The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Budget ‘Heist’ Is Robin Hood for Billionaires

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

On this episode of The New Abnormal, Republican math isn’t math-ing for hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy after the GOP-led House passed a budget framework to fund tax cuts for billionaires that would add $5.7 trillion to the government deficit. “That doesn't seem like a recipe for balancing a budget to me,” says Levy. Plus! New York Times chief TV critic James Poniewozik dissects Kristi Noem’s Homeland Security social media dramedy, and Vanderbilt University professor Dr. Jonathan Metzel on higher education’s crash course on authoritarianism. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. 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 an excellent show we have today.

James Panozik, Chief TV critic for The New York Times is here to talk about his recent article, the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Publicity, and how Christy Nome's viral prison video reflects the administration's obsession with cinematic displays of dominance. Then we'll talk to Vanderbilt University professor Dr. Jonathan Metzell, the author of Dying of Whiteness, who will tell us about the Trump's administration. an assault on higher education and why white people may finally be waking up to the kind of authoritarianism that black Americans have warned about for decades. But first, let's have some fun. So, I don't know. You know, it is. All listeners. Every day, I am in a bit of a pickle, because

I can't believe that we are not at 100 days of this administration yet. As we're recording this, I think we are at day 79, and the damage that has been done is just extraordinary. But, you know, it's like the house continually says, hold my beer. And they have just passed one of the most draconian budgets ever. Like, Andy, I'm just going to say, I don't know. I'm really wondering what America is going to look like after this is all said and done. And when you take a look at this budget and what it X's out and how it is going to harm Americans, it is really difficult for me to understand how 77 million Americans said, yes, please give me as much pain as possible. Yeah. And look, I'll give the Democrats some credit here, not a single one of them voted for this, which is nice to see.

I wish they would apply that more broadly to the bills that are being brought before them. but at least they did it here. And I thought it was interesting that two Republicans joined the Democrats in voting against it, Thomas Massey and Victoria Sparts. But of course, they voted against it because they don't think it's draconian enough. And there was a big push to get the most conservative members of the House to vote for this budget because they didn't want to. And they all came around as Republicans all do in the end and helped to pass this. It's not good. And it's just the cuts that they are going to be making to the most important services in this country. Look, I'll just quote AOC.

She called it a, quote, heist in public. She said this is a heist on Medicaid, a heist on Medicare recipients, a heist on public health care in order to continue to finance Elon Musk's defense contracts. I can't put it any better. This is a budget that will take money from the people who can't afford to get. give money and give money to the people who don't need it because they already got way more than enough. But this is what happens in an oligarchy. And that's why we are where we are right now. It's so disgusting that the Republicans are scouring to find cuts to pay for the richest man on earth to have more money. And again, I say, people voted for this. This is. This is a lot.

This isn't like it wasn't a bait and switch here. It was expressed very clearly what would happen to our social safety nets, what our tax dollars would go towards. And people said yes to this. I struggle because everyone always wants to look for every other fucking reason than the reality, which is racism and misogyny. Everybody wants to try and find all of the other reasons as to how, oh, the prices of eggs. oh, it was the price of this. Oh, it was the price of it. No, it's not. None of it is. It all goes back to racism and misogyny at the root of the reason why you couldn't vote for Kamala Harris, why you couldn't vote for your kids to have an education and a future, why you couldn't vote

to continue to have the ability to fucking retire. I don't understand how people continue to vote for the Republican Party. Unless you are in the 1%, you get absolutely. absolutely fucking nothing here. But Danielle, I think what you're overlooking is that a lot of people are very concerned with the deficit, with the amount of debt that the federal government has. And this budget, oh, no, wait, I'm now being told that this budget will add $5.7 trillion to the federal government's debt. Again, yes, all these so-called conservatives who every time there's a Democratic president

in office whine about the deficit and about the debt and say things like you couldn't run your household this way. They remarkably lose their fiscal conservatism when a Republican is in office. And that's exactly what's going on here. It calls for spending cuts. So here's a deal. $4 billion in spending cuts. And this, I guess, sounds like a lot of money, $4 billion. But then it also cuts taxes by $5 trillion. So, yeah, if you're cutting $4 billion from the budget, but also cutting the money that will come in by $5 trillion, that doesn't seem like a recipe for balancing a budget to me. I would like that to apply to me personally. I will cut my spending by $1,000.

and then I would like $20,000 deposited in my bank account for doing that. That's great. That's great for me. It's not great for the federal government. And it's not great for paying for things that need to be paid for. And of course, it ain't cutting the budget for immigration. And we know what that means. It means more ICE agents kidnapping people off the street and pulling them out of their cars. Where it cuts is, as the AOC said, And as you said, it cuts the social safety net. It cuts the money people need simply to survive, not even to thrive, but just to survive. And it takes that money and it gives it, in essence, to the people who have millions and tens of millions and hundreds of millions and billions of dollars already. And this is how they fight for you, I guess, because that's what we keep hearing. We always hear about Trump, you know, oh, I like him because he fights for me. He cares about me. He understands me. Really? Then you must be a damn billionaire because that's the only people he cares about. Those are the straight facts. And I would love to tell everybody that, oh, wait, but there are things that got better this week in the House of Representatives.

And unfortunately, I would be lying to you just as the Save Act is lying about saving America anything. So, oh, God, let me say this. The SAVE Act, and it is called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, Save Act, which would, and I want folks to understand this, require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. What does that mean? It means that it would require a person to obtain proof of citizenship either through your birth certificate or a passport and do so in person at your voting location in order to qualify

to register to vote. Now, why is this a problem? Well, because 140 million Americans, which I am startled by this number, nearly half of the American population does not have a passport. Do you know who has changed their names from what appears on their birth certificate, about 80% of married women who take on the last names of their partners, their husbands. So if you're bringing proof of your citizenship vis-a-vis your birth certificate, but you were born Sarah Smith, and now you're Sarah Smithfield, guess what? Those two things don't align. And guess who is going to be unable to vote? That is about 69 million American women, not to mention those that are trans and non-binary and may have also changed their names. This is nothing more than the biggest, most offensive and brazen voter suppression bill we have ever

seen, I think, since pre-voting Rights Act of 1964. That is, I don't think, an exaggeration. And, you know, you mentioned the people who don't have a passport. According to a survey from the Brennan Center for Justice, about 21.3 million U.S. citizens, that's more than 9% of voters, don't have a passport or a birth certificate, handy. And you pointed out, again, completely correctly, that the idea that if you have changed your name since birth, this is going to make it tough and that that obviously disproportionately affects women because of our patriarchy, it is not a coincidence that the people who will be hardest

hit by this are women, our minorities, are people who can't afford to spend a day going in person somewhere to get these documents in order, whether it's elderly people, whether it's, you know, people who just financially can't take the time off or, you know, can't leave their kids or whatever. It is, in other words, the people who tend to vote for Democrats. And that's exactly the aim of this bill is to suppress the votes of the people who tend to vote Democratic. And it's just, it's so blatantly obvious. And yet, for Democrats, Danielle, Four Democrats joined Republicans to pass this bill in the House. Henry Quayar in Texas, Jared Golden in Maine, Marie Glusencamp Perez in Washington, and Ed

Case in Hawaii. And I got two words for these people, primary bitches. I laugh because one, I think that you believe we're going to have midterm elections. And two, because primary, because primary bitches, I actually. want on a t-shirt. I believe there will be Democratic primaries in 2026. Okay. Okay. I don't know if there'll be a general election. Okay. Speaking of primary bitches. Yeah. A prime example of, again, Andy and I are not economists. I'm pretty sure in my high school yearbook, my math teacher wrote, like, do better. as her sign off to me for graduation.

What I do know, though, and I don't think that I needed to have attended many math classes or, like, become a scholar, is what insider trading looks like, particularly when you post it on your broke-ass social media platform. So, funny enough, Donald Trump, as we all know, has been tanking the markets. And if you watch any of the business shows, they've been telling people buy in the dip, buy in the dip, which apparently we're all supposed to have an excess of thousands of dollars where we can buy in the dip. These are the same people who voted against student loan debt relief, which maybe young people would have been able to buy in the dip because they wouldn't have had been saddled with six figures worth of debt just to get an education to get a job that, again, doesn't allow them to buy in the dip. It allows them to barely make it. Nonetheless, Donald Trump has been playing a game of chicken with the world, and yesterday, he blinked. And what's really funny is that before, right before, Donald Trump announces that he is going to suspend these egregious tariffs that he's put on about 180 countries, he's going to suspend about 75% of them while increasing China's tariffs to 125,000.

percent from 104 percent, a funny thing happened in the markets. Before the announcements, the NASDAQ skyrocketed. Before the announcement, there was all of a sudden this major turnaround that was happening. And for those that may have had some inkling, or let's say a fucking tip-off, that Donald Trump was going to be backing off the tariffs and now would be a really great time to get in, did really well. And so now, Senator Adam Schiff is calling for an investigation because what we saw yesterday was just, again, another bold, brazen fucking grift in broad daylight because Donald Trump has been doing nothing more than manipulating the markets in order to get even richer.

It's unreal. It's absolutely unreal. people have been suggesting that this entire thing has been market manipulation since Trump first started this little stupid game of announcing tariffs and then quote unquote suspending them or pausing them. So this is just the latest, but it's also the most blatant. It's the most blatant to the point where Trump even posted on his truth social a couple of hours before he made his announcement. He said, this is a great time to buy.

And the other thing is, you know, Congress, we got to do something about this. There is a chart going around showing the spike of the NASDAQ spike that you talked about. And to quote AOC again, which, you know, maybe we should just change the name of this podcast to AOC's thoughts. But she is out there, like she's out there saying the things that need to be said. And what she said was, she said, any member of Congress who purchased stocks in the last 48 hours should probably disclose that now. I've been hearing some interesting chatter on the floor. Disclosure deadline is May 15th. We're about to learn a few things. It's time to ban insider trading in Congress. And it's that last line that

it is absolutely wild that members of Congress can, without any barriers, can buy stocks that have to do with companies and industries over which they have some oversight, or at least that they have the power to pass laws affecting these companies. And this is a bipartisan problem. This is not a Republican problem. There have been attempts to ban the trading of stock for Congress people, and they have been shot down on a bipartisan basis. Nancy Pelosi cannot stand this idea that she would not be able to buy and sell stocks. It is such an obvious means of cheating, of fraud, whatever you want to call it. And the idea that this is not like, the first thing that Congress should say to itself, hey, we need to cut this out. This looks really

bad. But again, they don't really care if it looks really bad because they're getting rich. So AOC is correct. All the other people who have been saying for a long time now that this shit needs to stop are correct. But on a bipartisan basis, there have never been the votes to ban this. Yeah, because why ban something that puts more money in your pockets? Like, why ban something that, like, you're able to benefit off of? They're never going to. going to do it. And it's disgusting because we're asking the people. It's like asking the police after you kill somebody, oh, we're going to wait around for your report on the bad thing that you did. Like we're waiting for people to police themselves here. And they're not going to fucking do it.

And just to close, I want to point out that Adam Schiff, Senator from California, has demanded a probe on this. But what his probe is demanding, and he's written a letter co-signed by Arizona of Senator Ruben Gallego and sent it to the Office of Government Ethics and to Trump's chief of staff. And he's demanding an inquiry into whether Trump or the Trump family or administration members engaged in insider trading, which is great. It just doesn't go far enough because for some reason, Adam Schiff doesn't seem to care about his fellow senators and members of the House. So it needs to go further. It's good that Schiff is doing this, but he needs to look in his own house as well.

100%. Some days the show is a prison drama, some days it's a police procedural, some days it's a Western. This is how chief TV critic for the New York Times, James Panoisik, describes the media campaign being waged by Homeland Security Secretary Christine Nome under the headline, the Trump administration's

Department of Homeland Publicity. He joins me now. James, thanks so much for coming on. Nice for having me. So let's start with the video that made the biggest splash, which was last week's cosplay as, and I don't know, a prison guard or less charitably a gulag official in El Salvador. Break down the elements of the video, starting with Nome herself. You have Christy Nome, who is posing in this El Salvador in prison to which the Trump administration

has deported, extradited, shipped, I don't know the legal term, a number of prisoners, you know, without the usual procedures of due process. I think what, you know, one of the things that got so much attention for this off the bat was that it's just such a striking image. It is Christy Noam in sort of influencers casual active wear. Yeah. Posing in front of this multi-level array of. of prisoners staring dead at the camera from behind bars, talking about how the Trump administration

is protecting you from quote-unquote terrorists. You know, I use the term advisedly because we have been learning that there have been people deported in error, and we know very little about what's going on with a lot of this. But selling this notion, basically, that if you mess with the United States, this is where you're going to end up. It's a striking contrast. They're behind the bars. She's in front of it. One thing that obviously got a great amount of notice from this is that while doing all this, she is kind of casually flexing a $50,000 Rolex watch on her wrist. It is just this glaring contrast of first world hegemity and power in a third world prison. Yeah, for sure. And as you said,

The prisoners are in the background, and it really annoys me to use filmic and cinematic terms, but I was really struck by the shot composition of this scene. I think you're right to be. This is an administration headed by a TV star, a lifelong media figure that is very conscious of imagery and appearance on a screen. These prisoners are basically wallpaper of threat and menace and subjugation. I use this term advisedly because, you know, there is sort of a risk of kind of repeating this constant messaging, but they're like these indistinguishable threats behind bars. And she is the only thing standing between you and being overrun by the horde. I mean, you talk about the shot composition of it and there is the prisoners being used sort of as props here and her positioning in front of them.

And also, how many times in a show like the Walking Dead, say, have you seen this image of a rampaging horde kept behind a fence? That is the danger against which we need to be protected. It is very worth noticing. It is very conscious. Yeah. And look, none of this is accidental, is it? It's done on purpose. It's carefully choreographed to send a message.

As we know, you under no circumstances have to hand it to them. but you kind of do in a Laney Reefenstahl sort of way. Absolutely. There are multiple messages being sent here. One is this sense of menace. And also there is, I think particularly in the second Trump administration, there has been this kind of constant messaging of dominance, especially in the videos. And there have been a lot of them they've been producing around, you know, the immigration

crap down, the ice ride-alongs and all that. sense of almost imperial resistance is futile. We are everywhere and we will get you anywhere and you can't run and you can't hide. So who is this video aimed at? Because if you just, if you watch it, if you listen to it, she gives a message. She says if you come to our country illegally, this is one of the consequences you could face. And on the surface, that would make you think, oh, this video is aimed at the people who would consider doing that. And I think that's what they want you to think it's aimed at, but it's not really, is it? It's a message that you are delivering to an audience that wants to hear you delivering that message to that audience. It's a message

aimed at the American public and Trump supporters who want to hear that kind of message being delivered to non-Americans, because you're right. Nominally, the you in that sentence is people who would seek to enter the United States illegally. That's how she says it. But you, You know, she's delivering the message in English. She is delivering it through a government account that is clearly aimed at courting and making political arguments on behalf of the administration to an audience of Americans. And, of course, chief among that audience is, you know, the audience of one in the White House who is very careful and obsessed about having people work under him who are good on TV, who he has maybe seen on TV and then hired. and who look the part. Yeah, an audience of one, by the way, would be a great name for a book.

Somebody should do that. Somebody should write that book. Yes, I agree. That book, yes. To our listeners who don't know, James did write that book. This really is, this video that we've been talking about is sort of the tip of the iceberg for Ice Barbie. She's got a little cottage industry of what you call, and you use the word domination earlier, and I think that's so important.

And you call her videos images of unsparing domination with a telegenic face. One day she's on a horse wearing a cowboy hat. The next day, she's got a flack vest on with an ice ball cap. The next day, it's a Border Patrol windbreaker and ball cap. The next day, she's back in ice gear pointing a rifle at an ice agent's head. But that's another story. The outfits are very important, aren't they? Especially the hats, I feel like.

There's a lot of costuming going on in these videos. One way that I sort of think about it is that it's like a picture of like, you know, if authoritarianism were CBS drama, right? because so much of this is images that we have seen over and over again in primetime entertainments, you know, crime shows and terrorism dramas and westerns that send these messages, you know, that are focused on authority figures and law enforcement and cultivating a sense of a dangerous world from which you need to be protected. And, you know, there is almost a kind of costuming that's going on here where it's,

we're patrolling the wild frontier. So now I'm in a cowboy hat. We are going on a raid. So I'm putting on an ice flack vest. It's a kind of multi-platform primetime franchise that adapts itself to whichever aspect of this administration's efforts they want to highlight at that point. There's an importance to the fact that they draw from these tropes, as you say, and that there are tropes that we are all aware of whether we realize it or not.

And this is really a thing that hits me watching them as a television critic. Because all these shows and genres that they're drawing on here, they have their own messages and they've had those messages for a long time. A lot of the subliminal or overt messages, of a lot of police procedurals, or, you know, certainly terrorism dramas, say, you know, 24, are that we live in a dangerous, scary world and the bad guys don't follow the rules. And sometimes maybe, you know, following due process and dotting all the eyes and crossing the T's is at odds with your liberty and safety. And that is not incompatible with a lot of the political messaging that this administration is trying to make around disappearing people to other countries, for instance. Yeah, she's setting herself up as the cop who doesn't play by the rules and gets the job done. Or, as you said, in 24, we went through that whole little ridiculous thing of whether torture would be okay in a 24 situation.

And that's exactly what she's doing here. She is Jack Bauer. She is, I don't know, Bruce Willis in Pick the Movie. 24 is famous for the sort of specious, ticking time bomb argument of fighting terrorism. And something like that, you know, El Salvadoran prison video is taking these human props who are staged to look as menacing and other as possible and saying, these are the time bomb. You don't let me do what we need.

to and want to do, and they're going to come to your town and explode. Look, obviously, politicians, political campaigns using Hollywood tropes and techniques is nothing new. But this administration really does seem to take it to another level. And as you say, this really does all come back to the fact that this is Donald Trump's administration. And this is how he sort of, it's almost like This is how he views the world. Donald Trump is, and not to be constantly hawking myself here, but, you know, this is a theme of my book. He's a child with television. His life basically overlaps the lifespan of American commercial television.

He grew up with it before he was president and before he was even a reality TV star, he was someone who, you know, as a businessman in the 1980s, his success was understanding that we'd love. live in a mediated culture that is dominated by images on screens and that if you create the appearance of something on a screen, it can become real or it can become as if real. And he applied that to, you know, making himself sort of a celebrity of business and building a brand that he could sell. And he turned that into reality TV stardom. And he turned that into becoming a political force. And, you know, the way that he has run his administration, one of my colleagues, Maggie Haberman. Famously reported that when his first administration was starting, he told his staff, look at every day as if it were an episode of a reality TV show in which we beat our enemies.

And that has been the approach throughout. Be conscious of what the camera wants. Be conscious of how you can use visual image to bypass people's brains and go for their guts. and know the message that you want to send, which, you know, is winning, strength, domination, and find ways to create images of those constantly. And if you want to, I think, do well in his administration and be in his good graces, this is something you need to be good at or need to learn.

And it's not only Christie Nome, you know, although he was the one who was getting a lot of the attention for this, you know, the guy running the Pentagon now, Pete Hegsa, was Fox News host. Likewise, as much as anything has been sort of a prolific video producer and just kind of online shitposter on behalf of the messages that the administration is trying to send around the military and masculinity and so forth. Yeah, look, it's not accidental that there's a lot of shirtless videos and pictures of him floating around. Yes, exactly. If you look at his social feed, there's a lot of, you know, working at.

out in the gym, shots of his tattoos, and him posting with Connor McGregor, you know, the mixed martial arts fighter, because the overt messaging of a lot of what he has done is we are making the military masculine again. And much of his personal visual imaging has been to sort of make himself the embodiment of that. What strikes me about how the Trump administration's use of these Hollywood tropes, these Hollywood techniques, how much it differs from the way that Ronald Reagan used his Hollywood experience. Everything that Trump administration does and that we've been talking about, and as you said, it portrays dominance. It portrays a dangerous world. There's no morning in America aesthetic going on here, is there? This is something as a culture critic who looks at politics.

You know, I really had to consider when Donald Trump was first elected, because I think that a place where a lot of people's minds went was, oh, this is, you know, Hollywood coming to the White House. It's just like Reagan. We've seen that before. Yes and no. Donald Trump is a reality TV star and a media person, a celebrity businessman. In other words, his training is the portrayal of himself, the performance of himself, you know, maybe the most, you know, exaggerated or boisterous or belligerent version of himself, but that's what you do in reality TV. Ronald Reagan was an actor, and he very interestingly talked about how he felt that helped him as a president. Whatever you thought about Ronald Reagan as an actor, he said that being an actor forced him to try to inhabit

the minds of other people and to try to think about things the way other people do. And that naturally makes you develop a language of empathy and uplift. In other words, you know, you're trying to appeal to people and put yourself inside their heads and think about what makes them feel good. In the reality TV mindset, the sort of the, the form of the media that Donald Trump came up in and succeeded in, it's about conflict. And it's about being as much you as possible. And not really thinking that, you know, other people are necessarily people, but they are competitors or they are prizes to be won or whatever. And there is much more of a focus on conflict and threat and fear and, you know, this sort of, you know, darkness of this

kind of message. Yeah. And look, I'm not a huge reality TV guy, but I know enough about it to know that the people who become famous off of reality TV are, in a lot of cases, the assholes. It is an anti-hero genre. You know, I am a reality TV fan. There's a lot of different kinds of reality TV, but certainly in the, you know, sort of competition style reality TV, which the apprentice was in that genre. The most famous quote of reality TV, I'm not here to make friends. Right. Right. Right. That is kind of a subtext of Donald Trump's political career and the Maga political project. This isn't nice, but it works.

Like you would see in a reality TV show or even a dark anti-hero drama like The Shield, you know, the message of those shows is often, yeah, this guy's an asshole, but he's an effective asshole. It is much more of a mindset of this is a bad world, full of bad people, and you want the baddest guy on your side, you know, or you want to be the baddest version of yourself to survive. Yeah, God, this is such a fascinating topic to me. And James, thank you so much for coming on to talk about it. I really appreciate it. Thanks a lot, Andy. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the new abnormal, my friend, Dr. Jonathan Metzell,

who is the author of Dying of Whiteness and What We've Become, and he is also a professor, Director of Medicine, Health and Society at Vanderbilt University. Jonathan, it has been some time. Like you said at the beginning, we spoke in the old world. This may be one of the first conversations that we're having on the new abnormal in the new world. I want to start out by asking you, as a professor, we have seen how higher education academia has been attacked over the last several weeks by this administration. And I just want to get your thoughts like what is the vibe that is happening right now inside of academia, both from your perspective as a professor, but also what you may hear from students. I would say that there's the obvious story, which is the story of

anxiety and uncertainty because across the country, grants are getting cut and funding is being cut, and students are being detained or deported. Just kind of where is this leading and where is this going? And I think that's been pretty well articulated. And I just think that, you know, I'm hoping that we rally together in defensive knowledge and free expression and the role that universities play in society. I think there are kind of everyday things that might not be as a parent that result from that that are part of my daily life as an academic. And what is just the uncertainty that I feel from students about where the country's going or what kind of market they're going to go into or how can they plan their careers? We had a big dinner for our graduating students last week and

they are incredible, just worked so hard to get there and then work so hard to get through. And they were just saying, like, what's the world going to look like? I mean, many students who go through health programs like ours are either going to go to grad school, but grad school programs are closing, or they're going to go into jobs that link to, like a master to public health. You use a government database to get your data, but those databases are being threatened or things like that. And so just the uncertainty of kind of what can we do, with our knowledge to contribute to society, I think is something that students who are just on the precipice

of entering the job market right now are feeling no matter what their ideological position is or their career plans. So I think part of it is about students. And then the other part is there are a lot of faculty who have worked incredibly hard. It's almost unimaginable how hard it is to get a federal grant, for example,

to support research, your chances of just getting to the position where you can submit a grant and then having that expertise and then going through an incredibly competitive process of levels of review and blind reviews and continual, continual assessment. It is just years and years of training. And if you looked on social media or things like that, you would think every single grant was like, I'm studying wokeness or something like that. But I mean, I have colleagues who are studying vaccines. How can vaccines prevent pancreatic cancer?

How can we talk to people about vaccines? What's the role of public health and society? How can we communicate? All these major, really major societal and social issues that are also tied to the economy. And it just feels like the kind of feeling for us like the kind of randomness through which some grants are being just wiped off the map and what that means. So there's uncertainty just about the work people are doing, which promotes health, promotes the economy. And so it's kind of different levels of uncertainty, I would say. And hopefully

there's some stability coming at the end of this. But I guess the last point of that is, I do think colleges and universities need to do a better job going forward of articulating their value to society. Because I think right now, just trying to defend the academic process, just it's not concrete enough for people. So it is a challenge for universities. And there's some hopefulness for that. But I just think in general, it's kind of the randomness right now that makes daily life feel quite difficult. What we've seen over the course of the last several weeks are universities like Columbia, Harvard, and others be targeted by this administration to the extent that they have either drastically changed their policies on campus with regard to the dress of students,

with regard to the Middle Eastern Studies Program and oversight or shutting down programs altogether. And there's been a lot of capitulation from these universities. Have you been surprised by this? I've lived in a world where education is a common good. And there's all this data. I'm reading this great book, Equality now, that talks about how after World War II, for example, America soared to the place it was because we made college increasingly affordable for people, right? That 90% of high school students, if they graduated, had at least the opportunity to go to higher education.

But in Europe, that number was 30% or 40%. So the fact that Americans had a chance to continually be on this process of invention and education and the one generation built on the shoulders of the one before it to have a better life. our children had better lives than their parents because of this. And that's been the narrative of my whole life. And that's been the narrative of many people's lives. Part of the story is about the America that we know, the America that, you know, for better or worse,

and obviously there's lots of worse. But America rose to its place in the world economy and invented the Internet and all these treatments and all these other things, not because we've had factories, but because we had education, which gave us an educated workforce, which served all of these purposes. It's easy to destroy that. It's just nobody's ever wanted to destroy that

because in general people thought this was the common good. And so part of the reason that education became affordable for people is that there's tons of involvement with the federal government. Like it or not, you know, governments give scholarships to students and they support grants and they support infrastructure. There's tons of public-private partnerships. We've never had an arsonist in the theater before. Mm-hmm.

And so part of the story is if you want to destroy that, I mean, just to be honest, the federal government could wipe Columbia off the map. It really could. If it wanted to, it could light a fire to the whole thing because all of a sudden students wouldn't be able to go there. And the accreditation process is linked to the government. And so I guess I'm saying this because if you're not in the university world, this binary of resistance capitulation seems like the story. And I certainly think there needs to be a better resistance. that ties to articulating what we do, mobilizing public support, all these factors. But I can also say that from an administrative perspective, I'm not in an administration, but I know that from an administrator perspective, somebody's got their hand on a grenade, which will explode your entire thing.

And so I hope we can get to a more balanced point where it's not capitulate or die, but that is in part what I think is at least on the specter of possibility for universities. And I'm not trying to not answer your question. just saying that the stakes are incredibly high for universities because you can make an example of a university and literally shut it down if you're the government. And so I don't know what was being threatened. I don't know what was being promised or proposed. But I can say that there needs to be a more

massive mobilization because one university trying to fight back against the federal government that university is going to lose. That to me is where I hear everything that you're saying and I think that for me and a lot of people listening, that the issue is that you cannot fight against this regime on your own as just Columbia University. So it's like what does it look like for all universities, for all higher education places to link arms and to stand for their, not just standing for their students, obviously, which they need in order to like bring in money, but to stand for education and intellect and critical thinking at a time when it's crucial. And what I'm seeing is, again, a lot of siloed thinking, a lot of individualistic and protectionism that is happening from

one institution to the next as opposed to like the collective. And that's just the problem is that this regime is going to be able to make examples of individuals and institutions, law firms, whether it's a law firm or a college and university, whether it's a person, if everyone does not understand that their value and their survival is going to be linked to the fate of others. I could not agree more. I think that there are so many individual issues. It's like every day there are, I mean, there's so many urgent issues right now. Democracy, Gaza, reproductive rights. I mean, just name, pick any headline right now. But I think if we're fighting about individual campuses and individual issues, it's a losing proposition. Whereas what you're saying, which I totally agree with,

is the bigger project of what this does for our country, for our economy, for the idea of a country based in free expression and free speech. I think those larger principles are what universities stand for. And not only that, but, you know, it's funny because I even have family members who they only know, I mean, they all like went to college and grad school and stuff like that, but in their daily lives now,

like what they see is what they see on social media. And it's like every single student is like lighting their understanding. pants on fire or something like that. But if you're actually hanging out in college, like just the stories of the many different, incredible people who got there through every different walk of life and who were the first in their family ever to go to college or were somebody from a small town or worked three jobs, their whole junior high in high school to, you know, take the SAT course. And the students are incredible. I mean, like, honestly, I always tell them, like, I don't think I would get into college right now because, you know, because they're just so, it's, they're so smart.

And the competition is, is, is intense. But that competition is what is incredibly generative. People are competing for grants, for publications, for fellowships. And that competition creates solutions to societal problems. And so I just think that that's what we have to be thinking about is like that bigger story. How do we tell that bigger story? And then, of course, there's all these balances, right? Because the other part of this is that education and knowledge itself is, really under attack, right? If you want to get a grant for health right now pretty soon, you're going to probably need to prove a bogus link between autism and vaccine, for example. If you want to grant in guns, you're going to have to show the therapeutic value of carrying an AR-15 and

things like that. So with the knowledge base itself, now I do think, I mean, I write about this, as you know, I have been critical of, just to be honest, I don't think we've engaged conservative voices enough. I think that the Academy became a bit too insular in certain fields, not in all. I mean, the ones that make social media, that's not true in business or science or other places, but I do think that broadening the specter of the kinds of, I mean, you know from my gun book, right, I'm critical of the left for not understanding what the right felt about guns. So I think that kind of engagement is what universities are built to do, but I think that producing false knowledge is a real risk, because you can make a bogus.

study and fund it and then pump it out on the internet and it gets as much credibility as a peer-reviewed study sometimes. And so I think the universities also need to be the arbiters of truth in a way that we need to articulate and defend. And it's a challenging moment, but I say challenging intentionally, right? We are challenged right now to articulate this. I want to switch gears because one of your other forties is understanding white people, their mindset, the rural parts of this country, and et cetera and like why they make the decisions that they do. Me and others will say, why are you continuing to vote against your best interest? Why are you cutting off your nose to spite your face? And in your book, Dying of Whiteness, you talk about this way of thinking and addressing things.

And so I want to frame it in this way that, you know, on April 5th, there was a massive hands-off protest. The folks that indivisible and 50-51 are trying to get 3.5.5,000, you know, on April 5,000, of the population protesting because they believe that 3.5% is the tipping point where you're able to overturn a dictatorship when that many people are invested. And what we are seeing at these protests is that they are largely white. And it is for a reason because black people, black women in particular, the base of the Democratic Party following the election said, we're done. We're actually not going to be putting our bodies on the line anymore. And particularly as you all, have decided that Donald Trump is your guy. I want to believe, Jonathan, that right now, as white people

for the first time are experiencing a government that is not working for them, that is actually weaponized against them, a government that is taking away their social safety nets, a government that is calling them the enemy from within, that this is a awakening for white people in America. What are your thoughts about what you were seeing in the streets, hearing from folks about white people taking on this moment while black people take rest? Is it the case that black people are taking rest or is that they aren't appearing at those protests? There are a couple of things that are happening. One, not appearing at protests. Two, putting attention towards their economic boycotts and much more insular practices. But I do think that it is very interesting because there are lots of white folks that are going on

TikTok and some of them are saying like, no, I get it. I get why black people aren't showing up. It's our turn to show up. It's our turn to do the work. And I want your thoughts literally on that, on what we're seeing percolating. First, let me say something is percolating, right? There's a lot of concern. There's a lot of anxiety. As you say, people's lives are being touched right now. And we see on social media people saying, like, I didn't vote for this or I don't stand for this or this isn't what America is. I'm going to give you a little bit more complicated answer than I probably should. But I'll just say, like, I obviously don't study or speak for all white people, but I will say that I think there are different categories of whiteness right now that we should be thinking about. So,

first, there are people who go to marches and are protesting vocally. But the question is, what percentage of that? I don't know about 3, 5%. But I can say that, like, we'd love to hear convert stories. in a way, they're very popular on social media also. Like, I voted for Trump and this isn't what I voted for and I regret my vote. Like, if you say that on social media right now, you're going to go viral like crazy because people love to hear that story of it's kind of the F around and find out kind of story about like you, this is what you deserve because you voted for that or something like that. And the question is what percentage is that of the American populace, of the voting white population, especially after all the cuts to voting that we're

about to see, limiting voting access? Is that enough to swing the needs? or is it enough to swing popular opinion? And my point actually is still the same. I think about this a lot, but remember after Kamala Harris gave her acceptance speech at the DNC, and we were talking about this, and I said, like, I thought it was a great speech, but I don't think it convinced anybody who didn't already agree with her. That was my concern at the time was because it was so powerful, and it was, I thought, a soaring, terrific speech, but it also said, we're going to come together and we're going to

support government programs, and we're going to have gun control through all these kind of things and all these kind of things. And so part of the story is if you're a Democrat and you believe in fairness and regulation and the power of community and the power of government, that kind of narrative was really powerful. But Trump is, even today, even after they pump and dump and dump again, apparently now, right now, he's still saying, like, look, I'm making people rich. There's something aspirational. I'm, you know, this is capitalism, and I'm making you rich and things like that. So I guess the story I always ask myself as a researcher is not why do people vote against their own self-interest. I mean, I do have a lot of data about that from my

perspective. It's like, what are their self-interest? And can we speak to those self-address or do we discard them? Trump is still serving a role for people, which is that he's promising them power. He's promising them a certain kind of prosperity. And the question is, are people getable to our side right now who are seeing the cracks in that? And I don't think it's going to be by telling them this is what you deserve. I think this is a moment where we can actually broaden our coalition by paying attention to what people in the middle might be saying and wondering if that links to our ideals. All right. Well, we will have to leave it there today. My friend Jonathan Metzell, always appreciate your insight and analysis. Thank you so much for making time for the new

abnormal. Thank you. Thank you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are you closing out this week in our Hellscape? Well, I am going to talk about a tweet that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement put out Thursday morning, better known as ICE, the tweet said, ICE enforces 400 plus federal laws to ensure public safety and national security, learn more about our mission at ICE.gov. Then there's a graphic, and I want to read this graphic to you. It says, if it crosses the U.S. border illegally, it's our job to stop. it. And then behind that, it says people, meaning if people cross the border illegally, it's their job to stop it. Then it says money. Same thing. Then it says products. Same thing. Then it says ideas. I am unaware of what an illegal idea is. Oh, you're aware.

Well, yes, I guess that's fair. I am aware of what ICE and this current administration thinks an illegal idea is. And that would be things like criticizing President Trump or supporting Palestine. I did not realize, and I'm thankful to ICE for educating me, that it was their job to stop ideas from crossing the border. And I assume, kicked out people which they're already doing, who hold some of these ideas. I saw this and I actually saw it posted on blue sky. And the number of times I have seen people quote it and say, okay, I thought this was fake until I looked it up over on Twitter and saw that, no, this is indeed a real thing. Because this is just, I mean, I don't even know how you cope with this. This is so beyond the pale. the idea that holding an idea is now considered by the American government to be illegal. I'm sort of flabbergasted, like that they actually said this. We know that this is how they've been acting.

But I guess this goes back to what we've been saying for a while, Danielle, that the quiet part is gone. Fuck those guys. This is fascism. This is, there is no way around this other than to say that our thoughts, our ideas are now criminal. They have already started, people have already been detained for their social media posts. We just had an American citizen, Amir MacLead, a civil rights attorney, held in an airport for 90 minutes after coming back from spring break with his family in the Dominican Republic.

He is currently representing a student at Michigan University who, is being charged with a crime for having protested during all of the student protests across the country. He was held for 90 minutes, a U.S. citizen. They asked for his phone. They wanted to go through his contact list. They wanted to go through privileged communications between him and his clients. This is obscene. This is happening. And it's getting worse literally by the day. And I'll just say again, it has not even been a hundred days. And they are telling you that your thoughts are now criminal. Fuck those guys. Danielle, close us out. Who's your fuck that guy? Well, since our fuck that guy is a theme today, we're going to be staying on ice. The hideous director of ice,

Todd Lyons, has said, quote, we need to get better at treating this like a business. This, he means, rounding up human beings. He goes on to say, you know, like Amazon Prime, but with human beings. So I know that I'm not the only one that lives in a neighborhood where there are Amazon trucks on the road all the time. Now there are Amazon like little petty cars that they're like peddling like electric bikes to drop off goods because that's much people are consuming from Amazon. And what this piece of shit has said is that he wants human beings to be treated like Amazon packages and picked off of the street and thrown in the backs of trucks and shipped to detention

centers the way that we do with packages. That is human trafficking. That is a just absolute. abhorrent, disgusting, Nazi-style way of thinking about human beings like goods and packages. And this is who is directing ICE operations. This is who is saying to people, break into their windows and yank them off of the streets and don't forget to wear your masks and throw them in on marked cars. This country is so far gone.

And again, I say it has only been several weeks. Fuck this guy, Todd Lyons. Fuck this administration. And fuck the dehumanization that they have turned into policy. It is wild how quickly we've gone from don't invoke the Nazis as a comparison to it is impossible to not invoke the Nazis as a comparison. I mean, you want to talk about people, a regime that wanted an effective. efficient way to move people to camps? Who else are you supposed to think of other than the Nazis? It's become a daily thing where you see something being done and you're literally sitting there going,

holy shit, this is what the Nazis did. And it sucks because I liked it a lot better when Nazi comparisons were overblown. And you can say, look, this is bad. It's not the Nazis. We're not Nazi Germany. You could say that and be correct. You can't say that and be correct now. You can say we're not there yet because, yeah, we're not there yet. But if you look at everything happening and all the things they want to happen, there's no way to look at that and not think to yourself, this is the road they're going down. This is what they want. And the idea of comparing people to packages, which is, let's be clear, that is what he's doing here. I have no doubt that if they're called on it, they'll spin some bullshit like, no, we're not comparing people to packages. And

We're just saying we need, you know, we need a way. Yeah, exactly. We need a routine that is set, whatever. You are comparing people to packages. That's exactly what you're doing. And another reason that they want to do this as quickly as possible is to avoid the possibility of any of these people who are being, again, kidnapped off the street, pulled out of cars for them to challenge this in court.

Because if they get these people out of the country before anyone even knows about it, Then they can say, as they're doing right now in a legal case, they're saying, hey, we can't get to people from El Salvador back. You've got to talk to the El Salvador and go that's not us. So all of this, it doesn't get any more fascist than this. The only thing missing right now are the actual extermination camps. But everything else is almost like they're doing it consciously is following the Nazi blueprint. So yeah, fuck these guys so hard. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal.

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