The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s America Meets All ‘Four Threats’ To Democracy

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

President Donald Trump isn’t a threat to American democracy on a metaphorical level. He’s a threat to the country’s entire political structure, literally, according to two academics who have studied American democracy throughout history and wrote a whole book on the topic. Dr. Robert C. Lieberman, Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy, joined Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal to share which of the “four pillars” that help sustain democracy Trump has completely bulldozed over (hint: all of them.) According to Dr. Lieberman, that’s a big problem. “The American democratic system is supposed to keep one person or one small group from gaining all the levers of power at the same time. And that's where things have kind of fallen down,” he says. See, these threats have always crept up in our history (even Alexander Hamilton was involved in partisan games) but Leiberman says it’s the “piling of threats on top of each other” that triggers the alarms. (“Trump seems to have an unerring instinct to make just about every situation, worse. He is a product of this confluence of threats. He is a product of the time.”) The team also hears from Rev. Warnock, who is running for Senate in Georgia’s special election race against Sen. Kelly Loeffler and would become the first Black Senator for Georgia if he won, “at a time in which we're dealing with a renewed conversation and reckoning around our age old problem of race and racism in this country.” Plus! Rick tells Molly the cold, hard truth about the future of the Supreme Court and the two discuss why the GOP is headed for an Ice Age, just how sketchy Deutsche Bank is, and of course, Trump’s “all kinds of illegal” tax revelations. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Hey, Molly, drunk fast. Guess how much Donald Trump paid in federal taxes in the first year he was president? He's a billionaire now, a multi-gaggigillion, bagillionaire, so it's pick your number.

I don't know, millions of dollars, trillions of dollars, or maybe $750. $750. I don't know, but I was told that he was one of the wealthiest men in the world. Just ask him. Yeah, I was told that too. He's a really, really rich. See, I'm losing money being president. Well, apparently he's been losing money being Donald Trump. He paid no income taxes for 11 consecutive years.

The New York Times has all the motherfucking receipts, every one of them. And this story is eating Donald Trump's psyche from the inside out this morning because there's only so many times you can say, well, I'm really smart. I treat the IRS because the whole thing has unveiled that Donald Trump is a fake billionaire, just like everyone that you've ever known in New York, I'm sure, has been aware of for a a trillion years. And just as I recounted in my first book, the meeting I had with a big donor hedge fund guy in 2015, and I said, listen, I don't know how much Trump's worth, but he could fund his campaign. He's a billionaire. And the guy leaned back in his chair and he looked at me, he smiles, this big smile, and he points at himself, he says, Rick, I'm a billionaire.

Trump is a clown living on credit. This idea of Trump's wealth in 2015 and 2016, God knows how many focus groups I sat in. And these people would say, Mr. Trump's the wealthiest man in the world. He's the best dealmaker ever. He's a billionaire. He's richer than Bill Gates. Bill Gates polishes Donald Trump's shoes. Oh, Mr. Trump, he can't be bought. He's a billionaire. And it just became this part of his fucking legend. Florida writer Bill Cotterill said in the New York Times, Trump has been more successful playing a billionaire than being one. It is just astounding how much he has suckered these people. All of his companies lose money like crazy. He's been selling off assets like crazy. He's got loans. He's got $300 million worth of loans coming. Who do you pay when you're in tax trouble? The IRS? No, you pay your daughter consulting fees. A little bankie's been getting consulting fees to lower the Trump tax burden. It's not even that he paid her consulting fees. It's that then she,

She wrote off the consulting fees. So one of the things that happens, and I don't know this firsthand, of course, but when wealthy parents are trying to give their kids money, you're supposed to pay gift anything over $15,000 a year you're supposed to pay gift tax on. So what Trump did was he paid Ivanka a consulting fee of $750,000 or a little bit more. he deducted it, so he's not paying the gift tax and also taking the deduction on a gift to his daughter. So it's like all kinds of legal, I'm no tax lawyer, but this I could see is really problematic. And, you know, a lot of people I know who have money are really careful to overpay their taxes because, you know, it's a lot of work to be audited. And also, it's really stressful. And the other thing is, honestly, in my mind, it's a pleasure to get to pay.

taxes. Like, it's our part. We're lucky to get to pay taxes. Like, that's, you know, that's a sign of success. And so the idea that this guy would do everything he could to cheat the federal government, which he is now running, I just don't understand how you thread that needle and say that that makes him good to be president. Here's a fun fact. Abraham Lincoln's first year as president. He paid three times as much in taxes in 18, in 19th century dollars. as Donald Trump paid this year. I was surprised that Obama paid $1.8 million when Bush only paid $250,000 and the Bushes are so wealthy. Well, that was Obama's book deal that year. He always paid at and above the part, right?

The thing that fascinates me most in the tax story is, you know, Molly, what is the fundamental predicate of Donald Trump with American Republican dude supporters of Donald Trump? I don't know. What is it? It's that he is the swaggering macho, alpha male, testosterone-drenched silverback gorilla that his dick knocks between his knees, that he's such a tough guy, that he's the badass motherfucker. He deducted $70,000 for hairstyling. Let's just dispense with the idea that Donald Trump is an American man. He is a fancy lad who gets $70,000 worth of hairstyling deducted off his fucking taxes. Let's just have a minute on the hair, though, for a second.

You know, I have this two-color hair, and it's quite complicated and expensive to maintain and involves numerous hairdresser trips. There's no world in which it costs $70,000 to maintain. Like, what is he, I mean, does he get the implanted wig re-implanted every year? I can't speak to what that technique might be as a bald dude whose average haircut costs around $11 when I don't do it myself. you know, $70,000 of deducted his hair styling. I mean, it's like his hair, he's overpaying, man. I mean, I've seen that hair, and it's not great. I also want to point out that these records show that Donald Trump paid more in taxes overseas

than he has in America. So Panama and the Philippines and Argentina and other places are being made great again. He's not paying taxes here in this country. Well, let's get back to the fundamentals here. What this reveals, is that Donald Trump is a con man. He has conned the American people into believing he was this uncorruptible billionaire. In reality, he's a grubbing, scruffy, low-rent loan fraudster who tells banks when he wants

to borrow money, I'm worth a treasillion dollars. When he tells the IRS that he wants a $72 million tax refund, he says, I'm barely able to rub two Trump coins together. I'm starving. Can't you see? And you've done a lot of polling. So you really know what moves. and what doesn't move. The Atlantic piece, Jeffrey Goldberg piece that may or may not have

been anecdotes provided by John Kelly. That is John Kelly, like the story about Trump and John Kelly. Right. That story moved voters. That story had an impact on Americans. That story drove actual numbers with activity service members and with military veterans. We've seen it. We've tracked it. it's real. Okay. So then, but a lot of the stuff in that story, we in the pundon class, already knew. Largely. Right. I mean, there was nothing in there that was surprising, but the way that it was put together was very... The specificity and the TikTok and the specificity on it were shocking. Yes. So this story is very similar. We knew a lot of this stuff. We all suspected everything in the story, but somehow put together this way. with the concrete number, $750. It's that same phenomenon of things we already knew,

but really sort of on paper right in front of us. Well, I think tomorrow night in the debate, Joe Biden has a phenomenal opportunity to walk out on stage and say, you know, Mr. President, for a guy who claims to be a billionaire, I paid a hell of a lot more taxes than you did in 2016-2017. And for a guy who claims to be the Tribune of the Working Man,

you've fought against giving people a little extra unemployment, coverage in a time of an economic crisis you created. And those people are still paying taxes on it. So if you got the $600 a month for the last six months, you owe taxes on that money. And they'll pay more in taxes on a COVID crisis assistance payment than you paid in 2016 and 2017. I also think what is good. Biden is really ultimately a civil servant who has never really collected the way, you know what I

mean? He's not wealthy the way some politicians are wealthy. Joe Biden never got rich off of being in office. Molly, Joe Biden was the lowest earning senator. And I think he had the lowest net worth or among the lowest net worth. This was never a guy driven by public service as a way to get rich. And even after he left office as vice president, believe me, every consulting firm on K Street, every big law firm would love to have a former VP of counsel. Exactly.

He really did not try to monetize. We have a crook, a career criminal, and then we have a guy who's really just been a public servant his whole life. And I think it's an interesting contrast. Here's the funny part, probably. I mean, given the debts Donald Trump owes to a variety of both banks and leg-breaking oligarchs. We don't know about the leg-breaking oligarchs, but it's fair to say that probably that's likely. Well, let's put it this way. Name an American bank that loans Donald Trump money.

Does Deutsche Bank still loan him money or now? Deutsche Bank still loans him money. And Deutsche Bank is sketchy as how. Although, when you look at Deutsche Bank, it is so deeply wired into a whole variety of networks in Europe that are, shall we say, oligarch adjacent. There's a high degree of sketch going on there. Yes, it's maximum sketch. It's like being the president's campaign manager is cursed. How many of them have been in jail?

Well, six people from his first campaign went to jail. Okay. And now we have this weekend's Brad News. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the police were called to Brad Parscale's house. It's not entirely clear what happened, but he was taken into custody and I think put in a psychiatric facility. My understanding of the story from the local coverage and from some folks in Florida was that the police were called on Saturday night to the Parskow residence in Seven Isles. down in Fort Lauderdale. And the report on the 911 call was that a man was in the house with firearms threatening his life and to his own life. Broward County SWAT negotiated with him. They entered

the house he left with them. He was committed under Florida's Baker Act. It's an involuntary psychiatric evaluation that lasts for 72 hours. Section 5150 of the Florida law. In a wacky side story, I once helped someone else get Baker acted. It was not a pretty process. I will tell you that. Never great. Never great. And I will say this, campaigns are a stressful and very high impact sport. And people crack under pressure after a point. I feel for anybody that's in a situation like that and feels as if harming themselves is the only out. Or maybe it's just Florida.

Maybe it's just Florida. There's a lot of the water. There's a lot of the water in the great state of Florida. Right. I'm just saying I don't want to be annoying here, but could it possibly be that Florida is the issue here? Oh, he's a recent Florida transplant, so I don't know if the antibodies have built up yet for the Florida problems. But look, there will be more to this story coming out, is what I understand. I'm going to kind of leave it right there for now.

I think that's the appropriate thing to do while the guy is still in a sight cold. I can see you're showing an enormous meta restraint. Beyond your imagination. Oh, no, I believe it. But with the time story, there are many more stories coming out. So if I were Kaylee McEnany, I would think be a little bit worried about the next couple weeks of lying. Well, if the tax story was the September surprise, I think there will be many, many more things that break in the coming days and weeks because the only easy day was yesterday, Donald. Yesterday, he spent the day playing golf, too.

As one does, when you're losing a presidential election and 205,000 people have been killed by a pandemic he mismanaged, I mean, that's the natural reaction. Nope. Yeah, I mean, he definitely, that's his go-to, so to speak. So, Rick, how do I be happy about this? Fucking feminist icon, RBG died. Trump's scary nominee that he's had forever wants to try to fill the seat before the election. What do you think? I have some bad news for you. Tell me. Mitch McConnell has the votes. I say that with no joy. I say that with discipline, because I'm going to tell you, nothing would please the Trump campaign more. Nothing would delight them more. Nothing would improve their electoral prospects more than spending the next 30 days, screeching, tearing our hair out, setting our asses on fire, running around without any discipline or focus about the Supreme Court fight, that Mitch McConnell, I am sad to tell you, is going to win.

He's going to win it, okay? There's no secret vote out there. There's no Republican and White Knight going to save this thing. Nobody's going to come and say, my God, the scales have fallen from my eyes. I must oppose this. Right. But they would love to make this into a fight about Catholicism. Because why?

Because Trump is losing in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota. Those northern tier states have a higher percentage of white Catholic voters. And they would really, really, really, really, really, really, really love to be running abs saying, San Francisco liberals are attacking your Catholic faith. These liberal liberals hate Catholics like you. Of course, Nancy Polo, is also a Catholic. You know what I think is interesting

is that when I was reading Jane Mayer in New Yorker, she was saying that actually Mitch McConnell has been promising donors that even if RBG dies in October, he will fill the seed. Yes. Look, I wrote about this in the book. I said,

you know, you got to watch for externalities. And the biggest externality of all would be RGB dying. And the campaign gods are what they are. And there we have it. So, See, I think that Democrats do better when they fight about filling the seat that should not be filled versus who is filling it. Well, yes, they have a more politically viable argument about the process than the personality. Even if you don't like her history, her policy, her jurisprudence, all these things, right?

Even if all those things are brought out litigating that, does not hurt Trump electorally. The only mission here is to hurt Trump electorally. So as I told a Democratic friend the other day, I said, Here's your real choice, given the realities of the world, because you know I'm nothing but tough love. Who do you want an office when Clarence Thomas passes? Are you going to kill Clarence Thomas? I mean, he's only like, how old is he? He's only 72.

He just looks like death from not asking any questions. Right. The thing I'm always impressed with Clarence Thomas is like, what is he even doing there if he's not going to ask any questions? But yes, continue, continue. There is going to be for a while a 6-3. court. Now, there are some signs that Roberts is deciding he's going to play the center vote now, which as Chief Justice is not a bad place to be. And what kind of president do you want in office at a time when you have a 6-3 conservative majority to constrain their potential activism in those

matters that McConnell and the conservative judicial apparatus are interested in pushing? There are two prizes at hand, one of which requires you draw like 57 inside straights in a row. And that is beating Barrett and beating McConnell. The other prize requires you lay down a pair of force, and that's beating Donald Trump. The reality we're facing is that McConnell has the votes. And McConnell could lose the Senate over this. And that, I think, is what Democrats need to focus on, is that this is very unpopular. People don't want it.

They don't agree with it. It can mean that the Democrat Senate map can open up in a way that it wouldn't have. if he wasn't shoving in the votes. I think McConnell must know that he is trading this Supreme Court seat for control of the Senate. Well, I think he does know that. And I think I think he does know that. But I know he knows that. And I also think he recognizes that the Republican Party is about to enter an ice age. And this is going to be his legacy item. He knows, he knows that a six three court is going to be the only thing that holds together. what he wants in the world because they're not going to regain control of the House for the foreseeable future. And the damage Trump has done to the Republican Party in the states will ensure that the

next wave of redistricting that we're in right now does not look like they thought it would look. It will be more Democrat. Some of these very, very, very red districts will not be as red. And some of these moderate districts will be much more blue. Reverend Raphael Warnock is a senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta since 2005 and is the Democratic frontrunner in the Georgia Special Election for the Senate. Tell us about what the Georgia Special Election is and when it happens. I don't know that our listeners know it's a little wacky. So can you explain what's going on?

Well, thank you. And it's great to be here with you. Georgia is the only state in this cycle that has not one but two. United States Senate seats available. I'm running in the special election, which means I'm running to finish the last two years of a term that was Johnny Isaacson's term, the Republican senator. And so I'm in a race, and because it's a special election, people call it a jungle primary, which they had a better word. Yeah, it seems unfortunate. Everybody, Democrats and Republicans are all on the same ballot. And as it turns out,

there are 21 people who've qualified for my race come November 3rd. will all be on the ballot for the first time. They will indicate people's party affiliation, but other than the incumbent, everybody's name will be listed alphabetically. Oh, so you're at the bottom? My last name is Warnock, so I'm right near the bottom, which is where I used to be in the lunch line as a kid

on the way to reset and the cafeteria. So in order to win, you've got to have 50% plus one. And if no one gets 50% plus one in the November 3rd election, you know, many analysts think it's likely because so many people in the race, I'm pushing to win outright on November 3rd. But if that doesn't happen, the two top vote getters go to a January 5th runoff. So that's the special election. What does the landscape look like?

I know, but I would love you to explain to our listener. I am the Democratic standard bearer in this race running against Kelly Leffler, who was appointed by the Republican governor, Kemp, to warm up the seat until I get there. She's the incumbent. But I'm running against her. And it's an interesting race because although she was appointed by the governor, she's being challenged by Republican congressman, Doug Collins,

I think became most well known in our nation during the impeachment hearings in which he was an arch defendant of everything Donald Trump. And so the two of them are fighting on that side. And their argument, it seems to me, is essentially the same. They're both arguing and squabbling with one another about who would be the best representative for Donald Trump. And I'm running to see who's going to be the best representative of Georgia. And I think based on my record, the work I've been doing all these years, that person is clearly me. Oh, no question. We have another Lieberman trying to lose the seat for the Democrats.

Can you talk to us a little bit about that? My question is not biased at all. Well, there are several people in this race. I said there, 21 people in the race. Two major Republicans on that side, the incumbent being challenged by the Republican congressman. And then on our side of the race, there are a few Democrats. I can't remember right offhand how many. And there's some concern about that.

But look, I'm going to run the best race I can. And I'm very gratified by the support that I'm feeling all across this state. And I intend to win this seat for Democrats. So much is at state. We certainly cannot afford to have either Kelly Leffler, who's seen much more focused on her stock portfolio than the people of Georgia when she heard about the coronavirus pandemic through a secret private briefing given to Senator. She was much more focused on sheltering her investments than the people who are

sheltering in here in Georgia across the state. We can't afford to have her and we can't afford to have Doug Collins, who has been a career politician who seems much more focused on careerism. And so he's been focused on making deals. She's been focused on making money. I've been focused on making a difference. I'm really encouraged because we're building a lot of movement across the state. I went on television a little over a month ago and my polling numbers have increase quite significantly, and we intend to win this seat. River Moorneck, I think one of the things the American people don't always see is how the person who's going to represent them compared to the person who's currently represent them is going to

change things for their lives. What will be substantially different for what you will be fighting for compared to Ms. Lofler? My fight is for ordinary people, and it really comes from my own story. I think that the best indicator of what a person will do after they're in office is what were they doing before they were elected. And so let me first of all just say that while I serve as senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, spiritual home of Martin Luther King, Jr., one of the most well-known prominent pulpits in the country, that's not where I started. I grew up as a kid in public housing, Kate and Holmes' housing projects down in Savannah, Georgia,

one of 12 children in my family. I'm number 11, and I'm the first college graduate in my family. So when you look at me, you're looking at someone who understands the importance of personal responsibility, my dad and my mom, who were both very hard workers, instilled in me the importance of hard work. But when you look at me, you're looking at a combination of someone who takes seriously personal responsibility and public policy. When you look at me, you're looking at the product of Pell Grants and low-interest student loans, without which I would not have been able to earn a college degree. I often say I went to Morehouse College on a full-face scholarship.

I didn't know how it was going to pay for the first semester, but good public policy helped me to realize my dreams. I'm also a Head Start Baby, which more people need to know about. This is an early preschool program that allows poor children to have a good start in stimulating their brain. I mean, look, none of us will be as smart as we were between age to zero and four. There's not hardly a smarter investment that we can make as a nation than to invest really in very small children from the beginning of life and then K through 12 and then making sure our kids have access to a good quality education, whether that's a four-year college degree, as was the case with me and went on to receive two master's degrees and a PhD degree.

But the kids who grow up and really need a technical school education, junior college, where you can learn skills to get you ready for the new economy. These are the people I'll be standing up for them. And I will be leading with this issue of health care. Here in Georgia, we have 500,000 people in the Medicaid gap because we've refused to expand Medicaid in this state. And as a result of that, our rule high. hospitals are closing. The ninth hospital now has announced that it will close in our state in a decade, nine hospitals in a decade. And so whether you need Medicaid or not, you ought to want Medicaid expanded in the state because our hospitals are closing. And it doesn't matter

if you have insurance if there's no hospital nearby to get to. Meanwhile, Kelly Leffler and Doug Collins are standing by as the Trump administration is trying to get rid of the Affordable Care Act. There'll be a Supreme Court hearing a week after the election. And Georgia needs a senator who will work at the federal level to ensure that Georgia joins the other 38 states that have already expanded Medicaid. Some of them led by red state governors because it just doesn't make any economic sense for us to do otherwise. So I'll be fighting for health care and I'll be fighting for the dignity of workers who should not be called essential workers while being denied an essential living wage and essential benefits. Yeah, that's absolutely true.

Basically, what do you need right now from listeners? They can give to my campaign. Let me tell you, we've been gaining a lot of steam and momentum. People all over this state are supporting us, but you can support us whether you live in this state or not, both through contributions and you can volunteer. I'm excited about our momentum. Tell people that Reverend Warnock, the pastor of Dr. King's Church, is running to become the first black senator in the state of Georgia, and only the 11th black senator in the history of our country that have been nearly

2000 at a time in which we're not only dealing with a once in a century pandemic and a once in a century economic turned down, but at a time in which we're dealing with a renewed conversation and reckoning around our age, old problem of race and racism in this country, demonstrated by these tragic flashpoints. George Floyd, Brianna, Taylor, Ahmad, Aubrey, right here in the state of Georgia, Rashard Brooks, whose eulogy I preached and whose eight-year-old. daughter and other members of the family I had the sad honor of comforting during that death. And also the pastor of John Lewis, who served as I officiated. I'm running in the tradition of John Lewis. I think we know what it's like to have Washington, D.C. filled up with only professional

politicians, which is the case for most of the folk who are there. I think we need more citizen representatives, somebody who will go to Washington, but will stay closely planted in the community that sent me there in the first place. The Congress did make John Lewis. He, He was who he was, and it was rooted in his moral authority. He was a great patriot who risked life and limb in order to secure for all Americans the promise of the vote, which is your voice and your human dignity. And because of his moral authority, he was able to bring people together not only at life, he did it in death.

Three American presidents showed up to his funeral. Much of the country paused to watch in spite of all that's going on. And that's because he exuded a kind of moral authority that was rooted in his own life, witness, a kind of faith that suffering produced. I can't be him. I'm Raphael Warnow, but he was my mentor, and I want to bring that kind of commitment to the upper chamber. We need more moral voices in our country. Across faith tradition, folks are wondering, what about the pastor running for the Senate? I believe firmly in the separation of church and state is part of the covenant, actually, we have with one another as an American people. And I believe in equality for all people, regardless of race,

religious tradition or no faith tradition at all, regardless of whether they're male or female, members of the LGBTQ plus community, there's no such thing as equal rights for some. We have to protect one another, stand up for one another. And I'm deeply hopeful that in this defining moment in America, I might be one among the many moral voices and bring the spirit of the pastor to a United States Senate that I think could use a conscience. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each

Sunday, but listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal.com to become a Beast inside member now. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com. Robert Lieberman, along with Suzanne Metler, are the authors of four threats, The Recurring Crisis of American Democracy. Robert was able to join us today to talk about what the four threats to American democracy are and how they are affecting us right now. Robert, thanks so much for being with us today. Can you tell us a little bit about this very important book that you've written for our time right now?

Yeah, well, this book came about because Suzanne and I both teach the introductory course in American politics. And we found this course over the last few years increasingly difficult to teach because American democracy doesn't really resemble what we were taught about in graduate school and what we used to teach our students. And then after the 2016 election, it became extremely hard to teach that course. And we began to think about together, you know, what is it that makes American democracy so challenged these days? And we drew on two kinds of insights to think about that. One is what is it that we know about other countries that have gone through these kinds of democratic challenges? And then what do we know about the American past? Because this is not the first time that American democracy has been under threat like this. And combining the two insights from history and comparison, we developed this framework of four threats that threaten democracy in general.

Can you tell us what they are? Yeah. So the four threats, and these are things that people who study democracy elsewhere have identified as things that make the three. democracy difficult to sustain. And they are very quickly polarization, political polarization, conflict over what we call the boundaries of membership in society, what groups are entitled to full status and citizenship and what groups are on the outside, typically in the United States, that gets expressed as racism or nativism. The third is high and growing economic inequality, and the fourth is growth of executive power, the concentration of power in the executive branch at the expense of other branches of government.

So I guess the first thing I'd want to know, though, is when you were getting hints that what you were taught in grad school, what was like a pivotal moment where you were really thinking, like we have to rewrite and rethink how this happened, or was it really a slow erosion? It was a slow erosion. I mean, both of us had taught this course in the 1990s and came back to it a few years ago.

And when I was asked to teach the course again four or five years ago, I said, oh, well, that's no problem. I have my lecture notes from 1990. I'll just dust those off and bring them back out. And as I read through them, I realized that pretty much everything I taught my students in the 1990s was, as Joe Biden would say, malarkey. So I apologize to any of my students from the 90s who I led astray. But it was really a slow process until the 2016 election. And then, you know, I think a lot, as a lot of people did, we realized that we were really entering new territory or territory.

that we hadn't seen in our lifetimes. And this is one of the interesting things. For people like us who, you know, grew up in the late 20th century and came of age after World War II and toward the end of the century, that was a pretty unusual time in American democracy. But if you go back much farther, it's not hard to find these moments of crisis.

I am a person I would regard myself as being pretty far left. And so when people talk about polarization in politics, those of us who are polarized are often like, well, what's the harm? So why is it a threat to democracy? because I don't want to threaten democracy. If bipolarization, we mean just disagreements. You and I have different views about policy or the direction of the country or something like that.

That in itself is not dangerous. And in fact, that's the kind of difference that makes democratic societies work. When polarization becomes dangerous is when it really divides the country into these sort of mutually exclusive us and them camps. And that's what we've seen. crop up periodically over American history. It's not always like that, but it was like that and a number of the periods that we chronicle in the book, and it's like that now. How responsible is Facebook for this, and how responsible are the Murdoch? Well, that's a tough question. I mean, what's interesting about Facebook and the foxification

of the media is that it creates these separate sort of mutually exclusive information channels. where people can gather information or what seems like information and live in these sort of echo chambers. Even that is not a new phenomenon. So if you go back to the 1790s, which is the first period of crisis that we challenge in the book, you know, there were these two factions, the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. We all know about this from the show. One of the things that they did, these two groups, was create their own newspaper. So Hamilton had his newspaper, and Jefferson and Madison had their news.

paper that they use to, you know, feed information to their supporters and to denigrate the other side in these very personal terms. So the sort of, you know, independent media channels and castigating the other side phenomenon is not necessarily new. Now, I think Facebook has accelerated it and social media generally accelerates that. It makes the, you know, speed of communication faster, makes it easier for people to find each other. But this sort of media echo chamber phenomenon is not by itself new, and it's a feature of these polarized periods in American history. Do you think it's worse?

I think what's worse is not particularly these communication channels, but the way polarization interacts with the other threats that we describe. In periods in history, as we describe in the book, When polarization existed alongside deep conflict over race in the United States and economic inequality, that's when polarization becomes extraordinarily dangerous. And it's the compounding of threats that, for example, led to the Civil War in the 1850s and 60s, or led in the 1890s to the mass disenfranchisement of African Americans in the South and the installation of Jim Crow, which lasted for two generations.

So it's the piling of threats on top of each other that's really dangerous. A lot of people, and I actually sort of believe this, think that one of the sort of only thing that saved us is the fact that Trump is just so incompetent. I mean, do you think that that theoretically is the one bright spot in this whole thing? I have to have something because I'm quite depressed. I mean, yes. I mean, well, they're, but I want to, I mean, I really think, Suzanne and I really think that Trump, well, as I said, Trump seems to have an unerring instinct to make just about every situation worse. Yes. He is a product of this confluence of threats. He's a product of the time. He's not the cause of, of polarization today or of racial conflict or the fact that the Republican Party has become essentially an outpost of white nationalism today. Although again, you know, up to a. point, that's how democracy works. And the system is designed to be a contest for power, right? Between

parties, it wasn't designed with parties in mind, but between candidates, between branches, between the federal government and the state government, you know, it's designed to create these multiple centers of power on the assumption that politicians are people who seek power. And the American democratic system is supposed to keep one person or one small group from gaining all the levers of power at the same time. And that's where things have kind of fallen down. And that's what you're talking about with the executive overreach. And I know a lot of people have blamed the Obama presidency for doing that because of how bad the Senate was to him. And the Republicans acting in the bad faith they've been acting since the Duke-Gigrant era.

what is your perspective on that? Well, we actually take the story of executive aggrandizement, as we call it, back to FDR. You know, the growth of presidential power really began earlier in the 20th century. But, you know, FDR comes into office in 1933 at the trough of the Depression at a moment of tremendous fear and anxiety about the future of democracy. Congress hands Roosevelt's a lot of power. He leaves the presidency much more powerful. He leaves the presidency much more powerful. He leaves the presidency much stronger than he found it. He has a much bigger administrative state, a bigger White House staff, direct policy authority. And he uses that both to try and reform the economic system and save democracy, but also to try and pack the courts, which was seen as an anti-democratic move.

He uses it during the war to incarcerate more than 100,000 Japanese Americans in the West. And he uses it in 1940, and this is an episode we write about in the book, to sign. a secret memorandum authorizing illegal wiretapping against what he was very concerned about Nazi subversion in the United States in the in the late 1930s as as we were entering the war. So he sort of appropriates these tools of presidential power that grow over the Cold War and then are available to Richard Nixon when he comes into office in the 1960s and 70s to weaponize. So a lot of people would say racism and nativism always been a part of America.

And if anything, it's seeming like things are getting better. How is this a threat right now and what is it that you see that's made this more importance in your new teachings? Yeah, that's absolutely right. Race has always been a line of conflict from the beginning of the Republican well before the beginning of the Republic. There have been times, though, when it really bursts onto the surface and forms the principal line of political conflict. So in the 1850s, as we write about the run up to the Civil War, the party system that had for several decades kept slavery off the national agenda, all of a sudden reorganizes itself around the slavery question. So you have an anti-slavery party and a pro-slavery party. Again, in the 1890s, voting rights for African Americans in the South become, if not the issue that divides the parties, one of the key issues that divides the parties and leads to, as we describe essentially, violent overthrow of the government in North Carolina in 1898 by white supremacists.

And that's what's happening again today. The division between the parties has reorganized itself around the issue of race so that on the one hand the Democrats are much more themselves, much more diverse, represent diverse constituencies and diverse parts of the country, whereas Republican identifiers are much more likely to be white and are much more likely to hold racially resentful attitudes. So economic inequality is obviously bubbled up and caused lots of countries' downfalls. Can you explain to us what you're seeing there? Yeah, you know, the story of growing economic inequality, especially growth at the very, very top of the income distribution is an old story. We're not, that's not original. But what you've got is a, again,

a system that's aligned on both of these lines, race and economics. So that the, The challenge that economic inequality poses to democracy is primarily because the wealthy see themselves and their gains and their status threatened by middle and working class voters. And they will do a couple of things. They will go to any lengths, generally speaking, to protect their gains and to protect their economic status. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What can people do to try to push back on all of this? Well, these threats are very hard to roll back. Polarization, economic inequality, racial inequality, and executive power are not themselves easy to turn back.

But what we describe is what we call four pillars of democracy. These are the things that make democratic government work. Free and fair elections, the rule of law, the idea that no one is above the law, the law applies equally to everybody and that being in power doesn't exempt you from the law. The idea of a legitimate opposition, the idea that you and I can disagree and be opponents in an election or a political contest without being enemies, and the integrity of rights. Are we protecting the rights that are necessary for democracy to work, civil rights, civil liberties, and voting rights especially?

These are things that we can observe more closely and we can protect. And I think what's important is that people prioritize democracy. If there's one lesson we'd like people to take from the book, it's that democracy itself has to be a value. And one sign of hope, I think, is that in public opinion surveys, Americans across party lines support the values of democracy. They support the idea of free and fair elections. They support the rule of law. And I think drawing attention to the ways in which these pillars have been compromised and are maybe crumbling and making them the centerpiece of our debate and our discourse can help push people maybe in the right

direction. Well, Molly, as if the gods wish to teach us another lesson about podcasting during the Trump era, during a high-intensity newsday, the Miami Herald has broken a story now, indicating that this may also have been a domestic case with Pascal and his wife, Candice. Apparently, she had bruising on her and, ugh. From what I read in the Miami Herald, it sounds like, sounds really tragic and terrible. That she had bruises on her and that that's when the police started investigating. It sounds really tragic. Well, and some other horrible breaking news that I view is bordering on a declaration of war.

It turns out that the Trump campaign has a special category for African-American voters in Florida, would you like to know what they call it? Deterrence. Now, I'm pretty sure, since African-American voters in Florida don't have nuclear weapons, they're trying to deter them from voting. I mean, the whole fight with the Bloomberg paying off the felony stuff is really, and the Republican governor, DeSantis, not wanting him to. I mean, you know, there's a whole other level of voter suppression going on in Florida.

So it's just interesting that everything's coming out, right? The taxes yesterday and then today, all the Cambridge Analytica stuff from 2016 with the Mercer's and all the, the, uh, the target. get a data? Well, I mean, this is this big trunch of data they found apparently has to do with the Trump campaign's targeting of African-American voters in particular. And in places like the state of Georgia, 61% of them were marked in the deterrence category. That meant they sought actively to prevent them from voting. And of the overall deterrence category, 54% were black, Hispanic, Asian, or other. I know that we're supposed to be focused only on 2020, and this is a story from

16, where Steve Bannon, who was running the operation with his allies at Cambridge Analytica, were engaged in this. And the fascinating thing to me is, we know this is happening again right now. And it all is vectored through one horrible hell spawn site called Facebook. And the fact that this country collectively and governmentally has done nothing to put the brakes on this boggles the damn imagination, truly. Well, it does it, though. I mean, Trump's not going to regulate it, Right? And the Senate is controlled by Republicans. And the House can't do anything because of Mitch McConnell. So I mean, I think it is shocking, but I also how it would possibly get regulated. Well, I agree with you. I mean, look, call me a cock-eyed optimist, but I'm thinking the only solution may be to burn all the buildings to the ground and melt the servers at Facebook into slag and form them into a giant 80-foot statue of Donald Trump pointing out to the sea. So, Rick Wilson, and now for the light part of the episode.

The light heart of the people. The delightful moment in our podcast that everyone's waiting for. Where we talk about the people we hate. Who is your fuck that guy? Who will be featuring today two horsemen of the Trumpocalypse? Molly, would you like to lead with yours? It's like the two worst senators after Mitch McConnell. Two most evil senators.

I think that's... So my guy is the biggest hypocrisy. in the Senate. I think that's fair. Trump lapdog and complete and utter. Is it his new golf caddy? Yes, he's the guy who carries Trump's clubs. Lindsay Graham. And why is Lindsay your fuck that guy today? You know what's interesting about Lindsey Graham? He has such a big mouth that you can find tape of him saying almost anything. You can always find tape of him saying something like very incriminating. And so there are like numerous tapes of him saying he would never fill a Supreme Court seat right before an election. He would never, ever, ever do that. And then immediately, when Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies, minutes later, he is ready to fill the seat. And so he is,

with his sort of smiley hypocrisy and his hideous personality, and he is my fuck that guy. I don't know if you caught it on Friday, but Lincoln Project released a web ad of Lindsay Graham, begging and crying on television for donations to the Sarah McLaughman tune that was using the ASPCA commercials for a generation. Six million views. I said this morning. And the key selling proposition was, was call today and you'll receive this photograph of Lindsay Graham enjoying a hot dog. Well, I think the thing about Lindsey Graham is that he is just, there's something so loathsome about him. He's a truly loathsome creature. My fuck that guy for today is, is Lil Fascist Tom Cotton, who predicts there will be a peaceful transfer of power in 2025.

Is that his rap name? That's his rap name. Lilfascist. People do not know that Tom Cotton toured with Yellow Wolf and M&M. It's a little known fact, but, you know, a little fascist. Honestly, I think the gold chains will make his neck look really pencil-like in an unpleasant way. He should not wear gold chains. Well, you know, he's got that big Mercedes-Benz emblem.

Can we just talk about Tom Cotton in a track suit? Can we? Because that captures my imagination in a way, few things have. In some ways, I think of Tom Cotton less is like an Al Sharpton-90s-era tractsuit wearer and more of a Bosnian Civil War Adidas tractsuit wearing guy who may someday be involved in war crimes. Yes. No, I think that's right. He belongs in like a Borat movie.

In the rap video trope, I see this one is like the guy who's standing outside the helicopter with the machine gun tried to look tough when you really see that facade of skinny pencil necklace? One of the things I'm impressed with with Tom Cotton is his continual, like he just wants to go to war with everyone. I think he's like working on his war with the American people. This whole thing, it sprang off of Trump saying, get rid of the bandits. You have a very peaceful transfer.

Frankly, it won't be a transfer. It'll be a continuation. The ballots are out of control. And Tom Cotton was asked about that, as were many Republican senators. the vast majority, I get him like a shred of credit, the vast majority Republican senators said things like, President who? Transfer of what?

Where did you see this on some sort of machine? What is this machine you call the Twitar? I don't, I never heard that. Yeah, they did their usual bullshit. Yeah, I never saw the tweet. The jack boot at least fits, right? There would be a peaceful transfer of power in 2025. Go fuck yourself, bro.

You know why? You know what that pisses me off? Because one of the through lines of our history, is that even in hotly contested, deeply divided, bitterly partisan elections, at the end of the day, the argument isn't, well, I didn't get my way, burn it all down, fuck you. The argument is, okay, tough fight, see you next time. And even at the end of a bitterly contested election in 2000, after they litigated and fought

and yelled and screamed Al Gore and George W. Bush, the transfer of power came peacefully. Yeah, I wish it hadn't, but anyway. Right. Not my favorite moment. Even that election, the most contested election of our lifetimes, by far, even after Richard Nixon heard on election night that Joe Kennedy had helped steal Chicago for John, the answer wasn't, fuck you, have taken to the streets, or there will be no peaceful transfer of power.

It was, okay, see you next. The slow dissolving of the norm, having a cultural standard of peaceful transfer power, as with a lot of things in Trump world, it starts out as a joke. And then it becomes, fuck you, he's just trying to own the lives. then it becomes, well, maybe we should, then it becomes national policy. So you've got to cut that arc fast. Right. I also think the great tragedy of this whole story is that Tom Cotton is running unopposed, which is just infuriating.

I'm sorry, it wasn't fast enough to make that happen. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond for media, culture, politics, and science, who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app

and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest, and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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