The Daily Beast Podcast - Tucker Carlson Went Too Far and Even Republicans Know it

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

On this episode of The New Abnormal, Senior Fellow at Media Matters for America, Matt Gertz talks about Tucker Carlson and the latest leaks in the Dominion versus Fox News lawsuit. Plus, columnist Kurt Bardella talks about Kevin McCarthy’s role in all this drama. 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 a great show we have for you today.

We'll be joined by Senior Fellow of Media Matters for America, Matt Gertz, and he'll talk to us about the latest leaks in the Dominion versus Fox News lawsuit. Then we keep the Fox train rolling and talk to LA Times contributor and Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella about what repercussions Fox News could face and how media should handle them going forward. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy, sadly, we have no M&Ms or gas stoves or, you know, any Legos to report on as we kick things off. But there is some good news and hope on the woke front, contrary to what Republicans want, which is that there is a new poll that has come out because we love a poll. And it's the USA Today, Ipsos poll, finds that a majority of Americans are inclined to see the word woke as a positive attribute, not a negative one. While Republicans, you know, have been hopeful to say that woke is this horrible thing, most people who have brains who understand, you know, what it means to be aware and not asleep,

understand the term to be, quote, to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices. But Republicans, Andy, would love you to stay the fuck asleep. Yeah. I mean, on the one hand, obviously this is good news, especially given how hard Republicans have worked to turn the word into a pejorative. It's a bit of a bummer that it's only 56% are aware that, as you said, that it means to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices, that should be 100%. But look, we live in a country where you've got to take the wins you get. So I guess 56% is pretty good.

I did think it was interesting that, so it was three-fourths of Democrats said that. And over a third of Republicans, which is more than... than I would have expected, given that every damn day we hear the word used as a pejorative by Republican officials, by conservative writers in conservative media in general. So it really is kind of, I guess it really is kind of amazing that it's managed to stay at least in its original meaning for a majority of the American people. It's one of those words where I'm just so tired of hearing it because every time I hear it, It's in the pejorative sense.

And that's because, you know, from spending too much time online or whatever. But it's almost always used as basically as a slur now in the way I hear it. And this is a nice reminder of something that we all know, but that can be easy to forget that online is not real life. Yes. Most people are not on Twitter all day, baking fools of themselves. They're out there living their lives. And a majority of them are knowing what words actually mean. So, yay, America, I guess.

I guess. Speaking of places that aren't woke, though, that not only want to keep everyone asleep, but apparently also want to push people back into 1953. So it looks like the Tennessee House, which is just, I have queer friends that are just about to move to Tennessee, and I don't understand why. And here's what I will tell them. The House just passed a bill that would allow county clerks to deny marriage license. to same-sex couples, interfaith couples, folks, and interracial couples.

What in the entire fuck is happening with the Republican Party right now? They are just saying to us, we want the 1950s back. Women in the closet with coat hangers because we've banned abortion. Black people and white people stay on your side of the train tracks. Now interfaith as well as same-sex couples, there is no misogination. There is no mixing. This is what the GOP stands for. And I'm just like out of my fucking mind that 75 million people voted for Donald Trump in 2020.

Like I'm just out of my mind that these people keep getting elected. And yes, I know voter suppression and all of the, I understand this. But there are people who are applauding these efforts. Meanwhile, their children are being gunned down in classrooms. Just saying. But this is the most important. thing. Drag and making sure that there's no mixing in marriage. Yeah. So let's get to the heart of this, at least what the heart of it for me is. The bill language says that a person shall not be required to

solemnize a marriage if the person has an objection to the marriage based on the person's conscience or religious beliefs. Okay. So it's already the case in Tennessee that religious leaders don't have to officiate a wedding that they object to. This is from the new republic. Whatever, that's fine. You don't have a constitutional right to get married in a Catholic church. And if a Catholic priest wants to say, no, I'm not doing that. Okay, whatever. What this bill does is apply that to people like county clerks who now apparently will be able to refuse to certify marriage licenses if they don't like the fact that two queer people are getting married or a black person and a white person are getting married or for that matter if a Jewish person and a

Protestant are getting married and I'm sorry but no that's not how this fucking works if you take a job like that you subsume your individual beliefs to the constitution that I mean that's what you are supposed to be upholding here is the rule of law and the rule of law does not give you the right to opt out on things like this. Or at least it shouldn't. Apparently, in Tennessee, they want to say it should. So the heart of this is this whole religious beliefs thing. And this is what I am sick to death of. I am highly respectful of people's religious beliefs. I think you should believe whatever you want. I will pay you the respect of politely nodding while you talk about it if you want. What you do not get to do is take those religious beliefs and make

them apply to other people. Yes. And we have to stop in this country. We have this thing where we sort of, no pun intended, we make religious beliefs sacred. I'm sorry, they are sacred to the person that holds them. And that's where it stops. The end. And I am all for it being sacred to that person. But if you take a job like a county clerk and you, or if you take a job in a form, for example, you do not get to say, I am not dispensing this medication because it does not accord with my religious beliefs, or I am not signing this marriage license because it does not accord with my religious beliefs. Fuck you. Fuck you straight to the hell that you believe in. These people who make these decisions to get a job that is about servicing the public,

go work within your congregation. Go then work within your church, within your clergy. go and do that type of work. But if you are going to actually function in society, in a society that is not one that is ruled by religious laws, then you have to function by the laws within that society. This is the whole crowd of people that want to call progressives that want to call people who believe in equity and justice snowflakes. And I'm like, fuck your feelings. I don't give a fuck what you think as a CVS pharmacist. I don't give a fuck what you think as the county clerk, because guess what? I'm not trying to get a marriage license to marry you.

My medications that I need doesn't have anything to do with your life. You feel bad about it. Go home and pray about it. But don't pray over the shit that, like, I'm coming in as a secular person in society to be able to handle. Look, you cannot tell me that if a bill like this is allowed to stand, what is the difference between this and someone at the DMV deciding their religious beliefs are that Jews shouldn't be allowed to drive or black people shouldn't be allowed to drive. And then they will then

refuse to issue driver's licenses to people who are Jewish or black or queer or have an earring or dye their hair. Because that's where this heads. And that's why you don't do shit like this. And that's why religion stays in the private sphere. And again, I don't care what your religious beliefs are any more than I care what your political beliefs are when you work for the government. You have an obligation to service all citizens. And that's what I mean when I say we hold these religious beliefs. We make them sacred. Religious beliefs, I'm sorry, are no different than political beliefs. They're no different from what you believe is your favorite color. I don't care if your favorite color is red. What I care about is if you say, well, I'm not issuing marriage licenses to anyone whose favorite

color is blue. And that to me is exactly the same as this. And I'm not mocking anyone's religious beliefs here. I, again, believe whatever you want. I will respect that. I have read a shit ton of books on religion. I find it a fascinating subject and I have a very healthy respect for it. I don't have any respect for it being shoved down other people's throats and being held up as well, but we can't make them do that because their religion says otherwise. No, I'm sorry. There is no difference to do that in saying we can't make them do that because they believe

that red is an evil color. I don't want to hear it. I think that what we did wrong here was carve out religious freedom protections. and put them under the guise of being able to veil discrimination. All of these religious freedom laws were never about people's freedom to practice what kind of religion that they want. It was the freedom to be able to discriminate and call it religion, the freedom to be able to dictate other people's lives and call it religion.

If I wanted that, we would live someplace else and it wouldn't be America. And so I don't understand how we allow the Republican Party to continue to use words like freedom when everything that they're doing is anything but. If you want to be a white evangelical Christian, go with God. I'm not telling you how to practice and what church to go to and what to believe. If that's what you want to believe, fine. But your belief should not dictate my body, should not dictate who I love, should not dictate what I have access to. Your religion shouldn't be able to deny me of shit. I don't understand how we have moved so far backwards to this place. But, you know, I have to remind people, America not founded by, but stolen by religious

zealots. Of course. Who got on a boat and said that they didn't want to pay taxes. And they wanted the freedom to be able to be as puritan as they wanted to. This is where this all stems from. Right. And again, you know, I think I've talked about this before, but we were always taught in school that they came here for religious freedom. They came here for their religious freedom. They didn't come here to allow other people religious freedom. They didn't come here to allow. They didn't come here to allow people who disagreed with them to have religious freedom. They wanted their own religious freedom, but they wanted that freedom to be the law of the land. And that's where this tension is, because that's what this kind of shit gets at. To me, if the Catholic Church does not want to

perform same-sex marriages, I think that I'll use the word okay in the legal sense. Morally or ethically, that's whatever. But legally, I don't believe the Catholic Church should be forced to perform same-sex marriages. I don't believe a religious institution of any kind should be forced perform mixed faith marriages if they don't want to. That's their business, but that's separate from the state. That cannot be allowed to spill over into your job as a county clerk or as, you know, someone who works at Walgreens or something like that. You have to check that shit at the door. And you can belong to whatever congregation you want, you know, if you want to belong to a church that doesn't allow people of color to be members and that thinks that Jews are going to hell,

fine, you have the right to do that. You have the right to congregate with people who believe in the same stupid shit that you do. What you don't have the right to do is to come in the public sphere and push that belief down anyone else's throat. And that's what they're doing here. And the ironic thing is all this talk from the right is about how gays and trans people want to, you know, oh, they're shoving it down our throat. No, they just want to live their fucking lives. You're the ones that want to shove your beliefs down other people. people's throats. And we've talked about this before. There's no point getting into the hypocrisy of it all because it doesn't matter to them, but it's still true. The only thing that I was going to say is that I will go to the

church of Andy any day. Because I love that sermon. That was the one. That was the one. You're welcome in my church any day. It's held in virtual reality. So I guess we have to talk about a place that I like to call FNC. Other people may know it as Fox News Channel. Everyone else in America, yes. Go ahead. Yes, a certain sub-segment know it as Fox News Channel. Majority know it as FNC. And other people now think it should just be called Fox Channel and news should be dropped.

I've heard people say that, Danielle. Yes, I've actually started to hear it as well. Yes. Yet another week of amazing stuff coming out of that network. I guess I'll start with Tucker Carlson and the Jackson. January 6 tapes. As we know, Mr. Limp Gavill himself, Kevin McCarthy, gave countless hours of tapes to Tucker Carlston and only to Tucker Carlston because he knows that Tucker is all about the truth and will show everyone exactly what happened. I'm kidding, of course, Daniel. Of course. So Tucker

puts together excerpts of the tape and what he does is he finds the parts of the tape where the insurrectionists are not fighting the cops and are not trash. people's offices and are not breaking windows and barging through doors. And then he puts those together and says, yeah, see, these were just a bunch of tourists coming into the people's house. And I will say that it was a little nice that what he did was so obviously ridiculous that there were even a bunch of Republicans. I know.

It was hard to believe. All in the Senate, I noticed. No one from the House. But at least in the Senate, you had a bunch of people. You had Mitt Romney saying that what Tucker did was dangerous and disgusting. John Thune saying, I think it was an attack on the Capitol. Mitch McConnell endorsed a statement that the U.S. Capitol Police put out that said that Carlson was cherry-picking footage and drawing offensive and misleading conclusions. So it was good to see that what he did went too far, even for some Republicans in the Senate, if not for apparently a single one in the House.

You know, it's amazing to me when you think about, you know, what apparently Tucker Carlson wants to refer to as our lying ass eyes. But the fact that we all collectively in this country and around the fucking globe watched in real time as people with Trump flags and American flag polls and all of these things charged police and charged into the building, broken glass, breaking glass. doors and then Tucker Carlson wants to show what 30 seconds of footage here and a minute of footage here that says, oh, these are tourists. Let me tell you something about Capitol Hill. Taurus are not allowed to just walk around wherever the fuck they want. So even on his bullshit theory, you need to go through metal detectors, you need to be guided, you need to have a pass, you need to have been, frankly, in a lot of places vetted to go through your congressperson in order to be able to get in to get a tour of the Capitol building.

So even if these were quote unquote wayward tourists, they're breaking the fucking law. And the idea that members of Congress, Republicans included, were fearing for their lives that day. And then Tucker Carlson is just like, oh, no, it's all made up. What is the difference between what Tucker Carlson is doing and tell me what Alex Jones was just sued for? Yeah, nothing. Right? with regard to the families of Newtown. Because he said on his show, Newtown didn't happen.

These are crisis actors. This is the same shit that Tucker Carlson is saying. And if I, let me just tell you, if the Capitol Police, those that were victims of the insurrection, should be looking at another lawsuit at Tucker Carlson because what he is doing is also defamatory, libel, whatever the laws. I'm not a lawyer. I just play one on a podcast. But all I'm saying is that there is no separation that I see between what Alex Jones

was just sued up to tens and tens of millions of dollars for, right? And found guilty of in court and what Tucker Carlson is doing around the insurrection. And for Tom Tillis, of all people, to come out and say that Tucker Carlson, this is like a Republican of Republicans in the Senate to say, to call bullshit, then you know that this motherfucker has gone too far. Yeah, and of course, the bitter irony of this is that shortly after the riot slash insurrection, whatever you want to call it, Kevin McCarthy fully agreed with that, and he said nobody would say that that was wrong. And now he obviously, as we know, quickly backpedaled from that and paid a little visit to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Trump's ass, not thereafter, and to make sure that

his balls, which are in a safe down there, were still okay. But then, of course, he gives the tapes to Tucker Carlson, knowing full well what Tucker is going to do with them. And it's just another example of how Kevin McCarthy is just an absolute. He's just the empty man and he has no soul. And again, the fact that I, as far as I have seen, not a single Republican House member has actually said anything about the tapes. And then you get, there are people, I think it was Steve Scalise who was asked. And he's like, oh, you people never want to stop talking about January 6th. It's like, wait a minute.

Kevin McCarthy gave these tapes to Tucker Carlson, who is playing them on the air. And you're blaming this on the left now wanting to talk about it or on the media now wanting to talk about it. Like, they're soulless. They're empty and soulless. And that's why I'm like shaming them or trying to shame them. We just need to indict them. We just need to bring legal cases against them because you cannot shame the devil. And honestly, they want to talk about religion.

I've never seen people that are so absent of morals, that are so absent of values in my fucking life. I never liked him when he was wearing a fucking bow tie on MSNBC, but nonetheless. It was another banner week for the journalists of Fox News, both of them, if that. Here to discuss the lies emanating from the rest of the entertainment network is Media Matters Senior Fellow Matt Gertz. Matt, thanks for being here. Good to be here. Where to start with the latest revelations from the Dominion trial or Tucker Carlson's attempt to portray the January 6th

insurrectionists as tourists. I'm going to let you choose, Matt. Which one you want to talk about first? Let's go Dominion first. There was the latest round of releases from the pretrial stuff that's been going on. What did we learn? It seems that off-air Tucker Carlson

isn't necessarily Donald Trump's biggest fan? Yeah, it turns out that off-air Tucker Carlson despises Donald Trump as much as any of us do. It turns out that he has a raging, full-blown case of Trump derangement syndrome. It's quite a shock, I suppose, to his viewers, if they ever find out about it. Yeah, which they won't. We also learned that the entertainment folks, as I call the prime time, well, at this point it's most of the day, but they absolutely loathe the skeleton crew of what's left of the news folks. They do. And I think the feeling is mainly mutual. You have a lot

of the news side folks now going to reporters at places. is like The Daily Beast and saying how miserable it is to have to work in a place where apparently everyone just lies on the air all the time and so on and so forth. I don't know. This is one of those things where like, I guess I want to feel a little bit bad for them, but where do you think you work, guys? Like, what are you expecting exactly? You work at the propaganda factory.

They make propaganda. That's what they do. I don't know what to tell you. Look, I never. work there, so I don't know about that. So let's just move on. Let's just move on. Another thing we learned is that Fox reporter Jackie Heinrich isn't a team player. Why is that? Apparently, she made the gravely offensive decision to try to fact-check a Donald Trump tweet about election fraud in which he was, I believe, citing Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity. So that, I

guess it's kind of awkward. You're not supposed to tell the truth at Fox News. There's like rules about that. So Hannity freaked out and Tucker Carlson was telling Sean Hannity to get her fired. He blew up and, you know, you end up in this situation where she's getting basically attacked by executives at Fox News in these emails for being out for herself and trying to get a job somewhere else. You should try to get a job somewhere else. Seriously, you work in the propaganda factory. I mean, let's take this through. But that that does seem to be the conversation. Yeah. And, you know, they also, they weren't happy with people like Leland Vittert. And I guess, you know, again, what's left of the reporting apparatus at Fox News. And they make all of that clear in these texts, don't they? Yeah, there's this back and forth series in the text chain that the

Fox prime time hosts have, which Good Lord to be a fly on the wall. Hannity and Lorraine and Tucker Carlson are on this shared text chain and there's this long series of rants where they go off on people like Leland Vitterd and Chris Wallace and they're basically saying like, who do these people think they are? They keep messing things up with our viewers and you have Lord Ingram basically concluding this by saying, you know, we need to throw our weight around more. We have a lot of power here and we should exercise it, which again, like I kind of think that the prime time people are right here. They again, recognize that they're all working in. in a propaganda factory, right? And they understand that that's what the product is and that the

news side people are getting in the way of making the product by trying to do real new. And this is a huge problem because the customers are angry that there's not enough propaganda and too much real news. It's a back and forth we've seen, I think, again and again over the last eight years or so where you have these flare-ups between the news side and the opinion side. And the opinion side is routing the news side. The highest profile, straight news side people like Chris Wallace and Shep Smith have left, or they're like Brett Baer and are generally not that interested in publicly doing anything critical of the network. And you know, you have the various supporters like Vittert, like Kristen Fisher, who is another Fox reporter who gets criticized by the executives

for telling the truth too much about election fraud and she left for CNN. Vitterrand is now at News Nation. So, you know, they're kind of slowly leaving and being replaced by people who are very, very comfortable working for the propaganda factory. So there's a thing I've seen going around, which I find interesting because it's something I've been saying for a little bit now, too. And that is the thought that this wouldn't be happening if Roger Ailes were still around. and none of this is a defense of Ailes, obviously, who is one of history's great monsters,

or however you want to describe, just an awful person in every way. But he did rule that place with a fairly iron fist, which is not something I think you can say of Suzanne Scott. And I was curious what your take on that is. I don't really buy that in a lot of these particular cases, where I do think that Ailes did a better job of ruling with an iron fist was on some of the more. or directly partisan stuff that you see Fox personalities doing. So, for instance, when Sean Hannity tried to host a show at a Tea Party fundraiser that got scotched after he was in a Trump ad, he got yelled out over that, and that didn't recur.

I don't think you would have seen things like Hannity speaking at a rally under Ailes. I think that wouldn't have happened. but I don't really buy the notion that Fox News wouldn't have promoted a lot of conspiracy theories if Ailes was around. I mean, we have to remember that Donald Trump's big berther turn largely came through a series of Fox News interviews in which various hosts just kind of let him go on about how the birth certificate was probably fake and generally did not push back on him at all. So I'm a little skeptical that Ailes would have cracked down on election fraud stuff per se. I think that that's a bit of a bridge too far. Okay. I don't disagree with that.

And that's actually, that's not what I meant, at least. I don't know what other people mean when they say this. I mean more of the, like what you said about Laura Ingram and the primetime folks, realizing that they have all this power and that they can throw their weight around. I don't think they would have thought that if there were a Roger Ails in charge because he was always clearly in charge. And I think that they, as you say, correctly, they have figured out that in the absence of a Roger Ailes,

they are really running the network. And they can shit on the news side. I mean, look, this stuff wasn't public, but they've been fairly clear about their contempt for the news side of the network, what's left of it again. And I don't think, you know, Ailes was always big on you don't aim your fire inside the tent. And so it's the stuff like that that I'm talking about.

I got you. That, that I think is right. I do think Ailes would have been able to say, and I think this is correct. I think that they are way over their skis on a lot of this stuff. And it's because Suzanne Scott and Rupert Murdoch have let them get away with it, this has progressed so far. But I think Ailes would have been able to say, you know, Bill O'Reilly was the King of Cable News for 10 years. And then we fired him because he was a sexual predator. And I don't know if you've heard, but he, like, has a podcast and a show. it's something called the first. Right. You know, there are zero examples of people who have left Fox News and gone on to better things.

Megan Kelly went to NBC completely flamed out. The Shep Smith and Chris Wallace shows at CNBC and CNN did not perform very well. Eric Bowling is at Newsmax. No one has a bigger platform and has more views. and is more popular after they leave. And the network manages to deal with all the churn fine. The viewers are there for the network. The stars help. But I think if you replaced the three primetime hosts with anyone else, if you replace them with, you know, Pete Hegseth and Don Benjino and Maria Bardo, I don't think the ratings would go down too much. I think they'd be fine. But

But I think it is the case that Suzanne Scott doesn't feel comfortable laying down the law and saying, I run this network, you don't. And if you don't like it, hit the bricks. That does not seem to be happening. Yeah. And as you alluded to, the flip side is an L's could sit there and say, yeah, we got rid of Bill O'Reilly. And guess what? Ratings didn't suffer at all.

You think I can't get rid of you? But like you said, Suzanne Scott doesn't have the juice to really say anything like that. All right. I want to move back to a couple more things about Dominion and then get to the January 6th stuff. Much like with Trump, it seems that Tucker Carlson's views of QAnon change when there's a camera on as opposed to when there's not. Yeah, I think, you know, this is one of several cases in which the on-air presentation and the off-air private commentary just diverge wildly. So Tucker Carlson, as we see in some of these filings, they're filled with tech. text messages between different Fox hosts and other people. In one of them from January 7th, so this

is 2021, so right after the insurrection, somebody, an unnamed person that's just listed as unknown in the documents, tells Carlson this crazy Q stuff has consequences. It also takes a lot of demagogues for them to believe this stuff. Trump never disavowed the Q shit or any of that. And then he says, he passes on a message that the Q movement is sincerely dangerous, sort of a long description here of how the Q&N conspiracy theory kind of colonizes people's minds and leads them into dangerous, violent politics. And Carlson takes all this in and responds, not surprised, all misdirected religious impulses. Secular societies don't work, which is an interesting aside, I guess. But so he fully like understands and recognizes that there is something dangerous happening on the far right of the party. But he can't really say that, I guess, in public on his own show, as other media outlets report on the role that QAnon adherence played in the January 6th riots. He's just kind of mocking it. He's mocking the journalist for talking about it.

He's saying that Q&N is just a forbidden idea. a few weeks after that, he sort of famously at this point says, you know, we spent all day trying to locate the famous QAnon, which in the end we learned is not even a website. If it's out there, we could not find it. It's really, really not that hard to find information about Q&ON. It's literally everywhere. But Tucker can't find it. This is the same person that thinks that Antifa has meetings. He cannot be honest about something like QAnon because he knows there's a chance that some of viewers are part of it. Oh, of course.

Rather than reveal that they're like getting into some really dangerous, crazy stuff, he's going to look past. He's going to pretend it's not happening. Yeah. I want to move to the January 6th stuff. So Kevin McCarthy gave Tucker thousands of hours or whatever it was of the security tapes from January 6th. And Tucker has now presented little snippets of them.

And as a lot of people pointed out, so on one night, Carlson's thesis was that there was no violence. This was a peaceful demonstration by sightseers. And then the next night, he complained that the real problem was that the Capitol Police were unprepared. And as Nick Katagio, the artist formerly known as Alapundit, wrote at the dispatch, what he's doing is he's giving viewers a choose-your-own-adventure-story where reality is a multiple-choice question. He's throwing little theories at, you know, that are in direct contradiction with each other. And he's throwing them out there and letting his viewers decide which of these fake realities they prefer. Yeah, I think that's right.

I mean, what you basically have here is there are two sort of overarching arguments that people on the right make about January 6th. One of them is that January 6th was bad and it's Nancy Pelosi's fault because they didn't do enough to defend the Capitol. The Capitol Police did not have enough people out there. It's a big mess caused by failures of government intelligence agencies and law enforcement services. There's a second argument, though, and this is the one that Tucker Carlson typically goes with, which is all of this January 6th stuff is being wildly overblown. In reality, what's happening is a small amount of violence is being seized upon by the Democrats in the media and they're lying about it because they want to.

use it to destroy their political enemies and, you know, seize control of the country and so on and so forth. These arguments are contradictory. They are explicitly opposite. Either the insurrectionists were extremely dangerous, and so there should have been more support on the ground with the law enforcement there that day, or they were not dangerous, and it's been dramatically overblown, but it really can't be both. that's the game he's trying to play here. Honestly, I was pretty underwhelmed by this whole January 6th thing. I mean, obviously, the purpose that he's aiming at is grotesque. You know, he's trying to create revisionism around the whole thing for his own political game. But he had 40,000 hours of footage that his team had access to. He got maybe 10 minutes of material out of it. And what he actually ends

of showing is just so minor, such like little tickety-tack stuff that he's trying to blow into a massive conspiracy to defraud the public. It's pretty pathetic. I expected more from Tucker Carlson's propagandists. Like, I knew it was going to be propaganda, but I expected better propaganda than he really gave us. It feels like what he's doing is basically the equivalent of, like, of a Harvey Weinstein released footage of himself sleeping. And then he would say, see, I never sexually assaulted anyone. Here's footage of me sleep. That's what he's doing. And as you said, he got like a couple of, you know, 10 minutes at him. And he repeated a lot of the same video. It feels very lazy. It feels very pat. It feels very, well, we had this opportunity and we know what our conclusions are going to be.

So let's find some stuff that we can kind of throw out there. Our viewers won't know the difference. They don't really care that much about the details. As long as it is launched by a stirring monologue about how terrible our political enemies are, the whole thing will be. fine. They didn't do the work. I'm a little disappointed. Yeah, and sort of like the bedrock tenant of his coverage of this footage has been, I'm going to quote him here. He says, the Democratic Party and its allies in the media prevented you from seeing it. This is, I forget what the word is, this is the opposite of true. And in fact, any footage that we have in the public domain has been because I think CNN and other outlets have been fighting for the release of as much footage as possible for a very long time. Yeah, the idea that there hasn't been enough footage of January 6th for people to make up their minds

about what happened is just patently ridiculous. This was the most covered riot of all time. We all saw it happen in real time on cable news that day if we were watching. The whole thing unfolded in front of tons of reporters, some of whom were in the capital and were locked down as the insurgents breached the building. There were plenty of reporters outside covering it. There's tons of footage from every angle of all sorts of events. And from that, we get a pretty good picture of a huge mob beating the crap out of a bunch of

law enforcement officers who are trying to prevent the mob from getting into the Capitol and stopping the peaceful transition of power. So, I mean, fine, yeah, let's get out the footage. Other journalists are interested in a little bit more, too. But the point of this is, from Tucker's end, is to create doubt in their viewers of what they had personally seen immediately after January 6th, and to replace it with this counter narrative, this alternate reality in which the whole thing is some sort of conspiracy theory. It's grotesque. Yeah, that sort of leads to my exit question, though. My exit question is more about the Dominion stuff.

It's this. The network strategy with the Dominion stuff is pretty much to just pretend it's not happening. And my feelings are, A, this shouldn't come as a surprise because it's always been what they do with information they're not happy about. And B, I maintain that this will absolutely work with its viewership because they are generally completely locked into the Fox ecosystem. And if they're not, the ecosystem extends to places like Gateway Pundit and things like that that are also not going to go after Fox. But again, it's important to note that I never worked there, so I don't know anything. So I need to get your thoughts on this. Am I correct in that this strategy, A, is not a surprise, and B, will absolutely work.

I think you are correct that it's not a surprise. I am not quite as sure as you are that it will succeed. and the reason is this, we are starting to see some cracks, some other right-wing outlets who think that they can snag some of Fox's market share by taking it down a few pegs. Last night, Eric Bowling, one of the former Fox Newspeople who now have worse jobs after leaving, in his case, again, I think some sort of sexual transgression allegation. Eric Bowling on his show was talking about how Tucker Carlson was saying that he hates

Donald Trump, and he just doesn't understand how he can say that while in public praising him all the time. That is, I think, a little bit different. And a signifier that at least one of Fox's potential competitors sees an opportunity in these Dominion filings to try to pull away some of its viewers. And, you know, as we know from those filings, there's nothing that terrifies Fox executives more than that potential. Right. And as we saw on Tucker Carlson, I think it was Wednesday night, did an entire segment about how Trump's proposals for his 2024 campaign are absolute genius. And I think he's just going to shift to overly praising Trump on his show. And that will give the people what they want to hear. And ultimately, I think 90% of them won't know what Eric Bowling said.

And the other or half of the remaining 10% won't really care or they'll think it's fake. that these texts were made up or out of context. And, okay, maybe they'll lose a couple of viewers. But I think that they managed to stay impregnable no matter what. I'm just too cynical to think that this is going to change anything. Yeah, I mean, it's a fair point. This is not the first time we've seen Fox News in a legal battle that involves them doing a lot of terrible stuff and news side people telling reporters at other outlets that it's all a horrible thing.

I mean, we saw this with Seth Rich back in 2017. A sort of similar story, though, the lawsuit was on a much smaller scale. But, yeah, I mean, it's a big fortress that has thick walls and a lot of guards at the gates, no doubt about it. Matt Gertz, thank you so much for being here. And thank you for all your work at Media Matters, an organization I have always supported. And it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Thanks, Matt. 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. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. my friend, a former Republican, now Democratic strategist, columnist for everywhere that is important

the LA Times, USA Today, MSNBC analyst Kurt Bardella. Kurt. Yes. There has been a earthquake through mainstream media the last week or so with regard to the discovery that came out of the Dominion lawsuit case against Fox. For those of us who live on Earth One, we have known that Fox News harbors a bunch of liars who are paid tens of millions of dollars to go on television to lie to their audience day in and day out. What I didn't know was that Rupert Mardock would throw them all under the bus when put under oath

and that we would see a treasure trove of text messages with Tucker Carlson, their golden boy, and another person proclaiming that Sidney Powell, one of Donald Trump's like absolutely Looney Tunes lawyers, the one that brought in 60-some-odd cases that were laughed out of courts after the 2020 election based on, you know, bamboo that was found in machines and, you know, the lies about Dominion that got Fox News in trouble in the first place, calling her crazy. This is coming from Tucker Carlson, saying that Donald Trump is basically the devil and he's going to destroy everything, but at least he won't destroy us. I just want to get your initial thoughts on what we keep calling in media a bombshell reporting, but it's only bombshell reporting for people

who live on Earth One. That's not where the Fox News audience broadcast to, though. Yeah, a couple of things really kind of have stood out to me as this case has unfolded in all these text messages and depositions and exhibits have entered the public domain. Number one, It's almost entertaining to me how shocked everybody is acting about something that anyone with the functioning brain has known damn well has been going on for the entire time that Donald Trump has existed in the political universe. It shouldn't have taken these type of disclosures to get the mainstream media to begin to finally question whether or not it is appropriate to consider, Fox and actual news organization. They have shown every day for like five years now that they are not a news organization, that they do not give a damn about the truth, that they have no problem lying about everything

and everyone. You know, it's almost entertaining that Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, and almost everyone that works at Fox, and for those programs say these same things about Donald Trump to themselves that we would. say about Donald Trump amongst ourselves and have for many years now. I think it really calls into question how going forward everyone in the political and media ecosystem treats Fox. You cannot allow them to be part of a presidential debate, for instance. It was like just a few weeks ago that there were actually people out there who you and I both know who are saying that President

Biden should sit down with Fox News for an interview during. in the Super Bowl. Right. Right there. One of the good ones would be conducting. And I see what has happened here and the information that has come on about people like Brett Fair, about people like Martha McCollum, about the so-called news side of Fox. And I'm asking myself, are you fucking kidding me that you would dare to suggest that the president sit down and talk to these people who knowingly lied about him, who knowingly fomented insurrection, who to this day at this very second are using their airwaves to continue to lie about January 6. Give me a break. I have said for a while now, you know, remember when Donald Trump decided that he was just going to shut down the White House press

corps? Like, I'm not giving it any more interviews. We're not giving any more briefings. The administration's no longer giving briefings. And that lasted for a very long time. So then we have the adults come back into the room. The Biden administration comes in and they welcome back all organizations. And my feeling is that Fox should have never been one of those networks that were welcome back in. Much in the same way that you don't have Netflix or Cinemax or Showtime in the White House Press Corps, these entertainment-focused outlets, why the fuck is Fox there? To ask questions to Corinne Jean-Pierre about whether or not Biden is woke? To ask questions about Eminem's and gas stoves, I think that by allowing them to be a part of the White House press corps for all of us

to continue to refer to them just by the title of their name alone, gives them some type of legitimacy as like as a news outlet. But in every court case that has come up against Tucker Carlson and Fox News, they say, whoa, whoa, whoa, no one should take us seriously. We're just for entertainment. That's what they said in one of their cases. Their own words, their own words. And, you know, I think it's a slap in a face to any real journalist, frankly, that they are allowed to participate in the White House press pool, that they're allowed to participate and have a press pass to cover the United States Capitol while they are using their airways at this very second to try to whitewash away and attack on that very capital. And I think that we fall in, Democrats particularly fall into this trap of, well, you know, we're for everyone having access and transparency and all these things. And it's like, you know, they're not interested in that. They aren't even that.

Their own words are described themselves as something other than a media institution. So why are we treating them like that? Because they're not, and they're not ever going to be because it literally starts at the very top. The guy who owns the company. Right. In these depositions, you know, exposes, I mean, if anything surprised me, it is the fact that he did apparently tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And in the process, literally threw everyone underneath him under the bus.

But it was all done at his direction. I mean, this is a guy who shared information about the Biden campaign's advertisements with Jared Kushner. Right there. That should be the end of the story. That is so egregious and over the line of what is acceptable journalistic practices that until Rupert Murdoch is removed from having anything to do with Fox, Fox should not be allowed to participate in any type of journalistic enterprise. And I think that that's right. And I also, I think that there should be a collective decision.

that is made by actual news outlets that say that on-air personalities, everyone that goes in, we're no longer referring to Fox's Fox News. Right. You can call it Fox Entertainment. You can call it Fox Media. But like, we need to get into the business of getting on the same page because you're right. If you are a journalist, you should be insulted.

I looked at it and I said earlier, Jesse Waters makes $16 million a year. The man's intelligence is that of a brick. And I'm like, but $16 million a year he makes. And I said I went into the wrong profession. I should have just been a black Republican entertainer because I could have cleaned up. I mean, I say all the time, if I had stayed a Republican, I'd be filthy rich right now.

And it just underscores how fucked up our entire media ecosystem is that for some reason it's more profitable to do the wrong thing and to be the wrong thing than it is to tell the truth and to have a conscience. There's an alternate universe right now where I stayed a Republican this entire time, rode the Maga train, have my own show and making $10 million. It's just absolutely crazy. You know, Kurt, switching gears, but staying on Fox, but switching gears to Tucker Carlson, Kevin McCarthy,

and the January 6th tapes. So like you had started out by saying, Tucker Carlson is doing his best to be the one-man band that is rewriting history. That is telling all of us that our lying eyes don't know what we saw on January 6th, 2021, but the little stills and clips that he's putting out is what actually happened. That Brian Sicknick clearly did not die the following days after the attack on the Capitol, that all of those police officers that testified and those that did not testify, the hundreds that were harmed physically and emotionally,

apparently are all made up. And Kevin McCarthy, we know, gave over these 40,000 some odd hours solely to Tucker Carlson. What is being rumored out there is that this was part of the deal in order to get the Fisher Price gavel that he has in his hand. What say you? Well, it's very clear that this effort to try to curry favor with Tucker is just the latest in a string of concessions that McCarthy has made so that he can have his name on a door in the United States Capitol, and that's really it. I think it's really dangerous, though, because what you're doing here by enabling this nonsense show to continue and to be there, you know, Kevin McCarthy's basically provided Tucker

with the blueprint to how to sack the capital. And when I look at what's going on, all that I see is another effort to try to create a situation where there is another insurrection only this time they'll be more successful. This information will be used as a kind of recon intel building and gathering for those people who believe that they need to finish what they started, to finish their story. I don't agree with most Republicans most of the time at this point, but when you look at the Republicans and the Senate particularly who are very, right now, much to my surprise, publicly saying this is nonsense.

Like, what are you guys doing over there in the House representatives? They're right to be upset and understand that when the mob comes, they're coming for everybody. They're not going to distinguish who's who, who's a Republican, who's a Democrat. There's a reason why Josh Hawley was hauling ass running away from the mob, okay? They don't care and they will come for you. Kevin McCarthy basically put a bullet on the backs of every single one of his colleagues in the House and the Senate. And it's an absolute disgrace. It's a violation of his oath of office, in my opinion.

It's a slap in a face to anyone who wears a law enforcement uniform, particularly those who stood their ground, held their ground on January 6. And I never want to hear the myth again that Republicans and Fox News are pro law enforcement. You cannot be pro coup and pro cop at the same time. It just doesn't work that way. No, it doesn't. And I love that. And I think that it needs to be lifted up and said over and over again because they're only pro cop when they have their knee on the neck of black. people. Right. That's when they're pro-cop. When they are killing unarmed black people, that's when

they're pro-cop and they're like, no, no, we can't get rid of qualified immunity. No, no, we got to believe our officers in their police reports. But when it comes to who was attacking them, then all of a sudden it's unimaginable. It didn't happen. Right. They're all crisis actors and making it up. I want to now talk about the other war that the Republican Party is waging, which is their quote-unquote war on wokeness, which is from everything, like I said at the top, from Legos to M&Ms, to gas stoves, to AP Black History, to all of these different things. Most recently, though, which should shock no one, the Tennessee House of Representatives has passed legislation that would allow a county clerk who is quote unquote religious and doesn't agree with Salmonizing the marriage of a same-sex

couple, an interracial couple, or an interfaith couple, to be okay. This is where the Republican Party is. They're not mincing words. They're telling you who exactly they're going after to and what time frame they're trying to bring this country back to. How is it, Kurt, that we are dealing with inflation, climate change, mass shootings, and we have Republicans that are out here trying to make interracial marriage illegal, again, make same-sex marriage illegal, but make child labor legal? What is going on? What do you see when you see these hundreds of pieces of legislation that are rolling out across Republican states? You know, it's interesting because back in the time that I was a Republican, the mantra from the Republican Party was, we need a smaller, more limited government that isn't

reaching into our day-to-day lives. And when I look at it. at the Republican Party of today that's trying to litigate who you can marry, what you can read, what type of health care you're allowed to receive. I think to myself, that is the exact opposite of the central tenet of what conservatism used to represent. And I really do think that Democrats need to adopt this kind of messaging style as well. Listen, Republicans are the party of big government overreach. They are the party that is about abuse of power. They are the party about using the instruments of government to literally control every facet of your life. They are the ones that you should be afraid of. They're just not going to stop.

And I've said time and again, you can't stop hate anywhere unless you're willing to call it out everywhere. And what we are seeing from this version of the Republican Party that has overrun the entire organizational structure of the GOP is a hateful, white, driven effort that is not going to stop. It's not going to slow down. The only way that we can stop this is to beat the shit out of them at the polls, is to literally mobilize, show up, and beat them. We've got to stop sending mixed signals as a society. We can't, on one hand, vote for Democrats, for president, but then let the Republicans take the House of Representatives. We can't, on one hand, control the Senate, but lose a governorship.

We have got to send a unified message that this is going to be repudiated and rejected. And I'll be honest with you, for the first time and a long time, I'm actually bullish that that's going to happen in 2024. I think that there is going to be just an overwhelming repudiation of the Republican overreach into our lives, that everything that they're doing is going to backfire spectacularly in their face because people are not interested in this combination of banning books, going after business enterprises, going after investigations that no one gives a shit about relitigating January 6th. All of those things are just massive losers, politically speaking.

And I think the Republicans are just setting themselves up for just an asswipping. I mean, I hope that you're right, because here's the thing. You know me, I vacillate to be ye of little hope to then have a mustard seat. of hope and then some days, St. John Wart kicks in and I feel like really hopeful, like, yeah, America's going to fight back. But when I look at what the Republican Party is doing, Kurt, without having the presidency, without having the Senate, they have the courts, they have more than half of the governorships, and they're able to just nullify our constitution. And so, you know, for those folks who don't share your sentiment of hope, how do we not feel stuck?

How do we not feel stuck in this moment where I can't have a phone alert come in that isn't telling me what the fuckery is happening in Florida and Tennessee and Texas and Kentucky and this state and that state? I think my message to them, and believe me, I get it. There are times where I feel that frustration, almost that despair. But then I step outside of here and now and take a broader lens and I say, look, by all accounts, Democrats were supposed to just get wiped out last November. It was supposed to be a giant red wave. Everything was working against the Democratic Party.

Historical trends, the economy, a president whose approval rating was under 50%. And yet, when push came to shove, when the choice was between Kerry Lake and Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz, and the same people, we won. Our side won. When the choice was between crazy election deniers trying to take over administrative positions to run elections in our country, they lost, we won. When we were supposed to lose 50, 60 seats in the House of Representatives, as Republicans predicted last spring, and they only have a four or five seat majority, which frankly, if it weren't for some shenanigans in the state of New York, we would have actually held the House. The direction of things politically tells us that the extreme nature that the party has embraced is backfiring.

And here's a sad thing. And it's tough. It is going to get a little worse before it gets better for the reason that you pointed out. Because we're seeing what's happening at the state level, what we're seeing in some of the judicial overreach that's happening in America. But there's also things that are happening that are offsetting that. You know, Joe Biden and the democratically controlled Senate are confirming a record number of judges right now that breaks the pace of what even Donald Trump was able to do, that gives me some measure of hope for the long-term stability of our lawmaking in this country. You know, you look at what happened in Georgia, winning another special election, keeping, you know, Warnock now has six years ahead of him in the Senate

a full term to look forward to. I find that incredibly encouraging. When you look at just, I think, how our generation has not left the field of battle, has continued to stay engaged, continue to stay in this fight continuing to show up and they won't be silenced, that gives me hope when I look at where anyone who's under the age of 40 is right now in this country, they're on our side, more than they are on the other guy's side. So, and I have to say, the fact that Donald Trump ain't going anywhere, that he's probably going to be the Republican nominee, anytime that Donald Trump is a focal point of an election, they're losing. They lose in 2018. They lost in 2020. They lost in 2020. They lost in the midterms. They'll lose in 2024. They are now tripling, quadrupling down

on the strategy that has failed them time and again. That gives me hope. Yeah. I mean, from your lips to God's ears, Kurt. As always, I appreciate your time, your energy, folks. If you're not following Kurt on social media, follow him on Twitter at Kurt Bardella. Thank you, my friend, for giving us a mustard seed today. I appreciate you. I'm your weekly dose of optimism. Andy, it has been another long week here on Earth One. Who are you ending the week with with your fuck that guy? Well, Danielle Moody, I am going to end my week with a fuck that guy who a lot of you are probably familiar with. He's a pretty rich guy and he owns a bunch of companies.

And his name is Elon Musk. You've probably read about him. Mm-mm-mm. He found himself in a little bit of trouble. on his own platform Twitter the other day. A guy from Iceland, I will just call him Holly. He is a senior director of Twitter, and he tweeted that his computer access to Twitter

had been cut off nine days ago, but he never got any notification that he was fired or anything like that. In a tweet to Elon, he said that your head of HR can't confirm whether I'm an employee or not. And Musk replied to him and said, what work have you been doing? and Holly explained the work he'd been doing.

And then Musk didn't believe him and said pics or it didn't happen. And he then went on to tweet that Holly, quote, did no actual work and claimed as an excuse that he had a disability that prevented him from typing. So at this point, Holly was like, okay, here's the deal. I have muscular dystrophy. Oh, no. Oh, God. Yeah, he went into a whole thing about how this horrible progressive disease had to

taken over his body. And it turns out, a couple things turned out to be the case. And one is that this guy, Holly, started this digital branding company that was then bought by Twitter. As part of this purchase, Holly could have either been paid what I think is it was like $100 million straight up or he could have taken a job at Twitter and got the money broken down over years. And he chose to go work at Twitter. Why? He said he wanted to pay more. taxes. Oh, this is a good man. He didn't want to avoid taxes, which he could have by taking a certain pay structure, I guess. This guy also has been recognized by the United Nations and the President of Iceland because he was the head of this effort that built like a thousand wheelchair ramps around

Recovic to make the city more accessible for people with disabilities. He went on this whole thing and immediately people started jumping in, lawyers and stuff being like, yeah, Elon, you're in a bit of trouble here because you basically just said that you maybe fired a guy because he had a disability. You also revealed that he had a disability, which is probably a violation of a lot of HR laws. Oh, by the way, it turned out that according to this guy's contract, if he was ever fired, he was owed that $100 million straight up. So within a little bit after that, Musk took to Twitter to say, I would like to apologize to Halley for my misunderstanding of this situation. It was based on things I was told that were

untrue or in some cases true but not meaningful. So it was just like, first of all, how obvious is it that a lawyer told Elon like, yo, you're in a bunch of trouble, son. And he quickly sent that off. But also that, again, this is, and this tells you all you need to know about Musk is he immediately blamed this on being given bad information. Based on things I was told that were untrue. This is exactly the kind of guy he is.

All these guys have the same pathology. him, Trump, it's all the same thing. Nothing is ever their fault. Nope. They are always the victim. Someone else is always to blame. Someone else, you know, fucked up and that's why they did something wrong. It's always the same pathology.

Look, I mean, at least he apologized to the guy, but it was, you know, obviously the least sincere apology that I've ever seen. And that was clearly done strictly for legal reasons. And I hope to God he gets his ass sued off. and loses even more of his money because of Twitter, because that is just the ultimate revenge for all of us who used to sort of enjoy using Twitter. So, yeah, Elon Musk, fuck that guy. Yo, Holly is like the antithesis of Elon Musk,

just like an all-around good human being, doing right in his community, not taking a big huge payout to pay more taxes. Like, yeah, Holly, please go ahead and sue the fuck. Fuck out of Elon Musk. Please. Do us all a favor. Thanks.

So who's your fuck that guy, Daniel? Well, because we believe in equity on this show. Uh-huh. This week, my fuck that guy is a gal. Okay. Who is from one of those iconic families who are iconic for all the wrong reasons, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, known as the smoky-eyed liar from the Trump administration. So as governor, she has decided recently, because you know, Andy, Republicans care so much about children.

Of course. Everything that they're doing these days is about children, right? Roll back on abortion, banning drag shows, you know, denying trans children, gender affirming care. Everything is about the children. And so Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in this vein, you know, of doing all these good, good things for the children, have decided to sign a law, according to the Washington Post, that would loosen child labor protections. Let us be a little bit more clear. The law eliminates requirements for the state to verify the age of children younger than 16 before they can take a job.

Sanders believes that the provision was, quote, burdensome and obsolete. Who the fuck is this burdensome for? Right? Because I forget what state it is and somebody can tell me. me that is under investigation for having a child working at a meat packing plant. And here's the thing. This is what I want people to understand. And I tweeted this, which is the reason why these governors and these red states are passing this kind of legislation is specifically targeted at unaccompanied minors that are coming across the border, that they want to be able to traumatize

not only after they cross the border, but, you know, in the workplace. So, So this is not about little lily white children working in jobs that they shouldn't be able to work in because we are supposedly were a civilized nation that doesn't believe in child labor. That is, of course, unless you speak Spanish are unaccompanied, are undocumented, and then we can use you for slavery. That is what these governors are doing. So I want folks to be really clear, crystal clear, about the Republican Party. everything that they are doing is to roll back legislation and protection for people, for children, for democracy, everything. They do not care, right?

And their idea is that if you are coming across the border, unaccompanied, we're going to put you to work. And you don't know the language, don't know anything, but no, you need to eat, right? Here, come and take this job at this unsanitary plant. and no one will be the wiser. Sarah Huckabee-Sandis, you are fucking disgusting, but we knew this because you stood in front of the American people for, you know, years and lied to our faces. You are a piece of shit.

And for that reason, you are my fuck-that girl. God, we talk a lot about how, you know, Republicans want to go back to like the 1950s. This is, I mean, the child labor laws, we're talking like 100 years ago is when we finally, you know, people started getting their act together and saying, maybe, you know, 13-year-old shouldn't be working in coal mines and stuff like that.

And it is just unbelievable. Isn't this what we go after the Chinese for? Like, isn't this, like, I'm just, like, isn't the sweatshops and the things that people love to equate? Like, America is so much better because we don't force children into factories. And, oh, my God, we, you know, totally cancel companies for shipping over their factory work. And here in the United States, Republican governors are pulling this shit. Yeah, like you said, we yell at Nike and Apple and companies like that when they use plants in China and other places that are basically sweatshops for kids. And here she is pretty much not giving a shit if we do the same thing here in this country.

Make sweatshops great again. 24. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation. going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider

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