The Daily Beast Podcast - Trump’s SCOTUS Win Shows Why We Need Federally Run Elections

Episode Date: March 5, 2024

Jose Pagliery, a political investigations reporter at The Daily Beast, joins the program to discuss Trump’s jam-packed court calendar. Plus, a conversation with journalist and author Radley Balko about the sinister attempt to “retcon” the death of George Floyd and exonerate the cop who killed him, Derek Chauvin. 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. The Daily Beast Political Investigations reporter, Jose Pallieri, is here to walk us through all the latest legal decisions going on regarding one Donald Trump. Then Radley Balco, author of the book Rise of the Warrior Cop, is here to tell us all about the three-part 30,000-word piece he just finished publishing on his substack, The Watch, about what he calls the retconning of George Floyd. But first, let's have some fun. Well, let's start with the only bit of good news you will receive on today's show.

So, Andy, let's put our hands together for the fact that this is the new abnormal's 400th episode. Aplaus, applause, applause. Shout out to the entire team of brilliant people. Jesse, Seamus, Andy, and everyone. else who makes this show happen. Yay to us. Okay. That's all the good news. So buckle up, buckle up for the rest of it. Because let me tell you, I need a 10-day retreat after all of the breaking news that happened on Monday. So the nine black robes, the unelected, most corrupt

Supreme Court decided in a nine to zero decision that states is right. rights only matter if a red state governor is trying to take away the rights, bodily autonomy of their constituents. But if a state is trying to, let's say, protect its constituents from a known insurrectionist from being on the ballot like Colorado did to try and remove Donald Trump and other states followed suit, citing, you know, the Constitution, which, Who gives a fuck about that anymore? The 14th Amendment of the Constitution stating that if you have participated in an insurrection, then you are ineligible from being on a ballot.

And the Supreme Court said, nah, Trump is good. So it's all good. And in one of the, I guess in the opinion, Amy Coney-Barritt talked about needing to bring the country together. And I had everything inside me want to hurl up onto the floor. and had to push it back down. Because first of all, Amy, you shouldn't have that fucking job.

You want to talk about people who were promoted into positions that they shouldn't be in? You. You are that fucking person. You wrote an op-ed that Trump liked and then he put you in there. So don't write opinions.

Be like Clarence Thomas and shut the fuck up unless somebody's writing you a check. That all being said, I'm disgusted. The week is just getting started and I am over it. Andy?

First of all, yes, congratulations to us for our 400th episode, technically our 400th non-bonous episode. And a shout out to Deanna who edits this podcast. Yes, Deanna. Sorry. Yes. Because I cannot even imagine what a job that is. I love the fact that Danielle, that you and I have been the hosts from the beginning and that there have never been any other hosts of this show. So shout out to us.

Shout out to us. Shout out to us. A couple of things about this decision. First of all, congrats to Harlan Crow and the whole team. Yep. Whole team. Way to go. There were a couple of things about this decision, and you touched on them, and I just

want to go into them more. One thing the court didn't do was rule that Trump is not an insurrectionist. They just avoided the question altogether and didn't rule on that part of it. So if you're looking for a sliver of a silver lining, it's that, that at least Trump can't go around saying the Supreme Court. said, I'm not an insurrectionist. That aside, let's talk about this whole idea that somehow only Congress can make this determination to keep someone off the ballot for being an insurrectionist. And as you pointed out, this seems fundamentally at odds with a lot of Supreme Court state's rights

rulings. But I say fine. I say if states can't decide for themselves, who can be on their ballots? If only the federal government can make that decision, let's take this all the way. Let's fully nationalized presidential elections. Let's stop having 50 plus elections for president and have one. Let's get rid of the electoral college and make it so whoever gets more votes nationwide wins the way a normal country should do things. Let's stop letting states run rough shot over the Voting Rights Act. Let's take the presidential election out of the hands of states. If they cannot even determine who is eligible to be on their ballots, then let's just take everything out of their hands and let's nationalize it. and let's have one presidential election.

I'm all for that, by the way. I don't like the fact that we have 50-plus presidential elections every four years. I think it's stupid. I think it leads to ridiculous results where people can win more electoral votes, which are made up, but win fewer actual votes and be named president. That is just flat out insane. So let's apply this logic that the Supreme Court now seems to want to take up and champion. and let's say only the federal government can certify elections.

Only the federal government can run a presidential election. Let's go further. Let's make it the same thing for the House. Let's stop letting states like Alabama gerrymander black votes out of existence. Let's do this whole hog. And then I will be 100% on board with the way the Supreme Court ruled today. Until that time, nope, because you have ruled the other way far too many times. And look, I am not a lawyer.

And I'm not even arguing the legality of what they decided. I'm just saying I want some consistency. So that's one of the things that really gets me here. If you're going to do this, then fucking do it. Let's go whole hog. I mean, it's just, you know what it is? It is the nibbling, nibbling, nibbling, nibbling, away at our democracy that I think has really just has my nerves shot at this point.

It's like if you're just going to get rid of it, let's just do that. And then the rest of us can figure out how we're going to move forward. You know, we've talked about this, Andy, on this show, which is that I think that what we are going to see over the next five to ten years is an incredible brain drain from this country. I think that our universities are going to be hollowed out. I think that the talent that used to come into this country are going to see America as no more, right, as undesirable. And it's going to be shocking. But it's just like what this elected body, this unelected body is doing, everything that made America appealing as a place of opportunity, the lies that we have spread about American exceptionalism and opportunity and the American dream and all of these things, this Supreme.

court has systematically undone in the last handful of years. Yeah, it really is unreal. And then for Amy Barrett to sit there and say, we need to bring the country together when everything they've done in those past years has driven the country apart. It's weird how bringing the country together didn't really matter when it came to overturning Roe. And if I didn't know better, I would think bringing the country together is code for let's uphold everything Republicans want to do.

If I didn't know better, Danielle, But obviously that can't be the case. Jonathan Last made a great point over the bulwark. He said, basically pointing out, it's amazing how quickly the court can act when it wants to. This whole thing took eight weeks from when Trump filed his appeal to the actual decision. And Jonathan Last points out contrast this with the presidential immunity case. Trump appealed, filed his appeal of that, which said that, you know, presidents do not have blanket immunity for all official actions while in office. He filed that appeal on February 12th. The court didn't even agree to hear the case until February 28th, and it won't be argued until April 22nd.

So from appeal to arguments is 10 weeks. That's already longer than appeal to decision in this case. It's really interesting that the court could move fairly quickly to ensure that Trump stays on the ballots, but can't move quite so quickly to ensure that the trial against him can move. ahead. Yeah, one of the friends of the show, Ellie Mistel, wrote a piece in the nation that was saying, like, the Supreme Court must be stopped as the title of the piece. And the fact is, is that we as a country have held the Supreme Court above reproach. We have made them the untouchables. We have given them supreme and total rule over everything. And the fact is, is that they don't receive, not nearly the amount of scrutiny, even just within the media, that let's say, that, let's say,

and he had wrote this that fucking Taylor Swift received during the Super Bowl. The Supreme Court justices aren't followed, you know, when they're heading out to dinner or when they're going on their Harlan Crow expenses free vacations over the summer when they take off, right, while the rest of America works. You know, they don't have to meet the constituents face to face when they pull some hot shit like the folks do that run for the House or run for the Senate or local office, right? Like, they just get to live high on the hog, literally on our tax dollars, be above reproach, make these decisions, and then just go about living their fucking normal lives while they ruin the rest of ours.

And so it's like, when do we say enough is enough? You look around at other countries and the way that they fucking protest, the way that they halt everything to a stop. And I'm like, are Americans just too exhausted, too ambivalent or both? Like, I don't know what it is. But we sit and we wait for every single headline to figure out at the beginning of every week what rights will have by the end. There's no pushback. It's just like, well, the Supreme Court said it. So I guess it must be true.

In the same way that police reports would come out after the millionth on-arm killing of a black person or child and be like, well, they said they feared for their lives. So I guess that must be true. Yeah, I think you need to be careful here, Danielle. I think it might be illegal to belittle the Supreme Court. Oh, you're right. You're right. You know, I know they don't take kindly to that, and I know Chief Justice Roberts doesn't like it when you do that. And he thinks we have to have the utmost respect for everything they do, regardless of the fact that you have a justice on there who does not recuse himself from cases

in which his wife had an active interest and who received a lot of money from conservative donors, et cetera, at infinitum. But somehow we have to keep pretending, like you said, that the Supreme Court are like referees on a basketball court or umps at a baseball game, just calling balls and strikes, you know, and just upholding the rules. When that is just so clearly not the case, and look, I'm not saying it's ever been the case, but it is, I don't even know how arguable that it is that it is particularly and egregiously not the case. right now. John Roberts talks a lot about the legacy of the Supreme Court and how he wants it to be viewed. And buddy, I got to tell you, if there is a future history, I don't think it's going to look

too kindly on your reign. But, you know, lucky for them, Andy, there probably will not be a future history. So whatever graphic novel comes out and makes Chief Justice Roberts seem like, you know, the second coming of Superman, you know, that's all people will know. Let me tell you something. I'm just like, expedite this shit because these people are on some absolute total and complete bullshit and just, you know, and we all just keep going along, going along as if it's okay. Speaking of things that are also not okay, apparently Joe Biden's poll numbers, you know, and we talk about the polls. We are what, eight, nine months out from the presidential election.

Who the fuck knows what will happen between now and then? We don't even know what is going to happen by the time we get to Friday. But what we will say is that the New Times-Siena polls basically highlight, and this is what got me at the top. Here are the things that apparently were asked in this poll, going in between comparison in between Biden's policies and Trump's policies. Did Biden's policies help you personally? 18% say Biden's policies help them personally. Trump's policies 40% say help them personally. How, Andy?

How? I guess white supremacy is really fucking helpful. I don't understand. They go on, hurt you personally. Biden's policies apparently hurt 43% of people personally. Was it the vaccinations? Was it the cancellation of some student loans? Like, what part of Biden's policies have hurt people personally?

Only 25% say that Trump's policies hurt them personally. And then made no difference. 39% Biden's policies made no difference to their lives. Trump's policies 34%. What says you about the level of trouble said Biden may be in? Yeah, I'm of two minds about this because this is not the first time we've talked about polls, and we always sort of throw in, as you did, you know, that little caveat that, hey, we're eight months out. So green assault and all that. The thing that worries me about this poll is it's not about, well, at least on its surface, it's not about the person. It's about the policies.

And as the Times points out and its write-up of this, this is sort of a unique position. I guess 1912, we sort of were in a position because you had Teddy Roosevelt running against Taft. And both of them, one was the current president and one had been president. But at the very least, since then, we haven't been in this position again. So we actually have, we have four years of a Trump presidency and three plus years of a Biden presidency. and for people to be talking about the fact that they believe, we're not talking about Biden being too old here or even Trump being a criminal. We're talking about actual policy, or at least that's what the questions are based off of. Like you said, I don't know what the specific policies are that the people are talking about.

But the fact that people, even eight months out, are looking back and saying, you know what, Trump's policies when he was president helped me more than Joe Biden's policies, help me while he's president. That I think is a bit worrisome. And there's interesting things about here. And you don't know how much of this is just people who, quite frankly, are, you know, I don't want to even say low information voters. I like to call them disinformation voters or misinformation voters. How women are 20 percentage points more likely to say that Trump's policies help them than Biden's policies have is absolutely beyond me. But every once in a while you see a piece and they interviews a woman who says that, She's mad at Joe Biden because the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

What? Because it happened while Joe Biden was president. And they don't think or realize that it was conservative judges and justices and many of whom were appointed by Trump who did this. What they see is Joe Biden is the president and the Supreme Court overturns Roe. And that hurts me personally. And therefore, Joe Biden has hurt me personally. So that's what I mean when I say on the surface that it's really worrisome. And the only way to counter that is just a shit ton of education between now and November.

I echo your what? Because I don't know how anyone could actually think that. But again, I have seen it in the Times and other places when they interview voters. These are the kinds of things they say. I don't know what you can do about that other than an incredible amount of education, a PR push, whatever you want to call it, to let people know that, hey, wait a minute, Joe Biden didn't take away Roe. The Supreme Court did that.

a Supreme Court made up of Donald Trump justices did that. And I think there's a lot of other issues you could apply that to. You could apply that to inflation and Biden inheriting an economy that, you know, he has now done at least, I think, a halfway decent job of bringing under control things like inflation, et cetera. But people don't look at it that way. And I don't know what you do about that. You know, the thing is, is that if we actually cared in this country about civic engagement, which we don't. Because, like, let's be honest about this. That where does the education come?

Oh, I don't know. In our K through 12 education. It is not a requirement that you understand some, like, basic levels of civics, how government actually works. It varies from state to state from district to district. There are ways that you could build entire curriculum around government, your responsibility as a citizen and preparing. that when you graduate from high school, that you were ready to be activated as a voter with all of the rights and responsibilities that that comes with, that you would require that people are able to vote.

Voting, regardless, election day would be a day off. So there are ways in which other countries that are supposedly just as quote unquote civilized do these fucking basic things. But we don't. We do the opposite now. Exactly. So, you know, when I say, my God, about what people think about how Roe v. Wade got was overturned, it's just like, how could they? But how could they not? Because on top of the lack of information, the lack of education that is, that goes into our K through 12 educational system, right? Then you add on top of that the last 10 years of disinformation. It's amazing that people know anything. They're just like these sins. I don't know. I'm beyond disturbed about where we are. Here's a comment from a voter in the Times piece. Even though Donald Trump gets on my nerve sometimes with his comments, he really was helping the people, whether it was food, housing, gas, to jobs.

I don't know how you have a discussion with a person who believes that. I used to think I knew how to have discussions, and I think I used to be pretty good about having discussions with people I disagreed with because it was reality-based. I don't know how you have discussions, you know, rational, sane discussions with people whose world view is not based in reality. It's a big problem. And that's why you and I sit here and talk about that it is far from unlikely that Donald Trump wins again. The guy in this Times piece who said that voted for Biden in 2020 and is planning to vote for Trump in 2024. Yeah. At this point, I don't know. I'm not trying to talk to the people on Earth, too, but it seems like we're the only ones left. on the first planet. You know what I'm saying? Like, and the 70% either, like I said, either they're exhausted or they're just, you know, they're just tapped out and don't give a fuck.

But I don't know who's being asked these questions in these polls and who's being interviewed, but it's incredible. We're in an extraordinary place that honestly didn't just take the last 10 years to get here. This is what people not understanding the importance of the Supreme Court is and that the presidents are the ones that get to appoint that. And when Hillary Clinton said it in 2016, people said, you know, I don't really like her pantsuits. And what about our emails? So here we are. It sounds to me, Danielle, like what you're saying is, this is the new app. We'll be right back. Or will we? Folks, I'm really excited to welcome back to the new abnormal investigative reporter at the Daily Beast, Jose Pallieri, to give us the rundown in all of Trump's legal

woes, which are abundant. God bless you for doing the job that you do, Jose. So let's start off with the fact that Monday morning folks woke up to the fact that let's see. Alan Weisselberg is probably headed back to jail, Trump's former CFO of Trump organization who has already served time in Rikers for his fraudulent and grifting behavior, but now has been found to have lied under oath, and that can receive a penalty of up to five months in jail. So, I can't for the life of me figure out why this man is so indebted to Donald Trump that he's willing to give literal time to this man in Rikers of all places. But for some reason, he is. Then Trump got a Christmas gift come early from the Supreme Court that has said that, ah, fuck the Constitution.

And the 14th Amendment, Donald Trump, you're okay to be on the ballot in Colorado. Colorado was the first state to remove Donald Trump from the ballot, citing the 14th Amendment. If you have participated in an insurrection, you will not be on a ballot. The Supreme Court said, nah, in a 9-2-zip decision. This is just the tip of the iceberg. So tell us what we're in for. Well, Danielle, this is very much as busy as this sounds. In some ways, this is the calm before the storm.

Because we are now three weeks out to the first ever American criminal. trial of a former president. And what we're getting now is all of these legal problems that are surrounding Trump are starting to come to definitive conclusions. So the first one that you mentioned, Alan Weisselberg, let's go into detail about what exactly that's about. For years now, prosecutors in New York and elsewhere actually have been trying to get at this man because he was the longtime accountant to Trump at the Trump organization. He previously served Trump's father. and then got pulled over to the sun and stayed with him for now almost 50 years. And so he knows where all of the skeletons are in the closet.

And he is in a position to tell law enforcement just how Trump has been dodging taxes, lying on forms, getting away with stuff for a very long time. But he hasn't really flipped. And it's interesting how over the years, every time prosecutors come after him, journalists will write headlines saying, Weisselberg flipped. Well, he makes a pretty terrible witness for them because in court, he makes himself the fall guy. We saw this initially when the Manhattan DA went after the Trump organization.

There was a tax fraud trial that took down two Trump companies and hit them with $1.6 million in a judgment because of tax fraud. And in that instance, Alan Weisselberg took the fall. He took a plea deal. He admitted to dodging tax. and he spent 99 days on Rikers Island, which is a hellhole. I mean, everybody who reads the news in New York knows that Rikers Island is a terrible place. The conditions are horrendous. There's rampant misabuse of detainees there, but he had a pretty even time there. He spent almost three months there and got let out early. And after he left there, it apparently wasn't enough

to convince him that he should work with prosecutors. Because what we've learned today is that in three instances, two of them after his time in jail, in three instances, he lied to investigators at a parallel law enforcement agency, which is the New York Attorney General's office, which was going after the Trump's for bank fraud, civil bank fraud. And in that case, at two depositions and at the trial that I attended last fall, he He also lied about his role at the company and exactly how they were fabricating financial statements.

And he lied about what I think is one of the stupidest things possible, which was the size of Trump's massive three-floor apartment at Trump Tower. He was one of the main players who helped essentially fake its size and triple it from about 11,000 square feet over to closer to 30,000 square feet. And when investigators asked him in depositions and at trial, just how he was involved in it, how central he was to that scheme, he kept shrugging it off and, you know, pushing them off saying, oh, no, I wasn't, I wasn't really involved. I wasn't focused on the numbers when actually he did. And so at that trial, the judge found against the Trump's and against him, he's now on the hook for $1.1 million for his role in that. But he still, he's still. still manage to essentially get away with it because he hasn't suffered criminal charges for that. But what we have today with his guilty plea is that the DA's office is coming after him saying, you can't continue to lie on Trump's behalf. You can't keep being that fall guy. There are consequences

to that. And so we have really interesting timing here where this guy is going to show up in court in early April to find out how long he's going to serve at Rikers, which right now stands at five months. If it's cut down like it was last time, it'll be another 99 days in that island jail. And he hasn't learned his lesson. His decision to take a plea deal shouldn't be read as prosecutors finally getting to him. It's actually quite the opposite. It's that prosecutors keep trying to get at this guy who just won't flip on his former boss. He won't tell the whole story.

And we all know that he knows more than he leads on to because we've seen emails. We've seen the financial statements. we know he was involved, but he keeps going out in front of the guy. Now, the other news today that you mentioned is the Supreme Court decision that procuring, meaning the entire court, all decided that the 14th Amendment cannot be used by Colorado to keep Trump off the ballot. And the timing here is critical. It comes just 24 hours before Super Tuesday, where Colorado and Maine were two states that

had pulled him off the ballot. And now he's going to be on it. The Supreme Court decided that states don't have the power to. do this. But I read the opinion this morning. I read it twice. And two things jump out at me. One of them is that in saying that the states can't use this power, the majority of the court have decided that, no, this is a federal thing. This is up to Congress. But that sets up a weird fight because we know that the MAGA contingent in Congress will not turn on Trump. They won't be the ones to go after Trump and say that he shouldn't be on the ballot. In fact, they're rooting

for him to be on the ballot and beat Joe Biden. But the other part that jumped out, at me was that nowhere in this opinion did they say that Trump was an insurrectionist or that he wasn't and so I'm reading this I'm left wondering why is there even a 14th amendment why do we have this section there if it's not going to be employed it blew my mind it actually infuriated me that the majority of the court in reasoning that this shouldn't be used this way essentially relied on the idea that it has not been used up until this point which is apparently to them a big red flag, a big indicator that it should not be used this way. Whereas I think any reasonable

thinking person would conclude if it hasn't been used up until this point, it's because we haven't had an insurrectionist running for office to be president, which is a good thing. But the fact that it has happened now is the perfect test case for this method. And the Supreme Court essentially just pushed that off. And what does it say to you with this decision that there was no dissent. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it was one thing for them to be like, oh, Donald Trump should be on the ballot in Colorado and it be a six to three decision. It wasn't. This is one of those issues that if you are a lawyer or you're a journalist covering the courts, things make sense as long as you keep certain blinders on, right? And this is something that happens

a lot in academia where you consider something in a vacuum. Yeah, I can see how I can see how the Supreme court could naturally reason that allowing states willy-nilly to use this amendment could create chaos. And that's something that they were concerned about. They said if a state can do this unilaterally, then we're going to have a, they call it a patchwork of chaos across the country where states would employ it this way. But if we zoom out a little bit and we consider what their argument rests on, it's the idea that using this amendment against someone who, before all of our eyes engaged in a failed coup to stay in office in 2020, that if we use this against Trump, it would create chaos. Whereas if he is elected and he continues to act this way,

that is essentially a threat to our working democracy. So they're willing to hold off on the hypothetical present minor chaos to potentially usher in a republic destroying chaos. That's a real problem with not just this court, but how a lot of our conversations about the mega threat goes. I have friends who are completely anti-Mega who were aghast that the 14th Amendment could be used this way because in their eyes, this seemed like an unfair way to keep Trump off the ballot. And my argument to them has always been, if not now, then when? If a person is not willing to utilize the 14th Amendment against someone like Trump, then please, entertain me.

Who do you have in mind? Do you have a dictator like Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela? Are you thinking of somebody like Bashar al-Assad in Syria? Who do you imagine this is going to be used against? Because I've read the Federalist papers that discuss the threat to a democracy from an uncontrollment. executive, and Trump fits the bill. In fact, I actually am disappointed that Alexander Hamilton wasn't creative enough in considering how someone like Trump could reach a position where he would be in office, because in the federalist papers, the founders say, surely no one who's this kind of maniac would end up in a position where they are in the in line for the presidency. Well, they were wrong, and that's why something like the 14th Amendment was written. But the Supreme Court has

shown that they're not willing to employ it. And the reasons for doing so is a hypothetical chaos that hasn't happened yet because as far as we know, the 14th Amendment has not been used or employed at all against people who have fallen short of what we saw in January 6th. I don't know what hypothetical world that they're living inside of. Because everywhere that I look, chaos has unfolded. And they talk about a power that we don't want a patchwork of protections. You mean like you left for abortion? Like you left for affirmative action? as we're watching DEI efforts across the country be destroyed. So when it comes again to this particular Supreme Court that is unique in the fact of the obvious grift that is happening there

and the people that believe that they are supreme and above any type of law whatsoever, is that they're fine with patchwork protection so long as it's coming from red states. But when you have other states, whether they be purple or blue, that try and in enforcement, force any type of state's rights, well, this is where the Supreme Court decides to step in. Yeah, if you want to argue things inside of a vacuum, except we don't live inside of a vacuum, except our democracy is hanging on by a thread because of what it is that they're doing. We know, Jose, that in the upcoming couple of weeks, as you mentioned at the top, the first trial will begin, but we also know that the nine black robes are going to be now hearing

in April, whether or not Donald Trump presidents have absolute immunity. What are your thoughts on where that goes. I was there for the oral argument as to whether or not Trump can receive immunity from Jack Smith's criminal investigation for his role in the election interference in 2020. And it's pretty clear to me that the judges are not going to hand him that victory. But in some sense, they already handed him a whole other victory in their timing of this case because they didn't need to take a long time. The Supreme Court dealt with U.S. v. Nixon some 40 years ago or so, almost 50 years ago, they worked that case out during the Watergate scandal quite quickly, whereas with this one, they're taking their dear sweet time. And what that means is that by the time they come to a decision

on whether or not he can be granted a ridiculous level of immunity that, in his own lawyer's words, would allow the president to employ SEAL Team 6 to kill a political rights. If that decision comes sometime midsummer, then we're in a very awkward position where this trial would maybe take place in the fall in the last month or two before the general election. And then, of course, we're going to hear people call foul. How could this guy who's supposed to be in the race in the closing days show up every day in court in Washington, D.C. to fight for his freedom? Well, that's where we're at. That is where we're at. And it's possible that, you know, he'll be found guilty or acquitted, what, the day before the election. They made it really messy by doing it this way.

But you know what? There is a whole other. In the words of, I think it was Yoda and Star Wars, there is another. Well, there is another. And that is Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg Jr. who is going to have his case against Trump, the one involving the election interference because of the cover up with the Stormy Daniels porn affair in 2016. that one starts on March 25th, and that's going to go on for about two months, and we will get an answer. I'm going to say probably by May or June as to whether or not Trump could be sentenced to spend time at Rikers,

maybe alongside Alan Weisselberg, for that case. And so when I say this is the calm before the storm, it's kind of a misnomer because it's not very calm. Trump is going through a ton of legal headaches, and he's going to be extremely busy. His lawyer, his defense team is working nonstop right now. And this is extremely distracting for his 2024 residential run. But this guy is going to be in the rut for the next few weeks. And I'm counting down the days to March 25th because that trial is going to be late. Well, Jose, we will come back to you when things rev up, although my blood pressure would say otherwise.

Really appreciate you, as always, for making the time for the new abnormal. Thank you, Danielle. Radley Balco is an award-winning journalist and author of the essential book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, and he's just finished publishing an incredible three-part, 30,000-word look at what he calls the retconning of George Floyd at his excellent substack, The Watch. He joins me now to walk us through it. Radley, thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. Thanks for having me on again. Absolutely. All right, so let's start with the general subject, the retconning of George Floyd. This is the rise, or I guess the second coming of

this idea on the right that Derek Chauvin was wrongly convicted of murdering him? You know, there was a book that came out by this journalist in Minneapolis, Liz Collin, that, you know, got a little bit of attention on some fever swamp right-wing sites. But then what really kind of amplified these claims was a documentary that she produced with a former police officer and this conservative news outlet called Alpha News in Minneapolis called The Fall of Minneapolis. And this is really where you see a lot of the claims that have been kind of circulating on far-right media synthesized into a documentary form. And, you know, we see this often after high-profile incidents of police abuse or police killing gets a lot of attention and generates a lot of protests.

There have been cases where, you know, evidence comes out that shows that things didn't, you know, quite go down the way they were initially reported or initially claimed on social media or by, you know, racial. justice activist. Michael Brown's a good example. Jacob Blake and Kenosha is another good example. But there are two problems that. One is in George Floyd's case, it did happen exactly as it was initially reported. I think the evidence is overwhelming that George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin. The second, you know, that's a kind of flattening of what these protests are all about. I mean, Ferguson was not just about Michael Brown's death. It was about this systematic, predatory relationship between the people who lived in these towns, poor, mostly black people who lived in these towns in St. Louis County and the towns that kind of preyed off of them and saw them as

walking ATMs. This is always the case after a protest. And George Floyd's protest was certainly about George Floyd and certainly about that video, but I think in a broader sense, it was about a Minneapolis Police Department that had a long, ugly history of racism, of abuse, of cops acting with impunity, of refusal to hold even really egregious police abuse accountable. People rarely come out and spill out into the streets because of one incident or one person, even one death. It's usually because that death resonates with people in a certain way is because they can see themselves being the person on the receiving end of that police abuse. And so that's what I think these retconning campaigns are really all about. They're an attempt to erase the very legitimate

claims of these protests by seizing, you know, on a few inconsistencies in the way that these incidents were initially reported. So you mentioned the quote-unquote documentary, the fall of Minneapolis, which as you point out seems to be the impetus for the resurrection of this ridiculous theory. Barry Weiss's publication, the free press, published a piece by Coleman Hughes, headlined, what really happened to George Floyd? That's with a question mark, so you know he's just asking questions. But this seemed to be the impetus for your own writings. What was it about this piece that made you sit up and say, oh, hang on, I got to set this straight? These ret-cunning campaigns that happen after these incidents,

I find them particularly aggravating because, you know, I'm somebody who I come from a libertarian background. I used to work at the Cato Institute. I used to work at Reason Magazine. I mean, how I read a column for Fox News for 10 years. And, you know, I think for a long time these issues, these police abuse issues and criminal justice reform, there was an audience on the right for them as I think consistent sort of principal people on the right are skeptical of government and skeptical of government power. and that extends to police officers and prosecutors as well. In the Trump era, I think that a lot of that's been lost. I think Trump has been successful at sort of sucking these issues into his broader culture war. And so, you know, I think I first kind of noticed this and became a little bit discouraged by it after Brianna Taylor, you know, which was a terrible incident of police abuse that should never happen. But then you have Daniel Cameron and the Attorney General of Kentucky, you know, called this press conference and put out what we now know are just flat lies about.

her and about the case. But the people who I, you know, who are longtime readers, outlets that I may disagree with sometimes I've always found sort of credible or at least well-intentioned or honest brokers really kind of ran with that and ran with this idea that was all the lie. You know, I started to see a repeat of this with the George Floyd case. You know, at first, the fall of Minneapolis and Liz Collins' claims were, you know, you saw them on kind of far-right sites. Then you saw, you know, Tucker Carlson run with them, Megan Kelly, the We the Fifth podcast, which is a, you know, libertarian people, a couple of whom were former colleagues were pretty reverent about it. I mean, they had some criticism of it, but mostly kind of ran with it.

And, you know, to me, it was like, okay, now I have to address this, you know, because people who, who I think, you know, in the past least have been, I would consider sort of allies on these issues, were now embracing this idea that it was all based on a lie. Even if it was all based on a lie, even if the documentary was right about how George Floyd died, I don't think that that should erase the protest in the very, real sort of anger behind them because we have a DOJ report that documents the abuse at the Minneapolis Police Department and it is it's jaw dropping. I'd encourage people to read it. It's very easy to read. But in this case, it wasn't based on a lie. It was true. And this documentary was putting forth claims that as somebody who's covered these issues for a long time, you know, or were pretty transparently bullshit to me. But the problem with, I think it's called Brandelini's law, the problem with, you know, misinformation is that it's very easy to sort of get it out there and

get it circulating, it takes just a monumental amount of research and time and writing to effectively point out why it's bullshit. And the main problem, I think, with what happened in Floyd's case is with the death investigation system. And this is something I've written on for a long time. But we have a broken death investigation system in the U.S. We have medical examiners determine the cause and manner of death. The manner of death in particular, whether it's a homicide or an accident or negligence or suicide or undetermined, that determination by a medical examiner usually is what decides whether or not their criminal charges brought.

And for decades, what we've seen in deaths in police custody is that medical examiners have a strong bias toward exonerating law enforcement. And what I found particularly frustrating about the fall of Minneapolis and the way that its claims are sort of amplified is that they kind of had a point, right? So Derek Chauvin was unusual. It was unusual that in this particular case, state officials didn't just go with the state medical examiner, who, by the way, did also say it was a homicide. But they also went, you know, they consulted with a pulmonologist and with several cardiologists. They talked to extra medical examiners to get second opinions.

And to somebody who isn't familiar with how broken the death investigation system is, I can understand why that looks like Chauvin is being singled out, you know, right? He's getting special treatment. But the reality of the situation is, I can tell you that he's being singled out in the sense that this is, is one of the few cases where we got a just outcome. This is one of the few cases where they did what should happen in every single one of these in custody deaths. And so to see that, the fact that this was, you know, that George Floyd is one of the few people to die in police custody who actually got the sort of thorough examination that these deaths deserve, to see that spun as, well, this is just proof that it was all a fix and that, you know, it was, you know, that this is a corrupt

system and that whatever woke officials or the FBI, you know, made this happen and made a martyr out of Chauvin, it's just infuriating. One thing that happened as a result of this one case where they went out of the way to get it right is that it sparked some changes and it sparked some reforms, some pretty obvious and others kind of behind the scenes. And this effort to undo all of that, you know, threatens to undo those reforms as well, which means we're going to have more unnecessary deaths. There are going to be more people who die in police custody who didn't have to. Yeah, for sure. And also, as someone who comes from a libertarian background, you're not special, Radley. I share the sort of disappointment and dismay at what's happened to that movement over the past, I don't know, five, six years.

I want to talk about one of the claims that, as you say, that Coleman Hughes focuses on and that also features in the fall of Minneapolis. That is that what Chauvin did, which was put his knee on Floyd's back and neck for nine minutes, was what he was trained to do by the Minneapolis Police Department. and therefore it could not have been criminal assault. Why is that incorrect? This focuses on a technique that was taught at the time in Minneapolis called the maximum restraint technique or MRT. It was trained by the police department. And the idea was that you put your knee sort of into the side of a suspect's neck to

pin them down. But it's supposed to be used against people who are struggling, who are resisting arrest, who are violently resisting arrest. But it's supposed to be done temporarily, you know, a matter of. of seconds, basically, in order to administer a device called a hobble, which is designed to incapacitate, you know, people who are struggling and are resisting arrest. And then the police and BD officers were instructed to immediately, once the hobble was on, to immediately roll the suspect over onto their side. And the reason for that is a condition called positional asphyxia.

It basically means death by suffocation, but it doesn't mean that your windpipe has been restricted, that somebody's, you know, manually choking you with, whether it's with your hands or your knee or whatever, it means that your body is in a position where it's difficult for you to inhale or to inhale deeply. And it gets a little bit technical, but what the pulmonologist and Chauvin's trial and what other experts I've talked to since have said, so when you can't inhale deeply, where you can only take shallow breaths, what happens is, one, your oxygen levels drop. But two, you can't move air deep enough into your lungs where the alvealide, these little, sacks that exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. If the air doesn't get all the way down to them, they can't make that exchange. So your oxygen levels drop, but then your carbon dioxide levels

soar. And that creates a chemical process that can lead to cardiac arrest, which is what happened to George Floyd. This is all very technical and, you know, a possible defense of Chauvin that could see people making. How is a cop supposed to know about the obelie and how they function. And the point is that the experts have already laid all of this out. And that's why this is a part of police training. And it's not just MPD. Every police department in the country that I've seen so far, and I've probably looked at 40 or so policy manuals, explicitly warns about positional asphyxia. It's drummed into police officers in their training. And this importance of rolling people onto their side, it's emphasized because it prevents depth. When you're on your stomach and handcuffed,

especially if you're handcuffed, and then especially if there's weight on you on your back, you just can't breathe in a way that allows your body to function. And if you're held that way for, you know, five, six, ten minutes, it can be fatal. And this is so well known in police departments. I mean, the Department of Justice put out a notice about this in the 90s. NYPD has been explicitly warning about it since 95. You know, Chicago PD, LAPD, most of these departments have, not only do they warn about positional asphyxia in their training.

manuals, they explicitly say, you know, that it can cause death. They explicitly say, do not put any weight on a suspect's back when they're on their, on their stomach, which is called the prone position. So, Chauvin's defense and the documentary argue that because MPD trained officers to put their knees on someone's neck, that's what Chauvin was doing in this case, and therefore he was only following policy. What they don't mention is that the policy says this should only be administered for a very short period of time, only to put on this hobble device, and then immediately you're supposed to roll the person over. Well, what we know is that Chauvin did not use a hobble. In fact, they decided early on they weren't going to use it. He didn't roll Floyd over onto his

side to help him breathe. And he put all of his way, instead of sort of putting his knee on the neck while putting most of his own weight on his other foot, Chauvin was leaned forward. He was putting all of his weight on Floyd. And he did this, even as bystanders, continued to tell him that Floyd couldn't breathe, even as a colleague, checked for Floyd's pulse and couldn't find it. And even as Floyd himself went unconscious, went limp and, you know, basically continued to put his weight on Floyd's back in a prone position while he was handcuffed for another three minutes after Floyd lost consciousness. So there's no police department in the country that allows that under its policy. So, you know, to say that Chauvin couldn't have

been guilty of killing Floyd because this was taught, it's like, taking the very first step in something that's taught and then disregarding and ignoring all the rest, including clear signs that this person is in distress and is in danger of dying, it was the indifference. It was the nonchalance. I mean, at one point, one of his fellow officers even says to Chauvin, maybe we should roll him on side. You know, I'm worried about this. And Chauvin says, nah, you know, he just sort of blows him off. So that's where this is really kind of a disingenuous argument that, you know, because he was trained on this, he couldn't have possibly killed him. So you mentioned this earlier, but you call the third and final part of your series,

The Great Flattening. And you sort of got into it a little bit, but I want to go further on that because you really get into the motive behind all of this. And it seems that as you've written, and I think you make an excellent case, the motive of this is not about necessarily Derek Chauvin and George Floyd. It's about police reforms, and it's about countering any movement in favor of those reforms, isn't it? Yeah. So, I mean, there's a, there is a well-funded movement in quasi-academic circles to make it almost impossible to hold police officers accountable. So, you know, I said earlier, this notion of positional asphyxia. It is well known in the forensic science community. It's well accepted. There's nothing controversial about it. It's diagnosed all the time, you know,

in car accidents. If you're left in a position where it makes you difficult to breathe after a car accident. We know about kids and car seats can die of positional asphyxia infants and carriers if they're not positioned correctly. There's nothing controversial about it at all. And positional affixia, it can kill you from a lack of oxygen or an excess of carbon dioxide in a way that doesn't leave any physical marks. I mean, everybody points out that the Floyd autopsy didn't show any signs of fatal injury. But that is common with positional asphyxia. It's well accepted, you know, well regarded, not controversial. Same time, there is this extremely controversial and frankly, you know, dubious bullshit diagnosis called Excited Delirium that

was invented in the 80s as this way to explain a weirdly a rash of deaths of black sex workers in Miami with this white medical examiner came up with this preposterous theory that there's something about black women that when they mix sex and cocaine, they just sort of die spontaneously. And he then expanded it to include black men and then generally just that some people just sort of die when they get really excited if they're on some sort of drug. It turns out the black women were all killed by a serial killer, we found out later. And that should have killed excited delirium as well. But it didn't. It kind of lived on. And Axon, the company that makes taser, has been funding research for decades now that basically the intent of the research is to use

excited delirium to replace positional asphyxia as a cause of death of people in police custody. And what that does is it removes the onus from police officers to take care of people to make sure that you're not killing the person you're arresting. And it says, some of these people just sort of die. We don't know why. We can't explain it. And so we're just going to chalk it up to excited delirium. And the thing about excited delirium is it's so convenient for law enforcement because not only does it come up with this mysterious death that, you know, exonerates them of any wrongdoing, it also posits that people who are suffering from it have superhuman strength. The Minneapolis Police Department slide training officers of excited delirium up until a couple of years ago,

included a photo of the Incredible Hulk. It also claims that people are impervious to pain. And so it not only becomes a way to exonerate cops of people when people die in their custody, it becomes an excuse for them to use more force and use more extreme measures because this person has superhuman strength. So, of course, we're going to do that. And we know this that, you know, Derek Chauvin early on, one of his fellow officers said he was worried about excited delirium and Chauvin's attorneys tried to bring it up at trial, that he thought Floyd had this condition.

And so it's been incredibly destructive as a diagnosis because it both encourages police brutality and excuses it at the same time. And it's becoming more and more common. But one thing that we saw after George Floyd's death is a reevaluation of all this. We started to see an audit, for example, of this former state medical examiner in Maryland of all the in custody deaths that he oversaw. We saw the state of California banned excited delirium as a diagnosis in these cases. And this is a real threat to companies like Axon and law enforcement and groups that work

with law enforcement. And so, you know, this pushback to claim that Floyd died because he, you know, had a condition or he was on drugs and that Chauvin had nothing to do with it. You know, it's an attempt to, you know, if that was all the lie, then all these reforms that were passing that are based on that are, you know, unnecessary and we should roll them back. And there's one quote actually from one of these academics that Axon's been on Axon's payroll forever. He gave an online, a webinar in police training in 2019. Well, first of all, the name of it was fascinating. It was called Managing Your Medical Examiner, which is, you know, medical

He's supposed to be independent and science-based and this idea that they need to be managed is pretty revealing. But then he basically compared a positional asphyxia to SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, which, you know, is this sort of unexplained condition that babies die in their cribs and we don't really know why. There's been some progress on it in the last few years. But he says basically, you know, we used to prosecute parents for SIDS deaths and now we don't and that's a good thing. And so he posits, we need a condition called, I think he calls it, arrest-related death syndrome. And, you know, he basically says we need, we need to do to police officers what we did to parents in these cases, which is just excuse them, you know, that there's no reason to question them. And, you know, the dangerous thing about that is, you know, I don't, I don't think we should criminally prosecute police officers for accidents or for things that happened that were beyond their control if they were following policy and following the law. But, you know, what that diagnosis does, what excited delirium, what this new thing that this guy is positing, what they do is they take away any urgent sense of urgency or not. need for police to change policies to prevent unnecessary deaths in the future, right? They say, there's nothing wrong. We can just keep doing things the way they are. I mean, that's the really

pernicious, destructive aspect of this retconning effort, which is that, you know, whatever you think about Chauvin, and, you know, I think he deserved to be convicted. I think he deserves to be in prison. You know, I think maybe a sentence was a bit too long. I also think the other officers were treated maybe a little bit more harshly than they should have been. But whatever you think about that, we could prevent this stuff from happening in the future. I've said this a lot about police shootings also. You know, there's, there are two questions that we should ask. First is, what was this shooting legal? And that's the one that we tend to focus on. But the other one is, wasn't shooting preventable? Are the things that we could have done to make, to prevent this

from happening, defend this person from dying who didn't necessarily need to die? And what I really find destructive and kind of shameful about this retconning effort is that it really distracts from that last question. It really, like basically says that last question is even worth asking. You know, we don't need to reform anything. We just need to keep doing things the way they are. And if more people die in police custody, who didn't have to, you know, so be it. So I know, Coleman Hughes said you should come on his podcast and, you know, debate him, bro. And then after you declined, Barry Weiss said you should come on her podcast along with Hughes an opportunity. You also turned down. So I would just like to thank you

for coming on my podcast instead. Radley Balco, I encourage everyone to go to the watch and read this incredible series on the retconning of George Floyd. Thank you so much for being here. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on Andy. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, I would love to say how are you starting off this good week, but it's just another fucking week. So who is your fuck that guy to just get us off right? I'm going to do a little bit of a throwback to classic rock radio and do a two for Tuesday. They're kind of connected, so, which is good, although what they're connected in is bad. And start with the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, who is now being sued by P-Flagg, which is an

LGBTQ group, because he has demanded that they turn over all their records in support of Texas families seeking, according to NBC News, transition-related medical care for their transgender youth. In other words, he wants a list. Ken Paxton wants a list of transgender youth turned over to him to use for God knows what purpose. This is disgusting. It is dangerous. It is demonic. Despicable. It is despicable. And I think it's fair to say that Ken Paxton is a D-bag. I am glad that P-Flag is pushing back on this. And I hope that their pushback is successful. Although given the state of our court system, I'm not particularly optimistic. But this is absolutely insane. and we have a rich history on this planet of knowing that the government having lists of particular

groups of people is almost 99, I would say 99.9% of the time, a really bad thing for that group of people. And to keep carrying on like this in 2024 and to be absolutely, I don't even want to say they're ignorant of history because I believe that Ken Paxton is not ignorant of history. he knows damn well that history shows that it is bad for whatever people are on the list, and he wants to continue that. So that's fuck that guy, number one. And then over in Missouri, a bill filed in the House of Representatives there by state representative Jamie Gregg, as reported by the Riverfront Times, would make it a felony

for teachers or school counselors to aid the social transition, quote unquote, of a child. Let me explain at least partially what that means. That means if a school teacher, for example, referred to a child by their preferred pronouns, they could be found guilty of a felony and placed in a sex offender register company that is reserved for tier one sex offenders, which is Missouri's lowest level, but includes things like possession of child porn or attempting a sexual act with a minor. This would, among other things, effectively end the teacher's career, obviously, or the school counselor or whatever. But again, the upside of this is, at least as of now, according to the Riverfront Times, there are no co-sponsors for this bill, and hopefully it will stay that way. But again, we've talked about this before.

We cannot sit here and say, ah, these are crazy bills that have no chance of passing because too often these days, the bills that look crazy that we say, ah, that has no chance of passing. That's just some, you know, Republican nut job. It turns out there's a lot more Republican nut jobs than we maybe used to think. some of these bills that are insane on their face and you would think, well, this is just some lone nut. It turns out not to be the case. So I do think it's important to highlight these things. And it is just these two things together are just more along the same path of trying to criminalize transgender folks, of trying to criminalize people who are supportive of transgender folks. And I'll just go back to all the D words I used about Ken Paxson and just you can just

applied them all to Jamie Gregg. So fuck both those guys. I just want people to understand that to place trans youth, non-binary youth, on somebody's list, and they're not telling you what that list is for, just send me over a list, is what fascism looks like. Will those children be put in some type of correctional boarding school? Will their parents lose parental rights? These are the things that are at stake.

if any Republican enters into the White House, any Republican, this is what is at stake. And just so folks understand, if you're like, ah, well, I don't have an LGBTQ plus kid or I don't have kids at all, so this isn't going to affect me. This is where it starts. It's not where it ends. Yep. And because we don't really teach history, I would say, oh, this is how history repeats itself over and over and over again. But you can just look at the cases that were won by Native American tribes recently in places that created these quote unquote state funded boarding schools that beat them sexually abused them all legally right as a way to have them assimilate into white American culture and ways so we have a a long history of doing things like this in America to children so folks

should wake the fuck up fuck those guys yeah all right daniel do it lea lea Yeah. So my fuck that guy to start this week doesn't go out to just one guy. It goes out to a full fucking state. And that is the state of Kentucky that has House Bill 500 sponsored by Georgetown Republican Representative Philip Pratt. And what does this bill say, Andy? Well, let me tell you. It would eliminate the requirement that employers provide lunch breaks and rest breaks. That's right. Tell me that you love something. slavery without telling me you love slavery. This is what this would look like. Currently, and this is according to Fox 56 news, quote, currently employers in Kentucky must provide at least a 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work, in addition to a scheduled lunch break for every three to five hours of work. In this bill's new guidance, a worker not, quote, completely relieved from any duties for the purposes of eating a meal can't be denied pay for time spent during a work shift. But if the employer provides a lunch break, no payment is owed for time spent eating outside of a scheduled lunch break.

And just so you know, this motherfucker that introduced the bill owns a lawn and landscape company in Kentucky. And I just want folks to think about that for a minute in terms of who does a lot of the landscaping that we see. see in communities. Andy, what I will say, Republicans not only are creating legislation to eliminate workers' rights and just humane conditions, bathroom breaks, lunch breaks, rest breaks, because we're not machines and we got rid of slavery, apparently in the Civil War. Nikki Haley, shout out to you, just bold that. But they're also bringing back and doing away with child labor laws to make it okay for children to work 30 and 40 hours a week in some of these red states on top of going to school.

And I just want people to understand why is that happening? Well, there also happens to be a lot of, oh, I don't know, unattached children, undocumented children who were ripped away from their families that have yet to be. be reunited and these people want the right to abuse as many children as possible. Not white children, let us be clear, because that's not who is going to be forced into work. It is wild. And I don't know how you could be a worker at any level of any economic status that isn't the 1% and vote for these motherfuckers. So for that reason, the state of Kentucky and specifically, Republican Representative Philip Pratt, Welcome to the list. Fuck that guy.

Yeah, I loved reading this article at Fox 56 News.com and the very last sentence of the article is Republicans have also backed measures to relax child labor laws in Kentucky. Yeah. It's all of a piece. It is the rollbacks that we are seeing to the, in some cases, minimal progress that we've made that took decades, if not centuries to achieve. It's just unreal. And it goes so much deeper than Trump. That's what people really need to understand. And I think a lot of people do understand it. I just, I feel like there are some people who do think that, well, once we get past Trump, everything will go back to quote unquote normal.

I don't know that that's the case. I mean, what he did to emboldened so many governors and state legislatures and school board members and stuff like that to just come up with this shit of making it so that you don't have to provide a lunch break for employees, rolling back child labor laws. I mean, every day I'm still in shock at what we're seeing with child labor laws. Like, that to me is just, you know, that is the most no-brainer thing in the world that, yeah, we do not want to go back to a time when 12-year-olds or whatever were working the fields or working the minds all day.

And obviously, nobody could be opposed to that. And yet. And yet. Like you said, all of this is of a piece and just, uh, fuck these 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.

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