The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Is Like the Kid at Disney World Who Refuses to Go Home

Episode Date: September 13, 2022

Just when you thought Donald Trump couldn’t get any worse, new revelations prove Trump was even worse than we thought, according to hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy on this episode of The New Abnormal. Also on the podcast, Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic as well as Democracy Journal and author of the new book, The Middle Out: The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity, talks about how the Democrats can shape their message around progressive politics to win. (Tomasky is also a former special correspondent and editor at the Daily Beast.) Then, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) talks about her reelection bid and her wacky opponent, Adam Laxalt. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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start your period of month in Shopify. coms bar records. Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objective.

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 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. First, we have Michael Tamaski, who's the editor of the New Republic as well as Democracy Journal. And he's going to talk to us about his new book, The Middle Out, the rise of progressive economics and a return to shared prosperity. He's going to talk to us exactly about how the Democrats can shape their message around progressive politics to win. Then we'll talk to Nevada Senator Catherine Cortez Mastow about her re-election bid and her wacky opponent.

But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. I know you're going to be surprised to hear this because it sounds very out of character, but there's this man who was president, and he has a number of investigations happening around him. Another way to phrase that is, many, many different departments of the United States government and also the state governments are investigating one done. Donald J. Trump, Trump is trying in his way to have his lawyers fight these investigations.

But one of the really important sort of Trump's raison d'etre is that he's quite cheap. And so he, you know, Stiff's lawyers, which is maybe some of causing some of his legal problems right now. Right. It turns out that a special master is just not an expense he wants to cover. Shocking, yeah. I should say that when you started off, I assumed you were talking about Barack Hussein Obama. Right, right, right. But obviously not. So, you know, it's not enough that he sort of has this 12-year-old judge that he put in office making favorable rulings for him. He now wants the taxpayers to pay the, to bear the burden of these costs for this special master.

and he also wants, you know, he's trying to run out the clock basically and kill time and whatever. So he wants this judge to not allow the Justice Department to be looking at these classified documents before the special master is appointed or whatever. But he also doesn't want to pay for the special master. And he doesn't want to pay for the special master, right. But they keep calling this, like they love to refer to this as a storage dispute. That was Marco Rubio. It's a document storage dispute. But now his own attorneys, like that's what they're saying in the filing that they did to Judge Cannon,

asking that she stopped the Justice Department from continuing its investigation. They literally say in what at its core is a document storage dispute that has spiraled out of control. And they try to refer to all these records as his records, his personal records, his presidential records, which is just, it's exactly the peak into the mind of Trump, though, because he is basically, he's a five-year-old, and it's just mine, mine, mine, mine. I want this. This is mine. You can't have it. It's also, I would say it's that continual Nixonian thing of, like, the government stuff is actually mine, right? Like, it's not a crime when the president does it, though documents or my documents.

You know, we've gone so deep into Republican malfeasance here. that we're no longer, you know, no one is playing with a full DAC at this point. Yeah, absolutely. And I think we've talked about this before, but people said, well, why did he have these documents? And, you know, there's been speculation. Well, he wanted to, people have said, oh, he's going to sell them to foreign governments or whatever. And the Occam's razor here is the, again, it's the five-year-old theory. It's that he just decided these are mine and no one else can have them.

I want them. But another thing we learned today from Maggie Haberman was that Trump's plan. And honestly, like, this is a big scoop, but it's also like something that seems clear. Like, if you look back on it, it seems like clearly something that you could have, that doesn't, it doesn't sound very surprising. Trump was sort of toyed with the idea of just never leaving, like just sort of staying there forever, like going to Disney World and, you know, refusing to go home with your parents when the trip was over, I think is a good example. I mean, look, you know, that happened in Pakistan, too, right, where we had the PM who didn't want to leave. I mean, this is like, they're sort of testing out. It's kind of like, I want to say like cosplay fascism.

Like they just want to see how maybe cosplay authoritarianism is better. Like they're trying to figure out like just how far they can push it. Like, can we go like half a Mussolini? Like can we go to a Musa, you know, just not the whole thing? And I think that's, you know, you see a lot of that with Trump. Like, you know, maybe I can stay. Maybe I can stay forever. Maybe I can do this.

Maybe I can do that. I'm still on toilet gate. Maggie's last big scoop from this book, which hasn't even come out yet, where it turned out that Trump was ripping apart little pieces of documents and flushing them down the toilet and someone had gone to the bathroom after him to find these little pieces of documents stuffed in the toilet. I mean, by the way, the White House is very old building. like not the place you want to start, you know, with very old plumbing, right?

I'm serious, right? I don't know. I'm just happy you got to the at the real heart of this, which is the old plumbing at the White House. Right. George Washington's plumbing cannot support Donald Trump's malfeasance. No, it's wooden plumbing. That's right. It's wooden plumbing made of teeth from, you know, exactly.

So I'm glad we've cleared that up. But yes, I think this, the, we can continually learning that Trump was even worse than we thought. And again, like, you know, I would feel a little better if Trump weren't still the de facto head of the Republican Party. Well, that is what this all comes down to is, is that he is that. And so you can't, you know, and this is why obviously all of the Kevin McCarthy's and everything saying, oh, people don't care. We don't care about January 6th. Move on. move on. No, fuck you. We'll move on when you stop pledging your fealty to Trump, which you haven't.

So, no, we're not going to move on. It's interesting that you said, you know, it's sort of semi-authoritarianism or you said half-authoritarianism because that's exactly, you know, when Joe Biden said semi-fascist, like that's exactly the same thing. Right. And by the way, the right lost their fucking mind, right? Like, how dare you? Right. But, you know, if you want to call it a half bonito or whatever, I think you're right, though, it is. it is, they, they want to sort of find this line that will work this week and then next week they'll push the line even further. And that, of course, is how you slide into authoritarianism. It's, you know, that's many people who have studied this far more than I am, I've noted. It's not, you know, you don't wake up one day necessarily in a dictatorship or in a fascist country. There's this, there's this slide. And that's how you do it. You know, you continually push the envelope and you continually sort of feel out where the line is that people will put up with that people will let you

get away with. And what do you know? Once you get away with something, then a couple weeks later, you go a little further and it doesn't seem like that much because, well, you already did this. Right. You know, so what does this matter? But that's why all these things matter. And that's why I get, you know, I pisses me off to no end when people say, well, we can't putting Trump on trial, charging Trump would be bad for the country. No. Right. No, not charging Trump will be bad for the country. Exactly. And that's exactly why. Because every time you do this, you make it easier for the next person to go even further. The reporting provided to CNN from the forthcoming book also reveals new details of what those around Trump were doing in the aftermath of the election law loss he refused to

accept. Trump's son-in-law, the right honorable, Jared Kushner, was reluctant to confront Trump on the loss, according to Haberman. What was he doing? What was he doing? What was he job. He was both right and honorable. I mean, it was two jobs. You know, a lot of people are right, but they're not honorable. Then you have some honorable people, but they're not right. So to find in one person, you know, someone who can be both right and honorable, when you have that, you don't give that up. You, you know, you take advantage of that.

Yeah, I don't have a fucking clue what you do. I mean, we've discussed this before. He did fix the Middle East. Yeah. He's right. He's from the Middle East. So there was that. That was it.

He sort of, you know, rested on his laurels after that, I feel like. He kind of coasted after that. That's right. After peace in the Middle East. Well, some might say that was enough. We're being sarcastic, by the way. Yes. Really?

Yes. So anyway, so one of the interesting things that has happened, and again, the two things that people are really talking about this Monday today are, are the polls, wrong, right? Because Nate Cohen, not to be confused with Nate Silver, has said that some of these strong polls for Dems may be wrong. So that's like caused a sort of news cycle anxiety. And again, we don't know if because polling is so bad now. And again, pollsters will tell us that it's just because we're reading them wrong. But those of us who are reading them wrong are also noticing

that the polls are generally wrong. So we're having a sort of moment of inflection two months before the midterms. Are Democrats polling better than they really will do? Again, we don't know because polls are such a shitty indicator, no offense, pollsters. But the other thing is that there was some really interesting writing this weekend, and I'm writing my newsletter on this idea that Republicans have gone too far with the culture wars. And Democrats are actually sort of turning the tide. and that goes for abortion, which we know because we've read a lot about that, and I've written a lot about that.

But also, it goes for interestingly enough for same-sex marriage, because right now a bunch of Republican senators and Kristen Sinema, so a bunch of Republican senators, are trying to codify same-sex marriage in order to protect it from the very conservative Trumpy Supreme Court. And that's a really good example of something that used to be. Remember, John Kerry lost on same-sex marriage just a few years ago, is now a winner for Democrats. And so it's super interesting to see if perhaps Democrats have really won the culture wars or are winning the culture wars. Yeah. John Kerry was what? 2004? Yes. We all know there's been a huge change in the country with regard to games. marriage, thank God. I agree with you on abortion. I do think that, you know, we're starting to see

this in the special elections and everything that we've seen in a lot of states the number of women who have registered to vote since Dobbs was handed down is pretty high. It's higher than men in many states. And I think it's fair to say that a very large percentage of that is probably cause and effect. I agree with you that we've talked about this, the horror stories of the 10-year-olds being raped and having to go out of state and to get an abortion and the women whose lives have been put in danger, even though the fetus was not even viable because doctors in some states are too afraid to do anything until a certain point. So a woman has to be in agony for weeks or however long it is longer than it should be. You know, those stories are much more than a

and I think conservative efforts to portray those as either outliers or as people, you know, misunderstanding the laws have largely failed and correctly failed. This is the future liberals want is the sort of famous meme. But this is the future conservatives want. But as soon as it starts happening, they try to backpedal and say that that's not what they intended. And they're full crap. When you pass laws that don't have exceptions for rape or for the health of the mother,

what do you expect to happen? You can't then just say, well, we didn't mean for that. Yeah, you did. You absolutely did. And as you pointed out, Molly, most people don't want that. Most women, I think, certainly don't want that. I don't think most men want that. I hope to God, most men don't want that. Well, it's also just very out of step with, like, the rest of the world. And I think that's something we, in America, you know, we're so America-centric. We don't talk about the fact that, like, Pakistan is, you know, a third of Pakistan is covered in floods. We don't talk. about the fact that Mexico made choice legal, you know, and that the fact that all of these countries have really embraced choice for women and have sort of even stopped arguing about it.

So I do think that, you know, we just have this very American-centric view of the world, you know, because of where we are and how far away we are and just the sort of history of America. So I do think that a lot of us aren't really seeing just how, much out of step the Supreme Court is. That's true, but I also don't think conservatives care about that. I mean, their mandate is from God in their mind. So they, you know, what do they care? What France is doing? Or, I mean, they certainly don't care what's happening in Pakistan, but they don't even care what's happening in Europe, really. And that, look, I mean, psychologically, that you could say that goes back to the Puritans. I mean, they left England because they wanted harsher political stuff. I mean, religious stuff. You know, we were all. always taught that they came here for religious freedom. And that's true. But they wanted the freedom to be even more hardcore. And so we have that strain. And that strain ain't going away. But again, that strain isn't enough. Right. Like what we've seen with Trump is like Trump space isn't enough to win elections. It's 20%. It's not, you know, 25%. No, agreed. The only place I get a little leery

about saying that the Dems are winning the culture wars is I don't, while I agree that it's true for abortion. I separate sort of abortion from the other quote unquote culture war issues. Well, same-sex marriage, right? They want, they're winning on safe sex marriage. Yes, I agree that I think Dems are winning on that, to put it in just blunt political language, I guess, I think. But on trans stuff, on a lot of other stuff, even with gay issues, I mean, maybe aside from same-sex marriage, but we look at what's going on in places like Florida with DeSantis and with the don't say gay stuff in the schools and the basically looking to fire any teacher that dares to have a, you know, if it's a male teacher that might have a picture of their husband on their desk or something like that. You haven't seen polling on that yet. You've just seen that it works. DeSantis thinks it will work for him with the Republican base, right? This is not, DeSantis is not responding to a larger desire by Floridians. He just thinks it will help him win the Republican primary.

True, but I also, my sense is that he's a fairly popular governor in Florida. There are battles we thought were won that I am no longer confident have been won. And look, we saw this with Dobbs. And, you know, yes, this does seem to be overreaching, but it also is the law of the land right now. But I also worry that we're seeing this with gay rights and with trans rights and stuff like that, that things, there are people that want to go back. Right. No, the whole Republican Party.

Yes, and they're very loud. They're not going away. I hope that they are only like 20%. I wish it was 0%. But I hope they're only 20% of the country and that they're not 50% of the country. And I feel like it's probably closer to 20% than 50, but it's still a significant chunk and they vote.

I just get a little worried, even though I generally agree. Yeah, I mean, I think. it's more of a question, right? Will this? Yes. You know, are Democrats winning the culture war? I mean, remember, for so long, Democrats had been profoundly losing the culture war. So I think the question is more like, can this be turned around now? No, I think you're right. It's not even as much that Democrats were losing the culture war. They had sort of conceded it. And you saw this, like, particularly in language about abortion and the whole, you know, legal, safe and rare. Right. And, you know, trying to, excuse me, trying to minimize it as much as possible

instead of just getting up there and saying, this is a woman's right. This is a woman's body. And we should not be telling a woman what she can do with her body. Instead of that, they would use this merely mouth language that was, you know, aimed at the quote-unquote center. And what it did was it set the, it set the left edge of the discussion in the, center. So that was as far left as they were going to go. And then you had the right wing was free to go as far right as they wanted. And I think what you're seeing now with particularly with younger Democrats and younger people on the left is like, no, that's, we are not saying that. We're saying, get your hands off my body. And I think that's good. I think that's necessary.

Yeah. No, I agree. And like, honestly, I think what I think is like the thing again with Dobbs is that ultimately, and the reason why I actually think that you could see something, the thing that gives me a lot of hope with abortion is not the terrible tragedy of the 10-year-olds girl who has to go out of state to get an abortion and how that's fucking Republicans up. I think the thing that gives me hope about possibly legislating more protection when it comes to the abortion space is that the doctors are not doing while, right? the doctors are refusing to treat. The doctors are in danger of losing their licenses or being jailed. And I think ultimately we're going to see that the doctors are going to be the people who really are like this is untenable. So I'll be interested to see. I think the women should have more rights than the doctors.

But I do think that the doctors are a fairly large group of individuals in this country. And I think that they ultimately are going to put their foot their collective feet down. Michael Tomaski is the editor of the New Republic, Democracy Journal, as well as the author of the new book, The Middle Out, The Rise of Progressive Economics and a Return to Shared Prosperity. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Mike Tamasker. Oh, it's so nice to be back. Thank you, Molly. My old friend and editor, and I'm so excited to have you. First, we'll talk about the book, and then we'll talk about whatever else. Deal. The book, and it was just in Politico.

It's a big, splashy article. And the book is called The Middle Out, The Rise of Progressive Economies, and a Return to Shared Prosperity. Explain to me how you got here. I have been following for the last several years of my life, this effort in progressive political circles. You know, to get the Democrats, especially since the Great Recession, Molly, to get the Democrats to, you know, embrace a more progressive economic agenda. In addition to the New Republic, I edited a quarterly journal called Democracy, and Democracy Journal has done a lot of stuff along these lines about this. And so I've been

pretty immersed in this for a long time. And then when Biden started campaigning after the pandemic hit, he changed from the way he had been in 2019. He started talking about, I want to change the economic paradigm. We have a crisis that is big as the oppression, and this is like an an FDR moment. Then he said famously, he says all the time, and I borrowed this for my book title. The economy doesn't grow from the top down. It grows from the middle out and the bottom up. The story that I'm trying to tell in this book is the story of all the thinking and writing and activism and political activity that goes into pushing a president, like Joe Biden, who's that's not really his natural instincts, but all the activity, over the course of a decade or more,

that goes into pushing Joe Biden to embrace that kind of agenda and trying to enact that kind of agenda. So I tell stories of important people in economics, in politics, in grassroots activism, and in the undercover but very important worlds of foundations and think tanks, which are very central here. I tell the stories of these people and the work that they've been doing to try and get this kind of new economic agenda on the table. You grew up in West Virginia. I did. How does that inform your mission there?

You know, I haven't lived in West Virginia for a long time, so I don't want to claim some Appalachian cred that I have long since cashiered by living in big East Coast dark blue cities. Right. That would be sort of a J.D. Vance move. Yes. And we're not going there. But I do still have some of it in my DNA or whatever, and I go back a lot. And, you know, I guess my origins sort of keep me thinking about those kinds of folks. I mean, with respect to West Virginia specifically, obviously, Joe Biden's not going to be winning West Virginia anytime soon. And they're not going to be electing a whole boatload of Democrats. But I do think about, like, how the Democratic Party can improve those people's lives and improve, improve, improve,

opportunity and give them more chances. And this is where I think this agenda can just obviously help people in West Virginia and other places like it tremendously. And this is where I, you know, Joe Bigh or Joe Manchin, excuse me, was, was so maddening over the course of 2021. I mean, the people of West Virginia and many other places could certainly use a $15 minimum wage, a $12 minimum wage. You know, it's now $7.25. And there's a lot of people. in places like that who work for the minimum wage, they could use free community college. They could use subsidized childcare. If we're talking about, you know, trying to give people opportunities to better themselves and to live up to their potential,

these kinds of programs aren't, you know, wasteful government spending. These are necessities. And it was very frustrating that Mansion didn't think of it that way. West Virginia is such an interesting place because it's a very interesting place because it's a very interesting place. place because it has really been underserved by their politicians. Yeah. I mean, how do you think that happens? Cultural politics really just kind of overtook the place and anti-anthole politics really overtook the place. So, you know, West Virginia was when I was growing up completely democratic. Right. And that was because the United Mine Workers Union had such presence in the state

in those days. It was also because cultural issues hadn't yet come to the four in a way that happened in the 1970s and 80s. There are a lot more Southern Baptist churches in the state now than there were what I was a kid. There were only a handful when I was a kid. There are hundreds now. So that's one thing that's happened. Another thing that's happened, of course, is that the Democratic Party has become more identified with environmentalism and fighting climate change. And so it's an anti-fossil fuel party by and large. So, you know, that's another thing that's happened. But I still say in general and in this book, and again, you know, no Democrat presidential candidate is going to be winning West Virginia anytime soon. But I think Democrats can do better in places like that

with an economic program that says to middle class and working class people, look, we're firmly on your side. We're against the 1%. The 0.1%. We're against pharmaceutical law. We're on your side. And I think that's where they have to go. You talked about unions just a minute ago and Biden has been really involved in unions. It feels like Democrats kind of lost their connection to unions and are now sort of getting it back. Is that right, do you think? And how is that happening and where sort of what do you think the role of unions are in this new kind of America? Yeah.

Well, you know, it's still a very shriveled up movement. From a peak in the early mid-50s of 30-something percent, private sector workforce is six and a half percent unionized now, I think. Even if unionism explodes, I've talked to people in the labor movement who think it's impossible for it to get anywhere near where it used to be that might get up to 12 percent. It might get up to 15 percent. But that would be a big jump. That would change our politics, I think, pretty dramatically. The heartening side of it, of course, is that, you know, there are public approval of unions is higher now than it's been. in decades, especially among young people. And, you know, they're getting activated and they're

getting organized and they're impressive young organizers like that guy Chris Smalls who organized the Amazon warehouse in Staten Island. And there are a lot of people like that around the country. Unions can be a big part of this story because if there's a union movement again in this country of serious consequence, they can provide the political pressure to make people like Joe Manchin. Yeah. And Kirsten Sintama vote, you know, in a more progressive fashion. Biden is really, like, one of the first presidents that is actually, I don't know if he is the first because my history is like rusty. But he's sort of one of the first, like, really middle class presidents.

Yeah. He's also, he's been in politics for so long. I don't think he's, he hasn't made a big fortune or anything like that. And just, you know, just as a, you know, just his affidavis. his sensibility, you know, it's very working class, it's very middle class. He doesn't reek of money at all. He reeks of, he reeks of middle class. He reeks of Baskin-Robbins or something. I guess ice cream is his big love. Do you think that that will help the sort of increasing, I mean, like, I feel like there's been a sort of realization over the last couple of years that

the middle class has really been kind of pillaged by the Republican. That's a great question. By people like you and me, yeah, your average person, I don't know that people are really that aware of that. And this is one of the big points that I get to in the last chapter of the book. You know, the Democrats just have to do a better job of explaining to people what they're about, explaining to people that they're at, that they actually historically have been much better stewards of the economy than Republicans have, which is a real sort of pet peeve of mind because, You see all these polls. Always with polling, right? That Republicans are better in the economy, but then you look at these numbers and you see the Republicans have grown the debt every time they've been in office. Every time they've been in office. And the way they scream about the deficit, this, deficit that, you know, and they're the ones who have made the deficit just out of control. Ever since Ronald Reagan, you know, Jimmy Carter had a $54 billion deficit, I think, at the end of his term.

And Republicans screamed about that. And then by the time Reagan left, it was 150-something, 160-something billion. And, you know, it just went up and up and up. And, you know, Democrats, well, Bill Clinton erased it. And Barack Obama reduced it. And Joe Biden's reducing it from where Trump left it. I mean, the whole thing is just a canard. But nobody knows, you know.

But job creation, deficit reduction, stock market performance, median household income, Those four key measures, Democrats just wipe the floor with Republicans, but nobody knows they've got to do a better job of broadcasting that. Why is this happening? Why are Democrats so bad? I mean, it's like a truth universally acknowledged at this point that the Democratic Party cannot message, but why? It's got to have something to do with what their pollsters tell them to do. I think it comes down to something like this. Most, if you poll individual issues, majorities tend to support these Democratic positions more than not. You know, like pretty strong majority supports a higher minimum wage. Pretty strong majority supports paid family leave. Pretty strong majority supports, you know, free or affordable community college.

Very strong majority support the Democratic position on guns. And a very strong majority supports a democratic position on abortion. So I think they look at these polls and they think, well, all we have to do is say our position on these things. And most people agree with us and it'll be fine. But that really isn't how it works and isn't really how the political scrum during a campaign works. Because Republicans are much better at a couple things. They're much better at taking one really symbolic, even if it's totally false kind of thing and just twisting it into saying, you know, this is what the Democrats stand. You know, they'll take some extreme sort of wacky liberal arts professor somewhere and just who said something crazy.

this is what the Democrats believe or something like that. Right. You know, they do that on Fox all the time. But the other thing they're better at is talking about their big picture beliefs. They talk, for example, I go on in the last chapter of the book about this word, the word freedom. Republicans carry on about freedom all the time. Democrats never use the word. Well, people love freedom.

We're taught from the time we're kids that freedom is a very American and very good thing. I say in the book, Democrats need not to see that word to Republicans. They need to take it back and radically redefine it. Freedom isn't the free market because the free market gives wealthy people plenty of freedom, but it doesn't give working class people much freedom. You know, to go back to West Virginia, I could, you know, there are a lot of towns in West Virginia where people are quote unquote free to work at the dollar store or sell some oxycontin.

That's not freedom. Freedom is the ability, as I said earlier, to fulfill your highest potential as a human being. That takes some help from government. And especially now, Molly, with the Republicans having just taken away from more than half of the American population, a 50-year-old right that people had, that women had, they're pretty hard-pressed to call themselves the Party of Freedom these days. I think the Democrats ought to seize that. It's really interesting. How do you think Democrats can do a bit of a better job with keeping,

things to that. Like some of Democrats' problem, I think, too, is that Republicans are very flashy and good at making things about these sort of, you know, drag queen story hour or, right? They're sort of, you know, they have historically won these kind of culture war tropes. Do you think that there's a way for Democrats to kind of be smarter when it comes to interacting with the mainstream media? Yeah. And finding that that story that lodges its way into people's brains is really something. You said it exactly right that the Republicans are really good at. The right is really good at and the Democrats aren't very good at it. Yeah, that drag queen story hour thing.

How much difference did that actually make to people? I don't know. Maybe a lot of people don't actually vote on that. But it drives the narrative. It keeps our side on defense. to return to Dobbs and abortion rights. I think the Democrats should just say and say and say, these people want to make a 12-year-old girl who was raped by her stepfather.

Ten. Carry that baby to term. Ten. Yeah. Right. Yeah. They want to make that girl, that poor girl, carry that baby to turn. What else do you need to know about who these people are?

And there's plenty else they could say, of course, about the fascism, so, for example. But, you know, that is just, as Molly John Fast would say, wait, what? Thank you, Mike Tamasky. I hope you'll come back soon. Anytime you ask, Molly, thank you for having me. Catherine Cortez Mastow is the senior senator from Nevada. Welcome to the podcast, Senator. Well, thank you.

I'm excited to be joining you, Molly. Well, we're very excited to be some of your out-of-state media. Thank you. So this is your re-election campaign. You are a crucial Senate seat in the state of Nevada. And I'm just curious. I just was actually watching your amazing speech at Emily's List. And I was curious, like, talk to us about what your re-election campaign looks like.

Absolutely. And one thing, Molly, and don't take offense to this, but it's Nevada. I couldn't go throughout the whole podcast without telling you it's Nevada. Okay. Okay, good. I'm glad. Listen, I've caused international incidents before and I'm sure I will again. Thank you. I've been targeted by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, as you well know. They've already putting millions of dollars into this race. I want to say about 50 million to defeat me. They are doing everything that they can to elevate, whom I believe, is a right-wing radical opponent who is a Trump public, quite honestly.

He follows Trump's lead every step of the way. And there's a big contrast between the two of us for the state of Nevada. And I will say this, one of those issues is what you just highlighted is this idea about a woman's right to choose and trusting women in this country. Nevada is a proud pro-choice state.

We actually became a pro-choice state in 1990. We had some incredible women who actually at that time came forward. They took Roe versus Wade. They made it at a referendum for vote. voters to decide if they wanted to codify Roe versus Wade in statute by referendum. And the voters of Nevada said yes, two thirds of the voters at that time in 1990 voted for that codification. Really, if you talk to voters now and I poll most recently I saw a poll, still two thirds of the voters in Nevada support a

woman's right to choose. It crosses whether you're a Democrat or Republican, nonpartisan background. It doesn't matter. Nevadaans believe in this idea that women have this right. to make these decisions about their reproductive freedoms themselves. So there's just a recently was an article, Republicans have decided that your seat is their best opportunity at any point in the last 14 years to pick up the seat because of Hispanic voters. But aren't you the first Hispanic senator to represent the state? I'm very proud, yes. I'm not only the first female senator from the state of Nevada,

but the first Latina ever elected to the United States Senate. And really this issue of these kitchen table issues, the repeal of Roversus Wade, all of these things matter to Nevadans, including our Latinos, who are also collectively pro-choice. Really the distinction between me, who I spent my career supporting a woman's right to choose, and my opponent, Adam Laxalt, who would take it all away. I mean, he is proud of the Dobbs decision. He thinks it was a historic victory for this country.

And he has really leaned into this idea that he believes Roe versus Wake was a joke from the very beginning. And he supports a returning Nevada's abortion protections. That's just one issue where there is this extreme where my opponent is on the other side, even of what Nevadans believe, a majority of Nevadans believe this right to choose. And he's on the other side of that. Yeah, I want to talk to you about that because the polling I saw is very high. The state is 69% of Nevadans. That's correct.

Thank you. Our pro choice, I got to be careful now. Our pro choice, that's higher than the rest of the country. Well, and think about this, though, Molly. Nevada's made this decision in 1990. Right. So this is something not only for the last 50 years, as we know, women have had the right to make these decisions on their own,

but it was important for us in Nevada to actually codify. it via referendum. So since 1990, we've been able to make these decisions. And the biggest concern, and really for so many Nevadans now and why they are coming out addressing their concerns and their concern with Adam Laxalt is because they also know that even though we fought for this referendum, it can be taken away. Federal abortion ban. I know my colleagues are right now drafting some sort of federal abortion ban. And Mitch McConnell has said he would put it on the floor of the Senate. There's no doubt in my mind, Adam Laxalt would vote in support of that. And if they do, it preempts our state law and takes it all away.

So voters know what's at stake here in Nevada. And the other thing, let me just say this moment, because I have an opponent who's going around trying to walk this fine line of, yes, this is a historic victory for pro-life, but don't worry, Nevada law is settled. Well, where have we heard that before? Right? When the Supreme Court justices went before the judiciary committee claiming, oh, don't worry, Rovers's way to settle law, what we respect it.

We respect their hysteresis. And look where we are now. So this idea that he's trying to walk this fine line is just false. So in August, your opponent went on Sebastian Gorka's show. You may have heard of Dr. Sebastian Gorka complaining that big tech is censoring his fundraising emails. I would read you the quote, but it's so stupid. I think it's a waste of time.

I mean, how do you run against someone like that? Well, and that's why it is important just to get out and talk to Nevada and talk about, one, the issues that matter to them, right? I know as a third generation Nevada and getting out in my state and talking to people and traveling throughout our 17 counties, what the issues that matter to them. It is those kitchen table issues. It is access to health care. It is prescription drug negotiation. It is lowering health care costs. It is leaning into a clean energy economy and addressing.

the climate because we are in the middle of a drought and we see wildfires happening all the time. It's happening in real time for all of us. So those issues are the ones that matter. And when I have an opponent who says no comment to what he would do with respect to drought is ridiculous. So really it is pointing out these stark contrast between the two of us, the work that I've done and will continue to do on behalf of Nevada every single day and finding solutions and working with everyone. I travel throughout my state. I go into the rural red counties. I talk with everybody. I said, you know, I know you didn't vote for me, but I'm here to represent you as your senator and let's figure out how we can work together to benefit all of our families. And to me, that's what it means to be

a Nevada and a U.S. senator from Nevada in representing my great state. But my opponent, Adam, you just, every comment he makes, everything he talks about is for his own political game. And it is, contrary to what Nevadans want in the state. He has also played down the insurrection. Can you talk a little bit about that? Listen, I am happy to talk about this because I lived it. I was on the floor of the Senate the day this insurrection occurred. In fact, I was preparing that morning to defend not only the electoral votes for Nevada, but for Arizona.

You know, Amy Klobuchar was taking the lead on coordinating all of the argument. against our Republican colleagues who were challenging the electoral votes. And she asked me, because I knew they were going to challenge Nevada, she asked me not only to stand up for Nevada, but for Arizona. So I was ready for, because that was going to be the first one to be challenged, I was getting ready for it, preparing my remarks and my arguments to my Republican colleagues. And I will tell you, as I walked out to go to the floor to start those arguments on the floor of the Senate, there was a bathroom right by my office in the Capitol.

And two of my colleagues, senators Murkowski and Smith, were standing out this open door of a bathroom. And I walked over to them. I said, what's going on? And they said, there's a capital police officer in there. And he was over the sink and he was flushing his eyes out with water. And I said, oh, my gosh, what happened? And they said, well, he's got something in his eye. I think he's been pepper sprayed. And I said, I think you're right. And I asked him, have you been pepper sprayed? And he said, yes, but don't worry. We've got this secured. and he just ran back up out the stairs and out the door. That was the first time for me knowing that they were so close. I knew they were at their lips. I did not know they were that close to the Capitol.

And then when we started the day of the arguments for Arizona's electoral count, it got to my opponent, Langford, Senator Langford from Oklahoma, who was challenging it. And I was going to go right after him and right in the middle of it. That's when the Capitol police came in and shut everything down and basically said the Capitol's been breached. This is the safest place that you all can be right now. Just sit quiet. We'll tell you where to go. We'll tell you what to do. Now, I cannot tell you, Molly, when you're inside the Senate chambers and the Capitol, there's doors everywhere, but there's no window. So you can't see what's going out. But you know the doors that people can potentially come in. You don't know whether they have guns. You don't know who they are. You just know that it's been breached. And so now all of us are sitting there thinking, what is going on? And you've got two tears to the Senate. And we could hear them as they were coming near the doors. Now, I later learned and watched like everyone else how that Capitol Police officers steered them away from one door towards the rotunda. But we could only hear the noise and we could hear them as they came near the doors and then they were moving towards

the rotunda. And at that moment, when this is when the Capitol Police officer said, okay, everybody out the back door, go now, now, now, now, and we were just moving as fast as we possibly could to get to a secure location. And it wasn't until we got to that secure location that we brought in TVs to see what actually was happening to the Capitol. And I'm here to tell you, one, we were going to finish our job. It was to a T. We were going to go back. We were not going to let these insurrectionists try to undermine our democracy. We were going to finish our job and do everything that we possibly could, no matter how long it took, we were going to go back out there. And we did. But I will tell you, when we were walking back, the place was a disaster. The capital was a disaster.

broken window, broken furniture, Trump paraphernalia, everywhere you went, walked over after we did the initial challenges to the electoral count, walked back to my office in the capital. There were some offices that had been, windows had been broken into, and the entire furniture and office space for some of these rooms had been turned upside down and ripped apart. It was horrific. And now later, you realize what their intent was and the assault upon the law enforcement officers from the Metropolitan Police Department to the Capitol Police officers who defended us. And now Adam Laxalt claiming he's standing with law enforcement in my state when he, in actuality, does even recognize that this was an insurrection and law enforcement officers were standing

guard and they were under attack, along with everyone else, is outrageous and rightfully so. To me, this is a perfect example of someone like my opponent who continues to peddle in conspiracies and lies and facilitate continued harm upon our democratic institutions. And that's why it is important for people to know the truth. It is important for people to know where he stands versus where I stand when it comes to protecting our democracy, protecting our future in this country, because he's on the other side of it. Were you afraid for your life that day? Eight years as an attorney general of my state, and I'm married to a retired Secret Service agent. I will tell you one thing I've learned over the years, and this is how I went into that mode, whether I was in the Senate or in that secure location, my back was to the wall and my eyes were on the doors,

because I wasn't sure who was coming burst and through, and whether they had guns or not, and what their intent was. And there were many of us that felt the same way. So yes. And let me just say one final thing, because I think this gets lost as well. It was about three days later when we all came back to the Capitol to finish our jobs. And thank goodness, my staff were working from home. I didn't want them in the offices at the time. I wanted them to work from home because we were in the middle of pandemic. But I also knew that the protest was happening.

So I didn't want them anywhere near the Capitol or near those protests that were happening on the lips. Thank goodness they weren't there. And I didn't have to worry about their safety as well. But I will tell you what, when I came back to my office and saw my first Capitol Police officer, that was the first time it hit me. And I walked up to that officer to thank him and every officer that I saw to thank them for protecting the Capitol. I literally started crying because the emotion just came up at that time and what was what we had gone through and what was at stake. And I will never forget that. And I do think it is important for people to remember. And it is important to call it for what it was that people, literally, illegally, this insurrection trying to undermine our democracy on falsities and lives. And now I have an opponent who continues to peddle that. And it is important. We push back on that and stand up against it now, more than ever. Thank you so much, Senator. Well, thank you, Molly. I appreciate it. If anybody wants to help out with my campaign, catherinecortezmasto.com, you can go there, learn more information. But just thank you so much, Molly, for the conversation today and everything that you're doing.

Andy. Molly. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is, I assume people listening to this podcast know what's going on in Jackson, Mississippi with the water, and this absolutely heinous crisis that is basically unforgivable. You know, you've got an entire city with bad infrastructure, it's super old infrastructure, and you end up with a, there was too much rainfall last month, and a river flooded, and it led to one of the two water treatment plants in the city failing,

and that led to low water pressure, and people didn't have water to drink or water to flush toilets, and all their water that they are getting is discolored and not safe because one of the water treatment plants has failed. And you mentioned earlier in the podcast that the America-centric stuff where we don't care about flooding in Pakistan, we apparently don't care about a lot of this shit, too, in our own country because it's not happening in New York or Los Angeles or Chicago or Texas.

But it's happening in Jackson, Mississippi. It's absolutely horrific and it needs more coverage. It deserves more coverage. I think you could argue it could be on the front page of the papers every day instead of maybe the 90-plus-year-old person in another country dying, having to be wall-to-wall coverage. But regardless, it needs more coverage. There needs to be investigations of this. There needs to be, I mean, you've already got the governor of Mississippi talking about, you know, privatizing the water treatment stuff, which is always their solution.

And it's almost like you would, if you didn't know better, you would think, maybe they want these things to fail so then they can privatize them. But of course, that couldn't be true. It's absolutely horrific what's going on there. And we need more knowledge of it. We need more awareness of it. And we need more coverage of it. So my fuck that guy is, I guess in a large sense here, it's to the media.

Take Reeve, the governor, that fucking guy. Well, no, absolutely the governor. And I really think this needs a lot more coverage. And it's just, again, when you turn on cable news, which I don't, but I see a lot of people who are talking about this. And it's wall-to-wall coverage of Queen Elizabeth dying. And we've got people in a city here who cannot bathe and can't fly. their toilets. I don't think you need wall-to-wall coverage of a 96-year-old

woman dying in another country when you can talk about stuff like that. And so I just, that to me, that right now is what I'm a little more focused on than the obviously horrible governor of the state. And I would just really like the media to get its shit together.

So, so fuck them. Fuck us, I guess. You want to know who my fuck that guy is? Yes, please. My fuck that guy is someone who, I'm going to miss him when he's gone, that little guy. One Louis P. Gomert. I was thinking about this.

I said, you know, you're dissented to becoming an empty nester just getting two blows in such a short time. I mean, first the kid goes to college and then Louis Gomer leaves Congress. I'm going to miss that little fella. My little friend, Louis Gomer, from the great state of Texas. So, Louis has been grappling with what he's going to do. now that he is retired. And he has decided that he's going to do stupid stunts, which is not all that different from what he did when he's in office.

I mean, again, he has his job till January. But one of the things he did, which is, it feels like peak Louis Gomer, was that he presented an honorary American flag, folded like you had lost someone in service. right in that folded in a little triangle to a debunked conspiracy theorist named Dr. Simone Gold, who was released from federal prison in Miami on Friday. He gifted her the flag, flown over the Capitol, along with an official certificate, which I assume he typed up himself.

In a statement, released Friday, Gomer falsely claimed. that Gold was a political prisoner, as opposed to how we usually think of it as someone who did crimes and then went to jail. Right. He said that Dr. Gold is the definition of what a political prisoner looks like. Something I never thought I'd see here in the United States of America says, Gomer. You remember that Dr. Gold was also a group, was part of this group called America's frontline doctors. a group that worked very hard to push hydrochloroquine and then spread a lot of lies about the vaccines. So anyway, she is an anti-vaxxer.

She's an insurrectionist. And now she has been honored by one Louis Gomer. And so yet again, I give the dumbest member of Congress until it's over anyway. Hardy, go fuck yourself. Will you be presenting him a flag when he retires as the dumbest member of Congress? Yes. A flag and a set of teeth. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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