The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Coming for Your Granny’s Health Care

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodiediscuss a recent interview in which Donald Trump discusses cutting social security. Then, Justin Baragona, senior media reporter for The Daily Beast, spills the tea on a weekend full of Trump mishaps. Plus! Shannon Vavra, national security reporter for The Daily Beast, explains both the laughable and alarming world of Russian disinformation. 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 Campbell News conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Justin Barragona, who's a senior media reporter for The Daily Beast, is here to give us all the tea on a weekend where there was a bloodbath over the word. Bloodbath. Oh, and Fox News got sued again. That will be joined by Daily Beast National Security reporter Shannon Vavro. We'll talk to us about all things Russia, and in particular her recent piece, The Sloppy Russian, schemers impersonating top U.S. officials. But first, let's have some fun. Dearest, Andy, I have some news for you and everyone else.

And I know pause for shock, but Donald Trump can't come up with $454 million that he needs in order to appeal the bond against him in the not the E. Jean Carroll case, folks, not to be confused, but in the case that Tish James brought against him for fraudulent business practices. And now, in order to appeal, he has to come up with nearly half a billion dollars in order to appeal that fraud case. And lo and behold, ain't nobody want to lend him the money. I don't know why. He seems to always be good for it, doesn't he?

Yeah. I mean, he's always been throughout his life and career. He's been very good about paying people on time, about paying people back. I mean, look, if my half billion dollars wasn't tied up, I would loan it to him. I think he's a good risk. Mm-hmm. I understand that that's a lot of cash to have on hand, but it seems to me if, if, and I repeat, if you are worth many, many billions of dollars, shouldn't you be able to come up with

half a billion dollars in cash? Shouldn't you be able to, I don't know, sell shit? Well, this is the funny thing, is that his lawyers, and this is just done, Trump and the Trump organization, the Trump family and all of their, you know, sick offense around them is that they have for decades tried to convince us that Donald Trump is a multi-billionaire, that his name is gold, literally, on top of buildings, all of these things. So if you're going to come into court, which they did, and say that Donald Trump is worth about 14 billion or so, which one of his many lawyers offered up, then how does it make sense

that you can't just put up 454 million? It doesn't make any sense. Yeah, again, I can understand no matter how rich you are, not having that kind of cash on hand. But it does seem to me that if you're that rich, you could get access to that kind of cash and probably fairly quickly, at least quickly enough to secure a bond. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. And, you know, I'm starting to think that maybe Trump hasn't been fully truthful about his net worth. I don't know. Oh, huh. Interesting.

Yeah. But, you know, so his lawyers are saying that they've made what they call diligent efforts to secure this cash and that they've approached, I don't know, 30 companies or so. But that they have just run into, quote, unquote, insurmountable difficulties. Is that the new word for no? Yeah. I think the insurmountable difficulty exactly is the company is saying no. No. So we are not giving you $10 towards a bond, let alone $450 million. He has to post this bond in order to appeal the case or Tish James can start seizing his assets later this month. I think on, what's it, the 25th, I think?

Yeah, I think that that's like next week. Next Monday, maybe, next Tuesday? I don't know. There's no way to know what day of the week March 25th is, so I won't even bother looking it up. I think start season. It's season season. All I want from Tish James is just to let us know so that we can just do the show live as they're taking down Trump's, you know, name off of the towers.

Because here's the thing, again. I said this last time, Moody Towers. Right. I love the way that that sounds. If Donald Trump, if he had not inflated the lies about the worth of his properties, wouldn't you also be able to put up your property as collateral as. a bond, but again, because he lied, which is what got him here in the first place about the values, his properties combined aren't worth half a billion dollars. And so I'm just like, at this point, I don't know how many pairs of sneakers he would have to sell in order to make this happen.

But given as out, they're already on sale, and I don't know if anyone has actually gotten a pair, that's not going to be it. So I think that come Monday, there's going to be news cameras and Tish James is just going to start putting Donald Trump's, you know, I don't know, feathered mattresses and gold toilets out in the street. I pray for that. Let's remember that Trump separately had a post $91.something million bond in the E. Jean Carroll case to prevent her from enforcing the verdict while he appeals it. So it may well be that you keep going to companies trying to get loans or whatever or collateral to postpone. And they're like, really? Didn't we just go through this? Mm-hmm. And, you know, I don't know.

It's just I would love to know. I would love to hear spelled out. And maybe we will in the coming days what these insurmountable difficulties were. Like I would love to know what the 30 companies said to him or to his lawyers when he tried to, you know, when he approached them. because I bet it's hilarious. I bet it's something to the effect of you already owe us money. Right. So we're definitely not going to go ahead and put up more money.

That is not within our best interest. He's not a good bet. And I think that that's what this all comes down to. So whether you're looking at casting a ballot for this motherfucker or like whether or not you're going to pony up funds, like what the banks and his business cronies are saying is that he's not a good bet. And all I will continue to say is that this amount of debt that he is in makes him even more dangerous to the American people and his access to classified information than he was in 2017 when he came into the White House. If I'm the Biden campaign, that's what I'm putting out there on top of everything out.

Like there's a reason why we ask for bank records and tax records and all of these things because we want to know whether or not you're going to be easily bought by. foreign entities. And Donald Trump, we know, is ripe for the picking. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think, first of all, he's been right for the picking his whole life. But like you said, even more so now that he's sort of cornered and, you know, owes all this money and it's trying to raise all this money. I did look up. Apparently what his lawyers are saying is that there were very few bonding companies that will even issue a bond that large. And those that will, won't accept real estate as collateral. And so you might ask, well, okay, then he needs to sell him some real estate and get that capital.

And the lawyers are claiming that if he had to do that, it would amount to a quote-unquote fire sale, which would result in what they call massive irrecoverable losses. And I like, yeah, okay. So? Mm-mm. A disaster for him. Okay. So Trump did a rally. And I don't even know why the fuck we call it rallies, actually. He had a hate or he had it. He organized a hate a rant or a hate rally. Like that's what this is. It's not a political rally where he's talking about his vision for America. Because my God, if you just pull out what he's saying at some of these things, which we're going to unpack, his vision of how he sees America would have me want to never leave my house. Like lock the closets, lock the doors. close all of the windows and just hide under the bed.

Because his vision of America is so terrifying and dangerous and dark. Like, don't people want to elect folks that inspire them and provide hope? I guess not. Like, that's not who his people are. But nonetheless, not at all shocking to anyone with ears or eyes that the man who made his foray into politics by saying that Barack Obama was not born in this country. then continued with his first utterances on the 2016 campaign trail by calling Mexicans rapists and murderers. Now, now goes ahead and goes even further.

Again, folks, no quiet part whatsoever. And says that some immigrants, he says, are not people. These are, quote, animals. Every day, he just goes out there and tops himself in terms of, you know, his language being just more. and more off the rails, more and more extreme, more and more hateful. And the Hitler comparisons are, you always want to be careful when you compare someone to Hitler or even Stalin or something like that. But like they're just, they are so in your face right now. And just calling groups of people, animals. And I don't want to say, I don't know, even know where he goes from here, because it'll be worse.

but this is just a continuation of him talking about how immigrants poison the blood of America. And it's just it is all, it couldn't be more, if you don't want to say Hitler, if you think that's too much, which at this point, I don't, I mean, you can just generically just say it's all right out of the fascist playbook. And we are so past the point of arguing whether Donald Trump is a fascist or a wannabe fascist. He is. He absolutely is. He absolutely is. and everything he has said can only lead you to that conclusion. I just don't know how you can form any other conclusion. And there's a couple things here. When you refer to people as animals, obviously you are dehumanizing them and you are saying they don't have rights as human beings, etc.

What you're also doing tacitly is encouraging violence against them. And we've seen this time and time again. And you and I have talked about this a lot. And that, you know, this has become a standard of sort of Republican or, of MAGA rhetoric. Marjorie Taylor Green does it. A whole bunch of others do it. But when you are saying to your supporters that migrants coming across the border are not humans, they are animals, you are basically telling them it's okay to pick up a gun and shoot them. Yes. And he knows that. This is not new. This is authoritarianism and Nazism and 101. This is how you build up a country's

resources around enslaving other people by saying that those people, the very people that you're enslaving, the children that you're breaking apart, the people that you're murdering and hanging and lynching and all of those things are not people. So we don't have to care. So you don't have to, you don't have to find any connective tissue that connects you to their humanity because so long as you're able to dehumanize them, then whatever it is that happens to them or you do to them doesn't matter. Like that's always the point. And so, any time that any fucking politician in modern fucking times is calling other human beings anything other than that, there is no mincing of words.

Like, I wonder what he meant. That's the bullshit like navel gazing that I don't get, which is that we don't have to wonder what he thinks about immigrants. We don't have to wonder what he thinks about migrants. We don't have to wonder what he thinks about black people, what he thinks about Mexicans. Like you don't have to because he's fucking telling you. And so that his supporters will do whatever they can to quote unquote protect their land and protect their whiteness and protect their homes from these quote unquote animals.

This is not language that is becoming of any person that would serve any type of office, let alone the presidency. But we're going to play around with it like, oh, I wonder what he's thinking. Oh, maybe he didn't really mean it. Oh, he backtracks off of the crazy. It's not crazy rhetoric. This is how you have policies that are created by Greg Abbott that sit and allow families to drown when they could be helped. When you have bodies ripped apart by barbed wire and buoys with fucking medieval, you know, thorns and sharp edges on them to rip people's bodies apart because you don't see them as people. And yeah, one final word on this. In that same speech, he talked about having the biggest deportation effort in history.

And I think he's talking about deporting 8 million people or something like that. I would love for someone to ask him what he thinks that will do to the economy. And again, not that the worth of a person is solely based on what they contribute to the economy, but in addition to just being, you know, all kinds of awful and, again, dehumanizing, it also, I don't see any way how it wouldn't destroy our economy. And speaking of which, you know, we talk about all these Trump things. and in addition to the ones we've talked about, there was, you know, we could talk about Mike Pence, Trump's vice president declining to endorse him saying he will not endorse him for

2024, which I cannot remember the last time a vice president didn't endorse the president they served under. You know, we could talk about him talking about, Trump talking about bringing Paul Manafort back, who he had to pardon because he was convicted for all sorts of shenanigans involving Russia. But all of all of the things. of this is kind of, not that it's not important, it is all important, but there is something that maybe we should be talking about more because it may directly affect how people vote. And that is Donald Trump going on a CNBC interview and talking about cutting social security. And what he said was that he said, quote, there's a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting.

And he's tried to backtrack from that. But it is very clear that. That, as with every other policy that Trump wants, he wants to benefit the rich and harm the middle class and harm poorer people. But this is the kind of thing that I think, you know, like I said, there may be a lot of people out there who are, they, honestly, they could not give a fuck about migrants. They could not give a fuck about the fact that dozens and dozens of former Trump cabinet members will not endorse him. But they will care. They will give a fuck if you go after their Social Security. I just think that once again, if you are not highlighting all of the pieces of how this just adds more money to the pockets of the already

fucking greedy, that you have some of these Republicans getting on CNBC and other places saying that retirement ages are bullshit. So not only do you want to get rid of retirement, like the ability to retire at 65, but now you want to ensure that when people do retire, that if you are not already wealthy, even though you've been giving into the system since you first started working however many fucking 30, 40 years ago, that you won't get any of that any of your money that you put into the system back is absolutely fucking absurd. And it is so disgusting to me how greedy these people are. Like there's just never enough. Like, they're never enough. Like, they're never satiated. They just want more and more and more fucking breaks and cuts while everyone

else is suffering. Like to me, the fact that like he's saying these things and then is allowed to walk them back should be, it should be the only calling card. Donald Trump goes into, like, not only is he going to give more tax breaks to the fucking wealthy that don't even pay 20% in taxes, but he's also going to ensure that if you ever have the ability to, to retire, that you are going to be living hand to mouth. It's obscene. They're fucking disgusting. Well, I guess we should end since we've spent the first 20, 25 minutes talking about how horrible things are and how horrible Donald Trump is. We got to do a both sides thing because we're in the media. Oh, God. So we need to talk about Joe Biden and the horrible things that

he's been doing. Let's see. He was in New Hampshire and he talked about proposing a 25% tax on billionaires. He's going to sign an executive order that will advance the study of women's health. He's going to introduce or he introduced a new plan on Friday that will force college costs to be more transparent. And he raised a hell of a lot more money than Donald Trump did in February. So that's your both sides, I think, Danielle. Is that fair? I mean, what a terrible person he is. He wants to eliminate the junk fees. He was also talking about shrinkflation during his state of the union and eliminating that. I mean, my God, it's really hard to see the sheer differences between these two parties, Andy.

Thank God we have a podcast that explains it because otherwise I just don't think I'd be able to figure it out. Like, who are the good guys? It's so difficult. The girls are fighting and Fox News finds itself the target of another lawsuit. Here to explain those stories, plus a bloodbath is DailyB Senior Media Reporter, Justin Barragona. Justin, thanks so much for being here. Well, I'm glad to be here. So let's talk about the bloodbath first.

I'm referring, of course, to Donald Trump saying at an Ohio rally on Saturday, quote, Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath. That's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. Explaining what he was talking about has become, I don't know, maybe a bit of a media Roershack test, hasn't it? or I think maybe you have a better analogy? Yeah, yeah.

I call it like a choose your own adventure. Depending on how you want to see it. And a lot of times it's just going to be based off of your ideological leanings or who you want to see when the presidential election in November. You're going to either lean on the, well, he was just talking about the macroeconomics, the auto industry and tariffs and the need to stop foreign car. imports to help our esteemed auto workers here in the United States. Or you're going to also lean on the other side of going, well, this is just him using

a dystopic, scary, violent language to scare his supporters into not only supporting him, but also, you know, to let them know that if he doesn't win, guess what you guys need to do? You know, you need to do another January 6th or something of that nature. And then he does have a habit of using this kind of violent rhetoric. You know, I mean, even when he was first inaugurated, you know, we all know about the American Carnage speech. Was he doing this on purpose to try to send a greater message and, you know, let it be known that, you know, his supporters are not going to sit by idly if he once again loses election? I don't know. I'm not a mind reader, but, you know, he loves doing this kind of stuff, right?

Right. No, absolutely. And I mean, look, I'll be honest. I kind of fall on the, when I first saw the quote out of context, I thought, oh, he's referring to if he loses the election. You know, and he's referring to the fact that there will basically be violence in the street. And then, and I posted something on blue sky about it. And then I saw the context and I was like, ah, I think I'm going to delete that. Because it does really seem to me in this case that he was talking about the auto industry. basically for people who haven't seen it. He prefaced this with talking about how he was going to impose. I think it was 100% tariff on stuff coming in from China, et cetera. And then he was basically saying, you know, if I lose and we don't impose this, there's going to be a bloodbath. And I think he was talking about in the, I think the unspoken thing there was in the auto industry.

But again, it's so hard to give him the benefit of the doubt because as you say, he loves him some violent rhetoric, and usually it's not contained to one specific economic area. Exactly. I would also say that this is given a lot of ammunition to, you know, Trump supporters in both the Republican Party and the, you know, right-wing media echo sphere. To then claim, once again, the fake news media is misinterpreting or completely lying about, what Trump said, which of course is something that he's embraced already this morning. Right.

And then he's also used it to fundraise off of, right? So when people who themselves take shit out of context all the time and just straight up make up stuff, then complain if, you know, a specific quote is taken out of context, which by the way, I don't think most of the mainstream media did take it out of context. I think, I mean, that's where I got the context from was from reading. you with the Daily Beast and other coverage of it. But I just, like, I have no sympathy for them. And, you know, they're going to find ways to attack you and your kind, Justin, no matter what, I feel like.

Also, let's rewind it back a little. He literally said bloodbath for this country. I mean, he said those words. So if somebody's putting that in a headline, you know, bloodbath for this country, you know, that's not even wrong. For sure. Absolutely. And he says there will be a bloodbath for. bloodbath if he's not elected. He said within the election. So, I mean, if you're getting a shortened

headline that says that, and then I don't think you should get all up in arms because it's like, oh my God, how are they letting this get by without the lack of context of not saying auto industry specifically in the headline, only because he's saying there's going to, you know, you could just say he's saying that there's a bloodbath if he's not elected. So, you know, I was reading in the Washington Post, Aaron Blake, you know, talking about how a lot of times this is just missing the forest for the trees, right? That he has a habit of doing this. And if we're going to then get into like the semantics of it, it, you know, it only ends up helping him in a way because now we're going to get a debate of what did he really mean when he's, you know, he's out there

using violent rhetoric as he typically does. Yeah, absolutely. And for me, it's just, I mean, he says so much violent, hateful stuff that I guess I just don't really care that much. I mean, I agree there too. The thing is, in that speech itself, there is a lot more noxious stuff to focus on a one-word thing. It actually does, it is something that right-wing media wants to get into because it then, you know, that becomes the focus then, right? And not, you know, not the substance.

It's now, you know, look at the liberal media. you know, doing Donald Dirty again. Right. And when I say I don't care, that's what I mean. Like, I do not care. Go ahead, right-wing media. Say that shit. The only response to that for me is just to laugh at them.

Let's move on and take a whiff of the not-so-delightful scent of Lemon Musk. Former CNN anchor Don Lemon, who was fired back in April of last year, not long after making stupid comments about Nikki Haley being past her prime at the age of 51. and also amid credible reports of misogyny that he directed at female CNN employees, he announced in January, or it was announced in January, that he was going to launch a new show on Twitter. And then he interviewed Elon Musk for that shows what would have been that show's first episode. And then over the weekend, he put out of a statement saying their partnership had been dissolved.

What's going on here? Other than this being sort of like really fun for people who don't like either of these guys. It was actually Wednesday when this all kind of went down. And then it was over the next few days and then through the weekend. Gotcha. Because, you know, Don got to go onto CNN for the first time, like in almost a year to talk about. Then you could tell that Elon's people were, you know, leaking stuff to like the New York Post and daily mail about how much of a diva Don Lemon was and all the stuff that he was asking for to do the Twitter slash X show. and like how Don wasn't very prepared for their interview and it just frustrated Elon,

but then when you watch the actual full hour-long interview, what comes across here is, I mean, Don was okay in it, you know, he didn't seem as prepared as he's making himself out to be in terms of grilling Elon, but for the most part, he was trying to hold, you know, a powerful man's feet to the fire a little bit on certain subjects, but all of that really comes across is that Elyleon, long as a big giant piss baby, did not enjoy having somebody not fawn over him and just treat him like the most brilliant person in the world is the way he wants to be treated. That was my takeaway from

that interview. Look, I haven't watched the interview because I think both of these dudes are huge assholes. But I know you had to for your job. So I thank you for your service. Did anything jump out at you, like anything in particular? Well, I apologize for the hard-hitting question, Justin. Please don't dissolve our partnership. I'll take that under advisement. You know, we'll see. Things that really stand out here is that Elon is nowhere near as smart as he thinks he is, right?

Yes. I mean, that's just apparent. But we get that from like his constant posting on social media. But it really stands out when he's made. to speak to somebody even somewhat adversarial in an area. Like we've seen that before with like a New York Times, you know, review and I think, you know, with Andrew Ross Sorkin. But this time you could just tell there's like a real turning point.

It's when Don starts asking him about his drug use and is using that. That is where it starts turning. And then you could tell like Elon just wants to get out of there, right? then Don then starts pressing him on, you know, the amount of toxic content on his side. And if he needs to like do more to moderate that, if he, you know, his Elon's own personal belief in the great replacement theory, which, you know, at this point I don't think we need to explain what that is anything. No, we don't. Elon keeps contradicting himself when he's talking about the great replacement theory that he doesn't really believe it, but he does believe. He just doesn't think it's the Jews. He just thinks it's Democrats, you know? And then it goes

from there into DEI. And, you know, how Elon's gone out there and essentially said that DEI is going to kill people because of black doctors or black pilots or what have you because he's like, the standards are being lowered. But he can't point to where the standards are being lowered. And then he says, well, I'm just warning about it if the standards get lowered. You can't could tell that there's not much deep thought going on there. Yeah. That's where that comes in when it comes to Elon wax and poetic about the woke mind virus. But he can't really pinpoint anything.

The issue I have here is that gna is not great at actually coming back with hard evidence. You know, he just says the evidence shows or studies show. And then that just lets Elon get to roll his eyes. At the same time, Elon is saying, well, you know what? The facts will show that I'm right here because once this interview air, all the replies on X are going to, you know, prove me right. And he literally says something of that nature. And you're going, you've got to be kidding me.

So it's, you know, reply guys are going to, you know, that's who we should be, you know, taking our information from. That's what he's giving us. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's how he's, you know, redirected Twitter. So not really a surprise, I guess. I was reading a New York Times article on the interview, and I'll just read a short little section. It says, Musk appeared visibly annoyed by a direct line of questioning about him appearing to endorse

an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. That would, I assume, be great replacement, which, by the way, he doesn't appear to endorse it. He does endorse it. But they printed what he said. He said, quote, I don't have to answer these questions. I don't have to answer questions from reporters, Don. The only reason I'm doing this interview is because you're on the X platform and you ask for it. otherwise I would not do this interview.

And it's like, I don't know. Does he, I guess he thinks that shit like that makes him look good, again, because his reply guys will applaud him for it? Well, yeah, and he's sticking it to the liberal media, right? He's sticking it to fake news. That's where that is, you know, that he doesn't have to answer these questions. And he's only doing a whole favor. My favorite reaction to the Elon Don interview was when we were just getting the

Sripits. And, you know, it announced that, you know, basically right after that interview, Elon had canceled their deal, you know, for Don to do his show on Twitter. But then some Fox News hosts were like, how dare Don Lemon actually, like, press and grill Elon? Doesn't he realize he wasn't doing him a favor? And it just was like, you know, they're just basically endorsing that you should just tell, tell to power, you know?

Right. You know, but it never occurs at them that you could actually do this to one of the richest men in the world, that you could actually try to like hit them with a few tough questions that, you know, it may be with some beliefs that don't like go in line with his anti-woke stance, you know. Yes. Look, I mean, that sort of, that's the Fox News motto, isn't it? I don't know. Well, yeah, it would never occur to them that they could actually press.

Robert Redock or someone of that nature or any like wealthy Donald Trump for that matter exactly with Donald Trump it's like whenever they actually ask a semi hard question and he goes onto his true social and then complains about it for weeks on end like you you got to want to talk to Brett by here anymore he spent like weeks on end after that entry last year just complaining about it yeah and you know the lesson learned that Fox learned from that was not you know continue to hold people's feet to the fire. It was, you know, stop asking tough questions of people like Donald Trump. Before we end, I just, because I mentioned this in the intro, and it's a serious matter, but I'm talking about the lawsuit that Fox News is facing now. Who is suing the network and why?

The parents of a young Ukrainian journalist are suing the network. If you recall, basically two years ago, well, the lawsuit was about two years to the day after a correspondent Benjamin Hill was seriously injured, and then two Fox News journalists were killed during a shell attack in Ukraine while they were reporting from the front lines of the war. And this was only a few weeks after Russia had invaded Ukraine. The parents of Alexa Sacha Koznyova, she was the 24-year-old Ukrainian contractor who was being used as sort of like an interpreter, producer, fixer, things of that nature in the war's out. They alleged that Fox News was engaged in a cover-up over the actual like circumstances that resulted in their daughter's death. Fox News, of course, is denying that.

There's a lot of kind of eye-opening and kind of, frankly, heartbreaking details within the lawsuit itself. Yeah, I was reading a little bit about it. They're actually, they're saying, that Hall, the journalist who was injured, they're naming him as a defendant saying that he, quote unquote, wrote or adopted a false account of the death of Kuf Shanova in the memoir that he wrote after this, right? That is correct. It should also point out in that lawsuit itself, they seem to suggest that Hall would maybe change his position.

It's this went further to a trial, thinking that he would end up maybe even being a plaintiff. and, you know, provide a testimony that would, you know, be on the defendant side. We're sort of suggesting, and if you read between the lines in this lawsuit, they're suggesting that he wasn't necessarily won so much, you know, personally that's pushing a false account as much as it's the network and the book publisher and so forth that are kind of holding his feet to the fire on that. Gotcha. That's at least my take from the way that it's portrayed.

trade in our lawsuit itself. Yeah, wow, that's really interesting. Justin, always a pleasure to talk to you. And I'll definitely keep watching to see what goes on with that lawsuit because it does seem, obviously, the circumstances around it are tragic, but it does seem really, really interesting. So thanks for being on top of that. Justin, I will talk to you soon, hopefully. Ready. Thank you. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal Shannon Vavra, who is a national security reporter for The Daily Beast covering the politics of war, national security hacking, disinformation, and espionage, probably pretty much the coolest beat I think that we have had on the show.

Shannon, one of your pieces, it's just like, I don't know if I'm watching a Bond movie or this is actually real life. But you did a piece entitled, The Sloppy Russian Schemers impersonating top U.S. officials. I'm just going to hand it over to you to give us the 50,000 foot view on what the hell is going on in Russia? Like, 2016 was about, you know, troll farms and bots. We've entered into another phase and level of the crazy. So walk us through. Yeah. First of First of all, thanks for having me. Second of all, I love the comparison of this to a Bond movie. The reality is that a lot of the operation that we came across, this disinformation operation, is really sloppy. And that's what makes it both laughable and alarming, in my opinion.

So a couple of weeks ago, I was looking up a meeting between Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Jim O'Brien, and Leonid Volkov, this close ally of Alexei Navalny, because they were meeting at the State Department. And lo and behold, the second and third results on Google search were these really weird-looking websites that I haven't seen before. One of them was called clear story. News. Didn't seem very official. Had a lot of AI images on the page. And the second was Miami Chronicle, which looked sort of like it could be a real news website, but on further investigation.

Neither of them is real and authentic. And the story that they had on them was about this alleged leaked audio between, undersecretary for political affairs, Victoria Newland over at the State Department, and Jim O'Brien talking about sort of hashing a plot to back a new Russian opposition leader after Alexei Navalny's death. And the stories made it sound like they were putting their heads together, brainstorming behind the scenes, doing something really horrible. And for me, I was like, oh, well, you know, maybe it's alleged, you know, maybe it's this leaked

audio. Let's go find the audio and see what it sounds like. Lo and behold, it was a very thinly veiled attempt at looking like a real leaked audio from these two state department officials. But the Russian accents were so clear. I mean, I call it laughable, but I honestly was laughing while I was listening to it because it was so clear that this was a Russian disinformation operation right off the bat. I mean, it sounds like a mix between a Bond villain announcing how they're going to kill you and also like Scooby-Doo revealing the people underneath the. the mask at the end of the episode of the cartoon. And it's just like, I mean, do we look at this as, oh, this is so funny and ridiculous like no one would ever believe this or is this just practice

attempts? Do you know what I'm saying to see how far it goes? Where are, you know, that you're testing all of the fences before you release the real version of things? Yeah. So I think it's a really good question is this sort of testing the ground. And we know that Russia traditionally with some of its gray zone operations, hacking, sabotage, cyber operations, influence operations, they run tests, right, to see sort of how far they can push the envelope against the grain. What I think we're seeing here is a couple of things. One, this is, this disinformation operation we saw, this alleged leaked audio, is not an isolated incident. They have posted on sites like Miami Chronicle, this clear story. news.

There's also other websites that are just like it, the Chicago Chronicle, the New York News Daily, not the New York Daily News, meant to look like legitimate websites. She's read information, disinformation to look like real news, real authors, but they're not authors, right? They're written by, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, quote unquote, admin. Some of them claimed to be created, you know, decades ago, but they were created a couple of weeks ago. And we saw in recent months, there was.

one post on one of their websites called D.C. Weekly, which, again, is a fake website, not journalism. And it had this story that claimed that Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky, had used U.S. aid money to purchase the yachts, which was totally fake. The yachts weren't even purchased. BBC did a really incredible write-up of this campaign. But what we saw is three lawmakers on Capitol Hill, sort of parroting it, referencing Yotsin Zelensky, and the real beauty slash alarm of these campaigns is they don't have to be well done. If you take a minute to Google this and look up any of the information, it's very clearly fake. But the idea behind it is, can you sow an idea, can you plant some seedling of an idea that aligns with something we might already believe or something we might already think, right, with Zelensky, going back to some historical allegations of corruption in Ukraine? and then does it get into the bloodstream of American democracy?

And the answer is yes. And I think that has some alarming implications for the months ahead leading into the 2024 presidential election. I think that that is what is most alarming to me is not that these fake audios and these websites are so bad that no one will believe them. It's that in order to spread disinformation, all you need is a kernel. And if you have people on Capitol Hill like Marjorie Taylor Green, like Matt Gates, like whomever, that are susceptible and actually go, you know, head deep into conspiracy theory

land, that's all you need. And then you have jumped from a messy website into the halls of Congress. And all you had to do was one click. And I think that that is what makes it so unnerving. Exactly. And I think you mentioned this earlier, right, moving from Russian trolls, into this new sort of ecosystem of blended information that looks like it's real. And I think that's one of the other alarming parts about this disinformation campaign is we are seeing the Russian disinformation and influence playbook evolve, which is to be expected. But with Russia's continued interest in weakening support for Ukraine, we see that this evolution from just some troll armies that may or may not have traction online that might clearly

look fake sort of again using that sloppy playbook, we see this really, easy insertion of ideas into the political conversation in the United States that could really have some legs. And we're already seeing a little bit of that on Capitol Hill. If you look at some of the, for instance, this YouTube audio, leaked audio only had several thousand views. So looking at reach of some of these campaigns isn't necessarily clear if you look at just some of these metrics. But we've already seen on Capitol Hill a lot of the legislation around Ukraine and delayed with Republican lawmakers really getting in the way of President Biden's billion dollar request for Ukraine.

And I want to draw listeners' attention to a part of your piece in which you're talking about YouTube, YouTube, the platform that is owned by Google, and not tracking this misinformation. And so you write this. Google indicated it has work to do on preventing stories like this from ranking so high in search. YouTube, which is owned by Google, said that it is terminating the channel. responsible for posting the fake, quote, leaked audio after being contacted by the Daily Beast. They write, uh, we terminated a channel shared by the Daily Beast for violating YouTube's

misinformation policies, a YouTube spokesperson said. And I think again, what is alarming about this is one, you're needing to do the investigative journalism in order to bring it to the attention of one of the biggest platforms on the planet that you are platforming misinformation and disinformation and that while this video only got 2,000 views, I guess my question for you is, then my confidence is not really that high in these platforms to do what it is that they said in front of Congress that they would do, which is take disinformation and misinformation seriously and create, you know, the catches to make sure that this kind of information doesn't spread. Should we feel comfortable with the fact that had the Daily Bees

not brought it to YouTube's attention that this video would still be up? You hit the nail on the head here. I think it's very concerning that, I mean, credit where credit is due, right? I reached out, YouTube investigated. They took down this channel that was spreading this fake leaked audio. Simultaneously, the State Department told me, yes, this is clearly fake, you know, in case the thick Russian accents didn't give it away. But we can't necessarily rely on this whack-a-mole approach.

I spoke with a researcher Darren Linville, who has been investigating Russian disinformation for years now. He's, he's a renowned expert in this area. And he told me that there's many other YouTube postings just like this. Maybe it's not lead audio to U.S. State Department officials, but there's a trend here. And the trend is that the takedowns are not happening when they need to. And the information space has essentially been poisoned. So there could definitely be some stronger takedown and monitoring approaches from YouTube here. You know, and it's funny because right before we came on, I was, you know, watching a story unfold on cable news where a judge in Louisiana has blocked the ability of the FBI and other outlets to reach out to social media platforms

to ensure that the information that they're putting out is valid and truthful. And now this is being heard by the Supreme Court to see whether or not, you know, the FBI and other investigative agencies are able to partner with and work alongside of, these platforms to make sure that disinformation is not spreading. The conservative judge in Louisiana said, oh, no, they've gone too far. And it's just here we are where the goal is to overwhelm the system. We're not going to catch everything. But the goal is to overwhelm and plant all of these little seeds so that you don't believe

your eyes. You don't believe your ears. It makes you much more porous and susceptible to strong men that then come in and say, trust me, don't trust everything else. And so I wonder, like, as you go through these investigations, you know, Russia is one of the biggest, I guess, proponents of this type of work, but they're not the only country that does it. Where else do you have your eyes on when you're looking at these types of security breaches? Totally, totally. And I think that that sort of brings me to the U.S. intelligence community released its intelligence assessment for various worldwide threats,

where they touch on everything from terrorism to potential election interference. And we know that from that, it's not just Russia that's interested in interfering in U.S. elections. I'll just throw in here. It's not just Russia and China interested in interfering in the United States, of course. But with a focus on the U.S., the assessment is that China might attempt to influence U.S. elections. It has a vested interest in pushing aside critical of China and digging into and stirring up U.S. divisions, right? And that sort of sounds a lot like the Russian playbook, which has long been aimed at stirring up existing divisions. And I think what Americans and really people around the world ought to remember with this evolving playbook from

trolls to YouTube to leaked audio to fake websites that might look like real journalism is, just do a quick Google, do a quick double check, a quick triple check, because even if it sounds like it might be real, that's exactly what the Russians are betting on. That's exactly what Putin is betting on. And it's all aimed, at least in this campaign, at propping up Putin and securing his grip on power and weakening U.S. and Western support to Ukraine, which again, back to this intelligence assessment, the U.S. intelligence community assesses that Russia may also attempt to interfere in U.S. politics this year with the aim of decreasing Western alliances, right, and stirring up those divisions.

But we do have to be on guard, no matter what YouTube does or doesn't do. Yeah, I mean, it's just the prevalence of this, right, began in 2016. I'm sure it began before that, but we weren't paying attention. We didn't have eyes on it in the way that we did post the 2016 election. And we've seen it just ramp up. Like, you know, I said at the beginning, we went from troll farms to now entire fake websites and newspapers and systems that go to such a. length to cover their tracks. Now again, what you reported on right here is sloppy. I don't necessarily

think that precision is the goal. I think it's just, you know, to kind of blow a dandelion and see where the seeds go and hope that they take root somewhere. I wonder on your end, like as you're investigating things like this, is it sophistication that we're looking for? Or is it the blanketing of disinformation that we're looking for because I feel that if the analytics of like a Google and a YouTube are just looking for sophisticated sites, then I feel like we're missing the forest for the trees. Yeah. I mean, I think it's not necessarily sophistication that we're looking out for, right?

And that is, I think, one of the hardest things to untangle for folks, especially who aren't necessarily tracking Russian disinformation on a daily basis or any disinformation. right, is that we make it out, you know, headlines might even make it sound like this is really sophisticated. And I think even in days past there were headlines that maybe I wrote that said, you know, really sophisticated Russian information operation. And there are, there are different prongs of different information operations we've seen through the years, right? We saw Russia hire out and have some different outposts in various countries in Africa focused on information operations. It's not that these things have necessarily been easy and sloppy 100% of the time.

But I think that's what we're dealing with now. And, you know, in terms of, of how far it goes, you know, whether it's blanketing the field in the coming months, I think we'll have to watch and see what happens. But we also know that the election year changes a couple of things for Russia, but Russia is playing the long game here. And they have been, they've been focused on decreasing Western support to Ukraine and diluting Western support to Ukraine and sowing those seeds of doubt and disinterest and allegations of corruption since 2022. That's not necessarily new here. I'll be tracking, of course, you know, does the case, does the technical use change? Is it blanketed? And, you know, maybe they'll throw us a

plot twist too and just become ultra-sophisticated in the coming months we'll have to see it. You're looking for the blanketing. You're looking for the disinformation. And I'm just wondering, like, will it just get worse in your opinion from what you're seeing? Or is there a way for these companies like YouTube, like, you know, like meta and the like to get more sophisticated in their ability to seek these out and take these kinds of elements down. My guess is that it's going to take a lot of folks like Darren Linville, other researchers, myself and other reporters calling them up and asking them why these disinformation operations are still online, why the misinformation policies they claim to have are being violated.

Why is it allowed for these clear and identified Russian disinformation sites to be ranked second and third in search? Why can't we do better? I mean, part of this too is, and this is pulling from a page of Darren's book who is really excellent, and I recommend everybody go take a look at his research. It's very extensive and interesting, which is that some of these websites are using generative AI to create their reports. So it's like cribbing information and content from Fox News or from other news websites and just

tweaking it a little bit to make it look a little bit different. And I think watching that tech and how they continue to use AI will be really interesting and see if there's innovation there that they can lean on. And on the sloppy side of things, these websites that we looked at, Miami Chronicle and Clear Story News, had these fake AI, they appeared to be AI generated images at least that looked like really cartoonish versions of what's probably meant to be Tori Newland and Jim O'Brien. And some of that stuff is just so blatantly fake, which I just saw the dimension as well. Yeah.

Well, Shannon, I thank you so much for your report. And folks, if you are interested in this kind of level of, you know, the politics of war and disinformation and espionage and all of the happenings, pretty much that are influencing our elections do follow Shannon's writing at the Daily Bee. Shannon really appreciate you making the time for the new abnormal. Thank you for having me. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are we starting out this lovely, lovely spring week in America? with your fuck that guy.

Yeah, I'm going to go with someone. I feel like this is someone we've let slide recently. Oh. We haven't named him in a while. And he is one of the world's most famous son-in-laws. And his name is Jared Kushner. Mm. And he has just developed a deal with Serbia.

Of course he did. To develop a site in the capital city. of Belgrade, and it would give him a 99-year lease at no charge. He can build a luxury hotel and apartment complex and a museum there. What makes this interesting is that, this is according to New York Times, back in 2013, Donald Trump wanted to do this. And Trump organization went in and they inspect of the location and all of this stuff, but they couldn't get the project together before Trump became president, so obviously he couldn't make the deal. So it's a little interesting that his son-in-law is now making this deal that Donald Trump wanted very badly to make back in

2013. Kushner claims that he never discussed this deal with Trump and that he wasn't even aware that Donald Trump had tried to make a similar deal back in 2013. If you believe that, I think you should send me $2 million and I will repay it the next day. Rick Rinell, who was Trump's special envoy in the Balkans, helped Kushner make this deal. He also said he had no idea that Donald Trump had been interested in this site back in 2013. It is just unbelievable that we are sitting here and we've had, I don't know, How many hearings about Hunter Biden and nonstop Republicans going after Hunter Biden? And meanwhile, here is Donald Trump's son-in-law making half-billion dollar deals that Donald himself wanted to make.

He's making this deal with the help of a guy who was in Donald Trump's administration, who served, again, as a special envoy to that region. I don't know. I was going to say I try not to be cynical, but that's a lie. I guess a better way to put this is no matter how cynical I am, I still, like, I look at this stuff and I'm like, they're just doing it. Like, they're just outright doing it. And we're not doing, no one's doing anything to stop them. This is the world we live in. So for all those reasons, fuck Jared Kushner, fuck Rick Rennell and fuck Donald Trump.

Fuck them all. Yeah. This is just that deal. Like, where was the fucking investigation into the two Billy that he got from the Saudi Prince right after? He left the White House. Like, where the fuck is that investigation, to be honest? Like, anyone, like, does Merrick Garland have a fucking pulse these days? Or is it weekend at Bernie's over there?

Like, where the fuck is he? Oh, my God. You want to talk about somebody who should, like, is forever a fuck that guy for me? Fucking Merrick Garland. No, for sure. Weekendap Merrick's has a great ring to it. Yeah. I hate him.

All right, Danielle. So start off your spring week, since I respect your time. truth. Who's your fuck, that guy? Look, I need to advance the blossoming of something other than my rage. So there it is. I'm starting off this week. Has anybody asked for Judge Aline Canons like school transcripts? Like, did she go to law school? Is the question that I have. Because every time that she issues some type of opinion or statement, all of the legal analysts on the TV, are like, what did she say?

What does this mean? It doesn't make any sense. Like, I feel like she just got in there maybe and like batted eyelashes. I have no idea. But Ailing Cannon, we all know, is in the pocket of Donald Trump and has been. And that's why she was placed down in Florida on the bench without any experience whatsoever. And she is doing exactly what she was put there to do, which is issuing these orders that don't actually make really any sense.

So let me just give you a little piece of this from salon.com. So canon, according to Salon, shot down Trump's motion arguing that the Espionage Act is unconstitutionally vague when applied to a former president. So he's trying to get a motion to dismiss the classified documents case over the presidential records and his ability to have full immunity and blah, blah, blah. And so the order, though, that she issues is just an odd one. And this is what it says, which is that Trump's arguments warrant, quote, serious consideration. And first of all, if you're using the phrase serious consideration and Trump in the same sentence of something that he wants, you haven't considered it at all.

You haven't because all of his lawyers are fucking idiots and they just throw everything at the wall to see what's stick. So no, we know that it doesn't warrant serious consideration. We know it's a delay tactic and it actually has no merit. But then she goes on to write this rather than prematurely decide now on them trying to argue the espionage act, she denied the motion and then basically instructed Trump's team that they could raise it again in another time. I'm like, what is happening here? What is happening? And why, again, is this woman not under investigation?

She has been humiliated multiple times now by three panel judges' decisions that strike her decisions down. She has been laughed at by other academics for not knowing basic things. So again, I say, where does the sequencing happening for people who don't know how to to do their job to be removed from their job. Because I'm telling you, I really want to go back in time and become a judge. Because apparently anyone can be one. Well, I don't think there's a legal requirement that you have a law degree to be a judge.

So I don't even think you have to go back in time, Daniel. You're right. Just throw your hat in the ring. Just give me a gavel. Give me a gavel and a black gown. Because apparently, I had no idea. It wasn't president that little kids should wish to be or a few. or a magician, you should just wish to be a judge because apparently you get to do whatever

the fuck you want. And also, you have a sugar daddy for your entire life, too. So you get an allowance forever if you're one of the Supremes. So that's great too. I did it all wrong. Are a lot of kids really wishing to be a magician? I don't know, Andy, but I'd like to disappear. So there's that. There's that. So for that reason and all the convoluted reasons that come out of Florida, under the guise of Alien Cannon, she is my, fuck that guy, fuck that girl, fuck that dumb, dumb to start off this week. Yep, no arguments here.

I would just end by encouraging new abnormal listeners to start a draft Danielle Moody campaign to be a New York state judge. And I think we could get her on the ballot and I think it'd be really good for her and the country. Thank you. Thank you, Andy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it,

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