The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Perfected It, But GOP Has Long Courted The Crazy Vote

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Donald Trump often gets credit for his Rumpelstiltskin-like ability to spin the most demented parts of the American psyche into political gold. But in his new book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How The Republican Party Went Crazy, David Corn traces the lineage of the GOP’s love of lunatics all the way back to the 1950s and says Trump is just the latest in a long line of morally bankrupt politicians willing to use the chaotic crazy generated by the darkest parts of society to fuel their ambitions. “Far Right extremism, including paranoia, racism, tribalism, conspiracy theories, … what we’ve seen under Donald Trump is nothing new. It might be the culmination, it’s not an aberration,” Corn said. Corn, a veteran journalist, author and Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones, joined the political podcast The New Abnormal to explain just how American brains became so broken. 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 Info. 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. 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. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal. And we thank you so much for being here.

Today we have an extra special guest with David Korn, who's of course the D.C. Bureau Chief of Mother Jones and an MSNBC analyst. But today we're going to talk to him about his new book, American Psychosis, a historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy. And he's going to tell us about exactly that. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Yes, please. Clips.

I need the clips. Not ready. I need the clips. So you two, you know, you were bored depended. I could just tell it about you. You came out of the womb with takes. DJ, TJ or Donald Trump Jr. As some people know him as, he had to be born again to do it.

So what was interesting for politics for me being where I'm from is, like, it was actually really cathartic. Now I can go do the things that I'm into. Right. You know, when before it was like I was sort of putting on a suit and showing up to a boardroom in New York. city, you know, I may have, you know, spent the weekend at my cabin. Like, I didn't spend a weekend in New York in probably a decade in the city, meaning I'd go up to my cabin, I'd be fly fish, I'd be shooting, I'd be hunting. And it's like, I felt like every day I was putting on a suit. Like, I was faking it. Politics, as vicious, as brutal as it was, as much as they,

you know, tried and continued to try to sort of destroy me and my family. It was like, like, I was like, oh, like, it was actually, like, I found a sort of freedom at, like, 38, like started almost, you know, anew, which is not something a lot of people sort of have that opportunity to do where, again, I was, it was very different than that business. So for me, again, as vicious as it was, I was like, this is great. And, you know, just went from there. So what political, what, writer? I mean, a politician, does he have an elected office? He, I guess he found his calling, which is tweets. Tweeting and going on podcasts and making really dumb speeches and going on Fox News.

He has had a tough life, I have to say. And my heart goes out to him. And I'm glad that at 38 he was able to sort of find himself because he had it rough before than having to put on a suit five days a week and go sit in a boardroom where absolutely nobody paid attention to him. Father's fake company. Yeah, it was hard. He made millions of dollars for doing not a goddamn thing. And so I say good for him. And I wish he would speak a little more slowly,

but I understand that when certain areas of the brain get activated by certain substances, one of the things that happens is you speak more quickly and tell people about your screenplay. I don't want to read Don Jr.'s screenplay. Again, I have sympathy for them. man. Yeah, well, that makes one of us. I know I said you guys were bored to do takes, but you guys can't even identify what type of content creator he is.

He's a Rumbler. Oh, is he a Rumbler? Rumbler. Yeah, you know, like, you know, there's YouTubers, there's tweeters, there's Rumblers. He's a Rumbler. All right. Is he on locals? What the hell is that?

That's Dave Rubin's this little thing. Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, that sounds right. Dave Rubin, so dumb. That's perfect. Well, the bad news is we haven't moved past the portion of this episode where we're going to discuss the people who are not the brain trust of the other party in our country. Sarah Palin has some feelings about her recent loss.

That harms the entire nation. So I think the entire country should be angry at what's going on with this establishment system. And it was the political establishment that created this system with the ranked choice voting and without encouraging the other Republican to drop out once you got. thumb three times. Others should be outraged about what's going on here because we our system is harming the rest of the U.S. It is not. So Alaskans voted for ranked choice voting. Yes. You'll, you may remember as Alaska is the place that Sarah Palin was from where she doesn't, I don't, I'm not sure she still lives there, but she is running for Congress there. She was a governor

of the state for like six months. Yeah. Well, she just left early under a cloud of corruption. Who's to say left a year early? Turns out people don't like it when you leave your job a year early under a threat of corruption. I love this race because two Republicans are still fighting it out and neither wants to drop out. So, Dianu, good luck team. Have fun. Yeah, there's actually a chance that the Democrat is going to win this. She could stay.

She won it four months ago. Yeah. Yeah, no, I know. Mary Peralta. It's amazing that Palin won't drop out and blames it on the other guy who has much higher favorables than she does. Not saying much, by the way, but yes, more popular than her. You know, her favorables are in the tank. Again, she quit on her last political job in the state, so no surprise there.

She's also very, very Trumpy. Yeah. Some would say she was sort of the forbearer of the Trump family. I wrote that she was in my newsletter. Wait, what? Anyway, that's something I've been saying for months. I seem to remember myself saying that she was the spiritual grandmother of Trumpism. But perhaps I am confused.

But I'm with you, though. I hope she does not drop out of this race. Good for her. You keep fighting, Queen. You keep fighting. Wasala needs you. Oh. Wasilla.

Wasilla. Whatever. Wakanda. Now I'm sad about the queen again. Now you're going to cancel. The real queen. The real queen. Okay. Moving on. Sarah Palin. Moving on to the Senate. Mitch McAtel. Never a profile in courage.

He's asked about Trump's recent troubles and he does not have much to say. Do you think it's appropriate the way that the former president was storing those top secret and classified documents at his private estate at Marlago. Yeah, I don't really have any comments on this, this whole investigation that's been dominating the news for the last month. I think we're following it like all of you are. Those are classified documents, Mr. Leader. I mean, that's important. You don't have any comment on that? Yeah, he doesn't have any comment. I'm the leader of the Senate Republicans, and I have no comment on the Senate.

story that's been dominating the news for the last month about a member of my party. The leader. Not even a member. The leader of my party. That's what you want. That's leadership right there. That's what that is. I'm no fan of Mitch McConnell, but I have to say that every time I talk about him.

But the fact that he said dominating the news cycle for a month, like, you know, he wouldn't have said that if he didn't want to stick it to Donald Trump a little bit. And remember, Donald Trump has recently been quoted about how Mitch McConnell is a broke-down hack. Right. I mean, the two men clearly hate each other. No, I agree with you. He sort of did the passive-aggressive thing there. Right. Like everyone's been talking about it, but I'm not going to talk about it. Right. Exactly. I have nothing to say about the news story about the former president who stole classified documents and kept them in a hotel. I have nothing to say about that. Exactly.

Well, it doesn't get much better in the brain trust of the Senate. Oh, come on. Wait, are we done? No. Jesus Christ. Just nothing from Pennsylvania. That's all I ask. It's all from Pennsylvania.

I know Molly asserted what a great surge of Dr. Oz is, but the policy stuff. Jesus Christ. How do I die on this hill? I don't like him. I just, you know, it's okay to say someone's a good surgeon. It doesn't mean he's a good senator. Well, he's not very good at the policy stuff, which is part of the Senate. Now, when you go home today, what did you do?

I think you have to think about 15-minute physicals. Your local hospitals will fund these. They're incredibly inexpensive to run. You can screen thousands of people for almost nothing, and you allow a conversation and take place in more of a festival-like setting. It's not scary. And I mentioned earlier that almost everybody who comes to our 50-minute physicals has a job, but a lot don't have insurance.

Give them a way of crawling back out of the event. abyss of darkness, of fear over not having the health they need, and give them an opportunity, because they don't have the right to health, but they have the right to access a chance to get that health. That's the clip? You're not going to do the clip about the penises? I think I missed out on Dr. Oz talking about penises, sadly. Yeah, you did, man.

All right, I don't know. I like this. My favorite part of that is the festival setting. Yeah, Fire Fest for your health. Dr. Oz 2022. It's like spinal tap in a festival crowd. There's so much opo research on him. They just can dump it every day until he loses.

I guess I sort of understand when he says don't have the right to health. I guess what he means there is that, you know, some people are just going to have health problems. But what a dumb way of saying it. Like, that's just, oh, boy. We're going to be here forever. You know, this just keeps going. I know, and people are going to keep saying, well, he's a great surgeon, and we're going to have to keep listening to it, to people defending him and taking his side. Oh, Jesus Christ.

Yelling about how you won't hear this in the media, but he's a really good surgeon, and it's just, I'm sick of it. Again, I think we have to open our eyes to the fact that it's possible that Dr. Oz doesn't want to win. I don't think, no. I think he's just bad. this. Yeah, he's bad. I really do. I think he's just really, really bad at this. I don't think it's that he doesn't want to win. I mean, he's putting the time in, you know, he's out there trying to make vegetable plates and stuff like that. That's not something you do. Crude de Tate. Crude de Tate. Oh, God. All right. I have one last one for you guys for our reoccurring segment.

What the hell is Herschel Walker's sake? In all schools, you've seen it. All kids are behind because they want to be woke. They want to be woke. What about teaching them how to write? What about teaching them how to read? What about teaching them how to spell? But right now, we've elected people to watch that monorprofit off their backs or the misery that give it to us.

No. I'm not. No. I refuse to participate in this. I have a question. Uh-huh. No. What the hell is Herschel Walker saying?

This one sounds like his son wrote it. I can't. I can't. I can't participate in this. I'm sorry. David Korn is D.C. Bureau Chief of Mother Jones, an MSNBC analyst, and the author of American Psychosis, a historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy. Welcome back to the new abnormal, David Korn. It's great to be with you and your abnormality.

Thank you. I want this. to be about me. American psychosis, a historical investigation of how the Republican Party went crazy. So my first question has to be, David Korn, how did the Republican Party go crazy? Well, the real answer is that it's always been. I mean, I mean that someone's just, but it's been, the premise of my book is that the Republican Party has for decades exploited and encouraged far-right extremism, including paranoia, racism, tribalism, conspiracy theories, and that what we've seen under Donald Trump is nothing new.

It might be the culmination. It's not an aberration. And the book goes back to the 50s and starting McCarthyism and shows that again and again, the Republican Party, its leaders, its presidential candidates, its presidents, have courted, flirted with, whatever you want to call it, with far-right fanatics and far-right fanaticism to gain voters, support, raise money. And Trump did was basically take what had been the dark side of the Republican Party, the unacknowledged side of the Republican Party that has often been undercovered by the news media and certainly not, you know, not acknowledged or recognized by the

Republic of the party itself. He took all that and he made it front and centered. There is no reason to hide it anymore in the basement or the attic. You can put it at the dining room table and say, this is who we are. And he was right. I mean, when he started running in 2015, it was an open question. What type of support he would get with his anti-Muslim bigotry, his support of conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, his tribalism, his birtherism, you know, who knew how far he could get? Well, it turns out that the Republican Party was there for it. The base, the voters, they were there for it. They've always been there. This element had always been there. And he hugged it in front of everybody. Would you say it was more that he said the quiet part loud?

Yeah, I mean, I think to a certain degree, if you go back to McCarthyism, McCarthy said the quiet part very, very, very loudly. He said that there was an immense conspiracy run by Democrats in the government, including George Marshall, who was the Secretary of Defense at the time, who had been Army Chief of Staff, helped win World War II, and then helped save Europe with the Marshall Plan. He said there was a conspiracy led by George Marshall and other Democrats to weaken the United States. purposefully so that the Soviet Union could take over. He said it very loudly, and the Republican Party said, you go. And they lionized him, and they swung behind him. And when Dwight Eisenhower campaigned with him in 1952, he endorsed McCarthyism. So in those days, that was saying the conspiracy of the crazy part allowed.

You know, when Richard Nixon, in 68, cut a deal with white supremacists to get the nomination for the Republican Party presidential nomination, he did not advertise that fact. He cut that deal. He said quietly. You know, Ronald Reagan, when he embraced the moral majority, while members of the moral majority leadership were publicly calling for the execution of gay people, I'm not making this up. They were saying that gay people could be executed because they violated the word of God, and they were leaders of the moral majority, Ronald Reagan was fully embracing the moral majority in Jerry Falwell and saying you are doing this country a great service.

You know, Boehner welcomed the Tea Party when the Tea Party, the core of its ideology, if you call it that, was that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, was a secret Muslim, secret socialist who had a plan to destroy the economy so he can impose a totalitarian dictatorship on the nation. Glenn Beck said this. And Republicans flocked to his show. And this is what was said at Tea Party rallies led by Michelle Bachman and where John Boehner appeared. So at times they've been quiet about it. At times they haven't been quiet about it. But it's always been sort of a side story. At least they believed it was and peddled it that way. Donald Trump said, hey, come into the spotlight with me. Right. As someone whose grandfather was jailed by these very people. There is that. Yeah, I have some experience with what's happening. You do see how the direct line between the Tea Party and Trumpism, I mean, they set the table and Trump just walked in there. I mean, what do you think about, like these people like Joe Walsh, who are Tea Party people, you know, now condemning Trumpism? It's interesting because there was sort of an anti-government element, small government, libertarian element to the Tea Party.

And the Republican Party has always had been the party opposed to government. Now, there are different ways to be opposed to government, right? They're saying, we don't believe there should be social welfare programs. We don't want the government involved in education. And it's a policy-driven. It's a libertarian view, whatever. Then there's the QAnon anti-government strain, the conspiratorial anti-government strain that McCarthy started, which is the government is run by evil.

people or Pat Robertson would Pat Robertson would say and did say a satanic cabal that wants to destroy us and you know the Tea Party encompassed both although I think it's emotional energy was more

of the crazy conspiratorial side so it did suck people in like Joe Wash people who were you know far right very extreme libertarians and conservatives but I you know he came at some point to see that the crazy was more the point of Tea Partyism or of Sarah Palinism,

which started, you know, was a few years before the Tea Party, a year or two before the Tea Party, when you'd go to rallies and people would call for the execution of Barack Obama. Kill him, kill him. He's a traitor. You know, she was, you know, I started this by saying he powed around with terrorists, and it played off the whole birtherism that he was a fraud. Right. By the way, that terrorist was Bill Ayers, who was one of their underground weathermen, and he was, you know, was at University of Chicago. I mean, it's not like this was, you know, he had known him in academic circles.

I mean, it wasn't like he was. Yeah, it wasn't even a close friendship. It was, you know, the interaction because they were in the same academic community in Chicago. So it was totally made up. And, you know, it wasn't just Palin, but McCain campaign. I mean, we lionized John McCain now, and I knew the man, and I liked him in a lot of ways, but the McCain campaign told Palin to attack Barack Obama for his loose connection to Bill Ayers. So they wanted to other him.

They wanted to make it seem like he was an extremist. And again, this is all about feeding on paranoia of conspiratorial notions, the idea that the Democrats and liberals are not just opponents, but enemies, who want to destroy the country. The Tea Party wasn't out there saying that Obama was wrong with his housing policies or with his health care plans. Glenn Beck was saying this is intended to destroy America. He's going to set up concentration camps. And John Boehner and other Republicans going on the show validating this nonsense. And I think that's a really important point.

So what can we sort of learn from history that could conceivably help? America in the future? Well, that's a great question. What I saw in writing the book, American psychosis, is that there is this deep, ingrained pattern, that what Trump is doing is not an aberration.

He may be doing it to a higher degree than Republicans and conservatives that in the past, but it's always, always has been there. And the idea of exploiting and capitalizing and taking advantage of people's fears, grievances, and resentment,

by appealing to violence, conspiracy theory, nuttery, and the like, has always been part of the Republican playbook. So I think if you understand that, it gives you at least some historical context as we try to comprehend what is going on now. Like in the last few weeks, we've had this debate or discussion about Biden saying that MAGA extremism, maga republicanism, is akin to semi-fascarion.

You know, that's exactly what the type of thing I've been thinking about and that I address in the book, the strift towards authoritarianism. So I think if we understand that it's not just because of Trump, it's because there is a base of tens of millions of Americans who have always been susceptible to these arguments that Republicans have always used to some extent, that it kind of makes you think, okay, how can this be addressed? And I think the idea of going back to your father's Republican Party, which was something that Joe Biden and others used to talk about, they don't do it so much anymore, is an idea that won't rise to the task at hand. And if you can't, you know, get the Republican Party back on track or to, you know, move back from this embrace of extremism, then I think you have to think about how to segregate it, which sounds both tough and difficult.

You know, if there are 30% of the public, you know, is invested in Trump and Trumpism and conspiracy ideas and, you know, extremism and tribalism, whether it's racist or not, what do you do about that? Are there ways to keep that group as small as possible, try to appeal to the Americans who might drift in that direction but not go all the way, or at least show people in the very, very, very thin middle what the, what this, part of the country is representing and up to, and try to make them see it as clearly as you do so that you can create some buffers and some lines of resistance against that.

And just, you know, they're going to do what they're going to do and they have disproportionate political power because of gerrymandering and because of the way the Senate is structured and because of electoral college. But it's still a minority. And if you can see that, you know, it's not a persuadable minority and that it is indeed

a long-term threat that It won't disappear if Trump says he's not running, that perhaps you can come up with some strategies over the long run, because it's not a short-term solution here to keep that threat at bay. Do you think that's possible? Years ago, I had a great conversation with Joe Biden when he was vice president. And it happened to be at a Washington, D.C. cocktail party. And we were talking about Afghanistan and how difficult it was. It was towards the beginning of the Obama administration.

and he gave me, I mean, literally for 20 minutes, this long, detailed plan about how the U.S. could possibly succeed in Afghanistan and it meant dealing with these Pakistani officials. And he knew names of deputy ministers in Pakistan and company commanders in Afghanistan. And I was just incredibly impressed. He was a very coherent, you know, well thought out, very in-depth, comprehensive plan. for perhaps winning or not losing in Afghanistan. And at the end of it, I said, do you think that really could work? And he looked at me and he said, ah, 50-50. You can see him saying, right?

And so I think, I don't think we're guaranteed success in this fight here. I do think, you know, what non-Trumpers and non-authoritarians have going for them is that they represent a majority of the country. Right. So if you can figure out how to mobilize and, leverage that majority position, then you probably can succeed. But if you don't fight as hard as the other side, even if there are fewer of them, you know, things could go self. Horribly wrong. It's interesting to me, you have been around a long time. I don't mean you're old,

but I mean you've been doing this for a long time. And so you've lived through many administrations. And you've sort of seen, I think with yesterday's Obama portrait unveiling, there was a kind of like moment of like, oh, this was what normal presidents were like. This ended with Trumpism. I don't think we talk enough about how kind of traumatic it was to go from sort of normal to whatever Trump was. And then there's like a very real anxiety bubbling over under the surface that Trumpism could be bad.

Yeah. Well, Trumpism is still here. If you look at Ronda Santis and you look at, you know, the Dobbs decision and you look at what's happening in states. with terms of Trumpers trying to take control of the vote counting systems. So, you know, it's here, you know, even if, you know, Trump is just doing in Moralago or, you know, reading top secret documents, whatever you might be doing down there. So, you know, so it hasn't, you know, it hasn't gone away, you know, I, you know, I'm not a great fan of

fantasy literature, but I just happened to watch out of curiosity the opening episodes to the Lord of the Rings prequel on Amazon. And it's like, you know, the evil doesn't really go away, just waits and burrows underground and starts making tunnels to use later. And it's sort of a good, you know, metaphor for what's happening, what's happening now. And I do think you're right. Trump was a traumatic shock to the system. And it's hard for people to fully absorb it, to understand its full ramifications and consequences, and to understand what needs to be done to deal with it. You know, big problems like climate change are often hard to address because they seem so big.

And if you have any reason to ignore them, oh, Trump's not in power any longer, you know, the human mind will quickly go to that subway stop and be very happy, right? We don't have to think about that. It's done. It's over. It's too big to deal with. There's nothing I can do. I do think, you know, the traumatization is real and is there, and it can be exhausting.

Constant vigilance is exhausting. But if you're not vigilant, well, you know who that gives an advantage to. Right. It's so interesting. What did you sort of learn from writing this book that you didn't know? Well, I saw a pattern that, I'll say, it seems much clearer to me. I saw it more, you know, I experienced it viscerally, although I might have understood. understood it intellectually previously.

And that is from World War II on, one of the major lines of attack of the Republican Party in one form or another is that the Democrats, liberals, are not just wrong, but they're enemies in the sense that they want to destroy America. They're not really, truly American.

They don't believe in America. They don't understand it. they want to destroy it. It's not even that their policies are wrong. It's that they have, they purposefully hate America and want to bring it down. Obviously, that's McCarthy said, you know, it's what Reagan and the moral majority said in terms of destroying America and Christianity. And it's what Trump says. And it's what Trump says. It's what the Tea Party said about Barack Obama. It's always been in some version or another. They don't like this America. and, you know, the other America, the quiet America that Nixon celebrated, the silent majority.

And so, and you can't, you don't see that. I mean, when Hillary Clinton said that part of Trump's supporters were deplorable, or when it says, Maga Republicans are semi-fascists, I mean, that's as far as any Democrat has gone in terms of saying the other side is a threat. But the Republicans, you know, have said it consistently, and they've backed it up with conspiracy theory and the fueling of paranoia and the exploitation of just outright hatred and racism and bigotry. And that just, you know, is part of the American political culture that hasn't changed. Yeah. So interesting.

Thank you so much, David Korn. Thank you. I hope everyone, you know, buys American psychosis and comes. This great understanding of the terrible moment we're at. Yes. 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. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover

what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.