The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump Should Be in a Doctor’s Office, Not on the Campaign Trail

Episode Date: October 18, 2024

 “Something is clearly not right” with the former president, The New Abnormal co-hosts agree. Then, The Washington Post’s national columnist Philip Bump joins the program to discuss his approach to covering Trump—which Levy says is a “rare bright spot” in the genre. Plus! A talk with Charlie Warzel, a staff writer at The Atlantic, about his most recent piece, titled “I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is,” and the crisis of misinformation currently plaguing America. 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. 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. Washington Post National

columnist Philip Bump is here to tell us all about how they write about Donald Trump and why the rest of the political media should take notes. Then staff writer at the Atlantic, Charlie Wurzel, joins us to talk about their most recent piece. I'm running out of ways to explain how bad this is. What's happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis. But first, let's have some fun. You know, Andy, I think that this whole podcasting thing, you know, we need to switch things up. Why don't we just play our greatest hits and just sway? I know that people can't see us, but they can feel the vibe.

Danielle, I'm starting to worry about you. Is it as much as the media should be worrying about Donald Trump? Because that 39 minutes of Maga's best hits with Donald Trump swing, Christine Nome, aka dog killer, trying to do her best miming of his moves? I don't even know what the hell you would call it to make it seem like this was totally normal and as I think it was, I don't know what outlet said it,

but they said, oh, Donald Trump decides to have a spontaneous concert. I'm sorry, what? I don't think you can call it dancing. I think you can call it swaying, as you said, off the top. Someone on blue sky, a guy named Cooper, Lund put the music from, like the jazzy music from Twin Peaks underneath it. I think it was Audrey's theme.

And it was absolutely perfect. It was absolutely perfect. He has, look, we've been talking about this for a long time on this podcast about the fact that he's sundowning and the fact that he just is mentally completely losing it. And this is, in case you needed more evidence, which I guess some people still do. I mean, come on. When I first saw this story that it was happening, and I saw someone say, you know, whatever the story was, that he stopped his town hall to play some music. I figured he played a song, which would still be beyond weird.

And then when I saw it was, like you said, was it 39 minutes of him just standing on the stage and swaying and playing, I guess, what's supposed to be his amazing playlist that even for true, Trump, this was like, what the hell, man? We've been watching this. We've been watching this decline for I don't know how long. The Trump that was in 2016, the Trump that was in even 2020, does not exist anymore. And I can recall that back in July, when President Joe Biden was watching fireworks at a concert and kind of gazing off into the distance, that that was headline news for weeks. And guess what? He wasn't on a stage supposedly taking questions and delivering remarks.

He was at a fireworks show. And they had conversations and headlines and made up stories about his endurance and mental fitness. You have Donald Trump consistently pulling shit like this. This goes on top of the Hannibal Lecter going off on tangents of a fictional character. This goes on top of the nuking of hurricanes and just making. up all of this nonsense and now canceling events, one event after the other. Now it seems that maybe mainstream corporate media is picking up on the fact that maybe he's not okay and should actually release his medical records because he is the oldest person in this race and is showing

obvious signs of decline. Okay, but Danielle, look, the media has never wanted to jump in and talk about a candidate's fitness or age as being a problem for their, you know what, I can't even get through that with a straight face. They, of course, were all over Joe Biden about this and have been, I think, curiously silent is not an unfair way to put it when it comes to Trump. We've been harping on this, and we're not the only ones. There've been, you know, a lot of people in, I guess, whatever you want to call it, non-traditional media or a lot of people online have been talking about the fact that Trump is, like you said, he's not who he was in 2016. He's not even who he was in 2020. He's always been a liar. He's always been a not particularly smart

person who says incredibly dumb things. But this is, I think, qualitatively different. What we've been seeing over the past, I don't know, six months or a year, whatever it's been, it's different. And the rambling stories that have nothing. to do with reality, the constant references to Hannibal Lecter, the, you know, this, the swaying. All of this is, again, as you said, this is not the Trump from 2016. The Trump from 2016 was, again, he was a very bad person and a pathological liar. And someone who said, as I pointed out, said very stupid things, he was not this guy. And it is way past time that the big boys in the media and girls.

started talking about this the way they had absolutely no compunction talking about Joe Biden. And you'll have to explain to me, Daniel, why there's been this double standard because I'm not smart enough to understand it. You know, at one time we used to say, oh, well, they're afraid of Donald Trump. They're afraid of being seen as quote unquote the liberal media, which I now come to understand and I want people to get is absolute bullshit. There is no such thing as liberal media at all, not the people. that are sitting in the C-suits of these networks. I believe that they want Donald Trump to win because there is no way that you look at, first of all,

that episode on stage for 39 minutes, not five, not 15, 39 minutes of Donald Trump swaying on stage, looking completely and totally out of it. And on top of that has canceled the interview with 60 minutes, last minute, canceled the CNBC interview that he was supposed to have this week last minute, canceled an NBC news interview and canceled a rally in Savannah. And his people are saying, oh, well, there has been a conflict of the schedule.

Really? So where is he now? You had a conflict of the schedule means that he should be someplace else. So where is he? In the doctor's office? Because that's exactly where the fuck he needs to be. Because something is clearly not right. Yeah.

I mean, look, they're lying. At least one of those things where they said it was a conflict that he was not going to be in town, quote unquote. he was actually right across town at Fox News headquarters. Clearly, they have made a decision that he is only going to go on places like Fox, and they are not going to let him do anything outside of basically their little bubble. I want to point this out because I read it and I still can't believe it. I don't know if you saw this, Danielle, there was a piece at Time.com,

which is Time Magazine, because of us old enough to remember Time Magazine. The headline was, the perils of trolling Trump on his, weird dance party by a guy named Philip Elliott. This is part of Times Politics newsletter. So Philip Elliott, he goes through what happened for the nearly 40 minutes on stage in Philadelphia. And then he says, but there's a risk here in going after Trump for this. And one that Democrats would do well to take seriously. It's worth remembering that close to two thirds of voters are expected to be over the age of 45 this fall and one in four is slated to be 65 or over. And then he says, it's one thing to go after someone's potential capacity to do the job, and it's quite another

if it looks like straight up ageism. And at the moment, Harris's approach could alienate some voters who view it as more like the latter. Are you kidding me? Is he serious with that bullshit? This is not a comedy piece. This is not The Onion. This is not Clickhole. This is Time Magazine. And this is part of a media that hammered Joe Biden over and over again and talked about how he was the oldest candidate ever to run for president or whatever the stat was over and over again. And now that it's Trump, oh, we got to be careful. We got to be, you know, you don't want to overplay this. You don't want to alienate voters. My jaw dropped as I was reading this piece. And look, you and I, because I remember this, we were very, very careful and very, very upfront about saying things,

you know, even when we were talking about Biden. It's not ageism. And that it really was about whether or not he was up to the job. And we would point out people like Bernie Sanders, who is, you know, around the same age, but who seems totally fine. To think that going after Trump for standing up at a rally for 40 minutes or at a town hall when he's supposed to be taking questions, it wasn't even a rally. He was supposed to be taking questions. And he's standing there playing music for 39 minutes. And to say that, oh, you can't go after him. You've got to be careful because you can't make it about his age. No one's making it about his age

except for the fact that they're making it about the fact that he is sundowning. And to read this from a mainstream media person after everything we went through with Joe Biden, just it blew my mind, Danielle. And that's the thing to me is that the bias is extreme because for a year, the headlines were all about Joe Biden's age.

The headlines were about how quick or slowly Joe Biden was walking. The headlines were about whether or not it is Joe Biden's stutter or his mental decline that we need to be paying attention to. Article after article after article, which ends up with him leaving the race, which, look, best thing that has happened, grateful for that. But if you're watching the same but worse, happen with Donald Trump. And now all of a sudden, you're treating him with kid gloves when they're.

went for the jugular with Joe Biden, the bias is so evident. I will just say that this story is one that needs to continue because let me tell you, just I will say this quickly, that incident on the stage, just imagine that in the situation room as we have, oh, I don't know, global catastrophe that is unfolding. And Donald Trump is like, oh, run me my playlist again. And then it's J.D. Vance and Stephen Miller that are the ones calling the fucking shots. Like, you know, folks, need to wake up. Speaking of waking up, I have to hand it to the vice president for doing what I haven't done in over a decade, which is going on Fox. Initially, I was just like, why, why do this? It's a trap. Does it matter? I think it's one of the smartest moves that her campaign has made,

and they've made a lot of smart moves, and I think that that was one of them. Did you think that it was a move by them. I don't think it was negative at all. And I talked a little bit about this with Washington Post reporter Philip Bump in an interview that you'll hear a little later listeners. I don't know what she really gets out of it. I don't think it's bad. I don't think that, you know, there are people who say, oh, you shouldn't go on. You shouldn't go on. They used to yell at Bernie Sanders. They would yell at someone like Pete Buttigieg who does it. I don't buy that it's a negative. I don't know how much it helps. But regardless, the fact is she went in to, and there's no other way to say this, she went into enemy territory.

Mm-hmm. And Brett Baer, who is someone that I actually used to have a fair amount of respect for. Really? Oh, well, you're a nice thing. Yeah, no, I think back in the day, look, he was always leaning to the right. Yes, absolutely. But back in the day, particularly pre-Trump, you could get good political coverage from him. And he would have people on who were smart on his show's special report. Even if you didn't agree with them, they were smart. They had heft. And the show is now, I mean, it's devolved into a complete MAGA Fest.

I thought the way he handled that interview was embarrassing. And he just, he would not stop interrupting her. There's a clip going around for if people haven't seen it of her talking about Trump, talking about the enemy within. Yep. And going on and on about his little fascist plan to, and you and I talked about Trump saying this, I think, on the last episode, you know, his plan to go out. after with the military, if necessary, what he perceives as the enemy within, which is, you know,

Democrats specifically mentioned the Pelosi's, which I, is not just Nancy Pelosi, but I guess also her husband who has already been through a horrible attack because he says shit like this. And Bear interrupted her to try to cover for Donald Trump. And he did this by playing a clip of Trump addressing this with Harris Faulkner, also on Fox, and where Trump a little bit, soft-pedaled it, but not really. And Harris wouldn't stand for it. And she basically was like, you didn't play the clip of Donald Trump saying this. And Brett was like, no, this was the clip of him on Fox.

Well, pardon my language. Bitch, don't play the clip on Fox. Play the original clip of Donald Trump saying it because that's what she's talking about. And he said it. And by the way, his cleanup on Harris-Factor's interview wasn't much better, if at all. But it was so obvious that the dice were loaded, the deck was. stacked by Fox News by Brett Baer. And it was absolutely shameful for someone who used to be, in my mind, again, maybe just in my mind, he used to be a journalist. He was never a Laura

Ingram, a Sean Hannity, a Jesse Waters, whatever. He was an actual journalist. Yes, he had his biases, but he was, end of the day, I thought he was a journalist. I do not think that anymore. I don't, I think he's lost all claim to that title. And he is now basically just a host slash pundit for Fox News. I didn't expect anything more from Brett Baer other than to try and play the alpha dog and to look tough to his audience of one, which is Donald Trump that is watching. But I got to tell you that as a woman, watching that man try and walk all over the vice president, it's familiar. And it's familiar to a lot of women. And, And I think that Republicans, these Maga Republicans, are overplaying their hand that, like, the white women who they court will continue to look at this, look at their toxic misogyny and say, oh, yeah, that was a great job.

Oh, yeah. So wonderful. You know, so tough. As opposed to, I just feel icky. Like, I just feel an ick. Yeah. And you can see in the polling that is being done on women, particularly on white women, that Democrats are in fact peeling them off because I think that they are showcasing very clearly like

one, her going on there was just like, I'm not afraid of you. I know what it is, but I'm actually going to show up in the way that your big bad man doesn't show up any fucking where where he's not getting, you know, roses thrown at his feet and his ass kissed because he can't take the fucking heat. And so I think that in just the visual and creating that moment for her, particularly there was really important to blast their, oh, she just sticks with her talking point. She doesn't want to sit down. Where is Kamala? Where is Kamala?

I'm in your living room, bitch. Like, that's where I am. And I thought it was brilliant. I don't disagree with that at all. And I think particularly where we are now, it shows a stark contrast to Trump, who, as we were talking about earlier, is canceling interviews pretty much everywhere that is not Fox News or some other friendly territory. And so absolutely. I just, I am skeptical that these interviews in general move the needle at all, whether it's with Fox, whether it's with 60 minutes, you know, whether it's with the New York Times.

I think the only place where it would really move the needle is, of course, if she came on the new abnormal, that would, I think at least, I would say seven states might switch from red to blue. And it could be more. I'm giving like, that's like a floor. I think the ceiling is much higher. So anyway, Vice President Harrison. if you're listening. And if you truly want to win this election, you know how to find me. I love to see it.

Can't wait for the sit down. The biggest election of our lifetimes is less than a month away. And the news is only going to get crazier and more important as the countdown continues. As each day brings new headlines and critical campaign updates, the future of the country may be decided by the stories that cut through the noise and capture our attention during the next few weeks. If you want to stay informed through all. of the twists and turns, the Daily Beast's new daily newsletter, October Surprise, is the reliable

resource you're looking for. It will keep you in the know on everything that's happening as we race toward election day. Sign up now at beast.pub slash October surprise. Beast.pub slash October surprise. We've been pretty harsh on much of the political media here on the new abnormal, but one of the rare bright spots in this year's election coverage and coverage of Donald Trump in particular has been the work of the Washington Post National Colonist Philip Bump. He joins me now. Philip, thank you so much for being here. Of course.

I mean it when I say that, that you've been a rare bright spot and I've name checked you on more than a few occasions recently. But as a voracious listener of the new abnormal, I'm sure you knew that already. My first question to you is, why have you been covering Trump so well when so many of your peers, in my opinion, haven't been? And to be clear, I'm not asking you to slam other people here. I'm asking how you go about writing your pieces because to me, they are very different from the ones written by most other journalists covering Trump in the election. Those are your words, right, that I'm doing it particularly well. I just, I feel like I'm doing it the way that that it ought to be done. I appreciate it when people find it valuable, right? I think that's worth saying in part just because, you know, I tend to be a relatively modest person. So all of that throat clearing out of the way, all I try and do is use the experience that I have in paying attention to Trump, which I think is something that a lot of people don't really have time to do, right? When you're at a Trump rally, for example, it's hard to pay a lot of attention to what he's saying because there's so much else going on and you're trying to get interviews with other people and yada, yada, yada,

when you sit back and you have the luxury that I do of doing it in retrospect and viewing what he's saying and watching what he's doing and importantly, having done this since even before he came down the famous escalator in June 2015, that I have a deep background in understanding what it is and how he says things. And of course, I, you know, I'm a columnist as opposed to a reporter. Sure. And so I'm allowed to then have, you know, my opinion of what it is that he's doing. seep into my writing about it. And, you know, look, I think that my assessments of who Donald Trump is in the way in which he engages in American politics are not secret to anyone who reads what I write. But it is not because I am, you know, some newly spawned baby that is emerging eyes wide and bright into

this world. It's because I've been doing this for a long time and recognize the patterns in what it is that he does and why it is that he does those things. So I want to give an example of what I mean. You ran a piece called, here's how Donald Trump would lower grocery prices. In this piece, you printed in full Donald Trump's town hall response to a woman who asked him, what steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from inflation? And his response that, again, that you printed in full was right around 1,000 words of rambling nonsense. It was mostly about immigration. And you ran it all without interruption, which made it extremely clear just how nuts it was. And then you corrected it in footnotes. And this is so different from how Trump is usually covered that honestly it was great, but it was just wild to even see it. Yeah, it's funny because I also went to my editor and I was like, hey, this is what I want to do here. And he was like, yeah, great.

You know, as long as you make it clear that this is Trump saying it, then fine, go for it. You know, so even in the moment, I was just kind of like, well, this is a different way of doing it. I had in the past done sort of written through what, you know, the journalists would call written through where you sort of interspice your own thoughts as you're actually conveying what actually occurred. I did that, for example, when he had that baffling child care answer at the Economic Club of New York, you know, a month or two ago. I did the same thing. I said, here's what he said, but, you know, instead of just doing it as sort of a verbatim script, I wrote through it, you know, so, so this is not the first time I've done it. But here it was just because the answer was so deviated so obviously from what the questioner had intended. A pre-screened questioner, mind you. You know, someone who he should have known this question was coming, but that it deviated so obviously, I think, presented an opportunity to show that, you know, his answer had nothing to do with it.

And there was a second aspect to this, too, that I think is sort of was underappreciated in the response, which is that I offered it as well because there's so much focus. by the media specifically on this idea that what undecided voters lack is more information about what the candidates want to do. And I wrote a piece a week or two ago looking at polling, which shows the undecided voters actually don't say, for example, that what they're waiting to hear is more about Kamala Harris's policy details. I mean, of course not. That's stupid. Like, if you're an undecided voter, it's because you're not paying attention to politics, not because you've been paying close attention and you're just missing the details. Right. Like, you know, no one believes that, but it's very self-serving for the media. And I don't mean to bash the media.

I'm a member of the media, and I think we often get a bad rap. But it is the case that some members of the media are using that as a cudgel to try and get Harris to sit down with them and say, oh, well, you know, this is what undecided voters want. So the point in part in doing that was to say, okay, undecided voters, you want to know what the policies are here. This is what Donald Trump says. And that's actually the kicker to the pieces. And that's what Donald Trump is going to do for English, which is nothing. You know, so there were multiple aspects to it. But it just, you know, if the answer hadn't been so absolutely bizarre, obviously.

it also wouldn't have worked. Yeah, for sure. And my favorite part, I think, of that piece was the footnote you wrote for when Trump says, but you asked another question about safety and also about black population jobs and Hispanic population, in particular those two. And your footnote simply read, she did not ask this question. Right. Well, she didn't. You know, it's sort of fascinating, too, you know, watching the event, Donald Trump, one of the things, you know, one of the things that I keep in mind as I'm covering Trump. And, you know, I try and be open to the, to, I try not to have too many preconceptions when I'm doing these things. But one of the things that is obvious is that Donald Trump is, is, has proven himself to be broadly incapable of adjusting on the fly.

There's this very famous moment. I cannot find it. And I wish I can. And I need to spend more time doing it. But there's this moment during the 2016 campaign when he's sitting down. I think it was for an interview with MSNBC. And they start giving him this leading question about like a rich, successful, something or other. I don't remember what it was, but it was very obviously setting him up to be talking about Hillary Clinton, but I haven't think it was talking about him. And he just fell for it in exactly the same way that he chopped down on every piece of bait that Harris gave him during the debate. He totally fell for it because he's demonstrated that he is generally incapable of having any sort of nuanced perception of what's happening and the way in which he's engaging with these things.

And so this woman asked a question, and she did at the outset frame it as, you know, I'm a black person. She's a black Republican from Philadelphia. You know, and I recognize that the problems of the black community are similar to the problems of other communities. But, you know, what do you do about grocery prices? But he sees her and he sees a black person. He sees a black person answering the question. And so he starts going off on this riff about, you know, these other theoretical questions that a black person might have asked because he's incapable of not doing that because he sees this black person asking question. It's really, you know, the the psychology of Donald Trump's engagement with politics is so much simpler.

So many people presented as. And it is that he sees a thing and says the thing that he thinks is going to get people to like it. That's it. That's literally it. So he sees a black woman asking question. And so he answers the question that he thinks is the one that black people want to hear. Yeah. I want to move to another piece you wrote.

And it was something you brought up. The piece was called The Myth of Businessman Trump has collapsed. And you were talking about his interview at the Economic Club of Chicago earlier in the week. Why did Trump do so badly here? You have a theory. Yeah. And I think that the word badly there is to some extent missing the point, not to be rude to you. Well, though it too late.

He came into that interview approaching it like a campaign event, which of course it was. And in his campaign, he has one goal. And that is to say, I'm going to be the guy that punishes our enemies. And our enemies is a loosely bounded category, which includes for his base Democrats and Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff and various other people. It also includes foreign actors who were the targets of his tariffs. That's his rhetoric about tariffs is framed by Republicans as, oh, he's just, you know, he wants to negotiate with these things. But that's not what it is. He sees tariffs as a thing that can be a cudgel that he can use against foreign nations.

And that's why he talks about tariffs all the time. In part, it's because it's an easy out for him to talk about the economy. But so he comes into this Economic Club of Chicago conversation in a campaign mindset. And so he engages with it as though he's just going to talk about beating up his enemies. And so then when Micklethwaite comes after him, the Edner Chief Bloomberg, you know, starts pressing him on hard questions. He simply reframes Micklethwaite as one of the enemies, right? And you're, you know, you got all this stuff wrong too. Ha, ha, ha.

And, of course, his base eats it up because that's what they're here for is Don Trump is going to challenge the enemies. So he did badly from the perspective of a presidential candidate talking about what he's going to do for the economy. Because, of course, he said nothing besides, I'm going to have these terrorists, which everyone understands is going to be inflationary. But from the perspective of the campaign, he did what he's supposed to do, which is say, I'm going to be the guy that takes on the elites and the enemies. which is his sole narrative. So the point of that piece was that this is very different than when he ran in 2016. In 2016, he was, I'm this outsider guy who isn't the Republican establishment, and plus I know business. And so I'm going to make the economy better because business, yada, yada, yada, right? Which, of course, at the time was overinflated and predicated heavily on the apprentice, which was itself overinflated.

But over time, he's just sort of abandoned that. And it was very obvious in that appearance. This is a, you know, if you're the businessman turned politician, that's where you should thrive. This isn't a foreign policy conversation. It's the economy. This is what you're supposed to be good at. But he wasn't. He wasn't good to answering questions because that's not who he is anymore. And all this idea that he was the businessman who's going to change things, like, that's just totally out the window, including in, you know, in the perspective of Donald Trump himself.

Yeah. And the other thing you point out in the piece is that, you know, he's not as much a businessman as he is someone who has established a cult of personality and who slaps his name on things and sells them. for ridiculous prices. Yeah, exactly, right. So he was being compared during that event to other business leaders, people who run successful businesses, but that's not who he is. I mean, honestly, it's never really who he was. The Trump Organization was founded by his father handed to him, you know, and a sort of of

middling success, obviously, as, you know, indicated by the various bankruptcies that he had. But now it's just very obvious. Like, he is the equivalent of a TikTok influencer who leverages their, you know, two million followers on TikTok to sell, you know, garbage T-shirts and stupid branded, you know, sneakers. Like, this is what he does, right? You know, he sells mega hats to raise money for his campaign, but he's obviously more invested in putting money in his own pocket by selling all of these other random things and licensing his name to Bibles and NFTs and, you know, anything that he can vacuum up money.

When the Edmner Chief of Bloomberg News is sitting down and thinking about who are the people that really have a good grasp on how to build a strong business, he doesn't look at TikTok, you know, the ones are right but that's essentially what don't Trump is yeah I think I saw yesterday I don't know if you saw this that they're now selling hats that are it's a hat with a picture of a MAGA hat on it or a drawing of

it's like a hat on a hat I did see that and on blue sky our commonly preferred social media platform I shared that with a little jiff of exhibit which is you know perhaps a reference that kids today don't understand but yeah you like that's when we put a hat in your hat and you'll enjoy that yeah I'm a little

upset that you said jiff and not gift, but I'll let it go. Well, it's the proper pronunciation. We can have a whole separate podcast on that. All right. We'll edit that out. I want to move to a couple other pieces you wrote because you brought up the whole idea of Trump and his enemies and how that's, you know, basically the rationale for so much of his campaign right now. So two days apart, you published a piece titled, Trump wants to punish all of his enemies, not just immigrants. And then another one with the headline, Trump clarifies that his quote unquote enemy within. comment was about evil Democrats. And that piece had a subheadline that read, his allies have tried to narrow the scope of whom Trump was talking about. Once again, Trump made their efforts much more difficult. And again, this is, this is great coverage. Talk about exactly what Trump means or what he meant when he said all this. Yeah, I'll first say that I didn't write whom and that.

That's our, unfortunately, our copy desk is very assiduous about making who's into whoms, which I find very frustrating. I just, I want to defend my own, my own, uh, Pretentious mistake. Yeah. So Donald Trump has increasingly over the past few weeks, and in part because his pattern is if you push back on him, then he doubles down. So because he started off saying this thing and because he received pushback, now he's digging it even further. But he has started referring to this idea that there are enemies within the United States who oppose a bigger risk to the United States than foreign actors like China and Russia. Now, this is in part because he doesn't view China and Russia as particularly threatening because he views Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin as allies in the experiment of establishing a pseudo-democracy with an authoritarian figurehead, right? He aligns with that, and so he views China in Russia. It's not that bad anyway. But it is also in part because he is casting the political left broadly and his critics as these enemies within the people who are out to get and subvert America, right? And so, you know, he had this conversation with Maria Bartaromo, who I must take a very quick aside to say is probably the worst most conspiracy. adult person working in major media at this point of time.

He has this interview with her on Sunday in which he makes these claims about the enemy within. References Adam Schiff specifically the candidate for Senate and the sitting, you know, representative from California. Also says that the danger that will be posed on election day is not from foreign actors, but from these enemies within who should probably be challenged with the use of force, right, with the National Guard or whoever it is. So then he is, you know, his allies get on TV and they're like, oh, he's not really saying. use the military against the left.

He's just saying blah, blah, blah, whatever their excuses are. So then he goes on Fox News yesterday, is asked about this and says, no, no, that's what I mean. I mean, the evil Democrats. I mean, people like the Pelosi's, which necessarily includes Paul Pelosi, the guy who got hit with a hammer because of this sort of rhetoric. And so he just, he made very clear. No, I am saying that the people here are Democrats who are evil, who are our enemies and who will never work with Republicans.

And it's like, okay, well, you know, when we talk about fascist rhetoric, that's fascist rhetoric. And when we talk about dangerous rhetoric, that's dangerous rhetoric. And it's worth saying these things are fascist and dangerous, which is hopefully what those what those pieces did. Absolutely. And then I assume you saw that in Kamala Harris's interview with Brett Baer, he tried to play the clip from the Fox News interview with Harris Faulkner as sort of somehow that that let Trump off the hook or softened what he had said. And to Harris's credit, she did not let him get away with that. No, no, absolutely. Right. And so, you know, I mean, I have a lot of of other thoughts, which I have a piece up this morning about the Fox News interview. But yes,

that Fox News in that moment in particular was itself trying to portray this as sort of a normal approach. And I think, too, when we look back at the nine years of Donald Trump's presence in national politics, the extent to which we have gotten to this point where we treat these things as, okay, well, maybe this is just something politicians say is just absolutely mind-relly. Can you imagine Mitt Romney in 2012? saying, well, you know, he said the 47% comment, which was this disparagement of people who he said, we're looking for handouts and yada, yada, yada. And there was a backlash for weeks. You know, Donald Trump says worse things than that in his sleep. And we just don't even look at it. And it's just,

you know, sometimes you just sort of have to stand back in Marvel and say that this is the level of discussion we're having about Fox News trying to downplay his designation of millions of America's enemies to the state is just astonishing. Yeah. And I want to good. to that piece you wrote Thursday morning with the headline how Fox News loads the dice so Trump always wins. And I also want to touch on something you said in a piece you wrote, I guess, on Wednesday, which is that Trump is a big fan of this sort of schoolyard rhetoric, you know, no, you are. And that any time he's called authoritarian or fascist because he proposes or says, I think, authoritarian or fascist, he'll always try to make his, well, they're the fascist. The Democrats are the real fascists.

Yeah, I mean, and again, this is just, it's ludicrous, right? What do you say? Yeah, I mean, this is what, you know, I point back to the third debate in 2016 when Hillary Clinton says, you know, Vladimir Putin wants a puppet. He says, no, puppet, you're the puppet. Like that moment was just such a signifier for everything that followed of Donald Trump rejecting this very obvious and over time proven accurate point that Clinton was making and trying to turn it around. I mean, the fact that he this week said that Kamel Harris needs to have her cognition tested. It's like, what are you talking about? Like, who doesn't see what you're doing here? Very quickly on the Fox News point, Fox News has demonstrated over and over again. People think you can go on there and you can reach out to Fox News viewers

and maybe you can convince one or two of them fine. But then every time any Democrat goes on Fox News, Fox News, if there are of any prominence, Fox News then spends the next four hours having its opinion hosts absolutely shred everything had happened and cast everything in as negative light as they possibly can as they did with Kamal Harris as interviewed for a bear. And it is a lesson that I think the left and Trump critics broadly keep having to learn, which is that you are not going to win. You are not going to convince Fox News viewers of something that Fox News doesn't want them to be convinced of.

Yeah, no, I think that's right. I mean, like you said, they're just not going to let you. They're going to try out Jesse Waters and Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, et cetera, at infinitum to just talk about how badly you did on that interview. Philip, thank you so much. Again, it's been a pleasure reading your stuff this election year. Keep up the great work. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you, sir. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal staff writer at the Atlantic Charlie Warsell, whose latest piece basically laid out all the ways I feel right now. It is entitled,

I'm running out of ways to explain how bad this is. What's happening in America today is something darker than a misinformation crisis. First off, Charlie, I will say, thank you for making me feel less crazy. I think I said recently that the gas light is so hard that I can smell it on a regular basis and feel like I'm losing my mind. So talk to us about why what we're experiencing now isn't just misinformation. It isn't just what Kellyanne Conaway referred to as alternative. Yeah, so thank you for having me. The point really behind the article came out of a conversation that I've been having with myself and other people for like the last, I don't know, year or two, which is about the limits of the word misinformation. Misinformation, the term has been around for

a really long time, but, you know, in the wake of the 2016 election, it became rightly something that a lot of people were really concerned about, both in government. There was a lot of like, you know, nonprofits and agencies that were spun up to, you know, kind of counter it, study it, all this stuff. And it, you know, clearly entered the discourse in around like 2017 as this pretty charged political term, right? You have, you know, all these people who think that it is, you know, the left's sort of war on truth, right? Like misinformation is the way that they can conduct their speech crackdown and that the government is going to come in and step in and regulate speech, right? Or we're going to regulate the tech giants in this way and crackdown.

and shadow ban and all that stuff. So it's become this freighted term because obviously it describes something that's very real. But it's kind of become, I think, in more liberal spaces in people who are actually trying to do good work. It's become this term that people are using,

I think, to talk about persuasion. And there's this idea that there's all these, you know, dumb people out there who are, you know, not as well educated or, you know, aren't getting good sources of information and they're getting duped by these people, right? And, oh, poor them, right? And it's this idea that, you know, they were just like us, and then they saw a tweet and, you know, now they're InfoWars people, right? And it's this,

I think it's become kind of this very, I'm simplifying it, but I think the idea has been oversimplified about the persuasion power of misinformation. And so I have been talking with different people, and this one scholar at the University of Washington, Mike Colfield, has been saying it for a while, but this idea that misinformation isn't really its primary purpose is not about persuasion. It's actually about like hardening your belief systems and inoculating you against having to accept new facts, right? So it actually traps you in your ideology instead of, you know, catapulting you into a different ideology. And I think that that's really important because when we talk about the term misinformation, which I think we probably need better, you know, more. More words.

Yeah, yeah. But I think that's. it's really important to talk about the agency of the people, not just the Alex Joneses of the world and, you know, the J.D. Vance's and whatever. I think it's important to talk about the people sort of on the ground level who are sharing this stuff and not thinking of them as just, you know, dupes, but thinking of them as people who have agency in this, who are believing in ideology and are trying very hard not to accept counter information that is going to be difficult for them. That's going to make them have to question some of their, you know, first principles, some of their beliefs. And I think that that is something that is really part of the conversation I really wanted to put forward. And I think that, you know,

what we saw with the hurricanes and all the conspiracy theorizing and whatever we call it, fake news, all of that stuff, I think that it's really important to think about that because I think that we always underestimate just how painful it is for people to counter new information, right, to change their beliefs. And I think thinking of misinformation as a way to keep people from having to do that is actually its primary function right now. And I think it's just important to talk about that. I want to read a piece of your article and then we'll unpack it, which is this because it gets to, I think, the core of what you're saying, that at the beginning, and I would say at the beginning and when I mean by that as nine years ago, at the beginning of kind of maga and the

formation around Maga and this sowing the seeds very early of distrust. We all thought that the goal was to persuade, that what Donald Trump and what Republicans were doing were trying to persuade their base and more into believing in their ideology. But what you lay out here is that, like, that's not actually the goal. And it's actually, to me, what you express here is, a lot more sinister in nature than just using language and information or disinformation or let me just be very fucking clear lies to distort people from reality. And you write this. It is difficult to capture the nihilism of the current moment. The pandemic saw Americans distrustful of authority, trying to discredit effective vaccines, spreading conspiracy theories

and attacking public health officials. But what feels novel in the aftermath, of this month's hurricanes is how the people doing the lying aren't even trying to hide the provenance of their bullshit. Similarly, those sharing the lies are happy to admit that they do not care whether what they're pushing is real or not. And that, to me, that's what's sinister is that initially we're thinking to ourselves, well, how do we combat this disinformation and misinformation? Well, you just present facts.

and then people will just gravitate towards the facts and all will be well. But that's not the point. So if you, the tactic, the response, the reaction needs to be tailored to what is actually happening here. And so I want to get your thoughts on like, the diagnosis was wrong. The diagnosis nine years ago and over the last nine years has been, Steve Bannon said to flood the zone, just flood the zone with bullshit. people won't know which way is up.

So they're more likely to gravitate to a strong man as a life raft. But in all honesty, what you're saying, or at least what I'm interpreting that you're saying is that, oh, no, no, their goal was never actually to persuade people. It was to distort and create and construct an entirely new reality that people existed in and felt comfortable in. I think it's definitely a little of both, right? Like there's a lot that is happening here.

I am proposing, you know, that we think about it in that sort of multi-dimensional way, right, bringing in that idea of the construction of the alternative reality that isn't about persuasion. I think there definitely is persuasion. I'm glad you brought up the flood the zone with shit comment because I think it speaks a little bit to this idea of, you know, disorientation, right? Like how do you get people out? It's doing a lot of things at once, right? It could persuade certain people, right? Because they see something, it sounds good, it feels good. It just trolls people who they don't like and they, they just trolls people who they don't like and they just. jump on board with that because they delight in, you know, watching the media flounder or whatever. So it can persuade. The disorientation, I think, is really aimed at attacking the media. When Steve Bannon said that quote, it was in response to, we are not really worried about going after Democrats. The media is our primary enemy. We're going to flood the zone with shit. And that obviously means sending journalists and fact checkers and debunkers and whatever, right? Or just, you know, assignment editors at major news institutions, sending them on a wild goose chase, right? If you're spending all your time going through the falsehoods of a Trump speech, you're not talking about your agenda, right? You're not talking about, you know, the positive elements of somebody else's campaign. You're just talking about the bullshit. So I think there's that. And then, yes, there's this protection of a worldview. The thing that really changed for me watching what was coming out of the hurricanes was all the AI generated slop that people were sharing.

I mean, mm-hmm. There were so many real photos of devastation in Asheville, North Carolina. There were so many harrowing stories, news reports of families who had lost everything standing around their homes or in shelters, things like that. There was so much of that. And yet, across the internet, you were seeing a lot of people with far-right beliefs who were sharing AI-generated images of Donald Trump touring the, you know, the devastation, which he was not on a lot of.

raft in Asheville. The water had receded by then. And showing, you know, videos of, of children holding puppies, you know, neglected by FEMA. Yeah, that was my favorite. The little girl on the raft with the puppy. And I was just like, it looked like it was AI that was done by a toddler. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, that's how fake it looked. And yet, I think it had like 20 million or something, something like that impressions. What I saw that really struck me with this was that there were a number of people sharing this and both like, you know, just people sharing in their group texts, but also politicians and public figures who were sharing this and getting called out and saying, who cares? It feels real, right? It represents something that I believe is happening. And so I don't

really care. It's truer than true. And I think getting called out on that and having absolutely no shame and being able to admit, I don't really care. That to me is. That to me is. is, you know, I'd say we crossed the red lines a long time ago on all this stuff. But it is crossing a specific line because it's basically admitting I'm fine being a dupe. In fact, I'm not even really being duped. I'm actually just like that takes, you know, grandpa from, you know, the guy who's sharing AI slop and you feel bad for him to he's, you're a propagandist at that point, right? If you are sharing that type of information.

So I think that that was a big change. And it's funny, I haven't told this story yet, but I posted about it. In the wake of that article coming out, there were a lot of people who were on the right very mad that someone was just kind of, you know, stating a lot of this very plainly. The article got a little bit of traction. And on the right, I thought I was going to get like a true counter of this, right? The sort of, you know, here's why this is wrong, you know, sort of quote unquote fact checking me with their alternative facts. But instead, what happened was people just started sharing a fake screen. that said that I wanted to send people who used the word gay and the word retard. Sorry to use the word, but it was a fake headline that said I wanted to put those people in camps. Like a truly preposterous, like it was a horrible, pixelated fake screenshot of my article saying that. And that went viral in all the kind of spots, you know, the fever swamp areas of Twitter. And I got hundreds, maybe a thousand, you know, emails, direct messages from me. people saying, I can't believe that they let you write this, that you want to put your ideological

enemies in camps, all these people. People sending me their group chats with their, you know, uncle saying, can you believe with the Atlantic published? All these people. And to me, it was just so indicative of exactly what the article was explaining, right? This idea that instead of even having to reckon with the fact that there are people out there who are calling this out, Instead of having to engage with the reality of here's what we're doing and here's, you know, like how people are describing it, let's argue in favor of posting AI slop, right? Instead it was just we're going to make up an argument to shut this guy down because we are going to troll him mercilessly for it. And it just felt so indicative to me of this moment, right? Like they're making up a completely different version of me to engage with instead of engaging with the thing. With the actual, yeah, it's Black Mirror. It's wild. Yeah.

I want to read this piece of your article as well because it gets to the heart of what you just said. You wrote, this has all been building for more than a decade. The Colbert report back in 2005, Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness, which he defined as, quote, the belief in what you feel to be true rather than what the facts will support. This reality fracturing is the result of an impact. ecosystem that is dominated by platforms that offer financial and attentional incentives to lie and enrage and to turn every tragedy and large event into a shameless content creation opportunity. It's like their responses, well, the vibes were there instead of where

the reality sits. And I wonder for you, is there a response that could be developed that would combat this? Or is it again, we're just left to be spinning tops just trying to surf the shit that they're putting out? I've been thinking so much about someone messaged me about this piece and said, you know, okay, it's a nice diagnosis, right? But I very much understand you can walk away from the piece and say, well, what the fuck do we do? Right. And I've been thinking for for years, really about this. And obviously I don't have the solution. Nobody has the solution. But I think, the more I do think about this, I think that the solutions are really unsatisfying because the solution that is required to sort of stem the tide of all of this is definitely systemic, right?

What I mean by that is, I think, like, let's just take the media angle of this. Trust has eroded so aggressively in American and a lot of global media outlets. And I think, I think one of the big issues there is the demise of a local news, right? How do you build trust in the institution of journalism? You do it at a very local level, right? The journalists at your paper, the columnist, the whatever, the editor, the photographers, their kids go to school with your kids. You see them at soccer. You see them at church. You see them at barbecues. You see them wherever, right? They're real people to you. They're not shady elites or whatever. But when the news is all incredibly national, and you have these people who either parachute into your communities or

say things about your communities that may not completely be totally accurate or, you know, seem to represent a lifestyle that is totally foreign to you. That is a great breeding ground for distrust. And when we have this hollowing out of something like local news, it's very easy to paint them as the enemies. And then to latch on to this, you know, influencer ecosystem. And I'm not saying that as, you know, I love the internet. Like, I have parisocial relationships with influencers too. Like, I'm not trying to, you know, condemn people for that. But I think when you look at what is kind of sprung up to, you know, replace a lot of people's news consumption, it's through these types of relationships with influencers and people like that who are most incentivized by, you know,

the attention economy. I think that can be exploited in so many different ways. I mean, you saw Russia was exploiting, you know, the influencer system just recently, you know, trying to inject more propaganda into the American news cycle. So I think that's just one element, right? And it's really unsatisfying because it's like, how do we address this crisis of trust at a local level? And then I think, you know, you kind of have to keep going further. But I think this is such a huge, huge problem.

And one thing that I'm sort of optimistic about on it is I always look at the internet revolution, right? Like we're whatever, 30 years into this or 28 years. even less when you have like high speed or like Wi-Fi or phones in our pockets. And it's a technological revolution on the scale of like the printing press or something like that, right? Those informational revolutions are always met with turbulence and chaos and violence and upheaval because it changes the amount of information in the world, the number of people who have, you know, an ability to tell their story, who have the ability to hijack conversations, persuade people, inject, you know, conspiracy theories into the world.

And what we see is eventually we do learn how to exist in it, right? Eventually we do sort of find an equilibrium, a stasis. And so I feel like when people ask, like, what are we going to do about it, right? It always comes down to this like, well, you know, Facebook needs to crack down on this. And like, sure, maybe, you know, maybe we constantly need to be up on content moderation issues. But I think the way to look at this type of thing and to take it as seriously, it needs to is that it's a multi-generational approach that we are going to have to take over a long period of time. Yeah. Sorry, that's very unsatisfied. It wasn't. We will have to leave it there today,

Charlie, but I will just circle back to what I said at the beginning. I just, I thank you for providing a diagnosis to how I've been feeling, and I know that so many other people have been feeling and we'll take this one and figure out how we move forward. But it's the the right diagnosis at the right moment. Folks, the title of the article at the Atlantic is, I'm running out of ways to explain how bad this is by Charlie Wardsell. Thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. Really appreciate you.

Yeah, thank you for having me. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Daniel, close out this. It's been a week. Who is your fuck that guy? Hmm. So, unsurprising.

But honestly, maybe it is a little bit of surprise because I don't think that he's been our fuck that guy specifically for a couple of weeks now. But I'm going to go ahead and go with the quote unquote father of IVF. Donald J. I'm losing my fucking mind, Trump. So in a all-women town hall that happened on Fox, Donald Trump was peppered with questions that he deflected, didn't answer. answer. And Bravo to these people, because some of the women had really, like, stellar questions and their questions deserved responses, but that's not what Donald Trump did. Instead, he said this, Andy, which I don't really understand what it means. But he said, quote, we really are the party for IVF, quote, we want fertilization. And it's all the way. And it's all the way.

And the Democrats tried to attack us on it. And we're out there on IVF even more than them. And then he said he was the father of IVF. His campaign, of course, comes out and says, it was a joke. Because apparently everything that he says that is absolutely ludicrous is a joke because he apparently is a stand-up fucking comic as opposed to a candidate for president of the union.

United States. He wasn't joking. And I don't know what the fuck is meant by we want fertilization. All I see is like a field of grain being sprayed by a plane up ahead. I just, he is wild and nuts. And more people need to be talking about how fucking unstable he is. This was one of those moments. And for that reason, you absolute insane, inept, swaying fool. Donald J. Trump is my fuck that guy. Always, but particularly to close out this week. Yeah, the only thing I could think of is when he was saying we want fertilization is that does kind of describe what they think of women. You better say that.

Mm-hmm. You ain't wrong. I don't know that he meant it that way because I suspect he just is. you know, because of his rapidly declining mental health, I don't really think he meant anything by it. But if you wanted to ascribe meaning to it, that's the only thing I could think of is that what he said, we want fertilization, what he was talking about,

is, yeah, we think women should be, you know, barefoot and pregnant and making us sandwiches. So, yeah, fuck that guy. Mm-hmm, mm-mm. All right, Andy, how are you closing out this week with your fuck that guy? So, Danielle, have you seen The Hunt? for right October. Actually, it's one of my favorite movie.

Okay. So do you remember the scene where Jeffrey Pelt, who is, I believe, the National Security Advisor, played by the great Richard Jordan, the Soviet ambassador explains to him that they can't find another submarine and he says to him, you've lost a second submarine? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And it's a laugh line and it's played for laughs. Well, this story kind of made me think of that because it involves Stormy Daniels. who you may remember from testifying at a hush money trial in which the facts of the case are that Donald Trump paid her off before the 2016 election to keep quiet about the fact that he had cheated on his wife with her because he didn't want it to affect his electoral chances. And Trump was then convicted on, was it 30, Danielle, was it 31? Was it 32? It was 30 fucking four.

34, that's right. 34 felony counts that all had to do with falsifying business records in order to make the payments to her. So you would think, you would assume, right, that having been through all this, after doing it in 2016 and being found guilty on 34 felony counts in 2024, that he wouldn't do something like that again, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. Any normal person. I can't even tell you how wrong you would be, Daniel. Because we now have, and this was, I believe, originally reported by, reported by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC,

Stormy Daniels says that just this past summer, months ago, Trump offered her, again, financial incentive to keep quiet about him, including about the relationship that they had that led to him being found guilty of 34 felony counts. She has the receipts. She had documents. MSNBC got the documents from her lawyer and that showed Donald Trump doing the very same thing again, which is just wild. It's absolutely wild.

I mean, I don't know. I feel like not a lot of people are talking about this. And maybe there's just a sense of it like it all feels like deja vu. and it's like, I can't keep up with all the scandals. But just the fact that he did pretty much literally the same exact thing that he was just found earlier this year guilty of 30 on 34 separate counts of doing back in 2016, and here he is doing it again. And, you know, we've talked a lot on this podcast about how Donald Trump has never had to learn lessons

his whole life because he's always gotten away with everything. And it appears that even though he hasn't gotten away with what happened in 2016 in the sense that he's been found guilty, again, I'm just going to keep saying it of 34 separate felony accounts, felony counts. He still didn't learn his lesson and did the same exact shit again. And I guess if he wins in November, none of this will matter because he will make it all go away. Whether it's federal charges or state charges, he'll find some way. And his buddies on the Supreme Court will back him up.

But it is just, again, it is just wild to be that he's out there. Literally same shit, different day. Yeah, I'm going to add to your fuck that guy of Donald Trump with my own fuck that guy of Donald Trump. Oh, God. Every day of October has been an October surprise. Every single day. One of these stories would have normally carried us through to the election. I don't know how you get caught up trying to bribe the same person who you were found guilty of bribing in the first place and doing it again just for shits and giggles.

It's just wow at this point. Like, I don't even know. I don't, I don't, I don't even know. But fuck that guy. Honestly. Like, can we fucking get rid of him? Just, you know? Please.

A few more weeks. And we could possibly be rid of him. Imagine not having to talk about him ever again. I imagine it every fucking day. That would be an incredible new abnormal. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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