right. That is America's business. That's a good point. Let's just say, but they wanted their demands were that they wanted to the conservatives, the NDP, and the bloc, which are the few opposition parties, the former coalition, meet with the truckers,

and then meet with the governor general, who's a representative of the queen, and then to dissolve the, government. Oh, good. Latham Arrest, you know, arrest Fidel Castro's illegitimate son. It's quite amazing the kind of, the fantasy world that is out there. Because I think there are a few people on the more respectable, right?

And I mentioned Barry Wees. Who are like doing these things where I say, well, we should like listen to these. And then Matt Taibi. I mean, he said, well, you know, these are people with Kwebans says we should listen to them. I'm actually someone who has listened to them. I mean, I've listened to their on-air recording. And I have to say, if you're going to proclaim yourself, the Queen of Canada, declare martial law,

and arrest Fidel Castro's illegitimate son, Justin Trudeau, well, I don't know how these are demands that can be met. That's amazing. And I can't believe how stupid it is. And it's funny because I thought this was pretty stupid, but I had no idea. Oh, no, there's levels of stupidity here. It's the Mount Everest of Stupid,

or perhaps not even Mount Everest. Mountains on Mars that are three or four times taller than Mount Everest. That's a less insane. We wanted to talk about Biden is taking a lot of heat for inflation. And Jesse had a very good point, which was, and it's something we've talked about, too, in the UK and in a lot of other countries, including in Canada, you guys have a fair amount of inflation. Can you talk to us about, is Trudeau getting blamed? How is it affecting your life? and, you know, what does the landscape look like there?

That's an excellent point because, yeah, there's inflation like all over the world. And if you think about it for a minute, it's logical because we had a pandemic that created like these shortages. And, you know, when you have shortages, you have inflation. I don't think Justin Trudeau is taking so much heat for this right now. There's like maybe a little bit more national cohesion. It might come to come back to Hauntam. I think that, like, in America, the salient point is that inflation was brought up as a weapon. It's like, you know, you use whatever we have.

They wanted to stop the build back better agenda, and inflation was the kind of pretext, even though it really has nothing to do with one way or the other. I mean, like, I mean, the way you deal with inflation is to work on supply chain issues. And really, it's a whole supply chain in a lot of places has to be rewired. And there's a lot to do there. And I think you can legitimately criticize the, the Biden administration and a lot of other world governments for not moving fast enough on that. Although in a lot of ways, I mean, I think build back better would help with supply chain.

Like, you would be building some of the infrastructure you need for, like, you know, new transportation systems. But, but, yeah, so I think that the key maybe takeaway here is that I think inflation in a lot of ways is being used as a political weapon for people who really want to stop Biden's agenda dead in the track. I think also the thing with inflation that I'm sure Canada has, too, which is the sort of prevalent theory on how to stop inflation is to raise interest rates and you raise interest rates and you crush the market. So it's not a world filled with great choices. No, that's right. Well, I mean, the thing is that I think there are other ways that one could tackle inflation. I mean, like, it's more of a minority opinion among economists, but there are economists who think like some measures of price control could work. But I mean,

If the main thing is that it's a supply chain issue, that's what needs to be dealt with. And, yeah, I mean, I think, like, in some ways, what I see is an attempt to turn Biden into Jimmy Carter. Right, right, right. You know, things are out of control. He can't handle it. But more importantly, Jimmy Carter got spooked by inflation and put in, you know, Paul Volker, who, like, you know, massively raised interest rates, caused huge recession, misery and, like, opened the door for, like, you know, Reagan. And then when Reagan came in, you know, there's like two more years of, you know, really serious recession to 82. But after 82, you know, suddenly, oh, no more inflation.

You know, we're going to like lower interest rates. And, you know, like giving Reagan the economy he needed for a massive reelection in 84. And once we see this pattern time and again, where Democrats are kind of cornered into the position where they have to be the austerity party and the Republicans can be the ice cream party. The Republicans can be like, you know, tax cuts we're all, you know, we're going to juice up the military to create like sort of Keynesian spending that way. And then Democrats are, they come in and it's like a huge mess and they say, oh, man, we have to raise interest rates. And like, I don't know, man. I mean, I would think that you should try to resist falling into that trap. Like, how many times are you going to let Lucy pull the football away from you?

I think that's a really good point. So just back to the truckers for a second, how do you see this resolving? Well, actually, I think that the counter protest are the kind of solution. Like, I think people in Canada, the truckers are very unpopular. You know, there's never been more than a few thousand of them. So I think that, like, you know, as people, as the, you know, silent majority wakes up and things like, you know, we can't let this. I think that that's going to be, like, some investigation of the cops. There's, like, at least, like, two, maybe three special ops that were involved, like, top level,

you are equivalent of the Navy SEALs. which is like very troubling. That has to be investigated. And there's a whole like network. I mean, there was a big hack yesterday of the funding network. So I think Trudeau and Jack Meetsing are both kind of did a narrative that I'm very uncomfortable with saying, well, this is an American intervention. And I think that that's wrong. I think it's a transnational thing. I think there's fruitcakes on both sides of the border. The interesting thing that is kind of the hacking is that we have the names of the people who are donating to this. So like 55% are American, another 30 plus are Canadian and then people from Britain and Australia and other places.

There is an American money that's being put into this. Most of the money is actually Canadian. Like the Canadians, the 30% of Canadians donated more. So it's a little bit of a wash that way. And what I think is more important is that there's a kind of echo chamber or media network. Like, you know, Flack News was trumpeting this. There's a lot of Facebook stuff. and that was coming out of like a hacked account in Missouri, as well as an account in Bangladesh.

So I think there is an international network. And if you look at the people like, you know, Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson, or does I call him trucker Carlson or maybe Trecker Coulson? Right. He's selling T-shirts. They're selling T-shirts. And I think that, you know, they've been trying to do this for a while. There's like a fizzled Australian convoy that didn't wear. There was actually a convoy during Obama's time and a few in the U.S. But I mean, I think that they're very excited that they actually managed to do one of these things.

And I think they'll try to do it in the States as well. But I think the way to think about it is that you have, you know, these very localized people who tend to come from the evangelical far right and QAnon, people who've been red-pilled by Q&ON. And then they have a transnational network that's made available, you know, ironically, by globalization, by NAFTA, you know, creating these trucks that go back and forth by Facebook. and they egg each other on and they support each other. So, you know, I mean, I suspect that there will be an attempt to do this in the states, you know, have the American equivalent. I would hope that, like, you know, the lessons I learned, you know, to stop this stuff in the tracks.

But, yeah, I hope there's a level of the Biden administration or state and municipal places, you know, have enough control over their cops that, you know, they can, they can put this. Because, I mean, you don't need, like, hundreds of trucks. You can just like a few tracks can really like bottleneck a city. They snarl everything. It's interesting to me to see these people in the intellectual dark web, quote unquote, giving cover to crazy QAnon stuff. That is all.

Thank you, Jeet here for joining us. Thank you. It's always good to be here. Amani Perry is a professor at Princeton University and the author of South to America, a journey below the Mason Dixon to understand the soul of the nation. Welcome to the new abnormal Amani Perry. Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to have you because I'm a very big fan of yours.

You're an academic and you're a history professor and you've written a lot of academic books. This is your first commercial book, right? Yeah, I mean, I wrote two books for Beacon Press, which is not a university press, but the kind of, this is my first, you know, large New York house experience. Yeah, it's a different thing. We also both are newsletter writers at the Atlantic. But talk to me about how you got to this idea of, this book. Yeah, I have always been a writer or aspired to be a writer that precedes my decision to

become an academic by long time. And so I identify more as an intellectual, I would say, than an academic, you know, an intellectual and a writer. And I, you know, was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1972 in the period after what Birmingham is known for, 10, you know, generally speaking, and then was raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and spent much of my life traveling back and forth between those places and also to Chicago. And my family is in Alabama, always has been. And so the origin of the book is really my own experience of seeing the South as home

and also constantly seeing it from the outside in and feeling as though it was deeply misunderstood and that therefore I was misunderstood stood and that it was mischaracterized. And so I've been thinking about the South in an intimate way and from a distance my entire life. And then as someone who has studied, you know, black history, culture, the politics of gender, the politics of race, of empire, all these sorts of things, it seemed to me just an incredibly kind of natural thing to explore on the page. And so it really came about organically. And once I got to the point where I could get a contract to write a book that

would allow it to be the thing that it is, it just, that was the first thing I wanted to write. We've spent a lot of time talking about, like, how deeply unfair the representation is in the South, and Mississippi is such an example of that. Can you talk about how that figures in? Yes, although, you know, I have a running rivalry with a number of Mississippians who are my dear friends, but, you know, they tend to take up a lot of space in comparison to Alabama. Sorry. We also have a lot of Alabama politicians on this podcast, and we did have the state house minority leader.

We don't give Alabama shorts shift. I'm just plain, but one of the things I say is, and it's a quote, but that, you know, Mississippi loves its writers the way Alabama loves its football players. And there's this conception, you know, the South is at, the most racist place, the most backwards place, the most unsophisticated place, the least cosmopolitan, a place that has a racial binary, all of these things. And it's sort of like the South becomes a repository for the nation's sins. And so part of my interest is in revealing how, in fact, not only is it a case that the bounty of the labor and the pushing out of indigenous people and that sort of those norms shaping what would become the ways of doing things in the South and ultimately in the rest of the nation, but then also producing incredible wealth. That's a piece of it, but it's also the case that so much of where we

have gone and are going has been driven by the South. So instead of it being behind, often it's the vanguard, right? And we think about, you know, labor relations to this day. We think about environmental disaster. We think about, you know, politics and the like, right? So my point is actually to try to subvert the dominant image because it actually makes it much more difficult for us to address all of our challenges as a whole in the nation. What do you feel like we can learn from the South? You know, there's so much. I mean, I think there's something that happens that we learn sort of organically, right, in terms of, so the fact that the South is the source of almost all American music is instructive because it suggests that there are traditions of human encounter and

yearning and resilience that have been learned, you know, through great difficulty. This idea of, you know, our traditions of political organizing, not just in terms of, of course, the civil rights movement, but also the labor movement and the mine wars. And there's so much that has taken place there under incredibly humble circumstances that I think it ought to be a source of inspiration and also witnessing. You know, I mean, you think about now, I mean, it's really at the forefront, the region, especially the Gulf Coast is at the forefront of environmental disaster. And there are people in these small communities who are dedicating their lives to trying to save the planet and to save humanity. there's a lot to learn there so that if we can be less judgmental or assuming about what we know about those people and what happens there and what they do, I think we actually can gain a lot of

guidance from folks in that region. I want to talk about climate because there's so much coastline, you know, the part of the South that's coastline is a coastline that's really affected by climate. Can you go into that a little more? Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, to talk about every sort of, you know, there's more than one cancer alley, you know, oils, bills, dead zones all along the coast. And you combine that with the incredible deregulation. When I, when I tell people, even people in other parts of the South, for example, that you don't even have to get your car inspected in Alabama, right? Like, they're just... Oh, wow. And I also say, you know, I have a number of autoimmune diseases, and I attribute that, at least in

hard to the fact that, you know, the year I was born, Birmingham was the most polluted city in the country because of the mines and the steel mills and the like. And so people live with much higher rates of all kinds of disease and have lower life expectancies. And so it is an immediate experience, right? It's not an abstraction, right? That you're headed for something. Climate crisis is happening already. And then when we think about the political landscape, I think understanding why that hasn't shifted politics writ large, it's almost as though, you know, you see a history where politicians often in the South, or politics have not served regular Southerners across the spectrum, right, who tend to be. And so people don't place their faith in politicians. They face

their faith in prayer instead. You know, so I think also sort of trying to understand what is often seen as a kind of strange disposition for people who are suffering has to do with actually what politics in the electoral politics sense has meant so often. That's a really interesting point. I want to talk about that more. So because these people in the South are so disenfranchised and because their leadership doesn't look like them, their and often isn't even, you. You know, I mean, a good example is, you know, in Alabama. I mean, you know, he's not even an Alabama football coach and he can't name the three branches of government. Tommy Tuberville, I mean, I don't even know who he's representing. So explain to me what that phenomenon looks like. I mean, I think what it looks like is, one, the way race, right? The race operates.

And so I think for many white southerners, their actual relative vulnerability. is part of what drives the sense that one has to protect whiteness, right? There's not that different. And so that's a piece of it. But it's the culture of plant or aristocracy where there may be different people in those positions. Right. The idea of super, I mean, you know, Mansion is a great example. If we go West Virginia, which sometimes people don't talk about the mountain south, but for me, it's really important.

Yeah. But, you know, someone who's on the side of the coal boss, right? And it is one, essentially. Is a representative, those are the people who have been in leadership. That's the sort of social role that they occupy. The narratives that will protect you from not being like those other kinds of people who are more vulnerable than you. We're going to keep you a little bit higher, right? That logic is such an enormous driver.

You know, even a place like West Virginia, which has this very complex political history, which has included, you know, really aggressive moments. I mean, that's such a good point because I think about Jim Jordan, who used to be a Democrat, who is a coal baron too and who owns the, you know, the Greenbrier, the most expensive resort. I mean, it really is so much of their politics there is aspirational. And it's sort of, I mean, really a big man type of a political landscape. And I do think that even though the South was sort of decimated after the Civil War, the notion of, you know, there being sort of the way that planters functioned in the political landscape, right? And that the majority here now, right? People will talk about, well, the majority of white southerners in the context of slavery didn't own slaves. Absolutely.

Majority of white folks were vulnerable in that context. Absolutely. And yet that structure was sustained with the sort of you're not, but you're not a slave, right? I mean, there were protests over when enslaved people were brought in to work in minds because it was seen as a debasement of the work itself. So it's an old, old history. Yeah, that's so interesting. I hadn't even thought about that.

And West Virginia as part of the South, just, you know, it didn't even occur to me. Do you have anything prescriptive you can see here? Sorry, I know that's a mean question, but I always sort of want to look to like what we can do. Yeah, you know, so funny because I'm used to writing more prescriptively. and I was avoiding it in this book, but in the end, it actually does turn prescriptive because I can't avoid it. I mean, I think, you know, the prescriptive piece is actually predicated on, you know, the Ida B. Wells quote that I live with, the people must know before they can act. And that it's, it's really important for us to understand, you know, the complexities of our political landscape in a much more sophisticated way. I mean, even just the sort of at the very, you know, basic level,

the formulation of the red state blue state thing drives me crazy because the whole country is purple. We don't even understand how people are moved about politically, right? And so the South gets red in the logic of these sort of color-coded maps that don't actually describe how the various constituencies are moving about. I also believe in supporting and joining organizations at the local level. I mean, I think it's that simple, right? And there are lots of people who are doing meaningful work. And I love Ella Baker. I used to take her when she would come up to Boston, who was the mother of the student nonviolent coordinating committee. And I would take her to the park. And she's one of this sort of heroic figure as she was an elderly woman. And her theory of networked localism, right, that we do things that are meaningful at the local level, but we believe in establishing. networks in order to do that and believing, and that's, you know, was the core of the Southern

movement. But those networks must be based in mutual respect. And so I guess my hope is that the book pushes a kind of mutual respect that allows those to flourish across the boundaries of region. Oh, that's so good. Thank you so much. It's already a New York Times bestseller. Amani Perry. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much for having me, Molly. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer checking in on the movement of the radical right.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly John Fest. Your fuck that guy is not my fuck that guy. And in fact, your fuck that guy is a guy who you fancy intellectual Twitter, woke Twitter, continue to rag on. Because you all have your finger.

on what's really happening in the city. It's true, and I fully admit that. I'm here, as we speak, I am in a tower made of ivory. And, you know, I'm looking down on the masses, and they look like ants to me, Molly. So my fuck that guy is the mayor of my fair city of New York, Eric Adams.

Fake vegan. Yes, the fake vegan, who is apparently more of at least a pescatarian. We've found out. Why isn't every person on a dating app can figure that out, but he can't? Right. Do you think he's on dating apps? Eric Adams? Yeah, probably only Rye F he is.

Maybe. That fancy club he hangs out in all the time. I think that probably takes care of it for him. That's true. Yeah. Well, anyway, back on Friday, Mayor Adams came to New York City from his home in New Jersey, I believe. And he was complaining about rap videos, particularly.

a form of rap called drill rap that is kind of popular underground here in New York City. And he had no idea what it was, but his son sent him some videos and he decided it's alarming. Yes, he has a son. And he now wants to talk about Twitter and other sites banning these rap videos.

And when I saw that, I was like, wait, when I went to bed last night, it was the 2020s and I woke up and it's now the 1990s. And that's just a very weird feeling to have to look outside and think like, wow, I just, you know, I have to get back to the future. I'm stuck in the 90s. So anyway, he is, it's just, look, there are, there are gang shootings going on here in New York. Mayor Adams owned police department, the NYPD's deputy chief, said the music has nothing to do with these shootings, that there are gang shootings, but he doesn't

think that the music and the lyrics are the underlying motive for all of this. But you know what, Eric Adams doesn't care. He's on this little kick of turning into, tipper gore on a lot of issues. And so he gets my, and I'm going to say this with a fairer degree of certainty, this is not going to be the last time that I say that Mayor Eric Adams is my fuck that guy. In a city that has more rats than people by about 500 times, right? You would think that the biggest problem would not be the rap, but I guess, you know, what do I know?

Yeah. So my Fuck That guy is a consortium of shitty right-wing media organizations who together have decided

that it is time and it starts with this tweet from one Laura Ingram who actually has me blocked on Twitter so I had to look I had to find the goddamn tweet basically to the effect of the walls are closing in on Hillary Clinton

finally I mean I was like you guys I liked Hillary Clinton. I voted for her in 2016. I did, you know, I was a good Democrat, but I don't think Hillary Clinton is going to run for president again. And I don't think from the fact that she has said numerous times and everyone knows and she is not running for president again. And like, I feel like the far right industrial complex is so obsessed with her. Like, just let it go, man.

Don't forget Kanye West, who's also obsessed with that Pete Davidson slept with her now. Wait, Pete Davidson slept with Hillary Clinton? That's what Kanye West said this weekend. Yeah, there you. That's about right. Sorry, I had to bring that to you guys. That was like the worst thing I've ever heard. Like, I mean, just because they saw each other in the street once?

Yeah, well, you know, like man's not very mentally apt these days. So my fuck that guy is this right-wing media complex, which continually drudges up stuff, you know, this durring. report came out, the New York Post was very excited. They said, again, that this was the biggest story of 2022, because Durham has shown that, I mean, basically, I read this story, what I could tell you is they believe, with almost no proof that Durham, a guy with an enormous walrus, like mustache, proved that Hillary Clinton's campaign was spying on Trump with Russia. I mean, I don't fucking know. And that's why she hacked the election so she would lose. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. And so for that, I say, this information is like six years too late for any of us to care.

And for that I say, Laura Ingram, you and your ilk deserve my ire today. But I think what you're failing to understand here is that Fox News clearly has like internal polling. They know that if they talk about Hillary Clinton, their viewers love it. And so that's why they were hyping the Hillary is running in 24, that ridiculous piece by Doug Shone. And now they're hyping this because it's just they have the greatest villain that they have discovered for their viewers is Hillary Clinton. And she's going to be in the grave 30 years. Like I'm talking like 50, 60 years from now. And they are still going to be, you know, if Fox News is still around.

Well, you know, if they're broadcasting from underwater somewhere, it's going to. and be like, you know, Hillary running for Queen of the Purple Island. Yeah. Oh, no question. I mean, it is just, you know, I think we can all agree that Hillary Clinton is an obsession of this right-wing media because she was such, you know, there were so many tropes that she was able to, you know, a longtime political, a woman, a powerful woman, you know, there were all these tropes that right-wing media had a field day with. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll 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. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode.

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