The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s ‘Aspirational Fascism’ Casts a Shadow Over 2024

Episode Date: December 26, 2023

In this week's episode host Danielle Moodie talks to Patrick Gaspard, the CEO of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, discusses the challenges and threats facing democracy, highlighting the rise of Donald Trump and the Republican Party's shift towards extremism. Then Andy Levy sits down with The Guardian US' Martin Pengelly, to talk about his new book "Brotherhood when West Point Rugby Went to War," and discusses the genesis of his book exploring the lives of the 2002 West Point rugby players, their experiences during the 9/11 attacks, and their post-graduation journeys. 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 episode we have for you today. We may be off on holiday, but that doesn't mean that we didn't think about you in records and stuff in advance. Today we're joined by Patrick Gespard, president of the Center for American Progress, and he's here to talk about what progress has been made this year and what we can do to all keep pushing that forward. Then, Breaking News Editor for The Guardian, Martin Pangelli, is here to tell us all about his new book, Brotherhood, when West Point Rugby went to war. But first, let's have some fun. All right.

Let's light the mood a little. What was a great podcast you listened to this year? Aside from ours? I think we have to do aside from ours. People are not going to like this. Always a good start to an answer. Because it's a podcast that's over, but I never listened to it while it was new. And then I really loved it, but I know that this person, some people really, really love, and then some people can't stand.

But Brne Brown's podcast, Unlocking Us that she had on Spotify and then left Spotify or a close down that podcast. I have gone back and it's been really wild because she started the podcast in 2020. So it's actually really fascinating to listen to it now when people were pontificating about what was going to happen after the pandemic where people were not leaving their homes and kind of relive it through the interviews that she was having was is really awesome. So if people have not listened to that, I would highly recommend. Well, Blowback Season 4 was fantastic.

I've been listening to a lot of comedy podcasts, and I discovered one by a, I don't know if people know him. He's a little Conan O'Brien as his name. In all seriousness, his podcast is absolutely fantastic. It is just so funny, and he has fantastic guests. And at one point, I just typed in John Mullaney and listened to, like, a lot of different podcast that he was a guest on, because he's just. such a good podcast guest. I would encourage that too. But Conan's podcast is great. Yeah, I guess I'll

stick with that. Yeah, the Nirvana episode was fantastic. I'm going to recommend Switched-on Pop, since I think it's the best music podcast. How about a movie? I'm late to a lot of the movies this year, which is annoying, but, I mean, Oppenheimer was worth fully met the hype. Yeah, agreed. I really enjoyed The Killer, David Fincher's new one on Netflix. Great movie. When Evil Lurks is a great horror movie. Oh, God, there were a lot. Bottoms was really good. Barbie was good.

Bottoms was going to be my one that I think people don't know about, but I think that that was the funnest movie of the year at that. Yeah, I mean, it was hilarious, and Marchant Lynch needs to be in every movie. You're so funny. Is my takeaway from that.

I rarely do movies except to go for really nice popcorn and the food at a movie theater I like to go to in Brooklyn. But I will say for me, it was Barbie, because that was actually surprisingly just as good as the hype. Yeah, yeah. Which I was kind of blown away by.

And then I will say to close out was Beyonce's Renaissance. If you did not get to go to the concert, but to watch the behind the scenes, the effort, the artistic direction is pretty remarkable. So those two. The only other movie I'll throw out is actually from 2020. but it's criminally underseen. It's called The Empty Man.

It's one of the best sort of existential horror movies of the 21st century. Nice. I was going to say, I saw poor things this weekend and I thought that was incredible. How about a book? That's going to be hard because I read a lot of them. That's rough. I'll do mine while you guys consider. Naomi Klein doppelganger, I think is the best political book I've read this decade.

I will do a plug for the author that I interviewed on here, who is Nettie O'Koha for. Her African futurist books, I read three of them this year that were extraordinary. I read Four Points by Sean Gittemright. That was amazing. I read Burnout by another guest of ours. Amelia Nogowski and her sister, Emily, was a really good. Lighter by Young Pueblo was amazing.

I will stop there. I'll just, I'll stick with fiction. I think, because a lot of the nonfiction I've actually interviewed the people, I'll just let those stand. The reformatory by Tana Nirov-Doo was incredible. One of the best books I've ever read in my life, I read it this year. It came out, I guess, I don't know, three, four years ago. It's called Nomen, a novel. That's G-N-O-M-O-N by a guy named Nick Harkaway, which is just an unbelievable book. I am just constantly reading, so I'm forgetting so many great books I read this year. Falling Upward is another book that I read, sorry.

Yeah, a book I just read recently that I don't know if my time, and I've interviewed the author, but as of us taping this, it hasn't run yet. It may have run by the time you're listening to this. It's the Lumumba plot, the secret history of the CIA and a Cold War assassination by Stuart Reed, which is just unbelievably fascinating. And then I'll throw in on a comic book note, I'm going to throw in Waller v. Wildstorm by frequent new abnormal guest, Spencer Ackerman, and Evan Narciss, which is one of the best comic series I've ever read, and it's just unbelievable commentary on America's geopolitical influence during the Cold War, et cetera, and ends with one of the best last lines I have ever read in any piece of media

in my life. Damn. Love plugging Spencer. All right. I am so very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal Patrick Gasper, who is the president of the Center for American Progress, the largest progressive think tank in the country. Patrick, you know, I wish that I could say,

wow, we have such a bright future ahead. Tell us about some of the progress that we're making. Tell us about some of the policies that we need to be focused on. But frankly, we find ourselves in the position of just hanging on for dear life. And I believe, you know, as somebody who was once affiliated with the Center for American Progress, worked as a policy advisor there. We are proud to clean you. And I was proud to be there. I know that there are brilliant people that are working to try and hold on to our democracy.

So I just want to give you an opportunity to lay out to the listeners. What are we up against right now? Well, first, thanks so much for having me on, Danielle. and thank you for how you yourself have been kind of framing what the challenges are and just how dire the stakes are going into 2024. I will say that if you and I try to convince the world that everything is sunny, we're moving in the right direction, everything's fine, they would just point us to the clown show last night of a Republican debate

where these people were just trying to wrestle one another to the ground to be more extreme and more to the right of until the 100. than the next person. So it is, it is really challenging. You know, I'll say, I'll say a couple of things. First, if you are just doubting what is at stake next year and wondering whether or not you have any need to participate, just listen to what the leading, likely nominee is for the Republican ticket, Donald Trump, a man who has made no apologies about what can only be called his aspirational fascism. A man who's running for president basically to stay out of jail for all of his likely wrongdoing that's being proven multiple cases across the country right now. Someone who has made it

very, very clear that he wants to tear down the very scaffolding around the democracy just for his own personal benefit to make sure that he faces no accountability for what he's done. Just 48 hours ago, this man came straight out and said, that on day one, if he were reelected, in his own words, he would be a dictator. This doesn't happen that you and I are projecting on him. Donald Trump grabbed the dictator label and held firmly onto it in the last two days. He's promised to use his Department of Justice to go after political enemies and said he would instruct his attorney general to indict and possibly jail anyone he opposes. He called his opponents German, the kind of language we haven't heard since the National Socialist in Germany.

the 1930s, and he said that his political opponents in America pose a greater threat than our enemies in North Korea, and he would treat them accordingly. These are not things that we're projecting on him. These are not things that Daniel and Patrick Gasper is saying this man is intimating the things he has said directly. He's also already through his movement in the years that he was in the White House of the kinds of candidates he has supported since his defeat. He's unleashed that maga revolution across the country with unprecedented levels of coordination at the federal, state and local levels. These are the people who have tossed out state leaders in Tennessee and Montana in order to silence their dissent and the will of their constituents. These are people

who are working to overturn elections simply because they don't like the outcomes and limit access to the ballots of the super wave of voting rights of those they don't agree with. We know that in 2025, the Trump tax cuts that favored a very, very very strong. small, incredibly wealthy minority in this country are up for renewal again. And already we see wealthy conservatives in places like the Heritage Foundation, the America First Policy Institute, who are pouring tons of resources to help Donald Trump get a grip on power again so that they themselves don't lose their grip on power. So all of these things are happening all at once. And then it's all sitting on top of a powder tag of a Congress being really,

led by an extremist like Johnson, who days ago told all of us in the world that apparently Jesus Christ told him that this was a red sea moment that America is facing, and he was going to be our Moses in the Red Sea of America, and that there is something ecclesiastical about his speakership. An extraordinary bunch who are corrupt, messianic, fascistic, who have some measure of control over our Congress right now, who have tilted the Supreme Court to a radical extent, and who are poised if we are not vigilant, if we're not organized, if we don't come out and tell a story that is catalytic and mobilizes our base and persuades others who are on the fence. If we don't do this, then they capture the presidency again and it's no hold board. So,

yeah, there are a couple of things at stake next year, Danielle. The thing that gets me is that in everything that you've laid out right now, all of the stakes, the risk, the kinds of people that Donald Trump has surrounded himself, will surround himself with the Heritage Foundation that's backed by billionaires who have a plan for day one of how they're going to rid, quote unquote, the vermin, as they call them, from governmental agencies and replace them with loyalists to Donald Trump. Joe Biden in the polls, Patrick, down people on social media saying, I'm not voting for him. I'm going to vote my values. I'll roll the dice. What is happening with the narrative that is coming out of this White House that even with all of the things that you just laid out that we know to be true,

that Joe Biden is not soaring ahead right now? I know that in this climate, there will be no president again who will get 50% approval rating. We won't see that. Yep. But to drop well below 40 isn't a good sign. So what do you think is happening and also what needs to shift? A couple of things, Daniel. First, I know that you had my friend Mike Potthorger on your show. Yes. Yes. Yes. I was talking about mad pole disease. So I'm going to put the polling aside. I just love that phrase. I'm going to steal. I've still let it from Mike. We're going to put the polling aside. I've worked on presidential campaigns going back to 1988 all the way up through the present moment. And I well know the value of polls one year out that had George, the first George Bush winning handily going into 1992 that had Mitt Romney

way up on Barack Obama going into 2012. I can tell these stories, chapter and verse. So polling a year out, not a whole lot of value to it. But as you noted, you and I, don't need polls to know that this election is going to be close. Every election going back, the last 20-something years, has been pretty darn close in an incredibly polarized country with a fractured media environment. And unfortunately, too many people getting their news, getting their information off of platform, platforms that drive the polarization. And we know that misinformation's going to be rampant going into the election year. I do think that there has been a real in not just telling the story of what this Biden and Harris White House has accomplished,

working with Democrats in Congress, but also taking all of that and projecting it into a story of the future, like really laying out the comparative between Democrats and Republicans, working exceedingly hard to turn next year, not into a referendum on Joe Biden, but a clear contrast and choice between what Democrats have to offer and what Republicans have to to offer. I am absolutely confident that in a choice election, which is what we had in the midterms in 2018, it's what we had in the midterms in 2022, the presidential in 2020. Three elections in a row where Republicans have way underperformed approval and disapproval numbers and where Democrats have managed to outperform the projections going into the election because people were indeed

focused on abortion and the fact that Republicans, you know, the fact that Republicans, you know, have taken away the right of the level of Supreme Court are passing bans in state after state and have made it clear that if they're in office again, they're going to work to pass a national ban against women's access to reproductive health care. I know that when we have the comparative election and we look at the things that Joe Biden and Democrats have done to bring down costs from middle income families where a middle income family would save $23,000 from all of this president's legislation is fully implemented. And we are able to tell the story of the contrast between a party, a president driving down cost for students and making higher education accessible again.

And those who just want the market to run rampant and prevail, even on education. When we lay out very clearly, I just came back from the climate negotiations in Dubai. Talk about high stakes. The stakes are incredibly high. We are perilously close to missing the goals that we need to hit on climate. Most of the young activists, the young voters that I spend a lot of time in conversation with make it clear that climate is a critical issue for them and real action on climate's an issue. The things that we've seen in the Inflation Reduction Act, the infrastructure bill, that are helping us to transition to a green economy with jobs, with dignity,

and a new manufacturing future of America. that's something that Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Democrats in the House and Senate have led on, or Republicans have stood in the way of that. Even the things, Danielle, that Republicans say they care the most about like border security, just 24 hours ago, we had Republicans voting against the important border security measures in a bill before them because they're trying to play games around national security. So they voted against the fentanyl provisions. they voted against capacitating border patrols as they play games with aid to Ukraine. So in an election, that is a contrast election, that is a choice election, you can throw the polling out. I know that Joe Biden, Democrats do well in that election. That's not to suggest that the campaign as currently constructed, the narrative as currently held up, is a flawless one.

It's not. There are much more that could be done that Democrats need to be doing. far better, but I know that they certainly have time to organize that and to do the work of persuasion. You said that some of the people you talk to, so they're going to vote their values. If we get them out to vote, if we get them out to participate, when they look at their values, whether these are voters who are thinking about domestic policy or even foreign policy, as they think about the space of rights and they make the contrast between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed dictator. I think that the choice becomes clearer and clearer to them.

I just want to be about the business, Danielle, of persuading people to participate in the first place. Yeah, and I think that that's right. I mean, the fact is that when people understand the policies and understand, and I think abortion is a really good issue in that way that you had this right because of extremism and extremist judges and Trump being able to appoint three Supreme Court justice is it is a right that we no longer have after 50 years. And I think that when you explain things very concretely to people and when you use the narrative of we don't have to make up instances of a what if Trump becomes president again because we know what he did the first time around. And so I think that what's important is just telling the American people, here are the stakes.

You've lost abortion, but here is what else is up for granted. grabs if they have their way. And, you know, and I wonder, particularly around, you know, education, what you think about that as also a unifying issue from education as well as climate change that this administration should be speaking about and Democrats should be speaking about because it is things that the average person can see and feel. They can see what is happening in their schools and they can see what is happening outside their window. Daniel, it's crystal clear. what Republicans are trying to do in the education space with a parent to parents. If you look at the results across the country from state to state, folks are more inclined

towards our solutions than their solutions. Our approach has a good bit more popularity, so much so that when Ron DeSantis is on a debate stage with Governor Newsom last week, he is denying his own approach to book banning, right? It's clear that he can't stand on a stage, eyeball to eyeball. in front of the American people and actually claim the things that he has accomplished in banning books of people like Tony Morrison, Amanda Gorman, and so many others because they know that these measures are not politically popular. They also know that it's not popular to be attacking LGBTQ youths. Something they do to appeal to their radical basis inside of their own primary.

But in the light of day, when you pull back the curtain on the stage, they're not going to be. going to claim that stuff. They're going to try to run away from it as much as possible. Even someone like Nikki Haley, who is being offered up as some kind of a Trump alternative to us, we know that she's been on Republican stages claiming that she would pass a six-week abortion ban. So these are all people who are on the fringe who are not in the mainstream of American political thought, American culture. They're not walking down Main Street in our communities and proudly burnishing the things that they are saying in the quiet, in the dark inside of their own extreme primary.

But while you and I can say that, we also know, as you just noted, Danielle, that there is an issue here where we're not communicating forcefully as progressives, the things that we accomplish and the things that we aspire to. There has to be a conversation going into 2024 about what it means to grow the economy by growing the middle class,

talking about the work that's been done to secure and protect a downward trend in medications for seniors who are fixed incomes who are making brutal choices every single day. We have to be clear about what it means to safeguard democracy at home and abroad. There are steps that states like Michigan have taken to protect and expand access to the ballot that are profoundly popular. You can serve as a roadmap for other states in this country. There is a problem in the Supreme Court.

The president of the United States needs to be able to stand up on a debate stage against Donald Trump and talk about things like term limits. Supreme Court justices in a system that's run away from us where you've got the courts trying to crawl back executive authority from agencies. And we have to be honest and direct about the challenge to safeguard and create safer and just communities with progressive policies to fight gun violence, to root out hate in our communities, and to drive down the scourge of crime. We have to be able talk about these things from our progressive perspective, an inclusive perspective, when that expand access and rights and is pointing towards the north store of the future as opposed to

the mid-20th century that Republicans want to drag us back to. And if you listen to Donald Trump the last two days, drag us back to like 1930s national socialism with his fascism, his attack on political opponents and the way that he himself has said he's going to weaponize agencies like the Department of Justice. Not my words, not your words, but Donald Trump's own words. People need to listen to him and need to believe him and vote like the democracy depends on it. A hundred percent. Patrick, I cannot thank you enough for the work that you were doing with, you know, leading the Senate for American Progress and the work that you were doing to, frankly, try and hold on to our democracy. It is indeed a project and it is not perfect, but it doesn't mean that we abandon it, believing that we have another bite at the apple if Donald Trump were. to become president again in 2024.

So I hope that you will join us again. Danielle, any time you ask, and thank you so much for the power of your voice and your persistence on this issue of democracy, really, really grateful for you. Appreciate you. Martin Pengeli is a Washington Breaking News correspondent for the Guardian U.S.

and the author of a brand new book, his first, called Brotherhood, when West Point Rugby went to war. He joins me now to tell us about it. Martin, thanks so much for being. here. Thank you very much for having me all. On time fan. Thank you. Appreciate that. So let's go back to March 28, 2002. You're on a British rugby team, a club team, and you play a match against West Point in a British military town called Aldershot, which you win. And later that night, you write in your diary, as we drove away, I couldn't help

wondering how many of our opponents might yet die for their country somewhere out in the Middle East in the impending future. And this is sort of the genesis of the book, even if you didn't know it at the time, right? Yeah, it is. That was the question in my mind. The game was a year before the invasion of Iraq, but it sometimes feels a bit strange to think back and realize that we all knew in Marchau, too, that the Iraq invasion was going to happen. And of course, Afghanistan was happening at the same time, too. So that was a genuine young man's thought in his diary, which I kept religiously for some time. It would not have become a book, I don't think, unless I hadn't seven years after that met my wife, who was American, three years after that, moved over to New York. And a few years after

of that, gone up to West Point with the aim of finding out what had happened to these players. So it was a game and a team that lodged in my mind. It required a few more life events for it to become a book. Yeah, it basically required you recognizing that America is in all ways superior to England, is the sense I got from the book. Am I correct in having that sense? I've got myself into gigantic trouble on the internet before, but I basically agreeing with you know, I'm a Brit. My wife is America and my three girls. are American. I've lived here a long time. I'm still green card. I'm not a citizen yet, but that's going to change. I'm also a history grad, an overly literally minded guy with a big historical crush on Abraham

Lincoln. So, yes, basically. Well, you've picked a great time to become a U.S. citizen. We're doing fantastic here. Yeah, it's going well. Yeah, the experiment is a success. Okay, so obviously rugby isn't American football in terms of popularity. There's no national coverage of an Army-Navy rugby game, really. But the people who play it at West Point take it very seriously in the sense that it's really important to them, right? Yes, it is. Part of the book deals with and me trying to understand and me trying to express what rugby is at West Point. And what rugby is at West Point has changed. It's now a varsity sport. It's taken very seriously to recruit for it because rugby in America has changed. But 20 years ago, when I met them, it was a club sport. It was outside the mainstream of West Point Athletics and college athletics, where it remains in many, many American colleges. So it was a game for outsiders, people cut from football, people cut from wrestling, people who gave up the cross or so.

Most people founded by that roundabout route, they had an inspirational coach, a guy called Mike Mahana, retired colonel. And he has told me, since the book came out, and it's a very important distinction to make, that rugby was being used at the time by him and by his fellow officers who helped him to form army officers, particularly after 9-11, with the fairly gung-ho nature of some of the team, quite a few infantry officers. so they used rugby as preparation for comeback. Mike has pointed out to me that in those days, the team used it that way. It wasn't West Point the Academy itself using it. Rugby was very much outside the mainstream in a place, as I've said in the book, for nonconformists and a few iconoplasts, people like that. Nowadays, it's into the mainstream, it's varsity, and the Academy is using it in the same way.

That's interesting, yeah, because something that I thought was really cool in the book was, I'll just quote from what you write, simply by not being the Great God football, it fostered an outsider's bond. It was tribal, irreverent, and fun. those for whom the hardest part of West Point was the adjustment to military discipline. Some will always have difficulty keeping a straight face, and it wasn't a coincidence that some found a home under Mike Mahan, the rugby coach, who once chafed at officialdom himself. That really did sum up a lot of these guys, it felt like to me.

Yeah, it does. They're a fascinating bunch, as any team would be, and it's duty bound correctly to say nowadays at West Point, the women's rugby team would be, and other colleges. there are a bunch of people with different strengths, different responses to West Point. They had in there from a few classic, I think I called them, it's one of my favorite words. I love it. It comes from Philip Roth. A few classic American berserkers. Yes.

I love berserker, the American berserk. Fascilated by. A few of those guys who were differing abilities academically, but very interested in the beer, very interested in the party, very interested in rugby's sitting outside the mainstream, as well as the thrills of the game. But it also had the two guys I find particularly fascinating. Morgan Green, who played Fly Half, which is basically the quarterback at the team, he was iconoclastic, didn't like the discipline of West Point, didn't like all the sort of stagey things they put cadets through to keep them channeled. But he was also academically brilliant.

He finished fourth in the class of a thousand, and he ended up spending 10 years in special forces doing some remarkable stuff. On the other side of the ledger there was to him, Zach Miller, who was a guy so clever he won a Truman scholarship, and then passed it with a Rhodes Scholarship. And for him, rugby was absolutely everything to him, despite the fact he was heading for the son of Uplands of academia and the Army. So it's a real bunch of people who found something in rugby,

the common bond of rugby despite being different people. It's funny, those are two of the guys, because, you know, there are so many portraits in the book of different players, and I had to pick just a handful of them, and those are two of the guys I've picked. But before we get to them specifically, let's talk about this class of 2002. As you point out, they were the bicentennial,

class of the academy, which already made them kind of special. And then, of course, they are there on September 11th, 2001. And after that, they all know that they're going to war when they graduate. And you talk about what Matt Blind, who was the captain of the rugby team, did on that day, on September 11th. Yeah, Matt was in all the accounts and banking or something. A class that officers have to take because they're eventually going to have to do with their men's pay and so on. of the worst possible class for most of them. He said he hadn't prepared for, which was something I seized on as a detail, because, you know, that reminds you that these were then 20-year-old kids,

21-year-old kids. Right. All right, they're at West Point. They're all super fit. They're athletes. They're a bunch of them are high achievers. But they're struggling with class work, haven't done the work, hate the class, that kind of thing. So Matt was groggily in second hour.

It was the start of second hour, the second period of the day doing that. Other people were in other classes. Some had walked back to their room for some free time to do some work. some of them were still recovering from a heroic drink-up at Ohio State the previous Saturday, the first game of the season, followed by a party. When 9-11 happened. The book describes how, ironically, given who they were and where they were, they experienced 9-11 like most people around the world.

They saw it on TV, and they sat and watched it on TV with lessons. But there's a line in the book from Clint Learnick, one of the berserkers I mentioned earlier, one of the real rugby ultras, the only guy who played rugby at high school, in fact, in Colorado. He told me that his final class or his second hour before 9-11 was counterterrorism. And the instructor at the end of it said to the class, look, it's only a matter of time before someone hits America. Maybe that was the first class. And they walked out. That's all what happened on TV.

Saw no one of the 9-11 happen. So it was, I think, originally the title for that chapter was out of a clear blue sky, which is an obvious chapter for a 9-11 chapter. But it was in all possible ways. That was what happened to them. Their lives changed in an instant. But blind himself, he organized the rugby team or volunteered the rugby team to go down to the World Trade Center site, right? Yes, he did. And was told, no.

West Point was placed on lockdown. Chris Starling, one of the coaches, is actually a Marine who was guesting at the time at West Point on exchange, told me that a small team from the base hospital went down, but otherwise the place was shut down. It probably gets forgotten, and there's no reason why it would be remembered, but West Point was considered a possible target at the time, because you could take out a lot of officers, a lot of future officers, if you were to hit West Point. So it went into lockdown, and there's a scene in the book of 9-11, the night of 9-11 itself, where the cadets gathered together with Mike Mahan, their coach, and decided to train as usual that Tuesday night, go through their drills and tackling and practice and so, but did so silently. And with more

focus, Pete Chacon says, more focus than ever had before. It's one of those parallels across the world, how this book came to be written. It was a training night for me as well. And I went down to my club in London, Rossell & Park, and we didn't train. We all just sat around at the bar watching TV. Yeah. Again, we're just stunned. Yeah, absolutely. So obviously, a large part of the book is the post-graduation stories of these guys, the guys that once again you played against back in 2002. Unfortunately, we don't have time to go into all of them. So I did pick a few. You mentioned Mo Green earlier, and there's a line in the book that stuck with you wrote, if there was one rugby player from that class who sums up the outsider insider

model, it's Mo Green. What made him the model? He's a remarkable guy. When I first did the story, I wrote a story for The Guardian eight years ago before a Rugby World Cup, which told the story of the book in outline 5,000 words as opposed to 110,000, so two different bits of work. Then, Mo didn't cooperate. I mean, that sounds more abstractless.

He didn't talk. Right. He was still in special forces, and he decided not to. I picked that up then. Eventually, I was like, here's this Moe Green guy, and people were sort of whispering, and eventually I was told he was out in the Middle East.

Then he's retired. He was retiring as I wrote the book. I'd met him at a reunion. that was staged for the book. The process of any book, but particularly the process of a book about rugby playing soldiers, is to gain trust. And one way to do that is by meeting people face to face and drinking with them, which I did. I was going to say, yeah. You know, it's all journalistic. Sure. That's what I tell my wife. I said to Moe in great depth in the end. And he pointed me to what he did in special forces to start with. He was involved in the search for

Zarqawi in Iraq, which was some fairly serious stuff. That made me realize and think a lot and talk to Mo and talk to his friends about the kind of thing that drove Mo and the kind of almost no surprise he should have ended up in special forces because he just didn't like the West Point order and regimented nature of it. He chafed against that. But as I said, was brilliant, to finish fourth in his class and incredibly athletically able as well. Yeah, it's interesting because I spent three years in the Army and I remember being at airborne school at Fort Benning and it's a mixed class and you have people from other branches. you have people who are going to go on to be Navy SEALs, etc.

And the one thing I noticed there was that all the guys who were doing special forces, they were like the coolest guys in the world. You know, you weren't allowed to wear a watch at airborne school. They all wore watches. They didn't give a shit. The Rangers, on the other hand, were, to put it bluntly, the biggest assholes in the place. That just kind of struck me when you mentioned a person like that going to special forces. I was like, yeah, that tracks.

Yeah, it does. track. It's just fascinating to work your way through the personalities. And I've mentioned in a lot of interviews about the book. At one point, I quote a guy called Clinton Ramisha, who won the Medal of Honor for his part in a battle in Afghanistan, the Battle of Cop Keating, which eventually became the basis for the movie The Outpost, which came out a couple of years ago. And he just wrote in his very good book, Red Platoon, about that Ramesha wrote a definition of a platoon and pointing out that thanks to Band of Brothers, which obviously weighs heavy over my book, the team, Thanks to other things. Thanks to Shakespeare, thanks to other representations. People think

that platoons, and in this case read rugby team about the same size, are our bands of brothers and they all get on. Of course, they're not. They don't get on. There are people who don't fit in. There are people who go their own way. There are all sorts of different personalities that weigh on that kind of thing. The trick is to make it work regardless. Moe, therefore, stood out, among 15 unique personalities, other tip, never write a book with 15 main characters. He stood out as just as, he's, you can't say he's a round peg in a square hole or a square peg in a round hole, whatever that expression is. He couldn't say that because he fitted in well. But he's just, he's his own guy in every way.

Yeah, absolutely. This is a rough story. But talk about Zach Miller, who, as he said, was a road scholar. He gives up his summer to go to ranger school and pre-ranger school before he's supposed to go to Oxford. This was a tough story to read, but tell us about it. Oh, tough, tough to write. Zach was from Western Pennsylvania. I went there for the book. Out in the fields, cornfields, soy everywhere. small towns, Sandy Lake and Stonbury, he grew up between the two. He was basically bordering on genius. He was a very

clever kid. His parents talk about when they realized how clever he was when he was a tomb. Growing up that way. He was a golden child in various ways and he became, decided he wanted to go to West Point and became a member of what was known as the Golden Children, the 2002 class, because they were the bicentennial class and they were treated with

other classes thought they were treated with kid gloves. So Zach was a standout member of that. There is archive footage still available of him being interviewed by Anderson Cooper around the bicentennial at West Point. Randomly, and in a way that I think is glorious about rugby, and many people think isn't because rugby is what it is, as a barbaric sport.

Zach fell for it really hard. It says in the book that a rugby playing senior told him in his first week there, in least week, you're going to play rugby, you're the right size. And he never heard of rugby in his life before, but he said, okay, and fell for it hard. I recently met that older student, Zach Morford, in Texas. He just walked up to me at an event and said it was him, which is the way things happen in books.

You know, having met Zach Morford. now, I think I'd probably do what I was told by him as well. But Zach just fell to the game. He was, the book points out, he wasn't the best rugby player of all. He wasn't most of the time a first choice 18 player. He was a back row forward where there's lots of competition for back row forwards in army teams. To play back row, you have to be supremely fit, fast and hard, and they all are. He played Captain of the B team, B-side, captain down there, helping Mike Mahan run the younger cadets.

He's absolutely committed to it. It was remarked upon in his various scholarship applications, which I quoted from. Someone at one point calls him a scholar in the manner of René Descartes who would turn up at my classes with spectacular bruises and cuts from Rutley. He was a very, very able guy indeed. He won the Rhodes Scholarship. He finished high in the class and I had to work out. He went to Ranger School early with three other scholars in the summer of 2002 straight after graduation. He was supposed to go later at the year, supposed to cycle through. But they all wanted to get Ranger School, get the Ranger tab done before going off to the

UK to Edinburgh to Oxford, and universities, places like that. So that when they came back, after their year or two years abroad, they would be able to go into the infantry as quickly as possible. Because in the way of young officers, there were wars on, there was another war coming. Everyone knew about Iraq, and they basically

wanted to take part. They wanted to leave men in combat. That's what they were wronged to do. Right. So there was nothing unusual. I thought, was there something unusual about them attending major school earlier? No, there wasn't. It's an established practice. A couple of guys, who I met, including Craig Malady, who ended up with the Obama administration. He wrote, Craig wrote a book.

largely about doing the same thing as a Rhodes Scholar in 2000. So they went to Ranger School. There were mixups over paperwork. There were mixups over the physical fitness test you have to do to qualify for Ranger School. That's not something I was able to completely solve, apart from when you mentioned earlier that Army Rangers are basically just bastards that came out in the, in the cadre who trained them.

Zach failed press ups or sit-ups or something twice and couldn't get into Ranger School that way. I did a lot of journalism to establish that you can be. as fit as you can possibly be and be capable of doing 200 threat-ups so they can fail you if they want to. Yes. It doesn't mean he was unfit to do it. So he went to Pre-Ranger with another guy, and Pre-Ranger is a two-week course,

which is getting you ready for Rangers school, so it's mostly enlisted men, but these young lieutenants there. And then right at the end of Pre-Ranger, just as Zach was about to complete it and move on to Try Ranger School again, on an extremely hot day in July 2002, down in Georgia, a number of small things went wrong.

It's all detailed in the reports, from delayed food to a debate over medicine, treatments he was given for poison ivy. He finally ended up on the land navigation course out in category five heat and didn't come back and then wasn't found, as other people who suffered in casualties were found, he wasn't found, until later in the evening

when he was found, and he was found to have died. So it was a remarkable, awful tragedy that happened, that someone as brilliant as Zach Miller with so much before him died at Ranger School. It's as simple as that. Yeah, it was a heartbreaking story to read. And, you know, I was amazed that in the book, you talked to a former West Point Superintendent, Lieutenant General Daniel Christman, and he is unbelievably angry about Miller's death and says things that you would not expect a former West Point superintendent to say about the Ranger School and

the mishaps that happened there that contributed to his death. And I hate that I'm out of time and that I had to end on that unbelievably sad story. But the book, I really enjoyed it. I've been getting into, I was telling Martin before the interview, I've started watching rugby recently. It's a fascinating sport and a lot of fun. And I learned a lot about rugby from this book. But there's also just unbelievable stories about these guys post West Point.

And I couldn't recommend the book more highly. It is Brotherhood when West Point Rugby went to war. Martin Pengeli. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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