The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Lied, and Pence Could Have Died

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

The New Abnormal hosts recorded late, after the Jan. 6 committee's latest blockbuster hearing, where, co-host Andy Levy says, “We found out today that the mob in the capital came within 40 feet of [Vice President Pence] at one point while they were transporting him to the secure location. That sounds pretty terrifying considering, we have to remember, this is the mob that was chanting “Hang Mike Pence.’” Later, co-host Molly Jong Fast says,”I feel like the top line is when did the president know and what did he know it? He knew it, and he still tried to do it.” Indeed, says senior NBC News politics reporter and co-author of Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, “I think that it may be a mistake to look at anything that happened as particularly accidental. I'm always sort of torn a little bit when I talk to voters who are kind of like Jan. 6 deniers, because I think most of them aren't denying that Trump was trying to hold power. I think they're denying that it was bad.” Plus, Daily Beast and New York Magazine contributing writer Jay Michaelson breaks down the Ginni Thomas-John Eastman mess: “If this is not an impeachable offense for a Supreme court justice if what we've come out in evidence is true” then what would be? “This is the most impeachable offense I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean, this is not a gray area case. This is unbelievable.… John Eastman, one of the somewhat more crazy lawyers who tried to overturn the 2020 election said at one point that there seems to be a heated fight underway among the justices. And that's interesting. I don't know how he actually knew that, but now it seems that he knew that from actually being in touch with Ginni Thomas, the wife of one of the justices,” Clarence Thomas, “who is also a well-known conservative activist.” And, “if true, disclosing secret, confidential, and to put it mildly, highly sensitive deliberations of the Supreme Court justices to somebody who he knows—his wife—is closely involved with the effort to overturn the election. And it's fine that they have separate careers and they have separate lives. That's fine. But you know, Molly, if I disclose this to you, we don't have to be married for me to realize that that would probably be a problem, right? That disclosing to somebody with a close degree of not just interest but actual active participation in this effort, which is overturning an election, right, which is trying to mount some sort of a coup. So even if this was some boring insurance transaction that we were involved in, this would be a massive violation of judicial ethics. And the fact that it took place in the context of Jan. 6 is beyond shocking.” 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 objector. 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. First, we're going to talk to Jay Michelson, who's a contributing writer at New York Magazine and, of course, The Daily Beast. And he's going to tell us what to think of this whole Jiddy Thomas John Eastman mess. Then we'll talk to John Allen, who's, of course, NBC News's senior politics reporter, as well as the author of Lucky, how Joe Biden barely won the presidency.

and he's going to tell us what he saw during the January 6th hearing today. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. Let us talk about day three of the January 6 hearings. I think it's fair to say that Mike Pence is a pretty lucky guy. Yeah, we found out today that the mob in the Capitol came, I think they said, within 40 feet of him at one point while they were transporting him to the secure location. That sounds pretty terrifying considering this is, we have to remember, this is the mob that was chanting, Hang Mike Pence.

Pence. That photo of Karen Pence closing the shades so that the mob didn't see her husband and attack him, really something. Yeah, really something you, you know, you generally look at when another country, when it happens to another country and you say, oh, those poor people. And it turns out we are those poor people, which is, you know, pretty. sad considering how we comport ourselves around the world and talk about, you know, the shining city on a hill and all these different ways we like to talk about American exceptionalism. And it turns out that we ain't so different, you and I. Today's hearing was, was basically, I don't know that it was a lot of factual stuff that were, or sort of broad factual stuff that we didn't know. like we knew that Pence resisted a lot of attempts to get him to throw the election back to the states on

January 6th. And we knew a lot of the other stuff, but it was still, you know, at least to me, it was still very compelling to hear it spelled out by the people who worked for Pence and then, you know, some of the people who worked for Trump. It again shows, look, we've seen this a lot, and you and I have had this where we have to do this every time we talk about Liz Cheney or Mike Pence, and we have to say, these people suck in general, but for once in their life, they're doing the right thing, which Liz Cheney is doing now, and which Mike Pence did on January 6th. And I still see a lot of people, a lot of liberals and lefties saying that Mike Pence basically saying he shouldn't get any credit for what he did on January 6th.

And I just, I completely disagree with that. And I think today's hearing showed exactly why he should get credit for that. And yes, the bar is low to actually say, you know, to say, well, all he did was follow the Constitution and his oath of office. Granted. But when everyone around you is not doing that, it's very easy to go along with them. And I do think he deserves credit for not going along with them. And I think today's hearing showed what this country would have been plunged into had he caved

and had he not shown some spine? And remember, like we said, 40 feet away were people chanting hang Mike Pence. And he stood up to those people. And that ain't nothing. Yeah. I mean, I think that they wanted to hang him. They built a gallows. Like, you've heard people before Republicans defending the January 6th insurrection saying that it wasn't a working gallows.

Right. Okay. I mean, I guess. I mean, I've heard that excuse, but it wasn't a working gal. I think we can still say that nobody had good intentions for Mike Pence that day. And, you know, Mike Pence, you know, he refused to leave and he stayed and he certified the election. I think what I was struck by was, I'm telling you, there are some really angry conservative lawyers who do not like. You know, I thought George Conway was the angriest conservative lawyer, but some of these guys are really mad.

Please play the Eric Kirchman clip. It was the day after Eastman. I don't remember why he called me, or he texted me or called me, wanted to talk with me, and he said he couldn't reach others. And he started to ask me about something dealing with Georgia and preserving something, potentially for appeal. I said to him, are you out of your effing mind? Right? I said, I only want to hear two words coming out of your mouth for now on. Orderly transition.

And he said, I don't want to hear any other effing words coming out of your mouth no matter what. Other than orderly transition, repeat those words to me. And I'm reading that. Eventually, he said orderly transition. I said, good, John. Now I'm going to give you the best free legal advice you're ever getting. in your life, get a great F-N criminal defense lawyer, you're going to need it. And then I hung up on them.

But I have to say, I think the line of the whole thing is I've decided I should be on the pardon list, if that's still in the worst. Yeah. I think that that may be the line of the day. Yeah, I would like to say, by the way, that I also think I should be on the pardon list just in general. I know, it's such a great line that I've decided I should be on the part of it. Like, okay. Is that how this works? Well, also, like, Eastman is a lawyer.

So he knows, I mean, he does, I mean, he doesn't know the law. And, I mean, I think there was a moment, right, where Eastman said, where Trump, where Eastman was told his theory was bullshit. And he sort of, and both Trump and he, so they both knew that none of this was real, right? there was that moment. Yeah, that was a big thing in today's hearing. You had people testifying that they talked to Eastman and that Eastman basically agreed with them that his whole theory was, you know, as Bill Barr would say, bullshit. So you have him on the one hand saying, you know, that he knows what he's doing is wrong. And I think it'll be interesting for Bar associations to take a listen to today's hearing in that regard. Because it's one thing to just be a shitty lawyer. It's another. thing to actually know you're being a shitty lawyer. And he clearly knew he was being a shitty lawyer. Possibly the most chilling testimony I think we saw today was Mark Short, Pence's chief of staff, saying that just before they had to relocate the vice president to this secure location from the

actual floor of the Senate, I guess it was, that Mark Short sent an email to John Eastman, basically saying, I guess you said that you told the president that this plan was stupid. I guess the president didn't get that memo. And he said, and now because of you, the vice president's life is in danger. And this all happened because of you. And Eastman replied and, and, and said, well, you know how the president is once he gets an idea in his head. And he said, but the reason that you guys are in danger is because you didn't have the courage to do the right thing here, basically. Even though he, so that's Eastman now like doing this unbelievable victim shaming and victim blaming rather of, of, of, of, of, Pence saying, well, you're in danger because you refuse to violate the Constitution.

And it was like, oh my God. So here's this guy, John Eastman, who knows his theory is bullshit and yet is still blaming the people who won't go along with this theory for the fact that they are now in literal danger for their lives. And to me, that is like if you want to talk about a guy who's just, that's just straight up sociopathic and that's just totally was chilling to me. These are not good people. You're going to go out of a limb here. Yeah, I'm going to agree with you. And they would do anything to cling to power.

And I think that's where we're at. No, you're right. And I think that's, again, that's what a lot of today's hearing seem to be about is that basically, you know, with Trump, it's always hard to tell what he knows is garbage and what isn't. Trump didn't care whether it was garbage or not. He just wanted to stay in power. And today's, you know, today's hearing pretty much laid out the fact that. that that was all Donald Trump cared about, which again is not something we didn't know, but it's good to see it laid out. It's good to have it put in the historical record like this.

And, you know, maybe I'm naive in thinking there will, you know, once the cities are underwater, that the historical record will even matter. But I do think stuff like this is important. And I do think they did a really good job today of laying out just how. I honestly don't know if you can call them immoral or amoral. Like, I really can't tell at this point. They have no morals. I know that. The only thing I would say about this hearing, especially today, is that this is so big.

Like, I feel like it's bigger than I thought it was on January 6th. Yeah. And the fact that they sat on it for 18 months, I mean, like, the hearings are great and they're doing an incredible job. And it's like such a clear, like, this is how hearings need to be. And this is how the Mueller hearing should have been. and this is how you do hearings in this 20, 22 world. The fact that they sat on this stuff for 18 months is like, I couldn't have sat on this for 18 months.

I would have been like, you guys, this is democracy. And I don't love that they sat on this for 18 months. And I think it's hurt them and it's hurt us as a country. I have agreed with that, but I also think that I don't know that I would use the phrase sitting on it because I feel like what they've been doing is putting this case together by doing all these interviews and calling all these witnesses and doing all this, you know, research and whatever. So I feel like, you know, what we're watching is not fact finding. They already know what they've found. And this is, this is sort of a closed, I still feel

to me like this is a closing argument. Like this is, here's our case. Well, here's what we've learned in the past 18 months. And I do feel like in general, that's, yes, there's value in finding out this information and seeing it as, as it happens. But it's also. and I think it was you that brought this up on the last episode. You know, we have no attention span in this country. And people would not watch six, seven hours a day of hearings that, you know, maybe you get three or four nuggets in that time period. But they will watch.

I mean, we saw 20 million plus people watch the primetime version of this. By the way, I wish the rest of these were prime time as well. This to me is more of a, here's what we've been doing for the last 18 months. It's sort of like, it's like an oral presentation at the end of, the term, you know, to get your degree or whatever. So I agree. It sucks that we are 18 months out. And, you know, this allows that hideous GOP Twitter account to tweet old news every time as if that matters. Well, they can't say anything else, right? They don't want to say like, it's not true because

there's video. I know. So they have to be like, well, it happened a long time ago, like more than a year. You know, and it lets Kevin McCarthy and other boneheads like that say, the American people don't care about the past. They're looking forward. They care about the gas pump. It's like, you know what, I don't care if only 30% of the country cares that we are in some serious danger of not being a republic. It's still important. Whether it was then or 18 months later, I'm glad it's being done. I totally hear your point on, yeah, it would have been nice if this, you know, had happened at the end of January 2021 and we saw all this. But, you know, I think one of the problems with the, with the Mueller hearings were those were more in the vein of fact finding, it seems to me. And so you end up with

Yeah, I think that's a good point. So you end up with stuff that maybe doesn't go the way you want it to, whereas they've pretty much, they've done, this is, for lack of a better word, this is a show. And I don't mean that in any kind of denigrating way. I just mean that in this is a, you know, here's the, all the boring stuff we've been doing for the last 18 months. Here's why it's important, and here's what we found out. And I think that's, good way to go. Do you guys notice that Betty Thompson towards the end of the presentation hinted at possibly reforming it so that the vice president wouldn't be allowed to overturn an election? I thought that was interesting since everybody keeps saying this is about Trump,

but actually seems like they might be looking to make sure this doesn't happen again. Yes and no. I mean, I think I don't know that it has to be reformed in the legal sense because it seems pretty clear that Pence could not have done what Trump wanted him to do legally or constitutionally. That said, yeah, I guess there maybe should be a way to reform it so that they can't even do it illegally or unconstitutionally. I don't know what that would be. But look, I'm a crazy person who thinks that, you know, and I've been saying this for well over a decade who thinks the electoral college needs to eat shit and should just be thrown in the trash and that it should be one person, one vote in the country. And that would put a stop to all of this. But I know the

committee is not allowed to get into that and people are mad that, you know, there were some rumors that they were going to suggest that and people started wigging out because apparently they enjoy this system that was invented back when votes had to be communicated by horseback riders, but whatever, man. Just if you got rid of the electoral college, I'd get rid of all of this. Like if there's one election that should be federalized in this country, it should be the president of the United States. But I know I'm a dreamer and a crazy person. No, I agree. And I think, though, that's certainly true.

Jay Michelson is a contributing writer at The Daily Beast in New York Magazine. Welcome back to the new abnormal Jay Michelson. I can't tell whether this is going to be an episode of the new abnormal or fever dreams, because it's like the overlap of the crazy and the death of democracy all wrapped up in like one pigging blanket. Yeah, that's what we do here. We just do it all. Let's talk about Fox News's favorite Supreme Court justice. Except when it has anything to do with the January 6th panel, which, you know, isn't really happening, according to a lot of Fox News.

So, yeah, they're going to have a challenge. He's going to be in the news cycle for the wrong reason, not taking away your rights, but actually, you know, helping to destroy democracy. So explain to me what's happening here. What is, what have you found? Oh, you know what? I'm going to like do a different thing from what I use. usually do. Here's the conclusion. If this is not an impeachable offense for Supreme Court Justice, if what we've seen, you know, come out in evidence is true, right, which we don't yet 100% know.

If true, this is the most impeachable offense I've ever seen in my entire life. I mean, this is not a gray area case. This is unbelievable. You know, we're both pretty cynical at this point. So if true, here's what seems to have happened. So John Eastman, one of the somewhat more crazy lawyers who tried to overturn the 2020 election said at one point that there seems to be a heated fight underway among the justices. And that's interesting. I don't know how he actually knew that, but now it seems that he knew that from actually being in touch with Jenny Thomas, the wife of one of the justices, who is also a well-known conservative activist. So that's a pretty big deal, right? We were worried and justifiably about the leak of the Roe versus Wade overturning draft

opinion in the Dobbs case. That was a significant breach of Supreme Court protocol. And while not as important as the decision itself is pretty important. This is that 10 times that. This is an actual sitting justice, not some random clerk or something like that. Apparently, again, I won't keep caveating this, but I'm not assuming all of this is proven because it's not, but if true, disclosing secret, confidential and, to put it mildly, highly sensitive deliberations of the Supreme Court justices to somebody who he knows, his wife, he knows, is closely involved with the effort to overturn the election. And it's fine that they have separate careers and they have separate lives. That's fine. But, you know, Molly, if I disclose this to you, we don't have to be married

for me to realize that that would probably be a problem, right? That disclosing to somebody with a close degree of not just interest, but actual active participation in this effort. And that's bracketing what the effort actually is, which is overturning an election, right, which is trying to mount some sort of a coup. So even if this was some boring insurance transaction that we were involved in, This would be a massive violation of judicial ethics. And the fact that it took place in the context of January 6th is beyond shocking. I mean, in today's polarized America, it is clear, right, that Ginny Thomas, I mean, they're just, she wrote emails to everybody in the world about overturning this election.

I mean, she had basically had, you know, an email server that was like, coup. But I don't quite understand, like, everyone is so partisan. how would you do this? So I want to take a risk here, which is actually saying something principled rather than just pragmatic. So, yes, pragmatically speaking, it is impossible to imagine that there'd be, you know, 60 votes in the Senate or whatever to remove Justice Thomas from office. I get that. However, this is not like an edge case. This isn't, this is way stronger than the impeachment, you know, articles against Donald Trump were, in my opinion.

Right. This is, and there's not, we can get into the weeds a little bit. it, there's not a sort of clear standard. There's not a set of rules that govern Supreme Court justices the way every other federal court judge is governed and held to a code of ethics. That parenthetically should probably change, and this should be the case study for why they should change. But nonetheless, the Constitution specifically states that Supreme Court justices serve as long as they're basically on good behavior, which is funny. It kind of makes it sound like junior high school, but that's what the Constitution says. With a nice touch, it spells behavior

the British way with the U in there. that has not been tested. We do not have precedent that clearly indicates, like with high crimes and misdemeanors, we don't really know what that means either. And there's just not a lot when it comes to impeachment. There's not a lot of record. There is one Supreme Court impeachment that kind of almost happened of Justice Samuel Chase in the 19th century. There were floated ideas of impeachments during the Nixon administration, actually, trying to go against his ideological opponents. But admittedly, we don't have a lot of record on that. But that shouldn't stop this. from happening, right? If this is not good behavior, right? If Justice Thomas were on,

were a federal appellate court judge, he would clearly have violated the judicial code of ethics. I spent time this afternoon looking it up just to be sure that that was true. It is obviously true. It's not a closed case. So will this be now? I mean, the Democratic leadership can decide if this is a political winner or loser and it may turn out to be a loser. I have no idea. But on principle, you know, speaking of somebody who does still sort of care about the rule of law, this is, It's a massive violation of everything that any judge is supposed to stand for. So let's talk about John Eastman, because John Eastman is like a favorite. They talk to John Eastman and explained to our listeners.

It seemed like what I heard in these hearings today was John Eastman knew he was full of shit and continued on anyway. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's a good summary of what we now know about John Eastman. It's also true about what we know about Trump himself. You know, there was this kind of, and maybe there still is, this kind of weird twilight zone. where folks on the extreme right are doing things which are just obviously crazy, right? And they just seem to fly in the face of what used to be consensual reality. And so part of the question, I just remember for four years of covering the Trump administration is like, what does he believe, like, what some of the stuff that he's saying, like that, you know,

undocumented immigrants are, you know, rapists and murders or whatever. Does he believe this? Is he just saying it? So one of the kind of takeaways from the January 6th hearings is that, yeah, they, were told by all the grownups in the room that, you know, there was no basis for overturning the election, there was no widespread systemic fraud, and that they knew what they were doing was factually false. I feel like I'm sounding like, you know, Sean Spicer and Kellyanne Conway, like, you know, back before we had alternative facts, there was one set of facts, and they

knew that the facts did not support their position, and they went forward anyway. That is certainly the case, it seems, from what we've heard, but I think this Jenny Thomas connection, it's always been problematic that the wife of a Supreme Court justice has been as politically involved as she has been. That's not really happened before. It's not per se, you know, illegal or a violation of ethics, but it's just very unprecedented. It's very strange to have this happen. And now we're actually seeing how that, how the rubber hits the road. There was a very special guest at this hearing today, a very special lawyer, very respected conservative lawyer. Explain to us the dynamic there with Jay Lettig, because Eastman was one of his clerks, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's funny that when I was in law school and we were all getting clerkships and trying to get clerkships. And, you know, Judge Ludig was not like, this was not like someone who my, who I was looking at, right? I mean, this is somebody who had very, you know, unimpeachable conservative credentials and, you know, has made a lot of decisions that I found, you know, problematic. on the merits. Beyond the pale. But so did Liz Cheney, right? I mean, it's not, you know, there's some idea that like, these are the good guys, and they are the good guys in this, in this, you know, in this dispute. But these are not people who, you know, have been the allies of the oppressed for the last several decades. So for him to come out, you know, as firmly as he did, you know, it's kind of,

it's a lot to put it on Liz Cheney and like two or three other members of Congress to kind of carry what's left of the sane Republican Party on their backs, right? So to have a decision. distinguished jurist come out and say what he did, you know, with somebody who's, again, unimpeachable credentials. It's frustrating in a sense because it, you wonder to whom that matters, right? It just confirms what liberals already believed. And, you know, as soon as, it's like as soon as you make any statement that might be against Donald Trump's interest, you're kind of canceled, right? It's like the right wing cancel culture. Like, no matter what you've done over your distinguished 50-year judicial career. But nonetheless, you know, this should have been a wide nonpartisan,

bipartisan investigation. As it is, it's a very narrow bipartisan investigation. So anything that makes it a little bit more about the sane versus the insane or the people who are not criminals investigating the potential criminals, you know, that's important. And that was part of the, again, the takeaway from today. But it's pretty unusual to have a judge testifying against one of his clerks, right? I feel like, you know, I clerked for Judge Garland back when he was Judge Garland before Attorney General Garland or, you know, ripped off Supreme Court Justice Garland. I feel actually like he would do it in a hot minute, you know, if I'd been engaged in the kind of misconduct that's at issue here. You know, I just was too boring. I didn't, you know, I don't think I've, yeah, I haven't earned it yet.

Yet, there's still hope. I'm going to read you a haiku and I want you to respond. I've decided I should be on the pardon list if that's still in the works. Discuss. Wait, that was a haiku. There were way more than five syllables and so I was too busy counting syllables. You got to do it again. Eastman wrote following, I've decided I should be on

the pardon list if that's still in the works. Oh, right. That was a high haiku, huh? Discuss. It was sort of. All right. Close enough. What do you think of that? So on this one, I'm less aghast than I might otherwise be. I mean, I think when there's members of

Congress who claimed that they did nothing wrong saying they should be on the pardon list. That to me is, you know, I think it's easy to say, of course, it's easy to like imagine that this is an admission of guilt. Like, what are you being pardoned for if you haven't done anything wrong? At the same time, you know, they know that a hostile administration is coming in. They know, you know, I do think that Eastman and others like him believe that this is political and the Democrats are going to come after him. So I don't make too much out of his request to be on the pardon list because he's right. I mean, he has.

So even if he hadn't been a complete crook, I think, I think I would have, you know, he would have sent that email or whatever it was that message. You know, you got to cover your butt. You're not doing that if you think you did nothing wrong. Yeah, I feel like, you know, the precedent for this is Watergate and, you know, kind of blanket pardons. And I think making sure you're on the list is part of that. It's almost like your due diligence, you know, like you're checking out. I'm moving. So I'm involved in the real estate.

buying and selling process right now. So it's like, you know, you want to check out the insulation and the plumbing and, you know, the heating in the basement. And you probably want to make sure you're on the pardon list also. Thank you, Jay Michelson. Thank you, Jay Michaelson. John Allen is a senior politics reporter at NBC News, as well as the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Lucky, how Joe Biden barely won the presidency. John Allen. Molly John fast. Tell me about these hearings.

By the way, have you heard people on the right complain that the hearings are too slick, too televised? I haven't heard that particular criticism, though that it's a fairly common one. Usually if someone thinks that something is too well produced, if someone thinks that a televised hearing seems too much like a commercial or an ad, it is because they believe that it is effective. Exactly. No, whatever criticizes something that's being too slick. It's ineffective. Then they're like, look at the incompetence. I think that's right. Top lines from today go. You know, I think the top line from today is that a couple of things.

To degree to which Mike Pence was the lone man standing between the Constitution and Donald Trump's second term and the narrowness of the guardrails of American democracy, where they can get so thin that it's down to the width of one man. I think that another huge takeaway from today was the extent to which. There were ongoing discussions in the White House among lawyers about the violence that they thought would ensue if this particular line was pursued. And so you've got this sort of long track record of people in the White House saying, like, if Trump tries to stop the electoral vote count or Pence tries to stop it, that you're going to have violence in the streets. In this case, there was going to be violence in the streets because Pence didn't do it. The ability to foresee that, the anticipation of it as part of this discussion is something I don't think we really see. seen laid out in quite that way in quite such a stark way. And then of course, the thing that these lawmakers keep coming back to, and every time they have a hearing, you get more evidence of it,

is Donald Trump either knew or had at least been informed that he lost the election, that there was no legal means for him to overturn the election at the state level, and that, you know, Mike Pence didn't have the constitutional authority to stop the county of the electoral votes. And ultimately, he resorted to inciting a mob to storm the Capitol. And, you know, the detail are sometimes, you know, sometimes it's difficult to get people to focus on the details, but I think each detail, you know, sort of bolsters the case that either Donald Trump knew or should, should have known what he was doing the entire time. I feel like the top line is, when did the president know, and what did the president know

and when did he know it? He knew, he knew it, and he still tried to do it. Yeah, and I think that it may be a mistake to look at anything that happened is particularly accidental. I'm always sort of torn a little bit when I talk to voters who are kind of like January 6th deniers, if you will, because I think most of them aren't denying that Trump was trying to hold power. You know, I think they're denying that it was bad. Right, right, right. I think that's right. It's such an interesting and deeply stupid time in American life. Were you surprised? I was surprised that how bad it was. I'm glad that I'm I'm the one that made you think that this is a deeply stupid time in American life.

It's an observation I have a lot. You were surprised what was so bad, Molly? I was surprised that there were so many instances of Trump knowing and Pence knowing and people saying, like, he can't do this. Like, Trump goes back to the speech and adds, like, the Pence bullying language. Yeah, I mean, there's this act of disdaining. discussion in the White House about whether or not you should honor the Constitution. And Pence is like, yeah, we should honor the Constitution. We should do what the Constitution says, hey, we lost. And Trump's like, no, you're a jerk. You're a wimp. Calls him a qu word. Whatever the key word is. I guess listeners can use their imagination. Can you not say pussy in Congress? I mean, is that some kind of like, do the sex in the city women come out if you say pussy? Like, then Sarah Jessica Parker appears. There are so many things that you just said there that like, I need to. to stop myself from repeating or commenting on. I think you can say that in a congressional hearing.

I can't say it on your podcast if I want to keep my job. Why didn't they do that? Because it was a quote from, I mean, it was on a recording of testimony from Ivanka Trump's former chief of staff who said the P word, like she didn't say the word. She said quote unquote the P word. So that's what they used. But the point is, you know, Trump is berating Mike Pence. he is putting public pressure on him

not only via Twitter but at the at the rally. So he gets out off this call with Pence on the morning of January 6th and he starts screaming and yelling at him and calling him names. Ivanka Trump testified that she'd never heard her father use that tone with Pence before and Pence is like, yeah

dude, I'm not doing it. And then Trump goes out, to your point, adds in all of this, you know, vituperative language about Pence and focuses the anger of the mob on Mike Pence. And then he says, the mob go march to the Capitol. And the mob marches to the Capitol where they meet, guess what, right-wing extremists, the proud boys who have been out scoping the Capitol that morning,

who had arrived there to start the fight before Trump even spoke. And all of a sudden, the people who are rushing the Capitol are chanting, hang Mike Pence. They knew who Trump believed betrayed him. They knew, know who they believe the enemy is. And it's Mike Pence. And here's a guy who is seen in heroic fashion in these hearings, and I think there are a lot of Americans that at least respect what Mike Pence did, even if they don't see him as a hero. And at the same time, like,

he was just fulfilling his constitutional oath. Like, the danger that he was in for just doing his job in our republic is astounding. The mob got within 40 feet of him. Yeah. No, I mean, that picture of Karen Pence closing the shade so that the mob didn't come in and murder our vice president, seemed like a meaningful moment on January 6th. And like whoever the vice president is,

like Americans should want that person protected, first in line to the president. I think it's easier to forget how close we came to the precipice. Yeah. No, I think it's very close. Do you think that tonight talking heads on Fox will defend this? I think probably not. You know, I think they'll talk.

about other things. I think they will... You think they'll just ignore it? Yeah, they'll talk about inflation. And maybe they will make mention of the fact that there was a hearing only to say, look, at the Democrats, are focused on the wrong thing. Yeah. I mean, that is, I've definitely heard people yell at me about inflation. I don't know what that does, but it's nice. They're very excited to do that. I mean, it's possible that you could deal with two things at once, but if you're not dealing with the one thing that is on most people's minds, they won't give you the room to...

deal with two things. Like, you know, I don't know that anybody thinks that Benny Thompson and Liz Cheney, were they not doing this committee, would somehow be solving the inflation problem, you know, like it. How would you even solve inflation? Yeah, I mean, there were ways to do it. Right. I mean, the Fed is, well, they really aren't.

I mean, the Fed is raising rates, but can we talk about this gun legislation? I saw reporting that they were close. Then I heard, saw Cornyn saying that they weren't 100% on the red flag laws and the boyfriend loophole, the two. only parts of this that really have teeth. Then Mitch McConnell said he would go along with it. Do you know where this gun legislation stands now? I do not because I don't think any gun legislation is done until it's done.

Right. There are so many obstacles. I mean, to your point, like the, okay, so what are the two controversial things? Oh, the only two things that gun control advocates actually want. Right. Or think we'll have any, you know, any effect. The thing that struck me as like shockingly too. was like they couldn't even raise the purchase age to 21.

They just were like, we'll do more background checks for people 18 to 21. Like, what? Oh, that's what you're going to do? Like, no assault ban. No assault ban for people under the age of 21. No, just more background checks. Yeah, I mean, the argument from critics is that you can be a soldier. You can be sent to war at 18.

and you shouldn't have to wait until you're 21 to get that right that you're willing to die for. And at the same time, I sort of wonder what the actual real world effect of that would be in terms of, you know, like, would you suddenly see like more signups for the military because people are so desperate to get their hands on a gun that they would sign up for a hitch in order to get a gun? Like, I don't think so. No. I mean, it's crazy. But, I mean, there's always a sort of discussion around it has been for many years around like when you become an adult, you know, that. the right to vote was lowered to 18 during the Vietnam era for the reason that people were being sent to war. And it's certainly like a lively discussion that's been had over time.

And people feel strongly about it one way or the other. Yeah. Molly, when will you become an adult? I will become an adult when I'm 35, which is still five years away. You did get married young. I got married very young. Thank you, John Allen. Thank you, Molly John Fest.

Andy Levy. Molly John Fest. Who is your fuck that guy today? My fuck that guy today is I think the same person who was my fuck that guy a couple days ago. And he is the former football player who is now the Republican nominee for Senate in the... Great state of Georgia. Well, it's the great state of Georgia, but they got a bit of a problem here. And it's Herschel Walker.

So a couple days ago, Delhi Beast reporter Roger Salenberger broke the news that Walker had a 10-year-old son that he fathered out of wedlock, who had been a secret up until now. And I think the day after that, I think it was Wednesday night, Walker's campaign had to confirm that he, in fact, had yet another son with a different woman and a daughter that he had in college that nobody knew about. We're at four now. We're at four children. There's a 30% chance in rising that I am Herschel Walker's son.

and so we're looking into that, as President Trump would say, we're looking into that very, very closely. And all of this would be one thing if it was just, you know, it's not sort of not uncommon in the athletic world for this to happen. I think famously a football player Antonio Cromarty, who played for the Jets for a while, had I think it was eight children with his wife, or six children with his wife and eight children with eight different other women.

So Herschel's got a way to go to catch up to Antonio. The important thing here is that Herschel Walker is one of these people on the right who spends a lot of time yelling at men for having children out of wedlock. And in particular, I believe, yelling at black men for having children out of wedlock. So it becomes a bit of a thing when, you know, part of your stick is doing that. And then it turns out, well, guess what you've been doing this whole time? It starts to get into the Bill Cosby yelling at people to pull their pants up while he was, you know, sexually assaulting woman. after woman after woman. So for that, more so than for actually having the children out of wedlock, Herschel Walker gets by fuck that guy for the second time this week. My question is, how many kids, I mean, are we going to get to a place where, like, Boris Johnson, you're not, he's not even going to be able to answer? Like, Boris Johnson is famous for, like, refusing to answer how many kids he has.

Right. Well, Walker now says, in a statement, he says, I have four children, three sons and a daughter. So I don't see any reason to believe that he might not be telling the truth, given his past. So I guess there's absolutely no way he could have more than the four that we now know about. Yeah. I mean, if you can't take him at his word, then what are we even doing here? If you can't take the word of a federal agent who has won three Nobel Prizes and four Pulitzer's,

then whose word can you take? Listen, it's clearly, I think we all know what's going on here. So who is your fuck that guy for today, Molly? There are so many members of Congress who are, the word is backbenchers, right? People you don't know. People that are not, that don't get famous. I mean, there are a lot of members of Congress who you've never fucking heard of. I make a real point.

I have a real fondness for one, Louis Gomerte. That's the French pronunciation from the great state of Texas. He was a judge. She's leaving Congress in January. It's going to be very hard for me. But I may have found a possible replacement in Congressman Loudermount. Loudermilk. Not to be confused with Trump's lawyer Kenneth Cheesebro.

Yes, exactly. Or Congressman, what the fuck are you even talking about? Congressland, Loudermilk, you never. heard of him because he's a backbencher, but he is most famous for giving tours of the, I mean, it's funny, it's like the first time he's ever been famous, right? Giving tours, uh, where people were taking photographs of the stairwells and the security checkpoints, as one does. There are a number of reasons why this was suspicious. First of all, it was the day before the insurrection. Number two, it was during COVID, so they were not touring the Capitol.

Number three, they were taking pictures of the stairways, and they were, as Mikey Cheryl from New Jersey said, working on reconnaissance for the next day. In typical Republican fashion, Representative Barry Loudermil, as he's known, was indignant that he should ever be accused. choose of doing something he did, because that is the Republican brand. And so he was furious and went to the House Ethics Committee, which, by the way, the House Ethics Committee, if you look at how many cases they brought and how many charges, almost never does the House Ethics Committee ever do it? You know, they might as well be the Gardner's. The Gardner's have more power than the House Ethics Committee for alleging, without evidence, that members of Congress led reconnaissance tours just because he led a reconnaissance tour.

He's furious. Everyone said it was debunked. Even the Wall Street Journal, shockingly, the Wall Street Journal said it was debunked. I think that was on the editorial page, which has a slightly more Republican-leaning ethical standards. I mean, we don't know how connected representative, louder milk is. He's from the great state of Georgia. Of course he is. He's like Marjorie Taylor Green's air apparent for the,

this and for whatever else graduate of Wayland Baptist University, he gets a hearty fuck you. And, you know, I would like to just take a moment to say there are some really terrible members of Congress you've never heard of. And you'll be hearing about them in the coming weeks, but a chip Roy and a louder milk, and there's some real bad backbenchers there.

And for that, I say a hearty fuck you, For the Republican from Georgia's 11th District, 58-year-old, Representative Barry Dean Loudermilk. My favorite part of this story is that he said that they weren't taking pictures of like the stairwells and the exits and stuff like that. They were taking pictures of the little trains. Right, the little trains. Yeah. I like that. I do think in fairness to Congressman Loudermilk, it may not be that he was sort of a co-conspirator.

he just may have been so stupid he didn't realize what he was doing. Like, that's always a possibility with these guys. Yeah. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

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