The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Sent a Mob to His Office. Now He’s Kissing Don’s Ass.

Episode Date: January 29, 2021

He’s supposed to be a leader—the leader, in fact, of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. But he ain’t doing much leading.  As The Daily Beast reported, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) went in a matter of weeks from angrily criticizing Donald Trump for inciting the MAGA mob that attacked the Capitol—to kissing up to the entire Trump family. “The House of Representatives’ [Republican caucus] is comprised of the Trump party—with the exception of 10 or 11 reps,” says Rick Wilson on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “They're the pro-sedition, pro-insurrection, pro-mob party,”  “Right? It does feel like McCarthy is really giving Trump the Republican party. He really is,” adds Molly Jong-Fast. “I mean, there was like a chance where the Republican party was going to escape from Trump's clutches. And then [McCarthy] was like: ‘Too scary. Let's go back.’”   McCarthy went down, too—all the way to Mar-a-Lago, to bend the knee on Thursday.  “Kevin McCarthy had to flee his office [during the Capitol Riot]. He begged Donald Trump to speak, to stop what was going on as it was going on. And Trump was silent. And now Kevin McCarthy is going to apologize to Donald Trump,” says Jon Allen, co-author of the forthcoming Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency. “I don't know what to do with that… If you come to my house and try to kill me, if you bring your guns to my house, one thing I will not be doing is apologizing to you and begging for your forbearance.” And meanwhile, the Republicans in the Senate are acting only slightly less timid.  “I call the alligator fried chicken theory, which is you can keep throwing the alligator fried chicken [while you’re] sitting on the edge of the dock. But when you're out of fried chicken, he bites your foot off, okay?” Rick says. “They keep thinking they're going to be the last one like that. They're the last piece of fried chicken and they're going to be okay. They are not, [Trump] will always be there doing this to them from afar. He will haunt them until he is dead. And once he's dead, they'll upload them to the cloud and he'll haunt them for all the Trinity until the heat death of the universe.”  “The only path to cutting off the pernicious infection and the metastasizing cancer that is Trumpism is to vote to convict him. Now, I recognize that that would take people in the Senate on the Republican side with these rare and terrifying characteristics that are unimaginable in modern American politics, things like courage and integrity and patriotism and a love of country and putting country before party,” Rick adds, “All these things would be, would be easy, but they're also in Congress rare as hen's teeth, as my grandma would say.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just Rick & Molly discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks. This is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Chongfast, a left-wing pundit, and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, bestselling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. We take the issues seriously. Ourselves, Not so much. 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 get ourselves out of it. Hi, Rick Wilson. Hello, Molly Jungfast. How are you today? I'm good. So you know who's in your state of Florida right now? Is it noted lap dancer and erotic gymnast Kevin McCarthy? Yes. That's how he's usually described, so that makes a lot of sound. As most people do. Glitter Kevin. That's right. Glitter Kevin with the pasties.

McCarthy. Yeah. He's nice in the wig. You know, I have to say, I've always been told that his work in the champagne room is excellent. I've never experienced it myself. We're really heading. Folks, this is going to be one of those shows. This is going to be one of those shows that goes way off the fucking rails.

Yeah. It already seems problematic. Talk to me about what the fuck is happening. Well, why is Kevin McCarthy in Marlago, you're asking? I'm asking you're asking. take on it. I will give you the answer. Kevin McCarthy is in Marlago because he's Donald Trump's bitch, for one thing. And the House of Representatives is comprised of the Trump Party, with the exception of 10 or 11 reps who were not in the Trump Party. And they are on the, what we call the

Endangered Species Party. Those people are experiencing a form of pain and suffering they had not expected, which is they're not going to be getting corporate donations this cycle. They are associated now with the racist plan to disenfranchise tens of millions of African-American voters by executing what the Trump lawsuits failed to do. By executing that in Congress, they were unsuccessful, but they still embraced it completely. They wanted to overturn the election. They're the pro-sedition, pro-insurrection, pro-mob party. And as we've talked about on this show and elsewhere, that's bad for your brand. It's just not good for your brand. Being the racist pro mob party, I don't know what could go wrong. Why won't Nike advertise with us or fund us? So he's down there trying to shore up and get

access to Trump's email list and get the RNC's email list, which Trump still controls, because he still controls the RNC from afar, and get access to that money. He needs that money so he can fundraise. he also is worried because Matt Gates is actively planning to try to take the title of minority leader from him. He's out there hustling. Why is Matt Gates going to campaign against Liz Cheney? Because he's trying to get the MAGA predicate of running the MAGA caucus in the House and thus the Republican caucus in the House. I think McCarthy's got Gates in the review mirror now. He's not worried about Jim Jordan anymore. Jim Jordan's going to run for Senate. Matt is an immediate threat if Matt decides to go at him, and it looks like he is, because he's doing these things very publicly to go out to campaign against Liz Cheney, the apostate and all that other stuff. So look, it's just also a sign, by the way, if you needed an additional sign, that Kevin McCarthy has no bottom, as the Brits say. He has no integrity. He has no no guts, no soul, no, no moment of recognition that the time for Donald Trump just passed us by. Right. It does feel like McCarthy is really giving Trump the Republican Party.

Yeah, he really is. I mean, there was like a chance where the Republican Party was going to escape from Trump's clutches, and then McCarthy was like, too scary. Let's go back. Yeah. And, you know, but he's now recognized that the Trump Party controls the congressional Republican caucus, and unless he keeps Donald Trump happy, he'll be out. You know, he could say to Donald Trump, I love you more than Matt Gates. I do. I do. And just one more bottle of champagne and I'll make my quota for the night, sir. Jesus Christ.

There's no sex in the champagne room. Sorry, movie quote. Oh, God. I'm scared. Did I happen to see that a certain podcast host made a little Fox News appearance? Oh, I wouldn't say I made an appearance. I would say that Sean Hannity in his special Rick Wilson room that he keeps in the back of the studio. But behind Sean's makeup room, there's a special secret room, and it's pictures of me all over the wall. And whenever Sean goes in there, he looks at him, he goes, I didn't want to go to the prom with him anyway. I hate him. I love him. I hate him. I love him. So Sean puts me on the other night with the greatest Chiron ever. And it was just me, like, doing whatever I do on MSNBC the other day.

They're like, Trump hater goes on unhinged rant. I'm like, so close to, so close to hinged. I don't even know what it was. I was just like laying it out, like doing my usual indictment of their fuckery. But this has become like a part of their thing. So then he brings Gates on. Right. And Matt Gates does probably, and it was so funny because one of Gates's most prominent funders and supporters in Panama City sends me a message right after he goes, oh God, he sounds like a teenage girl. Yeah. That was a particularly embarrassing.

And he just lost. And he did have an unhinged rant about me. And he's like, well, Rick was this as I suck. Twitter, but I have more floors. I'm like, what the fuck, bro? My girlfriend in Canada thinks I have a big penis. She's a super model. That was not a great luck.

It was so desperate. It was so thirsty. I was like, good God, man. Get the fuck out of here. Do you think that Matt Gates just has no embarrassment? I mean, wouldn't you be embarrassed to go on television and be like, I have more followers? than this person. So obviously I'm good at internet.

Like, wouldn't you find that embarrassing? I would find that embarrassing. It was embarrassing. It was so embarrassing. It was just like, what? You more, what? Right? I mean.

And the irony is, of course, this all comes back to this like, feed the, feed the oppression machine of the Fox audience. Feed the, feed the, oh, the elites look down on you. You are the smart ones. They're the idiot. It's, I have more Twitter followers. I'm like, go fuck out of here, bro. I mean, come on.

It's really kind of insane. There's some part, okay, in the minds of Matt Gates and Sean Hannity, where they think, we owned him. We owned Rick Wilson. We owned the live. Our lives are complete for the day. It's just like, what world do you live in? What do you think happens now?

Well, look, we are going to enter into this. impeachment. And if the Democrats do not understand the political utility of impeachment, hello, Tim Cain, they are missing the boat. It's good for democracy. It's good for the Democrats. It's good to get this stuff out there. No, it's good for the country. Get the public record. Yeah. Yeah, it's good for the country. And it clearly, it clearly isn't just a little bit justified. It's utterly justified. Every day tells us more. Every day tells us more about what was going on about the fact that there was a conspiracy at the highest degree inside the Trump circle the night before this thing. You know, when you've got Ali Alexander talking with the senior most...

Right, right. Yes, and Tommy Tuberville. And the senior most members of the Trump advisory circle. Yeah. Who happened to be all as dumb as Ali Alexander. Are you kidding me that there's no tie here, that there's no link here, that there's no... I mean, this is the kind of like conspiracy case that a 22-year-old brand-new, minted prosecutor could make. This is not rocket science at this point. And I talked to somebody early this morning who said, you know, my theory of the case is that they're waiting, that they've already, they're figuring out which one is going to break and squeal and doesn't want to do jail time.

And I think it's probably a pretty good theory of the case. But, you know, the Justice Department is suddenly like taking this kind of shit seriously. And I can't imagine what. There must have been something that happened in the last 10 days that changed. that changed the Justice Department. I can't put my finger on that, but it seems to be pretty important. Yeah. What else was Bill Barr sitting on?

I know. Well, that is a question, I think. So today, Nancy Pelosi chastised Marjorie Taylor Green pretty bad after Jimmy Gomez introduced a move to expel her from Congress for all the whack-a-doodle things she's been saying over the years. I think it says a lot about Kevin McCarthy that Marjorie Taylor Green is a white, hot Qanonan lunatic, who was abusive to people in profound ways and who is a shit-tier human being of the worst possible character. She is somebody you wouldn't let in your house. She is somebody you wouldn't seat in a restaurant. If her behavior was iterated out in the public space without her having the name member of Congress in her title, she would not have

a role or a place in any society. The only way she holds any position right now is twofold. One, Kevin McCarthy supported her politically and financially to win that seat. And now, Kevin McCarthy has named her to committee assignments, okay? And this woman is bat-shit bug fuckadoo crazy. Not only was she yelling at the Parkland kids, but she was also on Facebook liking things like, we need to put a bullet between people's eyes. And they weren't like joking. It wasn't metaphorical.

It wasn't like, we're going to take that guy out. It was her showing us who she is. It was her telling us what she is, what she believes, what is really inside that ugly fucking void of her soul. McCarthy knows who she is. He knows what she does. And he put her on the fucking education committee. Are you fucking kidding me?

Get the fuck out of here. The problem is when you go for her, and I'm not saying you shouldn't because you absolutely should because she's a completely lunatic. You also have, like, Lauren Bopert, who was clearly in some way involved in this capital thing, if just in her encouragement of it. And then you have Mo Brooks who spoke at the Stop the Steel Rally. So if I could coat Lauren Bobert and Marjor Taylor Green and Mo Brooks and Josh Holly and Ted Cruz in barbecue sauce. Right.

And release them to. Those people don't belong in Congress. They don't belong in the Senate. They belong in a lunatic asylum. They belong on the edges and fringes of society. They belong in fucking on the chat rooms at 4chan, not here. Do we think that there's any world in which any of these people get censured? No, we're going to try. We're going to push it. Josh Hawley is now an embarrassment in the Senate, and he is hated.

Josh Holly's having trouble. Nobody wants to sit next to Josh Hawley in the lunchroom now. Let's put it that way. But Josh Hawley got about $700,000 from a pack. You saw that, right? Yeah, from a conservative leadership fund, which, you know, why? They're making up for the fact that his corporate money has been blown out. And look, he got about $250,000 in corporate money that we could identify last go-round. and he is now the poster boy for this post-conservative conservatism. They are not conservatives anymore, bears mentioning. They are now authoritarians with a bent towards a post-constitutional America. They think the Constitution is now a point of weakness, not a point of strength.

And so they're going to try to support and lift him up. I'm going to try to raise the same amount of money or more, just to blast him away, Just to countervail that donation, because I'd like to just be on TV for reminding people that Josh Hawley, a few hours before the mob swarmed the Capitol to murder cops, was out there giving him the big high fist. Yeah, man, come on. And that he was on the floor of the goddamn Senate that day, feeding the beast of their lunatic conspiracy theories saying, oh, yeah, this election was stolen. It was hacked. It was rigged. Come at us.

I am no fan of Mike Pence, but they were chanting hang Mike Pence. And there was a noose hanging from a gallows. Yes, yes, there was. A gibbet is the technical term, but yes. So they just don't give a shit about Mike Pence? No, they don't. Mike Pence is gone now, but they give all the shits about Donald Trump still. Because you have to nail in.

Here's the theory that we hear is floating around inside the Senate right now. Well, if we don't convict him, he'll just go away. If we don't convict him, he'll disappear, he'll sink into the obscurity, he'll never bother us again. And the, of course, answer to that question is, are you kidding me? If you feed the monster, does the monster go away, or does the monster say, feed me more? Well, I also think fundamentally you don't avoid autocracy by ignoring autocracy. Yes, that's correct. And while the individual members of the Senate are all doing what I call the alligator fried chicken theory,

which is you can keep throwing the alligator fried chicken sitting on the edge of the dock, but when you're out of fried chicken, he bites your foot off, okay? They keep thinking they're going to be the last one. Like they're the last piece of fried chicken and they're going to be okay. They're not. He will always be there doing this to them from afar. He will haunt them until he is dead. And once he's dead, they'll upload him to the cloud and he'll haunt them for all eternity,

until the heat death of the universe. This is the only path to cutting off the pernicious infection and the metastasizing cancer that is Trumpism is to vote to convict him. Now, I recognize that that would take people in the Senate on the Republican side with these rare and terrifying characteristics that are unimaginable in modern American politics. things like courage and integrity and patriotism and a love of country and putting country before party and putting yourself before your political, putting your political system before your political prospects. All these things would be easy, but they're also in Congress, you know, rare as hen's teeth, as my grandma would say. Yeah. So basically the DHS had a warning that there are white supremacists may have been.

emboldened by Trump's insurgents and may actually take more violence against elected officials. Weird, you think? Who could have seen this? But you know what's interesting? It's like this continually happens where we see that Trumpism begets white supremacy, begets more violence, beget, you know, like this is clearly a cycle. And then Republicans are like, we really need to move on. Yeah, well, of course. Of course, we just need to move on.

Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry I drove drunk, ran my car through the front of your house, killed your dog. But can we just move on? Right, because unity. Right, because the greatest fucking, the world's supply of irony, like, sucked down into a black hole with Ted Cruz on TV. Now it's time for us to all come together. Now it's time to be unified. The only thing we're going to be unified in this country is that everyone hates Ted Cruz.

Right. But the gumption of it, the hoods, the hoods, of it, the crazy fucking balls on these people to come out and go, now it's time to unify. We can't have more division and hate in this country because after the peaceful years of Donald Trump, don't we deserve even better and more beautifully glorious cooperative republic? Get out of here. What about when they're like, how dare Joe Biden fire Trump's weird political appointees that he installed to try to mess up Joe Biden?

Right. That's my favorite. How dare they fire the woman that Trump installed to run, you know, whatever, you know, whatever agency into the ground? Doesn't you want unity? Jonathan Allen is the co-author of the upcoming book Lucky. As well, he's the senior political analyst at NBC News. Hi, John Allen. Hi, Molly John Fast.

I'm very excited to have John Allen here today because he is also my friend. True. And his wife is my friend and his children are my children's friends. So it's very exciting for me. And your mom is like the unofficial sex ed teacher for my children. That is the worst thing I've ever heard. So you have a book coming out. First, just tell us what the title of the book is.

You wrote a book like this about the Hillary Clinton campaign too. Well, with the different ending this time. It's sort of the key. The key difference is that there's a different. ending. But yeah, it's a similar book in that it's sort of the behind the scenes of the 2020 election and the things that you didn't know about the things that you knew about. That is, you saw a debate on stage. You didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. You thought that the polls were going to say one thing. Here's what the campaigns thought behind the scenes.

Here's what they were doing. Lots of juicy nuggets and inside the room detail on that just like shattered. But again, the outcome here obviously is different. This book is called Lucky and my co-author and I, Amy Barnes, will be talking about more about what's in it as it comes closer to coming out, which is March 2nd, but it is available at your online retailer. Now for pre-order, I feel like I have to say that and also want to. I have a question about... Let me say that again. Lucky March 2nd, 2021.

And for the in-cells who might be listening, my guesses aren't that many, you can get lucky on March 2nd. I have a question for... you about the book. Is this a first campaign book out? I believe that it'll be the first like major campaign book out. I haven't seen other campaign books and I'm not aware of any that are expected to come out before this one.

I'm aware of several that are coming out later. So basically your life has been a misery for the last three months. I mean, that's fair. Probably more of a misery to the people around me. But yes, the final stage of writing book are, as you know, I've read your books which are awesome and people should

go by your books about social climbing or at least pretend to have read them no i've actually read them no i know but that's unusual people should people should read your your books they're um they're phenomenal you're uh as they can tell from the daily beast you're a great writer but oh thank you friend all right so you've been working in congress for a gazillion years and one of the things that i like to do is call you up when something doesn't make sense to me so i think there's a lot of confusion we talked about this with adam gentleston so we're not going to get too much into this, but because everything is so close and the Democrats have majorities that are so tight in both

the House and the Senate, it means that we have to spend a lot more time thinking about the minutia of Congress and its rules, because Democrats can't break them the way that Republicans could for any number of reasons, mostly because they're Democrats. So I'm curious to know what you think is going to happen with the COVID relief. It's a great question. I think ultimately you're going to get a much slim down version of what Biden offered in the first place. It won't be the $1.9 trillion. If there's money for state and local governments, it would be smaller than he's proposing. That should not be surprising because in a normal process, you know, forget the last four years

where there was no process and it was just the president making whimsical decisions on things. One side offers one thing, the other side offers another, and they spent some time negotiating the difference, right? And that's what Biden is accustomed to. And that's the way things have worked in the Washington that he wants us to see and that he believes can work again. I think there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle, and forgive me for using the term both sides, but a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who think that those times are dead and will never come back and that one party should jam them through. But I think

the thought process on Biden's part is very clearly, you've set out your marker for what you want, the other side counters, and then you find some area in between. So you don't predict they'll use reconciliation, which is basically not using the filibuster and just having one party get It could end up going to that. I mean, the urgency of getting relief now should, there should be urgency. I live right near the Capitol and between me and the Capitol. I'm like seven, eight blocks away. There is a tent city in a little park, right? Like, people in this country are suffering. And so many of us, you know, are lucky, fortunate. We have jobs. You know, our bank accounts have been, you know, ripped apart by COVID. But so many people in this country are suffering. And these members of Congress,

walk into that building every day and they pass people in tents. And I just, it's mind-boggling to me that they can't figure out how to at least do little bursts. So it may be that it ends up going to reconciliation. But I would also, you know, for those who look at reconciliation as like some sort of like, you know, I don't even know the right word. I'm looking for something like a golden dagger, the silver bullet. Reconciliation, the process of that is very difficult in and of itself and often requires the majority party to essentially break the parliamentarian, right, to outvote the parliamentarian to get things done. And even then it can be difficult. It's a very arcane and complex process. One of the problems with the COVID vaccine is that the states don't have money to set up the

infrastructure to give the vaccine. Do you think that money is going to come through? I mean, that seems more bipartisan. It may come through, but the Republicans are very much debt hawks situationally. Right. And so after Donald Trump got done spending trillions and trillions of dollars without paying for them on various things that the Republicans liked, military, tax cuts, whatever, now they're like in super deficit hog mode. I don't think Biden's going to get what he wants for the states. And some of them are perfectly happy to sink their own states. I mean, look, Mitch McConnell comes from a state, Kentucky, where the budget was like ripped apart by COVID last year. And he wasn't, he didn't want to put in money for the state. You know, I mean, one one reason we can assume is that it has a Democratic governor, right? Like, so he doesn't want the Democratic governor to get a boost from the federal government to make it easier to bring help to the people of his own state. It's just hard to fathom sometimes like the degree of which these people are partisan versus, you know, in the interest of bettering the lives of their constituents. I mean, it definitely feels like the continual threat of the Republican Party is trying to make government not work to prove that it's bad.

I mean, Grover Norquist once said it best the idea to reduce the government to the size that you could drag into the bathtub and drown it. Yeah. Nobody said it more precisely than what, you know, one vein of thinking is. That is not to say all Republicans believe government is bad. You know, like Rob Portman, who's just announced that he's going to retire is somebody who believes in government. He may believe in a little bit of government, but he believes in government. Served as O&B director, et cetera. And he's found there's no place for him in the Republican Party now.

And what's amazing about that is that he's very conservative. He's just very conservative and believes that there should be a government and a republic that reflects the one that the founders put in place. These should not be difficult things for any member of Congress to accept that there should be a government. It should reflect the republic that the founders wanted. It feels like anti-democracy is like a big thread in this Republican Party. That's Trump to a T. I mean, there are obviously people who like the idea of a, powerful authoritarian dictator type. Moron. And there are people who believe in a republic with dispersed power between the branches of government and that it is against the interests of the country to sack one of its branches of government. So let's talk about the other thing, which seems to actually be a real issue, which is the safety of our leaders.

Yeah, it's a real issue. Yeah, there's this warning yesterday that a lot of these elected officials may be targets. And then they are clearly concerned. And then they're the groups of people who were chanting Mike Pence and had a news. So talk to me. What do you think is going to happen here? Can these leaders protect themselves? Is there money for that?

And, I mean, have you ever seen this in your years of covering Congress? I mean, if everything's working, they shouldn't need protection. But everything's not working, and they do need protection. And we've seen it get worse. I spent a lot of time with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords before she got. shot in the head in 2010. Steve Scalese, the Republican whip, as everyone knows, was nearly paralyzed by a shooter. This keeps going on and there are no consequences.

And by that I don't mean that there's like no individual consequence. Somebody might go to prison for having taken such an act. But there's no consequence for the targeting of lawmakers. And that, which is much broader than just these, you know, very tragic and dramatic scenes of members of Congress being shot or being chased out of their offices in the Capitol, there is a fundamental problem when some segment of the public believes that it can get away with physically attacking members of Congress, physically threatening members of Congress. You should be able to yell whatever the heck you want at them about their policy positions, about their personal life or whatever

you want. You should not be able to threaten. There's no freedom of speech that protects that. You should not be able to like conspire with others to endanger them. There's nothing that protects that in our Constitution. And it's just so dangerous for our democracy, so dangerous for a republic. And when you talk about physical protection, like, it would be nice if we were in a place where people were afraid of attacking members of Congress to the point that they didn't do it. So you didn't need every single one of these people to have security. I mean, I've always thought that they were, you know, in the past I thought that there was too much security in that, A bunch of people who weren't like in the chain of command had security details and SUVs and stuff.

And it's like the president, the ex-presonance kids. And it's like the perk that they want, right? Right. They weren't really in danger back then. Now they're in danger. Now every single one of them is in danger. And they're in danger not only from the outside. They're in danger from the inside because some of their colleagues are trying to get them targeted, trying to have them perk.

And that's, it's just unfathomable. Imagine being, you know, part of a union or a social class. or something where, you know, other members felt like they could tell folks that, you know, hey, look, go over, get that guy, go beat him up, go find him. Yeah. Go hurt him or her. And a lot of them won't go through, right? The gun-toting Congresspeople won't go through, the metal detector, which was put up to prevent

them from going through the metal detector. Right. A lot of them were unwilling to do that. And for years, members of Congress have been able to walk into the Capitol without going through metal detectors, magnetometers. What's amazing to me is all these people who talk about conceal and carry, all these members of Congress, I concealing, you know, I'm always ready. Like, they ran too. Right.

Because their gun was not going to protect them against a mob. Right. Which is why the Capitol Police didn't shoot into the mob. Right. The whole thing is just kind of amazing. So you really know the ins and outs of Congress. And I'm curious to know, what can Nancy Pelosi do about a Congress person or a bunch of people? Congresspeople who won't go through the metal detector, who won't wear masks. I mean, really,

the floor of Congress has become a kind of little, a kind of microcosm of America's weird, anti-public health, anti-gun safety world. And anti-authority, right? Like, I mean, it's, these folks are, you know, walking around, it's like a, like a privilege problem. It's like if you're, you know, nine-year-olds all had, you know, tons of money and weapons and stuff and got to walk around to school and teachers trying to tell them, hey, like, you need to, like, be safe. And they're like, what's going to happen to me? So what can Nancy Pelosi do? Can she do anything? She can find them. She really can. I think she can find them. I think she can also take away office perks and whatever. But I mean, at the end of the day, like, these are people who are elected by their constituents. And,

you know, unless they get expelled from the House of Representatives, there's not much she can do. They, will either respond to the negative feedback about the way they're behaving or they won't. And then, you know, maybe at some point they try to go down the road of expelling people, but you've got, you know, if you're the Democrats, you have to pick up, I don't know what it is, about a quarter to a third or so of the Republican conference to agree with you to expel somebody. And by the way, that's a really harsh measure that should not be taken lightly because the constituents of that person elected them. And of course, they would elect somebody who was more extreme, to replace a person who got expelled.

Steve King is the closest thing we've seen to a kind of censure, and he was taken off all his committees and sort of allowed to stay in Congress. But can you explain exactly what happened there, and is that applicable to a Marjorie Taylor Green or a Lauren Booper? Well, I think what happened is the Republican Party decided that Steve King was more harmful to the rest of the party with what he was saying and doing than he was helpful in holding his house. seat. And so they stripped him of his committee assignments and they all distanced themselves from him

and they said what a terrible person he was. And they went through all that, all that. And it was out of self-interest. And I mean, that's kind of how the House has generally policed itself, not just in a partisan fashion, but more broadly, they police themselves in their own self-interest, which is why they have an ethics committee that has, you know, no real legal bearing, but they want to be able to say we distance ourselves from this behavior that this person has exhibited. With King, not everybody in the Republican Party hated him, but like a lot of them did. He made them look bad. But they must feel the same.

I mean, is Marjorie Taylor Green so different than King except that Marjorie Taylor Green is rich, right? On that conference call yesterday, she supposedly said she was going to donate $175,000 to the state party, and the leaders were thrilled. So, I mean, I do think money definitely plays a role there, right? Money plays a role and the times have changed. I mean, you know, the Republican Party is a Trump Republican Party. But Steve King was like two years ago. I know. It doesn't matter. It's changed so fast.

The Republican establishment was trying to stop Steve King from being the face of the party in the House. It's not that they necessarily disagreed with him, right? Like, it's not that they felt like what he's saying is so crazy. It's that they were like, what he's saying is hurting us. because other people think it's crazy. That is really depressing. I have to say that is really fucking depressing. Kevin McCarthy's meeting with Donald Trump today.

Kevin McCarthy had to flee his office. He begged Donald Trump to speak to stop what was going on as it was going on, and Trump was silent. And now Kevin McCarthy is going to apologize to Donald Trump. So, like, I mean, you know, I don't know what to do with that. It's pretty deranged. If you come at my house... and try to kill you?

Or you send your goons to my house. One thing I will not be doing is apologizing to you and begging for your, you know, for your forbearance. That's pretty fucking grim. I have a question, which is, what broke Devin Nunes's brain? I mean, there are so many ways to answer that question. It's a Rorschach. Look, Nunes was always somebody who was a little bit allured by conspiracy theories. He's got that kind of like, just like a little bit.

And then he became like the intention. intelligence chairman, and he actually got evidence of some of the things he suspected. You know, here's what happens in the secret world. And I think those two things interacted in an unusual way in Congressman Nunez and had sort of changed the way that he deals with the world. You would get a different answer from the Twitter handle Devin Nunes' cow, which would probably tell you that it was mad cow disease. They're trying to take their careers to rehab, but we're saying no.

Well, folks, now that the Trump administration and Trump allies and supporters have scattered to the winds like a bunch of cockroaches when the light comes on in a tenement kitchen in the middle of the night, they are all running out there trying to whitewash their careers, trying to pretend they never served in the Trump administration, trying to say, I'm just a normal everyday person. And I would like a new job, please, preferably in the $500,000 a year range. So we're not going to let them. We're going to keep our eye out for these folks. We're going to keep an eye out for who they are, what they're doing, and how they're alive. about what they, what role they played in the Trump era. So we've got our eyes on them. And with this week, we have a brand new segment called Career Rehab. Right, where we find the people from Trump world who are trying to remake themselves and escape Trumpism. Our first person who is trying to recreate himself, I think he's actually going to really thinks he's going to be the candidate in 2024, don't you? Absolutely. Mike Pence is looking for a brief landing spot before Mike Pence, excuse me, excuse me. I'm thinking of another oleageness, tepid vanilla paste.

Another boring white guy. When I think about which is the most boring white guy, I mean, Mike Pence would like clearly chop Pompeo. I have to say, Pompeo is just, there's something about him that is so incredibly unctious. It's just hard to take. It's so true, Molly. That's exactly what, that's exactly the word for it.

He is just, I mean, just such a, such a, just so repulsive. He's like Don Jr. without the charm. And Don Jr. is like Don Sr. without the charm. Is that fair? Yeah, it's fair. Look, Mike Pompeo was not this guy five years ago. But like a lot of people, he decided the way of Trump is the way of truth. I shall become the maga. And it's like snatched the freedom from my hand, little grasshopper. I am Mike Pompeo and I will transform myself. into the biggest dick I could possibly be. I mean, Mike Pompeo, as Secretary of States,

with the last several days of his tenure, essentially trolling people on Twitter through the official State Department account. He is a guy who was the ultimate Trump suckup, the ultimate Trump ass kisser in the White House and in the administration. He was a constant, oh no, Mr. President, your farts smell like rainbows and elderberries. It's delicious. You know, this guy was just, was just over the top. And now the Hudson Institute has apparently decided that Mike Pompeo is a valued asset to their lineup. I am curious who the Hudson Institute is funded by, but I suppose we'll find out soon enough because Mike Pompeo is only going to be there for a hot minute until his first visits to Iowa, which should happen sometime around June of this year. I don't see a world

where Mike Pompeo, I mean, he makes Josh Hawley look charismatic. Well, I mean, Mike Pompeo looks like a guy who's lost control of the Elks Lodge meeting, and he's banging the gavel as hard as he can against the table in the banquet hall. He's not a guy who comes across as modern-day presidential. He doesn't. Now, you'll know Mike Pompeo is serious about running for president if he goes keto in the next six weeks. Then you'll know. Oh, Jesus. Rick.

Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Solanadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes it's just Molly and I shooting the shit. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the Beast. fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com.

That's new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com. Travis Few is the host of the podcast, QAnon Anonymous. And today's going to talk to us about how everyone's favorite loony conspiracy theory is going. Can you just tell us a little bit about when you started following Q&ONON? Sure. I really first started getting interested in Q&ONN

in July of 2018. I was kind of vaguely aware of Q&N on before that, but I kind of dismissed it as sort of like a weird 8chan thing. And there are a lot of those. They're usually not worth paying attention to. But what really caught my attention was the fact that I noticed that Charlie Kirk started boosting some bogus Q&O statistics. And that worries me a whole lot because, you know,

Charlie Kirk is not a fringe figure. And a figure of like Q&ON was reaching some. someone with basically as much clout as Charlie Kirk, that signaled to me that was worth paying attention to more closely. Hey, you have a huge audience of senior citizens. That's not great. No, it's not. When do you think Q&OND started in earnest?

Well, I mean, Q&ON started, I mean, in earnest, I can identify the exact date. It was October 28, 2017. This was the day of the very first Q-Drop, which implied that, which implied that, which implied that basically that Hillary Clinton's arrest was imminent. Didn't get a whole lot of traction at first. This might have been one of the sort of the handful of like, you know, insider anons on the chans on 4chan who claimed that they have, that they have some sort of secret government information.

But this particular one, because it was a little bit more gamified, a little bit more exciting. And plus the fact that it was sort of pushed on other platforms like YouTube and Twitter, it caught on in a really surprising way. The thing that I'm so struck by with QAnon, We've seen all these in the last two days, all of his news about these Marjorie Taylor Green, Facebook posts, CNN, K-file, dug up. My question is, it feels to me like Marjorie Taylor Green is not an outlier that there is a large group of these middle-aged women who believe this. Yeah, I mean, it is surprisingly popular.

I mean, not just with middle-aged women, but with a surprisingly diverse. age groups. Yeah, I mean, with the case of like Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, I feel like I was, I was sounding the alarm about her like six months ago because like it was clear that she had some really, really deranged views. You know, she bought into the idea, for example, that JFK Jr's death in 1999 wasn't due to a tragic plane crash that it would do to a, you know, a pilot error, but rather he was murdered by Hillary Clinton. She claimed this once during a conference speech. And so yesterday it emerged that Marjorie Taylor-Greennor, what I like to call her as the alpha of the Maga-Kerrans, that she believes in this frazzled drip conspiracy. Yes.

What is that? Oh, my gosh. So, yes, there is a belief among Q&O followers in a basically a Hillary Clinton snuff film. They believe that there's this secret recording that's somewhere on the dark web of Hillary Clinton and Humannabed, mutilating a child. And Hillary wearing the child's face, right? Yes, they're both wearing the child's face. Now, this is just bizarre stuff from a 70s horror film.

Like there's nothing, there's no substance to it whatsoever. It's just bizarre fantasy. But some people convinced themselves that it is real. Sometimes people will even say falsely that they've seen it or something like that. But yeah, this is like one of the more, even within Q&ONN, which is full of really bizarre out there beliefs. This is one of the sort of the fringe of the fringe. So it was surprising that, you know, that she believed it and was managed to become a congresswoman afterwards. The JFK thing, just to get back to it for a second, there is a guy who goes to Q&ON rallies, and also

I've seen him at CPAC, who claims to be JFK Jr. Yes, you know, the funny thing about, yes, Vincent Fuchsia, I think, believe his name is, or Fusca. Yeah, he seems like a great guy. I mean, he is a funny guy. I mean, he's this, he's this Italian-American guy from Pennsylvania, So he's not, you know, even, you know, Irish Catholic as the candidates were. But the funny thing is that a lot of Q&L followers, they kind of latched on to the idea that he was secretly JFK Jr. in disguise and he had faked his death in 1999. And I don't think he really ever actually positively claimed that, yes, I am JFK Jr. But rather, he simply did not, chose not to deny it. He kind of rolled with it. He kind of allowed people to believe it. once he realized.

So he's kind of a funny case. You know, great reporter, of course, at Daily Beast. Will Sommer has tried to talk to him on a few occasions to try and get his story. But Vincent Fuchsia has demurred. And the interesting thing about Vincent Fuchsia is he doesn't look like JFK Jr. At all. No. I'm not even a little.

It's like they always bring up like they're weird like, you know, they look at JFK Jr. And then look at Fiatzifia and they have the side-by-side phone. those and they imply they look similar, but man, I do not see it. It is bizarre that people think. So here's a question for you. Now, Q has stopped posting. That's right. There's not been a single Q drop since December 8th of last year. So if Q has stopped posting, and then the son of the the 8-chan guy who is Q said everybody should get over it, right? Yes, that's that's that you're talking about, yeah, Ron Watkins. Yeah, Ron Watkins is the administrator of Aitcoon. site where Q has posted.

And he is Q and on, right? He is almost certainly authored some Q drops. He was instrumental in sort of hosting Q. So, yeah, I mean, we say, like, who is Q is probably him and Jim and perhaps a couple other people who worked with them. But yeah, he is certainly one of the people who was definitely behind the whole Q operation. So with that, on your most recent episode, you talked a lot about one of, I think the most instructive books about this era,

When Prophecy Fails from Leon Fessinger. It seems like we're now in the prophecy has failed stage of Q. What is the reaction that you're seeing from people with this? So, yeah, the reaction, I mean, it was essentially textbook, if you've read When Prophecy Fails by Fessinger. I agree. This is a, if you understand what's going on with the Q&I community, you need a familiarize yourself with that book and cognitive distance theory.

So, yeah, what happens at first, there was a lot of shock and disappointment and rage, that the feeling like they have been misled, Q and unfollowers. Some of them, you know, acted very stressed and acted like they had been deceived and even despairing at times because they felt like Q wasn't coming to the rescue. But then afterwards, they started, you know, they started in with their rationalizations. They started doing things like explaining why certain things weren't what they see. as predicted, basically. They are doing everything that we thought they would do. They're going to continue to believe it regardless of what is true. Fun. So bad. It's a sort of mass hallucination, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's very sad. I mean, these people there, yeah, they're very detached from reality. It really comes down to this really super intense hatred and of everything that they

consider to be part of the establishment. And it's kind of like this really hyper-populist movement in that sense. And, you know, there's a way to be skeptical about institutions or skeptical about the mainstream, I think, in a healthy, productive way. But these people, they instead, they sort of reject all of the mainstream media and all of medical science and all, you know, the regular government functions just out of hand. And they decide to replace it, with their own kind of version of reality and they declare that good enough. And this is what leads them into these delusions. It really is an anti-government conspiracy theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, we have a lot of long tradition of like, you know, anti-government movements here

in the U.S. But, yeah, I mean, it is the belief that it's not merely that, you know, the problem is that the government needs to be reformed or we need to get better people in the office or anything like that, is to believe that the entire institution is irredeemably corrupt. It needs to be profoundly cleansed to the extent that there's a mass arrest event and where they're all sort of seized by the military and the descent of Guantanamo Bay or something. They want a big, dramatic thing to happen in order to institute basically this revolution, this kind of military junta that fixes everything. What do you think will happen to these people? Do you think they'll ever be like, oh, Democrats aren't killing children and running sex rings out of pizza shops?

Probably not. I mean, a lot of these people have devoted years of their life to this kind of thing. They have, you know, they've made sacrifices. They've spent hours at the computer. Sometimes they've hurt family, they've hurt the relationships with family members. Sometimes they've actually hurt their career. And when you have, like, you know, sacrifice that much, it's incredibly painful to realize that you have been duped and you are not actually on the right path. So it's just, what probably is going to happen is that a lot of them will continue just doubling down

and continue believing it and continue believing it probably just for the feeling of community with other Q&O followers. Or they'll, you know, the bigger risk is that they'll get radicalized into an even more dangerous, even more militant kind of extremism. Trousson, you study this so much more than average people. I'm curious, January 6th was like kind of the moment where anybody who was like, oh, this is harmless, started to be like, oh, maybe it's not. Can you talk about any of the other ways you're seeing this affected society that you think are under discussed?

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing is that the biggest way this harm society is actually kind of subtle and quiet. It's not as ostentatious and loud as the capital insurrection. What it does that, it hurts people's relationships. It hurts people's ability to connect with other people in their life and hurts their ability to connect with other things that they might otherwise enjoy. It becomes an obsession. It becomes their primary way of interacting with the world. Is this fantasy world? And it's almost like, you know, it's like an addiction.

And people, they, you know, they choose this, this bizarre, alternate world that, serves nothing, does not help them, does not even help their own goals in any way, in lieu of things that they might actually give them joy and might actually, you know, help them understand the world, might actually lead to productive relationships. But those kinds of things don't lead to headlines. But that is the, that's what I think is the most, most widespread destruction that comes from QAnon. Did QAnon have like cruises or conferences or anything? Well, I bet they do. As a matter of fact, I mean, I personally have been to six different Q&on events,

and this includes Qaeda, like, marches and rallies, and what I have been to one QAnon conference. It was in Scottsdale, Arizona. And there was, yeah, there was a group of Q&N followers and a lot of, like, Q&N sort of leaders who discussed, who discussed Q&N and QDrops. So, yeah, it does exist. I don't know how much it's happening nowadays because, you know, COVID is still having a lot of problems.

So a lot of conference rooms aren't willing to book them, I imagine. But, yeah, I imagine once the pandemic gets under control, the Q&Lon conferences, we'll probably start roaring back to life. How are they with you? Are they mad at you or are they, like, cover me? You know, the funny thing is that some of them are mad at me, but some of them are simply believe that I'm simply a lost. soul. I mean, I'm kind of unique because I'm not someone in terms of, unique in terms of the types of people

who cover this, because I don't come from a government background, that I don't come from a mainstream media background. And so as a reason, for that reason, they're a little bit easier on me than they are on sort of more traditional reporters. They kind of think I'm sort of a lost soul. I think that one day I'll realize that I'm mistaken and then I'll come, come to them, say, I'm so sorry for dissuading people from this movement. Jesus, that is really terrifying. Thank you, Travis. Yeah, thank you for having me.

I'll let you go first today, Molly Junk Fast. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy today is Marjorie Taylor Green, who has even more of these insane videos, insane conspiracy theories, and just, I mean, she's basically been on Facebook being an insane boomer for the last. two years. And I would say that in this, I also, I am, I am not a boomer, so I don't want to get in

trouble. Do you guys have a favorite of MTG's crazy conspiracy theories? Because mine is definitely that a space laser started the California wildfires. A space laser? I mean, they're all bad. 9-11 didn't happen, right? Space laser. I mean, there's just so much fuckery. But the other thing I would say is, like, you can't have a Marjorie Taylor Green conversation without having a Kevin McCarthy conversation because, like, she would not be there. Of course. And that is because it is now the party of Q. It is the party of crazies. It's the party of assholes. It's the party of dark, shitty people. And they've normalized the darkness and the shittiness of Marjorie Taylor Green. And she's a shitty person. She's a bad person.

And also she wanted to put a gun and put a bullet. She liked a tweet that said, I mean, it just, there's no, the depths to her, her, you know, disgustingness, no, no bounds. So she is my fuck that guy. Rick, who is your? My fuck that guy today is Mr. Douglas Mackey. Douglas Mackey. You have to explain the whole backstory here.

Douglas Mackey is, has been arrested. I'm not going to describe it. I'm not going to describe in detail what he did to my kids on the show, but I am going to address it. But is he a quote-unquote journalist? What is he? No, he's not a journalist of any kind. He's a fucking troll. Okay. But was he a Breitbart? No, he's just a troll. He was at a hedge fund for a while. Okay.

So the FBI yesterday, folks, arrested a guy named Douglas Mackey. Now, you've never heard of Douglas Mackey unless you are particularly submerged in the Twitter subculture. of Flam Wars of the 2016 era and beyond. Douglas Mackey went by the name on Twitter of Ricky Vaughn. He was a flaming, raging, blatant, white supremacist asshole of the highest possible order. He had a lot of friends and followers who later whitewashed their little love of him, like Mike Sarnovich and Jack Posobiac and all these other idiots and the whole Breitbart crew, all these guys.

They loved Ricky Vaughn. He's the Trone of Tros. So Douglas Mackey was arrested by the FBI yesterday. Ricky Vaughn. In cuffs. I'm waiting for the mugshot because although he played the character on Twitter of the badass, he used the picture of Charlie Sheen for the movie Major League as his thing. Douglas Mackey is a soft-skinned, soft-handed Ponzi,

Middlebury college guy from Vermont, who was a raging white supremacist on Twitter. Now, in the 2016 race, Douglas Mackey, in his retirement, Bon character went after my kids. At the point, at that point, my son was in high school and my daughter was in college. Went after my kids repeatedly. Now, Douglas Mackey has been arrested for conspiracy against the constitutional rights of others, which is a rarity in the complaint, but he went out and bought text messaging services. And those text messaging services were targeted African Americans, and they said, you can vote by text. You don't have to vote. It was the voter fraud, the election fraud, that Republicans are screeching about,

stuck pigs all the time now. And the hit on this, at the minimum number, they believe that 4,850 voters, okay, sent in their quote-unquote vote by text and therefore did not vote. He sent them a message saying, did you know you can vote for Hillary by voting for text? Just text 555 whatever with your vote. Now, on the Tucker Carlson White Power Fishtick Hour last night,

he, of course, came out and said, Ricky Vaughn is being arrested for making it. memes. No, no. He was arrested because he engaged in electoral fraud. He engaged in a fraud which sought to abrogate the constitutional right to vote of African Americans. But anyway, I just want to send out a big old shout out to Douglas Mackey, who will never, ever, ever again, not be a guy who was arrested for election fraud and never ever again be a guy who can have a job anywhere other than being able to say, hello, welcome to Olive Garden. Would you like our unlimited breadstick basket? I'll be your server, Douglas Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn. Fuck that.

guy. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks in the Daily Beast and beyond for media, culture, politics, and science who will 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. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm at Molly JongFast and he's at the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you. again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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