The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s New Slogan Sums Him Up Perfectly

Episode Date: January 16, 2024

On The New Abnormal, hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy discuss the problem with Trump’s newest slogan. Then, Frankie Miranda, the president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation, tells us about the importance of the Latinx vote. Plus! We talk to the New Republic’s Timothy Noah, who explains the wild ride that started with billionaire Bill Ackman’s vicious Twitter campaign against then-Harvard President Claudine Gay, and then snowballed. 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 Kedin, 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. Frankie Miranda, the president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation, is here to tell us all about his nonprofit organization's efforts, as well as the importance of the Latinx vote and how border policy decisions and rhetoric impact Latinx voter sentiments. Then we'll talk to the new republics, Timothy Doa, who explained the wild ride that started with billionaire Bill Ackman's vicious Twitter campaign against then Harvard President Claudine Gay and then snowballed into, well, a lot of wife guy stuff. But first, let's have some fun.

Danielle, do you remember back in, I think it was 2004, Diddy started an organization called Citizen Change to get people to vote? And the big slogan was vote or die. And they had T-shirts and all that stuff. Well, 20 years later, Donald Trump has taken that to another level. and his slogan seems to be vote and die. And he's out there in Iowa where, as we record this, the caucuses are going on. And he is telling his supporters, because it's ungodly cold in Iowa right now,

I think it's like 300 below zero without the wind chill, was the last I saw. And he is telling his supporters, here's his quote, even if you vote and then pass away, it's worth it. So vote and die, Danielle. That is the new slogan. But if you want anything that sums up Trump perfectly, I mean, this is it. This is it. Go out and do this thing for me.

And then if you die, it's fine. Let's be clear. First of all, you're right. With the wind chill in Iowa, as we are speaking, it's like negative 40 degrees. There is not a living thing, let alone a human being that should be outside in this weather. They have called for critical temperature. people need to be careful. If we don't recall, just back last year

when people literally froze to death in their car in New York when there was another type of polar vortex that happens. But all of this kind of extreme weather, Donald Trump's extreme language, just sum up the Republican Party. If you want to die, right, then vote for them. So whether it is going ahead and caucusing in Iowa in these extreme temperatures,

whether it is deciding that you shouldn't have bodily autonomy, don't need health care, do away with Medicaid and Medicare and all of these things. Like, this is what this party is about. Remember when they talked to us and tried to say that if we had some form of Obamacare, then there were going to be death panels? Yeah. I mean, fast forward. And here we are.

And so Donald Trump, a man that canceled four events in Iowa because of insurance. temperatures is telling his supporters to go out and die for him. It's basically the same thing that he fucking said on January 6th when he said, go and take your country back while he sat behind protective glass while he was inside of the White House. He told them to go break in and storm into the Capitol building. And people did die that day. So this is not new. It's just amazing to me that we are at a place where we just shrug this shit off when a potential leader of the quote unquote, free-ish, I don't even know what we call this world nowadays, tells his supporters to go ahead and die, and they cheer, and they cheer.

It's amazing. So you're telling me that Trump himself canceled events so that he could stay warm, but he's telling his supporters to go out in the cold because that doesn't sound like the Donald Trump, I know. Yeah, it's, you know, it's giving Marie Antoinette, you know, but don't give them cake. Don't give them coats either. This is nothing new. It's a continuation of what he's been doing. he's telling people to go out and telling them that as long as they go out and vote for him,

if they pass away after that, it's okay. And along those lines, look at why he's telling them to vote for him, why they should vote for him. The reason he is saying he was at a rally over the weekend, I guess, I think on Sunday, and he told people to go out and vote for him for president so that he can fight back against his political enemies so that he can bring retribution against his political enemies. And I mean, personally, I can't think of a better reason to vote for a president than to help a guy cross names off his enemies list. But again, this is like, it is amazing. And you listen to these interviews with Trump supporters and you read New York Times pieces with Trump supporters and they always say, you know, he fights for people like me. He cares about people

like me. Nothing he has done in his life shows any evidence of that. And we know that. But they sit there And somehow they have convinced themselves where they have been convinced that he is out there fighting for him. Even when he's telling them, go out, vote for me, and then it's cool if you die. Even when he says, go out and vote for me so that I can get retribution against my enemies, they will sit there and act like he is fighting for them. We've had, I guess, what, eight years of this now, nine years of this now since 2015 when he, you know, started campaigning. And somehow these people still believe that he, gives the slightest shit about them, which he so clearly doesn't, and anyone that is even a little

bit anchored in reality knows that. But for some reason, after nine years of this guy doing everything he can to enrich himself and to better himself at the expense of the American people, they still believe that he's out there fighting for them. The reality is having somebody who hates the same people that you do evidently is enough. So I watch. these interviews where these people say, you know, I can't afford to spend $150 a week to fill up my car with diesel. And that's why I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. And I'm just like, because he did what exactly when oil prices went up? What, cut aside deal with the Saudis? I am confused with what he has offered. Even in his campaign, we say, okay, campaigns are when a lot of politicians stretch the truth. I'm going to give you, you know, free cake every week.

And you're like, yay, free cake. And then you never get it. That's what they do on the campaign trail. Donald Trump is not even pretending to say what he's going to provide any of his constituents, any Republicans. What are you offering them? Nothing. I'm offering to deport the people that you don't like or to let them die.

I am going to make sure that you never have to see black people and be uncomfortable or learn about anything that makes you uncomfortable. Like, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to take away all of the things that make you feel a certain type of way so that you can exist in some white supremacist bubble and believe that you are the best fucking thing. I'm not offering you shit. I'm just going to take away everything that makes you feel a certain type of way. That's what Donald Trump has been able to do is play on people's feelings. You don't have to offer them anything.

You don't have to tell them that you're going to make the economy better. You don't have to tell them that they're going to get better jobs or better training or better education for their young people. You don't have to say any of those things. You have to say that they won't have to go to school with people who don't look like them, don't pray like them, and don't love like them. You have to tell them that, you know, that neighbor down the street, those people of color that moved in, well, I'll make sure that, like, they can never get alone so that your neighborhood doesn't change. Like, that's what Donald Trump and the Republican Party is offering. If any journalist had any type of fucking integrity, they would say follow-up question. So when Donald Trump was president, how was your life better?

We really want to know. Dig deep for us and tell us. And just sit there and fucking wait. Because they don't even know. They're so attached to the fantasy, to the lie. And have fallen for the rope-a-dope so deep that they would. They would, Andy, go ahead and risk their lives and die. and their tombstead will say, at least I voted for Trump, MAGA forever.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, I was reading, I think it was a semaphore article, and one of Trump's messages in Iowa has been, here's a quote from a rally he did on Sunday. Every time the radical left, Democrats, Marxists, communists, and fascists indict me, I consider it truly a great badge of honor because I'm being indicted for you. What? And you sit here and you read a quote like that. And first of all, it's like, what do you?

Why are you bringing up the fascists indicting you? The fascists are your friends. The fascists are not indicting you. That aside, it's like, I'm being indicted for you. And people eat this up, and they will sit there. And this is a guy who stole classified documents, took them home. I don't think he did that for me. On every one of these counts, he did everything possible, again, to enrich himself or to make his life better.

And he will get up there and say, I'm being indicted for you, and they eat this shit up. It is absolutely unbelievable how brainwashed they've become. And you're right. You know, a lot of it is because what Trump has done has given a lot of Americans' license to be their worst self. And they are enjoying that. When I say a lot of Americans, I would be remiss to not say a lot of white Americans, because that is what we're talking about here in the vast majority.

And it has given, you know, a lot of white Americans this sort of this leeway and the thumbs up and the go ahead to let all the... their bigotries and all their hatreds that they had, you know, sort of learned to keep quiet about it. It's not that they lost them. They just had learned to keep quiet about them. They have now decided they don't need to keep quiet about them because Trump has given them license to get out there and just say what they really believe. And we talk about how a lot of the Republican stuff now is that there's no more quiet part, you know, and they just say everything out loud. And that's true, I think that that that's true for a lot of Americans now, too. A lot of Trump supporters. It's not

that they didn't believe this stuff 10 years ago. And look, we saw it when Obama was elected. We saw the, you know, the dark underbelly sort of start to come to the fore. But Trump really gave them license to just not keep their mouth shut anymore and to just expose what they had been the whole time. But now it was okay to do it in public. And then he can get up there and say, I'm being indicted for you. And they're like, yeah, that's right.

He's being indicted for me because he's telling people the truths that they don't want to hear. that we haven't been allowed to say for all this time. And they make these bizarre connections. And it's just, it's so frustrating because you can't argue with them. There's no logic that you can, you know, get to there. You're just, it's just they are who they are. It's honestly like arguing with an amoeba. I don't see the point.

There's nothing that is there. There's no rationale that is there. The one quick thing that I will say is that folks need to understand that we've only had a democracy in this country. And I use that with italic. underline quotation marks for 60 years since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And so everything that the Republicans and Donald Trump are doing this whole campaign of retribution is about rolling back the 60 years of progress that gave people access to the ballot,

that gave black people access to jobs. That's what they are about. There is no offering that is here. What they want is to ensure that white people can maintain power. And there's no better place to look to in their petri dish of workshopping that they do than in Texas and in Florida. And in Texas, what Greg Abbott has done in that state, but most recently, apparently by sending the military to block border patrol agents from aiding three migrants that were drowning by crossing the Rio Grande. I just want folks to understand. And I think that this is the thing that we just don't get because we don't talk or understand empathy.

That what would bring you to a place in your life where you would risk literally everything, that you would leave everything that you know, your culture, your country, your family, your friends, everything with a knapsack and risk death in order to get to the United States of America? Like we don't ever talk about that. These people are either punchlines or their political footballs or, you know, they're rapists and this, that, and the other thing. Because we can't fathom what kind of experience we would be living in in existence we would have that would force us to make the kind of ultimate decisions that these people make hundreds of miles on foot in temperatures in the desert that drop well below zero that are soaring. in heat during the day in order to get to the United States. But Greg Abbott, that piece of fucking shit,

like there is honestly, there is not a good thing that you can say about that man. When you talk about heartless, putting up buoys with spikes to maim and pierce and allow people to drown in front of you and you have the ability to help them, another human being, it's really sick.

It is really fucking sick how these people are. and what they've become and what we have allowed to just be casual political discourse is absolutely maddening. Yeah, no, it is. It's sick and it's evil. For those who don't know, what we're talking about is Congressman Henry Quayar from Texas, who's a Democrat from Texas, he said that basically it was, I assume what we think is a mom and her two kids drowned while trying to reach the U.S. in an area where Abbott has set up the Texas National Guard and has sort of blockaded it and won't let border patrol agents in it, which is clearly illegal.

And the Biden administration has come out and said as much. These three people, this mother and her two young children, died. They drowned. But this goes along with a couple days before that on Dana Lash's podcast, I guess. He said, quote, the only thing that we're not doing is we're not shooting people who come across the border. Because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder. Yeah, because it would be murder. Again, this goes back to what you said about this absolute lack of empathy and this absolute lack of caring for any human being who is not themselves or, you know, at the very least, doesn't look like them.

It is so foul and so vile. And look, he said that. And then a few days later, well, he found his little, I guess, what he thinks is his loophole. He didn't have, he didn't shoot them. He just stopped people from saving them from drowning, which is the same thing. let's not split hairs here. These are people who could have been saved. And because of Greg Abbott's actions denying access to the people who could have saved them, they died. To me, that is, you know, I'm not talking legally here. I'm just saying functionally, to me, that is no different

from having a sniper put bullets in their head. He caused their deaths. And it is absolutely vile. It is absolutely evil. And this is the governor of Texas. This is the popular governor of Texas. I don't know where we go from here as a country. I really don't. I mean, the definition, I just want to bring to people's mind of the word depraved, morally corrupt and wicked. There is nothing else that you can describe Greg Abbott's actions and the entirety of the Republican Party other than depraved. The fact that we are even, again, in conversation about this and Greg Abbott isn't in jail. Greg Abbott hasn't been arrested. That people will tell us once again, well, I don't know.

will the Department of Justice do anything? Oh, but it's an election year and this, that, and the other thing. And these people just continue to turn their back on morals, on values, on the sanctity of human life. A couple of years ago, nine years ago, before Donald Trump came and sunk his teeth into our democracy, this would never stand in nine years. These motherfuckers will get up before judges so that they don't have to supply basic, you know, hygiene, toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap to migrants. And they get up there and they argue proudly. This is who this country is with these people in charge.

And it gets worse by the day. Worse and worse and worse by the day. And we're still looking around and saying, you know, well, there's a 50-50 chance Joe Biden. and doesn't win. Because this, either it's go ahead and vote for me in 41 degree below temperatures and die, but at least it's worth it. I'll be a dictator on day one and then let me show you some proof of what we can expand from the good work that's being done in Texas. It's fucking sick. And the fact that people are not utterly disgusted and nauseated by what's been allowed to function as policy in this country is beyond me. There was a new poll done by YouGov over the weekend that showed

that 48% of Americans agreed that immigrants entering the country illegally are quote unquote poisoning the blood of the country. 48% of Americans agreed with the phrase, a straight up Nazi phrase. Forty eight percent of Americans agreed with that. And this brings me back to something that you hinted at or said. We always hear this expression, you know, this is not who we are, and we usually hear it from Democrats and whatever in response to some disgusting right-wing policy. The fact of the matter is, this is who we are. It's not wholly who we are. Again, it was 48 percent. That means at least 52 percent of Americans were like, no, we don't agree with the Nazi shit. But half of Americans did and do. And for us to say this is not who we are,

is we can't do that. That's an abdication of responsibility, because America is a lot of things, and this is one of them. One of them is this sort of this white supremacist strain, and it's very strong. And to pretend that it's not, and to pretend that, oh, well, Donald Trump, MAGA, oh, it's what? It's like, you know, 15, 20 percent of the country and sort of dismiss it. We can't do that because it's a lot bigger than that. And it has to be countered and it has to be fought. Saying this is not who we are is burying our heads in the sand. If we ever could in the past, we absolutely cannot afford to do that anymore. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal, the president of the Hispanic Federation, Frankie Miranda.

Frankie, first off, you know, tell folks a little bit about the Hispanic Federation and then let's jump in because there is just so much news for us to cover, but I want people to get an idea of your organization. Well, thank you so much for these opportunity, Danielle. The Hispanic Federation is an umbrella organization of representing more than 600 organizations that are partners and members in 40 states, D.C. and in Puerto Rico. We are a civil rights organization with offices in Washington, D.C., where we do public policy at the national level. But we also have regional offices where we do incredible work with these organizations that are frontline of all the issues affecting the Hispanic community. We provide technical assistance, we provide capacity building and grants, but we also work around certain programs, including immigration, civic engagement, and others.

So we are very proud of the work that we have been doing impacting the lives of millions of American Latinos in the United States. Amazing. So where I want to start with you today, Frankie, is the fact that the Republican Party, most specifically Donald Trump, has made immigration, made migrants, has made the larger Latino community a target. Ever since 2015, his comments about people coming from Mexico, when he was elected, his policies of putting literally children in cages and having the audacity to sit before panel judges to say why they don't need to provide these children and people with adequate soap and toothbrushes and toothpaste that they had decided to throw into these, these, these cages and camps. But when we look at how the Republicans and the Democrats have done nothing when it comes to overhauling our immigration

system and we consistently see footage of people who have been walking hundreds of miles to make it to the United States, to make a better life for themselves, I mean, how do you make sense of either parties lack of true action around creating sensible policy? And here's the thing. The response is, it's always so hard. Oh, it's so complicated. But is it as hard and as complicated as they would lead us to believe? First of all, thank you for that introduction.

It's really comprehensive. And it's right at the center of what we're discussing here. This is about willingness. willingness to really work at a bipartisan solution to something that is critically important for not only this country but also our economy. There's the shortage of workers. We see that in red districts and in blue districts all around, we know that people need more workers.

And here we are still pushing people into under the shadows and having to put them in in conditions where they have to work and people are working because there are many opportunities are being offered to them, but they're being exploited. So this is really about what are our true values when it comes to these population who is supporting the economy with trillions of dollars, are involved in paying taxes, they're involved in our lives, in every single aspect of our life. But there is a willingness. There's no willingness in Congress to really work at this. And what we're seeing is really serious consequences in all aspects that we're seeing more recently with the influx of recent arrivals. Talk to us about why there seems to be such an

influx. Now, I'm coming to you from New York City, where the mayor here, who is abysmal, but that's besides the point, has cut funding to a very important. variety of programs that are actually necessary for the people of New York City. And his reasoning behind that is we are not receiving the aid that we need from the federal government in order to deal with the influx of migrants, those that have been used as a political football and been bust or flown in from red state governors into blue cities and states. Why is this influx happening? Can you give us a picture of 50,000 foot view as to why we are seeing these headlines over the last year plus? It's all based on unfortunately American intervention in Latin America.

It's directly linked to our intervention on the countries that are creating the influx of people, our intervention in Venezuela, the way that we have managed, or lack of mass. of the aid or the relations in Central America have created the conditions for people to have to leave their countries of origin. Nobody wants to do this painful journey into the United States, as you have described, miles and miles, which is extremely dangerous. But people are doing this with babies. They're doing that with their families because they have no other choice to seek their right to apply for asylum, which is something that is our law, is international law, and the United States have committed to do this. We have been paying so much attention to other countries, rightfully so,

and providing international aid and making them a priority for our government to support those government when the reality is that we have not provided the attention needed in our regions, or neighbors to be able to create better conditions for people to say, hey, this is where I want to be with my family in a safe space. However, it's very easy for Republicans just to blame it on somebody else and not really take a hard look at some of these policies that have created the rooted causes of immigration. But if we stop there and we talk about what we are doing,

dealing here in the United States. I also, our headquarters sit here in New York City as well. And I have seen firsthand when the buses arrive, we have been at Port Authority providing a triage, volunteer triage to everybody that is coming. What they're coming is people wanting to work, that they were pushed into buses against their will. And by the way, I feel that the governor of Texas should be called a coyote. There's no difference between him and other people that are transporting human beings as commodities across state rights against their will just for their personal benefit.

So what we see is all of these people coming to the United States thinking that this is the end of their journey when the reality is like there's so much hurdle for them. But they want to work. Many of them are professional. They have the skills that we need. And all that we're doing is playing political football on these human. beings that are, they have the right to be here after, and they have to complete their asylum seeking process. And that's what we're working so hard at the Hispanic Federation. You know, you're absolutely right when it comes to Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, when it comes to DeSantis

in Florida, that they should absolutely, I mean, I have said that it is a miscarriage of justice, that they have not been prosecuted as human traffickers, because that's exactly what it is that they are doing. They are doing it for the headlines. They are doing it to be hailed and applauded on Fox News. But at the end of the day, what they're doing is engaging in criminal behavior and should be treated as such. Frankie, one of the things that I want to ask you is this idea that right now, you know, we are once again seeing this country careening towards a government shutdown.

Cable News's favorite topic because they get to have their best horse race on television when it is actually real people's jobs and livelihoods and their ability to put food on the table that should really be the conversation and not about all of the maneuvering that happens behind closed doors on Capitol Hill. But Republicans in many ways are using the possibility of a government shutdown

in a week, right, at the end of next week, to essentially put in the most draconian policies, poison pills around immigration. Can you speak to, some of the policies that they are suggesting that are just so disgusting and disheartening. You started this introduction, this interview with children in cages, the policies that are being pushed forward and that being put forward with the risk of the United States not fulfilling their promises to support Israel or Ukraine,

all of these packages that they are talking about and attaching it, which it should be to different topics. We need to resolve the issue of immigration and the security packages that are for international aid. But they're basically wanting to revert to Trump-era-like policies, pushing this administration to be in a corner and say, if you want this aid for Ukraine and Israel, you need to give us this, which is a proposition that is going to have terrible implications not only for people living in this country, but also potentially what is our stance internationally. But let me pause that. Going back to Trump-era-like and expedited removals of people or pushing people back to Mexico, immediately when they come in, they're also proposing

expediters removals for people already here in the United States. We're talking about rounding up human beings and separating families. We're talking about mixed status families in the United States where we are going to be looking at raids. We could see camps created where they're rounding up people. We have seen these images in the history and we're so ashamed of our part of our history in the United States. But we were rounding up. people just because they were suspicious of being foreign and being pushed into mass deportations. So we are extremely concerned that these are the conditions in which if the Senate Democrats want to get something approved, this is what will end up being.

Or what we're going to end up being is not a chapter of shame and embarrassment for the United States for the unfair treatment of human beings. We cannot have that in our country because it will create more chaos. People will be witnessed to crimes and will be afraid to go to the police. Children will stop going to school. People will stop getting the services that they need, the healthcare services that they need, creating issues of healthcare for entire communities. It is devastating. And we don't see that Republicans have right now any willingness to really work at real solutions. We understand the influence of asylum seekers present a number of challenges. But the ultimate truth is that communication, accountability

among federal, state, and local governments could have and still have a substantial effect to mitigate these challenges. So again, I'm really, really concerned. What would it look like, Frankie, if the Senate, if Democrats were to actually create separate from the larger budget issues, a separate and robust immigration plan, what would it look like to streamline the asylum process while also providing a path to immigration? Like, what are some of the things that the members of your federation, what are they suggesting here? Well, we have an incredible network of organizations already providing support to these populations. They're still underfunded.

They're on their research, but they're doing extraordinary job. And I'm going to give you just one example that we were able to accomplish in November. We were able to work with the federal administration, the state, the city, and we were able just in one week and a half, we were able to create a community clinic with the organizations and volunteers, and we process 1,700 asylum seekers. This is in a week and a half. And nearly 1,400 work permits were processed.

They were identified, that they were in the shelters. They were working with the federal administration. We were able to get federal workers to take biometrics right on site when everybody was getting these expedited application done. And in a week and a half, we were able to process, 1,400 work permits. It is possible to do, but we just need the right resources and is up to Congress to be able to allocate the right resources in the right places.

Governor Hoko has announced that she had more than 30,000 jobs already line off for these population. What we're talking about is that we have the infrastructure in the nonprofit sectors and the government working together that can create real solutions and meet the challenges of the workers shortage. But right now, unless we come up with serious solutions to deal with this and also the backlog for years, the immigration system in our country had been defunded, had been broken down even to pieces. So that's why there's an enormous backlog for people to really get their cases done and be processed. If Republicans are serious about security,

let's put the resources in the immigration system and we were able to figure out you can stay and you're not allowed to stay. But right now, all that they're creating is more chaos just to create an artificial crisis. And promoting peer-mongering that is very confusing for many, many voters, unfortunately. You know, I know that we've been talking about immigration because it's in the news and it is top of mind and has continued to be top of mind. But when you're looking now 10 months away, we have the presidential election, the most consequential presidential election of our time. What are some of the priorities that the Federation is looking at and how will you seek to get out this very important demographic to the polls? Well, first of all, Latinos in our

country are concerned about jobs, the economy, education, quality of life safety. Our community is really focused on those issues. And we want to continue providing information to our community that is true, that is accurate, that they can actually make the decisions that they can make the right decisions for their family. We continue to be doubling down on our non-partisan civic engagement efforts to get as many people registered to vote, educate it, and get them out to vote. However, we are very concerned that our community, especially Spanish-language-speaking community in the United States, is being targeted with misinformation and fear-mongering. So we are trying as much as possible to work on that front and make sure that our community continues to get the most

important and critical information with facts. And that is something that is true. We are going to commit to that and that is my number one priority and the members of the Federation. Frankie, I can't thank you enough for the work that the Hispanic Federation does for making the time also to join the new abnormal. And I hope as this campaign season begins to pick up, that you will come back again and join us to talk about the issues that are affecting the Latino community and what we can do in order to increase engagement, get out the vote, because it's going to be critical. Thank you so much.

It will be my honor to be back. I appreciate you. Bill Ackman is someone I was quite comfortable knowing nothing about back in simpler times, i.e. like a month ago. But then the billionaire hedge fund manager started what the New Republic's Timothy Noah called his vicious campaign against then Harvard president Claudine Gay, who eventually resigned over allegations of plagiarism. And not content with that, Ackman's attacks have spread to include the faculty at MIT and the owner of Business Insider, which published compelling evidence that Ackman's wife,

MIT professor Neri Oxman, plagiarized parts of her own dissertation. Here to explain how we got to the point where yet another billionaire is being unbelievably obnoxious online is the New Republic's Timothy Noah. Tim, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So let's start, I guess, well, at the beginning. Ackman had beef with Harvard even before the Claudine Gay situation, right? Yes, he's had a number of beefs with Harvard over the years. Some of them extremely complicated and hard to follow, including one about what they did with some money of his that he gave, that they invested in a way he didn't like.

And he is a high-maintenance donor to Harvard University. and he just went completely off the rails over unadmittedly not very good letter put out by some Harvard student organizations after the Hamas massacre on October 7th. This was a somewhat offensive letter defending the massacre. And Ackman went ballistic over it and went on Twitter and asked for the names of all the students who signed this letter so that he and other. corporate leaders could make sure they never got a job after they graduated from Harvard. That's the Ackman style right there. And the Ackman hypocrisy is nicely captured by the fact that even as he was beating up on these teenagers, he was defending Elon Musk from accusations of anti-Semitism so persuasive that X was losing corporate advertisers right and

left over Musk's most recent anti-Semitic tweet, and it wasn't the first. He punches down and he kisses up, which is always something very attractive and ability. Yeah. So that gets to, you know, the whole Claudine Gaye situation, which eventually, as I said, sort of morphed into a plagiarism thing, but it didn't start with that. Ackman was mad at her because of, he didn't like her response to this letter from the students and other things going on with the Israel Hamas situation, correct? Yes, you know, Gay was new in the job.

She was a little clumsy. And, of course, then there was this congressional hearing where you had all three of these university presidents being raped over the coals. And they all did a bad job of fielding questions from Elise Stephanach who was out for blood. They, you know, responded with very sort of lawyerly answers to questions about how they deal with anti-Semitism. So, Ackman wanted or gone. Shortly thereafter, Liz McGill, the president of Penn was pushed out, and Ackman said, well, there's one down. He's been carrying on this campaign on Twitter, pretty much.

But he was also sending letters to Harvard administrators, the Harvard Corporation, and so on, demanding that gay be pushed out. Eventually, he expanded his list of particulars against gay to include DEI, And then finally, to include these plagiarism accusations, which were just starting to dribble out from some anonymous academic who was sending complaints to Harvard. And the first one was fairly minor, but Ackman was demanding that she resign in part because of that. Subsequently, additional examples of plagiarism came out that were so compromising that gay did have to. step down. And one thing I tried to emphasize, and what I wrote about this, was Gay Step Down because of the plagiarism accusations. Harvard was actually willing to stand up to all this political pressure that Ackman and others were bringing. So it's wrong to say that this campaign

was successful. The only campaign that was successful was the campaign of disclosures about her plagiarism, which obviously were put forth in very bad faith. But they did have Trump. evidence. And the conservative activist who was pushing this and crowing about, was a guy named Christopher Rufo, who himself has patted his resume. Right. He said he had a master's from Harvard. He actually had a master's from Harvard Extension School, which is not quite the same thing. Anyway, Ackman does participate in the Hew and Cry over the plagiarism charges, which eventually did, I think, turn out to be legitimately troubling. Then he sort of didn't stop. there. He was calling for resignation of MIT's president, you know, just sort of carrying on like a

lunatic when finally Business Insider comes along and they find that Ackman's wife, a former MIT professor named Mary Aksman, had committed some plagiarism. So this was obviously very embarrassing to Ackman and mortifying, I'm sure, to Nary Axman. There were two stories in Business Insider about that. The second one found that she had plagiarized Wikipedia, which in addition to being plagiarism is just unbelievably tacky. Right. You're not supposed to use Wikipedia as a source. It's fine if you use Wikipedia as a, you know, as an entry point to other sources, but that's embarrassing for an undergraduate. Right. So, Tim, I would assume that since Ackman made such a big deal about Claudine Gay's plagiarism, that his rigorous intellectual honesty would require that he

hold his wife to the same standard. And I assume that that was his response to the business insider piece. And Tim, I don't want to hear that instead he attacked the publication. Well, see, you're misunderstanding the principle. The principle is, as I understand it, the principle is, plagiarism is a terrible, terrible academic crime unless it is committed by my wife. Oh, that's interesting. It is a clerical error of no great importance. Like a lot of people before him, it must be said, he gets tripped up by the word plagiarism. He will concede that there are repetitions of passages, but he will say that they are not plagiarism.

And of course, plagiarism is the repetition of them. Right. He also embraces this fiction, which he was just a month before making fun of, interestingly enough, on Twitter, that it's not plagiarism if it's unintentional. And every respectable definition you will find if plagiarism says, yes, we don't care about intent. It's plagiarism. And I will add, as a sideline that I don't recall ever in my entire life encountering somebody who said they committed plagiarism deliberately. Right. So he starts splitting these ridiculous hairs, and he's not the first to do that either. A lot of people in the academic community will do that when they get caught.

Doris Goodwin did it when she got caught 20 years ago. She said, oh, I'm so sorry, I inadvertently failed to cite these passages that I quoted word for word, but it was not plagiarism. And then she actually got a bunch of very distinguished historians, including Arthur Schlesinger, signed some letter to the New York Times, after the New York Times referred to her plagiarism, and they sent a letter saying this was not plagiarism. It is well known that plagiarism can't be inadvertent. And they made this up. That's just true.

One of the really interesting questions is, you know, I'm Neri Oxman, and I just got nailed for plagiarism. And she did apologize for it somewhat graciously. She didn't, you know, she wouldn't fess up that it was plagiarism. But now I'm thinking, if I'm Nary Oxman, I just want him to shut the fuck up. Right. And there was also this, in the middle of all this, there was this Nothing Burger story about her dealing with some donation by Jeffrey Epstein.

Right. It was a really uninteresting story. And now, of course, he's publicizing that to the truth by saying how unfair it was. He just doesn't seem to understand. I mean, that story had no legs at all. If he hadn't opened his mouth, I think most people would. wouldn't even be aware of it. So he is just nuts. And, you know, he's a billionaire. So he did manage to bully business insider into doing an investigation of whether their reporting was fair.

And they concluded that. And they said that it was fair. And now he's going on Twitter and threatening to put them out of business. And he's like a bond villain. It's unbelievable. And my understanding is, because like you, I am off. Twitter. But I follow the news enough to know that he is now posting these tweets that are some ungodly length, because for people who don't know, if you pay Elon Musk $8 a month, you can post like virtually unlimited walls of text as a single tweet. And as you put it in your most recent New Republic piece, you say that you have read these tweets so the rest of us mercifully don't have to, which I thank you for. So how long are the

tweets and what is he saying? They are very long. You know, when I was back in the days of, you know, before computers, when I was an editor at various print magazines, you could tell that a letter to the editor was crazy. There was one tell, which is that crazy people never double space. I feel quite certain that if this rant on Twitter had been produced in the era before computers, that it would have been single space. It was long. It was rambling. It was pompous. It was the lack of self-knowledge is breathtaking. I actually found myself feeling sorry for the guy because I thought, we all need those friends who will just put their hand on our shoulder and say, you have to stop.

Right. He does not have that good a friend, I guess. Or that saying a friend at any rate. At least one of these tweets was 5600 words, which is that shit crazy. Has he sort of backed off of the attacks that he leveled at Claudine Gay for plagiarism? Is he sort of changing his tone a little bit because of what's been going on with his wife? He's changed his tone very, very slightly. It's sort of fascinating to see that it is after, you know, the sixth or seventh rant, that it was beginning to penetrate his consciousness very, very slowly that he was perhaps being a, a little bit hypocritical on the subject of plagiarism, because he had ridiculed all these arguments earlier in his tweets about Claudine Gay. He had a tweet where he said, in retrospect,

I shouldn't have had to form my own conclusions about plagiarism and her work. That should have been determined by a formal and transparent process by an administrative board comprised of independent members who could have judged her work without personal consequences to themselves. There actually was a board that did that at Harvard at the time. He was. complaining that they were going outside of the proper process. So he's trying to paper over this hypocrisy and he can't quite do it. And of course, if he really wanted to remedy this hypocrisy, he would say, I apologize to Claudine Gay because she did pretty much what my wife did. And I pilloried her for it. And now I recognize that she's human and commits errors just like the rest of us.

but he's never going to say that. You argued, or you said, again, at TNR that what Oxman did was, I think the phrase you used was arguably worse than what Claudine Gaye did. Yeah, the Wikipedia bit was really, I think made it worse. I think, you know, in fairness, I think the plagiarism did cover a larger proportion of Claudine Gay's work. But plagiarizing Wikipedia is just unbelievable. And Ackman got caught up in some crazy argument about that where he said that MIT did not forbid plagiarizing from Wikipedia.

Right. After she wrote her thesis, that's because they never even occurred to these people. As to plagiarize Wikipedia. And it doesn't matter whether there's a copyright violation. That's not what plagiarism is about. you can plagiarize something that's in the public domain. And incidentally, I don't think technically Wikipedia articles are in the public domain. According to an explainer, I saw from one of the Wikipedia, those officials they have who manage it. But in any case, nobody was talking about

copyright or trademark in the first place. They were talking about plagiarism, and plagiarism is plagiarism. You can plagiarize from the encyclopedia. You can plagiarize from the dictionary. You can plagiarize from the phone book. Well, I guess you can't plagiarize from the phone book. Well, maybe ads in the yellow pages, if that still exists. I'm going to make an assumption again, which is that Ackman has learned his lesson and will calm down. And once again, Tim, I don't want to hear anything to the contrary. He hasn't. It's really remarkable. He just keeps going and going and going. And now his latest is, he posted this tweet yesterday where he, what did he say? He said something along the lines of, I'm going to put Business Insider out of business. It's just nuts.

I cannot imagine somebody having so little self-knowledge as Ackman has. The entire world is laughing at it. Yeah, it's unreal. He's also got now this vendetta against MIT, I guess, which is what, because that's where his wife taught or teaches. We think somebody from their leaked information about her, which, you know, is a good guess. I don't know whether it's true. It would have to be somebody familiar with her PhD thesis, right? But who knows? It might be publicly available and somebody might have found it that way.

He is supremely not rational. And I do have to say, if he were managing my money, I'd be a little worried. Yeah. Although he addressed that too. He said, he said, don't worry. I have plenty of time to do this. and to manage money very effectively. And I thought to myself,

it's interesting that you're bringing us up about it. Well, didn't he say he was tweeting from the elliptical? Yes, he said, don't worry. I'm writing this from the elliptical. Well, it kind of reads like you're composed it on the elliptical. I should, by the way, say that Ackman was technically my boss a dozen years ago. He was a part owner of the New Republic, something I actually was not aware of.

Oh, wow. I didn't know that either. I wasn't aware of it at the time. He was part of an investment group. that owned the New Republic for a few months when I was there. And I knew the lead guy. And I knew that Marty Perrits was a minority owner. But I didn't know who the other owners were, not because it was kept secret, but because I just sort of never paid attention.

Right. But Ackman was one of them. So I guess you could say technically I used to be on his payroll. But I feel no conflict of interest here because I didn't even know that, and I never met him. And I, you know, had no awareness of him. fairly recently. Yeah. Well, you've done great work at the New Republic, explaining everything that's been going on with this. And like I said, I cannot thank you enough from saving me from having to read

a 5600 word Twitter rant. You are doing the Lord's work there. Timothy Noah, thank you so much. I hope you come back and we can talk about more fun stuff like this. Great. Thank you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are we starting out this week with your fuck that guy. My fuck that guy is one of the most egregious examples of both sidesism that I've ever seen in my life. It's an op-ed written in the Wall Street Journal, which is supposedly the classy Murdoch publication, the intellectual Murdoch publication. It was written by Tom McClintock, who is a congressman who represents California's fifth district, a Republican. And the headline for this piece is both sides threatened democracy. And then it goes on to say the January 6th riot was a

national disgrace, but Biden should push his own party to respect norms. I saw this and I was just like, you have got to be kidding me. And I read through it. And it's interesting in the sense that, you know, McClintock actually says, which is rare for a Republican, he says what happened on January 6th was a national disgrace. And he says, Biden is right to raise concerns about the growing threats to our democracy. And then he goes on to say, in recent years, Democrats have rigged election laws to extend voting over an entire month, accept ballots after election day, use mail-in ballots, etc. In other words, everything that makes it easier for people to vote, in his mind, is not observing norms and is just as bad as what happened on January 6th. He is upset that the left,

as he says, has been clear that it intends to pack the Supreme Court by creating new seats, something that has not been done and is not even close to being done. It is absolutely unbelievable and reprehensible to try to both sides January 6th by saying, well, the Democrats don't respect norms either. As if any of the things that were mentioned, even if you disagree with them, even if you disagree with Malin voting, probably because you want fewer people to vote, but set that aside, To compare that to storming the capital to occupying congressional offices, it's just one in an infinite series of things that would be just straight up laughable, except that it's too dangerous to just laugh at. You can and should laugh at it because it's absurd. But it's also, these are not outliers.

This is the Republican Party. This is the mainstream Republican Party view. And so it's just to see the Wall Street Journal publish an editorial with the headline both sides. threatened democracy. I just saw that and I was like, you know what? Fuck these guys. I just don't even know what else to say other than fuck these guys. Like it's just, I don't know what to say because it's not even an alternate universe that they live in anymore. This architecture that they're putting around their lie and their continual lies. And the media just, this is the continuation. It just never stops. Fuck those guys. So Danielle, on this special day,

who is your fuck that guy? Everyone. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone that utters a quote, a picture, a phrase that they pick, cherry pick from the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I find it absolutely fucking abhorrent that the very people that championed this man as an enemy of the state who. mind you, would still be alive, old, but alive. Because I want you to know that when you look at these motherfuckers

who we've talked about on this show that passed Kissinger, 100 years old, this person, 89 years old, 90 years old, Martin Luther King would have been one of them, had he not been assassinated by the very people that are saying that they don't want actual factual history to be taught. I want to read this that Dr. Bernice King, Dr. Martin Luther King's daughter, posted a picture of her and her mother at her father's funeral. And she wrote this, with my mother, daddy's funeral. He wasn't assassinated

because he wanted his children to be judged, quote, by the content of their character, but for dismantling racism, poverty, and militarism. He wanted corrective measures to eradicate racism, not the delusion that it doesn't exist. The fact is that when Martin Luther King was assassinated, a majority of the country wanted him fucking dead. And then it wasn't until after he was killed, that then this warped and fucking twisted idea of who he was and what he stood for. And now all of these people apparently marched with him, right, and believed in the same sentiments that he believed in. But we all know that it's a lie. The March on Washington was about jobs and the economy that was not built to include black people and people of color. He was murdered because he had people stop and think about,

wait a minute, what is this system that they're telling us that we have to work inside of and then when we do, they keep moving the gold posts. They recreate the system. They redo the matrix over and over again every time we seem to get close. I just want people to look at the polls when you look at the favor that Martin Luther King has now versus when he was assassinated. All of it is a fucking lie. Everything that they utter about this man is a lie. And it just, you know, this time of year I tell you is a time when I really don't want to be on social media for that reason. But this is what I will end with, which is opposed by Mark Lamont Hill, who wrote this. Today, let us remember Martin Luther King as he truly was. A black, radical, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, revolutionary Christian

internationalist who was deemed an enemy of the state and assassinated for his radical work. Just about everything else is a lie. So for that reason, the entirety of people who find themselves on social media that hold elective office that are gutting schools, that are burning books, that are upending curriculum, that are denying AP credits for black history, that are chasing professors and presidents out of universities, that are denigrating critical thought. Fuck those guys. Every single last one of them. Okay, Danielle, let me explain to you and Mark what Dr. King was really about.

Jesus Christ. I'm kidding, of course, 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. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at thedailybeast.com slash podcasts.

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