The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Keeps Losing but the GOP Just Can’t Quit Him

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

It’s “a sea of performative moronics” ahead of the mid-terms, says New Abnormal Molly Jong-Fast, and we’re all drowning in it. Just look at “the cruelty, the stupidity and the racism” coming out of Texas right now, where Gov. Greg Abbott seems more interested in getting booked on Fox News than getting anything done. Then Jan. 6 committee member Jamie Raskin joins the pod to explain how Republicans transitioned from the party of Lincoln to the party of Trump, “a minority party, a shrinking minority party” that nonetheless “wants to get rid of Liz Cheney, who represents pretty big parts of the conservative Republican establishment. They want to get rid of Adam Kinzinger and Mitt Romney and so on because they don't follow the leader in the way that they're supposed to.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Congressman Jamie Raskin, who represents Maryland's 8th District, we'll be joining us to talk about what's going on with the January 6th committee, along with a host of other issues. Then we'll talk to the Daily Beast congressional reporter Sam Brody about what's going on with all the kooky people who are running for Congress and Senate this time. But first, let's have some fun.

I just wanted to start the podcast today talking about Eric Bolard, who was a guest on our Tuesday podcast and who was a great friend of the new abnormal and who we really, really adored and who was such an incredibly talented writer and thinker and pundant and shit disturber and who died really tragically on Tuesday night in a bicycle accident. And we at the New Abnormal are just sending a lot of love to his wife and to his two adult children. Yeah, Eric really is a huge loss for all of us. He really contributed a lot to holding the press accountable in his later career. I really admired he was an amazing music business reporter in the 2000s, who I always thought was one of the best people doing work then. and he lived in the town I grew up and he was really beloved there by the community. So rest in peace.

And now we're going to transition back into the normal show, but our hearts are really heavy for Eric. So today, Andy Levy, we find ourselves in what I like to think of as steeped in performative moronics. We're in a sea of performative moronics. We're in a smorgas board of stupid, for lack of a better word. Yeah, it's hard to know where to start, Molly Jongfest, but I guess we could head to the great state of Texas, maybe. Yes, the great state of Texas home of one Louis Gomer. There's a lot of stupid crap going on in Texas.

I want to talk about... So what I think has happened here is that Republicans have decided that the very... voters and the base love, really the base, love this kind of performative moronics, the cruelty, the stupidity, and the racism. And so, honestly, it really does feel like Abbott just is at this point trying to get on Fox News. And so he is Marjorie Taylor Green, if Marjorie Taylor Green were a governor. And his newest stunt is to bus illegal immigrants to DC. to stick it to the lips.

So the deal is this Title 42 was a health policy that was used during the pandemic to expel migrants at the border. And Trump used it and Biden also used it. But next month it's going to expire. Biden said, the administration said they're going to stop using it. So the thought here is that, well, this is going to lead to more migrants coming into the country, which, you know, some people think is a good thing. and then some people think is the end of white culture or whatever. And Abbott is in that latter group. So they say what they're going to do in response to this is charter these buses.

And I believe he also said planes. Oh, gosh. Hope the in-flight entertainment is good. Yeah. And they're going to take all these migrants, which I guess the worst case scenario is like 18,000 a month, I think, or, or a day, actually, 18,000 a day. preparing to activate up to 900 buses or as many as needed. Yeah, and they're going to drop all these migrants in D.C. And he said, quote, the first location will be the steps of the United States Capitol,

which, as you said, is like the ultimate in just performative shitburdery. Trying to get on Fox. Yeah, Tucker, meet me on the steps of the Capitol. Exactly. Like passing notes in a homeroom. But you know what's interesting about this is like, first of all, Texas has this power grid problem that has still not been addressed. And, you know, like, here's a governor who will do anything but deal with his own power grid issue. You have people freezing to death in this state because they're not on the, you know, on the American grid.

They're on their own special grid, which sucks. Like, and I feel like that's a great metaphor for this state. They have like real, they have actual real problems with their electricity, with their different, you know, they're going to have climate issues, they're going to have weather issues. And so they're focused on busing. It's going to be so expensive. By the way, they can't bus these immigrants against their will because that is kidnapping. So they're going to have to, it has to be optional. So it's optional busing, which again, again,

they're going to get these immigrants who they want out of the country further in the country as a way to stick it to the lips. Right. Yeah. I mean, the thing is all those things you mentioned fixing the power grid and all that, all that takes actual work. And that's not fun. You know, doing actual work isn't fun.

It's much more fun to get up at a press conference and say, we're going to bust these migrants to, you know, Washington, D.C. I guess the one upside of this is that the fewer people, there are in Texas, the fewer people there are to report abortions. So that's the only good thing I could see about it, although I'm guessing the migrants aren't the ones, but generally

reporting the abortions. But, you know, I'm a silver linings kind of guy, Molly, so I always try to look for the good in something. We talk a lot about immigration because Republicans think it's a winning issue for them because they think that everyone is as racist as they are. But

the thing that I was thinking about, and I don't know how this drives, but like Russia has invaded Ukraine. These Ukrainians are being welcomed with open arms into Poland, into Germany, even into America. And we've seen like incredible acts of kindness towards these Ukrainian refugees that have really made the American war on these South American immigrants look particularly disgusting. You know, they think they have a winning issue here. but it is quite grotesque. Look, it is grotesque.

There's no doubt about that. But it's pretty easy to point out the difference between people coming from Mexico and other Central American countries and people coming from, you know, the vast majority of people coming from Ukraine. And that is obviously skin color. And it's just, it's silly to pretend that that's not, you know,

what's going on here because it is what's going on here. It's always been what's going on here. So it's, you know, and look, even in Poland, we saw that where there were people of color from being racist towards African students, yeah. Yeah, Poland was turning them away. You know, the Republicans in particular want to dance around this, except for, look, I'll give Tucker Carlson and those people, I guess, credit in scare quotes.

They equally hate Ukrainians. Well, no, it's not even that. It's just they're honest about they're afraid of this, you know, this idiotic great replacement theory, which is that brown and black people are going to replace white people. And that's what they're afraid of. And that's what this is all about. And it's sort of at this point, it's like, all right, at least, at least they're saying it. I mean, it's shitty and it's, you know, it's openly racist.

But it's been what's there the whole time being, you know, in coded language. And now they're actually saying it. Don't you think that we've seen so many countries that have, like, destroyed their own economies by being anti-immigrant? And we have a very tight labor market in America. Like, it never occurs to any of these right-wing people. that this might actually just be the wrong play? You're exactly right. We have like unbelievably low unemployment right now

to the point where you have, you know, businesses and job creators saying we can't find people. Right. These are the people. Yeah. And so you want to turn people away at the border? Like, look, when you have high unemployment, I'm still in favor of letting people come here,

but at least you can make an argument that, hey, we got to put, quote, Americans to work before we let more immigrants in. But that excuse is gone. And again, it's been shown to be, and what it does is show that that excuse was also always a sham. And it's always been about,

about color and about racism. That excuse, as you pointed out, that excuse is completely gone right now with the unemployment levels we're at and with business is basically begging for employees. We just had Sam Brody on the podcast. Sam Brody says that Republicans are going to drill down as soon as the primaries are over,

which really will be this horrible. summer of hell, we're going to see Republicans focus on these two main issues that they think are the winners. One is inflation, which again, you know, I don't know if that's a winner for them. Certainly people are upset about it big time, though I do want to mention it is a worldwide phenomenon. So, but I guess they can still try to pin it on Biden. But the other one that they really think is a winner is this immigration issue. And it is interesting that all of the factors that make that a winner have now changed, quote-unquote winner. Yeah.

Ron DeSantis, who's a young but very tan fellow, wants to, if Biden is dumping people, which he has dumped people, we now have money where we can reroute them to sanctuary states like Delaware. Honestly, like, probably Delaware would be happy with that. There are like 10 people who live there. Have you been to Delaware? I'm not sure you can do that. I feel like you probably can't do that. Yeah, and I don't know. He's talking about Biden. Biden's not dumping people. Like, it's, people are not being dumped. People are coming here and being allowed in the country. Like, Biden's not dumping them in Florida. Like, these are people. They're coming to Florida. You live in a southern state. Yes, but not to be outflanked, or as we say, you're outstupited. Dan Crenshaw says he would like to send buses of undocumented migrants to. to Kamala Harris's house, the Naval Observatory.

That's sort of sweet. Oh, does he not mean that in a good way? I don't think he means. Oh, okay. Oh, I see. This is a sort of impressive level of moronics here. Remember when Saturday Night Live did a parody of him and conservatives pretended to be outraged

and then Saturday Night Live had him on as an apology? Yes. Oh, yeah, that was... Great moves, guys. Yeah, yeah. I have a thought I wonder if you guys have any thoughts on. I keep wondering if this is that the Republicans have drank their own bullshit propaganda so much that they think like when they say that the immigrants are voting places and that's what wins Democrats elections. They think, oh, we'll send them to D.C. where they already vote 90% Democratic and we have no chance left.

Or am I giving them way too much credit? Maybe both? Yeah. I have trouble imagining that any one of these people like has. really thought any of this through. I mean, that would be like a, you know, a good sort of nefarious political plan. I could see DeSantis thinking of that. I'm not sure I could picture Abbott thinking anything through that far.

What we are seeing and we are sure of is that Republicans are plumbing the depths of depravity. And a great example of this, I think, is one Marjorie Taylor Green, who has become the kind of frontrunner in the disgusting Olympics and who, went out and said that these three moderate, the sort of last sane Republicans, and again, they're still incredibly disappointing in numerous ways, but are still a little bit sane, are Mitt Romney and Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have decided to support Justice Jackson because she has been Senate confirmed. This will be her fourth Senate confirmation, and they are not total partisan hacks, but Marjorie Taylor Green was first to call them pedophiles. Well, no, she said they're pro-pedophile. She didn't say they're actual pedophiles.

Right. And then the bad Molly, Molly Hemingway also said, what changed with Mitt Romney's support of Justice Jackson, as to imply that he is somehow pedophilious, sympathetic? Right. The interesting thing to me about this, is. is so Marjorie Telegreen said this on Monday. As we tape this, it is now Thursday. So it's been three days since Marjorie Telegreen said Mitt Romney was pro-pedophile. And we have not heard a peep from the RNC chairperson. Oh, his niece?

His niece, Rana Rhonda McDaniel, has not said a word about this. And like if you didn't think that, like if for some reason it had escaped you that the GOP, was just an awful cesspool of horrible human beings. This should let you know that it has been 72 hours, basically, since MTG said this about Ronna McDaniel's uncle. And neither she personally nor the RNC, which she heads, has said a word either rebuking Marjorie Telegreen or supporting Mitt Romney and the other two.

But in this particular case, because it's personal, Mitt Romney. Just the ultimate in hackery is just letting a family member be thrown under the bus like that because you are too afraid to call out someone who really is. Like every time people say to me, you know, we've talked about this almost, I guess, ad nauseum on this podcast that, oh, Marjorie Telegreen, she's just an outlier, she's just a crazy person. She is the base. She is the face of the base.

They are too afraid to call her out, just as they were too afraid to do anything besides you know, give her the tiniest of tiny little, it was more of a love tap than a wrist slap that she got one time. But in general, they are too afraid because they know she represents their base. Yeah. No, I think that's right. If you have GOP leadership that will not say it's wrong to call people you don't agree with pro pedophilia, If you don't have people who will do the bare fucking minimum, then what is, what are you even doing? Yeah, but I mean, look, spend any amount of time on Twitter,

which I, for their own sanity, I hope most of our listeners do not. We'll do it for you. We are the first responders. We are the first tweeters. And I spent an entire day yesterday blocking and muting people who were calling me a groomer because that's the, new big thing because I had the nerve to point out that the Florida don't say gay bill is anti-gay and anti-trans.

And to the point where, like, for the first time ever on Twitter, I had to adjust my notifications so I would not get replies. I would not see any replies from anyone who didn't follow me. I've never had to do that in, you know, I think 15 years I've been on Twitter. This is the first time I had to do that. That's how bad it got. I think I have my notifications off now. Yeah. The point is not, oh, poor Andy. The point is there are a lot of these people out there and that this is what they believe. And the Republican Party is very, very happy to coddle them and not rebuke them, much in the same way that for decades, you know, going back to Nixon's Southern Strategy or whatever, the Republican Party was more than happy to play footsie with overt racists.

Right. And they continue to. And then they act like Trump is some sort of outlier, like, I can't believe this happened to my party. Well, these are the people that you played footsie with. You lie down in bed with racists. You wake up in a hood. That's what's happened to them. But they're continuing the mistakes by now not doing a thing about people like Marjorie Taylor Green because all they want to do is win elections and they don't care who helps them get there. Yeah, I think that's right.

And I also think that we are, I think it is a question of if they're not going to hold their members accountable. I want to point out also that last week we had Orgy Gate or Madison Cossorn said that he had been invited to orgies and Republicans shot him right down. Right. So like we know that they clearly can do this. They just don't want to. Right. The other thing I wanted to point out about the Groomer Gate stuff is that this is an old tactic. Yep.

From early days of people coming out as gay and saying that that would lead to pay. pedophilia. So I do think, like, you know, we're seeing Republicans cycle through other tactics. And for example, I mean, you know, we have this thing in Florida, right? There's this don't say gay bill. Disney finally, finally, finally after days and days and days comes out against it. And Desantis, and this is something very Trumpy, goes right after Disney, even though Disney is like, you know, the biggest employer in his state, the way it's set up there, a couple different entities, but there's still. the biggest employer in the state. And he's fighting with Disney now. But it's funny because it's like fighting with Disney is actually something that conservatives have been doing for a long time. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the Disney thing has gotten so out of hand that there's that guy Jack Pesobiac, who is, you know, sort of a pizza gate. Who was an early Pizza Gate influencer and McCrone links.

An early Pizza Gate guy. Yeah, a white nationalist, you know, call him whatever you want. and if it's bad, it's probably true. And he's out there like advertising T-shirts that have, you know, with the Disney logo, but it's been replaced with a groomer. Oh. And the shirt says like anti-groomer or something like that because they're trying to sell the shirts. Right.

There's a little square near the bottom of the shirt and it says bring ammo. Oh, cute. Yeah. And it's like if you don't think that that's, you know, there's a good chance that that's going to get someone killed. And that's basically what you're advocating. So it's the shittiest people, but you're absolutely right. This is, you know, Molly, I'm not quite, but Molly, you are probably old enough to remember the Republicans doing this back in like the 80s, the 70s and the 80s when. Yeah, the 70s when I was two.

Right, exactly, exactly. But even then, writing your little columns with your glasses on and making the fonts bigger so you could read them and all that fun stuff. Yeah, I recently learned how to make the fonts bigger. Thank you, Andy, for implying I'm old. I mean, he kind of got you for doing it to him before. Yeah, sure, sure. Like six times. Like six times.

I'm young enough to remember. Monster. Jimmy Raskin represents Maryland's 8th District and sits on the committee on House administration, the Judiciary Committee, oversight and government reform and the House Committee on Rules and the Select Committee on the January 6th attack. Welcome to the new abnormal Congressman Jamie Raskin. I'm delighted to be with you.

Well, we're delighted to have you. You today we're talking about banned books. I want to talk to you about this because being the daughter of someone who wrote a banned book is a subject near and dear to my heart. These books are disappearing from the shelves of libraries. I mean, this seems like a real problem. Well, it's one of the warning signs of fascism undoubtedly. Book banning and book burning suppression of ideas, trying to purge our history of offensive or intolerable facts like racism and slavery. Yeah, those are all hallmarks of fascist ways of thinking.

So, you know, I just want to make sure we're blowing the whistle on all of these things and we're aware of them we're speaking about. It seems like a lot of this is happening on the state level. What can Congress do to sort of stop those? Well, I mean, some of it is used this oversight function to expose what's taking place. I mean, if you're living in a small town in Pennsylvania, as some of our witnesses were, the people who are trying to ban books think that they can get away with it. And so we want to bring each episode to a broader nationwide stage. We can also make sure that we're building into our different federal funding streams,

conditions on the money that people can't be using federal resources to censor books and ideas based on their viewpoint or their content. You're working on this January 6th committee. You have now four criminal referrals. Am I right? For contempt, correct. What happens now with those? It goes to the Department of Justice.

and the Department of Justice can decide to pursue them, is expected to pursue them for a grand jury, and to get a grand jury to hand down an indictment for contempt of Congress. So why has that not happened? Well, you know, the wheels of justice turn on the slow side. You know, I think, I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that with Meadows and Bannon that there have been hearings set in the summertime.

Obviously, the justice system is backed up, and it's especially backed up because of Donald Trump's mob, more than 750 cases have been brought against people for destruction of property and assault on federal officers and trespass and interference with the federal proceeding and so on. And increasingly seditious conspiracy, which is conspiracy to overthrow. of the government. Do you think that that charge will continue, that we'll see other people charge with that? I know I'm asking you to speculate, which is me and so speculate. On the criminal side, yeah, I'm just speculating, but I would speculate, yes, I mean, if the proud boys and the oathkeepers were involved in it, presumably, so were the other groups that they were working with,

you know, the three percenters and who knows, you know, the full extent of it. I mean, there were various militia groups present, QAnon Networks, area nations. So I assume that they'll be following on that trail to see where there's probable cause to make some prosecutions. And of course, all of those people were activated in kind of a parallel line of attack on Congress and the Capitol with the effort politically to overthrow the election. The whole Green Bay Sweep and John Eastman and Mark Meadows, Steve Bannon, and Donald Trump, the people who actually had a plan to coerce Mike Pence's participation in the scheme by declaring his lawless, extra-constitutional, unilateral powers to reject electoral college votes from Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. The whole purpose of that was to try to lower Joe Biden's total in the electoral college from 306 to something below 270, which is, you know, the threshold of victory. And if under the 12th Amendment, no presidential candidate has received a majority, and that was the purpose of trying to return these electoral votes to their states, the whole thing is thrown into the House of Representatives for a so-called contingent election.

election. Right. You know, the idea there was then get the fake electorates involved, right? Well, yeah, I mean, that was just to show them somehow that it was a legitimate thing. But, you know, if nobody gets a majority, it goes to the House of Representatives. And, you know, people say, well, why did they want Pelosi and the Democrats deciding under the 12th Amendment? We don't vote one member one vote. We vote one state one vote. And they had 27 states. We have 22 states after the 2020 elections in one state, Pennsylvania split down the middle. So even had they lost Liz Cheney, the outlarge member from Wyoming and her vote, as I think they would have. They still would have had 26 votes. And they would have just called it for Donald

Trump and said he's seized the presidency for four years. And at that point, I think they were prepared to follow the counsel of Michael Flynn, Trump's disgrace former national security advisor and declare martial law under the Insurrection Act. And I think that was the ultimate destination of it to say, oh, there's all this violence on the right and left. And, you know, they spent the whole day looking for Antifa and couldn't find any Antifa. But it was somehow to justify it and create this false equivalency between these essentially fascist stormtroopers who laid siege to the capital and a non-existent force on the ground, the Antifa, that nobody could find any on January 6th. Right.

You guys are ultimately racing against the clock with this, right? How worried are you about a scenario? Like, when do these hearings happen? When do you see a sort of, I mean, basically there's a need for a narrative here? The hearings will be coming in May or June. And we have an extremely compelling and riveting story to tell rooted in the events and the causes behind them. And then also the changes that we need to make in order to avoid future coups and insurrection. How worried are you that, you know, because America is so siloed and weird right now and there's so much disinformation that people are not hearing what.

really happened? Well, it's definitely a concern. I mean, you could watch Fox News for months at a time and never encounter any hint that, you know, 150 of our officers ended up with broken jaws and necks and vertebrae and ribs and lost fingers and traumatic brain injury and so on. And all you get is the propaganda about how, you know, Trump's protesters greeted the police with hugs and kisses, I think the former president has said. So, yeah, I think it is a real problem just to struggle to establish the facts. But again, that is a hallmark of authoritarian and fascist politics, where the truth is treated totally as a convenient thing.

I mean, you see Vladimir Putin doing that, who's, you know, lied to the Russian people for months and years about Ukraine and has been lying. about his bloody and sickening war against the civilian population where they're murdering children and raping and killing women and leaving their corpses in the street. So there are members of the House of Representatives who are pro-Pudin. Can you talk to us about that? I mean, that seems like a very strange phenomenon. Yeah, well, it starts with Donald Trump, of course, who was utterly obsequious.

pandering at every move to Putin. He embraced Putin's agenda of trying to undermine NATO. Trump began attacking NATO right when he got into office, just like he began attacking democracy and started to align himself with every right-wing, ultra-nationalist and despot and dictator on earth from Putin and Russia to Wurban and Hungary to LCC and Egypt to Duterte in the Philippines

and the homicidal brown prince of Saudi Arabia and President Xi and China, all of them. But he seemed to have a specific fancy for Vladimir Putin. I mean, everybody remembers him going to Helsinki and publicly rejecting all of the information he'd been given by 17 different intelligence agencies in America about how Putin had deliberately interfered in our election in 16 and injected poison into the bloodstream. of America through the social media with all of his racial and ethnic and ideological propaganda. But Trump rejected all of it and said, oh, I asked Putin and he said there was no problem. And he took Putin's point of view. I mean, it was just episode after episode like that.

And so the right wing, but it goes beyond this personal crush that Trump's got on Putin. The right wing in America loves Putin as a strong man autocratic. leader who is very happy to dabble in racist and fascist-style politics. And now they love him all the more because, as Donald Trump put it, they consider him a genius for invading a country the way that Hitler invaded Poland or Czechoslovakia. But you're seeing, like, for example, these six House members who voted against this bill. I mean, I don't understand how you can vote against a bill that requires the State's Department to report and preserve the evidence of war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine?

I mean, like, how does it Thomas Massey, who actually went to MIT? I mean, so I think he has some other issues with it, perhaps, who knows? But like Marjorie Taylor Green and Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, that makes... No, but all of them are part of the Trump-Putn axis. Explain. They've been cheerleading for Trump, who's been cheerleading for Putin, and they're totally lined up that way. And every other word of their mouth has been Russian hoax, Russian hoax, although they're downpedaling a little bit over the last few weeks as the American public turns with utter revulsion against the, you know, the imperial war in Ukraine, this war of atrocities. So, you know, they're opposed to NATO.

They believe in Putin's ideology. They love the resurgent anti-Semitism and homophobia and violent nationalism. They see by the right wing in Europe and in Russia. And that's just the team that they're on. We have to accept that there are, you know, there's now in America one pro-democracy party. And then you've got in a pro-autocracy party. Is there anything to be done there? It does seem like on the January 6th committee, you do have two Republicans who are anti-autocracy.

But it doesn't seem like there's much in that wing of the party. party? Look, Donald Trump fashions himself, you know, something like a mob boss within the Republican Party or a religious cult leader. And, you know, every once in a while, a handful of them will stray a little bit the way Mitch McConnell did on January 6th when he told them not to go forward with their Green Bay suite plan of trying to steal the election or the way McConnell did after the impeachment trial when he didn't vote to convict, but he said that we'd made our case and, you know, laid out a really stinging indictment of everything Donald Trump had done,

but then he ended up saying that the Senate didn't have jurisdiction to try a former president, which is an absurd claim that has been rejected for a couple of centuries now. I know that Mitch McConnell is very smart and good at what he does. I mean, it's not what he does. what I believe in, but he's quite good at it. Do you get the sense that he is in too deep with this Trump, Russia, Putin access? Well, yeah, look, I think that Trump has $150 million in the bank.

He wields it like a guillotine over all these members of Congress. He's willing to endorse candidates to the right of candidates who don't do his bidding. To the right there essentially means people who are willing to surrender critical thought and just slavishly follow whatever Trump tells them what to do. So he's a formidable force because of his money, the power of his endorsement, and his just outsized, you know, fascist-style ego in a party that does tend to be dominant submissive in terms of how they treat their leadership. I mean, that's been kind of their style.

But what it has meant is that Abraham Lincoln's party became Donald Trump's party. And they really are no longer a political party. They're much more like an authoritarian, religious or political cult of personality. And that's how they operate. And most parties will try to enlarge themselves as much as possible and, you know, extend the size of the tent to bring more people in because of the logic of voting. That is not the MO of the GOP anymore. I mean, they are a minority party, they're a shrinking minority party, but they want to get rid of Liz Cheney, who represents pretty big parts of the conservative Republican establishment. They want to get rid of Adam Kinsiger and Mitt Romney and so on. They just want to get rid of them because they don't follow the leader in the way that they're supposed to.

And they are convinced that with the gerrymandering of congressional districts, the voter suppression statutes, they've been engineering across the country, the use of right-weigh. court packing and right-wing traditional activism, they will be able to hang on to power without growing anymore. I mean, they know all the young people of America are going in the direction of the Democrats, something more than 80% of teens today are identifying with the Democratic Party and something like 10% with the Republicans and 10% independent, something like that. There's no growth horizon for a party like that, but that's not. how they operate. They operate like a religious cult and they engage in a series of political conspiracies, the kind that we saw on January the 6th. But it doesn't necessarily matter, right?

They have more power in a lot of these state houses than Democrats. They've been able to sort of be so focused in a way, right, that even though they're demographically shrinking, they are continuing to get power. I mean, this is the classic story. course, that the liberal and progressive parties are focused on the problems of the country and are actually trying to work on it. And the right wing is just interested in maintaining its own power. And we'll do whatever needs to be done in order to seize power and hang on to it. I mean, you've got to check out Madeline Albright's book about fascism. And she says it's a mistake to think that fascism is an ideology with a fixed content to it. She says it's

not. Fascism is just a strategy for taking power and hanging on to it for parties that don't believe in democracy and, you know, parts of society that think they can succeed better without popular engagement. There's a lot of conventional media wisdom that it says that the Democrats are going to get a shalacking, to quote Barack Obama in the midterms. How could that be? I mean, it's not destiny, right, even though, I mean, Biden's approval rating is definitely not where it could be. And certainly, inflation is a real problem. But Republicans aren't all that popular either. And I think that narrative, it's just interesting. I mean, do you think Democrats have a chance to turn it around? Well, of course. I mean, let's start with this. I mean, our problem is not a shortage of

votes or a shortage of people. I mean, Hillary beat Donald Trump by three million. Joe Biden beat him by 7.5 million votes. We beat them in the last congressional elections by something like 5 million votes. They survive on a bag of tricks. I mean, the gerrymandering of our congressional districts depends on the gerrymandering of the legislatures. And what you get is GOP-run legislatures in Democratic states, like Wisconsin, for example, or like North Carolina, for a long time it was Virginia, where they kept essentially slicing the bologna so fine in the legislative redistricting that they would be able to build GOP legislative majorities out of a Democratic majority state just by packing all of the Democrats into a handful of districts. And that's how they've been able to do it. And then they're able to maintain their power in the state legislature with the same mechanism. And they keep dealing themselves a winning hand. So what you, What we're up against is these anti-democratic mechanisms like the filibuster, the gerrymander of our districts, the voter suppression tactics, the judicial activism.

And now the manipulation of the electoral college, which was always anti-democratic, which always had a southern accent for complex reasons that I can explain if you want me to. But in any event, today, today the electoral college is not just anti-democratic, and it's not just that it reduces the entire election to six or seven states before it even gets started, it's a positive danger to the republic because there are all these nooks and crannies in the electoral college process that a strategic bad actor like Donald Trump can exploit in order to keep the election going when it's over. And that's what we saw in 2020. Thank you so much, Congressman Raskin.

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. Sam Brody is a congressional reporter for The Daily Beast. Welcome to the new abnormal Sam Brody. Yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be back. Let's first talk about your most recent piece on what did she call herself? Is she bear a mama? Mama Grizzly. Oh, Jesus, fuck you Christ.

How quickly they forget. How quickly they forget feels like the theme of that piece. It's actually like a brilliant way to. cover the story. Explain to our listeners what you, how you guys did this. Yeah. So of course, Sarah Palin announced that she's going to run for Congress in Alaska. And so, you know, we were just interested what the reaction was was going to be among, I mean, obviously, Democrats, sure, but, you know, Republicans, just especially because I think you could make the case pretty persuasively that there are a few Republicans who are kind of more responsible for the

let's call it the look and feel of today's party than Sarah Palin. You didn't just go to regular Republicans. You went to the kind of Republicans who would not exist without Sarah Palin. Precisely, exactly. The kinds of Republicans who really owe to her the fact that they can kind of just like do what they do and it's considered normal. So I spoke to folks like Jim Jordan. I spoke to Ronnie Jackson, who's the former Obama Trump doctor turned guy who's like calling on Biden to take a cognitive test every day, Chip Roy, like, you know, really, really the right,

right wing. And, you know, I found kind of to a person that they were all like, yeah, I guess, you know, Jim Jordan literally shrugged. I mean, he shrugged. Yeah. That's just so wild when you consider that like, okay, this isn't like a rando, right? This is somebody who was the party's vice presidential nominee in 2008. She endorsed dozens of candidates in the Tea Party wave of 2010.

I mean, a lot of people could say they owe their careers, really, to Sarah Palin because 2010 was swept so many of these Republicans into office. And, you know, she's been out of the spotlight for a while. And I think the flip side, which sort of, I think is the kind of takeaway of the story is that, like, sure, Palin is as responsible as anybody for today's Republican Party. But now she's just another one in that party who is constantly kind of pushing the envelope. She's not unique anymore. And what's interesting is that people don't, like, give her a ton of deference, I guess, for doing what she did. And now she's just kind of in competition with a bunch of other folks who kind of took her stick and then, like, put it on steroids. And I thought that was really, that was really, really interesting.

And somebody that I thought was really interesting, I didn't find Marjorie Taylor Green. But Marjorie Taylor Green did tweet very favorably on Sarah Palin's. entry into the race. So at least one of them is kind of like paying, paying homage to the, to the OG there in a sense. There are 48 candidates running in that for that one Alaska seat. There are 48, yeah. That seems high. That's extremely high. I mean, so this seat was held by the same guy for literally 50 years. And Alaska's kind of crazy. I mean, it's really, it's a really wild state. And we think of it as a red state. And it certainly is in a lot of ways. But it's, very strange. They elect Democrats sometimes, and a lot of the time they just elect people of no

party in particular. So it's going to be a really, it's going to be a really weird race. And what I found in reporting kind of on the Alaska side of things is that like Palin is not well loved really by any stretch of the imagination up there. I mean, she has a lot of baggage that's specific to to that state. And kind of the conservative thought leaders there don't, don't like her really. And in some of the hesitants that I encountered from D.C. Republicans like Jim Jordan, I mean, he mentioned a couple times, he's like, well, there's a lot of people in the race. And so, you know, the Freedom Caucus types might actually, you know, I don't know if this is going to be the case, but like, I don't think it would be crazy to imagine some of them backing a candidate who's not Sarah Palin,

who might kind of be a little more in tune with today's sort of various like culture war things and, you know, MAGA stuff than Sarah Palin might be. You mean worse. Sorry. Let's just say people who've maybe improved on the Sarah Palin model. Yeah, the party has moved on from Sarah Palin.

What can you extrapolate from this about the sort of larger GOP as a whole? Is there anything you can? Yeah, no, it's kind of interesting because Palin's sort of a singular figure in that she's so responsible for the direction of the party yet she stepped away from it for such a long time. I mean, she's really been out of the spotlight for like over 10 years. I actually saw her during the Georgia runoffs. I was down there a lot.

And Palin came and stumped at some events. And it was super interesting talking to people there about her because they were like, yeah, you know, it was kind of a similar reaction. They were like, you know, she's all right. And one guy even said, like, I'm more a fan of like the movement that she started, which is interesting. Now, I think it's tempting to look at that and go, like, you know, Trump's not going to go away in the way that Sarah Palin kind of just like went away and did something else. Right. No, because she did that on purpose. She did it on purpose. However, like, it is kind of an interesting lesson in like how quickly very like influential Republicans who kind of set the tone and define the contours of the party can kind of be cast aside in favor of the like newer, fresher person who's sort of doing the same thing, but maybe a little more, you know, maybe a little more jazzed up. I'm not saying that that's going to happen to Trump,

but I think what happened to Palin is a lesson that, like, it absolutely can happen. And, you know, again, Trump's not going to just, like, kind of vanish in the way that Palin did. But, like, you know, this is not a party that's like beholden to its elders, really, right? Right. And especially influential ones who, yeah, who tow the line. Like, it's not like, you know, Palin is his loyal a Trump person as they come. Like, she was one of the first people really to kind of endorse him in a big way in the 2016 race.

So, like, her, like, Bona a few days are like not questioned in the base, but they're sort of like, maybe like it's time for somebody else. I've talked to reporters, and I'm sure you've had this experience too, who have gone to Trump events or, you know, MAGA events and have talked to people who have said, we support Trumpism more than Trump. Have you encountered that in the wild? I have.

But I think for as many people who say stuff like that, there's two who like are like, no, I support Donald Trump. It's all about Donald Trump. And the big question is, like, out in the world, like, what is the breakdown of those two camps? I think what's hard about the supporting Trumpism versus Trump himself is, like, I don't think any Republicans so far has really, like, really advanced, like, their own Trumpism, right? We talk about Ron DeSantis a lot, of course, as maybe being somebody who's done this. I just think that's really untested, right? I mean, like, there has been a lot of folks recently who the media goes, like, oh, that's like the new, like, face of the Republican Party.

And, like, obviously everything changed with Trump. But, like, I would reserve judgment on whether, like, DeSantis has pioneered that Trumpism sort of 2.0 until we get a little more hard evidence to that. That's, like, actually in, you know, 2023, let's say, as opposed to now. And it's possible we don't even know who's, like, going to kind of put forward this, this. next iteration of Trumpism yet. I just tend to be of the opinion that, like, this isn't going to happen until he, like, steps away in whatever form, whether he loses, you know, whatever it is. But he remains personally too important. It's funny because it's like Mitch McConnell understands that a lot of these Republican policies are not very popular. But Rick Scott does not.

And I would like to harken back to a piece that you wrote about GOP candidates can't stop touching the third rail of politics. Explain to. to our listeners a little bit about this phenomenon because it's totally fascinating. Yeah, it's super interesting. So I guess so the backstory here is Rick Scott, Florida Senator, potential 2024 candidate. He runs the Senate Republican campaign arm. And he put out this plan a while back in February, March or something. And he basically just like touched all the potential third rails possible for the Republican Party.

He's like, yeah, we're going to dis-raise, you know, if you're not paying income tax, like, you got to pay it. Like, everyone needs to have some skin in the game here. And, oh, yeah, we're going to sunset every program in five years unless Congress reauthorizes it. I mean, like, truly stuff that no party leader like Mitch McConnell would ever say. And, like, McConnell distanced himself from it. Basically, every Republican elected official distanced themselves from it. And viewed it sort of as a self-serving thing on Scott's part because he basically positioned himself as like, I'm the guy who's really going to tell it like it is, like all these swamp creatures.

And he didn't say McConnell, but, you know, there's, they're, they're, are not known to be especially close, the implication that it's folks like McConnell who are upholding the status quo and I'm going to go in there and shake things up and whatnot. And I found that in a number of key races for Senate, you know, Republican candidates are kind of echoing what he said, particularly on taxes. There's this guy Mike Gibbons, who's a frontrunner in the Ohio race, who basically said the same thing that Scott said about taxes. There's this guy Jim Lehman, who's a frontrunner in the Arizona Senate race, who said, you know, the Scott playing and really good stuff and, like, joke that Scott was taking ideas from his own, from Wayman's own

campaign website. So, like, it's interesting in that, like, it shows that, like, there's kind of a constituency for, for this sort of thing. There's a lot of discussion about how Trump changed sort of the, like, conventional line and the Republican Party on entitlements. Like, you'll remember he, you know, notably said in 2016, like, I'm not going to touch Social Security at all. I'm not going to touch Medicare at all. You know, Republicans are have this like low tax or orthodoxy, right? And like, I think out in the world there, when there's Republicans competing in these primaries and trying to stand out, like, there is this enticing sort of position or set of positions that are not compatible with like actually trying to run a government, but that make you sound like, you know,

common sense or whatever that means and tough. And, you know, we're going to, you know, it's never, they're never talking in audiences to people who actually are, are going to be affected. these changes. So, you know, it's easy to say, yeah, we're going to make those people, the middle class, like the people not pulling their weight, we're going to make them pay. Certainly not the upstanding folks who come out to see Republican Senate primary candidates on like a Tuesday morning. Right. So, but it's interesting. I mean, Scott, like Scott's trying to kind of set the tone here. And I mean, it's kind of working. Like, he produced a plan that was like so hated that it kind of forced everybody to talk about it. And in that sense,

he's winning. I mean, he just got elected. He's not up yet. He wouldn't be up until 2024, but he's thought of as somebody who would potentially run for president. And so this kind of scene is like a reach towards that kind of sitting him apart. Imagine a world where that person ends up running for president. It's hard to know what the Republican Party will look like. But it's hard to imagine a world where they elect that guy. It is. It definitely is. And like, look, he's really, really, really rich. I know, I know. Recent history is littered with like really, really, really rich guys who go, you know what? Like, I could do this. Like, you know, I'll spend whatever I have to spend. I've won before.

I can do it again. Like, Tom Steyer spent $400 million on his presidential days. And he's president now. Yeah, I mean, he is now, he is now president. He's now president. Yeah. That was an amazing victory. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He's a great president, too, Tom Steyer. What are you seeing, like we're seeing so much culture war stuff in Florida and in a lot of these different state houses. Abortion, don't say gay, you know, all of these different like performative moronics. Are you seeing that? How is that filtering through to Congress? Yeah, in terms of like campaigns or just like what they're doing up here.

Both campaigns and legislation. Yeah. I think on the campaign side, I would be shocked, honestly, if when we get to the general election and like, because right now these Republicans are beating each other up in these primaries and they're doing all the dumb culture war stuff. I mean, just like look at the Ohio Senate race for a moment. And it's like a smorgas board of like whatever kind of is churned out from like, you know, the Daily Wire or like Tucker Carlson segments. Like it's that that's defining that primary. But once we get beyond these primaries, like, I really think that Republicans are going to talk about three things. And this is what Republican strategists have described. I mean, they're going to talk about inflation. They are going to talk about immigration. And they're going to talk about like Afghanistan basically and like Biden's global leadership,

blah, blah, blah. Like that's it. And I would be shocked if like 90% of that weren't just inflation. I mean, they're just going to hammer it home. And, you know, with, you know, kind of with respect to the Scott plan, like one Republicans sort of explained to me, like, if we spend time talking about any of this, like, it is a waste of time because we have the conditions to win, and it requires talking about, like, some very, very straightforward issues that, like, affect people on a day-to-day basis.

And so I think if there are any campaigns in a general election that are, like, talking about, like, you know, trans athletes or don't say gay, I think most Republicans would view that as just, like, a completely, you know, a completely wasted opportunity. That said, I think a lot of Republicans might not be able to resist doing that kind of stuff. Or we'll get dragged into it anyway. Yeah. It's fealty to Trump. I mean, the crazier and more right when you can be is sort of a way to prove that you're a Trumpist.

Right. And then there's kind of the ultimate culture war issue sort of, which is like the 2020 election. And Trump is going to force all his, this is where I think a lot of candidates aren't going to be able to avoid Trump forcing them to talk about. it. I don't think that's like a crazy possibility at all, especially folks like Herschel Walker, who is so, I mean, the reason that he's just coasting in that primary is because Trump endorsed him. Right. He's going to have to talk about that, you know, candidates in Pennsylvania, you know, states that Democrats have a good chance of flipping for the Senate. Like, they're going to have to talk about this stuff that like really doesn't have a constituency at all outside of the hardcore

Republican base. Yeah, and Trump. So, so that's going to be super, super, super. interesting to watch. I want to go to this primary for a second, this crazy Ohio primary. What are you seeing there? It is like the Republican it is being like, it's like on blast every day there. I mean, like it's super muddled because all of these candidates come to the race with their own like specific kind of baggage. Insane. Josh Mandel. Josh Mandel, who like is sort of the Is the frontrunner? If I had to put money on someone, it would probably be him, but I would not feel good. Like, I would not feel good really about that.

And also, I think you'd have a good chance of losing that bad. It's a really volatile race. And, like, Mandel has, you know, his own weird baggage. And he's kind of this, like, consummate, like, political climber in, like, J.D. Vance. Like, people aren't getting over the Trump stuff with J.D. Vance. And the candidate. Ukraine stuff, right? Yeah.

Yeah. That, too. and the Marjorie Green endorsement. Like, you know, they all have their own kind of bits of baggage. But I think it's like a fairly, like, I think really anything could happen. And I think what's interesting about Ohio is like it's such a increasingly red state that like whoever does win that primary, I don't know if who they are in the general election is going to be that different. We're going to get kind of like maybe a slightly more toned down version of like Josh Mandel or J.D. Vance or whomever if they win the primary.

but like not by a whole lot. And if that person shows up to the Senate, that's going to be next level. It's a super interesting primary. I would note Trump has not endorsed yet. Like early voting has started. Will he, when he does, will that sweep it or now?

I think it depends on the candidate. At least when we were reporting on this last month, there was a sense that even if like Trump endorsed J.D. Vance, he still might not be able to come out on top. I think for any of the other candidates, though, a Trump endorsement. It's just so close between like the top five that, a Trump endorsement would probably send everybody but J.D. Vance over the top and maybe even

J.D. Vance. I don't even really know. But it's, I had heard and, you know, my colleague Swin had heard that, like, Trump just does not, he does not want to pick a loser. Right. There's such a risk that whoever he picks in this race is going to be a loser. And so the upshot of that is like, okay, then maybe he just doesn't endorse. But then other folks have said that he will, but I think time is kind of running out here. Because, again, they've started to, early voting has started in the Ohio. primary. It's in the first Tuesday in May is actual election day. So like he's got to make a move here. And I think in general, like, it's going to be a really critical couple months for like the test of Trump's endorsement. And a lot has been written and said about it. But like I think we're really going to get a glimpse of how how much his word matters in Senate races and House races and governorships. Like there's a lot of tests of it coming up. He's already unendorsed a couple people, including Mo Brooks. Mo Brooks. That's right. That's right.

Hall Hathno Fury, like a Mo Brooks squaring, you know, like Trump dumped him for reasons that were like totally unintelligible, right? I mean, you saw the statement Trump. He didn't lie enough about 2020, right? But also like, he was like, oh, yeah, he really tanked after he said that, you know, we should look ahead and like the timeline was like completely wrong on that. It's unclear who Trump is going to endorse. There's two candidates who he might. But I mean, Brooks is interesting because now he's like, fuck this guy. I mean, he's like toyed publicly with.

testifying to the January 6 committee. And so it's possible that the former president may not have approached this, especially strategically as it relates to the January 6th investigation. I mean, who knows if Brooks will actually do it. But the fact that he feels like striking some fear into the heart of Trump is an interesting thing. But I think we can safely bet that this guy is not going to become the next senator from Alabama. Thank you so much, Sam Brody. I hope you'll come back soon.

Yes, please. Anytime. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizagate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Tsubisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed.

That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly John Fest. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a Republican senator from the great state of Arkansas who was not really content with going after Judge Katanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing, but he decided that he needs to be. to get up on the Senate floor and make a little speech about her on Tuesday in which he said,

you know, the last Judge Jackson left the Supreme Court to go to Nuremberg and prosecute the case against the Nazis. This Judge Jackson might have gone there to defend them. Like, I don't even know where to start with this. There are so many levels on which this is just completely awful. But the ones he probably didn't even intend are basically, I don't know, I guess he's going after her here because she was the defense counsel for, I think, two or three people or for some inmates at Guantanamo. And I guess he doesn't like that because people are not entitled to defense counsel in this country in his mind, which for someone who pretends to love the Constitution is a very weird stance. And then, of course, he goes straight to some sort of Nazi comparison, which every, like it's 2022. How do you not know that you do.

don't do that. I mean, you have to be kind of willfully stupid to think that that's a good idea. So it's absolutely obscene is what it is. And, you know, the fact of the matter is we held people in Guantanamo, we continue to hold people in Guantanamo Bay without a trial for, you know, indefinitely. And they were entitled to counsel and she defended them. Defending criminals or potential or accused criminals does not mean you're pro-criminal. Defending accused terrorists does not mean you're pro-terrorist. It just means you recognize that everyone is entitled to a defense, except, I guess, Tom Cotton doesn't believe that. And what do you know? This is the same guy that wanted to send the troops out to fuck up Black Lives Matter. So, you know, I guess this isn't unexpected. But it's just,

it's just one of those things where every day you're like, you know, wow, how stupid was I for thinking that they'd hit bottom before today? And then, you know, I'm not going to make that mistake again. and then they do something again the next week, and you're like, wow, how stupid was I for thinking, you know, that last week was as bad as it gets? So anyway, just fuck this guy to hell. With Lindsey Graham, it's interesting, too, because he clearly was mad that they didn't pick his Supreme Court choice.

Right. Judge Childs. You know, he sort of had his finger on the scale. And so he's really relished in making it as unpleasant for justice, Brown Jackson as for anyone. When it comes to your, you're talking about, though, how you can't go to the Nazi thing anymore. I keep thinking how Godwin's law is now just totally obsolete because everybody goes there so fast. You can't even blink before you see it.

True. Yeah, you're not wrong. You want to know my, fuck that guy. Please. It's a smorgasbord of the worst members of Congress. A virtual, you know, who's who of everyone who sucks. six GOP House members vote against a bill that would require the State Department to report and preserve evidence of war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. So this is, think about this.

You're saying that you just want the State Department to report and preserve evidence of war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine. I mean. Right. No one can oppose that. Who votes against this? It's like voting against an anti-lunching bell. And here we go. Thomas Massey, who has, I think, quickly become the worst congressman, or at least up there in this sort of triumphant. Marjorie Taylor Green.

Andy Biggs. Representative Paul Gosar, the worst dentist in Congress. They get a hearty fuck you from me. So this means that Marjorie Taylor Green is pro-war crimes. Oh, that is right. She is pro-war crimes. That's a tweet, Andy. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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