The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Latest Interview With Time Magazine Is Also His Scariest to Date

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

Donald Trump gave a lengthy interview this week for a cover story in Time Magazine—and it sure scared The New Abnormal co-hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy. Then, Rolling Stone politics reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez joins the program to discuss Trump’s terrifying rhetoric. Plus! Brothers and investigative reporters Brody Mullins and Luke Mullins stop by The New Abnormal to discuss their new book, “The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Rolling Stone's politics reporter Nikki McCann Ramirez joins us to talk about her recent pieces on, well, the latest nonsense coming out of Donald Trump's mouth. Then investigative reporter and brothers, Brody and Luke Mullins, are here to talk about their new book, The Wolves of K Street, the secret history of how big money took over big government. But first, let's have some fun. So, as if these weeks in America don't get any worse. Like literally, when we start out the show at the beginning of the week, it takes us everything in life to get to the end. And this week, Time Magazine said, fuck it. I'm going to ruin your day on a Monday.

And they did so with their interview with Donald Trump, which my God, if there is any doubt about, what a second Trump term will look like. He laid it out in no explicit terms. And it needs to be in bold. It needs to be shouted on every rooftop. And I just want to read just a brief piece of what came out of that Time magazine article. Quote, what emerged in two interviews with Trump and conversations with more than a dozen of his closest advisors and confidants were the outlines of any outlines of any.

imperial presidency that would reshape America and its role in the world. To carry out a deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million people from the country, Trump told me he would be willing to build migrant detention camps and deploy the U.S. military, both at the border and inland. He would let red states monitor women's pregnancies and prosecute those who violate abortion bans. He would, at his personal discretion, withhold funds appropriated by Congress, according to top advisors. And, oh, he would be willing to fire a U.S. attorney who doesn't carry out his orders to prosecute someone breaking with a tradition of independent law enforcement that dates from America's founding. Folks, that's just, you know, a little tidbit from the top

of the Time Magazine piece, my fucking God. It's like those old infomercials, you know, but wait, there's more. Like, it just keeps going on. It's incredible as if that weren't enough reasons right there to keep this guy as far away from the Oval Office as possible. He's talking about pardoning every single one of the capital rioters, the treasonists, as I like to call them. He will deploy the National Guard to American Cities as he sees fit.

He will close the White House Pandan. preparedness office, and he will staff his administration with people who back his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. I think our listeners know what's coming if Trump gets elected. Like there's a quote in the article from Kellyanne Conway saying, I don't think it's a big mystery what his agenda would be, but I think people will be surprised at the alacrity with which he will take action. I think that's probably true for a lot of the country. I guess what I'm getting at is we've talked a lot on this podcast about Project 2025 and stuff like that. And I do think, you know, our listeners, and not just from us, because our listeners are. I've seen the data, Danielle,

they are in the top 0.01% of intelligence in the country and also personal attractiveness. It's really quite something. Stop pandering. Jesus. I think that the truth never panders, Jesse. I do think that she has a point there that I think there are a lot of people who don't realize how much of this stuff he will start executing. on day one. And we've heard it from him. He said he'll be a dictator on day one. There's a segment of this country that isn't Trump supporters, but that for some reason still refuses to take him as seriously as he needs to be taken. Those people, I God, I hope they read these interviews. And I hope that Time Magazine actually has a longer thing that is a full transcript of the

interviews. And it's just, I mean, it's long. But I feel like it should be force fed to people Clark-Rourne-style who are still like sort of on the fence or undecided. Because the man is insane. I mean, he's just flat out insane. He wants to be a dictator. None of this is hyperbole. It's just the reality of where we are. What I think is really disturbing, too, is that I don't believe that the majority of the country recognizes how quickly things will change within the first 100 days of a Trump presidency. You are not dealing with the same clown car that you were dealing with in the first administration where there was a revolving door, idiots and buffoons that were coming in and out of this White House. The team of people that he has put around him know what they are doing.

They are the who's who of like evil villains, but they absolutely know what they're doing. They know how to manipulate the media. They know who to poll. in order to pressure and manipulate states. When he says that he would block congressional funding, I just want to remind folks that during the pandemic, he didn't want to send aid to New York and other places where we had governors at that time that were readily pushing back against, you know, the idea that we should all shoot up bleach and shine lights up our asses, that he wasn't going to give resources that were allocated to states that he did not like. And we know that if he had the power to do that over again, he would do it with more states. And he's telling us this. And so when we talk

about Project 2025, we talk about the 20,000 plus people that are ready to take over government agencies and gut them from the inside out when these folks are saying that they're going to rid, you know, the country of the quote unquote deep state, you know, career employees, career public servants with institutional knowledge about how things work, all of those people will be gone on day one. And who is going to come in their place, did not pledge an allegiance to the Constitution. They pledging allegiance to Donald Trump by having to admit that, oh, yes, sir, we believe the election was stolen, just so that they have their jobs. You know, you've hit on it there, like in addition to, you know, replacing the bureaucracy or

whatever you want to call it, with loyalists, as opposed to just, you know, workers who are supposed to be doing their job. Trump is also not going to make, and he has said this. He said, he said, I think he says it actually in this interview, but he said it before. He was asked in this interview about the fact that some of his closest advisors from his first term say that he poses a danger to the republic. And his response to that is, well, I let them quit because I have a heart. I didn't want to embarrass anybody. I don't think I'll do that again. From now on, I'll fire. And the point there is, as horrific as someone like Bill Barr is, even he had a line, at least at the time. Now, of course, he says he'll vote for Trump.

So you got to question that line. But the point is he won't make that quote unquote mistake again of hiring a Bill Barr who might once every four years grow a conscience for 15 minutes and stop Trump from doing something that is illegal and or unconstitutional. The people that he is going to surround himself with are going to be 100% loyalists, 100% cronies, and that's going to be the Attorney General of the United States, and it's going to be the head of every agency in Washington. It's going to be everyone on his national security staff. There aren't going to be people there who say, no, Mr. President, you can't do that. And there was at least a sliver of that in the first Trump administration, which stopped some things from happening. That is gone in a second administration. And then there are people who say,

well, but, you know, he can only do so much like, you know, the courts will stop. Really? The courts? Which court? Which court? I mean, even forgetting the Supreme Court, we've got to talk about how many members of the Court of Appeals and the U.S. District courts he appointed. We've got an entire circuit, the Fifth Circuit, which every day issues a ruling that flies in the face of logic and flies in the face of the Constitution. But whether it's banning myth for Preston or whatever, they're literally making up law. And they're all Trump appointees. And if they're not Trump appointees, there are other Republican appointees who know where their bread is buttered. So there's going to be very little, I think, in terms of

guardrails here. I think people need to get really, really hip to that fact. I am concerned, as we continue to talk about this on this show, as we count down to this election, that Donald Trump's saying everything out loud, putting everything in print saying everything at his rallies isn't enough. I am concerned that they are already in red states monitoring women's pregnancies. Do we know that? Like, do folks get that? That like next up is going to be from the moment that your menstrual cycle starts, that that is on government record. And then, you know, just put that cycle up against your travel plans. And all of a sudden, there's no more freedom of movement. We've already had states pass laws that allow you to use an unnecessary

medical invasive procedure such as a wand inside of a woman that is unnecessary that doctors have said but just to punish women. Just on that, if you are a woman, if you have a uterus, if you have kids, this is crazy. And he said it. It should be up to states. And every time that he's asked about a national abortion ban. He says, oh, I'll just leave it up to states. Bullshit, you'll leave it up to states. Because white evangelical Christians are chomping at the bit, waiting for Donald Trump to become president of the United States so they can just one more major step.

But it won't stop there. So I, you know, I want people to take this interview at its word, take him at his word, because he means everything that he says. Yeah. The one thing I don't think he's. he means in this interview, which is one of the things where the interviewer kind of gave him a, you know, kind of let it go. It says, if he wins, Trump would be a lame duck. The interview here is talking about things that would maybe hold Trump back from passing everything he wants. And he

says, if he wins, Trump would be a lame duck. Contrary to the suggestions of some supporters, he tells time he would not seek to overturn or ignore the Constitution's prohibition on a third term. Really? You buy that? Because I don't. So here's the thing. At the time of this recording, Biden issued a statement on the college campus protests that have spread across the country and also around the world. And what Biden has said in his very brief statement is that dissent, quote, dissent must never lead to disorder and that, you know, there are peaceful ways to protest that doesn't go about breaking the law. And, pretty much admonished those who built encampments, those who were peacefully protesting,

until cops in militarized riot gear came in to spray rubber bullets at them, which they did at UCLA. I got to tell you, and I will speak solely for myself, I'm not quite sure how you make a statement like this with regard to dissent needing to be orderly. because that's the absolute fucking opposite of what dissent looks like. So then these are the same folks that want to lift up Martin Luther King on a regular fucking basis. Well, it was illegal for black people to go and sit at lunch counters in all white establishments. But in order to change the laws of segregation, they had to break the law.

They had to disrupt what was considered to be orderly segregation. So I'm not quite sure how you go about creating massive change and doing so while upholding the laws of oppression. But, you know, what the fuck do I know? Okay. I think there's two issues here. There's an issue of right or wrong. And I'm going to leave that aside for a second. And I'm going to talk about the issue of raw politics.

When Biden says, as he said in this statement, he said, destroying property is not a peaceful protest. it is against the law, vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest. Okay, so I fully believe that the majority of the country, the vast majority of the country, agrees with that. And that includes the vast majority of most Democrats. From a purely political perspective, just raw politics, morality, not an issue that I'm talking about here. I think this doesn't hurt him. at all. I think a lot of people, again, including most Democrats, looked at what happened at,

I'll say Columbia University and looked at occupying Hamilton Hall, which is a classroom and administration building, and saw in their minds what they saw, because we hear this every time they're just doing protest. Look at these spoiled rich kids, taking over this building, etc., etc. And setting aside the fact that, at least from my experience, this was a long time ago, but it wasn't the rich students who were protesting. Trust me on that. But again, that's a separate issue. My point is, purely political standpoint, I don't think he's hurting himself here.

I know there are people online and elsewhere who say he's losing the youth vote. He's losing the youth vote. That may be true. I think overall what he is saying there is in line with the modern Democratic Party and really is in line with the Democratic Party throughout, let's be honest, most of the 60s, to the present. There's always the more progressive elements or the more left elements of the Democratic Party that has sympathy for protests and that says, look, you got to, sometimes you got to do things like occupy a building. Or as you pointed out, Danielle, when black people sat at counters,

they were not supposed to be sitting at, that was trespassing. According to Joe Biden, that's not an okay way to show dissent. I don't think most of these people really know what they're saying when they say that, including him. Because as, As you absolutely perfectly pointed out, what that means for the civil rights protests in the 1960s is that you're saying they were illegitimate. They shouldn't have done it that way, which is a very, very conservative idea, but is not something that the Democratic Party is supposed to feel. So I don't think they really think these things through and I think, oh, well, this is different. This is, again, this is spoiled college kids. You know what?

I mean, really, that's not their determination to make. opinion. But again, I don't think this hurts him electorally. What I will say, because I will, as we used to do on Capitol Hill, respectfully disagree. What I will say is that it isn't just youth that are watching this moment, and I believe that the youth vote is absolutely important. It is the base of the Democratic Party, which are communities that are historically marginalized, black people, people of color, Latinx folks that are watching this and they're saying to themselves, you know, particularly as you say that, you know, dissent needs to be orderly. I can't name a protest.

Can anyone else name a protest that has happened that has brought the attention that it needed when the late John Lewis and SNCC was told, don't you organize? The governors are saying, we're going to shut this down. Don't you walk across that bridge? there'll be cops meeting you on the other side. Don't you take that freedom rider bus, right? To these sunset towns like, give me a fucking break. Protest looks like disruption.

It does not look like making the systems of oppression safe and comfortable. And do I think at all that things should be violent? No, but the violence that I have seen, militarized police coming in for unarmed college students, where was that heat on January 6th? Where was that weight on January 6th? Where was that in Charlottesville in 2017? Unarmed college students were going in like you're taking over a terrorist group?

Give me a fucking break. So it is the irresponsibility of the media that kept playing these images over and over again, all for the clickbait of it. But the fact is, is that this country was founded on protest when a group of people decided that they didn't want to pay taxes anymore and they came here and fuck some shit up. So let us not forget. Like what America was founded on. I guess what we're saying here is that throwing tea into a harbor is not a peaceful protest and is against the law.

You know, just saying, but you know, we don't read history books anymore. So how would we tie these things together? Yeah. And also, I mean, you mentioned John Lewis and he, of course, is associated with the very famous phrase, good trouble. You are saying with that phrase is that, yeah, I'm doing something that may be illegal, but I'm doing it. It's good trouble. I personally don't like what Biden said. And I hear you.

And I shouldn't have said, I shouldn't have just focused on the youth vote. Because you're right. It's people of color. It's Muslim Americans. It's a lot of people. I just think that electorally, I don't think it's going to hurt him the way a lot of other people think. Well, I pray we can get our shit together because we have but a handful of days left. But, you know.

187. Thank you, Jesse. 187. Ah! There we go. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal politics reporter at Rolling Stone, Nikki McCann Ramirez, who covers breaking political news, far-right media, and misinformation. You have a very busy beat.

Nikki, I want to start off. You have two pieces that are up right now at Rolling Stone, and I kind of want to start with the abortion article entitled, Trump on post row abortion chaos, people are absolutely thrilled. Trump's delusions know no bounds. But talk to us about this piece and what exactly he thinks that people are thrilled about. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you so much for having me on.

As you said, in Trump's view, women across the country are just positively thrilled over the loss of their bodily autonomy. Yesterday, Trump during a rally in Waukesha, Wisconsin, told a crowd of supporters that, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned and the issue of abortion has been returned to the states, people are quote unquote absolutely thrilled with the way that's going on. And he waxed at length about how all these great legal experts, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, everyone wanted to get abortion out of the federal government, that there was universal clamor for Roe v. Wade to be overturned, which is fundamentally untrue. But I think it speaks to the reality that Trump and Republicans have sort of screwed themselves in the aftermath of

row simply because these policies, the draconian anti-abortion, anti-reproductive freedom policies that are being implemented in states across the country are deeply unpopular with voters and are having real horrific repercussions for American women. So Trump is now caught in this scenario where electorally, abortion is terrible. Every ballot measure that's been put to voters in various states has succeeded. A lot of these laws are getting overturned. We saw in Arizona just this week that lawmakers overturned a civil era ban on abortion, a sort of zombie law that had been revived earlier this month. So clearly people are not thrilled about this. But if Trump comes out and attempts to soften his stance on abortion and pretend that, you know, he accomplished everything

he set out to do in his first term. That engineer's backlash from the political right, who is still deeply committed to further restricting women's bodily autonomy in this country. So he's walking a really shitty type robe that he created for himself. It's like, honestly, no one's fault but his own. I mean, I can only pray that it snaps the rope that he's walking on. But what I think is really ridiculous, right is the idea that you know places that we have seen abortion be put on the ballot in Kansas in Ohio they have all now written abortion access and bodily autonomy like into law in those states that any time that the voters have the ability to have their voices heard they vote for abortion they vote for choice they vote for bodily autonomy and I think that what

Donald Trump does here, and you tell me, is his base is not done. Like, abortion isn't the end. It was the beginning of their war against women and uteruses. That what we've seen is you give them an inch and they'll take the whole fucking country. It isn't just abortion. It will be birth control. It is IVF. And so now, at the time of this recording, you know, this week, Florida's 15-week abortion ban is now down to six weeks, and the doctors in that state are now having to scramble. And when you look at the map, Nikki, there's nowhere for women to go. Like, if you're in Florida, you have to manage to get yourself, I think the closest state would be North Carolina, right, if you're going north. And so how do you think that, like, his rhetoric on the campaign trail matches with what is happening on the ground?

in these states and the issue just as we get closer to November doesn't go away. Oh, absolutely. And I think it's abundantly clear, even to his own supporters, that a lot of his rhetoric on the campaign trail is a farce. And the wink and a nod, he gives his supporters there is whenever he talks about this issue and, you know, gives the line of, it's up to the states now. It'll sort itself out according to the will of the voters, is that right after that, he says, oh, well, you know, you have to follow your heart on these political issues, but you have to win elections. I think it's abundantly clear even to his supporters that, like you said, there are nowhere close to being done that this is a tactic for him to soften his stance,

soften his presentation for independent voters or conservatives who might be a little skeptical on the abortion issue, make himself more palatable. So in the moment that he assumes office, and as we saw in the time interview that came out this week, grants himself all the executive powers, he can continue carrying out the agenda he was operating under during his first term. And like you said, there's no breaks here. There's no limit on where conservatives will be comfortable on the abortion issue. For them, it is a matter of like life at conception. Any pregnancy should be carried to term.

They're talking about potentially surveilling women who are pregnant, criminalizing doctors and who provide abortions and women who receive them. And frankly, even if Trump keeps up the act, you still have governors and state legislatures and state Supreme courts who are not necessarily beholden to what he says. I'm glad that you brought up the time article. One of the things that he said in there is that states will have the ability to monitor women's pregnancies. And I will go a step further and say, no, they're not just going to monitor women's pregnancies. They're going to monitor women's menstrual cycles as well. And then be able to put that against a woman's travel plan.

So and, you know, why are you leaving the state? When he says these things in interviews, it's hard to believe that then when he's asked directly about a national abortion ban, he says, oh, no, but we won't do that. Is anyone buying that? I don't know if anyone is necessarily buying it in the sense that they're convinced that he's earnest. I think people are just sort of credulous because in effect, what Trump is proposing and what Republicans are proposing is to make women prisoners to their own biology and the whim of the state.

Again, like he's saying, it's about winning elections right now. It's about getting to November, winning election day, contesting the election if he doesn't win outright, and then implementing this unitary executive theory that he and his allies have been cooking up and running ragged with the institutions that protect women's civil rights in this country. And fundamentally, I don't think there's anything he could say right now that would cause his supporters to abandon him. I think we saw it last month when he first.

came out and sort of pivoted away from supporting the 15-week abortion ban to saying that it was now a state's rights issue. Anti-abortion groups came out and very softly were like, oh, well, we still wish he would prioritize these goals that we have, but he is still the pro-life candidate, so we're going to support him. I don't think anyone thinks that this is an earnest pivot on his part. It's an electoral ploy. It's an electoral ploy that is so transparent in its fallacy and in its bullshit that he he's offering. And I think that, you know, one of the things that the Biden and the Biden campaign is seizing on is this issue, is abortion. And using Donald Trump's own words at his rallies against him in ads that they are putting out that say, you know, Trump did this. Like when they're running

ads about women telling these horrific stories that they have faced, you know, death in a parking lot in order to get the health care that they need, you know, the ad ends with Trump did this. And so I don't foresee how he both owns, you know, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, where he gets these big applause and says, you know, I appointed these judges and they did the right thing. And then at the same time, says, oh, but I'm going to leave it up to the states to decide when you know that this Republican party is full steam ahead. I want to make a just, just a pivot, but, you know, staying on, staying on Trump, but going into what you just said right before, which is about Donald Trump accepting the 2024 election results. I mean, it's four years later.

and he hasn't accepted the 2020 election result. And so he says, you know, you quote him in this piece as basically saying if the election is quote unquote honest, if he feels it's honest. What does that mean? It means that he's leaving the door open for him to do exactly what he did in 2020. I mean, we know that there was not widespread fraud in the 2020 election, but he felt that there was. He didn't feel it was honest.

So what's stopping him from taking the exact same approach? This isn't a man who's operating on every day. of ballot counts in every single single state, he's operating off of the notion that he deserves the presidency. And if he doesn't win, there was fraud. And I think it's not the first time he's made a statement like this. He made a virtually verbatim statement in a town hall with CNN last year, that like really disastrous town hall with Caitlin Collins that got him sued by Eugene Carroll again, that one. He said a similar thing that, oh, I'll endorse the election results if they're honest. But we already know that his legal team, his advisors, are already building a strategy to challenge

election results in 2024. It's not like he's, oh, well, you know, I'm just going into it blind. And if everything goes well in November, then, you know, there won't be a problem. He's already mapping out how he's going to make level challenges in battleground states. Because for him, it's make or break this time around. We know, again, pointing to the article, which did a fantastic job, fantastic and terrifying job of sort of summarizing all of these horrific policy proposals, the true extent of what Trump's platform is going to be in 2024. If they're willing to gut all these federal institutions and dismantle all of these checks and balances that we have on the excess of presidential power, if he's willing to do that,

what on the truth is stopping him from challenging the 24 election? Nothing. He likes to play coy. Oh, if it's good, if it's honest, then I'll accept the results. But frankly, he's already laying the groundwork to repeat 2020. So don't believe it. The repeat of 2020 looks like 60-some-od court cases that were thrown out. Looks like his private attorney facing two different trials. It looks like a RICO trial that's happening in Georgia. It looks like I don't know, even know how many people were indicted in Arizona. I think it was, was about 19 or 20, similarly with who was indicted in Georgia. And so I'm just wondering, like, who is going to be willing to do the same thing for Donald Trump over again that has them land with an indictment and potential jail time? Well, I think part of it is that they have in a way learned from the mistakes they made, quote unquote mistakes in the 2020 election, because I think their strategy at the time was to pursue it

through the established legal avenues. My colleagues at Rowling Stone published a piece earlier this week about how they are essentially auditioning a new legal team that could challenge the results of the election months in advance of certification day. He's basically saying that we will challenge the election, but we won't commit the errors we committed last time. And I think one of the key differences is that this time around, he already has the Republican party in the fold.

On January 6th of 2021, a lot of Republicans. I'm sure you recall came out and said that this was unacceptable, that like the peaceful transfer of power needed to be respected, all that jazz. Most of those Republicans are now fully on the propaganda line that the January 6th rioters were just, you know, misguided tourists who are being like wrongfully prosecuted, that all the prosecutions of fake electors in various states are political prosecutions. He now has the full backing of the Republican Party. and I don't see a scenario where he doesn't leverage that to his advantage. I just, I mean, I guess like the rule of law doesn't actually change on this. And the fact is that, yeah, they may have tested the fences back in 2021, but the logic remains the same.

So you can get a whole new band of lawyers to, you know, to put up, trumped up, you know, bullshit. But the fact is, is that we've already seen this play out in a multitude of way. so he can get a quote unquote serious firm behind him instead of Rudy Giuliani standing in front of a landscape building with sweat and die running down his face, claiming that the election was stolen. But it's like, we've already run through this. We know what you're doing. And so for me, I don't think that it matters who is going to be levying these bullshit concerns

because I think that the courts themselves are like, yeah, this is actually a step too far. Am I crazy? No, I don't think you're crazy, not at all. I think it's a very valid assessment. It simply hinges on the cooperation of the courts and the bureaucrats and all of these institutions that Republicans during the Trump years heavily filled in with, you know, Trump loyalists, mega conservatives. Again, the hope and the prayer is that he levels an election, like a challenge to the election

and people will just tell them to fuck off. But I think it's also important to note that he did this. 2020. And while there are still these pending court cases, they remain unresolved. And if he makes it into the presidency, he can wipe that slate clean. He can wipe that slate of accountability clean. He can pardon all the people involved. He can pardon the January 6 rioters. And he can basically rework the bureaucracy of the federal government, the institutions, the checks and balances we have to ensure that any future candidate who wants to act in the way he acted can do it again and and face little to no repercussion from the law, face no barriers.

So, you know, it's also part of the process is ensuring that we are prepared for these challenges that election officials and states have the support needed to ensure that they can weather the protesters, the people who could come and try and fuck with ballot counts. And that is something where I think like six months ahead of the election, we're still lacking. We've had a ton of election workers leave. the sphere. I don't know if it's necessarily called a profession because a lot of them are volunteers. Right. But a lot of people are no longer participating in the civic process because of the fear of a repeat of 2020. So I think it's also incumbent on Democrats to ensure that they are

bolstering the sort of logistics network around the elections and making sure that the people tasked with ensuring that our elections are carried out fairly and with integrity have the resources to do that. Yeah, and I think that that's right. I think that one, while we've seen this play out before, I think also to remember, you know, that he is calling for a bloodbath if things don't go his way. And so it isn't just about him going back through the courts. It's also about him weaponizing his supporters. Weaponizing his supporters in a January 6th, you know, 2.0 bigger and badder and more dangerous than it was the first time. So the fact is, I appreciate your coverage because people need to take Donald Trump at his word. They need to take what he's saying

seriously. It's not a sneak dis. It's like it's a very clear about what he wants to do to our republic and folks need to pay attention to that. Yeah, he's been planning this for almost four years and this time he does not intend to lose. Nikki, appreciate you making the time for the new abnormal and you're writing at Rolling Stone. I hope that you'll come back and join us again. Always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Through the startling coincidence of having the same parents, investigative journalists Brody Mullins of the Wall Street Journal and Luke Mullins of Politico are brothers. And now together they've written an absorbing new book called The Wolves of K Street, which looks at the secret history of how big money took over big government. The book is out May 7th, and Brody and Luke join me now.

Guys, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having it. Thanks for having us. So the book shows the rise of the modern lobbyist, which you trace back to the 1970s. But before we get to how everything changed in the 70s and how this rise came about, can you briefly talk about what lobbying in America was like historically? Something that Luke and I were both native Washingtonians found amazing is that we're living now in an era of extreme corporate power.

And we thought that corporations were always really powerful in Washington. You know, we know that companies are powerful now. And you look back and you remember the railroad era and the J.P. Morgan's and the pre-trust busting era and thought that, well, companies must have been powerful for the last hundred years. But it turns out that after the early 20th century, when we had the Trust Busters and we had the Sherman Antrust Act, and we basically created regulations on the bigness of companies, that companies actually did not have much influence in Washington for most of the last century. It said labor unions, environmental groups, civil rights groups, had lots of power, you know, citizens groups, really. And as a result of that, we had tons of growth in the government and new programs and departments and agencies that protected the air we breathe and the labor laws and, you know, labor laws. creating weekends and, you know, all sorts of regulations on society to help consumers in the

American public. Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, during the 60s and 70s, what happens is that labor groups and environmental groups and public interest groups really become so powerful that once the economy starts to go into collapse, businesses, the corporate sector really starts to feel almost that it's in a state of existential crisis where their profit margins are decreasing and, you know, they're losing all these battles in Washington. So that leads us to really where our book starts, which is this sort of revolution of corporate power, corporate political power that begins in the early 70s. What I took from the book is it's all Ralph Nader's fault. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's sort of extraordinary to think now that a consumer activist could have

wielded that much power, but in fact, he did, you know, I mean, he basically almost single-handedly, he sort of spearheaded what became, you know, an entire new, new federal agency after, you know, what he was writing about at cars, essentially. And in doing so, taking on the most powerful U.S. industry at the time and making those powerful U.S. company at the time, GM. I mean, GM was, you know, what's good for GM is good for America. It's sort of like this one guy taking on Google right now and winning. Yeah.

No, for sure. Okay. So we come to the 70s and exaggerating a little for effect, Ralph Nader causes businesses, corporations, and entire industries to decide they need to start working Washington in earnest. And so the book really looks at three lobbying dynasties, as you call them. Let's start with a man named Tommy Boggs. What did he bring to the table and how did he help pave the way for the rise of K Street? Yeah, so one of the things our book does, besides describing their growth of corporate power,

is sort of show how corporations have changed how they lobby and influence Washington. And Tommy Boggs is a perfect character to show both. He was the first corporate lobbyist of the modern era, and he was a type of, lobbyists. It represents how lobbying used to work, which was with campaign checks and insider cozy relationships with lawmakers. Tommy Boggs was the ultimate Washington insider. His dad was a member of Congress becoming the number two House Democrat when Boggs was in high school and elementary school. When his dad died in a in a plain disappearance in Alaska, his mom was elected to Congress. So both of his parents were members of Congress. For summer jobs, he worked for LBJ. He worked on Capitol Hill.

He was an elevator operator. He got to know. know every important member of Congress on Capitol Hill, mostly Democrats, because Democrats are the ones who mattered. So at some point, he decided to leave the White House where he worked for LBJ, and he decided to become a lobbyist. He said, hey, I know all the people who pull the levers of power. I'm going to go basically sell those contacts and connections to corporations. And he became the first mega-corporate lobbyist of that era. And as you point out in the book, a little ironically, he actually worked to oppose and sometimes undo a lot of the stuff that his father had pushed as a powerful number of Congress.

Yeah, absolutely. And that way he sort of represents the kind of arc of the Democratic Party, right, where his father, you know, was a champion of sort of more robust protections for consumers against the market. And, you know, late 70s and into the 80s, you know, Democrats start thinking about moving away from their sort of old allies in the labor union and moving and establishing these allies in corporate America. And Boggs does a lot of his lobbying and also a lot of his fundraising from those new sources that become so influential in the Democratic Party. Back to history, just for

one quick second, just to show how things changed so dramatically in that period. It was Richard Nixon, a Republican, who helped create the EPA. And then once companies started investing in Washington and putting money into campaign donations and to influencing Washington, Democrats started to change and become more pro-corporated, including Jimmy Carter. In the late 1970, 70s, there was a tax bill that Democrats introduced to raise taxes on companies. And Democrats and Carter reversed that and ended up being a corporate tax cut. You would never think that Democrats or Jimmy Carter would do that, but they did. It's wild how much things change. As you point out, starting in the 70s and then continuing into the 80s and through to the 21st century. So you have

Boggs who, of course, ends up being a founding partner of Patent Boggs, which is one of the biggest lobbying firms in Washington for a very long time. And then there's Tony Podesta, who did a similar thing with the Podesta group. He was the president of Norman Lear's People for the American Way. His brother John, of course, was chief of staff to Bill Clinton and also was an advisor to Barack Obama. But what role really did he and his cronies play in really giving us the lovely system we have now? So Podesta, what is fascinating about Podesta to us is that he actually starts as this sort of bare-knuckle liberal activist, sort of as mentioned, working for people for the American way, which was this sort of really pioneering progressive group that was fighting, using contacts in

Hollywood to fight against the influence of the religious right. And Podesta, in his liberal activism, he didn't have the budget to fight the religious right head on. So what he started doing was connecting with his contacts in Hollywood through Norman Lear and basically whipping up public perception and public sentiment against sort of what. what the religious right was doing. We realized that the religious right and the Republican Party and the Reagan Revolution had all the money and power.

They were the incumbents. And he realized he could just use the media to rally regular Americans with small dollars to try to push against the Reagan Revolution and the religious right. And he ended up winning. Yeah. And most famously, he was one of the key lieutenants in the Robert Bork fight in 1987. And he really worked with Ted Kennedy about getting members, in actually church communities to get, you know, riled up against Robert Bork's nomination,

so much so that these congregants would put pressure on their lawmakers to vote against Bork. And sort of this type of activism, he's able to use it later in order to benefit his corporate clients. And basically, what he does is instead of going directly to a member of Congress and ask them to vote a certain way on a certain law, he would sort of, whip up public pressure, either for or against something among various constituents who would then put pressure on their lawmaker. Yeah, it is absolutely wild, as you're reading the book, to realize that

both Tony Podesta and Tommy Boggs came from these, you know, liberal backgrounds, from the Boggs, from the era of the Civil Rights Act and all that stuff. And as you say, working for LBJ and Podesta working with Norman Lear and Bill Clinton and everything. And then they end up just becoming totally in the tank for their corporate clients. And then there's the last of these three dynasties, which is a little bit different in that it's a group of conservatives. It's Charlie Black, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone, who founded the lobbying group Black Manafort and Stone in 1980, along with Lee Atwater, the ultimate political operative and Dirty Trickster. So how did They grow the beast.

Again, we're tracing a little bit of the change and evolution of lobbying tactics. And if you start with Tommy Boggs, he's our insider. Black men, Ford's Stone, were campaign guys. They were out trying to elect Ronald Reagan. They're trying to elect other conservative Republicans to Congress. And we're successful, by the way. What they realize is that in order to win an election, obviously, you have to get 51% of the constituents to support your guy. So when they came to Washington after Reagan was elected, they decided to become lobbyists.

And they realized that the same tactics were. If you go out into the country and get 51% of the Americans in a certain state to support your company's position, then the member of Congress who represent those states are going to be with the company also. So they started adding campaign-style tactics to lobbying. Lobbying today, to jump forward a little bit, is all campaign tactics. You're much more campaign tactics. So for us, Black Manifort and Stone was sort of showing how lobbying is sort of moving from the Tommy Boggs era of a Smokfield Room to much more modern lobbying today, which is taking plate out in states.

And, you know, a good example of this is the work that Black Manifort and Stone did with an Angolan warlord by the name of Jonas Sabimbi. This is, you know, the late 1980s. He is fighting this sort of very bloody civil war in Angola, and he needed support. And he was trying to get support from the U.S. government for arms. And basically, he signed this very lucrative contract with Black Manoform Stone. And one of the things that they did was bring Savindy to the U.S. They dressed him, you know, like he was a statesman, you know, drove him around in a limousine.

You know, he stayed at these really nice hotels, met with all of these influential members of Congress and the press, and really presented him, really made him over and made him look like a worldly figure, the kind of person that you could invest money in. And they sort of made him over as a freedom fighter. fighting, fighting communism. It proved sort of extraordinarily successful in the sense that all types of, you know, money and arms started flowing over there. But that civil war went on for years afterwards, and tens of thousands of innocent civilians died. So you talk a lot in the book about the inside game and the outside game. In fact, I think the first part of the book is titled The Inside Game. The Second Part is The Outside Game. And I think you've touched on it a bit in the interview, but I just want to sort of quantify it. The inside game, that to me is, I think you're referring to like, that's the Tommy Boggs, as you said, the smoke-filled rooms and the meetings with the senators directly.

And then the outside game is more of what Podesta and then Black Manafort and Stone do, where it's really rallying support around the country through campaign-like tactics. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, you think of lobbying, direct lobbying as, you know, hand-to-hand shoe leather lobbying. You're meeting with a member of Congress. The outside game is trying to target the people that sent that Congress person to Washington in the first place to put pressure on them through, you know, TV ads, you know, digital, to get the voters excited for or against something, which they will then put pressure on their member of Congress. It's direct lobbying versus indirect lobbying.

One of the things that we have discovered in our wording is that the number one thing that a member of Congress exists to do is to get reelected. They're going to do whatever their constituents want them to do. And companies know that. So companies know that if they can get a member of Congress's constituents to support a trade bill or oppose a trade bill or support, you know, breaking up big tech, for example, and that's what the member of Congress is going to do. So it's really a big shift from the days of, you know,

when you would hear about the senator from standard oil and stuff like that. Correct. And what's interesting about it is there are all these different industries that radiate out of direct lobbying for these outside game campaigns, they're more expensive. It takes more resources than just a single lobbyist. You also need a PR firm, a grassroots firm, digital, polling, all these things. And what that does is basically grow this industry and turn the lobbying industry from a sort of this what it once was, this sort of group of well-connected insiders to this very sophisticated economy, which we now have. And a problem here is that those traditional lobbyists, the

The people who represent companies or interest groups or environmentalists who go up to Capitol Hill and talk to members of Congress and advocate for against a position, their activities are regulated. They have to file annual or semi-annual reports disclosing who their clients are, how much money they're making, what they're lobbying on behalf, what agencies they're lobbying on behalf. But this new age of lobbyists who work out in the states don't have to disclose their activities at all. So people have no idea how big this industry is or really who is behind some of these efforts. that we see. There's a story you tell in the book that I think perfectly explains this and shows this. It has to do with Arizona Senator Kirsten Cinema and how I want to say it was private equity industry. Yeah, it was private equity industry. Right. And they sort of bragged that they had changed her vote. And then her office said something like, well, they never ever met with her. And in the book,

you're like, well, they didn't have to. Yeah. So the story starts in, when Biden became president, he said he was going to raise taxes on corporations and had particularly focused during the campaign trail on the carried interest tax, which is the artificially low tax rate that private equity managers pay on their income. Biden said he was going to raise that tax. He's going to do it as part of his bill back better plan. And Chris and Sinema was a key vote because Democrats had a razor within margin in the Senate. Every Republican was going to vote no. So Biden needed every Democrat to vote yes.

The private equity industry knew this and went out and ran basically a political campaign for the private equity industry in Arizona. They ran campaign ads. They had social media posting. They had grassroots advocates out there. They had newspaper opinion pieces. And they're all designed to shape cinema's opinion. So cinema eventually said came out against the private equity taxing because she thought it would hurt businesses in her state,

which is exactly the message that the private equity industry was making in her state. So as we say in the book there, she voted against it. The bill failed. There's never actually even a vote on it. She just said she was going to not support it. So Biden was never able to raise those taxes. And we went to her and said, hey, why do you follow the private equity industry? And she said that she'd never spoken to the private equity industry.

And it's because she just listened to her constituents. The industry, the lobbyists were talking to her constituents, not to her. And they won. Yeah. Amazing. The 2016 election and the rise of Trump dischanged things for lobbyists, didn't it? Yeah. I mean, basically the issue was that, you know, when Trump is obviously not expected to win.

So it really caught a K Street off guard. K Street and a lot of corporate lobbying shops had sort of staffed up with Democratic lobbyists. All of a sudden, you know, those Democratic lobbyists aren't going to be much use. At the same time, the Republican lobbyists that did exist had very few ties to Trump. So when Trump wins, it does a couple of things. One, it creates this opportunity for a whole new cast of characters that may have any in all connection to Trump to sort of be able to refashion themselves into sort of a Washington insider. Michael Cohen did this with AT&T, for example.

There was also a guy named Brian Ballard, who was a modest state-based lobbyists in Florida, but who had been Trump's lobbyist in the past, all of a sudden he becomes basically the lobbying power broker of Trump's Washington. Yeah, it's a big shift that happens in 2016. And I'm sorry we didn't have more time to get into it because it's a really interesting part of the book. The book is The Woles of K Street, The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government. It's out this Tuesday, May 7th.

Brody and Luke Mullen, thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy, how are you closing out this good, good, good, terrible week in America? I have a tofer for my fuck that guy. On Thursday, it was an op-ed published in the New York Times. And the headline is Trump embraces lawlessness, but in the name of a higher law, it's written by a guy named Matthew Schmidt.

He is a founder of Compact Magazine. He used to write for a journal called First Things, but he formed this with Sarab Amari, who is a whack job. I don't know other way to describe him because he keeps changing his sort of affiliation. I think he's now like sort of a Christian something or other. Grifter. Yeah. I think that's here. They are really bad this time of year.

It sounded like you said grifter. I don't know what you're talking about. That was quite a sneeze. Anyway, so he wrote this piece, which the New York Times decided was very important to publish in its August op-ed pages. I just want to read one little section. He talks about how there are people who say, hey, Donald Trump embraces lawlessness. and flouts the law at every possible turn. And he says, I'm going to read a little bit of what he wrote.

He wrote, but this understanding of his newfound criminal persona, first of all, it's not newfound, a persona his legal opponents have helped to thrust upon him. No, he has this persona because he is a criminal. Correct. But Mr. Schmidt says that this overlooks something important. Mr. Trump may pose a threat to our political system as it now exists, but it is a threat animated by a democratic spirit. It is the threat of the outlaw hero, a figure of defiance with deep roots in American culture who exposes the injustices and hypocrisies of a corrupt system. It lost me at the butt, but go ahead.

You read this. I could understand this coming from Compact Magazine. That's the shit they do there. For the New York Times to publish this, to publish an op-ed saying that Donald Trump's lawlessness and criminal persona exposes the injustices. of an hypocrisy's of a corrupt system. Donald Trump is the corrupt system. Mm-hmm. And the fact that the New York Times is giving oxygen to this argument, it's not even an argument, it's just a, it's just a screed with no basis in reality. But again, you expect this

from the Matthew Schmitz's of the world. Unfortunately, we sort of come to expect this from the New York Times' of the world. And I think that sucks. The article goes on to talk about how Trump's admirers from the beginning have compared him to Robin Hood. Are you fucking kidding me? This is literally a guy who robs from the poor to give to him. Absolutely insane. You know, he's trying to paint Trump as this, you know, a Wild West outlaw figure, sort of a romantic figure. And I understand that there are people who believe that. There's a word for those people. The word is morons. We don't need to be reading this in the New York Times. If you want to call that cancel culture, I don't give a fuck, call it what you want. The New York Times does not have to dignify this position with its very

valuable op-ed space. There are, uh, off the top of my head, I can think of probably 220 million Americans who could write something that is more intelligent and more reflected in reality than this absolute drivel. So yeah, Michael Schmitz gets one of my fuck that guys, but that's sort of expected. But it's just New York Times like I'm sitting like NYT WID. What are you doing? They are just consistently doing this. What's your goal here? What is your end game?

I'm just over it. I've been over it for a while, but this today on Thursday was really egregious. So fuck those guys. I want to say fuck that guy to the author as well. But doubly fuck those guys to the folks at the New York Times because this kind of both sides bullshit, this gervel didn't need to be published. It could have stayed on that motherfucker's blog where it belonged, not in a supposed legacy institution. So fuck those guys.

All right, Daniel, close out the week. It's sunny. It's warm. Keep us in that spirit. I only wish I could. That's a different show. So apparently, the state of Wyoming, Jesse will fill us in on what the population is because...

About a half a million. Okay. So about the size of Washington, D.C. or a couple of neighborhoods in Brooklyn. But more importantly, Wyoming has decided to... to void 28% of its voter registration and what they were referring to as a, quote, mandatory purge. Not like the purge the movie, evidently, but like what Republicans want to do to all voter rolls, because in this country, apparently, you pick your voters, your voters do not pick your representatives. This is what was written in the WIO file, and it reads this.

There are currently about 83,500 fewer registered voters in the state than at the end of 2022, a roughly 28% drop, according to data, released Wednesday by the Wyoming Secretary of State's office. They did a mandatory purge of people who did not cast a ballot in 2020 and 2022. So because you didn't cast a ballot then, Wyoming said, fuck you, you don't get to cast a ballot now. And oh my God. First of all, Wyoming red state. You know, like we don't have the possibility of winning over, you know, the 500,000 people in Wyoming. But the fact that they would still go to these types of lengths to ensure like the kind of MAGA candidates that they want is just wild.

So again, Republicans, it's not just enough to purge black and brown people to purge young people to make it increasingly difficult each and every election for people to vote, but they don't even want their own voters to vote. Like, they don't want voting at all. And that's the point is this is how you usher in a strong man. This is how you get to a place of authoritarianism. So when these motherfuckers are cheering. on in Maga World, oh yeah, voter suppression, gerrymandering, all of those things. Oh, you know,

what is his face? The new Fisher Price Speaker of the House of Representatives Johnson saying, well, we need to make sure illegals, quote unquote, don't vote, which is not a thing. They don't want anyone to vote, including their own people and case in point. So for that reason, the state of Wyoming, which has no people in it, the lengths that they will go, no, no bounds. So, for that reason, folks, Wyoming, you're my fuck that guy. Yeah, I mean, look, this is the state that thinks Liz Cheney is a socialist traitor. So whatever. But I've said this before.

There is one party in America that wants to make it easier for people to vote. There is one party in America that wants to make it way more difficult for people to vote and wants fewer people to vote. It's really easy on this one to answer the question, who are the good guys here? It just is. So yeah, fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going.

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