The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Is Polluting the Planet With a Thousand Mini-Dons

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

It’s bad enough that we have to deal with one Donald Trump here in the U.S. of A. What’s worse, Mehdi Hasan explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, is that Trump has become a template for a whole planet full of bad-faith actors and wannabe strongmen. Before he became the host of his own TV show in America, Hasan interviewed all sorts of international politicians. “What I noticed over the last few years is that they all now start talking like Trump. They all use the same verbal tics, the same ‘fake news,’ the same completely brazen lies,” Hasan tells Molly Jong-Fast. “This is not a coincidence. People around the world have said, ‘well, it worked for Donald Trump. Why can't it work for me?’ Of course, all politicians are bullshit artists. But what’s different today, Hasan adds, “is the way in which Trump and co. have turned lying into not just an art form, but an instrument of power. They don't lie just to get their way. They lie because they want to destroy our shared reality. They want to demonstrate their power. They want people to back them and say, yes, ‘I don't believe my lying eyes.’” Speaking of belief, you’ll be gobsmacked by the lengths Alex Gibney had to go to in order to make “Totally Under Control,” his documentary about the government’s response to COVID. For some interview subjects, he’d drop off a high-tech camera rig so they could basically film themselves. For others, “the camera person would go in alone to an Airbnb, kind of scrub it down, and then set up this shield—a series of shower curtains and tarps—between the subject and the camera person. And then there would be a lens sticking through,” he tells Molly. “That was a way… to do a proper lighting setup, but also be safe.” Then! Rick Wilson asks the questions on everyone’s mind, like: How much cash would it take to turn Texas blue? Why does Mike Lee hate democracy? Is mail order herpes a thing? And will Ted Cruz even remember Trump’s name on November 4th? Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

You're more famous than you were on Thursday. That's what they tell me. You were on 60 Minutes with your boy band. I was on 60 Minutes with my boy band. Actually, I think we more think of ourselves as a heavy metal band. The flowing locks, the loud music. That's right. I mean, our dance moves really aren't up to like BTK standards.

Oh, wait, BTK is the serial killer. What is the charming Korean boy band? BTF? Yes. I think I have PTSD after the time. What if BTS and BLM had a merger? It would be like the nightmare for every Trumper. What would be a protest?

What if we just talk about politics? We never talk anymore, Molly. Rick Wilson, what is going on? Well, the Super Spreader-in-Chief has gone to the place where dreams and, seniors go to die, Sanford, Florida, where he's having an airport rally and saw a little bit of video of it a few minutes ago. And you'd be surprised how robust the belief in Donald Trump's miracle elixir must be, because when these maskless 75-year-olds come down with the vid in a week or two, they're going to all say, well, where's my regener on? And their directors will stare at them and say,

the wazawa? Regina what? No, I'm so sorry. Why don't you put this respirator on? Let's talk about Ron DeSantis. First of all, Trump didn't wear a mask there, even though he's still contagious. Did DeSantis go to the rally? Yeah, Desantis introduced him. Well, of course, you know, Donald Trump is obsessing about getting out of the White House again now that he is completely free and clear of COVID. Did you see the blind Karen piece this afternoon?

He was interviewing a bunch of White House staffers, and they said, you know, they have no idea what to believe anymore. They have no idea to believe whether he's been tested in these negative or if he was never positive in the first place or if it was all, big act from the start or if it's an act now or if they're going to be in the pathway of this or if there any of them are going to get paid or that too well if you're in the campaign if i were you i'd get my checks before october 15th kids i think that's about right just saying but no look he's out on the road again and he's going to be on the road again and so the package of approximately 200 people that has to travel with the president no matter where he goes okay campaign or or no campaign, they're now all at risk of getting COVID from the travels that will be on with the

Mad King. And it is a sign that he is coming to understand that there are a lot of states moving out of play for him, including a lot of states he really, really, really would really, really, really like to win. Like what? Oh, I don't know. Places like Ohio and Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Well, he's actually doing okay in North Carolina. When you're two back in Texas and you're a Democrat, people like Donald Trump are paying

attention. And look, if somebody wants to drop 10 million bucks into Texas tomorrow, you could win that race. If somebody out there wanted to put $10 million into Texas, I think you could close the gate on that race. There's 750,000 undecided and leaning Biden Republicans in the state of Texas right now. Yeah, we've done a lot of data scraping in the last few days. And it's an astounding number. He's just not that popular anymore with people who have a college education. And Texas has become a much more college educated state in the last 10 years. So Michael Bloomberg, if you're listening, the number is $10 million, right? Is that fair? I think $10 million would probably do the trick. Honestly, it's not even that big of a lift. Look, the Democrats in Texas will crawl over broken glass right now to vote against Donald Trump.

The whole ballgame is in slicing off just enough disaffected Republicans there. And it's not an impossible task. It's a hard task. But if you did it, it would also end up. Trump would panic. He'd have to dump $50 million in there that he doesn't have. I'll just loan it to the campaign myself, said Donald Trump, if he was actually named Michael Bloomberg, because Donald Trump can't loan the campaign a million dollars because he's broke. Did you see that stuff in the Times about how Trump's loaned his campaign was actually illegal? Yes. You're shocked in some way. There's a financial shenanigan or some chicanery around Donald Trump.

Shocking. Who could have seen it? Who could have imagined that outcome? But, you know, look, he's going to be back on the road. It's going to be dangerous for people. and one very smart pollster said to me today, he said, look, Trump got a little sympathy bounce out of being sick. Republicans came home, and he says this week, between Amy Comey Barrett and the little sympathy balance for Trump, he probably gained two points overall in various state and national polls. But I said, well, I'm lucky for your side that he's going to go out and start campaigning again and say crazy, God damn shit every day. How's that going to work out for you? He goes, oh, it's already started.

This is the guy who's doing work at that level. He's kind of checked out at this point. It's just like... What Limbaugh shed? Well, Ma, you know, you could see the preview coming on Friday of last week of how crazy he's going to be in the next 20 days. When he calls Rush Limbaugh and has a long... Oh, two hours. ...threaty, intimate phone session with him.

It has to be ended by Rush playing music. When he even Rush Limbaugh's like, I know you're busy, but, you know, that was a phone call that started out with, what are you wearing? What are you wearing? Is it loose? What did you? Can we FaceTime, Rush? This is the worst thing you've ever said to me. And I had been through a line.

But this is the worst thing you've ever said to me. I will be haunted. Yes, you will. Yeah, thank you. Because Rush was wearing a... No, no. A kimono. You know you're envision a rush in a kimono right now.

No. Don't do it. I'm in the fetal position. Fetal stem cell position, you mean the drug, which was derived from fetal stem cells, which Donald Trump used at Walter Reed Medical Center? But you know that pro-lifers gave him a pass because he was not involved in that particular abortion. Well, I have some bad news for them. Talk to me about Republicans trying to distance themselves from Trump. while still trying not to alienate Trumpers.

This is the eternal conundrum. I would like to lose weight, he said, but only without dieting or exercising. It is the impossible position to be in because a Trump voter, the only way they look at a Republican candidate, whether it's John Cornynett in Texas or Sue Collins in Maine,

or Joni Arts in Iowa, or Cory Gardner in Colorado or Martha McSally in Arizona, they do not look at them as independent political actors from individual states. The only way Trump voters judge them is, do you love the great leader? Are you loyal to the dear leader? I'm saying that in what I refer to as North Korea-American Trump cult speak. Let's talk about Joni Ernst in this debate with Theresa Greenfield and the moderator, who I thought these state debate moderators have done a great job.

He said, do you support Donald Trump? And she could not say it. Joni Ernst. Of course not. Oh, no, that was Martha McSally. I'm sorry. That was Martha McSally. Martha McSally said she could not say it. She could not say she supported Trump. She said she

supported the tax cuts for Arizona. You know why? Because Martha McSally has seen the same polls that I have out of Maricopa County where the vast majority of the deciding vote will be cast in the Arizona U.S. Senate race. And Republican women in Maricopa County by a majority are voting for Joe Biden. This is how bad Martha McSally's campaign is. She's trailing Donald Trump. Most Republican Senate candidates are leading Trump. She's trailing Trump. She is about as popular. as mail order herpes. There's nothing for her but downside at this point. The Trumpers hate anybody who shows disloyalty to Donald Trump. She has dug a political grave by being too loyal to him. And now when it would be smart to back away, she's stuck. So, you know, that's what happens

when you have a personality cult and not a political party. Is mail order herpes a thing? I think you should yell Alexa. Alexa. I don't think I have an Alexa, but let's try it anyway. One of the interesting things that happened today during the hearing was that Ben Sass, who is like quietly trying to hope that 2024 will be his. He's sort of always measuring the presidency, said that he didn't agree. He sort of tried to differentiate himself from Donald Trump. Was that when he was saying that some of the things about COVID? Well, yes. And he did.

He said, I don't necessarily agree with what, how Donald Trump handled COVID and that or da. And it was sort of, it was sort of interesting. I wondered if that was sort of the first crap of these Republicans. Well, Ben Sass has always been a tiny bit crypto-sudo kind of sort of pretend independent, pretend dependent, if you will. But, you know, he doesn't have to worry about a reelection right now. And so he's, you know, fairly, look, what Ben Sass did today was the equivalent of someone standing in the middle of the White House in the Oval Office.

And they're like, fuck you, Mr. President, in the minds of most Trumpers. Okay. So Ben is getting hate online for that and whatever. He's fine. Don't cry for him, Ben's ass. The guy is politically speaking in the worst possible position you can be in. He has given Trump too much deference on the one hand. And yet, having said the slightest word against him, he is now disqualified from Republican primaries in the future.

I promise you, you know, Marco or Ted Cruz or whoever runs in 2024. Tucker Carlson. Yeah, Tucker. They will run ad saying liberal bin. Sass hates Donald Trump. Remember when Ben Sass, the liberal, liberal, said this? And I'll cut a little clip and then he'll say, it's time for a real leader to carry on Donald Trump's legacy. But it can't be liberal Ben Sass, whose liberal liberalism is too liberal for America. He's like A or C with a Coon Hussker accent. We're getting pure, unadulterated Rick Wilson tonight.

It's not the empire. It's the empire of poor, oppressed doctor Anthony Fauci. No, let me tell you something about Anthony Fauci. You could right now in Washington, D.C., hear a pin drop at the mention of his name because all the Trump people are waiting for the explosion. They know two things. They know one, that every time they poll Anthony Fauci, his numbers are higher than Trump's by about 25 points.

And yet this has been the dread they've been pondering the whole time. When does Trump lose his shit with Fauci? This one was pretty big. And Fauci's fairly direct and immediate, like, they took me out of context. They did not quote me correctly. I'm not happy about this. That to me... He said it was harassment.

Yeah, that to me, Trump will tell the campaign, dig in, keep running the ad. Because Trump is like a dog that sees like birds on TV or cat that sees birds on TV and keeps smashing into the TV, hoping the birds will be there. can smash into Fauci all he wants, it's not going to make his numbers higher than Fauci's. And that's what it's really like underneath it is that they want Trump to shut up, but Trump loves a fight. And so he won't fight. Yeah, I think that's true. It's really interesting. He can't fire Fauci. No, not really, especially at this point. But I don't think he has the jurisdiction to do it because he works for NIH, right? Oh, wait, but guys, I have to go back in one thing.

There's a video clip someone just sent me. I'm going to retweet it right now. Ron DeSantis, running down a line of people high-fiving them with no gloves, no mask. Woo, herd mentality, baby. How to get COVID at Donald Trump rally. Let's be clear about this sudden desire to have herd immunity as a national policy. The cost of herd immunity at the current death rates in the lowest possible boundary. The best case scenario, the lowest infection rate, the highest survival rate, would mean that 2.74 million Americans will die. Yeah, that's a lot of Americans.

If you are so hard over on proving your fucking point about herd immunity, you first, bitches, this is 2.74 is the low boundary with the numbers, and the number could be as high as 5.5 million people dead. If you're willing to accept 5.5 million dead Americans, fuck you. If you're willing to accept 5.5 million dead Americans, and you think that's a great outcome because you don't want to wear a mask and you don't want to socially distance and you want to go out to bar. every night. Go fuck yourself. Get the fuck out of here. Look, let's say 2.74 million people, okay? That's terrifying. That's a Wyoming and a Rhode Island and a South Dakota or North Dakota and

Idaho. This is a ridiculous and dangerous belief. The idea that you're ever, ever going to end up with herd immunity before a vaccine at that cost at this point in the game, it's a really, really bad idea, especially because this isn't a regular flu or something else that's amenable to herd immunity. COVID has a suite of symptoms and effects on the human body that mitigate the idea of herd immunity as a good strategy. But call me crazy. I'm not an epidemiologist or an immunologist. I just read things from, you know, epidemiologists and immunologists and not Jared fucking Kushner and Peter Navarro. And what about the crazy guy from Stanford? Oh, Scott Atlas? Yeah, Scott Atlas. He lives on the White House with this weekend, wearing no mask at the

Astro Turf event that was put on this weekend by Candice Owens. Those people were all paid to attend, so God bless them. And they were supposed to have, weren't they supposed to have like 2,000 people that'd end up only being 400 or 200? It was a couple hundred at most. Of course, when they got there, they decided they would jam them all together. Right, to make it look like more. Alex Gidney is the director of the amazing new film totally under control

on the mishandling of the COVID crisis in America. He has also directed other amazing documentaries like Agents of Chaos, Zero Deyes, and Enron, the smartest guys in the room. Alex, this movie is so unbelievably amazing. First, talk to me about how you decided to do it and how this came about. So I had no business doing this movie at all. As you know, I was hard at work on another movie called Agents of Chaos, which was consuming a lot of my time. but suddenly March, April, I'm in the middle of the pandemic in sort of the epicenter of the pandemic, which is New Jersey and New York.

A friend of mine had died from COVID. Another friend of mine was on a ventilator for two weeks. And it just struck me that the federal response was so feckless and so damaging that it would be worth doing a film about it. That would empower me in some way. But also, I wanted to do a film about it that would come out when a judgment could be made. So, you know, I wanted to make it on a fast track to have it come out. right about now, so that it would have some kind of impact on the election. So I decided to go forward with the thinking that the way to do it would be to focus on the early days, because with the fire hose

of scandal and lies and 24-7 news cycle that we're all drinking from, that those early days would actually seem like important history to understand, even as we might be continuing to be rolling around in the pandemic. So that was the idea. And then I needed help. And so I called out to Ophelia Harutunian and to Suzanne Hillinger and asked them if they would work with me on this and produce and directed with me. And thankfully, they said yes. And so we embarked. But we didn't really get started on it until early May, which was, that's not so very long ago. No, it's not. So we had a lot of work to do. And we put together a wonderful team. We had four editors working on it simultaneously. And they were editing almost before we started interviewing.

And we even had to figure out how to film this because we were in the the middle of a pandemic. That's so interesting when you show them bringing these special cameras. Will you talk about these special cameras? Sure. So we had two setups. One was the COVID cam. And the COVID cam was designed to be a device that you could leave on someone's porch and they could pick it up and turn it on. It was invented by Ben Bloodwell, with whom I had worked going back to Enron. He was the assistant camera on Enron. And he came up with a, it was basically a tray with a handle that had a laptop, a DSLR and a microphone. And then we'd send it to wherever the interview subject was, leave it on their porch, and then hook up to their internet. And then that meant that Ben had eyes on whatever the

camera was seeing. And the subject would carry it into their house. Then Ben could literally control the focus and the iris of the camera. And they would set it up in a room and then just roll. It was kind of incredible. And that meant that the subject never had to have any human contact with anybody. And So we did that for two of the interview subjects. The other way we did it was we'd rent an Airbnb in whatever location it happened to be. If it was somewhere near Ben, and he's out of Philadelphia, then he would go there. If it was somewhere else, then he would give the person instructions. And the camera person would go in alone to an Airbnb, kind of scrub it down,

and then set up this shield, a series of shower curtains and tarps that would be between the subject and the camera person. And then there would be a lens sticking through and mounted onto the lens was a thing called the eye direct, which is a kind of teleprompter. And it broadcasts on it the face of whoever is doing the interview so that they can look into the barrel of the lens, but they're seeing the face of the interviewer. And that was a way of not having to reckon with differing internet speeds and so forth. And also to do a proper lighting setup, but also be safe. Those were the two options we had.

And we did do some filming. I mean, it's interesting. you can see in the film, we did some shooting in South Korea, and we had a similar kind of set up. Though in South Korea, you can see a crew of four or five people, which testifies to how much better they were doing than we are because they weren't that concerned because they had basically contained the virus. I'm curious to know, what was the thing where you were like, holy shit? Because there are so many moments in this movie where I'm like, oh.

There were two holy shit moments for me, and one was a kind of slow awakening. over time that in all likelihood, the Trump administration had intentionally slow-walk testing. And that was just a jaw-dropping revelation for me. You know, it was even suggested by Kathleen Sebelius, but I didn't really believe it until we got to the end of the process in the movie, and particularly when we understood that the Trump knew by February 7th, thanks to Woodward, that the virus was dead. So that was a jaw-dropper. But I think the interview for me that just left me gobsmack was the interview with Max Kennedy Jr. where he described step by step by step what was going on inside the Jared Kushner task force so called. And it was just a portrait of such

utter incompetence and corruption that I just couldn't believe it. And Max was describing it in such sort of soft-spoken, detail-oriented terms that not a person who had an axe to grind, And he was just telling you the way it was and the way it was was just terrible. For now, you're sort of an expert on this. Can we talk a little bit about when Jared Kushner realized that the blue states were dying faster than the red states? We looked into that. And I think there was politics being played. And we showed a little bit of that in the film,

particularly when they're forcing Gavin Newsom to eat crow publicly in order to be able to get badly needed swabs for testing. But we couldn't find any. evidence that they intentionally targeted blue states for not getting PPE, for example, because they weren't going to get the votes there anyway. But I think what did happen is that over time, you know, particularly around that period where Trump is tweeting, Liberate Minnesota, liberate Michigan, there was this belief that were not the belief. I mean, the virus hit worse in the early days and in these very populous blue states that didn't give, they weren't going to support Trump's presidential run in any way, shape, or form. And they didn't. And they weren't,

there was this sense that if you could kind of pin it on them or make the other states believe that they were immune, that that would accrue to your political benefit. And that is effectively what ended up happening and what I think ended up causing this politicization of masks, which is so absurd and so desperately destructive to public health. But it all came out of, I think, that red state, blue state polarity, even though we now know, and the film shows that the virus was in the so-called red state. States pretty early on. It just didn't get to the level of contagion that Seattle, San Francisco, L.A., and particularly New York and New Jersey did from the early days. So, Alex, I feel like so many people don't feel like it's a coherent through line of how bad Trump's administration fucked this up. But one of the main pushbacks I always hear from people that seems to be the talking point to muddy the waters is that Pelosi and Schumer said all this stuff

that was incorrect as well. I find you to be such a straight shooter in your documentaries. I wanted to know what you thought about their role was in that, since I didn't really see that touched on that much. It's true. We didn't touch on Congress that much. There was a period where we thought we were going to get at, you know, particularly the relief measures and that. But it seemed to me that so much of this was about the executive branch, because that's what was really in control of the virus. You know, HHS is not an arm of Congress. It's part of the executive branch. And HHS is what controls Asper, what controls CDC. It's what controls FDA. And so the response to the virus was really coming out of the executive branch.

And while I think there was a film to be done about Congress or certainly articles to be done, and certainly an article in films to be done about the states as well, because there were certainly bongles there. Our focus was just on the federal response, that is to say, the executive branch. Yeah, that's true. Where do you think we are now? In some ways, we're in a much better place in the sense that we know a lot more about the disease than we did early on. that's something that people don't think about enough. We really didn't know how the disease spread, whether it's asymptomatic, did it spread through the air, did it was these droplets?

And also, how do you treat it? What do you do to try to get the air through the lungs? Even something as simple as lying in your stomach can be hugely effective in terms of treating COVID. We have a drug now called Remdesivir, which really does help. So in that sense, we're in a good place, but we're in a terrible place in the sense that we don't have any national coordinated plan about how to be. to get out of the situation that we're in. We're rudderless. And that's the thing that has to change for us to be able to move forward. Every place is different in terms of how they're reckoning with it. Every place is different in terms of whether or not they have access to proper testing. And so

that, I think, is really the problem. And also, we've lost trust and faith in our scientific institutions because they've become corrupted by a political agenda that is insisted on harnessing them to messaging, which is designed only to get Trump reelected. So that's what has to change. So this is such a complex story. And one of the things I think that's always so impressive with your documentary, especially like zero days. I couldn't believe how well you wove this story together.

I'm curious, though, is there a figure that you think doesn't get enough of the blame in this that you're consistently looking at this and going, what the hell? Why does no one see this? Well, if you watch the film, I think you could probably pause it a guess. Yes, I can do that. Might be Alex Azar. He's the person who had the responsibility to stand up for his team, the dedicated civil servants in CDC and FDA and also at Asper.

But, you know, there are other people along the way. I mean, and I think it's important that, and we talked about this a lot in the cutting room, one can become too Trump-centric in describing the problem here. And clearly Trump, because there are structural issues at work, i.e. a very bad and unequal health care system. But also there were administration officials who would become accustomed to flattering the boss rather than doing what was necessary. And by the way, they were chosen to some extent to do just that. And they were chosen, not because they were the best and the brightest, sometimes just the opposite. And into that category fall people like

Redfield, Berks, Hahn at FDA. These people have not served us well. And every time they have an opportunity to do the right thing. They almost always don't. Oh, so scary. We're all going to die. This film really is amazing. I've been telling all my friends who don't believe that Trump really deserves the brunt of the blame for why COVID's so bad in America to watch it. Can you tell everybody where they can see it? You can watch it now on Apple TV and Amazon Prime. And on October 30th, it goes up on Hulu. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now. And two episodes a week just like aren't enough to cover at all.

So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com to become a Beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com.

Medi Hassan is a journalist and now he is the host of the brand new peacock show, The Medi Hassad show. So let's talk first about this. One of the first interviews I remember seeing you do was this incredible interview with Eric Prince. And it was just like show, like I had never seen anyone do an interview quite that well.

And so I would love for you to talk about how it came about and just how you do that. So I used to do a show for Al Jazeera English prior to joining Peacock called Head to Head to Head. and up front, I did two shows for them, and I did that for several years. And the show you're mentioning, Eric Prince show was called Head to Head, and it's filmed at the Oxford Union in front of a live audience. And I always think live audiences make a show so much better.

A lot of TV shows don't do it anymore just because of costs over the years. A lot of TV shows on both sides of the Atlantic have cut back on live studio audiences for interview shows, which I always think is kind of sad. But that was an interview with Eric Prince. He was in the middle of his kind of promoting his latest plant, I think, to privatize the war in Afghanistan, I remember. That was the schick. That was what he was selling.

that's why he agreed to the interview. The number of people who asked me why Eric Prince agreed to come on my show knowing my style of interview. If I had a dollar for every person who asked me that I'd be a multi-millionaire now. And I don't know the answer, to be honest. If I was Eric Prince, I wouldn't have done it.

He did it. It was an hour-long interview, and the way we do head turns, we do a lot of prep, Molly. A lot. To prepare for days, weeks. We role play. I have a producer,

roll, pretend to be the guest and we go through possible answers that they might say. I mean, we don't wing it. It's a properly prepared. produced interview. And I like to prepare for interviews, to be ready. With Prince, he's one of these guests who I think is just not used to being challenged in that way, even when he's done the US media interviews with quote unquote liberals and leftists or whatever

it is, you know, there's a certain rules of the game, I think, which I don't necessarily follow, not in the sense that I do gotchas or I'm trying to be rude, it's more like there's no undue deference when I try and interview someone to push a person in power. And so, you know, we ask the blunt questions in that show. And I think if you remember the clips that went viral, were asking him about his congressional testimony where he basically lied about his context with the Trump campaign and about his visits to the U.A., the Seychelles.

That's right, where he happened, yeah. Yeah, it was just a beer, he said. And we kind of nailed him on the fact that he claimed he had said in congressional testimony what he hadn't said and we had been through every page of the hundreds of pages of transcript. So, you know, when you have those moments when you're prepared, it's great. And it was great TV and, you know, Adam Schiff referred him to DOJ for investigation afterwards.

I don't even know what's going on with that. Occasionally we hear updates about the DOJ, but it is the bill bar DOJ, so I guess I'm not full of confidence that they will actually do anything by Eric Prince. Yeah, hard to trust. Yeah, it was one of those interviews where a lot of Americans who didn't follow me at that point, because I had a big global audience at the time, got to know me a bit more because there was a sense of, I get a lot from American view as I get a lot of frustration. I get Americans saying to me, why can't all of our TV shows ask questions and be like your show?

And that's what I get, it's basically I'm like a valve for their discontent and frustration. Yes, okay, so why? Not to put you on this spot, but why are you so much better at that than American shows? Oh, you're too kind. I mean, now I have a show on American TV, so I'll be respectful to my peers. So it's a good question. I think it's to do with a multiplicity of different things. I think it's to do with the fact that in general, American political and media culture is just

more deferential to people in power, which is kind of weird given you guys had the revolution. And I say you guys, I just became a citizen a few days ago. I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm in a kind of identity crisis here because I'm both British and American at the same time. Let me wear my British hat now to answer this question. As a Brit, I look at Americans and say, you guys have a weird deference towards power that we don't necessarily have in the same way in the UK, which is odd because you had the revolution.

So you think you guys would be the ones who were more kind of anti-government and willing to call out the people in power. But, you know, if you look at how, for example, the president enters the Roosevelt Room and the White House, the press corps stand up. People in power here, once they lose office, they get to keep their titles. you get kind of Secretary Clinton and Mayor Giuliani, mayor of what? He hasn't been mayor of New York. But it's culture lends itself to kind of a certain respect and reverence, both not just for the institutions, but the people who've held them.

And I think I don't have that, really. So that helped me. And I think generally there's a big debate, as you know, about access journalism, which apply them both sides of the Atlantic, you know, this idea that if you are too tough in an interview, if you offend the guest, will they ever return? Will their friends return? Will other people from their political party come on?

And to be honest, at Alge's their English, I don't really need to worry too much about those considerations or at the intercept where I did my podcast before this. Now, maybe I need to think more about that. Maybe it's a real, maybe it's just a factor of life in the sense that I'm now doing a nightly show on Peacock, which is NBC's streaming channel. And obviously I'm trying to get guests from different walks of life, different parties. I don't want to be a different person. I still want to ask tough questions, but I'm much more cognizant of the fact that you are going to lose more people. You're going to have more people turning you down. And that's always a problem as well when it comes to these interviews and bookings. Right. Any type of somebody starting a new show, especially one with a new audience on a new network, what else, aside from your interviewing style, can we expect to see from this show?

That's going to be different from other shows. That's a great question. So one of the things I'm trying to take advantage of is it's built, it's designed, like what you would see as another primetime cable show on, it's an hour long, it's four blocks. We have ad break. But the good thing about Peacock is there's very few ads, even though there's a subscription service and there's a free service, even on the free service, you can watch my show for free every night at 7 p.m. and there's a plug.

Or on, and streaming forever. The good thing about it is there's actually much fewer ads in your average cable or network news hour. So your average cable hour, you're on air for about, what, 42 minutes, 43 minutes,

something like that, I think. Whereas on my show, we're on air for 55 minutes. The ad breaks are only a minute long. So it's a lot more real estate to cover or occupy. It makes it more tiring for me. But it's actually,

it means we can have more in-depth interviews, which is something I enjoy. Even as a guest, and Molly, you know, this going on cable, one of my frustrations as a guest always is, it's so short. blink and you miss it. You make one point and it's like, thank you for coming on. See you later.

And I'm like, I was grateful that time. So one of the good things about my show and we've been doing this week one, we're now in week two, is having the lengthier interviews, being able to have a kind of 17 minute conversation with Elizabeth Warren, being able to really get into depth on the Michigan white nationalism story on Friday, the militias we had the Michigan A.G. We had Obama's former assistant attorney general for counterterrorism on. I was able to do a kind of history lesson in how we got here from Tim McVeigh and Waco and Ruby Ridge. And I just think that space, the time that allows someone like me who has very strong views, as you know, to be able to air them and express them and really break down a subject. And I think that's

quite important in prime time. It's not often done, partly because of the time constraints, partly because some people just don't want to do it. So that's something from my show. It's not just the interviews. I'm very keen in kind of breaking subjects down, getting to the bottom of things. For example, this week, I know I'm going to get into court packing and I really want to talk about this whole idea of, oh, is it nine justices or eight justice? It is nine a magic number? Are the Republicans hypocrites because they wanted to keep the quarter eight for four years had it been Hillary Clinton? Aren't they doing it at a state level? I think there's stories you can break down in so many ways.

And in 2020 with Trump, we just move on so quickly. And one of my mottoes for my team and my show is we're just not going to move on quickly. No, I think that's great. And it's something that I think we are all interested in. Do you find, do you think that American media has learned the lessons of 2016 or now? So that's a great question. No. as a big picture answer? No, I would have to say, as a whole. Obviously, it's very hard,

Molly, when we talk about, and I'm guilty of this, I'm sure you are, we all are, journalists, shorthand when we say, the American media, and people say, well, what do you mean? You can't just take a broad brush. There is TV, there's print, there's online, there's whatever, there's left, there's right. But I think as a big picture, just as a kind of, if you do a kind of snapshot overview of where we are, not really. And I'll tell you why, the day after the first debate, if you saw the headlines on the front of the print press, both the national newspapers and local papers. It was horrific. I mean, I was so depressed to see kind of, it was all both sides. It was Biden and Trump exchange barbs. It was, you know, both sides throw insults. And it was like,

yeah, Biden called him a clown. Trump said he wouldn't accept a peaceful transition of power. I mean, it's just not the same. And it was just that Trump interrupted him a thousand times and got told off by the moderator for breaking the rules. That is not the same as Biden in frustration saying, ah, shut up, man. And then you're seeing this over the last few days. I don't know if you've been following the Biden Supreme Court, bruhaha. Oh, yeah, of course. Where you have journalists, liberal journalists falling over one another to say, oh, this is as bad as Trump. This is like Trump saying he won't leave office. Biden won't answer. It's not the same thing. Biden's position is if you push through the Supreme Court nominee and if you try and use the court to steal the election,

then yeah, I may have to do something about the court. We'll decide that after the election, which is a legitimate view. You don't have to agree with it. But this, I just feel it's, again, it's journalists who are a lot of political journalists who are, are almost kind of, it's inherent in who they are and what they do to not to be on one side or the other. And they must, you know, if Trump does this, then I need to find something to criticize Biden or Clinton on. And that was the problem in 2016 where you had Trump with his multiple scandal, the sexual assault scandals, the Trump University scandal, the Trump Foundation scandal, the racism, the bigotry, the corruption. And yet, we had Hillary's emails. And if you look at

the Harvard study that was done on media coverage of 2016, you'll see that amazing bar chart that people can Google the Schorgenstein Center did this. And this like one long bar of Hillary Clinton emails, that was media coverage of emails, outnumbered all of the tiny little bars for each of Trump's separate scandals put together. I think it was journalists deliberately trying to help Trump, in, not in some cases.

I think it was just journalists thinking, I can't just keep criticizing Trump. I'm not allowed to. I must find something on the other side to show that I'm fair and I'm immoral. And we're doing that again now. It's like, oh, Biden said something that we can get him on to show that we're fair.

Well, it's not the same thing as the thousand things that Trump does on a day. daily basis. And that's where I think we haven't learned the lesson. I am very like in the weeds on this, because I wrote about it for Vogue and I just have been thinking about a lot. So Trump has said he won't agree to it like a hundred times. That's his brand. We all know that. But at the vice presidential debate, Pence refused to answer it too. And I'm curious to know what your thinking is about that. Well, with Pence, I don't tend to read that much into Pence other than he's a sycophant. And therefore, he has to kind of go along with what the president says. I mean, if he had someone on

we're going to accept that. That would have undermined their entire strategy. And just answering this question and your previous question again, I just reminded of an Associated Press story that's out today on Monday, which buries like multiple paragraphs in a line about how Trump's allies are hoping it will be close on the night so he can declare victory and throw it to the courts. Which two points there. Number one, that is their strategy. They're not hiding it. They're like Bond villains. They're telling you what they're going to do. They're not hiding it in any way. There's no big reveal. They're very clear about what the nefarious plan is for election day. And number two, we can't help them do it as journalists.

It's weird that AP buried quite an important point that Trump allies are open about the fact that they're not going to accept the result. They buried that multiple paragraphs into a piece rather than say, this is not normal. And I think that should have been the mantra for four years from journalists and media organizations. And some did, to be clear, I'm not going to pay broad brush, some journalists would be excellent.

Some interviewers. We've seen some great interviews this year of Trump finally on American TV from Jonathan Swan of Axios. And Chris Wallace over at Fox News, although he then kind of let himself down on debate night. I think we're going to remember debate Chris Wallace more than we're going to remember interview Chris Wallace in 2020. That should have been our mantra for four years as journalists.

This is not normal. That should have preceded and ended every segment on Donald Trump, every interview with Donald Trump, every interview with a Donald Trump supporter. Instead, we kind of just internalized it to the point where, I don't know, I'll throw something at random. Donald Trump said on Fox News days ago that the governor of Virginia has executed a baby.

We just moved on. I haven't seen any coverage of that. I do remember. I said on my show that night, if I went on TV, if I went on Peacock and said Donald Trump has executed a baby, I would rightly be fired for saying a ridiculous thing. We all just moved up. It didn't even make for a news segment the morning after. Exactly.

I agree. I mean, it's just completely, he gets away with strange and terrifying things and nobody seems to notice. I'm curious to know what you think about the rise of this, really, this sort of Trumpy media and where you see this going. It's very worrying, to be honest. It's one of the most disillusioning, demoralizing aspects of the last few years. As a journalist, I remember telling a colleague of mine a few years ago, is we just chuck it all in and become accountants? Anything wrong with being an accountant? No, nothing else. The idea that, you know, everything we're doing, is there any point to it if people are they not consuming it or just not believing it when they consume it? If they're able to lock themselves off, wall themselves off in an alternative reality where they're fed information about Hunter Biden and fraudulent mail ballots and, you know, Joe Biden's earpiece. all day long. If that is what we're competing with, that is deeply dangerous for the media.

It's deeply dangerous to democracy. You can't have a democracy if you do not have a shared factual reality. And in an era of Trumpy media, in an era of Fox News, and this actually channels much worse than Fox News, the O-A-Ns and all of that of the world, when they're pumping out what is pure propaganda, completely divorced from reality, completely unhinged, then you really have to ask the question, what is the future for democracy in a country like that? I don't know, Molly, if you've seen the social dilemma on Netflix. My family and I just all sat down and watched it the other day. I have to watch.

Again, the social media angle to this as well. That is so depressing. And Jared Lanier, the inventor of virtual reality, he says on the social dilemma, he says, look, 20 more years of this of kind of social media amplifying nonsense and obviously throwing in the cable news nonsense on Fox and Co. You know, can American democracy, can our civilization survive this? And it sounds melodramatic, but facts matter, despite what Kellyanne Conway would have as believe. And if you don't have a shared factual reality, if you are able to, you know, in the old

days, quote unquote, Americans would gather around the water cooler or sit down to watch Tom Brokor or Dan Rather or Peter Jennings or beyond that, before that Walter Cronka. Now you can watch a debate and then say, how did the debate go? Let me tune into Sean Hannity interviewing the president's son on state TV to tell us how amazing it was. So I just think if you get that pumped at you 24-7 and you saw what happened to people like Cesar Seo, the pipe bomb. I mean, his entire defense is. in court was that I watch Fox News all day. He would eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner around Fox News shows. He would schedule his day.

I just think that is deeply dangerous. Now, just to come back to my earlier point, I don't want to be completely negative about it. Obviously, I haven't become an accountant, partly because I'm crap at math. Yeah, it's hard. I actually think accounting is very hard. It's very hard. But the other reason is because, look, I still believe in this. I still believe that facts matter.

I still believe that there is an audience out there that is desperate for genuine information, for perspectives that break through the BS, for people who are willing to call out bad faith actors. For me, the story of American politics right now is more than just Trump. It's the story of bad faith actors. And you're seeing that in the Supreme Court here. Everything you get from one wing of American politics is all in bad faith.

I mean, if you understand that point, you understand every new story going. It's all bad faith. No one believes anything. No one on the right who is pitching, whatever angle they're pitching, believes anything that they're actually saying. And I think that's very important to call out, and I'm going to try and do it on a nightly basis.

I'm trying to build an audience that's willing to, hear some kind of blunt truths both about where we are politically and where our media is and what needs to be done about it. I'm not going to pretend I'm optimistic, but I'm still hoping. I love that. I mean, I think it's so important and so necessary. And I also feel like I've been watching the Supreme Court hearings and they're just, there's so much bad faith. As a UK citizen, so you can escape any time. Do you think that the conservative, the Tories are act in better faith? It's a great question. So if you'd ask me that five years ago, 10 years ago, that said, look, they're as dishonest as most political parties.

You know, politicians are dishonest. Let's be clear. Polygians lie. That's not, you know, breaking news. What is so different about the current era is the way in which Trump and co have turned lying into not just an art form, but it's an instrument of power, right? They don't lie just to get their way. They lie because they want to destroy our shared reality.

They want to demonstrate their power. They want people to back them and say, yes, I don't believe my lying eyes. As Trump once said, do not believe what you see in here. Leave me. And that is, you know, Hannah Arend and others have all talked about. authoritarian to do that. You know, Ruth Ben Guillaat has written about Benito Mussolini and the lies he told and the pointless lies that he told. And I think that's really, really important for us to acknowledge. And what's depressing in the UK is that the Conservative Party there is heading in a Trumpian direction.

What Trump has done is he has set out a template for other right-wing parties around the world to now copy. And that's what's so worrying. And as I said, before I did my peacock show, the Mayor de Hassan show, before I did that, I did up front and head-to-head. And on those shows, I interviewed politicians from around the world, ministers from African governments, Asian government. And what I noticed over the last few years is that they all now start talking like Trump. You just see it. They all use the same verbal tics, the same fake news, the same completely brazen lies, the same kind of made up statistics, the same attack on the media or on the interviewer.

And it's just like, this is not a coincidence. People around the world have said, well, it worked for Donald Trump. Why can't it work for us? And I think Boris Johnson is a classic example of that. You're seeing very similar attacks on the BBC and on the press in the UK. you're seeing very similar kind of nativist dog whistling or more than dog whistling. And I just think the similarities are very clear in the way that they are approaching politics. So in that sense, unfortunately, I'd have to answer your question.

No, the British Tories may have been slightly better a few years ago, but they're all heading in that Trumpian direction. Trump, Modi, Bolsonaro. It's just the global authoritarian, whatever you want to call it, far right, populist right, anti-fact, anti-science, anti-media, anti-democracy movement. Jesus. Tucker Carlson. I feel very clear that I know what's going on in Fox News, right?

That Rupert Murdoch has successfully weaponized white grievance politics in a way and translated it into a media empire. But in my mind, Tucker Carlson is different. Do you notice this and how worried are you about this? It's a great question. So Rupert Murdoch, I did a poll on Twitter the other day. I said, who is most responsible for the mess that we're in? And it was kind of Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump.

And Murdoch won. And I think that's fair. I think Zuckerberg's coming up fast. but Murdoch in terms of kind of the decades he's put in, he should be recognised for his service and his work towards undermining democracy and race relations around the world. I mean, Kevin Rudd, the former Australian Prime Minister, has talked about this from what happened in Australia.

You look what happened in the UK, you look at the US, all countries where Murdoch media dominate in many ways. No coincidence there. Tucker Carlson's interesting because there's this kind of faction of people, some on the left, sadly, as well, who think he's somehow different in terms of he's a populist and he's calling out corporations. And number one, I just don't believe that's genuine.

And he works for Fox, this idea that he's some corporate bashers great. He works for Rupert Murdoch. And also, this idea that if you attack corporations or you support workers' rights, it means you're not far right. I mean, literally, that's what the Nazis did. That's what Marine Le Pen and France pictures. If you look at all of the European far-right parties, they're very pro-welfare state and workers' rights and big government.

That's part of their schick, and that we're going to look after our indigenous workers against the evil foreigners and elites. And on Tucker himself, I mean, it goes back to my point earlier about kind of the bad faith of it all. I don't believe he believes half this stuff. I mean, we have the leak tapes about him saying Iraqis and monkeys or apes or whatever it was. Fine, you know, the racism on the right is there.

But, you know, if you look at his career trajectory, I just think he's seen a gap in the market like Donald Trump did. And he's filling it. And when you see people like, you know, the Daily Stormer and all these neo-Nazis basically saying Tucker Carlson is our guy, he's doing our messaging, our talking points, or on his show, that should worry us for two reasons. Number one, nobody in American television, not even on Fox, should be mainstreaming literal white supremacy and neo-Nazism. And number two, I mean, how evil genius is this guy if he doesn't actually believe it and he's just playing them all? Because, you know, there is talking about a Tucker Carlson presidential run in 2024. And, you know, I'm not beyond seeing a Tucker Carlson Don Jr. Republican ticket.

And that would be both depressing as hell and scary as hell. Somali, as you are aware, under federal, state, local and international treaty law, we are required on each episode of the New Admiral podcast to include a segment called FUFICE. that guy. Wait, tell me more. I haven't heard of it. Most people strangely have an obsessive love with fuck that guy. And so here we are, forever bound to fuck that guy over and over again. I don't hate it. I don't hate it either. It has a certain life of its own now. Who is your fuck that guy? I was about to ask, and some people pay good money for that. I was about to have that Claus von Buello moment of, you have no idea how strange. Klaus von Buello, kids, he's a role model

for the youth of America. All right, go. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a double Mike Lee. And I'm not saying this is true for sure. I've heard that maybe it's apocryphal. I've heard that the porn industry refers to a double Mike Lee as some... Jesus Christ.

My God, man. We're trying to clean it up here. No, we're not. I'm trying to... Last night on 60 minutes, when Leslie Stahl asked me, goes, are you worried you're sinking to Trump's level? I was like, I hope so. so. I like that you drop the 60 minutes and wait, so you're fuck that guy. So it's Mike Lee

because Mike Lee talks a big game about being a constitutional conservative and a principled, limited government conservative. And he tweeted the other night, democracy isn't the objective. Liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that. But you're thinking, he hates rank choice. It's not rank choice. You're thinking that doesn't sound like the kind of thing that normally sends Rick into an orbital outrage spiral, but it is. But why? Because this is part of a very dangerous aspect of post-Trump conservatism where they're trying to reduce liberty and freedom to ancillary elements of our society and our political system rather than fundamental elements of it. They believe that it's part of the philosophy they're calling ordered liberty.

Now, the problem with ordered liberty is that it then decides. how certain rights are distributed, not the Constitution. This idea of ordered liberty is an incredibly dangerous philosophy. And unfortunately, they're trying to, like, lay back to older philosophical principles on it, but what it really is is about trying to put a pretty face on Trumpism and to keep Trumpism alive after Trump is gone. And the idea that, quote unquote, rank democracy is what we have in this country is absurd. We are still a republic based on a democratic system. And that republic has its principles outland in the Constitution. And so Mike Lee, you're today's fuck that guy.

I mean, I also think his amazing role as super spreader should not be undervalued. You mean at the Amy Comey Barrett coronation ceremony? As he was spitting without a mask. And the great irony, of course, is that the worst senator in the entire world except for Mitch, Ted Cruz, was actually quarantining because of his exposure to Mike Lee. Yes, yes. Can we really say Ted Cruz is the worst when, John Kennedy walks the earth?

I'm sorry, but I still think Ted Cruz was worse than John Kennedy today. Ted Cruz was so very Ted Cruz. But then again, Lindsay, soon to be ex-Senator Lindsey Graham, was pretty atrocious, too. I mean, he's just a nightmare. Someone said today about Ted Cruz. Somebody texted me. I said, it's the usual cruise performance. It's a combination of oily and yet oily.

I promise you that on November 4th, 2020, Ted Cruz is going to be like, Donald, who? Of course they are. Right. Of course they are. Wait, Donald, what? I believe I may have met someone named Donald with a tea before. I don't recall, though, when the truth is, these people are intimately familiar with the smell of Donald Trump's ass because they've been kissing it so hard for so long.

That's a good one. I was thinking you'd go for it. That's a sort of cleaner take than I was thinking you might go for. I'm impressed. You're showing a lot of restraint there. That Ted Cruz is more familiar with Donald Trump's tea. That's the sound of her producer dying. That's so getting cut out.

Yeah, there's no world in which. So my fuck that guy is going to be Mark Meadows, the guy who went to the hospital with Donald Trump, has been few people have been more exposed to COVID than Mark Meadows. And he refused to talk to journalists wearing a mask. But of course. But of course. How are you shocked by this? I'm shocked.

I also think like Kanye should tie because he has announced himself as a write-in candidate. Well, Kanye is going to greet the fate of all right-in candidates in 35 states, which is to say they get nothing. He won't even be counted. Also, I do have to say Marcia Blackburn did today say that she hopes to be the same kind of leader and glass ceiling breaker as RBG. From what asylum? On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover

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