The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Secretly Loves Steve Bannon and Elon Musk’s MAGA Civil War

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

Donald Trump is secretly excited at the emergence of a civil war among his supporters and allies, according to The New Abnormal co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy. Then, MSNBC political analyst Juanita Tolliver joins the program to talk about her new book, “A More Perfect Party: The Night Shirley Lee Chisholm and Diahann Carroll Reshaped Politics.” Plus! Cara Kelly, editor at large for The Barbed Wire, discusses her recent piece titled “The True Cost of Texas’ Abortion Ban: Rising Deaths, Abandoned Babies, Fewer Doctors.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

MSNBC political analyst Juanita Tolliver joins us to talk about her new book, A More Perfect Party, the Knight Shirley Chisholm and Diane Carroll reshaped politics. Then we'll talk to Kara Kelly, editor-at-large for the barbed wire to discuss her piece of the true cost of Texas's abortion ban. Rising deaths, abandoned babies, fewer doctors, which delves into the devastating effects of the state's restrained. restrictive laws on women's health and medical access. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, we are what? We are a week away from the inauguration of Donald Trump. I know you are very optimistic about the state of democracy as we go forward.

There's actually something going on now with, you know, we hear a lot of talk about civil wars over the past bunch of years between red states and blue states. sometimes within families, and all of it is pretty bleak stuff. But there's actually kind of a civil war going on now that I can get behind, I think. And that is sort of an internal MAGA civil war led on the one hand by Steve Bannon and on the other by Elon Musk. And Bannon, in an interview with an Italian newspaper, I believe over the weekend, said, quote, I will get Elon Musk kicked out by the time he's inaugurated. He won't have a blue pass with full access to the White House. He'll be like everyone else. So you might be thinking,

well, what is this about? And mainly it's about the H-1B visa program, which people like Musk and a lot of other tech bros very much love because it allows them to bring in skilled workers and quite frankly underpay them and have them here under threat of having to leave if they leave their job. And Steve Bannon doesn't like this. And Daniel, I'll let you get into some of the reasons for this. And I'll just say that I'll just close with another thing that Bannon said about Musk. He said he's a truly evil guy, a very bad guy. I made it my personal thing to take this guy down. Before, because he put money in, I was prepared to tolerate it.

I'm not prepared to tolerate it anymore. Danielle, go. It's amazing. There is very little glee and joy headed our way a week from now when Donald Trump becomes officially the president of the United States. The people that are coming into office are absolutely insane, that shit crazy. But I always thought that they seem to have linked arms around common hate. common racism, your garden variety, and then you wake up this morning to Steve Bannon telling

David Sacks, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel to go back to South Africa and saying it with his full chest. And I'm like, oh, so what Democrats have been saying for the longest time about these technocrats, about the broligarchy, has finally started to set off alarm bells inside of Maga World. There is a real divide here between the oligarch maga and the regular average manga. And the divide is an economic one where you have, you know, the broligarchs who want to continue to amass their disgusting amounts of wealth off of the backs of people. And then there are the others who thought that by kicking out a whole bunch of people from the country, then somehow they were going to rise in position and cast inside of the United States. And somehow their lottery dreams were going to turn them into Musk and Ramoswami and Teal and the others.

And I think that what's wild here is that Elon Musk has come out very vocally and been like, no, Americans are dumb. That's why we need people with HB1 visas. He said, y'all are not that bright. And then Vivek backed him up and was just like, yeah, we need outside talent because Americans are not talented and smart. And rather than invest, right, which is what the Democratic Party pretends to do with regard to investing in public education and strengthening STEM and all of these other things, they're like, no, we need a specific type of immigrant to come in.

And Steve Bannon's full-fledged white supremacist ideology is like, no, all immigrants are bad. It's a really deep place that I wish, Andy, that Democrats would find their way to exploiting, to developing a strategy around the exploitation of this deep divide, because I personally think that it is going to get worse in the coming weeks. And I also think that Donald Trump loves it because people are fighting over him. There's nothing a narcissist loves more than that. Yeah, no, I think that's entirely true. Yeah, it is wild.

First of all, you hate to fact check Steve Bannon, but Peter Thiel is not South African. He was born in Germany. His family emigrated to America when he was one year old. He did live in South Africa for a time as a teenager. But, you know, he went to high school in America. He went to Stanford. I mean, telling him to go back to South Africa is silly. But regardless, it's Steve Bannon.

Right. I know. I just wasted valuable listeners' time with that stupid fact check. Anyway, as you pointed out, Danielle, it is an economic split, and it's a split between, I think, I would call it a split between sort of the right-wing populism of Steve Bannon and sort of the almost like the feudalism of Elon Musk and the tech bros, where basically they see people in terms of there are lower class. some of them can work for us, but we are the lords of the manor. And look, another thing you hate to do with Steve Bannon is say you're on Team Bannon. And on this one issue, I am with Steve Bannon mostly. Oh, dear. Has hell frozen over? But none of that mitigates the fact that he's a horrific individual.

He just, on this one issue, he has, if nothing else, he has correctly pointed out what people, like Teal and Elon Musk and David Sachs want. They want to control everything. They want to control everyone. And look, we could talk about the irony of Steve Bannon being a sort of populist while supporting Donald Trump. But, you know, you and I and many others have been talking about for years the ridiculous irony of pretending that Donald Trump is for the people. But this is a nice little civil war. And I agree, I hope the Democrats exploit this. I do. I have faith that they will, not so much. But I do think that, you know, it's going to be interesting because as much as I sort of agree with you that Trump does love this because of the narcissist

in him, it may be a problem later on. If, as you said, if this continues to grow and I'm not entirely sure why it wouldn't, it might drive a big enough wedge into Magadum to be a problem for Trump, although, look, he can't be elected president again. it doesn't mean, you know, whatever. So he may not care. You know, he did what he needed to do. He's not going to jail. Mission accomplished.

It really doesn't matter what he does in the next four years, probably for him. I'm going to slightly disagree. Okay. I'm going to slightly disagree that he doesn't care what he does over the next four years. I think that we have to remember that Donald Trump is a enormous narcissist and egomaniac. And I think that the fact that over the last couple of weeks, we have heard about his advisors needing to call networks to tell him that Donald, to tell them that Donald Trump is still in charge and that Elon Musk is not the president-elect, that while Donald Trump

doesn't really like to work, I mean, we remember his schedule that he was keeping when he was in the White House the first time. I think that he might have kept a schedule, pretty close to mine when I was in college not doing well my freshman year. Like I'm pretty sure he was like rolling downstairs into the whole fucking west wing at like noon. You know what I'm saying? And then breaking for lunch. Yep. Going to McDonald's with his friends and breaking for lunch midway. And then, you know, dipping out by two, three o'clock in the afternoon. So we know he's not a hard worker, I think that he still wants the appearance of him being the strong man. And so what does it do to his ego and the functioning of this second Trump regime when it seems like everyone is vying

to pull his strings, which means that he is not actually the one in control? Because that to me is what is being set up here with this war between Bannon and Musk is like Donald Trump is running the show. And these two people are vying to be the master puppeteer. So I feel like Donald Trump is only going to let this go on for so long before, if not one, the both of them are showed the door because he wants absolute like fealty. And he wants people to think that like he is America's Putin. So those are my thoughts. Yeah, no, I agree with you. And I absolutely did not make this clear. I was trying to parse out how I don't know that a split in MAGA matters to Trump in terms of an electoral coalition because he's not running for president again, which doesn't

mean he's leaving in four years. Don't get me wrong. But he's not running for president again. So that's the only thing I meant. But overall, I completely agree with you, particularly in terms of the I'm in charge, strong man aspect of his personality. So meanwhile, Steve Bannon is not the only feuding with Elon Musk going after Elon Musk. California Governor Gavin Newsom has also been taking Musk to task for, let's call it what it is, for lying about the causes of the horrific Los Angeles fires, what's going on in terms of fighting them, etc. And he, Newsom, has launched a website, California Firefax.com to combat misinterpret and disinformation that we're seeing all over the place from Republicans, both online and,

you know, whenever they open their mouths. And one of the things that they posted there was a video of Musk, I think Newsom posted it on Twitter. It was a video of Musk talking to firefighters and trying desperately to get the firefighter to admit to say, you know, that they were being hamstrung by governor, by DEI, by the city of Los Angeles, et cetera. And the firefighter just refused to keep saying that. And he kept saying, no, that's whatever. That's not it. And Newsom posted this video. Look, I think good for him, I guess, for starting this page. I just hope he realizes it's not the answer. Because so much more needs to be done. And the idea of, well, we're going to launch a website and that'll take care of that. I really hope that's not what they're thinking.

But on the other hand, you know, why not? Why not have a place for accurate information and for pointing out untrue things and correcting the record? Again, I don't think anyone who's out there spouting conspiracy theories or talking about DEI or anything like that is going to go to this website. But you know what? Maybe it gives a family member some ammunition to argue with their parent or child or uncle or aunt or cousin or whatever. And so yeah, sure, certainly not a bad idea. I guess what breaks my heart

here is that it's needed in the first place. Just a couple of months ago, we witnessed massive destruction in North Carolina from Hurricane Helene and then Hurricane Milton. You have devastation that happened from North Carolina down to Florida and folks not wanting to provide information to FEMA because they're receiving information from Truth Social and Elon Musk and these other people that are telling them that FEMA is going to take your land or that they're going to, you know, you need to provide money or you need to provide this, that, and the other thing in order to get the resources that FEMA was providing on the ground. And then on top of which those agents needed to be pulled from North Carolina from doing their work

because there were militias that were on the ground going after FEMA agents. So the fact that this is now become our norm because of Maga and Donald Trump and the web of disinformation that has America in a chokehold for the last decade, to me, is just another, like if you need more signs of the time that we are living in and how dangerous it is, the governor needing to create in the midst of trying to help people on the ground with fires, that are still raging, that he needs to create this website to battle this misinformation inside of the right-wing ecosystem that in 10 years we haven't figured out a way to disrupt. It's terrifying because now in a week's time, they will have more power and more ability

to disorient and disrupt reality for the rest of us. Yeah, for sure. It is an unfortunate fact of life that this is where we are now. some would call it, I don't know, the new abnormal. Oh, damn. But it is where... But so early? But it is where we are.

And like you said, I mean, what it is, it's embarrassing. It's embarrassing for this country. It's embarrassing for humanity that we have to do this and that we have to constantly, when some idiot like lives of TikTok says that California, Southern California, is out of water, which is not even remotely close to the truth. The reservoirs there are at, you know, filled up. They're at record levels, even despite the fact that it hasn't rained in L.A. in forever. But I've said this before.

It used to be that people like Libs of TikTok, they were the people you avoided on the street because they were trying to hand you their pamphlet. And now they have millions of followers who parrot their lies and who parrot the absolute, I'm not even going to call it disinformation. It's straight up disinformation. there's no way not to know that nothing in terms of fighting these fires has to do with the fact that the reservoirs aren't filled. It's a very easy thing to check, in other words. And when you spread stuff like that, you are lying and you're lying on purpose.

So to me, that's disinformation. That is where we are now. And again, I just, you know, I suspect that a website like this probably not going to be able to counter the sheer, amount of disinformation, of lying, of misinformation from people who don't know better, that goes on with whether it's these fires, whether it's a school shooting, whether it's any other type of mass casualty event. It really is the world we live in. And I just, I don't see how it's going to get better, particularly as we see more and more social media companies, basically giving up in terms of fact-checking and not only giving up, but seeming to side with the misinformers and the disinformers.

I mean, I don't even think at this point we can even call it giving up. They are just laying down. Like it is, it is full-fledged, just wave the white flag, you know, whatever, whatever it is you want, dear leader. It is, you know, that Washington Post cartoonist, Antelanis, who quit in protest because of the censorship. around her political cartoon that showed all of these brawagarchs and technocrats holding up a bounty, you know, they're each of them a million bucks to the statue, the bust of Donald Trump is so accurate, is so accurate. And that's why Bezos didn't want it run. Because it's like, you look at this, there is no fight. There's no fight whatsoever. There's no pushback whatsoever. It's just like, please, sir, can I have some more?

Like, it's really terrifying to witness all of this happen. And we have a week to go. And Andy, I have no idea what we look like six months from now, let alone four years from now. As a country, when there is no one standing up for American democracy, there is no one seemingly fighting back. And instead of Democrats even putting together the forces, of younger, passionate, sharper voices in their party, they've decided, nah, let's just continue with the same old, same old, and the Septuagiarians and the Octanajarians, they'll show us the way. Yeah. I, God damn. It feels like once again, Danielle, it's up to the two of us.

And Jesse. Not so much, Jesse. Folks, I am so excited to welcome to the new abnormal. Juanita Tolover, who is the author of the new book, A More Perfect Party. The Knight Shirley Chisholm and Diane Carroll reshaped politics. She is also an MSNBC political analyst and opinion contributor for the Greo. This book is very exciting. And it's exciting because of one, obviously, the cover, the two main people.

It's like, it's almost as if I wanted to, honestly, want you to rip off the cover and like turn it into art in my house, right? I'm not opposed. Honestly, we can, we can do this. I want to do that. So just, you know, talk to us about this party and why you thought that it was important to create this book and to tell the world about this moment, about these women. these black women and this kind of pathway and idea of reshaping our politics. I appreciate so much that you started with the cover because I felt in love with this cover for a couple of reasons. But first and foremost, it highlighted the dynamic between two powerhouse black women who each broke down barriers in their own right, Diane Carroll, in film,

in television, and theater. And of course, Shirley Chisholm in politics and pop culture. And they came together as the first black woman to star in a network sitcom and the first black woman to run for president to tag team this effort to drive change and that change materialized through this once in an era party at Diane Carroll's mansion that had a guest list that rivals red carpets today like I'm talking about this mansion had a Florida ceiling wine cellar a massive black towel veranda and a massive pool with a waterfall feature of course but the reality is that And all of Diane Carroll's glamour and all of her privilege existing as an actress, a successful working actress, she knew that she felt this desire to tap into her own power, her own audience who had been following her from her shows like Julia to expose them to Shirley Chisholm. And what makes this party so impactful is that she did it at a moment when the press was dismissing her, when the Democratic Party was dismissing her, when her colleagues in Congress were dismissing her.

this a frivolous egotistical exercise, but Diane Carroll saw her campaign and saw power and possibility, because one thing that these two women have both done throughout their careers is cut through the steel of discrimination and racism and sexism to truly chart a new path. Diane Carroll did that by being heavily engaged in the writer's rooms on her shows, whether that was making sure they weren't trying to apply any stereotypes to black women as she portrayed a nurse who was living in middle class, raising her child as a widow. And of course, Shirley Chisholm did that even with every step she took because she challenged voters in the public to not try to box her into any one facet of her identity. Right. In her presidential campaign announcement

speech, she said, yes, I'm black. I'm proud to be black, but I'm not the candidate for black people. I'm a woman. I am proud to be a woman, but I am not the candidate for women. And so both of them came together under this premise of we reject the norms about what you think about us by looking at us and we reject the norms about who you think is automatically deemed to be a leader in this country. And so when Diane Carroll opened up her home, she did that to a mix of people. You would never expect to share space, Danielle. Like imagine music industry icon Barry Gordy standing next to revolutionary activist Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party, standing next to Oscar award-winning actress Goldie Hawn.

Like, please, please, what? How? Yeah. And so when I started digging in this research, the more that was more that I found, it started to paint a very clear picture for me that that how is because these individuals reflected the coalition that Shirley Chisholm was attempting to develop in her presidential run. as imperfect as it was. But she was explicitly clear that there is power within each of these individuals, not just their celebrity, but their work and what they represented. And so in each chapter, I drop readers back into 1972 through the lens of each guess. And I define what they represented within that coalition that Sirleuchism was building. But also the breathtaking reality that the

only reason they were able to come together was because of these two powerhouse black women and calling them in. I love this so much, particularly right now. And I kind of want you to continue to shape for us what was happening in 1972 and kind of juxtapose it to where we are right now in 2025. What I love about this is the idea of what it means to build community. And we hear that often, that it is important for us to build community that we heard it from Vice President Kamala Harris on her campaign trail about needing to link arms and not point fingers. And at a time right now where many of us are feeling who believe in democracy, who believe in the promise of freedom for all people, are feeling very wounded over this last presidential election cycle, the 107 days of

ferocity that Vice President Kamala Harris and Tim Walls gave us in their run for the White House. But in the backdrop of that has always been who are the who who do black women think that they are to think that they have the right to run for the highest office in the land. How dare they? How dare they? Right. Like how dare they believe that they can be representative, right? Of America. And so I want you to offer us like just a deeper dive. into the audaciousness of Shirley Chisholm and Diane Carroll to help elevate this, this black woman in politics to where we found ourselves with Vice President Kamala Harris. Oh, where to start. Where to start. Okay. Okay. So I just want to get folks the context of 1972.

There were so many things happening, compounding crises that were very similar to 2024. You had economic crisis where people feeling like they could not afford to exist, could not afford to put food on the table, could not afford to keep a roof over their head. Of course, disproportionately impacting black and Latino households similar to 2024. You had global crisis and war in 72, Vietnam. In 24, Israel's bombardment of Gaza and Russia's invasion into Ukraine and more. You had contrast between how government resources were being spent, whether they're on those foreign priorities versus domestic. And in 72, you also had the rise of young people because this was the first time that 18 to 20 year olds would be voting in presidential politics. And they were ready to flex a muscle.

The same way that we've seen young people flexing a muscle, whether that it was 2020, the 2020 midterms, and in 24. And so that energy was percolating around everything that was happening. And what emerged with Shirley Chisholm's candidacy, which I have to say was brought on by young people telling her, hey, when are we going to break this trend of only white men leading this country? She would laugh and say, but I'm a woman and I'm black. So, you know, and they said to her, hey, you know, we'll be voting soon. And she paused. That was young college students who recruited her into this campaign. and what was valuable about Chisholm's platform was that she was running on things that people needed,

things that she was well ahead of her time to run on. I'm talking about a national network of child care center so family and parents could access affordable child care. Oh, my. I'm talking about what a concept. Imagine a basic family income as a poverty alleviation measure. I'm talking about getting corporate money and wealthy donors out of poverty. politics. She was ahead of the game by half a century. But because she was the messenger packaged as a petite black woman who would never shrink herself. That was too much. That was too much

for the people within the Democratic Party who thought she was skipping the line. And so I say that. And I'll transition now to 2024, where I appreciate you emphasizing that Vice President Harris, her campaign was only 107 days. He did not get a full run. So this was dropped on to her in an unexpected way. But we can also look back to 2020 when she did run for additional parallels. When even before a vote had been cast in the Democratic primary press had decided to start asking, would you accept the VP nomination if offered?

And she's like, wait a second. I'm running for president and not a single voter has cast a ballot. Iowa hasn't happened yet. Why are you asking me this? But people within the Democratic Party began to chorus. Oh, she'd be a great VP. limiting any possibility around her leadership skills as the person to lead this country. And so when you think about the reality that that's what Vice President Harris experienced in 2020,

again in 24, because we know all the underlying factors around racism, sexism, misogyny, misogyn a war, all ever present in the 2024 election, it just points to the reality that not much has changed. But the one consistent component of this is that black women are still stepping up to take the risk. Shirley Chisholm did it in 72. Vice President Harris did it in 2020 and 24. And it's not going to stop. And so to your other question about building community and the importance of that community, I think this is the time that it's needed most because of these crises,

the compounding crises were experiencing economically global war. climate change and extreme weather-related disasters that are happening on a daily basis across this country to the point where when you recover from one, the next one's already starting, or even before you've recovered from the previous one, the next one's already starting. And it highlights the fact that at a human level, we need each other. As enraging and dangerous as that may sound, especially to some on the far right, We do need each other. There is value in each of our lives.

There's value in what we can contribute. There's value to leaning on each other because without that leaning, our survival is truly in question. You know, one of the things you've said so many that are incredibly salient, and there's one that I want to unpack a bit further, which is that black women continue to step up in thinking about Vice President Kamala Harris. And following the disappointment, the grave disappointment of this last presidential election cycle, we've heard from a number of black women across social media, celebrity, non-celebrity alike,

who have said, this is not our fight anymore. In 2025, I'm going to sit back. I'm sitting this out. Like, I'm not putting on another cake to try and save democracy. I'm not going to be on your front lines taking the hits first while everybody else sits at home and watches. Like to the white women that want to march on on inauguration day, you're on your own. And so what do you make of that very real sentiment from the base of the Democratic Party that is saying, we have been your fighters, we have been on your front lines, all to the loss of our mental health,

of our ability to focus on our communities and build wealth, all because we focus on the greater good. Now we're going to focus on ourselves. What do you make of that, Juanita? It's a revolutionary act to prioritize yourself. And that's why I respect it. And I appreciate it because I don't even know how many years black women have been trying to drag this country forward. And when I say drag, I'm talking about with everything we have. And that's why I have no problem with black women saying, hey, I will let you do it. Because the blueprint is laid.

The model is laid. The steps to take is laid. The information is available. And I think it's powerful to say, we have done our part recognizing the small slither of the small proportion that black women make up in the electoral process. We have done our part. Mm-hmm. An outsized part. An outsized part. We've been punching above our weight since, let's be real, since being brought to this country. And it's time to rest. But that rest does not mean not working. And I appreciate that you emphasize that there is a shift in focus because it's not about saving the nation from itself. It's about how are we protecting ourselves first and then pouring into our community. second, right? Like, it's the reprioritization because, you know what they say? The quickest way to know

what someone does is when they stop doing it. So I'm going to be curious to see, for example, how midterms unfolds when black women aren't out front bloodletting themselves in order to drag the Democratic Party forward. I'm curious to see what gaps truly emerge when we're not there. And I think that's going to be the undeniable lesson because there's only so long you can lecture and teach and model the behavior. At some point, you just got to step back. So I fully support rest and self-preservation and caring for ourselves in a way that will be disruptive because we know the work we've been putting in. And it's time for everybody else to see it. With just a couple of minutes that we have left, I want to ask you what you learned from your research,

search in doing and putting together this beautiful book and what you hope that readers take from it. Oh, I just got chills. Oh, my God. I can't believe how emotional I am right now, dang it. I'm so sorry. I love it. Be emotional. The number one thing I learned is how personal this all is. It's personal because this story came through my interviews and research with people like Congresswoman Barbara Lee who worked on Chisholm's campaign, who literally casually said, you know, I'm the one who took Huey P. Newton to Diane Carroll's house to meet Shirley Chisholm for the first time at a fundraiser. I'm like, what? But by the way, that's also where she met Congresswoman, Maxine Waters for the first time. This is our history. And my interviews and my research and my conversations all paralleled the same way I talk to my 91-year-old grandfather about his life and learn from his work and learn his lessons.

And the privilege I had to document this so that is not lost to time. The privilege that I had to create a book that I know is going to be in libraries across the country that people can go and check out freely, readily available to them, so that this could never be lost to time. I think the other thing that I hope people take away from this book is that Shirley Chisholm, Diane Carroll, better than anyone else knew that there is power in losing. There is power in losing because with Shirley Chisholm's 1972 campaign, she set precedent. She delivered on a proof of concept for people, for voters, for the press, for the Democratic Party that didn't know how to handle a black person or a woman running for the highest offense in the land,

that it is possible. Now, was she ahead of schedule? Yeah, she was even ahead of her own schedule. She predicted that the first woman wouldn't be elected president until 24. And only when women and young people unite across race, across class, across age. And so she left a full prescription. I just need, I need you to listen. So once you read this book, share it with someone else because the lessons and the blueprint

are there and it's 50 plus year old history that clearly can guide us into what is to come. Incredibly exciting and beautiful and a stark reminder of the history that folks don't want us to know. And folks don't want us to use as a blueprint. Folks, the book is a more perfect party. The Knight Shirley Chisholm and Diane Carroll reshaped politics. It is out now. Juanita Tolover, thank you so very much for your work, for this research and for this offering at a time when we need it most.

Really appreciate you. Daniel, thank you for this lovely conversation. I appreciate you so much. Thank you. The Barbed Wire is a new digital media outlet based in Texas, edited by former Daily Beaster Olivia Messer, and it's been doing outstanding work covering a state where local political happenings often have national implications. Joining me now is Barbwire editor at large Kara Kelly, who is also an adjunct professor at American University to talk about a piece she just wrote called the

true cost of Texas's abortion ban, rising deaths, abandoned babies, fewer doctors. Kara, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for having me. Texas doesn't make it easy to find out what its abortion restrictions have meant for women, does it? Not really, no. It's not as transparent as I think some of us would like, especially in the media. So can you refresh our listeners' memories about the extent of the abortion laws down in Texas, post-obs or just, you know, at present? Sure. So I did a little bit of a dive into the history. And Texas has regulated, either restricted or banned abortion since the 1800s. since 1854. And the bulk of that time, you know, lawmakers have argued that these laws were necessary to protect women's health. And so we had several leading up to through the 90s into the 2000s.

And then it really heated up around, you know, 2021 is where we saw the Senate Bill 8 to SB 8, as some people may be familiar. And that was dubbed the heartbeat bill, though that's a little bit controversial for being somewhat of a scientific misnomer. The law really restricts abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, which is usually around six weeks of pregnancy, but that's kind of before most people actually know they're pregnant. And that law took a different approach than we've seen in the past, where instead of being enforced by the state, by, you know, a district or county attorney, it could be enforced by private citizens. Really, anybody could sue another citizen for $10,000 for performing or aiding in an abortion.

So that was dubbed kind of like a vigilante civil enforcement mechanism that kind of got around some of the legal issues that had been overturned by the courts in the past. So basically a bounty bill? That's how some people have referred to it. Yes, it's through private action. So it's not a state enforced. Right. So not technically about it.

And so that was really big then in 2022 when the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned V. Wade in the Dobbs v. Jackson case. Another piece of legislation in Texas went into effect that was House Bill 1280. And that made providing an abortion a felony punishable up to life in prison and $100,000. So pretty hefty this time state enforced penalties. Okay. So we're looking at a state where it's not only incredibly difficult to get an abortion, if not impossible, it is an actual felony to provide an abortion.

So let's talk about what these laws, the various costs that they've imposed on women and also to babies, because something you note is that infants are dying in Texas at a greater rate than anywhere else in the country. How does that correlate with these laws? Yes, and that was a pretty striking statistic and got a lot of attention when this study first came out. It was by researchers at John Hopkins School of Public Health. They found that infant deaths increased by about 12.9% in the state of Texas compared to 1.8 nationally. And that was between 2021 and 22, which was the time when that first really intense law went into effect SB8. So the time period that they looked at was when Texas had the most restrictive, most stringent anti-abortion law in the

country, and they found that the law does not allow exemptions for fetal abnormalities, for congenital abnormalities, including fatal ones or ones that physicians are pretty confident will be fatal. So you saw a lot of, you know, more infants basically dying shortly after birth. And that bears out in a lot of the stories that we've heard to anecdotally that have been, you know, reported by other media outlets and in some court cases and lawsuits as well. Got it. And I suppose unsurprisingly, but obviously horrifically, the state's maternal mortality rate has also increased, right? Correct. And this is the one where, unfortunately, we don't have a super clear look at the data. We do know that from 2019 to 2022, Texas's maternal mortality rate,

rose by 56%, which is a pretty striking number. But we have been told that we're not going to get a review of the more recent years under the more recent laws that have come into effect for 2023 and 2024. The state's Maternal Mortality Commission Committee is not going to review those years. It'll be harder for us to know what exactly that looks like for the last two years. I assume that's the point. That's definitely been a criticism of the decision. Yes. So the committee made the determination, made the announcement that they would skip the reviews for the years of 2022 and 23. That has been pretty controversial. And yes, some people have kind of concluded or made the assumption that that is because, you know, maybe they, maybe state lawmakers do not exactly

want us to know how much this has affected women, pregnant women in the state. Yeah, it's amazing. There have been women who have died because they didn't receive care, haven't there? Why were these women denied the medical care they needed? What did these anti-abortion laws do to cause this? Yeah, so we are aware of three, and that's thanks a lot to other journalists and reporters, with ProPublica and also the New Yorker. And what's important for people to understand is that in some pregnancy complications and some conditions,

the standard of care is actually an abortion. It may be called a DNC, dilation and cuterage, but it's really an abortion procedure. So we've seen that physicians that, you know, health care providers have been extremely cautious you know, some have said they're very scared to perform these procedures, even when that is the standard of care for the situation, because they could lose their licenses, they could go to jail for life, they could have a $100,000 fine. That's pretty career ending, really. That's people's livelihoods. So, for example, you know, we've been paying a lot of attention to the Zorofsky v. Texas case, and I believe there were 22.5. plaintiffs or somewhere in the 20s, there were some additions throughout. Those women were largely denied the care that they needed, which they say was because it was an abortion, you know,

an abortion procedure and that the hospitals or physicians or health providers who were treating them were hesitant, if not straight, denied them of that care. Yeah, and there's the stat you have in the piece that, I guess from a survey by a medical consulting company that showed that around 60% of OBGYNs in Texas are fearful of legal repercussions under these laws? Yes, and we've seen that in other states as well. It's pretty much every state where we're seeing these really restrictive anti-abortion laws. So I don't think many people who've been paying really close attention were that surprised by that survey. That found some 57% of residents, OBGYN residents said that Texas's laws were relevant to their decision

of where they're going to go, if they're going to stay in the state or leave, which is pretty important because of the ability of Texas hospitals to recruit new doctors, we've seen that it's pretty diminished. Yeah, and you get into that in the piece. You talk about how there are healthcare deserts that we're seeing in Texas now. And I guess the number of OBGYNs and the number of maternity wards is lower than it was prior to 2021? Yes, absolutely. There was a pretty sobering report from the Texas Tribune that found there were only eight hospitals serving 26,000 miles in Texas. So particularly in rural parts of Texas, we've seen many closures. Now only 68 or 64, I'm sorry, provide OB, you know, obstetrical care and delivery services. You know, you think about the sheer size of

Texas. That's pretty sobering. Yeah, for sure. And along the lines of what you said about the 57% of the resident physicians, you also talk about how doctors are sort of fleeing the state. What are the stats there? Because they seemed unbelievable. Yeah, let's see. We found, you know, from the survey that was done, 44% indicated that they've thought about or have already changed how they practice. 13% said they're planning to retire early and 21% have thought about leaving or going to another state. That's a significant portion of OBGYNs who are still in Texas who are thinking about how they're going to handle how these laws have affected them professionally and personally. Yeah, I mean, it obviously doesn't bode well for the future. I think there was another stat.

I don't know, I can't remember. I think this was in your article, but that in states with abortion, bands generally fewer medical school graduates are applying to residency programs in those states. Yes, and if you look at, I don't have offhand, but even the way that they're taught in states with strict abortion bans, we've seen that it's impacting their full education and understanding of pregnancy, delivery, and the full range of gynecological issues that can come up in their future practice. So it's kind of hard to make a case for coming to a state where you're not going to get the full education that you might need in order to be, you know, the best practicing physician

that you can. Yeah, absolutely. And it's just, God, the future that this is going to result in is just horrifying to even think about. So I was looking through some of the scores that you collate that Texas receives from various organizations. What struck me is that they're the types of scores you expect from the poorest states of the union with which Texas is not. Talk about, for example, the 2024 Commonwealth Fund scorecard. What is that and how did Texas do? That's a pretty thorough one by a nonprofit group that looks at health policy. And they found that Texas ranked among the bottom of states for a variety of things.

They used 32 different measures, including health care assets, access and quality and health outcomes. And Texas overall ranked 50th out of 51, second only to Mississippi. So that's, you know, a pretty big indictment of the quality and availability of maternal health care in the state. And part of that has to do with health insurance as well. Texas has a particularly high number of uninsured women in the state. So that played a big role in, again, the affordability, the availability, access that really kind of dinged their overall score. Gotcha. And then there's March of Dimes also has a similar scorecard, and they gave Texas, I think, a D-minus? Yes, a D-minus. And the report said that birthing people in Texas have a very high vulnerability to poor outcomes and are most vulnerable due to reproductive health care access.

So it's really that lack of access. And one incredibly striking thing that I found in the Commonwealth's report actually was the rise in syphilis cases. I was just going to ask you about that because I was completely ignorant of that and the ranking is absolutely abysmal. I was too. And I had to read that several times and do further background research on it to fully kind of understand. And after I sat with it for a while, it started to make sense. you know, this is a pretty clear indicator of access to preventative health care. Syphilis has gone up, really not everywhere across the country, though several states have seen it. It's particularly bad in Texas.

122 women out of 100,000 had syphilis in 2022, which, you know, the Commonwealth found was a pretty high number. It's compared to 78 nationally. it's ranked 42nd out of 51 states. And infants had a higher rate of being born with congenital syphilis. And that's because syphilis is one of these SDGs that can pose severe complications, including the risk of miscarriage and stillbirth and infant death. So this has been used. The CDC recommends that all pregnant women be screened for syphilis early in pregnancy. It's a pretty routine thing in terms of, you know, if you are pregnant women, you're making your regular kind of gynecological visits, that the screening would be a part of those

early on in your pregnancy. But it kind of tells us of just if that's not done, then, you know, the rates we're just, we're seeing are going up. So it's a pretty clear indication that people are not getting the access to this pretty basic at this point, preventative health care and screening. Yeah, and again, like, as you say, this is pretty basic stuff, and that's what struck me. I mean, you have ranked 42nd for syphilis rates among women, 48th for infants born with congenital syphilis, and again, 50th out of 51st on the Commonwealth Fund scorecard and a D-Minus from March of Dimes. And like I said, like these are numbers you would associate with poorer states, with a place like Mississippi, which is the only state Texas beat in that Commonwealth Fund study,

but Texas is not a poor state. And so all of this seems to be, it seems to be a choice, basically, by the state government. And that's really why I wanted to pull all of this together and be able to look at it in kind of totality, because, yeah, I think sometimes we forget that a lot of abortion providers or abortion clinics also provided, basic health care. And, you know, people view abortion as a basic health care because it is the standard of care in a lot of situations, in complications, in pregnancy. And so if you don't have these clinics, if you don't have a significant number of these clinics in such a vast state like Texas, it becomes very, very difficult to get that type of routine care. What we didn't delve into in the

piece that we may do in a follow-up, some other outlets have started to cover this, is, you know, there's been funding for various things of, you know, crisis pregnancy centers and some others, but by and large, they're not actually staffed by medical professionals, by doctors and nurses, and they can't provide those kinds of basic care that we were previously seeing with, you know, places like Planned Parenthood. So you're missing these really preventable, catchable things early on in pregnancy or just even receiving prenatal care pretty much as a result or what we're seeing from these strict abortion laws. Yeah, it's truly horrible and heartbreaking to read all these statistics and think about the actual people behind them. Kara Kelly, thank you so much for joining us.

Everybody go check out the barbed wire at the barbwire.com. It's full of great reporting and important reporting. Kara, thanks again. Thank you. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. All right, Danielle, it is the Monday of the last week before possibly the end of democracy. Mm-hmm.

So keep us cheery. What you got for fuck that guy. I also like that you said possibly as if there is another option. So Zuckerberg stays in the news these days and not just. because of his horrible new fashion sense and aesthetic, but because he has gone full-blown maga at this point. So last week, it was doing away with fact-checking because apparently that interferes with freedom

and that interferes with the people having a voice in power because somehow, I don't know, referring to transgender people as anything other than proper programs. and women as, you know, property, apparently that's what freedom looks like in Meadowworld. He's not done because along with that public announcement, Zuckerberg quietly has done away with DEI, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and policies in meta. Not only on the platform, but the company at large, we know that diversity and equity and inclusion, first of all, is a way to integrate, integrate, not have like a separate elective, but integrate

diversity initiatives into your business practices because every report will tell you that diversity, racial diversity, ethnic diversity, gender diversity, ability diversity, etc., are good for your bottom line. Having a target practice around that breaks down the walls of barriers that have been put in place for every other group other than wealthy white straight men. So Zuckerberg now has decided to do away with that. And apparently on top of which only real Americans, and I'm using quotations and rolling my eyes deeply, I live in Texas and not in California, which is where he is moving his headquarters of his business.

So in every which way, Zuckerberg has shown us who he is in a legal. with, who his business practices are in allegiance with, and people need to make choices moving forward, plain and simple, because there's no like, well, we didn't know or it was unclear. They are telling you. And so for that reason, I'm starting out this week, the last week of our very imperfect American democracy to say, fuck that guy to Zuckerberg and his terrible look. I'll just add to that. I'll add Jeff Bezos, who we also learned that Amazon last month also started rolling back all its DEI programs. And look, the big takeaway here is probably not a big takeaway for a lot of people, but maybe one for some people. It's that anytime these guys do

something, like for instance, Facebook started its DEI initiative. You know, Zuckerberg started that. Bezos started that, and now they're ending them. And what that means is that they never believed it in the first place. Yep. That is the important takeaway here. And again, I'm not saying anything a lot of people didn't already know or, you know, suspect. But if you needed proof of it, here's the proof. They started a lot of these programs in the wake of George Floyd and with Black Lives matter forming and they were not doing it because they thought it was the right thing to do. The ironic thing is Zuckerberg saying that people who leave his platforms now because he's ending these things are virtue signaling.

Buddy, that's exactly what you did when you started these programs in the sense that you didn't believe any of that stuff and you did it solely to signal that you did, solely to pretend that you did. And that is the definition that I prefer for virtue signaling, not actually doing something because you believe in it. That's not virtue signaling. That's just, you know, that's virtue. But pretending to believe in something because it will make you look virtuous, that's virtue signaling to me. And Musk, Bezos, et cetera.

Yeah, fuck all those guys. So, Andy, it's our last week in America, democracy. How are you starting off this? good, good last week with your fuck that guy. I'm going to go to a fuck that guy favorite, an FTGF, and it is an MTG for FTG. It's Marjorie Taylor Green. Her latest that shit thing is tweeting, why don't they use geoengineering like cloud seeding to bring rain down on the wildfires in California?

They know how to do it. And it is funny when you look at the. sort of community note attached to it that's added by users. And the first one just says, if there are no clouds, there's nothing to seed. And it's like, yeah, you can't create clouds out of nothing. That's not cloud seeding is a thing. But first of all, it doesn't change things as much as idiots like Marjorie Taylor Green think it does. But also, there have to be clouds there in order to seed clouds. Like, it's there in the name. It's not air seeding. It's cloud seating. There has to be clouds there. But again, she thinks Hurricane Milton was created by the

government. There was, of course, the Jewish space lasers. She manages to, if not top herself every time. She equals herself every time. And since she's already pretty much at the top of the Batshit crazy caucus, just equaling that is enough to get her on fuck that guy. It's just, you know, the shit's not going to stop. And I'm also going to send out fuck that guy to the people of her district who voted for her. And you continue to vote for her, seeing what she is.

It's one thing to vote someone in the first time and maybe not realize maybe they kept the crazy hidden. We all know people who keep the crazy hidden. But with all the evidence now out there, they keep returning her to Congress. So fuck that guy to Marjorie Taylor Green and also to every single person who has voted for her since her first election. The only thing that I will add to that is Elon, like a broken clock, may be right twice,

which is that, they're not that bright. They're not that. Maga ain't that bright. They ain't that bright. Is that your queen? That's my question. Is that your queen? You voted for her?

You ain't that bright. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy. checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. 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,

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