The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump and This Murdering KKK Cannibal Have a Lot in Common

Episode Date: April 9, 2023

Timothy Egan, author of A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan’s Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them, joins Danielle on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to talk about his work and research on the KKK, how the group was able to maintain power, and all the ways that Trump mirrors one of the group’s most grotesque members Grand Dragon D.C. Stephenson. He also shares the most Trumpian thing about the convicted rapist and murderer and the reason he believes that everyone stood behind this person, despite knowing he was a monster. Plus, Danielle and co-host Andy Levy watch react to this week’s Sunday clips. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to the other Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Timothy Egan, who's the author of A Fever in the Heartland, the Ku Klux Klan's plot to take over America and the woman who stopped them. And he's going to tell us all about their new book. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips.

Clips. All right. So this clip really caught fire. Andy, you even sent it to me where Ms. Marjorie Taylor Green gives an interview to her boyfriend who works at RBN, Brian Glenn, outside of the poorly attended rally where she was drowned out by whistles because a moron Trump supporter handed out whistles, not considering what may happen. Let's have a listen. President Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison. Jesus, Jesus was arrested. arrested and murdered by the Roman government. There have been many people throughout history that have been arrested and persecuted by radical corrupt governments. And it's beginning today in New York City. And I just can't believe it's happening, but I'll always support him.

He's done nothing wrong. There's so much there. I'll talk about some of the Jesus stuff. Jesus was not arrested by a radical government. Jesus was the radical. Oh, Andy, stop with your logic. Stop with your logic. Let's start with that.

Was he arranged, though? I don't think that he was arraigned. I don't think he did the stations of the cross in a limo. I'm fairly certain that was not the case. I do have to say, though, I am shocked that she said that Jesus was murdered by the Romans and not by the Jews. That actually shocked me. I'm so used to hearing people like that say the Jews killed Jesus. And it absolutely floored me that she at least got that.

Right. There is so much wrong. There is so much wrong in every fucking thing that came out of her mouth. I think that maybe her Bible looks like a picture book. Maybe it's like a paint fight numbers. I think it's pop ups. It's pop ups, right? Please do not put Nelson Mandela in your mouth. Like just like just remove that man from from your mouth. Like because none of these people that you named paid off a porn star. That is not that is not how they ended up persecuted. I don't know what your martyr like what your definition of martyr is bitch But you need to look at Webster Because this ain't it I was just gonna say I hope The Mandela effect shifts to her just forgetting

He existed so she never does that again Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison And a large chunk of that was at some maximum Security prison on an island I really don't think that's gonna be the case with Donald Trump I should also say the true horror of this clip is that right after this, thank God you are just listeners and not viewers.

The two of them kissed on air after it. It was truly hard. Oh, my God. No, every, I don't need. Can we still contact the FCC? Because that was nasty. I don't. It was not good.

I don't want my kids seeing that. Seriously. Drag a brunch over that any day. So now we're going to shift to, for the rest of the show, Fox News. lots of fun stuff from them this week well I torture Danielle every week

it's time to torture you andy so you know so first we have Fox News is Pete Hengzeth who looks like a sentient ascot and he has some thoughts on elites alma mater I have a new new rule the more the more elite the university and advanced that a graduate is the more the dumber they are the less likely I am to trust them

If you went to the Ivy League, prove to me that you have any common sense at all. You went Ivy League, right? Yes, and I sent one of my degrees back. He sent one of his degrees back. Only one, though. I believe he has degrees from Princeton and Harvard. Yeah, a kind Twitter user wrote, Fox News lineup, Tucker, Trinity College, Hannity, NYU, Ingram, Dartmouth, Waters, Trinity, Gutfeld, Berkeley, Hegst, Princeton, McAnney, Harvard. I'm starting to think these people might be full of shit.

Yeah, I mean, it's so. odd here and I just think that their university should ask for their degrees back because that would be like you are not representing us. This is not what we turn out. No. So please if he wants if you want people to prove I would just if you're that university, hey ask for your degree back. They don't want it and they clearly don't fucking use it. Full disclosure here. So I went to an Ivy League college. That's really all I wanted to say. Oh, okay. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I really wanted to say that I knew there were a lot of smart people there and there were a lot of dumb people there. Like anyplace else.

Well, I'm going to throw a curveball here. We're about to listen to a show called The Five, which we've mocked a lot on Fox News. But wait for it. We're going to praise its analysis. This is all I'm saying. Based Dana Perino was not on my bingo card, especially when she was gaslighting us about the Iraq War. But base, Dina Perino, cue it up, girl. I want to point out something else, though. Republicans yesterday lost the Wisconsin Supreme Court race as well.

There was something very interesting that happened in Chicago that's connected with Wisconsin in my mind. Well, two things actually. This guy, the new mayor, Brandon Johnson, most of the ads that he did against Paul Valles were about abortion. Because 10 years or so ago, Paul Valles had something mildly supportive of a pro-life position. But then said, but I just want everybody to do their own thing. But for me personally, I would be pro-life. So they tagged him as a pro-life crazy nut, and there was no response on it. And that has nothing to do with the running of a city.

Now go next door to Wisconsin. Republicans lose by 10 points. Now, they won a lot of the conservative ballot issues, the issues that are on the ballot, but the candidate on the Republican Supreme Court case, he lost by 10 points. And Republicans used to be able to count on their voters turning out in the midterms. The left has really woken up to making sure that Gen Z gets out and vote. If you look at the vote and where it came from, especially in Wisconsin, at the University of Madison, for example, University of Wisconsin and Madison,

it was staggering. The numbers are staggering. And that is going to happen all across the country. Based. Wow. She's talking about the Democrats being woke. Yeah. I'd also like to point out that won the Wisconsin Supreme Court by 11 points, not 10.

Dana, when I worked there, I liked her a lot. And she has disappointed me a lot since I've left. So it is, I guess, nice to see her jumping back on the fact train for at least a little while on that show. And she has that capability. She's very smart. And she needs to do more of that. Yeah. I mean, I just, I'm speechless, really.

I couldn't find a fact to check because they were all correct. Yeah. Here's the thing. Run on abortion. Here's the thing. Your hatred, the far rights hatred and bigotry and hate of women and trans people and black people and people of color. Yeah, it's woken up the generation

that wants to say, fuck you. You don't get to control us. So yeah, everything she said was dead on. I'm shocked. Has hell frozen over? I'll take issue with her in one thing. She said that being pro or anti-abortion has nothing to do with running a city.

I don't agree with that. Because there are things you can do as a mayor to improve access to clinics and stuff like that. You know, there are a lot of things the mayor of a big city can do. if they favor women's reproductive freedoms or if they oppose them. So I think she's wrong about that. You are correct, in fact, even in our own city,

with the help of our former mayor, Bill DeBungler, he helped get rid of crisis pregnancy centers. Yeah, exactly. Well, what if I told you another Fox News surprising thing that Fox News was going to embarrass Donald Trump and for once it was not going to be by letting him speak? But instead, just show how ridiculous his views are. Yeah, I don't buy it.

Apparently today, Donald Trump, Trump has called for America to defund the police, particularly the FBI, the Department of Justice, because the Democrats have weaponized law enforcement. All right, who in this panel, raise your hand, who thinks that's a good idea? All right, nobody. They found the thing. Oh, wow. Yeah. They found the thing.

When Donald Trump's cult can't even go along with him on something, that that's bad. It was like, who thinks that a good, oh, okay, nobody. That was the best part. Like, did he think that people were going to like raise her? Yes, yes, you know. It was, oh, oh, nobody. Okay. Next segment.

So they're back to being pro-cop after being anti-cop on January 6th. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Interesting. I'm just saying if they defund the FBI and CIA, how are they going to infiltrate Black Antifa? It'll be so fucking difficult. By the way, Danielle, I asked for your recommendation to join.

Did you ever send that in? Because I haven't heard back from that. No, return to Sunder. Rude. Guess I'm not going to the cookout. Next year, Andy. I was going to make potato sauce. Finally, for all the people who say that the indictment of Mr. Trump is a weapon of the government,

but they claim the Republicans never prosecuted Hillary and she walks free, but a walrus look alike named John Bolton from the Trump administration has some thoughts. You agree that the Justice Department was weaponized under the Trump administration? I can attest to it personally. I don't need to look at other stories. What do you mean by that? Well, when Trump and his lawyers in the White House and in the Justice Department, Department brought both a civil and a criminal case against me for publishing a book that didn't go through the pre-publication review process when they know that it had been cleared in the regular

order, that is abusing the Justice Department. And there are plenty of other examples besides. When it happens to them, that's when they realize. It's like MTG and then visiting the January 6 people in jail and then suddenly being appalled by conditions in our prisons. It's like they couldn't give a rat's ass when it's not happening to them or people who look like them. But the minute it is, boy, they change their tune. The hypocrisy is so fucking wild. It's so ridiculous. Like, what about me? What about me? What about me? I don't know. I have nothing more to say. They make me sick in all honesty. It's like you should not need to experience something yourself to know that something is wrong. They are so fucking egocentric.

and just selfish and greedy and gross. Amen. All right, there's Danielle's anger. My job is done for this week. We did it. We did it, Joe. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal for the very first time, former New York Times reporter and author of the new book,

A Fever in the Heartland, the Klu Klux Klan's plot to take over America and the woman who stopped them. Timothy 1, it's great to be in conversation with you. I think that your book is incredibly timely, as racism is always timely in America, it seems. I want to start out with two pieces that were recently published, one in the Washington Post and then another one at Crime Reads, both of which I enjoyed immensely. The Washington Post piece entitled What We Can Learn from the Midwestern War Against the Clan 100 years ago, I think it's really interesting this juxtaposition that you are doing with the height of

the clan in the 1920s and the early 2020s that we are living in and this white supremacist resurgence that we are seeing in the halls of power. And so I just wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about the 1920s, this kind of remarkable time in American history and how you feel that our current climate of anxiety and rise in hate and hate-fueled crimes are running parallel to one another. Yeah, and you phrased it and platformed it really well, I thought, because they had just come out of a pandemic in the 1920s. There was a lot of change going on. The great migration was happening. African Americans were moving from the south to the north. There was a huge surge of immigration, but immigrants who didn't look like the former immigrants.

They were Jews from Eastern Europe, and there were Sicilians who were tended to be darker-skinned, and the 800,000 Sicilians came to our country. And finally, there were women who were newly socially liberated and had just been given the vote. The clan's growth in the 20s, and it was astonishing. I mean, it was astonishing how powerful they were. In the 1920s, there were up to six million members of the Ku Klux Klan, and their base was not in the old Confederacy, which makes all of us in the north think, all those dumb Southern Hicks. Of course they were racist. Their base was small town America in the north. Their base was the

quintessential American state of Indianapolis. So they had four clan governors, open clansmen. And as I said, people who'd put their hand on a Bible and took an oath to quote, forever uphold white supremacy. That's what the governor of Indiana did. That's what the governor of Colorado did. That's what the governor of Oregon did. Not southern Confederate states. The slogan of the clan elected governor in Colorado was every man under the capital dobe are clansmen. So on the surface, it was this sort of normalized Norman Rockwelly in America, but just below it was this deep, deep current of hatred and intolerance and fear of others. And what you see today is hatred and intolerance and fear of others. And it just takes different forms of shapes.

There, it was almost institutionalized. And they came, we can get into this later, but they came damn close to make it a rent for the White House because they had dominated the political conventions in 1924. Time magazine puts the Imperial Wizard on the cover and writes a largely praiseworthy story about how powerful it is. Okay. Well, we will get into that and how the mainstream media has historically been complicit in the rise of authoritarian. I often quote the fact that the New York Times, your former place of employment, did this beautiful story of Hitler in the 1930s on his long walks and his gardens. And you're like, I'm sorry,

what? Yeah. Sorry about that. The same thing about Stalin. Yeah. Right. In your piece, in the other piece in crime reads, we get a bigger picture, and it's just so, Timothy, it's just so beautifully written of this figure, D.C. St. Stevenson, who was the Grand Dragon in Indiana in the 1920s, famously quoted as saying, I am the law. And as you lay out this story in crime reads, I got to tell you that I got chills down my spine. And why is that? Because how DC Stevenson, and I'll allow you for the listeners

to be able to describe him, harken to Donald Trump. I alone can fix this. Harkens to Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida, creating his own militia, deciding that he alone is going to decide what children and students in secondary education learn, deciding what curriculum is. And so I'm saying, oh, my God, this is textbook. Like, they are taking the pages from this man's book. So please explain for folks who D.C. Stevenson was. Yeah. Again, you set that up nicely. A lot of people, and I'm afraid to say this, think my book will be banned in Florida because it's a shameful part of our history that we supposedly can't teach. In fact, it's a part of our history that makes us stronger if you realize it's a blueprint for hatred and how to stop it. But D.C. Stevenson is a classic American character. He says, I'm just a nobody from nowhere, but he's got the gift of gab. He says things that people want to hear. He plays to their fears. He blames their failures on other people. That it's not your fault that your life has fallen apart. It's these

awful other people. And he rolls into Indiana as a grifter and a drifter. And in four short years, controls 21 states of the largest realm of the Ku Klux Klan that the world has ever seen. He's a multi-millionaire. He has a plane with KKK logo at the bottom of it. It's a 98-foot yacht that he entertains senators, guess. He has a mansion in Irvington where he throws these wild parties with naked women popping out of cakes and one of his aides said these parties would have shamed Nero. This, by the way, is while he's professing the sexual purity of women. And he's a rapist. He's a con man.

He's a liar. He tells 20 lies before he gets out of bed in the morning. I mean, of course, you couldn't see him as a Trumpian figure. And here's the thing that's so Trumpian about him, not just the lies and that telling people. And I'm like, the sexual predator. No, you know, second murderer, a lie. Check, check, check. check, debauched, check. You just go through it all and you see this stuff. When he finally gets

his comeuppance, you know, he rapes several women. And he's a cannibal, actually. He starts chewing on their flesh. And as his depravity gets worse, he becomes more and more of a cannibal. When he finally is arrested and charged with raping, cannibalizing, and ultimately killing this one woman, this is before the trial. This is after his charge. He calls it all a smear and a a hoax and a witch hunt. And I'm like, holy shit. And this is the other thing. We want to talk about it. It's the trial of the century when it happens. Everybody knows about it. But even while facing charges as the Grand Dragon, the largest clan realm of the world's ever seen for rape or her and kidnapping, his clan slate runs the house in Indiana. They get a governor. They get mayor. They get the entire

city council where they enforce Jim Crow of the North. They know him right now that this man's a monster. a monster. And they choose to believe because the cause is greater than the man. The cause is greater than the man. Let's stay on that for a moment, Timothy. And fast forward to the 2020s. We don't need to make the pit stop in 2016. We know how we have arrived at this point in history. And back back in 2016, I had said on national television that the election of Donald Trump is white supremacy's last stand. kind of in the way that you would enter into the 100-year war, wondering if it's going to be over in a few months, right? Well, I never thought it was going to be a hundred-year war.

Right. Correct, right? So here we have arrived at this place where there has been this abandonment in the Republican Party of country, of patriotism, of shared values, whether or not this union has ever been perfect, we know that never to have been the case. But there was a shared value of each generation's desire to perfect this union, right? Now what we have seen through the rise of Trump, Trumpism, Magadam, whatever name that you want to refer to it as, white nationalist supremacy, is this idea that they will swallow Trump, right? They will take Trump for all his misgivings for his.

there's 34 felony counts for his multiple investigations and possible indictments that are on the horizon. Do you believe because in this same vein from a hundred years prior that was the cause in 1923 is the similar cause in 2023 for the Republican Party? Yeah, that's a great point. And in 1923, white supremacy was institutionalized in the form of Jim Crow in the South, basically took the citizenship rights away from 37% of Americans. It was being institutionalized in the North. But this is really important to understand.

For anyone who thinks these people were a bunch of dumb shits, they were the bankers, the merchants, the leading citizens, the leading politicians, the ministers, the teachers, the coaches, they're the people who held their communities together. And what are these people who held their communities together do? They put their hand on a Bible. And they swore to, quote,

forever uphold white supremacy. There was no dog whistle, nothing at all. It was outright, I swear, I will uphold one race and one religion. It was also based in religion. It was white Christian, militant nationalism, okay? The hated Catholics. Fast forward to today. That's fascinating. I didn't know you'd said in 2016 that Trump was the last gasp of white supremacy. Certainly, one hopes to believe that in looking at the arc of history. But that's what the fumes are all about because their marches, they fear replacement. What happened in Tennessee, Tennessee was the founding home of the Ku Klux Klan. It happened in the town of Pulaski, Tennessee, and it was a bunch of ex-Confederates who couldn't handle the fact that 36% of the population was no longer property,

that they were now American citizens. So they formed as a reaction to that. Fast forward to today, and now you have Tennessee creating an act that just could have been pulled from any time in the racist past of the clans reign over that. But you have pushback at least. I mean, then you had a handful of people, hopefully one woman had to push them back. Here you have people outrage. But your point is this, that you could get away with this shit because if you just want to believe another and you want to believe in the causes greater than the man. Trump, as we all know, famously said I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. If he's convicted, I don't think it'll put a dent in MAGA. Do you? No, I don't. I don't. And that to me is what we need to grasp with, right, is that the issues that we are facing in this country that we are being met with, whether it is what the Tennessee legislature just did to two black democratically appointed members of their body, expelled them, not for any crimes committed, but for the audacity to use their microphones and their voices. They see, this party sees that those people that took flagpoles,

and used them as weapons on January 6th and have beaten police officers, they see them as comrades in this war that they're waging. Peaceful black men sitting in protest and holding the tears of the parents of Covenant and others as the real villains here, right? Those that need to be subdued. And so what I want us to reconcile with is that Trump, much in the way that it wasn't just D.C. Stevenson, our problem is not one man. Right.

Right? Our problem is an ideology. But go ahead. I like to say that Trump and Stevenson were not the instigator, but they were a symptom of the times. So people want to say, well, the Ku Klux Klan, they were a fringe group. In fact, the mainstream newspaper in Indiana, the Indianapolis Star is still the leading newspaper. In 1921, they wrote this. This is the quote. The Negro is among us and must be encouraged to progress, that that does not mean this should ever lead to social mingling. So, I mean, racist sentiment was being professed in the state of Indiana by the leading mainstream paper. Similarly, I think a lot of the mainstream press has let the dark heart of Trumpism, the dark heart of it.

What MAGA is truly about is fear of others, holding on to an imagined past. a mythologized past. The same way that the clan held on to this view in the 20s that if only we could turn America back to 1890, that was the year that they imagined everyone was white and everyone was Protestant. And that's what they passed in the 1924 Immigration Act, which set the clock back to 1890

in terms of who could get into the country. We have to face this, that at its core, it is about an imagined America that is one way. And they are willing to throw every principle out the door, just as the clan of the 20s, It's represented purity of women but was led by a rapist, represented prohibition but was led by an alcoholic, represented truth when it was a serial liar and sociopath,

who they all followed. Similarly right now, the Maga Movement is, there's no other way to put this. I mean, it's led by a sociopath and a person willing to cross any line. My sad lesson of history on this on a human being basis, I hate to say this, but any person who has no bottom to their shame, You and I, when we do something that makes us feel shameful, our conscience has a little twinge,

and we started, did I do that wrong? Could I do better? I didn't mean to hurt that person. He had no shame. Trump has no shame. And this is the sad thing. If you have no shame, no bottom of your shame, you can get away with anything. You are a very liberated human being because you're shameless.

D.C. Stevenson had no shame and ruled the Midwest with an iron grip in the 1920s as Grand Dragon is the largest. oldest American domestic terror group in our history. Trump is able to keep a similar hold because he has no shame. Now, this is the first time in an interview I've ever just come out and talked about the Trump parallels. I'd just like to think they're there. If you read this story, you don't need me to goose the story. No, but here's the problem. This is why I'm so grateful for you making it so explicit, is that the problem is that a majority of Americans, and dare I say, a majority of white Americans do not know their history. So when we in the academic reading class

believe that these links are obvious, right? It's not obvious to a large swath of the population because it's like Joe Biden being the first president ever to visit Tulsa, the site of the massacre of 300 black people in Tulsa, Oklahoma, 100 years ago. And many people, in that moment, it was the first time that they learned about this. Exactly. So while we believe that Trump is a new figure, what your book and what your work illustrates here

is that, no, he is a reincarnation, right, of something that had been embedded in Americana. Yeah, boy, I hate to use reincarnation so close to you. Easter, but you're right. You're right. You're right. You know, he really is that. And the Tulsa Race Massacre until just a few years ago was called the Tulsa Race Riots, as if two sides were equally just fighting each other out. And, you know, we practice a lot of the historical amnesia in this country. I don't know if you knew it. I consider myself pretty damn historically literate. I didn't know jack shit about the Klan's rule in the 1920s. Did you know about it? I mean, did you know

they were this powerful? No. I mean, I have always understood that the clan was really powerful, but my imagination had me believe that it was only in the South. And so this realization was like, oh, no, no, no, right? Like, I think that in our rewriting of history, we like to absolve the North as a place of liberation. And what you offer is like, oh, no, that's not right. So I live in the Pacific Northwest. And it's always given me comfort to think that racism home is in this. South, except that Oregon, my state just next door to me, had a Klan governor in 1921 and elected him knowing full well that Walter Pierce would do the Klan spitting. The state of Colorado, where my daughter lives right now, Lexington, Progressive State, they elected a Klan governor

in 1924. And his motto, as I mentioned, was every man under the Capitol Dome of Klansman. They would not let anyone who wasn't Klan be in state government. So yeah, you're right. We almost give ourselves a break, an excuse in the North by saying, but in fact, one of the clan's main goals, and they did succeed for a long time, was planting Jim Crow in the North in more subtle ways, redlining. When blacks moved to the Pacific Northwest, they weren't hired initially at the Boeing factories. So things like that happen. But yeah, you're right.

And it's our job. You touched on a great point. I hope Ron DeSantis doesn't try to ban this book, but it's okay to look at the painful parts of our history because they sort of give you a blueprint for how to fix it. I mean, they beat these guys eventually. And so you study the painful parts of our history. You don't just go, oh, woes me, America sucks. You go, that was awful. There's a streak of awfulness and racism and hatred that courses through our history and goes back to the dawn of our history. That doesn't mean we're all racist and awful, but it means that it was there. And it means that you have to recognize it.

And by recognizing it, you get a plan to beat it. Yeah. Let me tell you, Timothy Egan, this has been just beyond a pleasure. And folks, the book is, and if you're in Florida, I'd get your copy now. A Fever in the Heartland, the Cluclux Klan's plot to take over America and the woman who stopped them. It is available everywhere. Timothy, this was fantastic. And I really appreciate you and your work.

I appreciate you and your work as well. Thanks for having me on, Danielle. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at

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