The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Isn’t a Style Icon. That Title Belongs to This Pair

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

The New Abnormal team give their picks for the most fashionable former president and first lady—and it is not Donald and Melania Trump. Plus! Mexican historian Ana Raquel Minian talks to Andy Levy about her new book In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States. 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 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 Kedden, 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. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Welcome back to another bonus episode of New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here.

Today we have an extra special guest. Stanford History Professor Ana Raquel Mignyaz is here to tell us all about their new book in the Shadow of Liberty, the invisible history of immigrant detention in the United States. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clits. Yeah.

So Stephen Miller, a man I imagine to be what the Harkonans look like before a blood feast. It's here to do what he's very qualified to do. He's going to talk style. He also just say, since we're addressing the subject of style, the most stylish president and first lady in our lifetimes are Donald Trump and Melania Trump. Donald Trump's a style icon. He changed American fashion in The Apprentice. spent the next 10 years trying to dress like Donald Trump. So if anybody deserves a puff piece on their sense of style, it's Donald Trump and the First Lady.

God. Some things are just too stupid. And this is one of them. Is it the red tie? That's too long? Is it the oversized boxy suit? Yeah. That he doesn't know how to button.

Is it her, I don't really care, do you? Is it her Nazi-esque attire? It's amazing. I didn't know you could breathe that far up somebody's ass. But apparently you can. It really is. He's also doing like an imitation of Trump now. Well, they all are at this point, aren't they?

He didn't used to do that. But now he's like doing that thing like where he tries to get all the air out of his body. He's really moving from Santa Monica Gerbils to the full furor. I'm hard pressed to list any politicians in my lifetime who have had any sense of style. I think Barack and Michelle probably come the closest. Young Bill and Hillary. Maybe. I have no compliments to pay those two.

They looked great in ancient times. I guess. But even that was like you would have to put, you know, with an asterisk and you have to say for a politician, I think. Personally, you know, be a former GQ editor. I'm not going with you there. All right. All right. I believe it is Barack Obama and Michelle Obama by a fucking landslide.

In our lifetime. Yeah. I mean, other than that, I guess, you know, JFK and Jackie obviously. And of course, Richard Nixon and obviously Spiro Agnew. Oh, yeah, yeah. Depper, man. I'll be sure to alert the Daily Beast bonus team that you two want tan suits now that you've endorsed this. Please do. I enjoy a tan suit.

Oh, okay. Now we have the former president, Mr. Trump, after his visit to a bodega, talking his usual shit. Crime is down. Like, I don't know what else to say. Are you sure, Andy? Because according to Earth 5, it's up. And it's everywhere. I can't walk outside my door. I tweeted the other day and somebody said, you know, oh, just open up your windows and you'll hear the crime in Brooklyn. I opened up my windows. Do you know what I hear, birds. It's very odd. It's very odd. I was going to say, you know, I live on a corner with three bodegas. And they're some of the funnest, most peaceful places I go to. We have a great time. We have great last. It's very nice. You know, a lot of ball busting and chiding. Yeah, it's just insane. You know, I talked to Jonathan last on the show.

on Friday, I guess. And he pointed out, yes, there was a crime wave in this country and a spike, and it was in 2020 when Donald Trump was president. Everything is way down since then. So just the idea that, you know, that he's going to run on somehow being tough on crime. Also, the fact that he's on trial and complaining about crime is just chef's kiss, I guess. Well, since there's no shame in any of this, we now have a little bit of a follow-up clip. Obviously, last week we played when Jesse Waters was totally clueless about how salaries, money, anything works.

He has a response to that Donald Trump clip we just played. Just because you leave the streets doesn't mean you lose touch. Inflation, crime, and migrants don't touch limousine liberals. But a man who's been riding limos his whole life still knows the cost of living and knows migrant crime can cost you your life. He is so fucking stupid that like a lobotomy would be. be a waste of time. He would be exactly the same. He would come out of a lobotomy exactly the same.

A medical marvel. A medical marvel. Amazing. I love that they're like, this is the first president to go to a bodega, and it's like, this is the first time he's gone to a bodega. Yeah. Imagine Trump without any cameras around him going to a bodega? No.

I'm sure if we fact check that they may have tried to put him on an apprentice seen in one at some point, but he probably vetoed it. Yeah, but again, that would be a camera. So they will do anything in the world that they can to defend and puff up dear leader. And that's just more of this. He is just a, just a, uh, he's so fucking stupid. The fear can do no wrong. I don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, my God. Well, RNC head Lara Trump for some reason has a podcast for running the RNC. They really let anyone have these these days. Right. Come on, people. Crowded Field. Don't need any more of these. Well, I'm just going to suggest, guys, maybe we should take questions because this one's so well for her.

She's going to take a very interesting question on her podcast. Okay. Next question. Oh, this is a nice one. Is Lara Trump as stupid as she appears to be? What is that stupid? Let me ask you that, sir or ma'am. I am, again, I say this all the time.

I'm just giving you information and the facts. What is stupid is voting for a party. that hates you and hates this country. What stupid is voting for a party that ultimately wants the destruction of America. And I assume you are one of those people. Nothing stupid over here. I've actually done my research.

I actually have the real information. I am actually not influenced by emotion, but cold, hard facts. You may want to get on that bandwagon because I'll tell you what, it's all sunshine lollipops and rainbows now. But if something happens, you're going to look back

and you're going to say, I bet Lara Trump was right. I should have listened to her. Is this upside down land? Like what? And also like, can I get a lollipop and some sprinkles? Because since that motherfucker came down that escalator, it has been just, you know, the complete opposite.

Like I don't know what the, remember that scene in the care bears where it would like go dark, you know? And then it was the dark care bears and the sad and the gray. That's what this is. What is she talking about? Oh, you mean like evil Troy and evil opposite? bed. I know nothing about the caravirs. No one in their life has ever said Laura Trump was right. That is not a sentence that anyone other than Laura Trump has ever said. And that includes,

is it Eric that she's married to? I was going to say, you think that she's the intellectual heavyweight up to Eric. This is a match. I don't want to witness. Actually, that's a fair point. Eric Trump may well have said Laura Trump is right at some point in his life. But podcasting is no place for amateurs. and this is just perfect proof of that. I mean, Danielle and I, this is our life. This is, we spend, you know, 60 to 80 hours a week doing research, making sure that we are prepared for the show. Because why? Because we respect the listeners.

And Laura Trump clearly does not because she's an amateur at this. She's just doing this for fun. Danielle and I don't do this for fun. We have fun doing it, but we don't do it for fun. We do it for the listeners. It's what separates us. Thank you, Andy. There's nothing else for me to add there.

No notes on the production end. In 2018, we watched horrified as migrant families were ripped apart under Donald Trump's family separation policy. But as Stanford History Professor Anna Raquel Minion chose in her harrowing new book, In The Shadow of Liberty, the Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States, this was part and parcel of American immigration policy for well over a century. They join us now to discuss, Anna, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's such an honor to be here.

The heart of the book is the story of four would-be immigrants at different points in American history. Can you briefly explain who these four people are? Yes. I follow four different individuals in order to trace the history, the broad history of immigrant detention, both in terms of the policies that led to the detention system that we have now, as well as to trace the experiences, the inner lives of those who have been caught by the tentacles of detention. The first person whose life I trace is a man called Fuchi-Hou. He came soon after the passage of Chinese Exclusion. The Chinese Exclusion Act was passed in 1882.

Fuchihau arrived in 2001. When he arrived, most Chinese were not allowed in. but Fuchihau should have been. He had risked his life to save American citizens who were about to be killed in the Boxer Rebellion in China. He had tried to help save their lives. Oberlin College had allowed him, had invited him to come as a student, so he could have come, and yet he was detained in the United States upon his arrival.

His story shows both the beginnings of immigrants, detention. The immigrant detention system had just started when he arrived, as well as the fact that his race, being Chinese, mattered more than his actions. He had come after trying to save the lives of American citizens. His actions did not matter. I then continue this history by following the life of a German Jewish Holocaust survivor, Ellen Knopf, who arrived in the United States in 1948. After the war, which she had survived, she had married an American GI. So she had the right to come to the United States through the war brides bill. And she did. But when she arrived, the government thought that she might be a spy. And they incarcerated her for three years

in Alice Island. Ellis Island, of course, we generally think of as this place, this gateway, sorry, of opportunity where the huddle masses came into this country, but it also functioned as a prison. Ellen's story is important not only to demonstrate the history of Alice Island, but also because what she went through her experiences cost so much commotion among American citizens that the government decided that it was time to end detention. Soon after she was released, the Attorney General that rather than detaining immigrants, the government was going to release them on parole while they waited for their cases to be adjudicated. And from 1954 to the early 1980s, we really see the detention system weighed and government officials

turn against it. In fact, in 1958, the Supreme Court even ruled that this new policies reflected quote, the humane aspects of humane civilization. That's how the quote went. Now, in 1980, Fidel Castro allows 124,000 Cubans to flee from Cuba, from the Port of Mariel and to come into the United States. President Carter said that he would welcome these refugees with open arms. And yet, as they were making their way into America, Fidel Castro declared, that many of them were criminals, that he had opened the prisons of Cuba and put many of the

prisoners there. So of course, Americans became very, very scared. And that is when the government decided that it was time to reintroduce detention. President Reagan not only reintroduced a detention system that had been waning, but also introduced it for a different reason. While previously we had had a detention system that stopped immigrants while the government decided whether they could enter the country or not. Immigration detention started to be used for the purpose of deterrence. And that is when the third person that I follow comes in. His name was Gerardo Massoud. He arrived to Cuba, to the United States and the Cuban Mariel boat lift, and he was soon thereafter incarcerated. His American-born children were taken away from him and his wife, who was

also incarcerated, and the children were sent to foster care. And it is precisely this new system that the Reagan administration introduced of deterrence that continues to work today, and that led to the Trump administration being able to pass the zero tolerance policy, a policy that reflected this deterrence ideology. It was, the idea was, let us separate families, parents, from their children so that these migrants were coming, know that they will face such harsh experiences that they decide not to come.

One, the last person I follow, Fernando Arredondo, faced exactly this problem. He arrived to the United States in 2018. He didn't know that the zero tolerance policy had just been introduced, and yet his daughter was separated from him when he asked for asylum. at the Laredo Processing Station in Texas. All four stories in the book are absolutely heartbreaking and harrowing.

And I want to get to some of the running themes in the book. The heart seems to be a term known as entry fiction. What is this? Before 1891, when migrants arrived and the government needed to decide whether they were allowed into the country or not, it had to keep them somewhere. And it generally kept them on the vessels on which they arrived. But this posed a huge problem because often the vessels had to leave port before the government had made its decision. And so in 1891, Congress allows for people who are arriving into the United States to behold on land while the government makes this decision.

But it adds a caveat. Yes, they can be held online, but legally the government would imagine would pretend that they were not here. And so since they were not here, they did not deserve to be afforded basic constitutional rights. In other words, the detention centers in which they were going to be held, in which they are held still, can be anywhere on the U.S. map. But the entrance held within them are imagined not to be here. And so they do not deserve rights. We have come to call this legal paradigm the entry fiction, and it continues to affect the lives of arriving migrants and asylum seekers to this day. They arrive. They're incarcerated anywhere in the country, but they do not have the right to a trial before their incarceration and other basic constitutional protections. Why? Because we imagine that they're not here.

Yeah, it's an absolutely incredible policy and one with which I was not wholly familiar. And it was just the way you laid it out in the book is so good at making people understand how we're able to do this and how we're able to do this to this day, basically. I want to talk about Fuchihau for a second. As you said, he fled China during the Boxer Rebellion and he actually was working with American missionaries and helping them and trying to save lives. And then he gets to this country and he finds himself in this horrible detention center in San Francisco. And then eventually he's sort of given leave to go to Oberlin. And you tell this story of how he ends up in Toronto because that's the way the train went. And then he gets in trouble for leaving the country. But also, the Canadians won't let him back into the country into America because they say he's there illegally. And it was so Kafkaesque and just so emblematic of the way these people have been treated that

It was just mind-blowing. Yeah, it puts people in this impossible situation. Yeah. Where he arrives. He's detained in San Francisco. He's released on bond. No one tells him exactly what the laws are. They tell him he can go to Oberlin College.

The train goes through Canada on its way to Oberlin. And because he left the country without knowing he was not allowed to come back in. But the government demands him to come back in to detain. to detain him, but doesn't allow him to come in. So it is quite a contradiction. And it shows how absurd our loss are and how impossible, even in the best case scenarios, when people are released on parole, on bond from detention, it is a huge problem. It's not a real solution. Well, that's another thing that you talk about that that seemed to me to be a running theme in the book is that even after the lucky ones get out of detention centers, they're still in

in a prison of sorts, whether because they're indebted to their bondholder or their freedom of movement is restricted or because even the slightest misstep can land them right back in detention. Talk about Geraldo Mansour and the little bag of marijuana. So Karado Mansour arrives in 1980. Like many Marial Cubans, he is first sent to a naval base and detained there. But eventually, after someone sponsors him, he, like most Marial Cubans, is a allowed to leave Fort Chaffee, which was the naval base where he was being held. And I have to say, it was quite a place to be held. The Ku Klux Klan showed up. It was pretty violent. So he's finally

released. He starts to make his life in Las Vegas with his new wife who also came in the Mariel Boatlift, Julia. They have one baby in Las Vegas, and they have another one. He has an amazing job. They're both really thriving. And then in 1983, for reasons that we're not really sure, but some say it was because of a noise complaint. Two police officers show up at his apartment and they come in and they see on the table an ounce, less than an ounce of marijuana, very, very little. And they decide to arrest him. So they arrest him. They arrest Julia, his wife. and meanwhile, his children are sent to foster care. Now, when he appears before the judge, the judge says, you know what?

You only deserve probation. This is not a big deal. And his lawyer tells him, yes, take it. Probation's not bad. Say that you did this, even though the marijuana had belonged to a friend. Say that you did this. Get probation is not a big deal. What they didn't know is that for immigrants released on parole, it is a big deal.

When Gerago appeared before his probation officer, immigration officials appeared and arrested both him and his wife. For a crime that had merited only probation, Gerardo Mansour was sent to a maximum security penitentiary in Atlanta and Julia to one in Lexington. Their children were sent to foster care permanently. The two were not released until after 1987. when in 1987 there were huge prison uprisings because Gerardo, his wife, and thousands of other Marial Cubans who had been arrested like them were being held because of the entry fiction with no rights. Gerardo and others, for example, had never had a trial.

They did not know when or even if they were going to be released. And yet they were being held in prison under absolutely abusive conditions. So they did an uprising. They had no other solution. And it is only thanks to this uprising that he has eventually released. And so is Julia in 1988 to be reunited with his children. But again, the key here is for people who are out on parole, even something that merited probation leads to maximum security penitentiary

and has led to being incarcerated in the system for indefinite. Imagine not knowing if you're ever going to be released. from prison. No, I mean, you know, we talk about Guantanamo Bay all the time, but we don't talk about how this has been sort of a policy of this country with people who are not even accused of being terrorists, but who simply wanted to come here to make a life for themselves. And we've done many of the same things to them. I just want to quickly talk about Ellen Knaff before getting to the present day. As you said earlier, you know, I feel like the fact that there was a prison at Ellis Island was very much glossed over in my education. And she actually writes, you quote her in the book,

it was an absolutely chilling statement. She says, Ellis Island is a concentration camp with steam, heat, and running water. And this is coming from someone who, as you said, was a Holocaust survivor. She's not exaggerating with no knowledge of what she's talking about. And it was just, it was absolutely chilling. Yeah, it was, it was chilling to me too. And again, she was in this predicament. She was just fighting to have a hearing before being detained. She wasn't even fighting to be released just for the right to a hearing. And she was being held in this symbol that our nation has of immigrants coming in. Yeah, it's absolutely, like I said, I mean, I keep saying the word chilling, but it was absolutely that's the best word I can think of to describe it as I was reading it. I just want to get to the modern

day stuff because sometimes you read history and you think, well, thank God it's no longer like that. or I'm glad we don't do that anymore. But that's not the case here. And the fourth person you talk about in the book is Fernando Arandondo, who came here from Guatemala around 2016 because he was fleeing gangs and he literally was in fear for his and his family's lives. And then, you know, we go ahead and I think, as you said earlier, his daughter is ripped from him. And it's just, it's a horrifying story of what we still continue to do to this day.

That's right. His story is emblematic because, you know, everyone was thinking during that period of family separation and he experienced it and it's absolutely, once we know the details of the people who experienced family separation, we understand how horrific it was. But Fernando's story shows not only that his daughter was ripped from his arms, literally, but also that the other force of the tension. And while we as a society fought and demonstrated against family separation, the horrors of detention continued to this day. And those horrors, I have to say, include family separation.

Just because we don't have an active policy of family separation today, one that affected, for example, Fernando, people are still being separated from their children as a result of our detention policies. Yeah, it's just, it's so, it's such a shameful history. and the fact that so much of it is continued to this day and makes it that much worse. The book is in the shadow of liberty, the invisible history of immigrant detention in the United States. Anna, thank you so much for being here. The book is out now, and it really is just,

it was an absolutely riveting read, and I learned so much from it, so I really appreciate you writing this. Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate you. Reading it so carefully, I have to say, I was pretty impressed and for interviewing me today. Thank you.

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