The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump's Abortion Stance Is Likely to Change Come November

Episode Date: April 9, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy discuss why we should take Donald Trump’s latest statement on abortion with a grain of salt. Plus! Deputy Director of the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project Cody Wofsy fills us in on an immigration law in Texas that even those supporting it have said may have gone too far. Then, journalist Jeb Lund is here to talk about his recent piece covering Florida’s “War on Woke.” 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 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 Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have for you today.

Cody Wopsy, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project, is here to fill us in on everything we need to know about Texas Senate Bill 4, an immigration law that even those supporting it have said may have gone too far. Then, journalist and host of the It's Christmas Town and Quaid in Full podcast, Jeb Blund, is here to talk about his recent piece in the wake of Florida's, War on Woe, Republicans return to terrorizing the underclass. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, now that we are fellow earthquake survivors, let's kick off this week and talk about a non-seismic shift that we saw from Donald Trump Monday morning when he put out a video laying out his abortion policy. And by laying out his abortion policy, I mean saying a bunch of shit, most of which isn't true. He says, in this speech video that he wants it to be left up to the states and that he doesn't want a national

abortion ban and that as far as he's concerned by leaving it up to the states, this is leaving it up to the will of the people. This is a little different from, you know, what he said in the past where he said he would support a 15-week federal ban. In the same video, he absolutely took credit for the Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court. He said, quote, he was proudly the person responsible. Basically, anyone who is reporting this as this is Trump's position on abortion should have to turn in their journalism card. Because a lot of times who say on this, you know, take Trump at his word when he says something. But we have to remember that that's only for the outrageously bad shit, where people will say, oh, he doesn't really mean that. But yes,

he does really mean it. When it comes to actual like policy like this, the opposite is true. take whatever he said and just throw it in the trash because he will do or say whatever he thinks is politically expedient. And somehow he's been convinced that by simply saying it should be left up to the states and by not giving his own personal preference, really, he thinks he's threaded the needle here. And he should not be allowed to get away with that. I just, you know, let me stop before I say something that will get me fired. The fact is that, I mean, you can't take Donald Trump at his word for anything. On one hand, when everyone was all up in arms around TikTok, he said TikTok should be banned. He sat down with a billionaire who had a lot of money tied up in TikTok.

And then the next thing you know, Donald Trump was changing his tune on TikTok. So right now, he says no national abortion ban because it's, you know, politically expedient to do so to give the appearance that he somehow kind of sort of believes that women and people with uteruses still should have bodily autonomy and give some type of relief to those people living inside of blue states that, oh, okay, well, if I'm in New York or California or what have you, like, I'm safe, but everyone else, it has a patchwork of protections and is fucked and will be treated like criminals because of the liars that he put on the Supreme Court who decided to just throw precedent in the trash. Like, the reality is for for Democrats, take that clip of Donald Trump patting himself on the back for overturning Roe v. Wade

and just run it in all of the swing states. Just take it and say, he's like, I'm so proud of the six Supreme Court justices and the three that he appointed who lied directly at their Senate Judiciary confirmation hearing saying that they believed in precedent and it would be what it is. And just run it. Like, you know, we're seeing that, you know, Democrats are running ads and putting a lot of money, you know, early into this cycle. And I'm just like, he's writing the ads for you.

You don't need to hire a firm. You just need to hire a video editor. Cut, copy, and post it. Like, because he's telling us everything that we need to know. And people should understand that nothing, literally nothing that comes out of this man's mouth is worth this spit that is entangled with it. Nothing. Yeah, I would agree.

And look, and run that statement and then show. a clip about the 10-year-old girl who was raped and had to travel to another state to get an abortion. And then run the clip of the woman in Texas. And, you know, I could go on and on and on. And I would say, hell, run that ad in all 50 states because I got to tell you, I mean, obviously it's the swing states where the electoral votes are needed. But I have to think the vast majority of, at least of women. And I think of all people in this country, even if they're. quote unquote, pro-life, that shit is not going to play well even with them, with the exception of like

the hardest of the hardcore. As far as his word, remember, this is Donald Trump that back in, I guess it was in 2016 during the primaries, said that women who got abortion should face some form of punishment. And then backtracked and said, oh, no, actually, I guess it's the doctors who performed the abortions as it faced some sort of punishment. And then he, like I said earlier, he's talked about being in favor of a nationwide 15-week ban. Now he says he wants it left up to the states and that he believed there should be exceptions for rape and incest. His story on this, look, whatever he said today, that is probably not going to be where he

is on it, you know, come November or whatever. And as you pointed out, and the bottom line is Trump appointed justices purposefully who were going to overturn Roe v. Wade. That was the reason he appointed them. And he is taking credit for that now. So he can say whatever the fuck he wants. But abortion was a litmus test for him. And again, I don't even know what his personal views are.

It doesn't matter. He knew that that's what the hardcore conservatives in his party wanted. And that's what he provided them. And that has allowed him to become an evangelical hero and all this other stuff. And he is going to continue down that path. There is absolutely no way he is going to go in the other direction. So whatever he said today, whatever he said today about not supporting a national abortion ban, you can be damn well sure that if he were president and Congress passed such a ban, he would sign it in a heartbeat.

I mean, do we honestly want a president that you need to flip a coin to figure out which day they're going to be saying what thing and not know for certain where they stand on any issues that are of importance to us that can just be swayed with, you know, the flash of, of a billionaire's smile. That is Donald Trump. Like, you can't trust anything that he says. He's not grounded in any of his own personal beliefs. For whatever anybody says about Biden, whether, because he doesn't say the word abortion and he talks about his religious beliefs, at least he has some. Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, at least you know where this man stands. And Donald Trump stands wherever a billionaire tells him to stand and says whatever the white evangelical Christians tell him to say. When Hillary Clinton called this man a puppet in 2016, like, that was probably one of the most accurate statements because all you need are strings that are attached to money and Donald Trump will do whatever jig and dance you want him to do. So I really don't think that if you care about your own future, the future of your daughters and sons in this country for generations to come, that you really want to put it in the hands of somebody that like you don't know from Monday to Friday

what their decision-making process is going to look like and be. And we also know that, like, they're going after IVF. They're telling you that they're going after abortion, that they want this national abortion ban. And so all they're trying to do is, oh, well, maybe we can confuse the electorate a little bit so that they don't think that we're as draconian as we fucking are. Like, we know what you're doing.

So all Democrats have to do is lift that up and put a spotlight on it. Yeah, absolutely. And the bottom line with Joe Biden is he is a man of many, many flaws. But one thing he is not is a theocrat. And so, you know, yes, he has, you know, he is Catholic and he has his religious beliefs and, and they color his views on abortion. But by the same token, he does not want his religious beliefs to be the law of the land. That's the important part here. It's one thing to have a belief that is firmly based on your religion, which I don't think, you know, most people wouldn't begrudge that as long as it doesn't, again, infringe on any.

anybody else's right to believe whatever they want to believe. And that's where Joe Biden draws the line. He can be like, you know, you look, I'm a Catholic. I'm not comfortable with abortion. My church teaches that abortion is wrong. But that's not the law of the land and shouldn't be the law of the land. And as long as he keeps saying that, we have to be sort of okay with that. Do I, you know, yes, in a perfect world, he would be, you know, maybe stronger on it. But on the other hand, the Biden team put out a campaign statement after Trump's little video. And he said, Donald Trump, made it clear once again today that he, more than anyone in America, is the person responsible for ending Roe v. Wade. He is more than anyone in America responsible for creating the cruelty and the

chaos that has enveloped America since the Dobbs decision. Great. That's what we need. We don't need Joe Biden getting up there and giving a full-throated defense of abortion itself if he's not comfortable doing that. What we need is him out there saying, hey, he is taking away your right to choose, your reproductive freedom and causing, again, I'm so happy that he used the word cruelty, because that's exactly what it is. We have talked about this many, many times on the show. And of course, Adam Serwer has the now famous quote, the cruelty is the point. And I'm very glad to see the Biden campaign and Joe Biden using that word because it's really, really important to get that message out there, I think.

A man that talked about grabbing a woman by the peeve that has paid off a porn star, like he's going to be the moral like compass. on abortion in this country, give me a fucking break. And also for the white and evangelical Christians that love to say that Donald Trump is just, you know, an interesting tool of gods, like, miss me with it. Like, it is just like you really need to check your religious teachings if Donald Trump is the man that you follow. You really do because it's so gross.

The good news is, though, Danielle, that, you know, Trump had a little, he gave, had a little speech. I think it was over the weekend. Yes, Saturday night. He gave a speech that was hosted by a billionaire investor named John Paulson. And he basically said that, hey, guys, we need to extend the Trump tax cuts. So it's nice when you're able, I think, to really reach an intended audience. And when you're in a room with a bunch of billionaires and be able to assure them that you will continue to try to keep their taxes as low as possible, I think you're really doing a great service to the country, Danielle. I just,

oh my God. The Trump tax cuts, how much did they cost? They added an additional, I believe, like $7 trillion worth of debt because Republicans are so good at managing money and for whatever reason get the highest marks on the economy from voters.

I have no idea why. But he wants to extend those tax cuts to billionaires. I hate this so much because the fact that there are people that exist in this world that are worth high. hundreds of billions of dollars. And there are people that, there are children that, like, require school lunch in order to have one reliable meal is sick to me.

And it should be to everyone. And when people say, like, oh, well, the billionaires, oh, they earned it. No, the fuck they didn't. Like, that's what it means to get these kinds of breaks and tax cuts that are put in place so that you don't have to pay your fair share. But, like, your assistant and the janitor that's working in your building, does and that seems like that seems okay and that these people morals be gone but they'll throw tens of millions of dollars because that's pocket change to them at Donald Trump so that they can secure their

greed it's so fucking obscene like I just when I when I see these numbers and I see oh they're claiming that he raised 50 million dollars at this event which will see when it's actually filed how much money he actually raised, but the money isn't even going to his campaign. It's going directly to his lawyers. So they should just wire transfer to the multiple law firms that Donald Trump has on retainer right now. Because let me tell you something, the $50 million, that doesn't even go for a full month of Donald Trump's, I think, legal fees. That's how much money these people are getting from him to push all of these court cases and file all of these appeals. It's actually just, it's a boon for the law firms that are backing him.

This is their golden goose right now. So I'm like to have that kind of money to waste, knowing that it's not even going into anything that has to do with making America, quote unquote, great again, to me it's just on some bullshit. These people are fucking filthy, rich, and they're greedy, and they're depraved. Yeah. And, you know, as we were talking about before we started recording, let's hold off on proclaiming that $50 million number.

real until we see the actual filings because, and I know this is going to come a surprise to you, Danielle, Donald Trump sometimes makes up numbers. Oh, weird. Yeah, sometimes he inflates them to make himself look good. Sometimes he lowers them so he can pay lower taxes and stuff like that. This should be, again, journalism 101. The headline shouldn't be Trump raises $50 million. The headline should be Trump claims that he raised $50 million, but we don't know if that's true or not. I know that's a little wordy for a headline, but you get the point. Also, at that same speech, Donald Trump's hate affair with immigrants continued. According to the New York Times, one of the things he spoke about, again, this is to an audience of multimillionaires and billionaires. He, according to the Times,

lamented that people were not immigrating to the United States from quote-unquote nice countries like Denmark. Yeah. They love Denmark. They really do love Denmark. Maybe it's just the whitest country he could think of off the top of his head. They just say all the quiet parts. All they want, they want white European immigrants and all the other immigrants are not from nice countries and they are dangerous. And he calls them animals. He uses all other kinds of slurs for them. And it's just, again, how you could be sitting there and say, this is the guy I want to give money to. You're a bad person if you're listening to a speech like that.

And your response is, I got to cut this guy a check. Yeah, you're just, you're a racist. If it walks like a racist and talks like a racist, it's a racist. If it funds a racist, it's a racist. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I don't care what kind of like moral gymnastics these people try and do with themselves. Like, oh, I fund everybody. It's like the man has called migrants and immigrants, animals.

He's referred to anyone that comes from a non-white country, is shithole countries. They're saying everything. So if you're supporting that, then you're supporting that. And there should be some type of, oh, I don't know, punishment or pay that you, you know, that you have to get if you're like, oh, I'm this billionaire. I back this company. Oh, you're a racist. We're boycotting. Like there's, you know what I'm saying? Like, there's no reason for these people to stop bad behavior because there are no repercussions that they get for said behavior. Like, it's just par for the course at this point. You know, just to remind everybody, didn't Melania get here

on a genius visa? What did she innovate? Did she invent something that we don't know about? Is she an engineer we don't know about? Like, is she a doctor? Because I'm pretty sure it doesn't take genius to pose naked with pearls on you, you know? But somehow she got into this country, as did her fucking parents. So I'm like, miss me with the bullshit. Like, you pay for poor stars. You, like, you use, you abuse the government system in order to get your family in here.

But, like, you want to talk to me about reforming immigration policies? Oh, my God. Yeah. And the Times pointed out something very telling about where the speech was given, which was at this guy, John Paulson's estate. I'm just going to read this paragraph. Mr. Paulson's estate sits along the waterway that separates the town of Palm Beach, a wealthy community on a barrier island that, according to the Census Bureau, is 93.8% white from West Palm Beach, where nearly a third of residents are black and a quarter are Hispanic. So when Trump says something like in his speech, he talked about the bad immigrants, and he says, quote, In fact, I don't think they're on this island, but I know they're on that island right there. That's West Palm.

Congratulations over there. But they'll be here. Eventually, they'll be here. So like the invasion mentality again? Exactly. This is the stuff that all these multimillionaires and billionaires, this is the stuff that they also believe down in their core. And so it's not an accident that these are the people that are supporting Trump. And like I said, you know, they will listen to the speech and they will cut him a check.

and they are bad people because they're not listening to the speech and going, oh, that's just Donald being crazy. They are listening to this speech going, he is absolutely right. He is absolutely right. And all these dirty, filthy animal immigrants from, you know, Central America, from South America, from, God forbid, Arab countries and Muslim countries, they are coming over here and destroying America. That's what they believe. Yeah. And, you know, and they back the people that will create the policies to implement their racist agenda. Like that's, I mean, that's what it is.

Hold on to all of their money and do nothing for this country whatsoever. And then to ensure that the people that they do not like, that they feign to be afraid of, remain in a economic class that is well below theirs. take away any opportunity, any ability to go to college, get an education, you know, open up your own business. It's, you just want to create a permanent underclass. And that is where you see black and brown people. And they will do whatever it takes in order to cement that in this country. And that's what people are voting for. You need to be very clear about it. That's what they want. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal Cody Wafsey, who is the deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants Rights Project. Cody, you must not get a lot of sleep these days.

I would imagine that your job is incredibly tough as it feels like immigration is in the headlines all the time. and most recently with the state of Texas and SB4. I would love for you to give our listeners a primer into what exactly SB4 is and entails and why it's being run through the courts right now. Absolutely. And Danielle, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. So SB4 is a really radical anti-immigrant law that Texas enacted. It criminalizes people entering the country irregularly in between ports of entry, and it authorizes state judges to issue deportation orders.

So it really sets up an entire new state system of regulating immigrants and authorizing deportation, essentially bypassing the whole federal immigration scheme. I mean, I just don't understand what is the premise of the argument that the state, state of Texas is making right now. As we're recording, this case is being brought up before a court of appeals and the law itself is on pause. We don't know what will happen by the time we hit stop on this recording. But what is the premise like of their argument to enact this law and bypass the federal government and essentially give Texas, I don't know, I guess, fiefdom authority over immigration? It's a great question. And I think what the justification Texas offers kind of depends on which day of the week you ask and who it is who's asking. So fundamentally what we're hearing from Texas, and they've said this in their briefs, is that there's a quote unquote invasion of immigrants and that therefore Texas can take over immigration enforcement from the Biden administration because they claim the federal government isn't doing its job. That's obviously totally inconsistent with the way the Constitution works. This is a federal power and a federal authority and states can't be setting up their own immigration policies

just because they disagree with what a particular administration is doing on any given day. But I think what you saw in some of the arguments, I mean, court is that when actually pressed, the state of Texas tries to essentially downplay what this law does. Oh, it's not actually creating state deportations. It's not actually making all that much changes. we're actually just trying to help the federal government out. And obviously, Texas can't have it both ways. And I think the truth of the matter is that this is an effort to seize control of immigration

policy from the federal government. And that's something we've seen from Texas just over and over recent years. So Texas's own Solicitor General, Aaron Nielsen, before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, said about SB4, quote, now, to be fair, maybe. Texas went too far. And Nielsen is arguing that this law should take effect, but has just stated in open court that maybe the law went too far. What do you make of this kind of backpedaling? I thought it was an interesting comment to make about the statute, particularly given that they've suggested that this falls well within their authorities under the Constitution. That's clearly

wrong and the Fifth Circuit panel that decided the initial stage of this case, the stay pending appeal, set out quite clearly that this is contrary to 150 years of Supreme Court precedent. And so it's not surprising to me that you see Texas's lawyers kind of falling back a little bit and trying to argue that maybe in some particular situation this could be legal. It's not. And I thought that the court's opinion on the stay pending appeal really laid that out in clear detail why Texas just absolutely cannot be in the business of regulating immigration. This panel of judges are very conservative judges, which is why a lot of, you know, these cases

run through Texas in the way that they do. And I'm curious as to what you make of some of the commentary that came out from Chief Circuit Judge Priscilla Richmond, who seems skeptical of Nielsen and his attempts to say, oh, maybe we went too far and kind of limit the state's law scope and she said, quote, what has the statute accomplished? What do you make of the tell or the questions that these panel of judges are asking about what the future of Texas's ability to enforce this type of law looks like? It's always difficult to read too much into what questions are being asked at oral argument. Certainly judges sometimes will ask questions to test their own thinking on something, but they may just, you know, have curiosity or want to push on both

sides' arguments. I will say, though, that what that particular question points to is what I was talking about before, Texas is up there trying to defend this law by essentially rewriting it to be about something completely different or, you know, trying to make it sound as reasonable as possible. But the truth is, you look at the words of the statute and it's crystal clear. It's Texas saying we're going to set up our own immigration system. We're not going to take account of, you know, of what the federal government wants to do in any given situation, even though immigration decisions require all sorts of sensitive decisions about humanitarian relief, asylum, foreign policy,

all kinds of issues. But SB4 is going to allow Texas to say, no, we're going to make those decisions, not the federal government. Cody, I think that we are in a wild place around immigration. And what I want to understand is what has happened over the last close to a. decade where, you know, we've heard the refrain, our immigration system is broken, we need pathways to citizenship. And that was what happened before. Now, it is just like these rabid,

draconian policies that are being instituted where we're seeing people being treated like political footballs, dropped off in front of the vice president's home, dropped off in Martha's Vineyard. What has happened? Can you make sense? of what has happened and why the narrative around immigration has become so incredibly divisive, not to say that it was ever like in a soft place. It's in a place where you have people up in Chicago who were once Democrats who aren't on a border, you know, state like Texas is and talking about the fact that, you know, we may not vote for Biden because of what has happened with immigration. Can you make sense for us of why we've fallen off the deep end here?

There are challenges and immigration can create challenges and everybody recognizes that. But rolling out policies of trying to sort of figure out who can be the cruelest to immigrants and as you say, who can treat immigrants as political footballs to score points against their opponents, that's no solution to any of the challenges that may be posed by the border. And I just point out, you know, there's a long history. of this. It's always been the case that when there are waves of people who, you know, are newcomers to this country, that there have been those within the United States who have opposed that immigration, who have called it, as Texas calls the current group of migrants, you know, invaders or violent or scary, and who have, you know, tried to push policies that clamp down on immigration and reduce it. And I think there's two sort of lessons to draw from

that history. One is, in the specific context of laws like Texas is, this has got to be a federal decision. It can't be that you have 50 states trying to choose for themselves what policies are going to govern our sort of national immigration system. And that's why through all those waves of immigration, the Supreme Court has said over and over, this has got to be a federal decision. But the other and broader point is just that those waves of migration that cause such consternation in their own time, those are the ancestors of today's Americans. Those are my ancestors. Those are a lot of people's ancestors.

And so I just think, you know, people sometimes could lose track of the extent to which the United States really is a nation of immigrants and the children of immigrants. And I think we would all be better off if we can bring that perspective a little bit to the ebbs and flows of migration. Is it possible, I guess, to shift the narrative that has painted immigrants and migrants as Donald Trump has painted them. These dredges on society that are just, you know, these countries that are quote unquote sending their worst. And people believing that. Like, you had a caravan of right-wing MAGA supporters that went down to the border. And then they go

there and they're like, uh, where's the invasion? Because there was nothing happening. Right. And so I am just wondering how, if we are not able to shift the narrative, then how do we expect, policy to shift. I think you're absolutely right. You know, you look at who is actually coming to this country and it's people who are fleeing persecution, fleeing instability, looking for a safe place to live and build their lives with their families and work. And you see that over and over again. And you see it in academic research that migration actually, you know, grows the economy, contributes much more in taxes than it takes away in terms of benefits and so on and so forth. But the reality is, has always been that immigrants are a convenient scapegoat for people's anger and fear and concern.

I think that that's what we're seeing. And I think that that's what we sort of as a society need to figure out how to diffuse and take on and so that we can make sure that we're, you know, seeing the humanity in our fellow people who are coming to this country to become Americans, to seek safety and to build a life. You know, and I wonder too, because I think that what's an important part of the conversation that I don't think is ever addressed. And you tell me if you think that this is important, which is a lot of these countries that have faced extraordinary amounts of instability, influxes in violence, are because of policies that America has instituted in those countries. and that we bear a responsibility for having intervened over the course of decades upon decades into different countries where we have disempowered places like Venezuela, Haiti, and others

from being able to elect the kind of leaders that would strengthen their country and put our own needs and desires of extraction and capitalism above theirs. And so do you think that that, too, we never get to the root of the why people are coming? I personally think that it's important, you know, do you think that that is a conversation that needs to be in the mix? I do. And then, you know, another example and a fairly direct example of that, you know, is obviously people who come from Afghanistan who very directly have assisted U.S. troops and had led the country for that reason and are now in sort of legal limbo in the United States. because of failure to pass legislation that would regularize their status. And that's an ongoing problem for them as well. I do think also just sort of zooming out, this isn't just a United States problem. Migration is a global challenge. There is more migration globally now than

there was in years past. And in many countries are facing the challenges of even much larger or percentages of their population in terms of recent immigration or refugees. And I just think at a bare minimum, the United States can do its fair share in terms of accommodating and welcoming new members into our communities. I think we can do it and I think we should do it. What happens, Cody, paint the picture for us if a Donald Trump and the Republican Party is able to win in November. What happens on this issue?

And what would ACLU, what would you be focused on? I don't think it's hypothetical since we've been there before during the first of Trump administration. We saw just an absolutely relentless assault on immigrant communities, on the ability to seek asylum, on due process protections. And we would expect to see that and more in a second Trump administration. Obviously, our organization is nonpartisan. We sue to protect the rights of immigrants and non-citizens, regardless of who's in the White House. But the reality is that a second Trump administration would be a disaster for immigrants' rights and immigrant communities around the country. And we certainly would continue to stand with those communities and fight for their protection in the courts and in the legislatures and in the streets.

We haven't made amends and corrected the devastation that he caused over his four years in office. Like, there are still children that have not been reunited with their families. I think that a lot of times people believe that when a president leaves office, like, they take the issues and the problems that they created with them. They don't. They continue and they are added on top of. And so quickly, as we close out here today, what do you want people to understand about how they, think about this issue moving forward as we get closer to November? Absolutely. I think the question has to be, what kind of country do we want to be?

Do we want to be a country that is living in fear that is pushing people away who really want nothing more than to become Americans, to build their lives, to raise their families, to work, to pay their taxes here in the United States? Or do we want to embrace our history and tradition of just what's written on the Statue of Liberty, you know, welcoming people from around the world who may be fleeing instability, may be fleeing harm, but are looking for that American dream. And I think we can and I think we should. Cody, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. Thank you for the work that you are doing at the ACLU. And I hope as these cases continue to unfold, that you'll come back and join us again soon. It's a pleasure. Thanks a

for having me. Jeb Lund is a journalist whose writing has appeared in such places as The Guardian, Vice, Rolling Stone, Gawker, and the New Republic. He's also the co-host of the It's Christmas Town and Quaid-in-Full Podcasts. And he's just written an excellently savage piece for creative loathing Tampa Bay called, in the wake of Florida's War on Woke, Republicans return to terrorizing the underclass. Jeb joins me now to justify his existence. Jeb, thanks for being here. It's a pleasure to exist. I love to be tested and I love to pass. Excellent. All right. So is the state GOP down there actually backing off of the war on woke? It definitely looks like that. I mean, we had a spate of articles. I think the Washington Post and NPR did some very good ones at either the end of February or the start of March, where it looked like the Senate president, Pasadomo, whose I believe husband died in an accident very recently. So no dunks there.

But the sensation was that she was just not going to advance much more of the war on woke legislation. There was stuff that was. you know, pretty potentially toxic that died in committee, which it didn't have to do because, you know, this is more or less a rubber stamp legislature. It has been charymandered to be so. So that looked to be like, all right, this guy is not the future of the party in Florida. He certainly isn't the future of much of anything in Florida because I don't think either Marco Rubio or Rick Scott have any intention of going anywhere. And anything else would be like a lower, like a descending move for him. So I think they just thought, all right, we don't need to service this guy's agenda. But the problem is, what do you do? If you're a party,

that doesn't believe that the government should achieve things, you've kind of got two years ahead of you where you're shrugging. Right. This guy, of course, being Governor Ron DeSantis. And are the state lawmakers maybe a little bit over DeSantis? And maybe that's tied into his fairly disastrous presidential run? I think so. I mean, before his presidential run, you had members of the Florida GOP just admitting, like, okay, yeah, he wanted these bills in the next legislative session. So we gave them to him with the understanding that they were cooperating with making sort of like legislative advertisements for his campaign. And he repaid them with, you know, just not being a very good glad handler. I mean,

all that impression you have of DeSantis from seeing him of like, this is maybe not somebody who's interacted with humans before and doesn't know how they look. He was doing that with glad handling and trading favors in the Capitol. And you don't do that. He would take credit for other lawmakers' bills and sort of edge them out of the spotlight. And he would veto line out and veto things sort of at the last minute. So there wasn't the sense of force trading that you want. And so now that prospect of his ascending to the White House is gone, there's no more return. There's no more ROI on Ron DeSantis, I think, if you are a legislator in Tallahassee. Yeah, that's interesting. And then you claim that the Florida GOP is terrorizing the underclass. And I got to say,

that doesn't sound like them. Well, look, I mean, what everybody wants them to do is something about housing and homeowners insurance, because we have insurers leaving the state, we have an insurer of last resort that is basically an exercise in sort of like maintaining, you know, the precipitate edge of bankruptcy. And then you have housing prices skyrocketing in the cities where people are moving. You have places that were renting for 800, 10 years ago that are renting for 2,500. And then pretty much the only thing that's changed is maybe some new faucets in the place. You know, you're still getting like a post-war one bathroom with that. And, you know, we have an exploding homeless population. It's definitely exacerbated

by being a sunny state. So people from colder states come down here. But it's something that's directly tied to two problems that are structural, that the GOP has no incentive to handle. I think, you know, in part because lots of donors are landowners and developers. But also because you don't want to set the nasty precedent of government intervention being a positive thing for the citizen. So the easiest thing to do is basically go to war on the symptoms of the condition that you know you have, but you're not willing to ameliorate. So don't do anything about housing. Do do something about people who don't have housing because they're not people.

They're not voters or at least not high incidence voters. Right. So are the faucets at least nice? Well, mine are, I mean, they're terrific. I'm going to probably, you know, when I leave, I mean, screw the deposit, right? They're coming with me. Oh, oh, they're that good. Wow.

They're colder, Andy. They're bold. Really? Interesting. So talk about this anti-squadding legislation that was, I guess, sort of the impetus for your piece. Yeah. I mean, this just came out of nowhere. It's one of those kind of right-wing fever swamp things.

And I make a crack in the piece. It's, you know, this is just like that wave of Ebola-infected Arabs who are going to flood the United States through the Mexico border in 2014. You remember when that happened, right? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they found an Islamic prayer rug. That was proof that these people were coming over the Rio Grande. And it turned out to be a pair of Umbroes.

So. I lost several cousins to that wave in 2014. Yeah. They were fleet of foot like midfielders. It was hard to catch them. But it's sort of the same thing where, you know, basically a guy had a TikTok of like, here's how easy it is to squat in certain places. And if I remember correctly, his example is New York, which has in the city extremely friendly regulations related to squatting. It's much more difficult in the rest of the country. And like the big thing that we're all sort of forgetting when we talk about squatting is the incidents of the incidence of swatting is probably an order of magnitude more than the incidence of squatting. But for whatever reason, this is kind of taking. over the GOP, Joe Rogan was doing a long bid on it. You know, it's been on Fox News. And so there's this sort of anxiety that you see these people out in the streets and the next thing you're going to do

is you're going to see them in the kitchen. And you're not. But, you know, it's a gimmee kind of piece of legislation. Well, we're not going to stand for this. Okay. I mean, I didn't think you did already. That's why it's called squatting. I feel really bad about saying that. You had a really good phrase or sentence in your piece. You wrote that, speaking of this sort of anti-squadding legislation and other things like it, you said, these are the wages of a governing philosophy that amounts to little more than no services only cops. And that really does seem to sum it up, doesn't it? I think that's pretty much a national GOP symptom. I think it's a little bit maybe more acute in Florida where you do have these huge universally perceived crises that just from an ideological

standpoint, the governing regime cannot engage with. But I think that's something you're seeing, you know, in New York where it's like, okay, the libraries aren't open, but we have 16 guys standing around something that looks like a white Dalek playing Candy Crush and earning like 200 grand a year because they're police and they get overtime pay. And, you know, the idea that, well, if we have a problem in the public, people will not mind. They will automatically just understand that it's okay to deploy a cop to it. But if you deploy a social worker, that's a real problem with government action. I'm trying to figure out if that was the first Doctor Who reference made on this podcast. I would be disappointed if it were. Keep it up. I don't know. I'll have to get our crack team on that.

So, you know, one of the things you write in your piece sort of at the end is you say, say, hey, tomorrow you can return home safe in the knowledge that there will not be another family living there. Just as you did yesterday and in fact, every other day of your life and in the living memory of anyone you've ever met. This is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Further, it's a solution for a very narrow part of the demographic that I think we've all been acculturated to feel like we're part of in the same way that like when a superstar baseball player wants a 10 year guaranteed like 500 million dollar contract and you're like well that's going to break the budget of the team you don't own the team a billionaire owns the team right that's a popcorn fart of a budget

item for that guy don't worry about it you're not on his side this is not your problem so when you see something like well they're taking care of squatting they're very they're trying very hard to convince you that squatters are something that's going to come into, to your neighborhood, to your gated community when largely this is a landlord problem. And it's remarkable just how much we're willing to go, yeah, I'm basically like that guy. The guy I have to see every 30 days to give a check and who doesn't provide services to me either. Why they think that's going to work beyond the fact that in many respects it has worked in a lot of, uh, I was going to say, you know, attitudinal sort of perspectives here in the United States. Right now, I don't know because I think,

Florida feels very much like it's getting close to the breaking point in terms of traffic and unsustainability of cities and problems that are very easily resolved by building housing. So let me ask you a question about November. I've been reading in a couple of places that Florida is no longer a swing state, that it's solidly in the Republican camp. And as evidence of this, it's pointed out that the GOP now out registers the Democrats by over 800,000 voters there in your fair state. and that's quite a change from the way it used to be.

But do you hold out some hope? I get the sense that you do. I do a little bit. I mean, you know, so Florida had a Democratic majority in terms of registrations for a long time. But a lot of those people were legacies of, you know, the Democratic Party they grew up with that in the South was more segregationist. And so they stayed for the services. And now that there are no services, there's no real reason to be a Democrat. I would hope, and this is my little, you know, I guess I'm pinning my hopes to this, but in addition to other things, that some of these people who are,

are coming are going to feel more like legacy Republicans. People who can't change or just haven't wanted to change their registration aren't really willing to admit that to themselves, but are looking at some of what Trump is doing to the GOP and going, I don't see myself there. And we're definitely seeing some, I guess, germinating stages of that here in Florida, especially with, for example, the Moms for Liberty. Here, the president in Florida was Bridget Ziegler, whose husband was the chairman of the Florida GOP. And it turned out that they were into the swinging lifestyle. And that sort of took a little bit of the shine off of the, we're here to save the kids aspect. But then the fact that the people who shut up in every meeting were just freaks. And people

don't want to be freaks. They see that. They see it on the news. They see it when they go to PTA meetings. They see it when they go to city council meetings. And they just don't want to be these people. Like they don't want to have to sign a permission slip to let their kid read a book that was a perfectly fine piece of the curriculum three years ago. You know, if you want parental responsibility for engaging with what your kids are reading, the people who are freaked out about it, can do it, but leave the rest of us alone. And I think that some people in Florida are starting to kind of get the message that this part of the GOP is not theirs anymore, because it is kind of a polyglot conservative place. You have conservatism from the northeast, the Midwest, even from

the West Coast. And I don't think everybody is quite on board with the culture war. In your view, is this, if not part of, or maybe completely, the impetus for the Florida, for the state GOP, kind of, as you say, moving away from this so-called war on woke? Sure, yeah, because really, if you look at their accomplishments, it's pretty much making abortion almost impossible and making reading at a school library an incredible hassle. I don't see a lot of people going, hey, that works for me. And I think the same kind of, you know, F around and find out problem that is, you know, that the GOP is wrestling with in every other part of the country over abortion is going to happen

here. Now, is it going to be enough to offset the change in registration? I don't know. Also, you know, in the last couple statewide elections, the Democrats really dropped the ball in getting out the vote in Hispanic communities and that they've effectively kind of been colonized by this anti-communist paranoia that plays well if you've come from a state that maybe was formerly under a left-wing junta, right? But seating that ground is I don't think something that Democrats are going to do in this cycle. And I think that they have, you know, a favorable kind of, you know, precondition over issues like abortion where they can start peeling away some of these, these lifelong Republican voters who maybe start to feel like the party is, leaving them. Based on the last few national elections, i.e. post-Dobbs, where the GOP has pretty much gone over when abortion has been on the ballot, I'm thinking or hoping that maybe the fact that a constitutional amendment that would enshrine reproductive rights will be on the Florida ballot in November,

that maybe that will help Joe Biden and the Dems in general. Yeah, absolutely. Although, I mean, I wouldn't blame Floridians if the turnout wasn't as high as it was for voting for the restoration of felon voting rights, voting for marijuana in the past, like all these things, voting for actually the big one was an anti-jerrymandering constitutional amendment, which, you know, the GOP in Tallahassee went, well, they didn't mean that in much of the same way they did when it came to felony voting registration. I think, well, they didn't really mean that. I think what they really wanted us to do was to create a system where people have to pay

essentially a poll tax to get their vote back, but there's no real way for them to figure out what the actual sum is. So maybe they'll go to prison if they go ahead and vote. So you're saying that people might not turn out. in droves to vote for this constitutional amendment because they've done this in the past and basically been ignored or overridden right yeah are you going to run full tilt at the football the third time lucy tells you to come kick it i don't know i would hope that the the actual energy of pushing back against abortion restrictions would be enough to to overcome any kind of hesitation but if there's

any state where the elect the electorate has learned and i think you would be right not to blame them for not thinking this is the thing I absolutely have to do. It's one that's been hoodwinked on this on two big issues in the past where a very clear mandate is sent to Tallahassee and then the people in power go, well, that doesn't apply to us. What are we? Public officials. What do you think Ron DeSantis's future is as a politician in the state of Florida? You know, honestly, this is a mystery that's been bugging me. I've been thinking about this for months because it seems sort of like the next take to have on DeSantis. And for whatever reason, people ask me to have takes on DeSantis. I don't think he has a lot. I don't think he has a

has one in the conventional sense, right? There is no move he can make that isn't lateral or down. You know, he's been the governor. He's been a legislator on the federal level. He can't compete for Senate. That would be the only other position, I think, of stature. Rubio hates him. Rick Scott hates them. They're not going to get out of the way for him. They might for somebody else, but that's a couple cycles down the road. I don't think Marco has much of a future outside of maintaining this sinecure so he can keep meeting nice rich men. What DeSantis can do ordinarily, you'd say, hey, think tank, you know, board of a, board of a defense contractor. But the utility that those people have is going out and meeting all the donors to those

groups, the people that are funding the think tank to get legislation passed and going, hey, this guy is a connection and this guy has multiple connections. And he's charismatic and he's going to get people to come to him. But anybody who's met Ron DeSantis will just admit, like, he is not that guy. He does not have those soft skills. So what hard skills can he trade on? and like, you know, just basically being an asshole is not something that's in short supply in the private sector. Right.

He does have that winning smile, though. Yeah, that's sort of like a dog sees something that's not sure is food, that kind of smile. Before I let you go, I know you're a proud alumnus of the new college of Florida. The last couple of times I have read about your school was when the American Association of University professors censured it. And then it hired a professor who wrote a book called The Case for Colonialism. How's that pride holding up? Oh, I feel great about it, Andy. I got to tell you.

Well, you know, as a journalist, you know I'm made up money. So I'm sending a lot to the school every year. I really want the box social where we all wear searsucker suits and pretend that we still own people is going to go great. It's so depressing. I mean, they've added, like, effectively sort of an online curriculum that's just run by a company that some billionaire donor owns. And it looks like just some real. I mean, no disrespect. DeVrya obviously has a point, you know, and it obviously serves a very helpful utility for people, but for the state honors college, that's not really what you want to

turn it into. And I feel like that's where it's going with, you know, visiting professors from the Claremont Institute of Craneal Examination. Yeah, I was reading somewhere probably on blue sky, somebody said, and I tried to find it last night, I couldn't. And for all I know, it was you who said it, that if this were happening to a school that were, say, in the Northeast, it would be such a bigger story that we'd be hearing about all the time what Ron DeSantis and his cronies are doing to new college. But because it's sort of down there in Florida, you know, it gets some coverage, but really the absolute gutting of what was, you know, an outstanding institution has just been sort of massively undercover, it feels like.

Absolutely. And I mean, look, I have left-leaning journalist friends who are utterly sympathetic to where I came from from a curricular standpoint and have a great deal of esteem for what they've learned about about new college. But the first time I told them I went to the Honors College of the state of Florida. I mean, you better believe they had a joke. It wasn't at like a third person's expense. It was definitely at right, you know. I may have been one of those people. I'm sure.

Yeah. Completely reasonable. So I think that there is sort of a like, it's Florida. How serious could it be? Come on. Right. Attitude going into it. And I probably would have stayed firmly in that mindset of like, well, you know, look, this is

not where legacy media sends their kids, right? You know, one-third of the New York Times newsroom is Ivy. Of course they're focusing on what's going on at Harvard and Yale and MIT and Cornell and etc. And new college just doesn't have the status. But what's been interesting to see is the gutting of a student academic freedom at Columbia that's happening in the backyard of some of this legacy media. And I think I'm sort of coming around to the idea that like this is just not a problem for a lot of people. I think there are a lot of people who kind of default toward, well, it's college. they're all stupid anyway. And I don't think anything could be further from the truth. No, it does feel like that. Jeb, thanks so much for being here. As always, it's always great to get your take on what's going on down there in the, is it the sunshine state? Is it still the sunshine state? I guess it's still the sunshine state.

Until hurricane season. Yeah, exactly. And I encourage everyone to go to creative loafing Tampa Bay, which is a finely named website and read Jeb's piece because it really is savage and there's just some unbelievably great lines in there. Jeb, thanks again. Thank you. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy, how are you starting off this eclipse week in America with your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a huge disappointment. It is a wrestler slash actor slash he's a multi-hyphenate talking about Dwayne Johnson,

aka The Rock. And back in 2020, he endorsed Joe Biden for president. This year, however, he went on Fox and Friends in an interview that aired last Friday. He said he will not be endorsing anyone this year because he says his endorsement caused an incredible amount of division in our country, which first of all, settle down, buddy. You're a huge star, one of the biggest in the world. Your endorsement did not cause division in this country. But then he says, my goal is to bring our country together. I believe in that in my DNA.

So in the spirit of that, there's going to be no endorsement. Now, look, people disagree about this. I am not one of those people that thinks every celebrity has an obligation to use their platform to speak out politically. If there are celebrities that don't want to get into politics, I'm sort of okay with that, for the most part, anyway, which doesn't mean I don't like it when some of them do, as long as they're on the right side. But the problem is, Johnson then says stuff like he says that woke culture really bugs him. And he did a whole thing about how trying to act as though woke culture, again, this is his phrase, is preventing people from being who they want to be.

And that along with cancel culture, it's forcing people to, it's the usual crap you hear from the right wing about how, oh, I'm not even free to believe what I want to believe anymore. And here's the rock buying into all of that. And look, you can debate the phrase or the word woke all you want. But the whole idea that it's, you know, you're going to blame people on the left for causing division in this country and for not allowing people to be who they want, which is the entire point of being quote unquote woke is not the entire point, but part of the point, as it's used now, is to let people be who they want, whether it's LGBTQ, whether it's the color of their skin, whether it's religion. It's the idea that you're supposed to live your best life. And the only place where that comes into play in quote unquote negative way is because it's against people who don't want to let other people live their life. And these are the people that the Rock is now talking about. Like, what are you talking about here? Are the trans people who just want to be left alone and want to be able to, again, live their true life? Are they the problem? Are they the ones causing division?

Or is it the people who don't want to let them do that and who want to criminalize that and to want to stigmatize it? And for him, to sort of jump in, on the one hand, saying, oh, I don't want to get involved in politics. And then on the other hand, bemoaning woke culture. Anytime you're bemoaning woke culture, particularly as a celebrity, all you're doing is sending a dog whistle to your right-wing friends, your bigoted friends, fans, rather, not friends. And that's exactly what he's doing here. So I'm just, you know, if you don't want to talk about politics, if you don't want to talk about culture, then don't talk about politics and don't talk about the culture. But if you're going to wait in on it, on one

side and talk about, you know, the problems with cancel culture and the problems with woke culture without pointing out that both of those things are in response to straight up bigotry on the other side, then you get my fuck that guy for today. It's incredibly unfortunate when people go on television to discuss an area that they know little about. And because you have such a huge platform, everyone takes what you say and attaches a great deal of importance to it. If you don't want to endorse anybody, nobody, I think, was going around trying to court the Rock's endorsement. I don't think that his thoughts on politics sway people one way or the other. But it is, to your point, Andy, incredibly frustrating for people

who don't even know how to define wokeness, by the way, because when asked to define what woke is, they have no fucking idea. And they all sound like bumbling fucking idiots. To be conscious of and aware of systemic injustice is a piece of what wokeness is,

and you won't even hear them say any of that. And so, again, to put the weight on those that call out systemic injustice and say that they're the problem as opposed to people that are active creating injustice is exactly what is wrong with the conversation and narrative that people have on these issues. And it just, again, sickens me that people of color who are so fucking privileged and wealthy get to then sit on their high horse and talk about, oh, yeah, it's the woke

culture. That's the problem. He was trending for a reason after he made that comment. And, you know, and I hope that after he gets up. uplifted by Nazis and white supremac that maybe he will, you know, change his tune and realize that you'll be remembered in this moment and not the way that you think that you want to be remembered. Fuck that guy. A couple of the things he said in that interview really bugged me. One of them was he said, like a lot of us out there, not trusting of all politicians, I do trust the American people and whoever they vote for, that is my president and who I will support

100%. So I just want to make it clear that the Rock is on the record as saying that if Donald Trump is elected president, and he starts moving this country even further down the fascist path that he set us, that the rock supports that 100% based on that statement. So he may want to rethink that. And the other thing he said, he said, today's cancel culture, woke culture, that really bugs me. In the spirit of that, you either succumb to that and be what other people want you to be, or you be yourself and be real. And that might make people upset and piss people off, and that's okay. This is the same guy who says, oh, I'm not going to endorse anyone because it causes division and

people get pissed at me. So again, you're a hypocrite, and I just think that needs to be pointed out. So again, fuck that guy. Yes. Danielle, who, whom, hoompsed is your fuck that guy to kick off this glorious eclipse-filled week. Mm-hmm. So I want to bring our listeners attention to a story that I came across at the site, Blavity. And back in 2023, in June of 2023, black entrepreneurs,

Victoria Scott Miller and her husband, Duane, opened up a bookstore called Liberation Station. And the bookstore was dedicated to children's books that center black protagonists. And it was all, like everyone was so excited, I remember, because I posted it on social media. I thought, how beautiful. And this was a bookstore that they opened in Raleigh, North Carolina, where they're from. Well, sadly, last week, they announced that they are closing the first ever black-owned children's bookstore. Why are they closing it?

Not because of a lack of sales, not because of a lack of interest, but because of the insurmountable amount of death threats and hate mail that they were receiving. Because God forbid in this fucking country that black people dismal. to open up a business to celebrate blackness, to celebrate little black children who get to see themselves inside of books. Because I will tell you, as a full-fledged adult, it wasn't for like 20 or maybe 20 years ago that I started seeing children's books that when I was teaching in the classroom, black and Latinx kids, that I had a boatload of books that I could show them. Because that wasn't my experience growing up where you could see yourself and didn't have to imagine what it

would be like to put a black or brown face in another white story. And so, you know, it just is a reminder for people who are like, oh, racism doesn't exist and oh, we're all making it up. Like, racism doesn't exist. Are you fucking kidding me? Because we can't have the basics in this country. We can't have a children's bookstore, not receive box. threats from racist fucking white people. And you know, I want to know where the goddamn investigations are into this. Where is the Department of Justice? Where is the FBI? Where are the conversations around like safety and inclusion? Because this is what the war on diversity, equity, and inclusion has created. A violent environment that has a children's bookstore having to close. So for that reason,

And, you know, it is my fuck that guy goes so beyond just like a person or a politician or whatever. It goes to this entire movement against any type of racial progress in this country. It goes to the entire movement being funded by Trump, MAGA supporters and their billions of dollars so that they can uphold whiteness. Fuck every single one of those guys. And I pray that this, this bookstore goes online. and it is online and can still bring light and life to the young people that they were trying to do in Raleigh, North Carolina. So fuck those guys. Yeah, this is just a hideously awful story.

And I know that Victoria Scott Miller, who owns the bookstore, one of the things she wrote was that since September, we faced numerous threats following the opening of our store. Some we brushed off, while others included a disturbing phone call detailing what our son Lank's in war when he was at the shop alone. I mean, my God, to be put in that situation is just unbelievable. And, you know, she said that they often varied their store hours in an attempt to stay safer. The stuff they had to go through for, as you said, for having the nerve to want to open a children's bookstore is just, it's so anger-making. Yeah. And it's, I just want to say, like, it's not 1950. It's 2024.

And none of us should shrug this kind of terrorism off because that's what it is. It is duressic terrorism. And we just act like that is par for the course of what it means to be black in America. It should not be. Yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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