The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s Mental Acuity Has Declined Noticeably in the Last Four Years

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy can only see a downhill spiral for Trump’s mental acuity. Plus! Author and journalist Lucian K. Truscott IV dishes on a right-wing media company that doesn't get as much attention as Fox News, but is perhaps equally dangerous. Then, author and professor of philosophy at Georgetown University-Qatar, Karl Widerquist, explains the meaning behind the idea of universal basic income, or UBI. 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.

Author and journalist Lucien K. Truscott the 4th joins us to talk about the history of Sinclair Media Group and their schemes to make the local news right-wing propaganda. That professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, Qatar, Carl Winderquist, is here to tell us about universal basic income. What it is, why we should want it, and why we don't have it. But first, let's have some fun. Where there's so much water you don't know what to do with it, you know, it's cool rain. It rains in a lot in certain places. But now their idea, you know, did you see the other day? They just put, I opened it up and they closed it again.

I opened it, they closed it. Washing machines to wash your dishes is a problem. They don't want you to have any water. They want no water. And I was with... And you were just listening to former President Trump, and we're going to talk about some of the things he was discussing there. We'll be right back with final remarks.

Oh, shit. So what you all heard there was Fox News hurriedly. A cut away, if you will. Cut away from Donald Trump as he started talking about washing machines for your dishes. Mm-hmm. Have a, I think there's a specific name for those apparatuses, Danielle. I believe it's called, I'm out. Wait, it's on the tip of my tongue.

Dish washer. Oh, that's. That's a tough one to remember, though. Yeah. We've been talking about this on the show a lot and other people on the left have as well, but he has lost it. And this is not the Donald Trump from 2016 or even the Donald Trump from 2020 who said crazy things. This to me is where he's at now mentally is so much worse. And he is so obviously in decline mentally.

and every time he talks now and gives a speech or whatever, he goes off on these long tangents, as Jesse was saying before we started recording, he's always done the tangent thing, but they used to be shorter. And now they're like, you know, they go on for paragraph after paragraph, and they're more tangential,

like they have less to do with what he was just talking about than they used to in the past. And he can't remember words like dishwasher. This guy is losing it. And I think we need to, to start seeing a lot of New York Times articles talking about how maybe he's just too old to be president, Danielle. Yeah, I think that the problem here too, and I believe that I have stressed this before, is that there is a difference between aging and whatever this, whatever is happening with Donald Trump.

And I think that if we actually had responsible reporting and responsible journalism was still a thing, and the fourth estate took its job actually seriously. It wasn't just. just after clickbait and ads, then we would understand that there's been a pattern of deterioration that we have witnessed, like you said, 2016, I didn't like any. I mean, I don't ever like any of the things that Donald Trump says because he's a misogynist and a racist and all of the things that you can name. So when he would go on those tangents, they were largely riddled with racism and hate and all of those things. They were coherent. Like it was very clear. what he was talking about. Over the last, I don't know, is it like the, is it the last year,

Andy, would you say? But it's like, it's almost as if he's having one conversation in his head and one that is out loud and they're competing with each other. And there are doctors who are not his doctor that have begun to make theories around dementia, make theories around different medical diagnoses. But again, none of them are his actual doctor. But, what we're seeing are things that people have seen their own family members in their own, you know, that is not just, oh, I'm old. I'm forgetting things. It's like I'm not making any sense and I'm not sure I know where I am. Yeah, for sure. I guess to answer your question, I don't know. There's just, there's a very noticeable difference to me between 2020 and 2024 Donald Trump. So I do think that,

you know, whatever is going on has accelerated in the past four years. years. And what's wild to me is that Joe Biden is much more mentally sharp than Donald Trump is. I mean, he may not be as fast as he was, which by the way is fine because presidents don't have to make decisions in three seconds for the most part. And you kind of don't want them making decisions in three seconds because what you get is Donald Trump wanting to call out the National Guard and the military to put down protesters because he just says whatever is on the top of his head without thinking. But we still end up with all these discussions about Joe Biden's mental acuity. And there just aren't enough regarding Donald Trump. He spoke recently to a group of top CEOs.

There was a lot of chatter coming out of that where they seemed less than thrilled with how he was when he spoke to them. I think Andrew Ross Sorkin from CNBC. He said that some of these CEOs were sort of, you know, they were probably planning on voting for Trump. And he said they actually walked out of the room less predisposed to him, actually predisposed to thinking, this is not necessarily or any different or better than Biden. It's really interesting to see that there are people, he's now, people who are generally on his side and in his pocket starting to notice on. this stuff. Of course, Trump's response to that was to post on truth social. Business executives and shareholder representatives should be 100% behind Donald Trump. Anybody's that not should be

fired for incompetence. Take it away, Daniel. Yeah, one, I think that moving forward, I'm going to start referring to myself in the third person on this podcast. So Daniel Moody thinks that Donald Trump has lost it. And I think that here's the thing. What makes me so angry is, sure, he's rambling. we see this and these things are terrible, he's also auctioning off America to these CEOs to get them in his corner. Because what he was saying to them was, here's what I got on the table for you. I'm going to lower taxes down from 21% to 20% for all of you. So you can have more money in your pocket, which means, guess what, folks? The taxes that the rest of us are paying got to go up because we got to make up the fucking gap here. Also, then he says,

And we can deregulate. You know, so who cares about clean water, clean air, you know, who cares about pesticides being in your food? I don't think people understand that when Donald Trump is sitting down with these CEOs, they want nothing more than zero regulation and all of the money in their pockets. And that comes at the expense of the rest of us. And so every time that Donald Trump offers, like he did during his administration, major tax cuts. What are we learning now that he ran up the debt two times the rate of Joe Biden right now?

Like Donald Trump added trillions of dollars worth of debt to the country and he continues to chop us up for parts that he's willing to sell out in order to get these CEOs. And if they don't line up with him, he's openly threatening them in the way that he's been openly threatening the judges and the juries in his cases. And we're just continuing to think that this is just normal behavior of a politician. And that's what he has done. That's how he has corroded this country and are thinking about what is acceptable and what is not. The interesting thing to me about the CEO meeting was, and you brought it up, he said, you know, he promised them he would cut their tax rates from 21% to 20%. And they weren't happy about that. Like, to them, they were

like, well, that's not really much better. It's like nothing is enough for these people. And I'm actually surprised that he, maybe this is another example of how he's slipping, because I'm actually surprised he didn't go in there and promise them he would cut their tax rate to 10% or 5%. Part of me thinks, like, if he had done that, they would not have given a shit about the fact that he is losing his mind and is not all there. And they would have walked out of that meeting and supported him wholeheartedly and given him even more money. It's nice that these CEOs were sort of like, you know, oh boy, I don't know about this guy, but I also feel like it was not necessarily for the right reasons. It's extraordinary, but to your point, they will never be satiated. These CEOs, these shareholders,

they will never be satiated. Their greed knows no end. It knows no bounds. And we'll never get back to the place where this country was, where people were taxed at a proper rate for those with extreme wealth, balance out and their responsibility in this country so that it didn't fall on the middle class, but it's really extraordinary. So aside from the rambling, I just want folks to pay attention to what he's auctioning, because to me that is who these Republicans are. No, for sure. And what he's, you know, basically trying to do, or at least, you know, make even worse, is bring back the 19th century robber barons. And I bring that up, Danielle. Yes. Because there's something else from the 19th century that keeps rearing its ugly head. It's a thing called the Comstock Act. Danielle, as you know,

I've interviewed several people about this. It won't go away. It has been mentioned in oral arguments by, you guessed it, justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. It has been brought up by a bunch of Republican members of Congress in both the House and the Senate, including such luminaries as Ted Cruz. And the Comstock Act basically was an 1873 law or set of laws, I guess, that basically prevented you, prevented people from using the post-executive.

system for sending what was, I guess it was labeled obscene or indecent material, so that, you know, which would be pornography and stuff like that. But it also had a provision not allowing you to mail any devices or medication or anything like that that might be used for abortions. And this law is somehow still on the books. It's one of those laws that nobody pays attention to and it was a vile, ugly law and Anthony Compstock was a vile ugly human being. But now they want to bring it back and they want to start enforcing it as a way of preventing things like Mifra Pristone from being sent through the mail, which by the way would include, apparently would include shipping it to clinics and stuff like that. So we're not just talking about people at home trying to get Miffra Pristone

through the mail. We're talking about basically they're trying to do an end run around the legality of Miffa Pristone. And all of this, it's in Project 2025, which we've talked about ad nauseum on this podcast, and we'll continue to do so because it's an unbelievably dangerous threat to this country. And this is all being done. I don't think Donald Trump has said anything specifically about the Comstock Act, but none of this goes on without his at least tacit approval. I mean, these people are all working for him. They're all working to get him elected. So I don't want to hear that, well, we don't really know where Trump stands on abortion. And, you know, he just wants it to be left up to the states.

No, he wants it gone. And when I say he wants, I don't think he personally gives a shit. He's probably pro-choice. But he knows where his bread is buttered. And he knows that that's the evangelicals, the Christian nationalists, et cetera, et cetera. And he will say or do anything to remain their leader. You know, so when I look at this, and this is, as you said, an 1873 act. So in Arizona, they pulled up, rolled in with what, 1864, and now they're in 1873.

So I guess, you know, this is progress, I guess. But what this was referred to were a set of, quote, anti-vice laws, right? So all things that are considered obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile. I have something to say, Andy, and I, you know, take this walk with me. Okay. So Donald Trump, the man who was just found guilty on 34 felony counts because he slept with a porn star, lied about it, used campaign funds in order to cover it up, the man who is also found guilty for rape, he's the one that's going to be standing on morality and trying to introduce morality to this country. This is who these people are putting their faith in stock in, right? And it is just wild to me. I don't know how, like, just Google Republicans and lascivious

shit and see what, see how long the list is. Because I forget what news outlet was like keeping track at one point of all of the Republican lawmakers who are either being accused of pedophilia, being accused of sex trafficking or being investigated, looking at you, Matt Gates for it, who are getting groped in a child's, you know, theater play, looking at you, Lauren Bobert. Like, it is just wild that these people who are so immoral are going hunting for laws to resurrect from the 19th century in 2020, in 2024. And I'm just like, we cannot just allow these people. to have ownership over morality and patriotism and these things, these words that they throw around,

but yet don't practice any of it. And like I said this recently, they don't worship any God. They worship power. And that's what this is. It is yet another power grab to circumvent the actual law. So we don't have to deal with the decision that was made on Mithipristone and the one that fucking Clarence Thomas just gave people, here's a playbook on how to bring this back to us again. And so this is the kind of shit that they will do. They are never going to stop. The fact that they are mining the 19th century as guidance should be everything that you need to know.

Donald Trump does not need to come out and say like, oh, and wear a T-shirt. I'm with Comstock. He don't need to do that. Everyone around him knows exactly what they are doing. This time around, and that's what makes Donald Trump in the world. Republican Party in 2024 more dangerous than they were in 2020. In 2020, they were a fucking clown car of bumbling idiots, right? In 2024, however, they are refined in their approach and are coming in at every single

angle. A hundred percent to all of that. There's an interesting thing that I have learned while doing this podcast because I've had to read a bunch of books on the Christian right. The person they compare Trump to in the evangelical community is King Cyrus. King Cyrus is a historical figure mentioned in the Bible. He allowed the Jews to get back to Israel in the Old Testament. And he was not Jewish. He was a non-believer. And what we're seeing a lot of from the modern-day evangelicals is they are calling Donald Trump a modern-day King Cyrus. And by that, what they mean is he is an imperfect vessel who has been chosen by God to lead the evangelical right to the promised land. And look for this, because you'll see it, you'll start seeing it a lot when you hear Christian right and evangelical people talking about Trump. And it's just, it's absolutely fascinating the contortions they will go through.

And like you said, with abortion, I have no evidence of this, but if you were to tell me that Donald Trump has paid for many abortions in his life, I would believe it. But again, they will use him because he knows they will further his agenda and they will wrap it up in this cloak of, you know, well, he's like a modern day King Cyrus or whatever. They don't care. Like to them, it's not even hypocritical. They're like, this is God's plan to have this imperfect man lead us to the promised land. I don't know what their promised land is. I don't know what it looks like. But I do know that they are continuing to concoct plans and strategies that folks are just not paying attention to. But one of the things that they are already starting to seed ahead of this first

debate is the fact that they've already decided that Donald Trump is going to lose and are saying that it's because Joe Biden is somehow on is somehow medicated, which is the same shit that they said after the state of the union. State of the union, Joe Biden hits and knocks it out of the park. It's probably one of the most powerful state of the unions I'd seen recently. And the, the, the commentary was, oh no, first it was Sleepy Joe, now it's on uppers Joe, right? And so they've already started to do this in preparation for the fact that we just heard at the top, what a rambling fucking idiot Donald Trump sounds like. So it is just wild to me, the extent to which they will go. But we have to understand that they are seeding so much ground right now in anticipation of what

they want to happen, what they want the narratives to be. We cannot continue to fall for it over and over again. Yeah, for sure. And Trump himself has made little insinuations. I think he mentioned something about Biden getting a quote shot in the ass right before the debate, meaning some kind of, you know, upper cocktail, I suppose. All I think of when I hear this stuff is what we talk about a lot on this podcast about how every accusation is them telling on themselves. And all I think of when I hear any of this is, oh, well, one of the candidates is going to be hopped up on something. And it probably ain't going to be Joe Biden. But this is just straight out of their playbook. And there's no reason for me to not think that by them doing this, they are, yes, they're simultaneously sort of lowering

expectations for Trump and saying that Joe Biden is cheating. But they're also revealing something that there's a good chance they themselves are going to do. I mean, that's coming from the White House that apparently was, you know, handing out Adderall and whatever other over the counter shit. That is on record. This is not just us, you know, spitballing than any other administration. I had no idea. It was like a Duane Reed over there. And the doctor who's calling for Biden get a drug test before it was the one who's handing those out. Yeah. And is it also the one that told us that Donald Trump was 200 pounds of muscle? That was actually the doctor before.

Okay. This is Ronnie Johnson, as Trump calls him, I believe. Congressman Ronnie Johnson. Yes. We'll be right back. We talk about Fox News a lot here on The New Abnormal, but today I want to focus on another right-wing media company that doesn't get as much attention, but maybe equally dangerous.

I'm talking about Sinclair Media Group, and my next guest wrote an excellent piece about it last week at Salon.com, so I thought he'd be the perfect person to explain what Sinclair is and what they do. Lucian K. Truscott the 4th has had a 50, year career as a writer and journalist, including a stint at the legendary village voice. He's a West Point graduate and the author of bestselling military novels, including two that take place at West Point, dress gray, and its sequel, Full Dress Gray, along with Army Blue and Heart of War. He also has a great newsletter at Lucientruscott.substack.com, and Lucian, as a long-time

fan of your books, this is a real honor for me. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, I'm glad to be here. So let's start with a little explainer of exactly what Sinclair Media group is, before we get into the specifics of what they're doing that are so dangerous, who are they and what kind of reach and power do they have? It's a very, very conservative family, the Smith family, from the Baltimore area. And about 40 years ago, they owned some, a local TV station in Baltimore and a few more called the Chesapeake Television Corporation. And they just decided to go out and start buying local TV broadcasting stations. Some of them are allied with CBS, some of them with NBC, some of them are independent,

some of them where the so-called UFH stations that broadcast over the air, kind of lesser frequency that gave you not as good a television reception. You know, this goes back to the days when they were like four stations plus two or three UFH stations. But a lot of these stations, you know, in small markets around the country, were owned by families that, you know, the patriarchs had passed away and the children were running this station. And running a TV station is a real pain in the ass. So they were able to come in and say, oh, we'll buy this station from you. And these people sold out.

So they started accumulating a kind of a network of small market TV stations around the country. And then they started going into cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, and buying a second station. And that violated old FCC rules. They got around that with a scammy little thing that they invented, this little agreement where they would jointly broadcast stuff and use joint staffs and joint advertising and all that and semi be owned by another company. Then the FCC changes rules and allowed one company to own two broadcast outlets in a city. So they went into another scammy little thing to allow them to own three stations in a market. You know, they started accumulating these stations one after another. And before you know it, they were up to like 190, 200 stations.

And, you know, that's a lot of stations. Yeah. It's under the radar in the sense that, I mean, it's similar to. the way the Republican Party took over the state governments in red states. They just moved in one representative and one state senator after another, you know, backing candidates. And while the Democrats were kind of like celebrating that they had Bill Clinton in office, and Barack Obama in office, the Republicans were running around down in coffee clashes in small towns like I live in Pennsylvania and bombing up these state slots and state senator slots, and before you know it,

they were taking over whole states. Well, Sinclair did the same thing with television stations. And let's talk about what makes that so dangerous. And I want to start with a thing that are called must run stories. What are must run stories? Must run stories are segments that are produced centrally by Sinclair and then shipped out to the stations and as must run segments of the news. And they're written so that the local host reads them like it's a sort of a news item or an editorial. And they sound like the local host has come up with this and it applies in this market for this reason or that reason, but it's not. It's centrally produced. And they go out to nearly all of Sinclair's outlets. So a few weeks ago, Sinclair did one of these must-run stories,

and we ran some clips, and it was local anchor after local anchor reading the same copy, like you said, and it was about President Biden's mental fitness being called into question. And this is exactly the kind of thing you're talking about. This is what they are doing sort of over and over again, right? Yeah. All they did really was regurgitate what was in a Wall Street Journal story about Biden's so-called fitness. And the Wall Street Journal story was basically based on one interview with Kevin McCarthy, who came out and said, well, Biden is losing it. Biden is stumbling. And that's not the other thing. And of course, Sinclair didn't mention that Kevin McCarthy, when he was Speaker of the House, had been quite praising of Biden in the negotiations that they had over the budget deal and stuff like that.

I mean, Kevin McCarthy gave an interview to Wall Street Journal as part of a big republic. Kim push run out of the Republican National Committee in Washington, D.C. to attack Joe Biden's age and his occasional stutters and this, that, the other thing. But it's coordinated. You know, Seppler did it from a central location. Then they started sending out these segments of clips of Biden that it were allegedly showed his infirmity. But, of course, they were edited, you know, for effect.

I mean, one of the clips that they sent out showed Biden listening to a concert in the Rose Garden of the White House. And he was listening. I mean, that's what he was doing. He was sitting there listening. And they said, well, look at Biden. He's staring off in the distance. He's not talking to anyone. You know, he's days. He zoned out. He was listening to a concert. And in another clip, they showed him at the G7 summit, walking in a field. And they said that he wandered away from the G7 leaders. And somebody had to go out and corral him and bring him back. Well, he walked over and was greeting the, these people that had dropped in as a skydiving demonstration, one from each country. And Biden was walking around and shaking hands.

I mean, Biden's a gregarious guy. Sure. You like to meet people and all of that. And that's what he was doing. But you take out the handshaking and you take out the skydiving. And you've got Biden walking on a grassy area heading somewhere, but you can't see where he's heading. So Sinclair sends that stuff around and says, look, see, this is what we're talking about.

This is what Kevin McCarthy meant. You know, this is propaganda. And propaganda used to have a bad name in this country. Right. You know, we used to associate propaganda with the Russians and Eastern European countries and China and, you know, communism. And it was terrible because, you know, we would say, look, all their broadcasting is centrally controlled. And they push out the same message everywhere to all these people so they don't really know what's going on. Look what's happening in this country.

I mean, you got a Republican family consciously going out and buying all a bunch of television stations and then orienting their ownership of the stations in such a way that they can serve the political party that they belong to. Back during 2004, Sinclair wanted to run the stolen honor documentary about John Kerry that had been produced by the SWIP votes for truth or whatever the hell they were. Yeah. And there was such an outcry that they didn't. end up running it. But they put out must-run segments to 60 of their stations using excerpts from. You have a documentary there that's a so-called documentary. Really all it is is a propaganda piece cobbled together by a political organization to attack a political candidate. That's propaganda.

So in your salon piece, you write that, and I want to quote you here, that this propaganda is being produced in conjunction with the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign. When you write that, when you say that, do you mean that they're all directly coordinating, or are they just sort of, you know, taking hints from each other and like wink in a nod and all that stuff? We don't know that they have meetings, but Baltimore is not very far from Washington, D.C., and they're all in the same gang of operatives, and they're friendly with each other. So they meet in a cocktail party and somebody says, hey, do you see the Wall Street Journal story

on Biden and the next thing you know, Sinclair Broadcasting is running an excerpt from the story. I mean, you don't have to have meetings in smoke-filled rooms anymore. I mean, you know, you've got WhatsApp for crying out loud. Right. You know, they can send a

message to each other or a gang message to every one of their stations and who's going to know. Yeah. We can't hack into WhatsApp and find out what they're saying to each other or they can call each other on the telephone. I mean, you know, when you say, it's coordinated, it's clearly coordinated. They are Republicans. They give money to the Republican

National Committee. They give money to the Trump campaign. And then they run stuff that's friendly to the Republican Party and to the Trump campaign. I mean, I just don't know how much more coordinated you can get than that. Yeah. And Trump himself has given, I guess, shoutouts to Sinclair on several occasions, hasn't he? Sure. And they give them exclusive interviews here and there. And this kind of thing is, to me, it's even more concerning than Fox News. Because with Fox News, you've got a kind of visible network, highly visible network that's run by one family, the Murdoch family, out of New York City. All of that is highly visible to the rest of the media and so forth.

But, you know, CNN, I mean, has a big office in New York and ABC, NBC, CBS are all headquartered there. So they're all looking up each other's underwear all the time, you know. But who knows what's going on? out in Columbus, Ohio, or in Zanesville or in, you know, Lincoln, Nebraska and markets like that. Who knows what the local host is saying to his listeners every night? What else Sinclair knows? And they want to have a 90 of them. No, absolutely. And the other thing is to me, and that's why I wanted to talk about this,

because I think it's so dangerous. With Fox News, you know what you're getting. If you tune into Fox News, you're going to get exactly what Fox News is known for. Sinclair, as you said earlier, they own these stations that are NBC affiliates, ABC affiliates, CBS affiliates, Fox affiliates. So the people watching them, you know, they don't know that Sinclair Media Group is behind all this and is pushing out these must run stories. They think they're watching their local NBC news or their local ABC news or whatever and that what's being reported is quote unquote the news, not this editorially based stuff coming out of Baltimore. Yeah, and it's local news. I mean, you turn on your name in Lincoln, Nebraska at 6 o'clock, and what you get is,

da-ding, da-ding, ding, here we are. Lincoln, Nebraska brings you FC-9-T, you know, your local station giving you local news, and this college team won today, and this road is being repaired. And, oh, by the way, have you noticed the story in the Wall Street Journal about Biden? You know, it's insidious. I mean, you know, people that turn on their local

news expect to get local news, but really what they're getting in at least part of these broadcast is national news from a right-wing network like Fox slipped in there like it's ordinary content. Yeah, exactly. It's the stealth nature of this. And that's what I meant with, you know, there's nothing stealthy about Fox News. As you said, everybody knows who they are, knows what they're about. But this is all being done, again, this sort of under the radar thing. And another thing that I'm not sure people take into account is with the ownership of all these local TV networks also comes their websites where you can push out the stories as well. Sure.

They've got websites. And not only that, all these stations do local promotions. They appear at the opening of a Walmart or the opening of a gas station for crying out a lot if it's a small enough market. And so their anchors are around and they're visible. People see them at local restaurants. and they shake hands with the guy that does a six o'clock news, all of that stuff. It seems like it's part of your town and part of your state and part of the place that you live

and where you've got your family and you've got your business and your home and all that. You're invested in. And really, you know, there's a bunch of operatives sitting over there in Baltimore, cranking this stuff out and yakking on the phone to the Republican National Committee. And the Republican National Committee has you guys. no doubt reported, is it just an arm of Donald Trump? It's in the family, for God's sake. You know, it's being run by his family. He isn't satisfied with being associated with a political party. He wants everything controlled with blood and money. That's what he's gotten with the

Republican Party now. So I guess the big question is, and I know you don't claim to be a legal expert on these things. But is there anything that can be done about this beyond making sure that it's pointed out? Does any of this violate any rules? Or should there be sort of, at the very least, should there be sort of transparency rules that say if a local anchor is going to read produced copy like this, you know, in a must-run story, that it should be identified as such? Or does nothing like that exist? And it's just, you know, First Amendment, end of story. No, there's really nothing you can do about with the FCC now because They came up with these scams like the local marketing agreements and the shared services agreements and, you know, that have allowed them to control three stations in one network.

And the FCC actually reduced its rules on the two-station thing. And now in Baltimore, not only does Sinclair control one or two of the local stations, the Sinclair family, the Smith guy, bought the Baltimore Sun. And so they own the newspaper. and they own two of the television networks and stations and the news in that town. And then, of course, Sinclair tried to buy the Tribune network, and then they could, they got blocked on that. But that just shows you what their ambition is and how they go about doing this stuff.

There's, you know, there's nothing you can do about it business-wise or legally. I mean, the only way you fight propaganda is with truth. And then the kind of truth that we're talking about is just like you said, pointing out the bias and pointing out the network affiliations and the political affiliations of this stuff. And that's more difficult than going into court and saying, give me that station back. Lucian, thank you so much for joining us and for writing about this. I want to remind our listeners, Luciantruscott.substack.com. And hopefully we'll have you back on again soon because you've had an incredibly fascinating

life and I want to talk about that. But thank you so much for joining us to talk about this. Okay. Thanks a lot for having me. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal author and professor of philosophy at Georgetown University, Cutter, Carl Weiderquist, who writes about the distribution of justice. And for the purposes of this conversation, really focusing on the idea around universal basic income or UBI. Carl, give us the basic understanding. What is universal basic income? And why is it coming up in the mainstream in America more and more? A hundred years ago, the philosopher Bertrand Russell, without naming it, gave a really good definition of basic income, which is a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be given to every member of the community, whether they work or not.

and then a higher income will be given to those who do some work that the community recognizes as useful. On this basis, we can build further. So it doesn't say this isn't the end of social justice, isn't it all there is to building a society, but making sure we take care of everyone, that no one falls through the cracks, that no one's under the threat of poverty and homelessness in order to get them to do things that may be more privileged people want them to do. We make sure there's enough for everyone to have food, shelter, and clothing, a little cushion for everything. This is very necessary in society because of power. We live in a society with enormous power imbalances where 99% of us have to work to keep ourselves alive. And for the

most part, we have to work for the other one percent who do not have to work to keep themselves alive. Many of them do work. But when you've got a certain amount of wealth, work becomes optional for you. You don't have to work if you don't want to. Your money will work for you. And with these sorts of power imbalances and other power imbalances between husbands and wise, between privileged people and less privileged people, between one group and another group between employers and employees, to address all these power imbalances, we need to find a way to concede power to every last individual in society. And the big way to do that is to make sure that that person doesn't have to do anything for you. because they're going to starve if they don't do it.

They do something for you because you've made it worth their while. Now, the idea behind this is that we are a country, I'll just say, that supposedly has abundance, has more than enough. Yes. And yet there has always been this pervasive idea that if you are poor, that somehow that is a character flaw, that is your problem and is your problem alone to fix. And so when we look at people who fall below income measures in this country who are working maybe two, three jobs and still are unable to make ends meet, in America, we look at those people as the problem rather than saying that the system is the problem. And what I find about the conversation around universal basic income is that we would have to move, shift out of that mindset, Carl, that poverty is.

is bestowed upon people who are undeserving of help. And so for Americans, that's a major shift. I mean, it's why we've struggled to have healthcare. One of the only industrialized nations that doesn't provide basic health care for people, because we want to believe that some people are deserving and some people are not. So how do you believe that we work around

our understanding of poverty, but our responsibility to each shot? in this country that we live in, that is based on individualistic, you know, achievement as opposed to community. It's based on a very artificial notion of achievement. And really all of those, as you mentioned, it's the system. It's really important that you brought up the system because the problem, people always want to look for a villain, especially when somebody's saying change things. They're saying, oh, you're saying this guy's bad because he's guilty. There's no necessarily any individual calls him. It is the rules of the system that create the situation that we're in.

Those rules have to change and we want to create a society that doesn't have the types of problems that you mentioned. But along with the rules of the system come the rhetoric of the system. The people who are powerful and have controlled the rhetoric for a long time. They really want you to look at some people as being unworthy and bad and undeserving. There is no human being who is undeserving. of food, shelter, and clothing. And they will say something like, well, in any society, you have to work to get food, shelter, and clothing.

What's wrong with making everybody work for it? Well, that is an equivocation. We're philosophers. We're big on fallacies. That's a fallacy of equivocation. They're taking the same word and using two different meanings of it. In every society, people in some sense do have to work. If you want to build your own home, you've got to work to do that.

If you want to fish or farm or hunt and gather, all of those things take effort, that's work in the sense of toil or effort. But those things are all illegal. They're either illegal or no longer possible. If you got to Manhattan 500 years ago, you would have found abundant fishing and plenty of woods or you could build a shelter for yourself. There is no place that's safe to fish that you can make your living off fishing in Manhattan. You cannot build your own shelter. It is illegal to build your own shelter. We create rules that say the environment belongs to someone else and you cannot access to it.

Those artificial rules creates a sense where then work is no longer about you expending effort. It is about you working for an employer or a client if you're so-called self-employed. But you're also, it turns out, you can be working for banks because you need money to start out. You work for employers. You work for clients. You work for banks. And you work for landlords. all of us who aren't already wealthy will work for these four groups of people.

We are set in the place where we're going to toil and effort for their benefit, not for the benefit of all mankind, but for the benefit of the privilege. And we're in a power situation where we can't say no to that. So what I think is most important that a good basic income can do, a basic income that's high enough to live on, is give you the power to say to the more privileged people, no, these jobs are offering are not good enough. These poverty wage jobs where I can't afford rent and I can't afford a decent place to live,

these are not good enough. If you want me to work for you, you have to give me a good wages, good working conditions, freedom from sexual harassment, good advancement, good advancement opportunities. And to give employers the incentive to offer these things, we need more power in the hands of the 99%. But I look at this because everything that you're saying is absolutely correct. It is a power structure. The system is based on a power. power structure that has the 1% with the ability to create essentially a more, I guess maybe a more

glamorous to some extent, indentured servitude, right, where you were locked in in one way or another, right, to your point, whether it is to affirm a company, an organization, a bank, the IRS, whatever it is. But aren't we also then asking for that same class of people that is benefiting from our toiling to then recognize that people need the base? We're asking for those people to then turn around and say, oh, even though we know that politicians to a very large extent are bought and paid for by many corporations, to then turn around and say, oh, we should do this thing for the people. Like we're asking the very class of people to turn around and go against what has been working very well for them for quite some time.

Well, your question behind your question is a very obvious. but yet a very important observation that most of us turn away from and like to pretend that it doesn't exist. And that's what you rightly observed is that our country is not a democracy. The 1% control the rhetoric. They control the political process through the legalized system of bribery we call campaign contributions. If the bottom 90% of people, if the majority of the bottom 90% of people want something, that's no assurance that it's going to pass in the United States. There's very little correlation between whether a majority of the bottom 90% supports something or not, but there's a very high correlation with whether the top 1% wants legislation or

doesn't want legislation on when it will pass. To the point, they can necessarily pass something over the heads of everyone else, but they can almost always veto something, even if the bottom 90 or 99% are. overwhelmingly for it. They can almost always block it. That's not a democracy. In a true democracy, this wouldn't be such an issue and say, okay, well, the 1% are going to disagree with this, but the 1% are only 1% of the political power in a true democracy. It would not be such an issue. To answer your question, am I saying, can we get the 1% to turn around and do this? There might be ways to do that. But another way is to change.

the institutions so that we get more democracy. The countries that have the most democracy also have the freest people and the most progressive social legislations. These are places like Iceland, Norway, and Finland. If we had more democracy like they have there, I think we would have much better social policies. Why do you think that those places have more democracy than we do? Is it because they are largely of one race, one group, that they have more democracy than America does? Because we are, for better or for worse, a salad bowl or whatever is the term that people use these days, where we have so many different groups of people, so many different ethnicities and cultures and religions and what have you, that there is always this hierarchy that is fundamentally based at the root of racism and bigotry.

And so the places that you named largely white, European, I'm wondering, do they have more democracy because there is less difference to fight about? And so we can all look at each other as we are all deserving. No, I don't think race has anything to do with it whatsoever. Remember, race is not real. Race is an invented idea in order to bring back slavery, which is gradually over the middle, from the Roman period through the Middle Ages, Europe gradually got. rid of slavery. And they were never able to really bring it back and full scale in Europe itself, only in the colonies. And they were only able to do it by saying that these slaves for sale in Africa, or these slaves were going to go capture in Africa, are a lesser thing we'll call a race.

They made up race and then they tried to prove it scientifically. You spent hundreds of years trying to prove the existence of race scientifically. And by the 20th century, any good biologists knew that there's more racial diversity in Africa than there is in the rest of the world combined, and you can get a person in one place in Africa and another, each of which are closer related to various European groups than to each other. There is no such thing as race. We racialized blacks. We racialized Asians.

We've even racialized so-called Hispanics when these are made up of Europeans and natives who have really nothing in common except for maybe. language. So then when you think about a diverse country or more racially, ethnically or whatever terms, unified country, mostly there's no such thing as a country without difference. There are differences that countries make a big deal out of and there are differences that people don't. Finland is actually an extremely diverse country. You have Finnish speakers, you have Swedish speakers, you have Russian speakers and people of Russian ancestry. You have the native group, the Sammy in the north.

You have immigrant groups. You have heterosexuals, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, queers. You have Catholics. You have Eastern Orthodox. You have non-religious people. Every single one of those, every single one of those things is something that someone could make a big deal out of and say, this is diversity. I hate this group. I dislike this group.

I will have no solidarity with the people in that group. And if they live in the inner city, I'm going to move to the suburbs and make sure the inner city doesn't get funding. Any one of those could be that kind of an excuse. The problem is not America's diversity. Diversity brings a lot of strengths with different ideas, different ways of doing things, and hybrid vigor. Well, I don't think it's technically called hybrid vigor in one species, but whatever they call it. Genetic diversity, I guess they call it. All of those things can be used as strength.

It's about building solidarity with people. And if you see also, you see these things are ever changing, you can make a big deal out of anything. As you know, in Northern Ireland, the difference between a Catholic and a Catholic, Protestant is a big deal. Whereas in the United States, maybe it was a big deal 100 years ago, but actually white evangelical Protestants in the United States feel perfectly well represented by having a Supreme Court filled with Catholics who share their views on a few issues. If the Catholic Protestant thing can bring war in Northern Ireland and bring virtually no animosity whatsoever in the United States, you got to realize this stuff about diversity is

really playing in for something else. It's playing in for power differentiations. Yeah, but I think that you're absolutely right. And I appreciate the breakdown of the fact that diversity has always been used and is being used right now. It's being weaponized right now as a way to continue to divide. Because again, going back to the original statement with regard to the systems and who actually has the power and what democracy is and should be, is not at all what America has. And I think that where we find ourselves right now is at a place on teetering on the edge of losing it, but we've never fully actualized it for all of the reasons that you've put forth, which is that so long as we can fight amongst ourselves and pick apart these differences that we

don't like, that we don't understand, those that are in power can continue to consolidate power why we fight amongst ourselves for the crumbs. And I think that that is the reason why the conversation about universal basic income is so interesting to me, because I think that it is something that could in fact truly level the playing field, not us just feeling good about ourselves, but really thinking about the collective rather than the individual. Carl, I have to thank you. And I have to have have you back again because I think that this conversation is one that is incredibly rich and requires people to really understand and ask true questions about the kind of America, the kind of country that they want to live in. So really appreciate you making time for us today.

Hey, thank you so much. And yeah, I'd love to come back. Andy Levy. Are you kicking off this heat wave of a week in New York City with your fuck that guy. I'm going to go with a Republican congressman from Texas by the name of Troy Nils. He on his suit jacket wears a little miniature pin of the Combat Infantryman's badge. And that is, for those who don't know, So it's a little badge that you can earn in the army if you have been in combat and I believe you have to actually be an infantryman, but I'm not positive. I can't remember. Anyway, so he's been wearing this little miniature version of the pin on his lapel.

And it turns out that he, the issuance of his combat infantryman's badge was revoked by the army in 2023. And he has said over and over again, no, the Army got it wrong. And he did qualify for the badge. And he's entitled to wear it. And one of the things he said was ask the Army. And a reporter named John Seward at notice, that's N-O-T-U-S, said, okay, I'll go ask the Army. And he got the Army to comment. The Army statement said that, yes, he received the Combat Infantryman's badge in 2018, but it was rescinded in 2023 when his service record was amended by the Pentagon, which is what had originally been reported by CBS News.

So kudos to John Seward for taking Troy Nell's advice and asking the Army and the Army backing him up. And Nels has said he is not going to stop wearing the badge. Look, I know this is a small thing in the scheme of everything that's going on these days, but it's also just sort of a perfect summation of the Republican Party in 2024. The CIB is a highly coveted. It's a highly respected badge. And there are people in the Army who will tell you that it is the only badge that matters because it means that you actually were in combat.

and the only qualification badge, I should add. And for this guy to be walking around wearing it and he is not authorized to wear it. And in fact, the Army has deemed him ineligible to wear it is just, it's just, there's something about that that just strikes me as so perfect in the way it sort of paints the Republican Party in 2024. And so I just wanted to highlight it with a hell and hearty fuck that guy to Texas Congressman Troy Nels. Who gets called out for wearing a badge you did not fucking earn and then says, I'm going to wear it anyway? Like, it's not a brooch. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's not, it's something that people earn. It's not like, you know, you also have to earn Girl Scout badges. You don't just get to sew them on your sash. Like if you haven't done the fucking work, but that is, it is such, it just exemplifies

this Republican Party. Don't want to do any of the fucking work. nothing that is hard, but want all of the credit and all of like just the accoutrements that come with things. It's just, it, there's just so gross. They're so, fuck that guy. Yeah, just to put a tag on it, you know, remember back in, I guess it was 2004, where the Republicans ran a whole smear campaign against John Kerry saying he didn't earn his medals in Vietnam, the whole swift boating thing, which was false and was just a blatant smear and a blatant lie. And here we are 20 years later, And there's Republicans actually wearing, in this case, a qualification badge for which they're not qualified. So I just, just to put a button on that.

Danielle, close us out. It's 142 degrees here. Who is your fuck that guy? Actually, it's not that bad today. Today is actually fine. But just FYI, we were 15 degrees above normal temperature over the weekend. No big deal. No big deal at all to feel like you're in the hot mouth of hell.

In June. Speaking of hell, Texas. That's it. I'm done. Fuck those guys. All right. We'll see you all next week here or Friday. So according to Newsweek, there is a big push.

Texas secessionists working with five other states, leaders say. So I just want to give you this. Texas nationalists are coordinating with successionist campaigners from five other states who are also interested in breaking away from the United States. The claim was made by Daniel Miller, president of the pro-independence Texas nationalist movement on the latest edition of Late Night Coffee Talk. And the whole, you know, idea is that it's Alito-esque, if you will,

when Alito was caught on tape saying that, you know, there were just some groups that can't live, you know, shoulder to shoulder with one another because the differences are just that big. And here's what I say. fucking go. Like leave Texas, bye-bye. Take, you know, Alaska with you, take Mississippi, take Alabama. I don't care. Go away. But you also know that you're not going to get any of the benefits that come from any of the other states. I just don't understand what these people want in so many ways. But it is not like, it is the most un-American action that all of these Magra Republicans, have in their heads, which is that America, however, hypocritical, however, it has not lived up to its creed, was founded with the idea that different groups of people can live how they want to,

that if I want to worship, I can. If I don't want to worship, I don't have to, right? Like, if I am a person from a certain ethnicity, from cultural groups, what have you. It is this idea that we can coexist. But that's not what these people want anymore. They don't want coexistence. They can't manage to even see like a fucking pride flag, like Martha Alito, because that will send you into some type of like untethered tantrum. And so this desire, this growing desire from these people to want to secede,

I'm just like, buy. Like get the fuck out. Like no one is begging you to stay. Also, you know, like I hear Alaska is nice. Go there. Take that whole place. Lots of open to. rain for you to shoot guns and like each other and live merrily ever after and it's very very white which

I'm certain that they like to I just I'm tired of these conversations and I'm tired of these people so for that reason Texas independent national whatever fuck those guys fuck all y'all and no you're not taking California because that was on their list of the of the places that they're talking about and I know that parts of California are indeed red but you ain't taken that state so bye they clearly watch civil war. Yeah, for sure. I hate being this guy. I will say it. I share your feelings about these people who want to live in a country other than the United States. Go. Bye, bitch. I worry that the people, you know, not that any of this is ever going to happen or anytime soon. I, of course, worry that the people in Texas and the people in Louisiana who will be the, you know, et cetera, who will be the most hurt by

this are not white Christians. The white Christians are a Christian either. So there's the, Well, for sure. Every time these people talk about seceding, my sort of first reaction is, yeah, go ahead. You know, but then I start thinking and I'm like, boy, I mean, look, I wouldn't put it past some of these places to reinstitute slavery, quite frankly. So, yeah, I'll just throw that in as a little caveat to let them go. I just wish all the people, the individuals that want to secede should all get together and go move to another country or an island somewhere. Those indigenous island people don't want them. That's true. That's absolutely true.

So yeah, but yeah, I mean, fuck those guys for sure. Antarctica relocation project. Yeah, go there. That's nice. I hear it's lovely this time of year. It's also probably 70 degrees. Antarctica is neutral territory. Nobody owns it.

Leave it alone. We should get you do that, the leave Britney alone voice. leave Antarctica. 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. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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