The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Is Using Classic Mob Boss Tactics to Carry Out His Wishes

Episode Date: December 10, 2024

Donald Trump is already up to his old tricks, according to co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Then, Melissa Murray, professor of law at NYU Law School, joins the program to break down Donald Trump’s recent statements on ending birthright citizenship. Plus! Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us to talk about his new article, “Trump Fans Are Suffering From Tony Soprano Syndrome.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

of Law at NYU Law School, joins us to break down Donald Trump's recent statements on ending birthright citizenship and mass deportation, exploring the constitutional, historical, and societal implications of these proposals. Then, Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us to talk about his new article. Trump fans are suffering from Tony Sopranos Syndrome. Some conservatives are embracing the villains in what are supposed to be cautionary tales. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, we have a couple stories that seem to, at least to us, to be somewhat connected. And I want to start with some comments that Donald Trump made on Sunday when he was a guest on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker. What he did was say that every member of the January 6th committee

should go to jail. He said, I mean, if you look at the transcript, he said, honestly, they should go to jail for what they did, anybody that voted in favor, et cetera, et cetera. And then Walker said, are you going to direct your FBI director and your attorney general to send them to jail? And Trump said, no, not at all. I think that they'll have to look at that. But I'm going to focus on drill, baby drill. So to me, this is mob boss Trump, where he says things, but he doesn't, actually direct people to do things in so many words. He just lets them know what he would like. And then he has the sort of plausible deniability of saying, I didn't, I didn't tell them to arrest that guy or, you know, it's the mob boss. I didn't tell them to kill that guy.

This is that. And he's done that countless times. So, so I don't think it's a stretch to say that's what he's doing here. But again, you sound like a broken record, but the idea that the people who served on the January 6th committee, all obviously congresspeople should go to jail for quote unquote what they did, which was serve on an investigative committee, I think, you know, gives us a pretty good picture of what we're looking at over the next four years. It's just like, go to jail for what exactly. For what they did, Danielle, for what they did. So what they did was open up an investigation because what we all witnessed with our own eyes were thousands of people with their Trump regalia breaking into the Capitol building, defecating in the halls of Congress, building

a gallows on the steps of the Capitol building. People were severely injured, police officers severely injured, a person was killed. So in Donald Trump's world, what was supposed to happened that day. What did happen was that all of those people were allowed to just go home, right, as opposed to what we saw happen in Brazil, which is when people were arrested same day. And I was like, oh, you're allowed to do that? Like, you can arrest people in the moment that they're committing a crime, not weeks and months later. The fact here is that in Donald Trump's mind, those people, as he has done at all of his rallies, should be celebrated, should be cheered on for what it is that they did, which is he told them to go take their country back and that's exactly what they

went to go do. I guess my question comes when Donald Trump pardons these people, what precedent that sets? That so long as I guess you were white and you are armed and you are a man and you decide that violence is the only option that you should be applauded for that. Everyone else, however, will either be killed on the spot sent to jail for God knows how long. Like I just, it makes no sense to me. And to have those people be investigated, what is the premise for the FBI and for the Department of Justice to be opening up investigations into, say, a Liz Cheney? What is the reason? Because Donald Trump said so, that's going to be enough to open up an and I guess so, because you'll get rid of all of the career people that are there, the people that

actually took an oath to the Constitution and didn't take an oath to Donald Trump. And so the big boss, like you said, Andy says, I don't like this Liz Cheney, but I'm going to focus on other things, but maybe you should focus on this. And that's what they do is just open up a ton of investigations to sully these people's names, but then they come up with absolutely nothing. Yeah. And then, of course, you know, in addition to sullying their names, they drag them before Congress or they make them pay court fees and whatever. And it's just, you know, it's everything possible basically to make their lives miserable because they dared to stand up to Donald Trump. This is not new territory for Trump. This is what he does. Look, it's a fair question as to what

actual charges would look like. I know they keep claiming that the committee destroyed evidence. Trump likes to say that a lot and sort of his hacky cronies. None of that is true. But But who the hell knows, you can only sit here for so long and say, you know, and try to think about this logically and be like, okay, well, what would the charges actually be? Because like you said, that is so secondary here. What's important here is to make these people's lives miserable and probably equally important, if not more important, to discourage anyone else from crossing Donald Trump. And we've seen that also time and time again where they threaten lawsuits and including lawsuits aimed at media organizations or, you know, the guy who's going to be the chairman of the FCC

threatens to yank NBC's broadcast license, which it doesn't even have because it's not networks that have broadcast licenses. It's local affiliates. But it doesn't matter. The idea is to discourage. It's to have a chilling effect, as the phrase that's always used. And look, so even if that's what's going on here and you can sit here and say, yeah, but what would the actual charges be? It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter to them. It doesn't matter to people saying, you know, like, they'll find something. They'll make something up.

Like, it really just doesn't matter to them. What matters is punishing them and deterring people from daring to go against a dear leader in the future. And here's what I'll say. What they are offering, these kind of threatening tones and the things, these little breadcrumbs that Donald Trump drops, during these interviews is the reason why you have most recently, and I'm so disgusted by the recent statements of Jim Clyburn, Democrat, Stalwart Democrat, been in Congress a very long time for him to even offer up that Joe Biden needs to pardon Donald Trump so that we can have a clean slate. You're listening to what Donald Trump is saying right now in these interviews and the reaction from

one of the most senior Democrats in Congress is that we all just need to move on and that Joe Biden needs to just provide him with a pardon, even as Donald Trump is getting ready to open up a fresh wave of new crimes, but that we should all just look the other way. When I hear things like that and I listen to what Donald Trump is saying, I'm just like, we continue to say, don't obey in advance, don't obey in advance. What the hell is this? Like what are Democrats, establishment Democrats, setting this country up for right now? When this is going to be your response is not we don't jail our political opponents or not forceful like language in terms of we are going to hold down the rule of law.

No, Jim Clyburn has said, eh, the insurrection. It wasn't a big deal. He took a couple of documents. That's not a big deal. And we wonder why seven million people stayed home and didn't. vote in this election? Make it make sense. It doesn't make sense except, I guess, maybe through one lens that we sort of talked about on a prior episode with regard to Joe Biden. I think you were actually the one that said it, is that Joe Biden, for however much good he did in his term as president,

and he did do some good things. I don't want to pretend he didn't. He never really grasped what had shifted around him since his time in the Senate. thing with Donald Trump, you know, whether it was Merrick Garland, slow walking, everything until it literally didn't matter anymore and everything had to be dropped, whether it was even campaigning on reaching across the aisle as if such a thing were still possible these days. And it feels like Congressman Clyburn, who, look, the dude has a long and fairly distinguished career. I mean, I don't want to, and I know you're not doing this either. I'm not trashing his whole career or anything like that. I mean, the guy has done a lot for this country.

But he's in his 80s. And I just think the time that they know the best is gone. And the time of whether it's Biden reaching across the aisle or whether it's Clyburn saying, hey, we have to put this behind us. We have, you know, Joe Biden should pardon Donald Trump. Let's get a clean slate. No, that time has passed. I hate to say it, but in some ways, the time for civility has passed. And it hasn't passed by the choice of Democrats. It's passed by the choice of Republicans. Republicans wanted it gone. And they've achieved that. So for Democrats to sit there and basically think that turning the other cheek, if you will, is the way to go. It just doesn't work. It's not even, you know, I guess you could consider it moral high ground. But I'm not

really sure what the point of the moral high ground is if the people who have seated that ground are running everything and are passing laws that are hurting people and doing things that are unethical and illegal. I'm not sure it's moral to stay up on the high ground and be like, well, look, you know, we have to forgive that. I don't think that works in, you know, the Year of Our Lord 20, 24. I was just going to say, I'm like, the shit like that works in church. Right, right.

To forget, it doesn't work. It's not supposed to work in Congress. Yeah. Yeah. And it worked on the West Wing, I guess. Right. But, you know, don't get me started on what that show did to the brains of way too many people. But right.

I'm not saying that it didn't have its time. And, but its time was the 20th century. You could even argue that it, it shouldn't have been around then. But look, I mean. there is a qualitative difference between a Mitt Romney and, I don't know, even a George Bush as bad as he was, and he was bad. There's still a difference between people like that and Donald Trump and what the MAGA Republican Party is today.

There just is a difference. That's not a compliment, really, to George W. Bush or anything like that. It's just pointing out that there was a fundamental difference. So it just seems to me that, again, the, the, The atmosphere in which these guys spent a large majority of their career is completely different now. You know, whether it's Clyburn, whether it's Biden. Honestly, whether it's someone like Chuck Schumer who I don't really know what he's accomplished in his position of leadership. You know, Nancy Pelosi, you could at least say, hey, she did a bunch of things.

I can't offhand think of anything that Chuck Schumer has accomplished. And yet these people still lead the Democratic Party. And I guess what I'm saying is it's time for some change. there and it's time to get some young blood in there and it can't happen soon enough. I mean, and at this point, fucking young blood looks like 60 years old. Do you know what I'm saying? Like in comparison to the people that have been there and look, I'm not trying to be ages. What I am saying, though, is that it is very clear in the responses of establishment Democrats that they are not built for this moment. That basically they, Donald Trump is the bully in the

schoolyard and instead of even trying before they even throw the first punch, you're already laying down saying, please, please, please stop. Like, you're not even trying to meet the moment. When Clyburn said, a clean slate, I'm thinking to myself, a clean slate for who? Are we supposed to be like, let me give a throwback, the men in black where they put up the light flash and all of a sudden your memory disappears? Like, are we supposed to do that collectively as a country? Just forget what it is that we see. And when we, when we heard Merrick Garland say that, oh, you know, no one is above the law. When we heard Joe Biden say that, oh, we're going to restore the soul of this nation, that all of that was bullshit. Like, because that's what it was. Because when you then now say to us that the only

way to move forward is to absolve Donald Trump of any wrongdoing over the last decade and that's how the country moves forward, then this is not at all the country that I think that it is, that I think that it can be is what I should say. Yeah. Because in order for us to say that we are a nation of laws, you actually have to have everyone abide by the same rule of law. And that doesn't mean that now becoming the president of the United States is the biggest get out of jail free card. Because what they have done is just put on a help wanted sign and basically distributed it to every criminal and said, hey, you want to be absolved of any wrongdoing? Just join government. That's what we do here. You get a clean slate, we wipe everything clean. It's sick and it's twisted in thinking that like Donald Trump is not going to be

the, he's not going to be the end. What they are creating is the beginning of an entirely different type of character and person that looks to be in office moving forward. I think that's absolutely true. And look, it's bad enough that the Supreme Court has already led us down this road with its idiotic immunity ruling. I just don't understand why Democrats want to piggyback off that in essence. And and say that Donald Trump should be granted, I guess, a blanket pardon. It makes no sense. And look, I don't think any of this is ageist. I mean, the world changes.

And what people know from when they were younger sometimes doesn't exist anymore. I mean, it's not ages to say that there are not a lot of people in their 80s who are very, very fluent technology. It's just a fact because they didn't grow up with it and they didn't spend their formative years with it. It's not saying they're less than. And again, Congressman Clyburn has had a long and, you know, I think you could probably say distinguished career.

And none of this takes away from that. It's just time. It's just time catches up to literally everyone. And the fact that the current leadership of the Democratic Party, although I guess it's starting to get a little younger, but the fact that people like Chuck Schumer and Jim Clyburn and people like that are still in very high positions of power within the party, it's time for that to stop. And it doesn't mean kick them out on their ass.

It means thank them for their service and, you know, celebrate their careers or whatever you want to do. But look, you know, the Democratic Party has a problem. And a lot of that problem is it's being run by a gerontocracy. Look, I'd like to see people younger than myself, younger than me in charge. I'm not even talking. Like you said, you know, I don't mean necessarily people in their 60s when I say younger. You know, you've got some rising stars who are in their 30s, who are in their 40s.

Start looking at them. Let them start to hold the reins of power. It's time. And I think that Clyburn's comments about pardoning Trump, I think that really makes it crystal clear. My last point, before I go back to you, Danielle, I just want to point out that the device in men in black is called a neuralizer. And it's a little shameful that you didn't know that. So my bad. I will have my nerd card were revoked. Is that what it is? I just wanted to make sure that listeners knew that I knew. Good, good. Well, at least one of us is an expert in that realm. So I appreciate you.

Send your snaps and your IG posts and your skeets and your tweets and your tweets to Danielle. Not to me. Because I get it. I get it. And this is why, you know, Andy is down with the people. Unlike Clyburn, he has his ear to the ground. All right. So, you know, I'm so exhausted and we're not even there yet.

This man has not even been inaugurated. And I am just like, I'm so beyond. I know. But the last thing of where we are in this stage of the F-A-R-R-R-R-N-F-N-F-N-F, is, you know, while Donald Trump was campaigning, what did he say that his favorite word was, tariffs, loves tariffs. Tariffs are great. Tariff, tariff, tariff, tariff. Any time that he was in front of an economic club to talk about what his economy, the Trump economy,

was going to be, because apparently at that time, corporate mainst, media was leading us to believe that we were on the verge of a recession or depression under Biden. And then lo and behold, weeks after the election, we've had the cheapest Thanksgiving and everything is great. And Black Friday people, everyone has all this money now and is purchasing all of these things. And what is Donald Trump now finally beginning to admit, which I don't know, a bevy of the world's leading economists had told us that his tariffs would send us into a, tailspin of a recession, if not a depression. And now Donald Trump is saying that, oh, oops, I can't guarantee that the tariffs, basically a national sales tax on goods, won't raise prices for Americans

and consumers. And so all of these people that thought that Mexico was going to build the wall, thought that China and Canada and Mexico were going to pay for the tariffs, are now at the find outstage, Andy, and they found out that Donald Trump has been, pause, hold onto your hat, lying. No. Donald Trump, the politician, has been lying. I, wow, this is. It's hard to take. It's hard to take. Yeah, I did, I'm shocked. I didn't see this coming. Yeah, look, everybody who knows anything about economics, even a little bit, which like me in the little bit category, knows that, tariffs are a horrible idea. For a whole bunch of reasons, first of all, they raise prices, which means that they are, as you said, they're a national sales tax. They are a tax. They are a tax

on consumers. You put a 10% tariff on something coming into the country. That's going to cost you 10% more when you want to buy it. And of course, the second reason is it inevitably, I think pretty much every time in history leads to trade wars. It leads to tariffs being placed on American goods by the countries that we place the tariffs on. And that makes it tougher for American companies to ship their goods overseas and sell them because in the same way, people here can't afford the stuff from the other countries because it's now 10% more expensive or whatever percentage it is. The people in the other countries can't afford the American stuff because it's 10% more or whatever the percentage is. So it just, it always leads to these trade wars. We've already seen countries say, hey, if Trump does this to us, we're doing it right back.

My point is, you don't need a PhD in economics. You don't need a master's degree. You don't need a bachelor's degree in economics to know this. This is common sense shit. And yes, he's been lying all this time. It's because he doesn't care if the prices that ordinary people pay go up. What he cares about is it makes him feel powerful to do. something like this. It makes him feel like a big, strong boy who can do anything mommy says he can.

And that is literally all he cares about here. And as always, the most really grading part of everything about him are the people that think that Trump is looking out for them. It is absolutely beyond me why they think that. He has never done that in his life. He's not doing it now. My guess is that, though, if he puts these tariffs on and prices go up, he'll find some way to blame. it on the Democrats, and there will be a substantial portion of this country that eats that up and tries to somehow make this Joe Biden or Kamala Harris's fault or AOC's fault or Nancy Pelosi's fault. I don't know. But it is very clearly going to be Donald Trump's fault when this happens if he goes through with this. I don't want people who fucked around to have to find out because

a lot of us didn't fuck around and we're going to have to find out too, and that sucks. I already knew. So I didn't need to find out. But that's what it means to be a part of a country that knows very little about how government works, knows very little about how the economy works, and then are all of a sudden surprise when they get conned by one of the biggest conmen. What else can one say? But I will say this to you. He won't blame Democrats. He'll blame undocumented people in the same way that, oh, no one can afford houses because

evidently people are coming over the Mexican border and purchasing $600,000, $700,000 fucking homes. with the money in their knapsacks. That's what they'll do. They'll find another scapegoat because they don't take responsibility or accountability for anything. That's their motto. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. Melissa Murray, who is a professor of law at NYU Law School, and she's also the co-host of strict scrutiny. And you can catch her on MSNBC on a regular basis. Melissa, we are but, a handful of weeks now away from the second Trump administration. And Donald Trump is making the rounds on cable news. And he made headlines just recently with saying that he is going to end birthright citizenship in the United States. Now, I'm not a lawyer, which is why I have you on,

but I thought that was a part of the Constitution. Walk me through how this is possible. Thanks for having me, Daniel. It's great to be here, and your intuition is exactly right. Provision for birthright citizenship are explicit in the text of the Constitution. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment says specifically that, quote, all persons born or naturalize in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. And it's not an accident that this is in the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment is passed in the way. of the American Civil War during Reconstruction. And this particular provision of the 14th Amendment was specifically intended to repudiate the Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott versus Sanford. That was the infamous case in which an enslaved man, Dred Scott sued for his freedom on the view that his owner had taken him to free territories and therefore he was a free man when he was in those territories.

and thereafter. In that infamous decision, the Supreme Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice Roger Taney, said that Dred Scott was not a citizen of Illinois or Missouri, these were the two states involved here, nor was he a citizen of the United States, because those descended from African slaves could never be citizens of the United States. So with the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 14th Amendment comes along and is specifically intended to address this question of the citizenship of those individuals who previously had been enslaved. And it says very clearly, if you are born in this country, you are a citizen of this country. And I know Donald Trump said that there are no other countries in the world that have birth

rights citizenship. That's just not so. So yes, this is a constitutional provision. You cannot do this through an executive order. It will be subject to an immediate legal challenge. Someone will bring this legal challenge that will go through the courts. I think even the federal courts that are stocked with movement conservatives would have a very difficult time trying to get around this provision of the Constitution. I mean, again, these are individuals who say you have to go back and look at the intent of the Constitution at the time that it was drafted and ratified. That would be post-Civil War. You have to look at the text, the plain meaning of these terms. I think based on the plain meaning, it's pretty clear that the 14th Amendment confers birthright citizenship, even to people.

that you don't want to be birthright citizens. And by you, I mean, Donald Trump. Oh, no, no, no. I know, not me. To that point, though, I think that when Donald Trump says these things, we're going to end this. We're going to do X, Y, and Z. I feel like the concern comes from the fact that we don't have safety inside of the courts.

So I want you to walk us through a little bit because we do know that Donald Trump's first turn at president, him alongside Mitch McConnell, stacked the federal benches. We know that right now, thanks to Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, we have a six to three Supreme Court that gave him immunity back in July. And so when we say that the courts would have a difficult time making the case for this, does it matter? Given the fact that seemingly they have all given over their thoughts around legality to Donald Trump's whims. And I'm just wondering, do you still have faith in some of these justices that Donald Trump has put on the courts to serve his means, his ends?

I don't want to be hopelessly naive here on our podcast, strict scrutiny. I am usually the voice of doom. And so I don't want to overstate this. You're exactly right that the one thing the Trump administration 1.0 was extremely successful in doing in terms of its domestic agenda was appointing judges. And that was largely because they outsourced it to the Federal Society and the Heritage Foundation. But they managed to stop the lower federal courts with movement conservatives who are certainly against regulation. They're very due regulatory, very much against affirmative action, against a lot of things, modernity, principally.

They also managed to stop the Supreme Court with three additional justices as a compliment to the existing conservative justices and they now have a 60-3 conservative supermajority on the United States Supreme Court. Still, there have been moments over the course of the first Trump administration during the Biden administration when conservative interests tried to bring things to the courts where even some of these conservative judges were like, I don't know about that. Again, I'm not saying that this is widespread. I'm not saying that this is a safe haven. I just think that this is so plain that individuals who profess predilection for originalism, for textualism would really have to contort themselves to get outside of these provisions and the

plain text of Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. Now, that doesn't mean they're not going to try. And we've already seen James Ho, who is a conservative judge on the Fifth Circuit. He's a former Clarence Thomas Clerk. In fact, he is the Clarence Thomas Clerk who was sworn into the Fifth Circuit in Harlan Crow's Library. At one point in his career as a lawyer, well, at one point, at one in his career as a lawyer. Jim Poe, who is himself, the son of immigrants, he immigrated to the United States from, I believe, Taiwan when he was a child, expressed some sympathy and support for the prospect of birthright citizenship, but more recently in a conservative blog, or I guess it's a libertarian blog, called Reason, he noted that he thought that the tax of the 14th Amendment did not

apply in circumstances where the United States was subject to an invasion. And the under underlying subtext, maybe it's not even subtext, it's supertext here, is that the individuals who are undocumented who are coming to the United States are part of this invading board. And when they have children in the United States, because they are invaders, their children are not subject to the terms of the 14th Amendment and therefore do not enjoy the privilege of birthright citizenship. So he's kind of changed his tune. I imagine if this was challenged. You would want to stay away from the Fifth Circuit where he fits, but I just want to emphasize, I think the language of the 14th Amendment is so clear that if conservative judges, if the Supreme Court were to play fast and loose with this, I really think

there would be a constitutional crisis. I mean, I think the court has already lost so much public support over the last three years that this would be at a clismet. It's just so fucking obvious from the text of the 14th Amendment. You know, when you say that there would be a constitutional crisis and the fact that their approval ratings are pretty much circling, you know, the drain, I guess I get to the place of they don't actually care. Like, they're appointed for life. I think some of them care. Justice Thomas and Alito may not care as much.

Andy Justice Forage doesn't care. I think Justice Kavanaugh very much wants to be liked and to be thought of as a good judge. I think the Chief Justice, maybe not necessarily concerned about his own personal standing, but certainly concerned for the institutional standing. of the court most of the time, not when he was writing that completely terrible immunity decision. But for the most part, I think he does think about the court's institutional standing. And I think Amy Coney-Barritt also is someone who has been on the court for such a short amount of time

and who has been a little hard to read on some of these questions. I think those three are probably our last best hope for maintaining us. And again, I'm not going to sugarcoat it. I think when we're counting on those three, like things are really, dire indeed, but I just think the tax of the Constitution is so straightforward here. The history is so straightforward, even for a court that professes to prioritize history and tradition in overruling abortion rights. The history and tradition here is just so obvious. The court, there's precedent on this point. Again, and I understand the court has overruled precedents in three of the last three

years. I get it. I just think this would be a bridge too far for most of the public, and I think it's likely they understand that too. So let's switch gears a bit, which is around Donald Trump's other policy measure that he wants to institute on day one, which is mass deportation. And again, he said recently, oh, no, we're going to deport the whole family. So you don't even have to worry about being separated in the way that families were separated and children were separated from their families during his first administration. He's like, no, everybody can go. And we're talking about, I mean, every day with him and his presumptive administration and cabinet, the numbers change and fluctuate by the millions. However, he's talking about deporting tens of millions of

people from this country, from going into blue states that have their own sanctuary laws, their own laws on the books. And Tom Holman, the incoming supposed borders are, said to blue state governors get out of our way or we're going to basically steam roll over you. What ability does the law provide to blue state governors to protect their undocumented constituents? What is Donald Trump and this very anti-immigrant, anti-party, anti-Latino, anti-black group coming in? What safety, what precautions, what policies, what laws do. Blue State governors have on their side to be able to push back this type of enforcement that they want to start on January 20th. Let me back up a little bit. So as you say, there's this plan to

deport tons of millions of people. And I just want to be clear, they first talked about prioritizing this with regard to criminality. So the people who are initially going to be prioritized, here are those who have criminal convictions that make them deportable. That's really only a couple 100,000 individuals. So that's not going to get you to the million or even the 10 million mark. So, you know, what will they do to get to that particular number? Well, I think one thing they're going to do is reclassify what it means to be a criminal alien. And most of the individuals that they have focused on, these individuals with criminal convictions, they're mostly felony convictions that they are talking about. And these are individuals who've committed serious crimes and they are deportable

for that reason, and that makes sense, I guess. But I think one thing that they could do is just really classify the nature of criminality, such that those who are convicted of misdemeanors are also deportable, like low-level crimes. And one of those low-level crimes could simply be crossing the border. Crossing the border is a misdemeanor offense. But if you make it a felony, suddenly you have a much wider scope of individuals who are now subject to deportations. I think that's one way that They could do this. I think they could change the categories of those who are lawfully here in the United States. So actual visa holders, their statuses could change such that their presence in the United States is no longer lawful, but is in fact unlawful. And that would get you up in some of those numbers. And there are a lot of different visa programs. You know, would there be pushback? I think a lot of the pushback is more likely to happen from private individuals and private concerns like corporations who may need some of these visa programs. You know, would there be pushback? I think a lot of the pushback is more likely to happen from private individuals. I think private individuals. holders to do sort of essential operations in their businesses. This is not going to be something that they're excited about. During the first Trump administration, I was the interim dean of the law school,

the University of California at Berkeley. And we had huge problems because many of our applicants to our master's in laws program were foreign lawyers who needed visas in order to get into the United States. And there was a real doubt about who would be able to get a student visa and who wouldn't. So, you know, we could change the categories of student visas in order to have eliminate individuals. We could change who's available to come to this country or eligible to come to this country. So there are lots of different ways in which they can use the legal system and manipulate the legal system to create a broader group of individuals who are not eligible to be here lawfully. And so I just want to sort of state that what are the options for blue state governors? That is more complicated

simply because the court has said that one, Congress enjoys plenary authority over immigration and the president under some of the laws that Congress has enacted, including the Immigration and Nationality Act, Congress has delegated, brought authority to the president to make decisions about who is eligible to be in the country, who is eligible to come in and who may be deported. And that may actually preempt whatever state or local laws. Like, there have been some cases sort of in that genre, but they're likely to be more challenges. And again, you know, this may not be the most accommodating or receptive court system for those. kinds of challenges, although they will certainly be brought and there, I think, a lot of important due process considerations that have to go into this. Like, you just can't deport people. Like there has to be some kind of process. And I think that is especially the case in circumstances where individuals had a prior status, like a lawful visa holder, where that status has been upended, changed in some respect. I think there has to be some kind of process for that. But all to say that we're really headed into uncharted territory,

it really will be interesting who those individuals who are not citizens will rely on as allies. I think it's going to be maybe some corporate entities who need the immigrant talent to have their operations go smoothly. I think that's not uncommon in some of these industries. I think there will certainly be among different advocacy groups, allies, but I think one thing that really troubles me and discernity is that there's a lot of anti-immigrant fervor right now in the United States, which is surprising to me. I myself am the daughter of immigrants and a lot of Americans are too. And so the fact that we're saying here, like, as a nation of immigrants, something the court has noted, we are a nation of immigrants, just being so hostile to immigration and not recognizing how much immigration has contributed

to our economy, to our status in the world. I mean, the fact that the United States has birthright citizenship has made it a place where people want to go. Like really smart people, really talented people and they bring their talents here. And the idea that we're sort of like, you know, we're closing up shock where this is not a welcoming place to individuals from other countries, that's a different thing. It's really sad to watch. I mean, I think one, it's a different thing, but it's also, I think that it's going to put the United States in a devastating economic position. We rely on a lot of talent. right, from other countries to come here to innovate.

And if America now is seen as a hostile environment, then those folks are going to be less likely to send kids to go to university here, which means that they're not going to stay here and build their own lives and families, et cetera. And I think that that is going to be a tremendous deficit that I don't know if it will be fixable. in the coming years, if that is the taint that this incoming administration has. But last point to you. I think that's right. I mean, when you look at the periods during which the United States has sort of grown in terms of its economy and its might, it's periods where there has been a lot

of immigration. And to be fair, much of this is quote unquote lawful immigration. But the fact of unlawful immigration, I think, sort of speaks to the ways in which the immigration system has really become broken and you know Congress is literally to riven with polarization to fix it. You know, there were steps taken during the Biden administration to deal with some of these immigration questions, perhaps provide a clear path to citizenship for individuals who are here unlawfully. And there was bipartisan support for that. Jim Langford, who was a conservative Republican, like, sponsored this bill. And, you know, it got killed by Donald Trump and a Republican Party enthralled. to Donald Trump. But this is still a domestic and foreign policy question that needs a solution. I'm not

sure that the solution is rounding people up and wholesale deporting them back to their countries. And the whole question of like what to do about children who are birthright citizens of the United States, I don't know that many courts are going to go with this rescission of birthright citizenship and an executive order rescinding the Constitution. But I think that there are probably a lot of parents who, when they are unceremoniously told to leave the United States, will want to take their children with them. So, you know, maybe this is all a new question with regard to the kids of those who are likely to be deported. But I think this is a really kind of dark scenario.

And apparently more than 50% of a country wants it. And maybe we all need to look at ourselves and sort of where we came from and how we got here because we are all immigrants. Yeah. Well, we will leave it there today. Melissa, thank you so much. for your insight and analysis and making the time for the new abnormal. Really appreciate you. Thanks for having me.

According to my next guest, Trump fans are suffering from Tony Soprano-Sidner. Joining me now to explain is staff writer at the Atlantic and corner of the phrase and author of the book The Cruelty is the Point. Adam, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me back. So I want to talk about what you mean by Tony Soprano Syndrome. And, you know, you wrote a piece about this at the Atlantic. And the subheadline to your piece reads,

Some Conservatives are embracing the villains in what are supposed to be cautionary tales. So Tony Soprano would be an example of that, right? Right. So I think, you know, the Sopranos, to be clear, I'm a fan of the show. I think the show is great. I think it's a tremendous artistic achievement.

But he's sort of the beginning of this age of bad men, TV, anti-heroes, which I think, you know, it's become more gender inclusive, certainly, since the genre began. But I think the issue with Tony Soprano, has always been that there are some people who are watching the show and don't get that this show is a tragedy, that it's about this man who cannot see past his own appetites in order to be a decent father and take care of his family because he's too busy running a criminal organization.

And so people, instead of, you know, just identifying with Tony and asking themselves, oh, well, what does it mean that I identify with this character who's, you know, not a very savory person? What does it say about me and human nature and all those things? they're like, oh, well, Tony Sopranos awesome because he's a gangster and he kills people. And that's really cool. Unfortunately, anytime you tell a complex story, you run the risk of some of the audience, maybe not understanding the point of the story. And I think the hook for this was Elon Musk saying that Matt Gates, of all people,

needed to be the judge dread for the Trump administration, which I think really misunderstands the point of the judge dread stories, which is that he's a fascist and a fascist dystopia not, we should all try to, you know, be like Judge Dredden, have a society that looks like that. Yeah, and look, to be clear, as you just were, what we're talking about here, it's separate from thinking Tony Soprano or like a Walter White

or even a Darth Vader type is a good character. What these people are thinking is that they are to be emulated. And you reference in your piece an undecided voter who told the New York Times focus group earlier this year that Trump is, quote, the anti-hero, the Soprano, the Breaking Bad, the guy who does bad things, who is a bad guy, but does them on behalf of the people he represents. I love that example because the two characters he chose Walter White and Tony Soprano,

their selfishness is their main character trait. And they continue to be selfish even as they destroy everything they claim to love around them. And at one point, Walter White literally stares at the camera and says, I did it for me. Like, it could not be more clear what the oral intent here is. Like, these are not telling stories about. You know, these guys are not Robin Hood. You know what I mean? But yet there's this sort of weird thing that sometimes happens where people identify with the character that, first of all, it's a great character, but they identify with them to the point of thinking, oh, I should be more like this person. And that is very different from, you know, simply enjoying complex textured or even badass character in the way that, you know, Darth Vader is badass. Like, you know, that scene in Rogue One where the rebel soldiers are trapped in the ship with him and his lightsaber ignites. That's a lot. awesome, that's great. But it's, you know, make-believe. You're not really supposed to want to be like Darth Vader, who's, you know, basically a school shooter. Exactly. And who stood right next to a guy

as he obliterated an entire planet. But is this in general, is this just a lack of media literacy, or is it more willful than that? So in other words, is it Walter White is meant to be a good guy, is what these people believe? Or I know Walter White is meant to be a bad guy, but to me he's a good guy. And I assume the answer is sort of it depends on the person. Yeah, I think it does depend on the person. I mean, I sort of start off saying like there's a sort of lack of media literacy here. Like the dread stories assume, you know, opposition to fascism as like a baseline. So, you know, the reader is capable of understanding that Judge Dread, though he's, you know, less corruptible than his colleagues is nevertheless upholding an unjust system. But I think, you know, the note that I

end on, which I think is something that's actually much more disturbing is that people, you know, understand that these are not characters that the authors or that the stories that they are being told want them to emulate, but they have simply come to embrace that toxicity as a virtuous moral ideal that they do want to emulate regardless of what other people might think. And I think that is actually a much more disturbing thing and probably says something about a society that elected Donald Trump for a second time and what it thinks about how men are supposed to be and what manhood is. Yeah, for sure. I guess a little bit. I want to get maybe Musk the benefit of the doubt. And believe me, I hate that I just use those words in that order. I think maybe it's less clear in the Dread movies, because you're talking about the Dread books. And it's less clear in the movies that Dread is very much not someone to be emulated, I would say, particularly in the Stallone version. And I'm going to go ahead and assume that Musk has not read the books. I will not say that it's a losing bet that he probably didn't necessarily read something. Yeah, I mean, I think it's possible that we're talking about the

cinematic interpretation of stuff here. And I think, you know, to some extent, this is a problem with other important pieces of art. I mean, you know, I'm not sure how many people who cite like Fight Club, for example, actually read Fight Club and how many people are like, think that Fight Club as a movie is like kind of like a pro. You should beat your friends up movie. And I think there's a fair amount of that. I mean, that was sort of my interpretation when I was like 15 and saw it or whatever. And, you know, there are a lot of people who are caught in a stage of arrested development where they might not understand. The movie is about how a certain interpretation of masculinity can hypnotize men into becoming a weird cult in an effort to give meaning to their lives. But, you know, you could also interpret it as, you know, Tyler Durdon is badass and look how good he looks shirtless.

Right. No, I mean, it's funny because I wanted to talk about a little bit about how this is not necessarily a new phenomenon. phenomenon. No, not at all. You know, I'm old enough to remember that there was a segment of the population that thought Gordon Gecko was the hero of Wall Street. And then I was going to say, and don't even get me started on Fight Club. So you preempted me. Yeah. I mean, in some ways, like, there's a kind of right-wing internet tone on social media that is like trying to imitate the voice of Tyler Durdon in Fight Club. Not understanding that this is like a deranged person's imaginary friend or like maybe understanding that, but just being indifferent to it,

because it thinks like he's too badass and therefore, you know, that's what I want to be like. Yeah, I want to talk about one of the sort of the funniest examples of this sort of media illiteracy is the Amazon superhero series, The Boys, because it was clear from the beginning of that series, which is now four seasons old, that say the character of Homelander was a straight-up fascist and that the show was mocking MAGA. But it really wasn't until season three that some of what we might charitably call the less bright Trump fans started to realize this, and then they got really, really butt hurt in season four when we were absolutely hit over the head with the parallels between the bad guys and MAGA.

And for them to not realize that, I mean, Homelander was dating, or however you want to put it, a character named Stormfront, which, you know, could not be much more of a Nazi dog whistle, but they, for some reason, in their head, they thought Homelander was. was the good guy. And it's just, it was so funny when they figured out what the creators of the show and the comic book before were actually saying. The boy's example is an obvious example of media literacy. I think another one is X-Men 97, which is a reboot slash continuation of this series that I grew up watching when I was a kid. And there was a lot of complaints that X-Men had become woke, you know, which is just sort of a bizarre thing because they'd always been a metaphor for

intolerance of some kind, racial intolerance, hatred towards LGBT. people. And this had, the show made it like somewhat more overt, but it had always been part of the X-Men canon. I mean, there were storylines that, you know, the authors had talked about, you know, being analogies for apartheid South Africa in the 90s and things like that. And I do think when it's a media literacy issue, you sometimes have these backlash is where guys basically, their fantasy is spoiled because they think it's a power fantasy about hurting people rather than a story about why hurting people is bad. And as a result, it, you know, it ruins the their enjoyment of the product, and that's why they don't want to be reminded of what the actual

theme of the story is. And I guess what's sort of disconcerting, really, is that it needs to become heavy-handed for them to realize what the story was actually saying. And part of the problem with that, is at least to me, is it hampers the art. For example, the boys, I thought season four was way too heavy-handed in its parallels between what was going on and MAGA. And for me, it was the toughest season to watch because I just kept rolling my eyes at it. how obvious they were making it. But, you know, you have to wonder, are Eric Kripke and the, and the creators, are they doing that? Because it's like, oh, my God, we've been doing everything but beat you over the head and you didn't get it. So I guess we have to beat you over the head with

it. I agree with you. I think in the abstract, you know, it is better when they don't have to beat you over their head with it. On the other hand, you know, we seem to have entered an era of profound moral lack of sophistication that people really won't understand what you're saying unless you do that. Again, you know, in the case of, you know, in the case of, the sopranos in Breaking Bad, I wouldn't say they beat you over the head, but they were fairly clear, and it didn't stop these interpretations. And maybe it's just not within the artist's ability to shape people's interpretations in that way. I mean, this is a longstanding debate about authorial intent. A society that has certain values is going to interpret things a certain way,

regardless of how the artist intends it. And that's sort of what I was trying to say, which is that we as a society are changing in some ways, in my view, for the worst, because we, are becoming a society that venerates this type of cruelty and political violence in a way that we have, I mean, not to say that political violence has never been a part of American culture before because we are arguing much more violent in the past. But we have come to venerate a particular interpretation of masculinity that I think is profoundly immoral and destructive. Absolutely. And I remember seeing an interview, I think it was last year with David Fincher, where he was asked if he thought, you know, I think it was along the lines of if he felt responsible for people who took Fight Club the wrong way.

And he said, it's impossible for me to imagine that people don't understand that Tyler Durden is a negative influence. People who can't understand that, I don't know how to respond and I don't know how to help them. And I think he's right. And, you know, I was glad to see that he wasn't, because I've seen people blame him for this. And to me, the movie was obviously what he, he says it is that Tyler Durdon is a negative influence and is destructive. But, but I'm wondering, like, I wonder if he made, and maybe not so much Fincher, because he seems pretty committed to what, you know, just doing what he wants to do. But I'm wondering if he, if a movie like that were made

today, if it would have to be more obvious that Tyler Durdon were the bad guy. I don't want to say yes, because I think, you know, on the one hand, I want artists to be responsible. But on the other hand, you know, audiences have a responsibility to. Right. And like, again, I think. you know, the really disturbing thing is not so much if people don't understand the story, right? It's if they understand the story and they don't care. I think you're right that the movie is obvious enough and the real issue here to some extent is really just that there are people who would rather be terrible people if it means, you know, they get to look like Tyler Durden and act like Tyler Durden. And, you know, so it, you know, what he, his destructiveness

to others just simply does not matter as long as they feel that kind of control over, you know, physical, violent control over their lives, you know, they'll feel good about themselves. And I think that's a question of values that is, you know, much harder to address than, you know, a question of media literacy. For sure. And I mean, I first want to say that I'm sort of living proof that you can look like Tyler Jordan and be a good guy. But beyond that, I mean, that's sort of what I was getting to earlier when I said, is this willful on the part of a lot of people, you know, that it's not that they think Walter White is meant to be a good guy, but they think, oh, he's supposed to be the bad guy, but to me, he's the good guy. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit

of column A and a little bit of column B, right? There are some people who really aren't getting the story and aren't getting the point, and there are some people who are just living vicariously through, you know, watching Tyler Durdon beat Jared Letto to a poll. And look, also, this stuff translates to the real world, and I guess in a world where a lot of people think the proud boys are the good guys and that they and the violent mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6th are the good guys. Why wouldn't they think that the people in the movies who are supposed to be the bad guys are also good guys? Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, when you have a lot of people who are looking for our politics that allows them to inflict violence against a group of people they have

decided are immoral by definition, then you're going to gravitate towards the characters in these stories who do things like that. And those guys are inevitably the bad guys, even if, you know, the people who idolize them think of them as good. Yeah, absolutely. And another way that this stuff sinks into real life is, as you point out in the piece, the backlash that Anna Gunn got on Breaking Bad, she played Walter White's wife, Skyler. And the backlash that she got mostly, if not completely, from men who thought that she was sort of the antagonist to Walter White's good guy and that she kept, you know, trying to stop him

from succeeding at the horrible thing he was doing. it was brutal what she got. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of a horrible example of people not being able to separate the actor from the character. But I think it was also just a manifestation of this like, Walt is having a kind of mid-life crisis and he responds to that mid-life crisis

by becoming a gangster. And I think, you know, that there were a lot of sort of middle-aged men who were living vicariously through that idea of, yeah, well, I might be hitting 50, but, you know, I'm still a tough guy. I could still hold my own. and didn't like, you know, Skyler ruining Walt's fun by pointing out that what he was doing was immoral and interfering with it, interfering with his, you know, destructive self-actualization. And I think that backlash against her as an actress and her as a character was a sort of manifestation of anger, of some men's anger over that kind of thing or what they saw is that kind of thing in their own lives, which is really profoundly disturbing when you think about it.

Absolutely. And it sort of reminds me of, I think it was Ellie Reeves was a guest I had on the show who researches a lot of right-wing, I guess, disinformation and rabbit holes and stuff like that. And she said that a lot of the people that she talked to who were part of the QAnon and all the things that have come recently, that so many of them go back to Gamergate, if not earlier, in terms of just rank misogyny. And now that really does seem to be a building block for a lot of this. I've written some on the men's rights movement, which, you know, preceded a lot of this stuff or at least foreshadowed a lot of it. And I think, you know, this sort of weird politics of masculinity that we have now where it's sort of, I'm by no means the first person to write about this, you know, a lot of women have written about it. This sort of new masculinity, which is soren of any of the sort of traditionalist elements of protection or, you know, serving or anything like that. And it's just sort of a toxic about violently physically dominating the people. people around you. It's a bizarre fantasy that I think is ultimately toxic and very destructive. And I'm not really sure what the answer to it is politically because it seems to have such appeal among a certain segment of the population, other than to point out that, you know, there's nothing admirable about it. Yeah, it is really, it's a tough nut to crack. And I also do not have the answers. Adam, thank you so much for being here. This is such an interesting conversation. And I'm always glad to talk to you. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much for having me, Andy. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. All right, Danielle. It's a brand new week, a brand new outlook of sunny optimism here on the new abnormal. What? I just made that up.

Give me your fuck that guy. Okay, great. Sunny optimism. That's our new tagline. So the person that I'm starting off this week with is not new to this list. As a matter of fact, I think that he may have a marble statue. in this hall of fuck that guys. And it is Ron DeSantis.

And of course, your response would be, well, what did he do this time? Because he's always doing something. Evidently, Ron DeSantis is being accused of hypocrisy. Everyone pause now for shock. Because he is rushing, according to the Guardian, to fill Republican House seats that are being vacated by Donald Trump's cabinet picks. We have Matt Gates, who was never going to become the Attorney General of the United States. Why for so many reasons?

But one being that, you know, there were ongoing investigations by the Ethics Committee in the House, by the Department of Justice. And the stories are out of a, I was going to say, a sitcom, but none of it is funny, out of like a Shonda Rhyme scandal episode every single day about Matt Gates. And so what has Ronda Santis been doing? He has set immediate dates for a January 28th primary in these Republican districts. And what folks are looking at is that when Congressman Elsie Hastings passed away in April of 2021, Ron DeSantis dragged his feet for seven months before he called a special election.

And folks are recognizing that it was a full 280 days after Hastings died. did Ron DeSantis managed to get his shit together? And so the responses from a Florida Democrat, Nikki Fried, said this, quote, of course there's hypocrisy. Ron DeSantis deprived residents in Broward County of representation in the U.S. Congress and made them wait nine months. And goes on to say, now with the slimmest of majorities that any party has ever held since the 50 state creation of the U.S., they are rushing together. these elections held because with these two seats open, it creates an even smaller majority for the Republicans in Congress. And we know that Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, is going to have his work cut out for him. And so you look at this, you see Ron DeSantis and what he's

doing. I don't see why anybody would be surprised. He is the most craven politician that we have seen in quite some time, which is why people have talked about him as the heir apparent to Donald Trump because of his maneuverings. And so for that reason and so many others, I say, fuck that guy. Yeah. I mean, the hypocrisy here is obvious and blatant and not at all unexpected. It's what they do. Part of this is he scheduled this new special election quickly because he signed a law in 2021 that requires voters to renew their registration every election cycle, as opposed to every four years the way it used to be. So people who want to vote by mail,

they have to realize that the voter registration expires at the end of the year, and they have to re-register at the beginning of the year and then ask for a mail-in ballot. So if they don't get on that right away, they may not be able to get a mail-in ballot in time to vote in that election. And I've said this before. If you took everything else off the table, all you have to look at is which party wants to make it hard,

for people to vote. Mm-hmm. And that's your answer as to who the bad guys are. In addition to the hypocrisy, again, he's trying to stack the deck. He's trying to get people who would vote by mail who tend to vote more democratic. He's trying to make it harder and harder for them to do that. And this is what they've, you know, we've seen this playbook in a whole bunch of states, whether it's this exact thing or just a whole bunch of ways aimed at making it harder

for Democrats to vote or for less wealthy people to vote. It's just so obvious that they are, like, they're cartoon bad guys in how obvious it is. And yeah, so, you know, for all the reasons you said and for that reason, I just fuck that guy. So, Andy, how are you starting out this good, good week in the new abnormal of America? So I'm going to jump up to the state of Missouri and remind people that on election day this year, the citizens of Missouri voted in, favor of Amendment 3. Amendment 3 is aimed at protecting access to abortion in that state. It is called the Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative. And it passed by a margin of 51.6% to 48.4%, which by Republican logic is both a landslide and a mandate. So we've got that going. But that hasn't stopped Republicans from already

doing what they call pre-filing bills to try to minimize the effects of Amendment 3. One state representative pre-filed a bill that would, according to K.Y.3 Springfield, that would bar doctors from performing or inducing an abortion after a heartbeat is detected. It's one of those stupid fetal heartbeat bills, which are both just absolute bad science, junk science, not science, however you want to refer to it. And there's other new bills being pre-filed. There are three new constitutional amendments that would make people go back to the ballot to vote on whether to remove Amendment 3 have been proposed.

So again, they are doing everything they can to prevent the will of the people, which again, you know, I am told that an election win by three points is a landslide and a mandate, and they are trying to overturn that landslide. and that mandate, they are trying to overturn the will of the voters by pre-filing these bills so that when they get back in session, they will vote on them. And it's insane. Missouri has an average of 70 women die while pregnant or postpartum each year. The national average maternal mortality rate is 22 deaths per 10,000 live births. Missouri's is about 10 higher. So, again, they don't care about this. All they care about is doing

whatever they can to control women's bodies. And it doesn't matter to them that this amendment was voted on, democratically and passed. They don't care. So for all those reasons, fuck those guys. Let's just be clear that the Republican Party does not care about voters and what voters want, which is why they go to the type of lengths that they do to suppress people's votes, to throw out their votes, and to suppress their votes. Because when the people have the opportunity to have their voices heard, guess what we discover? Republicans' policies are not popular and nobody wants them. And so here it is, the people of Missouri decide what it is that they want and how they want their state to move forward.

And these Republicans are saying, fuck you. We don't care about what it is that you want. And this is why people need to vote these folks out because they are not there to do your bidding. They are there to promote their way of thinking, to promote Donald Trump, and that is it. They do not believe in democracy. And we should have started saying that many, many years ago. with their gerrymandering and their voter suppression, that Republicans are not what democracy looks like.

Full stop. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder.

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