The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Campaign Shifts Strategy for Its Part-Time Candidate

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

The Daily Beast’s political reporter Jake Lahut tells The New Abnormal’s co-host Danielle Moodie that some Republicans were hopeful that the former president would still be able to host events like fundraisers while his trial takes place but they have had to go back to the drawing board to work out how he can connect with voters in key battleground states. Plus! Mike Masnick, the founder and editor of Techdirt and CEO of The Copia Institute, talks to The New Abnormal about the newly signed law that could see TikTok banned in the United States. 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.

One excellent show we have today. Mike Maznick, founder and editor of Tector and CEO of the Copia Institute, joins us today to give us all the details on the newly signed law that could see TikTok banned in the United States. Then we'll talk to Daily Beast Politics reporter Jake LaHut about how Donald Trump's criminal trial is hurting his campaign. But first, let's have some fun. So the nine black robes, the unelected body that rules over all of us, is now in the midst of oral arguments, Andy, for, I don't know, one of the most important fucking cases of the century.

And I know you're thinking to yourself, but abortion, but this, but that, but no, nothing can be more dangerous than the presidential immunity case that the Supreme Court had no fucking business taking up, but has decided to because, Donald Trump is their puppet master. And in order to slow down all of his cases, we have to go through and dissect whether or not the framers of the Constitution, you know, got it wrong when they didn't include into the Constitution that the president of the United States can operate as a full fucking fledged mobster and criminal and do so above the law. Because apparently the other 44 people that were president of these United States somehow got it wrong because they were able to do their jobs without, you know, going on a full fucking fledged crime spree for four years. I wish I could form an opinion on it, Andy, but I hate the Supreme Court. As their session comes to a close,

it's like cold sweat drips off of my body as we barrel towards July. I hate them. It's just been a week of grotesquiry from the Supreme Court. And today we had to listen to Justice Alito talking about how prosecuting Donald Trump is a bigger threat to democracy than Donald Trump planning a coup and trying to subvert a free and fair election. And this is what we're reduced to here. We are reduced to listening to Sam Alito somehow inform us that the worst thing in the world, the worst thing for America is the prosecution of Donald Trump. And they shouldn't even be hearing this case. It's absurd that they're hearing it. And the fact of the matter is they are doing this specifically to.

slow walk it so that nothing happens with it before the election coming up. And it's just everything about this. I'm just going to use the word again. It is absolutely grotesque. It is an absolute perversion of everything that America supposedly stands for. And we are having to sit here and listen to people like Sam Alito lecture us on what is and isn't important for America. And I'm really, I'm at the point where I can't think of anyone less qualified to talk about what is and isn't important for America than Sam Alito. I know I've been saying this for a while, because we've been having this debate back and forth, who's worse, Clarence Thomas or Sam Alito, and I've always gone with Alito. And I stand by that. I just, I really think this guy has done

more to damage the fabric of American society than probably any modern Supreme Court justice. I don't want to have to start going back to the 1800s and upholding slavery and stuff like that. I mean, you're not Arizona. So. Right. Exactly. So. Yeah, I'm going to keep this. I'm going to keep this in modern day. But just reading what he and other justices, including Gorsuch, et cetera, have been saying today, if I were a crier, this would make me weep. Yeah, listening to some of the questions that have come out, here's one from Amy COVID Barrett, which is what I like to call her, from Justice Barrett, this is what she said to the attorney for a Jack Smith. Quote, if the president has some kind of immunity, that's in. implicit in Article 2 of the Constitution, then that immunity would protect him from state prosecution as well. And attorney Michael Driban said, of course. So you see the part and parceling that these justices are trying to do. And even that question by Barrett has me questioning her, which I've done

since she was sat on the bench because all she had ever offered up was like a law article that Donald Trump liked. The fact is that even to think about, oh, well, maybe, because what is going to be dangerous here is that they're going to try and find some middle ground. And to me, that's more dangerous than anything else. Because what we know about Donald Trump, what we know about his prior administration, is that when you give them an inch, they take the whole fucking country. Do you know what I'm saying. So this idea that, well, maybe we'll make the president immune from federal crimes, but then he can still be prosecuted for state crimes. How'd I go and work? That don't make no sense. So either you're saying that the president of the United States, once they take office, are

incredibly above the law, which I don't think that people understand how fucking dangerous that is. What they are doing to this country, these nine unelected black robes, it's scarier than any sci-fi that I think I've ever watched. Yeah, I do think there are some people who understand just how scary that is and think that's a good thing, including a bunch of those people in the rows. I think you're right that the general American public is not really thinking about this stuff, which I don't blame them. Who the hell wants to think about this stuff? But it's bad. Like you said, we're watching the way they are crafting their arguments. So you've got Alito grilling the government's lawyer. Again, Michael Treben, here's what he said.

Presidents have to make a lot of tough decisions about enforcing the law, and they have to make decisions about questions that are unsettled. I understand you to say, well, you know, if he makes a mistake, he makes a mistake, he's subject to the criminal laws just like anybody else. You don't think he's in a special, a peculiarly precarious position. So what he's getting at here is he's talking about the idea that if a president makes a mistake and runs afoul of the law, he's going to end up being prosecuted. So two points to that. One, as Drebun fired back, hey, the president has supposedly the best legal advice in the country. He's not going to do anything that we're talking about here by mistake. That's not what lands you in criminal prosecution. So you've got Alito framing this as, oh, we have to protect the presidents for making a mistake.

And then Driban tried to bring up January 6th. And Neil Gorsuch was like, no, we don't want to talk about January 6th specifically. We're making a ruling for the ages here. So what they want to do is pretend this has nothing to do with January 6th and also offer up that, oh, this is about presidents making mistakes because everyone knows what happened on January 6th wasn't a mistake made by Donald Trump. But by framing the arguments that way and then literally telling the lawyers, no, we don't want to talk about January 6th. We're not dealing with the facts of a specific case here. We are talking in a general sense. They're making all the questions loaded, and they're loading them in a way to best protect Donald Trump.

You know, look, I don't know if the conservative justices are going to have the votes here to rule the way they want to. But I know damn well that they're going to have enough votes to slow, continue to slow walk this, and maybe even get some sort of compromise where they remand it back to the lower courts because a lot of what's happening here is turning on the issue of what's an official act as president and what's a private. Act as president. And I could very easily see them. And I shouldn't say I as if I came up and said yet. Of nowhere, I have seen others point this out as well. And it seems to make sense to me. That they could very easily just send this back to the lower courts and say, hey, we need more rulings on what constitutes a private act. And the entire purpose of this, again, will be to slow walk this case so that Donald Trump, if he wins in November, can assume office without any of these

prosecutions hanging over his head. As we're talking through this, you know, this is happening in real time. And one of the things that Justice Barrett has just sketched out is the potential of this going to trial this year. And if the Supreme Court, this is according to CNN, if the Supreme Court sends it back to the trial level, it could be heard by a jury without further appeals court involvement, which would mean no further delays in Donald Trump's case before trial once the Supreme Court would rule. We got, I don't know, 200 and not less than 200 days until the election. So, yeah, I just, I'm not feeling good about that fucking schedule.

So to be continued. 194 days. Y'all, we need to pick another country to do this show in. Yeah. I can't. I can't. So I mentioned earlier in the week, SCOTIS also heard oral arguments in a case involving Idaho's pretty much.

much as close to all total ban on abortion law that exists right now. And the question before the court was whether this law actually violates a federal law that requires patients to be able to receive emergency care. And so the idea here is if the abortion law is so strict in Idaho that it would deny care to women who need it in an emergency, i.e. a matter of life or death, then the law might be unconstitutional. And boy, did we hear some fucked up arguments and some fucked up questions from some fucked up justices? Danielle, I know you have someone in mind here.

So apparently, Justice Alito thinks that he went to medical school instead of law school. And the line of questioning that he had was absurd, right? Because basically what they are setting up is he's saying, well, I don't see why a doctor wouldn't be able to make this decision if it is an emergency. But what really constitutes an emergency? I'm sorry, what? An entire group of medical doctors in this country wrote a letter to the Supreme Court for clarification because apparently the justices who went to law school and not medical school are the ones that are going to decide what is an emergency. So these doctors that wrote into an open letter to the Supreme Court said, how many ceases of blood does a patient have to lose in order for it to be considered an emergency?

How much oxygen should they have had to lose? How close to death do they need to be? Because basically the reason why women are being turned away and people with uterces are being turned away from emergency rooms is because we live in a society that has two sets of facts and laws. So if you have one doctor that says, well, in my operating room, that wouldn't have been considered an emergency. And that's going to be who's going to be the expert for the prosecution. And then you'll have the defense come in and say, well, actually, that would have been an emergency.

The situation that they are setting up is to ensure that childbirth becomes as fucking dangerous as possible in an industrialized country. Before we had modern medicine, it was like a 50-50 toss-up that women would die in childbirth. because we didn't have the advanced technology. We didn't know what it is to do. Now we do, but we have justices like fucking Alito that think that they know better than those that went to school for eight, nine, ten years. And plus to have specialties in OBGYN care.

It is just wild to me that these fucking religious zealots are who get to decide, who gets to live and die. You want to talk about people playing God. Yeah. What the fuck is he doing? And I want to bring up another thing. that he said, Alito kept saying that the federal government, which is obviously arguing against Idaho in this case, that they kept saying, well, you're bringing up hypotheticals that don't exist in terms of, you know,

women dying because of not getting emergency care or whatever. And it was left to Justice Kagan to note, as the New York Times reports, that the hospital with the most advanced emergency room services in Idaho, so far this year has already needed to transfer six women to other states for emergency abortions because they were afraid to do them under this law. So this is not hypothetical. This is happening to women in Idaho literally right now, literally this year. I also want to point out while we're going after Samuel Alito, which I'm always in favor of doing, obviously. Another big thing that he brought up is that the federal law in question here does reference the unborn child. He tries to make that seem as if, therefore, performing an abortion is against this

emergency room, you know, the law that that provides that everyone has to get emergency room service. And Gabriel Mallor, who's a lawyer who I follow on Blue Sky and follow it on Twitter back when I was on there because he does excellent analysis, he pointed out that what Alito was doing here is, in his words, flat out deleting women from EMT, ALA protection. And he shows that in the act itself, the statute itself, it talks about emergency care has to be given any time that the absence of immediate medical attention could reasonably be expected to result in. And among those things are the health of the woman and the safety of the woman. This is in regards to pregnant women. So Alito is just pretending

that the act doesn't mention women, which I find, I guess, unsurprising because that's generally how he writes his laws or comes up with his opinions overall. He just acts like the lives of women don't matter. Yeah, because he spells women with a P, which he actually wants to say property. He doesn't actually care about the health, the well-being, because women to these people, which is what we have to understand, are just incubators. You know, there are those bold enough and disgusting enough on right-wing podcasts and radio that absolutely say that. Where the fuck you think these in-cells come from? They actually hate women. And so the fact is that you want to force women to give birth.

You don't care if they die doing so. The next thing that they're coming for is so now, if I'm living, if I'm a person and I'm in Idaho and like there's a potential that I could get pregnant in Idaho, like I absolutely am going to be on birth control because basically what you've given me is a death sentence. Because you're saying, well, they can just transfer to another state. Hey, do you understand that in the midst, what Alito doesn't understand is that in the midst of medical emergencies, time is something that is not a luxury. If you are losing blood, if you are losing oxygen, you are saying, well, we'll just put her in an ambulance or put her on a helicopter and ship her off to someplace else and all will be good. It is unnecessary and it is fucking cruel what they are doing.

And that's, I mean, to me, that's, that's the context of all of this that goes back to the fact that cruelty is the absolute point. You force women to carry babies that you don't want to take care of. You don't want to take care of the women. You don't want to take care of the children once they are born. And you don't care if they die. So long as you can say, oh, look at this healthy baby. But then after you've done the ooze and oz, you don't give a fuck either because you defund everything that has to do with ensuring that that healthy baby turn into a healthy citizen. I hate these people. I know I said that again. I just want to continue on this point that Danielle just made.

Joshua Turner is the lawyer representing Idaho before the Supreme Court. His big argument is no, under the Idaho law, if a pregnant woman has a medical problem that is likely to result in her death, then yes, an emergency department in a hospital can provide an abortion. First of all, take that with a grain of salt. But Justice Sotomayor then asked him, okay, what about if a woman without getting an abortion would lose an organ or just have serious medical complications? And Turner's reply was, yes, Idaho law does say that abortions in that case aren't allowed. So in other words, it's more important to them to force a woman to literally lose an organ or have serious medical complications. And that is exactly what you're saying, Danielle, and And it's exactly where these arguments are leading. And I know this isn't a segment, but fuck those guys. On Wednesday, President Biden signed into law a bill that would effectively ban TikTok

at America if bite dance, the Chinese company that owns a majority stake in it, doesn't sell it within a year. The law, which was passed by huge majorities in both the House and the Senate, would require both the Apple and Google app stores to remove the app in the U.S. if by dance doesn't divest itself of its ownership stake in the super popular app, which according to stats I found on the internet and therefore must be true, has over one billion active monthly users worldwide and over a hundred million in the US alone. Joining me now to explain what this all means going forward is Mike Maznick,

founder and editor of the Essential TechDirt blog at TechDirt.com and CEO of the Copia Institute. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, sure. Always happy to talk about craziness and the law. Yeah, well, you've written fairly extensively about how stupid you think these congressional efforts to ban TikTok have been. How much is China paying you to do this? Oh, my goodness. Oh, yeah.

Oh, I'm coming after you today, Maznik. Excellent, excellent, just what I signed up for. The whole framing of all of this, I think, is just really problematic. The idea that the U.S. should be banning any kind of app or making any sort of effort. to ban an app that involves speech and media, I think sets a terrible precedent, creates a whole bunch of other problems, and really doesn't get at the underlying concerns that everyone keeps wanting to talk about when they support something like a TikTok ban. So in all seriousness, explain to me the rationales behind this law. Why have lawmakers been saying

we need to do this? Well, there are two that are commonly brought up, and they're sort of used at times interchangeably. And if you argue against one, then they'll jump to the other. The first one is the sort of privacy surveillance aspect, the question of, well, because Bytdance is a Chinese company and under Chinese law, they have to obey the government. So if the government wants to get access on data on all these Americans who have loaded this app onto their phone,

Bight Dance has to give it to them. And that represents a real private. concern. Related to that are questions about how much data is the app actually collecting on people, what kinds of data, and what are the particular privacy implications of it. So that's argument one. Argument two is the idea that because the TikTok algorithm is supposedly so powerful that it is a form of mind control or the phrase I've seen bandied about is digital fentanyl, that it is this all-power powerful algorithm that controls the minds of 100 million Americans, that is dangerous because China is an adversary and they might make use of this algorithm to control our minds and

you know, have us do horrible things or to hate the U.S. government or love China or I don't know what, you know, there's all sorts of things that they might do with it is what the concern is. Well, and we hear quotes along from various members of Congress who support. you know, these efforts to force bite dance to sell. Along the lines of, well, you haven't seen or the American people haven't seen what I've seen in terms of it being a security threat. Make me believe, Mike, that they're being honest about this. Well, I don't know because you have other people who have seen those reports. We have other members of Congress who have come out

and said they've gone to the classified briefings and they haven't seen anything that is any more extreme or problematic than the things that every other app does that, you know, Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and all these other apps in terms of the kind of data that they collect and how they have algorithms that push people in one direction or another. I obviously have not been in those classified meetings, so I don't know, but at least some of the people have come out of them have been skeptical. And having seen sort of similar-ish panics in the past, I would believe that there is a way to present the things that TikTok does, which I believe are likely to be the similar kinds of things that every other app, major app does and make it sound

really, really scary, potentially just by adding like CCP to the description of it. And so, you know, who knows? In theory, you know, there could be something, but it is difficult to see what that might be that if the app is collecting too much data, for example, that's, the kind of thing that Apple or Google would likely catch and not allow it into the App Store. It's difficult to see where the really, really scary parts would be coming from that wouldn't have been stopped elsewhere. I mean, is the idea here, or at least one of the ideas, that the Chinese government could use this fentanylized algorithm to push propaganda on the youth of America and turn them into,

you know, I don't know, communist clone? I mean, that is, that seems to be the implication that some people are saying. And of course, for a variety of reasons that's silly. One, there's no evidence whatsoever that this is a particularly effective tool for propaganda, that it is, you know, melting the minds of people. I pointed to a few studies recently that show that American views towards China itself are at historic lows, that the American population does not trust China. You could argue that that's not what they're using it for.

Maybe they're just using it to soak chaos or whatever. But there's very little evidence that the algorithm is all-powerful mind control. And if you're just talking about in general propaganda, that exists, has always existed. You know, part of American freedom is that we live with the fact that someone somewhere will try to use propaganda for various purposes. And usually we deal with that through education rather than banning media. Yeah, for sure. which I guess leads to my next question, how does any of this requiring bite dance to sell, forcing Apple and Google to remove an app from their stores, how does any of this past First Amendment muster?

And how is this law, which has now been signed by President Biden, different from the 2020 efforts by President Trump that, in fact, were struck down by the courts? Yeah, there are some, like, real deep legal nuances in the differences here. The mechanism here is different than the mechanism that Trump used. And so there are people who believe that it is on more solid First Amendment grounds. I think it's still on very weak First Amendment grounds. You know, the issue with the Trump one was it was struck down. They didn't even get to the First Amendment issue in the Trump one because they said that the Trump administration presented no real evidence of the national security threat posed by TikTok.

And that was where the effort there was explain. about the supposed national security threat of having this app on phones. And because they couldn't present any evidence to support it, that ban got thrown out. You know, and that's where like now they talk about both things, partly the national security privacy threat and partly the propaganda threat. But as soon as you get to the propaganda side, then it hits at very clear First Amendment issues. Again, propaganda for the most part is protected under the First Amendment. And that's true even if it's coming from outside the country.

So I have a lot of trouble believing that it is possible to do this under the First Amendment, but you never know in terms of how courts will react and whether or not you find a judge who is sufficiently scared that the CCP is controlling our minds that they might magically rule the other way. Well, and why is this any different? And maybe somehow it is legally from, say, I don't know, Rupert Murdoch owning Fox News, the New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, etc. Yeah, I mean, there's that, though. Burdock, I believe, changed his residency in part because of media ownership laws. So there are some issues there. I mean, or you could argue Saudi Arabia has a large stake in the site formerly known as Twitter. There are a variety of other things where there are foreign investments in places.

Now, there are some rules about foreign investment, and there is the Sipheus process in terms of figuring out, you know, what foreign entities are allowed to own what percentage of American companies. And occasionally they will step in and block it. And there have been questions about whether or not that was the avenue to go with. And there have been some attempts to use the Sipheus process. I think it's a trickier legal issue to sort of sort through some of those. And again, in this case, in particular, it comes back to why are the concerns here? And in most Sipheus cases, it's about like strategic importance. So like semiconductors or, you know, something that is that's hugely important.

Here, as soon as you get to speech, you immediately run into First Amendment questions. questions. And, you know, most of the people who are pushing this ban sort of try and, you know, sidestep those First Amendment questions and pretend they don't exist or to wave them away because this is so serious. So look, obviously, Bight Dance isn't going to take this lying down. And if not by the time this interview goes live, then probably soon after, I would assume there'll be a suit filed challenging this law. Yeah. And actually, I don't know who, whether it would be BikDance itself or the TikTok, the actual entity, which is a US-based company.

There's a Singaporean-based version. And there are, you know, shell companies and everything. But so I don't know who's actually going to file it. But clearly someone is going to file it. You know, there was an attempt to ban TikTok in Montana also. And in that case, TikTok itself filed to block it and was successful, but also a bunch of users filed to claim that the law was, you know, violated their rights. rights. So I wouldn't surprise me if we saw both of those if there was a corporate lawsuit to try and block this as well as a user lawsuit to try and block it. And I imagine that'll come soon

and it will delay whatever process. You know, there's this one year deadline effectively in the bill. And that will just get put on hold while all of these lawsuits play out. So talk about some of the winners here because, you know, I know I'm not the first person to say this, but obviously it seems to me anyway, Google, which owns YouTube, and meta, which obviously owns Facebook and Instagram and now threads, are probably super happy about this, right? Yeah, I would think they are. It'll be interesting to see where sort of Google comes down because part of the law is, you

know, effectively banning them from allowing TikTok into their app store. And so you could see that side of Google being worried about new laws banning things showing up in app stores. Meta, on the other hand, I mean, there was a story. I don't remember how many years back this goes, that meta had this whole very advanced lobbying program to try to destroy TikTok and to really promote any sort of anti-Tick-Tac stories. You know, the crazy thing to me is that if you go back, again, not sure exactly the timeline, but let's say five years, the story in the media, the general story was that the history had been written. The only companies that could ever be large were Google, meta, Amazon, and Apple. And that was big tech.

And nobody would ever be able to enter that space. It's certainly not in social media. And then all of a sudden, TikTok comes along, effectively out of nowhere, grows to be massive, surpasses a whole bunch of other companies on the way. And it has been a real threat to meta. I mean, you know, you can see that meta has copied TikTok in all sorts of ways. Instagram is increasingly turning into a TikTok clone. But they were clearly scared.

And so they set up this whole program where, Personally, I thought they should use that to fight off the anti-trust cases that were coming their way and saying, see, look, you know, it's easy for other companies to spring up and hurt us. Instead, they went on this huge political campaign. They hired all these like political consultants and they were pushing all of these negative TikTok stories about how, you know, China bad, it's evil. So they must be thrilled.

I'm sure they're hoping that this makes TikTok take the eye off the wall and allows Instagram to increasingly take away TikTok's market share. And couldn't all of this be solved by simply passing an actual data privacy law? I mean, I know folks like Zuckerberg don't want that, and I would assume people in Google don't want it. But is that just too obvious? Depends on who you talk to. But yes, that should at least solve, you know, one half, right? There are two different issues that are brought up. But the data privacy surveillance side of it, It seems fairly obvious that the answer should be a comprehensive data privacy bill as opposed to a bill that literally names TikTok. It's like if this is a problem, it's a problem across the board.

And we should be concerned about that. And therefore, we should have a real data privacy bill. And there actually are attempts. And there's one that apparently has legs that appears to have, you know, the ability to move through Congress this year. And so we could have a real data privacy bill that should. should solve that side of it. And yet, I don't know why this is a more urgent thing to do. And then some people will argue that even with a data privacy bill, you don't deal with the propaganda side of the question. But again, that one strikes much more at First Amendment issues.

And I would argue even so, like, if you had a real data privacy bill, it also limits the power, you know, whatever, in my belief, limited power that any propaganda would have because you couldn't target it as well. Right. So talk about what's the power. the U.S. doing this would mean for the Internet overall. Aren't we supposed to be the big champion of the open Internet? And how do we yell at other countries for banning apps if we're doing it ourselves? Yeah. And I think this is one of the biggest problems of this overall. For years, the U.S. and the U.S. State Department has had a very clear, you know, strong, outgoing approach

saying, like, you know, the open Internet is super important and condemning actions by other countries. to try and limit that or to ban apps or to cut off the network or to create what is generally referred to as splinternets. And so this is really bad. Not that it is a surprising that the U.S. government is sometimes hypocritical in saying one thing and doing another. But, you know, it's kind of nice when we can back up what we say. And this sort of throws all of that out and says, like, sure, we believed in an open internet until China got successful on the internet. And therefore, or we no longer believe in it whatsoever, and we have to throw out those principles. And we know, because this happens all the time.

I mean, China will use this and bray about it and talk about like, oh, you know, look at these Americans and they're, you know, they were lying about their support for the open internet. That's not that surprising. But the more concerning part is that other countries will use this and start to ban apps or demand divestiture or whatever it might be and say, look, the U.S. is doing it. Why can't we do it too? And the US will have no moral high ground to stand on to say, like, no, you know, this is a larger, more important principle to have an open internet because we've just tossed that out because, oh, no, the app that teens used to dance is a real problem here. So I think it's a really bad look.

And I think that the whatever advantage it gets in terms of getting rid of China's connection to this one particular app, it does a lot more. overall in the sort of global discussion. Yeah, I just want to state for the record, though, that I know for a fact that, say, India would never do this. Right. So India did ban TikTok. Oh. I've been misinformed.

Yeah. So, you know, that happened a couple years ago, and it was basically, you know, in response to arguments between India and China. And so it was sort of a retaliatory measure to ban TikTok. And it was kind of a mess. And a number of users in India who had been fairly successful on TikTok were really pissed off by it because it sort of took away their audience. And there's been a bunch of arguments. And there have been like attempts by local Indian startups to try and replace TikTok.

A bunch of those popped up at once and almost all of them have since gone out of business. Most of it did move to Instagram. So again, like meta, you know, meta benefits from this pretty clearly. but all it did is effectively harm a bunch of users who had been successful and had built up big following on TikTok who suddenly lost it effectively overnight. So my last question, which is sort of a three-fer, I need your answer because I'm running low on time. I need your answer to be shorter than the question. Why should we think this would stop with TikTok? What's to prevent re-elected President Donald Trump from banning whatever apps or websites he's mad at in the name of natural security?

And why don't Democrats at least understand this? Yeah, that's the really big fear here, is that the bill really does open things up that if you have a president who wants to ban apps, it gives a real way for them to do so. And we should be really scared of that and what that means and how it would be used. That was absolutely perfect. Mike, thanks so much for being here. I learned so much for reading your stuff. And I am always grateful when you deign to make an appearance on my little podcast. Thanks, Mike.

That's great. I'm always happy to do it. Folks, I am so happy to welcome back to the new abnormal politics reporter for the Daily Beast Jake LaHatt. We're going to talk about all things Trump. I don't want to talk about all things Trump, but it's all anybody ever talks about Jake. But you wrote a great piece, Up at the Beast, entitled Trump's trial is already wrecking havoc on his campaign. So here's the thing, Donald Trump's attorneys, you know, one of the other million things that they try to throw at the wall was how can Donald Trump possibly be on trial because he's running for president and

this is going to affect his campaign and his ability to campaign yada yada yada and the judge is like great he can campaign on the weekends and on Wednesdays so talk to us about how this has actually really reshaped how he's campaigning and what you're hearing well hey crazy feedback and yeah this was something that I think the Trump's real inner circle the top of the people the campaign knew was going to be at least a kind of restriction that they would never have had any imagination of dealing with before and that it was going to be substantial and you can't just get in and out of, you know, Manhattan traffic on a weeknight and kind of jet off wherever you'd want. I think there are other Republicans who might have thought that we can get him, you know,

on fundraisers or whatever that aren't too far away. But it's really proving to be, yeah, like weekend warrior and then maybe, you know, Wednesday's either like a mental health day or, you know, like next week he has a doubleheader rally scheduled in Michigan and Wisconsin. The stuff like stopping at a bodega and, you know, kind of using just the general media presence in Manhattan to, you know, generate some sort of side campaign appearance. And you'll see more or more of that kind of thing. The Trump folks had sort of teased a couple weeks ago in some reporting we had that they were

looking at, you know, these quote unquote unprecedented ways of getting him out there in a non-rally format and you know you got bear in mind that the they've been doing fewer rallies this campaign in general for financial reasons but the unprecedented thing is really just a variation of him walking into the chick-fil-a or walking into a diner he just shows up somewhere there'll be like a pool of media outlets with at least one camera there or they'll just have you know they'll get enough heads up that they're posted up and it's sort of a semi-staged event and then you know otherwise it's just it's what did trump call it in a post of the end the week i think he called it an endurance sport after one week of being in court.

And he's just, he's so athletic. So I can understand why he's referring to it in that way. It does make me think of that, his whole theory about people being batteries. And I forget the exact verbiage he had there. But everyone has a finite amount of energy. But he's finding out that it got real. Just with the sheer amount of time, you got to be seated in there. And there's not much else they can control about it beyond that.

So it's become this test of like what kind of makes sure. shift improvisations can the Trump campaign make? And then really like what's the geographic turf in terms of battleground states that are, you know, where you can realistically hit them pretty hard in this period when you're limited to Wednesdays and weekends? The funny thing is, okay, so he goes into a bodega. He goes into this place like it isn't really about New York being his audience, right? Even though he insanely said this week that somehow Republicans are going to win back New York. I don't know in what delusion state he thinks that that's going to happen in. It isn't. But people in New York are not the audience.

It's his ability to like just have this press gaggle wherever he goes and then open up and spout off, right? Yeah. And it is true that like just by virtue of him being Donald Trump, when he, if he does show up somewhere people do like kind of going, what, what? And there will be more, you know, an inherent scene there even if there aren't these kind of finer touches that are put on it. In the Harlem Bodega case, that was by the New York Young Republicans, they're a younger activist down in Atlanta who did the Chick-fil-A one. It is kind of interesting that in some ways, these are, if you're someone who is a young Republican,

want to kind of make a name for yourself or whatever candidates you may have worked for before, if you could successfully organize one of these impromptu visits and have a crowd that's, you know, pretty full of Trump fans there, there's another one this morning of him with some union construction guys. Those are like kind of the bread and butter of the campaign right now.

And it's really all he has, aside from the limited rallies to get these visuals out there. But, you know, I mean, like, they, they like, it's basically just to show that he still has this poll. But it is, it is selective in, you know, how many people are lined up there beforehand. And but, granted, there are definitely people who just walk in off the street, like, oh, shit, like, this is a, this is a cool thing happening in New York. Eric Adams talking about this being the, the city where you can see anything from 9-11

to a business opening. You know, you can also see Donald Trump just, like, shown up to some random corner and making it part of the campaign in a way that it was just, it was. would not have been imaginable in 2016 or 2020 of him doing this stuff, you know? I mean, it's unimaginable that we are here. Multiple trials are happening at the same time in the midst of his presidential bid. And, you know, and we're all like moving along like this is somehow normal, which is absolutely insane.

I want to ask you this because one of the things that I find that, you know, at least on cable news that they are talking about is the fact that in this courtroom, let's just focus on Manhattan, where he has to be, where he's required to be in person, he's alone. His wife is not there. Melania is not there. And I know that you wrote a different story about her finally showing up on the campaign trail. But how does it weigh on you, you know, as a political reporter, like all of the norms in which

are broken around this candidate? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think that the, there is some sort of conventional wisdom that I kind of buy here from your older campaign hands who are. like, look, just at the fundamentals here of whether being in court for, you know, a hush money payment to a porn star, like, it helps you add voters. Or especially with the case of Trump where, like, there are so many different scandals. And this, this has been, you know, one of them that's now revived with the trial.

Does it bring them anyone new? Hard to argue that it does, right? On just the kind of personal drama side of it, Malania just appeared for this fundraiser with the Law Cabin Republicans, which is, I would say mostly pro-LGB Republican group, whose members almost all of whom identify as gay or queer, but with a very weird history with the party that we can get into at another point. But she appeared there in front of them at Mar-a-Lago,

and it was a crowd of like 60, you know, so a very modest return for her, but it was notable that she had someone like Rick Grinnell next to her who was at one point Trump's ambassador to Germany, and then later he was enacting a national security official, which also made him the first openly gay cabinet member in U.S. history, someone like that, angling and showing that, you know, he's in the good graces of the potential next first lady is, you know, a kind of a big deal

in Trump world, but also, you know, the unspoken part is what you said, that Ivanka, Don Jr., Eric, you know, they're not out there or they're not kind of playing defense in front of the courtroom. I'd had a couple people in Trump world talk about how, you know, it would maybe be smart of the vice presidential candidates to get out and mix it up with reporters in front of the courtroom. I don't think any of them want that like photo op hanging around for later either. So it is Even though I think we've all become numbed to so much of this stuff, ever since Trump rose to power, like him being totally hung out there is notable. I mean, I think if I were in court, we'd want, like, someone in our family to show up for

a bag. You're like, somebody. Even if it's, you know, a rotating couch of people, I don't expect necessarily the same person to be there every single day. And I think it was one of his attorneys in there, too, in opening statements, was like, tried to paint him as a family man. And I was like, in what? What fucking world are you talking about this man being a family man and ain't not one member of his family

sitting in this courtroom right now as he's on trial? Because in a normal world, in a normal criminal trial, you would have family members there to create sympathy for the jurors. Yeah. That's clearly going to be more that's the most tightly held secrets of the Trump campaign of like how exactly, you know, they came about the decision to have either nobody do it or hold off or whatever. But yeah, I mean, I think I think that's one of the things that might linger from this whole thing, along with, you know, just you never know what other revelations can happen in testimony and everything. I think the, it's become clear, though, that, you know, Don Jr. and Eric, and now, obviously, Eric's wife Lara with her prominent role at the RNC, I mean, the family business is definitely,

you know, churning in terms of their, just how deeply they've been able to kind of entrench themselves into the actual institution of the Republican Party now. And, you know, I think that Eric and Don Jr. are really the transition is the area that they're the most involved in from everything I've read and heard. So the Ivanka situation is something that's in a totally different realm, I think, where it's, you know, it's really unclear what she's going to do because, you know, Jared Kushner is sort of soft launching the whole hedge fund he has and then the money he got. From the Saudis.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And whatever projects with other sovereign wealth funds, that they may get involved with later. Like, clearly there's going to, he needs to do some sort of front-facing role for that. And it can be insulated at those chummy business functions or whatever. And, you know, she may not have to worry about a reporter like shouting questions or anything. But I do think it does leave a big open question of like, is she going to try to get back in the campaign?

I mean, I'm not, I'm not sure from their narrow political self-interest. I'm not sure that the campaign really want to deal with that as a whole thing to have to answer questions about. and it would make the base mad in exchange, you know, for them for nothing, really. Compared to, I mean, the election night in 2016, when the whole family was kind of rolled out, Tiffany included. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Louisville, probably the only time Tiffany was included. Yeah, oh, man. I think she was at States of the Union and things later, but that's, I mean, in general.

But, yeah, that's a good point. Poor Tiffany. But, yeah, that New York Hilton, they were doing the election night thing. And it was, that was sort of the, you know, it's a show of force and just kind of an optic move. And Trump being a guy who's so fixated about. about visuals and all that. That's just a card he can't play anymore. Right.

And I think that it took until now when, you know, he would sort of under normal American political, like, expectations, you have your family come there to back you up and he just isn't able to do it. And it's also just going to be kind of like that type of mood, I think for the rest of this thing where he has the endorphins in support of all these people in their Republican Party, but all these past characters who have kind of resurfaced with the trial, it reminds you of just like how many people and how many real,

what were once closed bombs, he's burned through or that are just left. I think this is more accurate in the family's case. They're just left really, really raw. And it would be such a deeply humiliating thing for any other type of political figure. But you do have to wonder, like, out of all the other things going on with Trump, does the family, like, you know, leaving him alone in court really register with anyone? I don't think that it does because I think that he has painted himself as like, again, I alone can fix this when he said that, like, I alone can.

can do these things. So he has painted himself as this, you know, magnanimous figure, right, that is just bigger than life. And so he would cast a shadow around other people. I think that that's like the distortion of it all that's been created. I mean, I think with any other person, the norm would be your family would be there. And any other politician, your family being a part of your campaign. It's not just you running, but it's the family that's running matters. And I think, that for Donald Trump, it's like so long as his family has the levers of the RNC, you know, which they have now, and can empty the coffers there, like he doesn't really want or need them by him. I want to go back to Melania for a moment because Melania, when she was in the White

House, was not a hands-on first lady, rarely saw her unless she was putting up some type of spooky-ass Christmas decorations or addressing very Nazi-esque for, you know, a speech that Donald Trump would give. But why do you think that she chose the log cabin Republicans, which I have my own issues with anyway, to be like her return, I guess, to the spotlight? The log cab Republicans, very interesting group from an intersectionality perspective. And if you're in college going through, that's maybe a great essay topic of just the attention there.

I mean, most recently the RNC issued a statement sort of distancing themselves slightly from them when when ronna macdainiel was still running things she had uh you know done a event with them and praised them as being a group that diversified the gop and saying that you know how valuable their perspective was but the fall of statement was like you know we clearly didn't mean anything about actual policy or anything everyone like relax i mean and that's oof so that that's kind of where they were left off with the party but they do have a lot of really influential people running out also kately jenner was there oh god yeah we quote uh her longtime manager who's also a trump surrogate and a and a delegate in that story. It's just a group that Melania had a longer-standing relationship with and just kind of

one of the only ones that was around, you know, available to use. But, you know, just even bigger picture. It is, it is crazy that she's making her return with this group while Trump is on trial for kind of the most, you know, shameful periods of their marriage and with the McDougal affair, the year that that Barron was born. So, I mean, I think that, you know, she never does anything unintentionally. So I think, you know, coming out in all black. I mean, blacked out everything, shoes, dress, belt, like the just basic backdrop of this being a group that the GOP does not always, or really ever put at like front and center. It's kind of like classic Melania and then it just leaves sort of these two maybe contradictory

things and you're left to make with them what you are, but she doesn't really elaborate on it any further. And the one thing I did find notable when reporting on this, though, was that she's hired basically like three different teams under Melania. She has a campaign one and outside PR one. and then a team that is the equivalent to her of what Trump's like 45 office team is, you know, his post-presidency office, but it's not part of that from what I'm told. So she does have like at least some semblance of an operation going.

And, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure if like any of her appearances that could happen down the line in the campaign are going to like neatly align with whatever the campaign message is at all. And it might end up being one of the most unpredictable weird parts of this whole thing. You know, what's funny is that like I think, that one of his packs is dolling out, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars for her clothing. Like they're paying for her clothing. And I'm just like, but she don't appear anywhere. So I'm like, how do you even say that like her fashion budget is a part of the campaign? Because I'm like,

this is the first event she's done. Right. So that's like wild. Yeah. And yeah, not published. I have a little fundraiser. It's crazy. Yeah. Although she also demonstrated that like the, they were at least bringing in over a million dollars within a day of the event. It also seemed to generate some outside buzz. And it showed that like at a time when the campaign really, really needs money, she's also sort of putting it out there like, hey, I can be of use for this. But how often will happen, nobody knows. What I will say, Jake, is that a million dollars is like not even half a day's work for Trump's lawyers. So at the end of the day, for average folks, that would be great. But for somebody that's running a fucking tab of hundreds of millions of dollars, that's a drop in the bucket.

As always, Jake, always great to have you join us and dish on the new abnormal. Really appreciate you. Yeah, it means much. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. How are you closing out this wonderful week in America with your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy today is, you might remember this guy, Bill Barr. He was the Attorney General under Trump.

Looks like a John Goodman character. I don't know if this is ringing about. Oh, that's mean to John Goodman. It is. I know. He had been going around for a while and he had a book out, going after Donald Trump, saying things like, as he did in June, about Trump. Should we be putting someone like this forward as the leader of the country?

He will always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interest. There's no question about it. And back when we were talking about this and whatever, I kept saying, yeah, but he's still going to end up voting for Trump and probably endorsing him. And sure enough, earlier this month on Fox News, Barr was asked if he would support Trump and he said, quote, I've said all along, given two bad choices, I think it's my duty to pick the person I think would do the least harm to the country. Trump may be playing Russian roulette, but a continuation of the Biden administration is national suicide, in my opinion. So, yes, he's come out and endorsed Trump. And that would be enough to get my fuck that guy for this week. But then I have to read. Because occasionally, Donald Trump is funny. I think there's no point not admitting that. At least that's my personal opinion. And he, I guess, must have just heard about this somehow. And on Wednesday night, he took a break from violating his gag order in one of his many trials here in New York. And he posted. Wow. Former AG Bill Barr, who let a lot of great people down by not investigating voter fraud in our country,

has just endorsed me for president, despite the fact that I called him weak, slow-moving, lethargic, gutless, and lazy. Based on the fact that I greatly appreciate his wholehearted endorsement, I am removing the word lethargic from my statement. Thank you, Bill. And I'm sorry, that is legitimately funny. and also exactly what Bill Barr deserves and, you know, as loathsome as Donald Trump is, and I'm not sitting here saying, you know, you got to hand it to Donald Trump. Absolutely not. But I do enjoy the fact that Bill Barr sat there and pretended he hated Trump and pretended all these things about Trump were so awful and then capitulated as they mostly do

and said that, no, he was going to vote for Trump. And that's what he got for it. from Donald Trump. And I just think that that is actually a beautiful thing. So yeah, Bill Barr, you're my fuck that guy. I mean, just forever and always. And that is just emblematic of everyone to Donald Trump inside of the Republican Party, right? Like, he thinks very little of them

and has no, like, qualms with letting everyone know. And they will still debase themselves. Yeah, because Biden is so dangerous, such a catastrophe. I mean, for different reasons, but give me a fucking break. I hate Bill Bart, you know what? Oh, God, you know, this show is testing me. You're testing me at the end of the week. All right, Danielle, close out this week for us.

Who is it? Who's your fuck that guy? Come on. Come on. Who is it? It's, you know, it was a tough decision because, like, everyone is testing my fucking nerves this week and they are afraid. But I got to hand it to the Republicans in Tennessee, boy, because you want to talk about people who give zero fucks about their constituency, who give zero fucks about their jobs, who give zero fucks about the children in that state.

Tennessee, if you all remember, last year experienced the states, according to the New York Times, deadly as school shooting. Deadly as school shooting. And there were protests, marches, the people of Tennessee saying that something needs to be done. You know, we need to protect our children. Like, we need to regulate guns in the state. Like, it's too easy, too accessible. You've seen the Republicans turn the police on these protesters. You've seen them throw mothers out for holding up signs in hearings.

You've seen them forcefully clear out the gallery in the statehouse. But nothing says fuck you to the people of Tennessee like the decision that they just made in the house, which is to allow teachers and administrators to carry concealed fucking handguns in schools. Because of what exactly? I just want to remind folks that in Texas where the horrific Yuvaldi school shooting took place, there were officers inside that were armed. because that was another bill that Greg Abbott had passed. Because their logic is, oh, but a good guy with a gun will stop a bad guy with a gun, right? Like that old bullshit saying. And do you know what happened?

A bunch of fucking children were slaughtered. Oh, not to mention all of the cops that were outside that also had guns that didn't do anything. Because you see, the real thing that happens when you add more guns to an already volatile situation is more deaths. will occur. What's to stop a teacher, administrator now when a fight breaks out in a school, which they inevitably do? You're going to pull out a gun on kids rolling around on the ground? What's to stop a kid from being able to disarm a teacher who has ideations of wanting to shoot up their school? Let me tell you something. These fucking people want mayhem. They want chaos. They want death. They want despair. That is their point. And so for the people in Tennessee, these are your folks. Come gather them the fuck up

before they cause more death and destruction. So for that reason, the entire Republican Party that is overseeing Tennessee right now, you are my fuck that guy. Fuck all y'all. Yeah, I feel like we've talked about this before, but man, Tennessee Republicans have really just been outdoing themselves like it feels like month after month, doesn't it? Yeah. Month after month. and then Arizona's like, hold my beer. Because I'm going to take this shit back to the 19th century. What you got? Texas and Florida, they're coming for your crowns.

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