The Daily Beast Podcast - Tucker Carlson Thinks Ohio Train Tracks Are Anti-White

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson hinted at a new conspiracy theory to explain the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, and Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie, co-hosts of The New Abnormal politics podcast, poke as many holes in it as they can (and with humor to boot). Plus, Shay Khatiri, Senior Policy Analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and Danielle debate whether the attacks on Nikki Haley’s name are valid based on Shay’s recent opinion piece for The Daily Beast “Stop Being a Jerk About Nikki Haley’s Name”—one of the first TNA debates. And Jennifer Wright, author of the book Madame Restell: The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Old New York’s Most Fabulous, Fearless, and Infamous Abortionist, tells Andy all about the badass woman from the 1800s who got rich—and infamous—helping women have abortions without killing them in the process. 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 pretty 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 Cannon, 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.

Shea Cateri, who does policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and is also a Daily Beast columnist, will talk to us about Nikki Haley and having more polite politics. Then we'll talk to Jennifer Wright about her new book. Madam Ristel, the life, death, and resurrection of Old New York's most fabulous, fearless, and infamous abortionist. But first, let's have some fun. and wonder why my nerves are always afraid because nothing spells everything. It's absolutely fucking A-OK when we see headlines about a potential World War III. Right now, dear friends, we have China potentially providing weapons to Russia to fight their war that they decided on a year ago now, a year we've been dealing with this in a year that Ukrainian people have been

shelled and murdered and I believe a genocide is happening. But when asked this week by David Muir, Joe Biden, what he will do if he finds out in fact that China is giving weapons to Russia, he says, Andy, that he will respond. Is it just me or does that sound ominous as fuck? Like, well, what is he supposed to say? I won't respond. I mean, I don't know what there is for him to do there. I mean, we've got sanctions on countries that are dealing with Russia right now. So the question is, and this is what Murrow I think was trying to get at, is would we levy the same sanctions on China? I guess he sort of answered that. He said it would be the same line everyone else would have crossed.

In other words, we've imposed severe sanctions on anyone who has done that. But then he just says, I'll let you characterize what the consequences would be. We would respond. It didn't sound ominous to me. it sounded kind of the opposite, like he was trying to soft pedal it and say, let's all just take a step back here. We're not looking to get into World War III. But on the other hand, we can't just let China do what we're sanctioning everyone else for doing. So I don't know.

Look, the whole Russia-Ukraine thing from Gay 1 has always had the possibility of spiraling out of control. And it's, you know, it's a vague miracle that, like you said, it's been a year. And it hasn't gotten out of control. By that, I mean spread beyond Russia. and Ukraine, not that things are going good or anything like that. But look, now China wants to be a player and they're putting forward some kind of what looks to be like a bullshit peace plan that is very short on specifics. So I don't know.

I mean, we'll see what happens. But I'm not concerned with Biden's saying we would respond. I don't know. I'm not concerned with him saying that we will respond. It's just the way he said it. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, it's the fact that we. We're teetering on world war.

Like, it's amazing that we've been able to keep this fighting within the borders of Ukraine. But the reality is, is that you know that Putin isn't interested in keeping this in the borders of Ukraine, that he has threatened nuclear war, that he took over the arsenals. And we know that there's a lot of underhanded shit that is happening here. And that China is usually in the mix with Russia in a lot of different ways. And so it's just like saying that we will respond and knowing the consequences of that, if in fact we do find out, I don't think that sanctions would be enough in order to stop China from supporting Russia. And then you have the Taiwan situation.

It just feels like a lot of escalation in a place where I want meditation. Do you know what I'm saying? Oh, yes, I do. And I agree that China writ large is a large problem. You mentioned the Taiwan situation and all of that. there are so many flashpoints going on here right now with them. And this would just add another one, which we don't want at all. Look, in an ideal world, China will stay out of this. Actually, in an ideal world, China would join our coalition, I guess, but that ain't happening. No, no.

So in an ideal yet realistic world, China would just stay the hell out of it. But who knows? I don't know what they're going to do. Biden kind of, again, he kind of downplayed the idea that they were even thinking about this, but it's his own administration officials who are warning that they're considering this. So it's not just some rogue op-ed writer at the Washington Post putting this up as an example. It's Biden administration officials. So look, I agree. And sanctions may have to be enough, though. I don't know what the next step after sanctions is. I mean, we don't want to get involved in a shooting war with China, that's for sure. And I'm not entirely sure what the steps in between those two things are. So sometimes you have to go with sanctions and hope it's enough. And as all,

always the unfortunate part of sanctions is it punishes large swaths of the population who are fairly innocent or completely innocent. I don't know what the answer is here. I'll say this. China supplies the world with, you know, everything. So it's like trying to sanction them, I feel like they have the upper hand in terms of retaliation. When everything in your home says that it is a product of China, like everything, it's kind of hard for us to have the upper hand. It's not like sanctioning Iran, for instance. Like, it's not like sanctioning a place where we don't literally rely on their production line for our survival in so many different ways. I mean, we saw what happened with the disruption with COVID and what happened with our production lines.

And so it's a very interesting and precarious situation that we're in when you have all of these people that seem to be so trigger-happy. Like, you have folks that on the right, for instance, when we had Balloon Gate coming around, cosplaying with their AR-15s to shoot down this balloon because we knew that it was a spy balloon from China. And it's just like, where is the in-between? You know, it feels like things are building and they just remain at a simmer.

And I guess my anxiety is always just like, every time the New York Times alert goes off on my phone, I'm like, is it it? Is this it? Right. Yeah. I mean, look, again, ideally the worst-case situation is we may have to wait a little bit for the iPhone 15. You know, that would be tough.

I understand, Danielle, but it would be preferable to all-out war with China, I think. But again, they haven't given Russia weapons yet, and I think the best thing for us all to do is to just assume that they're never going to and that everything is going to work out perfectly. I love your optimism. That's what I do every day, Daniel. I sit here and I am nothing but a cheery optimist. I'm a glass full person, Danielle.

Is it full with bourbon, Andy? Like, what is it full with? It doesn't matter what it's full with. The point is, it's full. It could be bourbon. It could be lean. It doesn't matter. It's full.

It is full. Oh my God. Andy's sipping on lean, y'all. This is how the world is dripping him crazy. I knew I should. shouldn't have sent you that Oliotti record with all the psychedelic rock all that. Speaking of people being driven crazy and white people doing crazy shit. So the train derailment, which happened at the beginning of February in East Palestine, Ohio,

there's a new spin that has come up from the minds of the folks at Fox and, you know, all the right-wing conspiracy theories, which is that the train derailment, it was. It wasn't about, you know, greed and capitalism and deregulation that came out of the Trump administration or any of those logical things. It is a campaign of discrimination, Andy, being waged against white people. Tell me more. Okay, let me tell you. So, according to Tucker Carlson, who said this, and this is being reported on in the Washington Post, he said this, quote, East Palestine is overwhelmingly white.

and it's politically conservative. Fox News, Tucker Carlson recently said, that shouldn't be relevant, but it very much is. That's it. That's what he said. Why is that relevant? I mean, here's the thing that we have to understand. It isn't relevant that the people are white so much as the fact that they are low income.

Where do these train tracks get put down? Usually in areas that are overwhelmingly rural, overwhelmingly low income, and where these derailments happen and you hope, oh, no one will really care. You don't see train tracks running through affluent areas. So to me, this is actually really a conversation about class and capitalism and deregulation than it is one of the white identity. But leave it to Fox News and Taco Carlson to find something else to whine and complain about. I mean, I'm just glad that maybe they wanted to lay M&Ms on the tracks. Maybe that would be the thing.

Maybe the tracks are transgender. Like that, that seems to be up their alley as well. Maybe the train, the rail employees were distracted by the sexy M&Ms. Yeah, I think that that's what this is. It's ridiculous to try to fight shit like this with logic. Given that, I'm just going to say one thing. And that is, there is blame for the conditions that led to this accident that go back to the Obama administration. They then got worse during the Trump administration. What Tucker is in effect

saying is that Donald Trump doesn't care about white people. Oh, so good. And yet he won't actually come out and say that and he won't put any of the blame for this on Trump. And again, it's been very well documented. If this train had had this different kind of break, there's at least a decent chance it would have stopped the derailment or there's a greater chance that it would have made the derailment less severe. The Obama administration wanted these trains to have those kind of breaks. They ended up having to drop their requirements to a different level because of lobbying by the rail industry. And then Trump just got rid of the break requirements altogether. So it's absolutely insane to blame this on woke white people, which I guess is what he's doing

here unless she thinks Donald Trump is woke. But again, none of this is about logic. None of this is about facts. None of this is about making any kind of sense. It is, as it always is, it's about simultaneously scaring Fox News viewers and giving them like a sort of odd comfort because that is how they think the world works. So it sort of confirms their priors. So it's just that weird combination. And that's all this is about when Tucker Carlson does something like this or Charlie Kirk is part of this. That's their job. Like, that's what they do for a living. They lie to their viewers. They lie to their listeners to get them worked up. And, you know, we have actual proof of this in court documents now. Not a shock to anyone that they just continue to do this. But this is what they want. Look,

they want a race war. Yeah. Let's be honest. That's what they want. They want white people, angry at black people. And that's who their viewers are. So this is the world we live in. And I honestly, like, I don't know what to do about it because, like I said, fighting this stuff with logic is just it's a fools game. It is. And I mean, the fact is is that all Fox News and these right-wing conspiracy theorists are doing is a pure distraction. Because it was the Trump administration that got rid of the regulations that would have kept East Palestine safe or at least safer. Because what we know is that at least a thousand derailments happen in this country every year, right? and we just don't hear about them. And the fact is, why are we hearing about this?

Because of the hazardous materials that are now laying in the water, in the ground, seeping into people's lungs. And instead of having a substantive conversation about how to keep people safe, what I realize about the far right is that they like want to kill their constituents. So whether it's lying to them about vaccines and telling them not to get them, that this is somehow, you know, the vaccine was about mapping. your DNA and, you know, putting Microsoft chips in your body. Don't wear a mask because that will interfere with your masculinity. And now it's like, oh, but boo-hoo me. If you cared about your

constituents, if you cared about your audience, then like you would have a real conversation about regulations and breaks and the way to avoid things like this from happening. But they don't care. And it's just amazing to me that these people continue to consume their bullshit. And like readily so. And when, you know, one of my friends, Dr. Jonathan Metzell, when he wrote the book dying of whiteness, like it was so illuminating because these people really will. They will cut off their nose to spite their face. They will cause themselves harm so long as they can hold on to their whiteness with their cold dead hands. Like it is fucking wild to me. But that's where we are. And I, you know, I know that it's documented the lying that Fox News does, the lying that Tucker Carlson

does, but is anybody ever going to be held accountable? Where's the accountability here that you just get to lie to 65, 70 million people every single day all day long? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we'll see how that trial plays out. But, you know, look, you're absolutely right. And then there's sort of the flip side of that. And now there's, you have Republicans, you have people like J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio saying, why weren't their regulations that could have stopped this? Are you fucking kidding me? Because y'all voted against it? Maybe? I don't know. I mean, Marco Rubio's been in Congress for a long-ass time at this point, and I don't see him voting for train regulation. J.D. Vance is a newcomer to Congress, but he certainly has not had a career that would make you think that he

wouldn't have caved to the rail lobbyists in less than a heartbeat. But of course, there's a Democratic administration, and they want to pretend that nothing that happened under the Trump administration happened. They see this as a great way to take a little shot at the Biden administration. And look, it is definitely arguable that when the Biden administration came in and they've been in office for long enough now that they should have done something about this, sure. But to pretend that Donald Trump didn't do anything but move us in the wrong direction on this and to act like that never happened and that this is a democratic problem, I mean, that, again, is a straight up lie. And again, that's what they do. But it is kind of funny now to see these right-wing people suddenly aghast that we weren't regulating the railroads enough. They feign their outrage.

They spin it. They're the ones that are responsible for it. But then they have their echo chamber of Fox News that will be like, oh, yeah, this is all Obama's fault. Like, or this is all Biden's fault or this is what Hunter Biden was doing on his laptop. Like, derailing trains. Like, it's psychotic. It's psychotic.

And again, I just go back to the fact that they really do not give a shit about people, all people, but particularly the white people that they want to turn into victims. Folks, I am very happy to be joined on The New Abnormal with Shea Kateri, who is a senior policy analyst at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and a Daily Beast colonist. He recently wrote the piece, Stop Being a Jerk about Nikki Haley's name. Progressives are embarrassing themselves by attacking the GOP candidate for changing her name, parentheses, she didn't, and hiding her Indian heritage, parentheses, she never had. Shea, good to have you. I want to jump right in about your piece and get your thoughts on, you know, what do you think that, why did you feel the need to write it? And what do you think that the major issues are that you're seeing happen around Nikki Haley as she's made her presidential announcement? Thank you guys for having me, first of all. And I'm very happy to be here. I wrote the piece for, a variety of reasons, and I should disclose on top that I have not been a big fan of former governor

and ambassador Nikki Haley. I am conservative. I spent the Trump years on the defensive side because I was riding for the ballwork. I was involved with the never trumpers. And one of the objections I had, among others, to the Trump years and the politics of Trump years was the nastiness, the atomomans that it involved. I remembered also the 2012 campaign and the nastiness toward then former governor McGrath that he had to endure from the left and then the right retaliated by getting even worse. And I just don't like this brand of politics. And then this whole debacle, I guess, where Haley's name happened. It was all the things I don't like about politics, but I decided to write about it because it was also personal. You introduced me as Shea.

She is not my legal name. It's the middle part of my full name, which is Khashoyar. And it's a Persian name. The listeners could tell that I have an accent. I am an immigrant from Iran. I pick the middle part of my name, Shea, because my name is impossible for an American or really a non-Persian audience to pronounce, and it was for convenience. And I saw many comments about how Haley is trying to make herself be white, pander to white people, or this or that, by going by Nikki instead of Nimaratah, which is her first name, Nikki is her middle name. It was personal for me.

I'm not trying to pretend that I'm not Persian. and she's not trying to pretend that she's not of Indian heritage. If you have ever heard her give a speech, she mentions that as a source of pride that her parents or immigrants from India, and she ends up being a representative of the United States government and American people before the United Nations. She just chose probably, she chose her name, her middle name, Nikki, instead of Nimaratha, because it's an easier name for most Americans.

That was it. There was no cynical thinking behind it when she adopted Nikki instead of Nimarata. And she's been going as Nikki since she was a kid. Again, it was personal because that was a decision I made consciously, not trying to be something. I'm not, not trying to pander to any audience. I just went with Shea because my name is difficult to pronounce and I don't like it when people mispronounce it or misspell it. So I go by Shea. And I decided to write that piece and point out that people generally like to

especially on the left, brag about how pro-immigrant they are and how pro-diversity they are. But one thing they need to understand is that being pro-immigrants also means to defer to immigrants about how we can lead our lives the best in the United States to help ourselves succeed in the society that is very welcoming to us. As for diversity, diversity has many aspects to it, but one form of diversity is that people who on the paper look very similar and come from a similar place, similar background, choose different ways of living in this country. And some people who have difficult names choose to keep those names. And some of us choose to adopt other names or use our middle names or shorten our names. And as I mentioned in the piece, it's not because we are

ashamed of our past, but we try to fit in the society. We don't try to fit the society to ourselves. And that's one of many reasons that you see a much higher success rate among immigrants and children of immigrants than native-born Americans who are so adamant to fit the society to themselves instead of accepting the society as it is. Well, I'm going to push back on you, Shea, in a couple of ways. How dare you? And I know, right? As the staunch progressive inviting you on the show for a couple of things. And I want to take Nikki Haley on first and what you named as, you know, as progressives embarrassing themselves.

And one of the reasons why I have a number of issues with Nikki Haley and have for many years. One of the reasons why I was extraordinarily pissed off by her announcement is because I was one of the many black faces and brown faces of women that she decided to use as a way to declare her war on wokeness. By her deciding to launch her campaign in centering it around the fact that freedom isn't real and racism doesn't exist, in my humble opinion, as a black queer woman that is a child of immigrants, my family came from Jamaica to the United States, found her premise and her launch to be absolute bullshit. As a governor that was a governor of South Carolina that decided in 2015 after the assassination of nine black parishion. at Mother Emmanuel Church, she decided after there was an uproar once again around the Confederate flag that, oh, she would take down the Confederate flag and wants to kind of hide the fact that she did that because she recognized in that moment that the Confederate flag and what it represents in South Carolina and in the South is a kind of the love affair with white supremacy and this

false identity around it being quote unquote rebellion and it not being about rebellion. and it being about upholding white supremacy and wanting to push back against the freeing of enslaved black people. And then what the remnants of that have been in policy and in politics for generations. And so for me, when I see people using her full name, right, in a way to talk about her, how is that different?

How do you see that as an insult, right? when Nikki Haley decided to use the faces and the imagery of people, including myself, that fight for freedom and justice and equity, not trying to bend this country to our will and desire, but bend it to its own credence and values and what it had decided to orientate itself around, which was in itself a lie. How does that seem to be nasty when she's launching a campaign? that tells us at a time when even the FBI and the CIA are talking about the rise in white supremac groups,

the rise in white supremacist domestic violence. We are seeing it with our own eyes every day and we're watching Republicans use their bully pulpit in order to advance that kind of rhetoric and give credence and cover to folks like the proud boys and the oathkeepers. How are progressive using her full name something to bash?

When in fact she's launching her campaign campaign on a premise that is not factual. So things that you mentioned, they all have merits to them. I agree with some. I disagree with some. And as I mentioned on top, I am not a fan of Nikki Haley, but I just don't see how any of those have any connection with her name. For instance, I have conservative views on, be it economy, be it foreign policy, and many

other things on racial issues. I'm, it's more complicated. I'm not full Tucker Carlson. God forbid, I'm not like Tucker Carlson on anything. But still, I'm conservative. I believe in the old school racially blind society and this and that. But my point is that all of my ideas are up for grab and up for debate, I guess. I just don't know how they have any relation to what they choose to go by, that I go by Shea instead of Chashoyar. And I understand that there are many. criticisms to have of Haley and that she has been going since she was a child by as, which is Nikki, or middle lane. I don't understand how attacking her on that engages with any of the

criticisms you just mentioned. For instance, I remember that she took the confeder flag down and then later as after her tenure as ambassador, she, talked about that, oh, that, like, people who go after Confederate monuments are going after our heritage, which is ridiculous. And I don't agree with that. But I think that's perfectly fine to talk about. But that has nothing to do with her name, right? I say that. And in fact, I think that that's a much more powerful way of criticizing her than her name. Or let me give you Another example, when she was ambassador to the United Nations, she is running on a very hockish foreign policy platform, which I like, except that when she was ambassador to the United Nations, most UN Commission chairmanship went to Chinese candidates. If I'm not mistaken, I'm quite sure that I'm right. She lost the fight over the chairmanship of WHO to the Chinese back, Dr. Tedros, who became very controversial during the COVID.

pandemic, trying to cover up the pandemic early on to benefit the Chinese. I think that's a huge problem, that issue of incompetence, that she should be held responsible for. And I think this is much more substantive. The issue of race, the issue of how she handled things in South Carolina, or her relationship with former president or then president Donald Trump, her professional relationship. I think all of these are perfectly valid. I just wish that we talk about these things instead of a silly thing like her name. I will say this, that one of the reasons why I believe that, and first of all, I had no idea. I thought Nikki Haley's whole name was Nikki Haley. I could, honestly, I could care less what she calls herself, what I care about and what pisses me off

with Republicans in general, this breed of Republican, that has its allegiance to Trumpism and has its allegiance to white supremacy is the policies that are put forward that are targeted at shaming people who embrace the fullness of their identity, whether they be queer, whether they be black, whether they be Latinx,

that are creating policies and or upholding policies that are trying to shame and criminalize people for embracing, right, and owning the fullness of their identities and stepping into and owning their personal power, while then choosing, and I'm speaking about Nikki Haley in particular, while choosing to then assimilate in ways that would have you in a position of power to criminalize other people's identities while you avoid your own. That to me is problematic. And I will attack Nikki Haley

up and down the street every day of the week and every day. And every week and every Republican. Because the thing is, is that they use their power and they wield their power to shame and blame other people for not assimilating in the way that they have chosen to. Assimulation is a choice. When other people decide that they want to live in the fullness of their skin, right? And the fullness of their identity, they should be allowed to. They should, in fact, in my mind, in the world that I would like to live in, they would be celebrated for it. So you don't get to then try and dismantle people's humanity, right, by creating policies that are targeted at trans children that are targeted at erasing the black experience and black resilience in this country in the face of

white supremacy and white rage. You don't get to do that while you then stand in front of other people and tell them to assimilate in the way that you did. And when they choose not to walk that same path, that you put a target on their back, that's the problem. That's the problem. that progressives in general have with Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and all of them. But Nikki Haley, as a woman of color, as a child of immigrants, which I share those similar notes, those similar points of identification with her, I find that to be the most abhorrent. So there's a lot to discuss there about assimilation or not, and I'm happy to talk about that at a future point. But here's the thing. Generally, I agree.

that this is a liberal society, this is an open society, and people get to live as they wish. As long as you're not violating the law, you get to assimilate or not, and nobody can, nobody should try to legally or extraditionally attack you, harm you for how you live. I completely agree with that. And there is a brand of right wing that opposes that. I'm not sure if Nikki Haley falls. under that. In fact, I don't know where Nikki Haley stands on many issues since she has taken many sides. Fair point. But these are all good ideas to debate. I am not just saying it. I am a writer. My entire profession is based on debating these ideas and just debating ideas. And on perfectly fine with doing that. I don't think that personal attacks, especially silly ones over someone's

name is going to advance any of these. Again, let me stress that if the silliness had not happened about her name, I would have been someone who, if I wrote something about Nikki Haley, it would have probably been critical of her resume, as I have done in the past. But that prompted me because, again, there was a personal connection there, and because I found it silly, it prompted me to come to her defense. And I'm not suddenly a Nikki Haley fan. No, I believe what I believed about her last week, but it distracted me and others from actual substantive discussion about her resume, about her platform that could be had and could be critical and would be much more productive. Now we're sitting here discussing this. Instead, we could be discussing

things you brought up. As I mentioned, we could be discussing her tenure as ambassador to the United Nations. Something she did that I really didn't like was when she went to East Palestine in Ohio and she said, oh, Biden is in Ukraine. Wouldn't you rather have him here right now? And she's trying to tow the line on being hawkish, but also being anti-Biden and being pro-Ukraine, which is difficult for her to do. And that's something she should be gone after. That's who side are you on here? But we're not doing any of those. Because we're engaging in something that's quite unsubstantive, that is quite irrelevant to her presidential prospects and her platform. And that was the point I was making. I agree with everything you

said about the diversity that we live in. I'd rather talk about those things, and I'd rather accept that diversity. And last thing I want to mention is that I really like Michelle Obama. well, I like Michelle Obama, period, but they like her line that when they go low, we go high. I try to do that as well. And there are many things conservatives and Republicans have done that I have spent a lot of time writing about. And same as progressives and Democrats. And I don't think that the answer to the nastiness is retaliating the same way. Yeah, I think, Shea, I am glad that we have the opportunity to talk about your piece because I do. think that the way in which progressives have a conversation around Nikki Haley's announcement and running is very much tied to the way in which she advances policies that are seeking to dehumanize

and harm people who are comfortable in their skin and want to stand in their skin and see her as somebody that doesn't. And I think that both and can be true. We can have conversations also about her policies and about her character, because as we have seen through the reign of Donald Trump, that character for a politician is also really important. But I want to thank you for taking the time to join the new abnormal. And folks, you can check out Shea's piece at the Daily Beast.com entitled, Stop Being a Jerk about Nikki Haley's name. Thank you, Shay, for making the time. Appreciate you. Thank you, Danielle. And let me stress that I absolutely agree. Character. is even more important than policy.

Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Fever Dreams is a daily beast podcast, taking you inside the rights push to retake power, from the MAGA Acolytes to the straight-up grifters. They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast.pub slash fever dreams to check it out. My next guest is the author of an incredibly fascinating

and unfortunately timely new book out now called Madaghan. Ram Restel, the life, death, and resurrection of Old New York's most fabulous, fearless, and infamous abortionist Jennifer Wright. To be clear, Jen is the author, not the abortionist. Hi, Andy. As far as I know, anyway. I do not have the skills that Madame Restel would have had. Okay. Well, thanks for being here anyway. It is a pleasure to be here. Jen, my first question is, why write a book about Madame Restell, what was it that made this woman born into a lower class British family who married a

tailor, had a daughter, came to New York City, watched her husband die of typhoid, eventually remarried to a newspaper printer, started providing birth control and abortion services from her Fifth Avenue house, became known by her enemies as Hell's representative on earth, and was eventually arrested by Anthony Comstock himself, seem at all interesting to you? First of all, I think you've summarized what makes you such an interesting person. One of the things I love about Madame Ristell is that this feels like an American success story to me of the kind that so many Americans love. We love hearing stories about people who came to the country and did semi-legal things and became incredibly rich. So I'm thinking of movies like Scarface or the Wolf of Wall Street or the Godfather.

And Madam Ristell kind of fits into that category. The difference is just, that first of all, she is an entirely real person. And second of all, what she was doing was actually helpful for so many of the people of her age. And it was an age where abortion was very common. The estimate is something like one in five pregnancies was terminated with an abortion. One of the anti-abortion crusaders of the period, Horatio Storer, estimated that it was a little bit higher in New York, that it was closer to one in four. So this wasn't a an uncommon procedure. And I think there are so many people, especially on the American right right now, who imagine that abortion was not occurring all through history, that this

is kind of a modern deviants from the norm when it really has been very common for hundreds of years. And to be clear, it was common, but illegal. When Madame Restell started performing abortions in the 1830s, it was a misdemeanor. So it was a misdemeanor before the quickening, which usually occurs when a woman can feel the fetus begin to move. So that's usually around five months. So before that, termination was a misdemeanor. You would probably be fined for it. As the years progressed, and people got more and more worried about, among other things, Irish immigration and white Protestant people being overrun by aliens, laws about abortion got much stricter in America so that by 1873, when the Comsteads, stat doc laws passed, it was illegal to even provide information about birth control or abortion.

Amazing. Okay, so let's get to the book itself. The early chapters sort of let us learn how this woman who was not born a madam or madame and was not named Restel becomes that person. And she is born, as I said in the intro, into a lower class British family and eventually comes to New York. The whole thing started with her learning how to become what back then was called a pill compounder, right? Yes, yes. She lived very nearby another pill compounder. There was no real oversight on what people were putting into pills during this period. So you could sort of smash together any herbs you had and say, okay, this will cure your headaches or your liver problems.

Now, what Madame Ristell started doing was compounding pills that would produce an abortion. And what she was using for those were ingredients like Tansy and Turpentine. Now, those will work. They're incredibly dangerous. Nobody should ever take those, although later doctors in the 20th century have said that turpentine is a kind of harrowing motif with do-it-yourself abortions. So those are things that people have used effectively to produce abortions. You should never do it because they can kill you.

But Madame Ristell combined them in such a way that she started very quickly obtaining repeat clientele. There were people saying, okay, I've used this. I have had five abortions. It has worked very effectively. Right. And once she met her husband, they started advertising in the New York Herald. And business exploded. She started branching out to other cities. She had originally immigrated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

and very quickly she was earning a massive amount of money, enough so that later in life, she could go on and buy a mansion where she would continue performing abortions. There's so much in the book and so much in what you just said. So she meets this man, Charles Lohman, and they sort of together come up with this idea for what you describe as a dazzling and very effective lie, and that is the creation of Madame Ristell. Yes, so Madam Ristel was born Antrow in Painswick, England. And she met her husband Charles, who was a free thinker and also an immigrant to America, and they were both very ambitious.

And Charles also worked at the newspaper and was becoming familiar with the kind of big personalities that could help a person succeed in New York in the mid-1800s. So they crafted this persona of Madame Ristel, where they talked about, about how she was the granddaughter of a famous midwife from Paris. And the French connection would have been effective first because then, as now, people think of the French as being very sophisticated concerning sexual matters, but also because this is what was known in medical circles as the Paris period, where France was really on the forefront of medical innovation.

So to say that you had trained in Paris meant to many people who were familiar with the development of medicine at all, that you probably had pretty good skills, that you were very well versed in new techniques. It might be useful. You take great pains to point out in the book that she was very good at what she did. She was so good at what she did. She had a real talent for getting sort of the proper mixtures in her pills so that she didn't... It is amazing. She didn't kill anyone. She didn't kill the women who came to her. Yeah, which look, I'm not a doctor, but that seems like a plus to me. Huge plus.

And she was also performing surgical abortions with a piece of whalebone. So again, amazing that none of these women died as a result of this because there were other less skilled abortionists during this period who absolutely killed their female patients. And it becomes this kind of recurring thing that you read about in newspapers of the period where they would find women who died from abortions. and the newspaper writers would very dismissively say, well, obviously she couldn't afford to go to Madame Ristel. So that's what happens. This was absolutely fascinating to me that in addition to her sort of pill compounding skills and all of that, her writing skills seem to have also been very, very important to her trade, to making her what she was.

The sense I got from the book is she was sort of a pioneer of advertorials. And she would also get into, like, I guess what today we would call flame wars with people like Samuel Jank Smith, the editor of the New York Sunday morning news, a competing newspaper. Yeah, the flame wars were incredibly effective for her. So Madame Rostale was borrowing from a lot of other thinkers of the period when she writes editorials about how wonderful birth control is. But in her writings, she raises some really important points about how we've all seen what happens to women who have too many children. We've seen them get very sick. We've seen them die in childbirth. Why shouldn't a young couple be able to be married and live for a few years making money before they choose to have children? Wouldn't it be a great thing to choose how many children you want to have? And she's very clear on that point. There's an article of hers that runs on Christmas Day where she likens birth control to a lightning rod that's averting the worst of nature's fury. So Madam Riesel is very clear on her. her position. And I think whether or not that was appealing to men at the time, and to many, it was not. They did not like this idea. The real fear was that your wife might have sex with

another man while you were away at sea, and nobody would ever know about it. So that was very frightening to a lot of people. And Manamer still has a great response of like, do you think the only reason your wife isn't sleeping around is because she would get caught? which I think is very reasonable to modern people who think, you know, you probably love your spouse, so you wouldn't want to do that to them. But yeah, her articles, I think, were incredibly compelling to a lot of people who probably shared her views whether or not they wanted to come out and say it loud. And she was also constantly fighting with people. So Samuel Jank Smith, who was very, very religious. and wanted to do a family-friendly newspaper,

realized pretty quickly that one of the ways that he could raise his profile was by attacking Madame Ristel because she would fight right back. So they would have these angry exchanges that I think at the time Madame Ristel might have thought that they were on equal footing. I think Madame Ristel probably did not anticipate that this would, eventually worked to her detriment, that if she had been a little quieter about her business, backlash might not have been so extreme. Anybody who's ever gotten in a fight on Twitter knows how this happened.

Right. Right. It somehow always works to the detriment of both people, or at least it does a lot. Yeah. And you actually say in the book that had she been alive today, she would have been very active on Twitter, you think? Oh, she would have loved Twitter. God, she would have loved Twitter.

She would have had a huge following. She was also very funny. She was very outspoken. And I was so interested because a lot of the writers of the time who talk to her, even if they very much disagree with the idea of abortion, agree that she's charming. She's so charming. She's so beautiful.

She's so fun to talk to. She's clearly very smart. The first article's written about her in The Herald, where to be fair, she's advertising a lot in the Herald, talk about her as being this pretty philosopher and she's going to better the human race by making sure that people have less children. And it's really once Jank Smith starts talking about how this is going to destroy society, that they pull back on that a bit. Unfortunately, I have to jump ahead in the book because of the time constraints of the interview, but by the 1870s, which now she's been doing this for decades, and she's been arrested a few times, but she has become the most famous abortionist in America, as you put it.

But you also say the timing couldn't have been worse. The timing was bad. This was post-Civil War. So in addition to fears about Irish people of overwhelming America, there were a great deal of fears about newly free black people. There was huge pressure on white Protestant women to create more children. The narrative about women who had abortions had sort of gone from the early century saying, oh, this woman must have been seduced by a man, that seducer should feel very bad about himself, this poor dumb woman, to saying like women who get abortions are just frivolous clotheshorses and they just don't want to lose their figure.

That's the only reason they're doing this. And that did coincide with the rise of the suffragette movement, that women were starting to look for more opportunities and wanted to do things other than be wives and mothers. And among those things they wanted to vote. So women asking for a greater level of power in society was very threatening to men who were in power. And the idea that they were going to be outbred by people or replaced by people who were not considered white Protestants at the time was also very, very upsetting to people. So there was a huge amount of pushback on anyone using birth control, anyone having an abortion. Some of this was also because this was a very rich, or at least very well-to-do, successful woman who had this house or mansion on Fifth Avenue and that there was backlash to the idea of a woman being this successful and this well-off.

It was. Well, look, there was backlash to the idea of women having jobs at all. Right. There were these many thousand-word editorials about how people were scared that women were going to start thinking that they were. should become teachers instead of becoming wives and mothers. So this was a period where America urbanized. Many, many people weren't living on farms anymore. And many of the people living in urban society were seeing women who were taking on new interesting roles, doing things like writing books or magazines or working for newspapers. And they were starting to say, okay, well,

maybe that is an option for my life, providing, of course, that I do not have many, many, children. That was very upsetting to people. So that's a lot of it. And Madame Ristell is certainly such an example of it. Like, this is a woman who has one child. She has two grandchildren, who she's incredibly close to. She has enough time to run this incredibly thriving business. She also built a fairly successful apartment building that was considered the height of luxury for the years after she built it. She has a husband who, basically, works for. She has a brother who works for her. She's throwing lavish parties. So if you were a woman thinking, I wonder what I want my life to look like. Well, Mademustella's one example of a pretty

interesting life. Yes. And so all of this brings us to one of the single most uptight assholes in American history, Anthony Comstock. I am sure he has made an appearance on this podcast before. I don't know that he has, actually. Oh, what a fucking nightmare. Obviously, this happens at the end of the book, but you also lead with it in sort of the intro to the book. And I was like, holy shit, the Anthony Comstock? That's the guy. And he eventually, he arrests her not for being an abortionist, but for providing him,

he sort of went to her undercover and she gave him birth control pills. He said they were probably abortive pills. Okay, I was unclear about that, but yeah, okay. Yeah. He said that, you know, he had a wife or a lady friend who was pregnant and who couldn't have another child. Madame Ristell gave him some medicine and instructions said, okay, these should work, but if they don't work by Thursday, come back to me and we'll take it from there. Anthony Konstuck did come back, but he came back with a group of policemen to arrest Madame Ristell.

And Madam Ristel was initially pretty calm about it. She'd been arrested before. She told Anthony Comstock that she thought he'd be taller. She makes the policeman sit with her and have like a very lavish oyster lunch before she goes off to the jail in her own carriage. And her lawyer was pretty confident that this was very clearly entrapment. They could probably get her off. But Madame Ristell very uncharacteristically becomes incredibly hysterical and starts telling everyone that she is very suicidal. and at one point very afraid that her house might just burn to the ground.

And then shortly after, Madame Ristel or a body that looked like Madame Ristel was found with its throat slit in Madame Ristel's bathtub. And there were a lot of questions at the time about whether or not Madame Ristel had faked her own death. For a strange son-in-law, explained that there had been a plan to get Madame Ristel out of the country. and there were later reports of people seeing her alive and well in Paris, and her two grandchildren who she was very, very close to, showed up to the reading of her will, did not wear any morning clothes, but for the next decade took a lovely yearly three months trip to France. So it's a bit of a conspiracy theory.

I like to believe that Madame Ristell just saw where the country was heading, realize there was no place for her in America anymore. decided to cash out and go off to France. It's so funny because my next question was that I never know if it's a spoiler to reveal the end of a biography. So I was going to leave it to you whether you wanted to talk about it or not. And you just went ahead and did it. I did. I think there is so much that's so interesting about knowing this person that it will not ruin it for you to know that she maybe faked your own death. Oh, no, not at all. I just didn't want to be the one to do it. So there's so much more interesting stuff in this book.

Jen, I really like the way you wrote it with. There's tons of little, I don't want to call them as sides, but there's things that sort of paint a great portrait of the time period and of the places, New York City and attitudes towards sex in the 19th century. There's just so much in the book that obviously I couldn't talk about in the interview, but it just made the book such a gripping and fascinating read. Oh, thank you so much. Just to remind our viewers, it's Madam Ristel, the life, death, and resurrection of Old

New York's most fabulous, fearless, and infamous abortionist, written by Jennifer Wright. And she really does feel like someone who, for someone who was so famous at the time, she's sort of become obscured by history. And it feels like she doesn't deserve that. So I think hopefully this book will go a long way towards correcting that. Jen, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Danielle Moody.

Andy Levy. Please unveil for us who your fuck that guy is as we start this good, good week. Oh, God. My fuck that guy is, lives a bunch of Republican members of Congress, but they were led by Jim Jordan, which is never a good idea. And they went down to Yuma, Arizona, because they wanted to get a bird's eye view of immigrants illegally crossing the border into America. Gathered themselves up, and they flew out to Yuma. and they got in police vehicles. I think there were like a dozen vehicles. And then what do you know, they did not spot a single immigrant crossing the border?

There's so many things that are sort of hilarious about this. None of the Democrats went along. I guess Jordan wanted the whole House Judiciary Committee to go, and the Democrats were like, no, we're not playing along with your stupid stunt. But the funniest part of this to me is what did they expect? They got in 12 vehicles, some of which were obvious police vehicles, and then they wonder why nobody crossed the border right in front of their eyes. Like, they forgot that there's a thing in quantum physics called the observer effect,

which is basically that when you observe something, you influence the thing itself. And that's what they did. It's like, I know they're stupid. It's one thing for them to be stupid, but they made the mistake of thinking that people who are risking everything to come here are similarly stupid and that they're going to see these vehicles and they're going to say, oh, that's probably nothing. Let's just cross instead of just saying, ah, you know what, they'll probably be gone in a few hours. We'll just wait and cross then. Assuming there were people there to begin with, which who the hell knows. But if they were, they certainly weren't going to cross in

front of them. It's called the observer effect and it's basic science at this point. And it just cracks me up that they literally thought that they would have no influence on the people trying to cross the border by showing up the way they did. So they get for their stupid stunt and then for being just dumb as a box of something really dumb on top of it. Jim Jordan and the other Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, get my fuck that guy for this day. Who the fuck is following Jim Jordan? Like, and thinking that things are going to pan out well. Like, it's people like Paul ghosts are. It's just like one big fucking circle jerk. Okay. Anyway. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So who is your fuck that guy? Well, because we are equal opportunities here. It can be a person.

It can be a state. It can be a woman. It can be a man. It can be a non-binary person. And so today, I'm going back to a good old favorite Lauren Dummy Bobert, who as a member of Congress has decided that using her bully, pulpit to tell people how to hide illegal guns is a good fucking idea. And again, I just think to myself, whenever you think, oh, I'm not smart enough to run for Congress or I'm not smart enough to do X, Y, and Z, I just want people to remember that Lauren Bobert is a member of fucking Congress. So she is at some, what looks like some saloon. That's what I will call it. It looks like some fucking saloon that she is at where she is standing up in front of, you know, a bunch of people

telling them that in order not to get their guns taken away, that they should stage boating accidents and then lie to law enforcement about it. She said, quote, I foresee many, many boating accidents in the near future. I recommend you get a boat if you don't have one or find a friend once so you can say you were on it. as a way to hide your illegal guns. What? I just, I honestly, like, I don't understand. Like, and I know, I know this.

I know that I'm going to fry my brain cells trying to figure out her path of logic here and how any of this makes sense and how she is a sitting member of Congress that is telling people how to get rid of illegal weapons. Like, it is wild to me. These people are sitting there like applauding her. I'm hoping most of them are drunk.

because they're in some type of saloon. But this is like this is only the best people. Republicans only have the best fucking people. I would love to see her in Marjorie Taylor Green in some type of faux duel, wouldn't you? Like some type of faux Western duel. I would love it because the idiocy here is just wild. But, you know, it's kind of like that commercial with,

how did you learn how to do this? You brought it up the other day, Andy. My dad on drugs, it's just like so when people get caught with it, legal guns on a boat, we'll just have them say, oh, well, Lauren Bober, my representative told me it was okay. It's not? I learned it by watching you, Lauren, you fucking dummy. And a forever, a forever, fuck that gal.

Top of my list every week. Yeah, I don't, maybe at some point in my life, I thought I'm not smart enough to be in Congress. Now I think I'm not dumb enough to be in Congress. I think we have too many degrees. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think they dropped the cutoff. I don't think that you need an eighth grade education.

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