The Daily Beast Podcast - Violent Insurrection: It’s the New Camping!

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

Those Trump supporters inside the Capitol on Jan. 6? The guy who made off with the lectern, the woman who stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop? They weren’t actually rioting. “Look, I am not here to tour shame,” humorist and former Fox News personality Andy Levy tells Molly. Next, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) comes on the show to talk about what’s happening on the border and how his state’s wacky election audit is going. Finally, economist Marshall Steinbaum joins Molly and co-host Jesse Cannon to talk about inflation, unemployment benefits, and why we shouldn’t worry about raising corporate taxes. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. Man, what an episode we have today. Congressman Ruben-Guygo of Arizona's 7th District is going to talk to us about the fuckery in Arizona,

as well as what the Dems are doing in Congress. And then, economist Marshall Steinbom is going to tell us why all the cable news chatter is not telling you what's really going on with the economy. But first, we have humorist and former Fox News personality, Andy Levy. Welcome to the new. abnormal, Andy Levy. Thank you very much. Great to be here. Very excited. I'm very thrilled. You're, you know, we're friends, too.

Well, you won't be by time. This is open. That's the hope, anyway. So, uh, they're just tourists going into the capital insurrection. Because as you know, tourists love to build gallows and chant hang Mike Pence. I mean, look, I'm not here to tour shame. And I think people have, you know, people have different ideas of vacations. Some people like camping. Some people like to be in a, like a really plush five-star hotel. And other people like to go to the nation's capital and, and yeah, erect gallows. I mean, who is, who is to say,

really, what is right? I mean, violent insurrection. It's the new camping. Is that fair? I mean, come on. Not tying for the news for my. Pets, you know? Right. I mean, they didn't actually, I feel like the defense is like they didn't actually hang Mike Pence. So perhaps it was largely theoretical. Yeah. I mean, look, when your defense is, we failed to do the thing that we kind of wanted to do. So therefore we, therefore we can't be, you know, called out for trying to do it. Like, the sad thing about all of this is that none of these comments today, like, are even shocking. Right. It's just, of course they're saying they were just tourists. Like there's been this for maybe like a day or two, some of them were actually like, holy

shit, I could have died. Right. And, and then when it sank in that they didn't die, they went right back to, you know, simping for Trump and, you know, defending the tourists. Yeah. You know, so it, like, none of this is a surprise. That's pretty much exactly what happened with Kevin McCarthy in the larger sense, you know? In the few days after January 6th, it was like, well, maybe, maybe we have created a monster. And then by like, I don't know if it was like January 8th or January 10th, it was like, oh, you know what, we didn't. It is kind of amazing. They did so quickly just turn. It was like, you saw Lindsay Graham was for a minute like, oh, maybe we've taken this too far.

And he was like, no, it's so good. I love Trump. I always feel like it's a party that's kidnapped itself and is now holding itself hostage. I just, to me, it's just, it's a flock of simps enabled by a gaggle. media grifters and they're leading like a constituency of dunces. And that's just like that's where I am right now. And I've just like everyone is either a mark or a shill at this point. And like the only game is figuring out which one some of them are.

Right. And then and then some of them are this sort of rare combination of both. I'd love the example. Yes. Ben Shapiro. Well, that's the thing. There's like there are these people who half the time, you know they clearly don't believe what they mean, but the other half of the time, it's like,

and I don't know, I think some of them started out as one and became the other. Like, Lindsey Graham might be a good example of that. I mean, he clearly, you know, clear anti-Trumper who then suddenly realized, holy shit, this guy's, you know, going to win, and then he did win, and then hitched his wagon. And to the point where now, like, I think Lindsay Graham could probably pass a lie detector test if you said to him, did you ever hate Trump? And he could say no and pass a lie detector test. Right.

I think a lot of these people did go from sort of from being one to the other. Like it would be funny if it weren't. Disturbing. If it weren't so unfunny, yeah. I mean, the thing that I think is interesting is like, in some ways it is hilarious, but like there is this one party doesn't believe in democracy anymore. And the other party, you know, has things you might not agree with, but fundamentally they want you to vote. Yeah.

I mean, you look at them now. And it, you know, they've done pretty much, I don't want to say everything humanly possible to prevent people from voting because they'll come up with something else tomorrow and then I'll look stupid, you know. We'll remind you. It is absolutely incredible between every step that they have taken to, you know, either disenfranchise people or make it harder for people to exercise their franchise. And the reasons they come up with for this and it's, you know, but it all really does come down to. I really do think, and you've seen it now with people like Tucker Carlson who are just more explicitly, you know, sort of embracing this sort of replacement theory type stuff. Yeah. And I do think, you know, that is, in the end, that's what it mostly comes down to. It's like, how can we keep non-white people from voting?

And it's so interesting because last week there was this birth panic thing where we saw these census numbers that said, like, in fact, Americans are not having, they're having babies at the lowest levels. since the 70s, and they're not actually meeting the quote-unquote replacement rate. And so you're going to have a country like Japan, where people get older and older and the economy dies unless you have immigration. So it is this interesting phenomenon where we have, you know, a Fox News ecosystem that and a Republican Party that's against the one thing that can save our country, ultimately. I think they would rather die white than live mixed. Yeah. That's what it seems to come down to.

to at this point. And it's just, you know, however it's dressed up, whether it's in the guise of protecting Western civilization or, or whatever, it really is all coming down to how can we make it more difficult, if not impossible for black and brown people to, you know, be a, be a full part of this country. Yeah. No, it's really grim. I have to say it's really depressing. But I do, just back to the interaction for one last minute, the guy who stole the lectern, right? the speaker's lectern? Right. Did he end up taking it or did he end up having to return it?

I think he ended up having to return it, right? I'm pretty sure I probably lived at like, when you hear about those pro-Trump bars where you could take the pictures with the cardboard cutouts of Trump, I bet you was next to one of those in like Buffalo, New York or whatever. At that bar, Michael Caputo has to go to try to convince bikers to get vaccines.

Yeah, I don't think Michael Caputo is convincing anyone to do anything good. I'm just picturing that now. in a bar and then the bar having like contests where it's a bunch of guys going up there in wigs and imitating like Nancy's sort of famous slash infamous

gavel wave. Oh yes, yes, yes. I feel like the question is, are there really bars where people are pretending to dress up like Donald Trump? No, that's a real thing that I'm telling you from Switz reporting. That's a horrifically

real thing. It's like the worst thing I've ever heard. I do want to get back to the instruction of one thing because we did learn that a lot of us thought, you know, Trump probably just didn't call in the guard on this day. But it now turns out that he wanted to protect the mob with the guard, which should have been obvious since that's always how these things go with Trump. Look, those were his people. Of course, that would be his thought. Yeah. I mean, as you said, Jesse, like, of course we should have realized that. It's very unsurprising, right? I mean, there's, you know, it's sort of surprising it took us. long to hear this, right?

Because it sort of makes sense, though he didn't send in the guards for a long time. That may account for why it took so long. Maybe some people thought he, you know, there was more knowledge about what was going on there. Certainly, it did, I mean, the guard didn't come in until that evening, right? Early evening.

So I think that's a totally disturbing. Who did they need protecting from? Well, I think the idea here is, as usual, Trump doesn't know how things work. First of all, they were tourists. Right, exactly.

So if you just, if all you have is a bunch of tourists peacefully visiting the capital, why do you need the guard to protect them? I'm very confused by this. It's like, why do you need cyber ninjas to run a recount when there is not, when they are neither cyber nor ninja? You're a little obsessed with cyber ninjas. I am not. I just have to tell you that I am obsessed with it because the episode.

of VEEP, right, that is this presidency, is like, and then, it's like people are, you know, in the writers room going, but Cyber Ninjas is a little over the top. Nothing could actually be called Cyber Ninjas. I feel like using Ninja and any tech

is like the lamest thing you could have done even 10 years ago, so of course it's trickled down to Republican culture that like, oh yeah, this is a witty name, woo! I have to say Republican tech is like its own weird venue of like Remember the My Pillow guy has Frank.

Oh, yes, yes. His social network. It's just the drags of sort of the worst of. Well, except for the ex-president's blog. Oh, yes, his live journal. Yeah. And we saw today that J.D. Vance being a tech guy, he's using templates and forgetting to update the state that he's running in on his website.

Just priceless from the guy who's running as being a technology background can save us all. I have to say that Ohio Senate race is so much fuckery. I can't even, like that's going to get so ugly. J.D. Vance isn't even the Trumpiest guy in the race. So who is the Trumpiest guy in the race? Josh Mandel. I mean, Vance, yep, to his credit, he is trying to become the Trumpiest person in that race. Yes, he's working hard.

But we do have good news from a Republican out of Ohio, which I'm so shocked to, I'm saying that sentence. Governor DeWine has made a lottery to encourage people to get the vaccine. What do we think of this? I'm kind of torn on this. Like, sure, I guess. But the money is coming from, like, the federal COVID aid fund. And I just kind of feel like, was that really what it should, you know, what it was meant to be earmarked for? Like, that seems, I don't know, this seems really close to like the running man.

Where it's just, it's like this post-apocalyptic sort of, you know, game playing with people's lives. And I want everyone to be vaccinated. And if, you know, for some reason, you're like, well, I wasn't going to get the vaccine, but, you know, an obscenely low chance of winning a million dollars will make me get the vaccine. Okay. I get it. And maybe, I guess that's the argument for why it's okay to use, you know, sort of taxpayer funds that are supposed to be helping, you know, rebuild and helping people, you know, put their lives back together. Yeah.

It just, so I don't, I don't know. I mean, you know, here in New York, we get. yet, what is it? Shake Shack is now giving free fries. Now, watching that video of Mayor de Blasio, can you explain to me why is he wet? Yeah, no, I not only can't explain that to you. I'm happy that I can't explain that to you. I do want to go back to your point, Ed, D, because, like, I feel like the bounties too high. I feel like lots of people having the chance to get this like $10,000 ones.

Right. He's like, would work way better. Like, my friend told me a great story that his nephew wouldn't get vaccinated. He's like, how about if I give you $50 for each shot? And he's like, hell yeah, I'm getting $100. Then he signed him up for the J&J. He didn't tell the kid until the end when he got the shot. The kid was so pissed.

That's genius. No, I mean, I think it's worth fine paying. people to take the fucking thing. I mean, think about the, right, the cost, it's cheaper to pay people to take it than it is to pay to intubate them. Right. It's also cheaper to just get the fucking vaccine. Right. Well, there's a lot, a lot of COVID misinformation going around. And actually, on Monday, we had Eric Topold talk about this, but there are smart people, like people who seem, or at least who I thought were smart before I had that conversation with them, who said to me, you know, we're not having our teenage daughter get vaccinated because we're worried about her fertility,

which is like a real insane thing that the anti-vaxors, I mean, what I think we don't realize as people who are not, you know, in this sort of, or not as much in this world of misinformation is that they're actually, these people like Alec Berenson are able to influence even smart people. I completely agree with that. My question is, if you are not going to get your daughter vaccinated because you're afraid it's going to lead to infertility. Do you change your mind on that at the small chance of winning a million dollars? Solid points. Because if you did, if you do, that's fucked up.

If you're saying, well, okay, I think my teenage daughter might end up being infertile from this, but hey, a million dollars. It's really bad devil's barking. Yeah, like I would respect you more if you just said, no, I would not, I'm not risking my daughter's infertility for any sum of money. Right. You know, at least, okay, you're wrong, but at least you, you know, you have a principle there. But, you know, so that's why I feel like, like the people who, I don't know, I guess this is meant for the people who are more like on the fence and not for the sort of

staunt, the people who are staunchly anti-vax or even the people, like you said, Molly, I'm not talking about just stupid people here, whatever. I'm talking about the same thing you are, like there are people who, who have been bombarded with this misinformation and whatever, but I don't know is, I don't know, I'm so, I'm so conflicted on this million dollar thing. Yeah. It makes, you know, it makes me roll my eyes. But yeah, but look, I guess if it works, it works.

And then I'll be happy that it works. Yeah. I mean, I hope it works. I have very mixed feelings about DeWine because he is one of the least terrible Republicans, but he's still incredibly terrible and has done lots of sleazy, anti-choice stuff in the middle of the night in crazy ways. So moving on to other horrible, horrible things, Liz Cheney, no longer in the leadership of the Republican Party after we last taped.

So how are you guys feeling about how this has gone down? I know you're a fan of Liz Cheney's. Lifelong, lifelong. She can do no wrong in my eyes. What started with her dad, right? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, the thing with Liz Cheney is I know, like, I guess you have to, like, you know,

I'm so tired of hearing. Well, I'm no fan of Liz Cheney, but, like, that's a thing. That's become, you know, that's the new catchphrase. Look, she's doing the right thing on this one issue of whether or not we had an election, you know, last year, because we did have an election last year. The bar is to the floor. Well, right. And she, you know, recognizes that we had an election day and people voted and the votes were counted. And it's like, okay, I don't think we need to, you know, start making up plaster cast for Mount Rushmore just yet, especially since.

that's not the way you chisel a mountain by making a plastic mask to the face. So that would be really dumb. And yet. And yet. And yet. I know. I know. And yet.

And it's like, I mean, look, when the alternative is, you know, Kevin McCarthy, if Kevin McCarthy were walking through the halls of the Rayburned office building, and he walked by a principal,

he wouldn't recognize it. He just would have no idea like, oh, someone would say, oh, that was a principal. That was something that's, people have. He would just be like, oh, okay, I think I read about that one somewhere. I've never, seen one before. So when you're, you know, you're sort of like, again, like you said, the bar is so low

and the people you're comparing her to are just the worst. And somehow, like, if, if you're making Liz Cheney look good, your party sucks. Your party is so bad if Liz Cheney, you know, is coming out smelling like roses. Yeah. I think that's a good sign. I mean, I just think that it's kind of amazing that we have, we're in this state where the one good thing about Trumpism is that he has made it so that, I mean this in, you know, sort of a theoretical way, because there are no good things about Trumpism. It's an oxymoron. But he has ruined the bushes. Please clap. He has destroyed the Cheney's, right? I don't think that Megan McCain is. going to be running for office anytime soon.

At least not successfully. Right. I mean, he has just decimated this sort of, this sort of Republican aristocracy. Yeah, I remember saying back in, I guess, well, back in 2016, which it was like 42 years ago, I think, that, you know, I was all for the Republican Party being burned to the ground, but Trump was just the wrong arsonist. Yeah. That's really good. I haven't said anything better since then. That's why I remember it.

Maybe this is shifting top. a little bit, but I know we've got that whole Evan McMullen, Miles Taylor thing going on now. And they're, they're threatening to leave the Republican Party, like, they're doing their, you know, this is your last chance to change. And I like, it's like,

okay, you know, I really don't think, you know, Evan McMullen and Captain Courageous Miles Taylor and, you know. Anonymous, Captain Courageous. Admiral Anonymous is probably better, yeah.

And then they're like Christine Todd Whitman and Tom Ridge. Like, I don't think they're the future of any party. But I do think, like, I think what people like them, I think, I think the misreading from them and even from people like Liz Cheney is that the stuff that we've seen over the last four years, the Trumpism, the Qish problem. None of that is going to magically go away if, you know, a bunch of the, either if Liz Cheney says, well, the election. wasn't stolen, or if this bunch of bland Rockefeller Republicans writes a strong reworded letter to the editor.

The assumption I think that they're all making is that the Republican Party has some kind of soul that can be saved. And I just, I look at it and as an exorcist fan, I just think, you know, Pizzou is incredibly entrenched within the Republican

Party right now, and none of these people are Father Karas. So I just I think, you know, this is not going away anytime soon. The only upside of all of this is if it does split the GOP in any way, I am all for that. Right. Anything that makes the GOP smaller is good at this point. And I say that as someone who has no special affection for the Democratic Party, that's for sure.

There's no alternative right now to, I think it was Molly. I think you said before, one party that at least believes in democracy. That's it. That's all we have. We have one party that believes in democracy out of the two major ones. So there's no competition right now. Well, we also have a country filled with people who need to know not to put gasoline and chopping back. So we're not in a great place here. No. So the thing I keep thinking about is that when we're talking about voter suppression is that everybody's like, well, elections are won in the margins. And the one thing I could say, and it's probably the only compliment I'm ever going to give Evan McMullen in my mind.

is, well, maybe this will help the margin a little bit because, like, we can't belittle that if we're always talking about that with voter suppression, that it may be those very few thousand people who actually believe that this Republican Party is gone wrong, that it would still vote Republican. Maybe this will help sway that away. No, I agree. I mean, that's, to a certain extent, that's what I meant when I said, like, if it splits to GOP, I'm all for it. I just don't, I just don't think they have a prayer of of recapturing the actual GOP. I think the GOP is too far gone at this point.

And look, I'm not saying that, you know, 30 years ago, you know, when we're all living in scuba gear anyway, 30 years from now, rather. I'm not saying that things might be different. Obviously, everything's sort of cyclical in politics. But there's certainly in the short term, you know, Trumpism isn't going away. I think you've got, you know, you've got a bunch of people now for who, like, Trumpism is going to seem like the good old days at a certain point. with all the Q-influenced stuff and the Marjorie Taylor Greens out there.

So at a certain point, it's going to be, like, it's sort of how the liberals, and a lot of people on the left, not on the left as much as liberals, but the sort of strange new respect for W. Right. And like literally, in 20 years, we could be, the same thing could be happening with Trump where it could be like, well, he was, he was, yeah, he was crazy, but at least he was funny. His Sonsie wig was so good. In other Hellworld news, Tucker Carlson has now moved to a new conspiracy about the election. That big tech is who rigged it. Do you guys feel like Google swayed your vote?

Yeah, definitely Google. Maybe Facebook and all of its fake news. We know you're on Facebook all day posting in the Q groups, Molly. That's right. Can you imagine if I'm really cute? Yeah. I hope someone will tell me. For me, it was it was Thesaurus.com.

I just want to put that out as a writer. I thought it was interesting. Keraswisher tweeted something out last night. One night, Rupert Murdoch called her and said basically what Tucker was saying, this idea that big tech was, you know, corrupt and was against him. Do you think that Tucker is just stealing that talking point or doing Rupert's bidding? Or do you think he came at this incredible? brilliant conclusion honestly and based solely on an incredible grasp of the facts.

I mean, I always think from what I understand about Fox News, that it's not an organized cabal. Instead, it's actually like a number of people just doing whatever they want with no supervision. It's possible I have some experience. Oh, see, tell us more. Yes, yes. I mean, look, the show I worked on aired at three in the morning, so we were kind of of, you know, siloed off. But I say that actually, in all honesty, because it's not like I was in on any of the big editorial meetings or anything like that. So I, despite having worked there for, God, forgive me, 10 plus years, I don't have a lot of knowledge about that. But I will say

that you are at least partially and probably a lot correct. Wow, the great grammar there. I got it. Particularly in the post-Ls era. Right. I don't think it's as much marching orders as it is they all figure out what their viewers want. They're very good at knowing what their viewers want for the most part. You know, they had a little, a little hiccup with Trump for a bit. But they were trying to go back on board. They realized the error of their ways. That's right. And they, they, they also toyed with being pro democracy, but then realized that that would hurt them. They also, they also independently came to the conclusion that there was a lot of tourism going on on January 6th.

Man. And, you know, and they did that also around January 9th is when they figured that out. So they quickly were able to do that. So Tucker in particular, who as someone I used to know, is

disappointing is not even the word. Like I can't even with him. I just can't. He's become the actual worst and it's terrible. Boca Grand rots your brain. Yeah. Well, cable news,

Roger brain. Yes. Yes. I said earlier, you know, it's hard to tell sometimes who's a shill and like with some people

you don't know if they're a shill or a mark. And I, look, I like legitimately had conversations with people who also knew Tucker, you know, back in the day. We would literally try to figure that out. Like,

and all of us were like, I don't know. I don't know if you really believe this stuff now or, you know, and like the honest truth is it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether he believes his, his assinine vaccination stuff or not or any of this stuff.

What matters is that the people who watch him believe it. And that's the only thing that matters. And Molly just yawned so I know I should stop. I was not yawning. It was agreeing. I needed oxygen.

I was dehydrated. Yeah. No. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside. Beasts membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadadobrian. Sometimes we just

have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast's fearless journalism as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. That's New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.Gueygo represents Arizona's 7th district in Congress and sits on the committees for armed services as well as the committees on natural resources. Welcome to New Abnormal, Representative Gallego.

Thank you. So what is your favorite sex in the city character? No, I'm just kidding. That's how I start all of my congressional interviews is with that question. No, I'm just kidding. I do not. You know, I'm Team Charlotte. Yeah, I think you have to be Team Charlotte if you're going to be an elected official, at least a Democrat. Yeah, I don't know. I think if you're like the Freedom Caucus, you could be all over the place. I think that's a combination of like Samantha, Skipper, and Mr. Big all rolled into one. So can you explain to us because I just read about what's going on over there, but what the hell is going on over there?

I mean, you're basically seeing the unraveling of a political party. These Republicans, I mean, they're not really Republicans. They're Trump followers are basically staking their whole, you know, party on the rise or fall of this guy who just lost epically last November. What that means is, you know, there's some people that you just don't want to go along that way. And that's, you know, Cheney saying that this is not a good way to go. Not only is it bad politics, this is bad for democracy because, you know, he is, you know, he is. given the opportunity, he will be, you know, authoritarian. And that's the fight that's existing right now.

And, you know, it's hard, it's a hard world. You're not doing very well as a party when Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gates consider the leaders of your party versus, you know, I think other people like Cheney, who I don't agree with a lot on politics, but at least it's somewhat more respectable in some regards. Can you explain to me why I read today in the Washington Post that Marjorie Taylor Green is chasing after AOC in the hallways? Because it's all about performative politics, right? Marjorie Tiller Green is never going to pass a bill.

She could care less about that. She, you know, she's not setting up vaccination sites like what I was doing right now right before this. She's not trying to do constituent service work, right? So all that she really has to do is, you know, continue to kind of, quote, unquote, piss off the libs or whatever they want to do. And that's what gets her reelect in. That's what gets her all this money from all across the country.

So it's, you know, every couple of weeks, she's going to do something of that nature and that performative kind of way to kind of, I say, keep her in the front of a lot of voters mind, a lot of donors minds because, you know, she raises a lot of money from people that somehow think that she's good. Yeah, I mean, it's sort of amazing. It feels like we are in this Never, Neverland where everything is completely bizarre. You are in some ways really on the front lines in Arizona because Republicans really like to politicize the border. That's like a favorite of theirs. So I'm curious to know, is there a border crisis? It's not a border crisis. We have a humanitarian crisis, but it's not even the, in really in Arizona.

It's actually more in Texas. And by the way, to give credit to the Biden administration, they've actually started to bring this under control because it was dealing with a lot of unaccompanied minors. But what you need to do is just have more space available for these young minors. When these miners cross the border, you know, we need to make sure that they don't have COVID. And then we want to get them out of these border stations into foster homes or to their parents and or other family members that are in the country. Right. And what happened is we were so overwhelmed because we were still dealing with the broken system that existed before that. Plus, because of COVID restrictions, a lot of the shelters would only take 25% of these children.

And so from what I gather that the wait time from when an unaccompanied minor enters, the country is down to about five days. And they're out of that station. I wish we could be sooner. But they're being reunited with families. And I think at the end of the day, we're doing much, much better than this. But, of course, just to be clear, in the minds of Republicans, there's always going to be a border crisis. They need that in their lives in order for them to justify a lot of the bullshit that they do. I've been in Arizona politics for 15 years.

And every year, there's always a border crisis. And everyone does this, you know, every governor will throw on a flack jacket, get an SUV, and then, like, tour the border with, like, aviators out and call himself a tough guy. Right. Every year it happens. Guarantee it. And if you start looking at, you'll see them. Do Google images of governor at the border and see how many of them you'll find, right? But look, Arizona's always been kind of a little kooky and crazy when it comes to their politics, too. I mean, right now we have a fraud, like a sham audit that's happening.

I wanted to ask you about the cyber ninjas. Yeah. Talk to me about the cyber ninjas. I mean, I don't know who they are, but they've never done an election audit. Really? I'm shocked. Their leader, like, publicly was, you know, spreading misinformation that the, you know, that the election was stolen and he was still given the contract. Well, I think he was just given the contract because of that, right? Probably, yes. And, and, you know, the county, which is Republican, the county board of supervisors that runs the elections in Arizona, tried to resist. But they were eventually subpoenaed. And unfortunately, they had to turn over. But they actually wanted, like, if you're going to do this, these are the kind of auditing companies that actually do this for a living. Instead, they went from, you consider your normal kind of auditing firms to the Yahoo's that are doing it right now in Cyber Ninjas. But, like, this is just a long, long history of just kind of craziness from the Arizona state legislature.

You know, we were the only state that actually passed a bill, luckily it was veto later, that asked the president to either show us proof of his birth certificate or proof. of circumcision in order to be on the ballot. What? Yeah, absolutely. Wait, what? Yes. Okay, that makes no sense. And the, you know, the Senate president, the president that approved the, you know, the cyber ninjas and the sham audit was the sponsor that bill. So how are we surprised that she, you know, is not, you know, buying into this conspiracy theory.

So, you know, it is, it's something I think it's in the water, but Arizona is changing blue. and that's why they're kind of freaking out right now. Yes. Well, that's why I wanted to ask you. Are you concerned that these voting restrictions will mess Democrats up? Well, if we let them stand, they will. But Arizona has an option that very few states has. We could refer any law to the ballot.

And we can ask the citizens to vote up or down on that ballot. Oh, wow. So, you know, a lot of us are talking. I just had a meeting with Stacey Abrams yesterday, just about, you know, what our options are. So we're going to wait and see what other bills come through. And then we're going to see if we should just challenge all those bills or just pass Avoiding Rights Act in 2022 and just supersede all these voter suppression bills. So you're not worried about this. Or you are, but you feel like there is recourse. I am worried, but, you know, my training comes from the Marine Corps.

You know, you always hope for the vest and plan for the worst. And, you know, I think we're going to be ready should it happen. What can you do about this audit in particular? I mean, at this point, we just have to make sure that we are battling all the misinformation that's coming out of there, right? Because, for example, yesterday, they, you know, they found a bunch of line codes, you know, of something in one of the servers or data. And they try to make that accusation that, see, this is proof that, you know, the votes were uploaded and then it was deleted. And in fact, it was just, you know, regular coding, right? So a lot of us are watching this every day.

and we just get on there right away and we push back and basically to either take it down or it's just, it just doesn't become as viral as it is. So it's all about right now stopping misinformation, making sure that we, you know, take the credibility away from it because there's not credible whatsoever and just push back as often as it can. And then when it comes to the actual law side of things, that's when we get ready to, you know, run the initiative, run a statewide voting rights act, bill, whatever it takes for us to, you know, to keep winning. What about the bamboo? This is one of the guys that I ran against.

I think his name is, I don't remember his name. That's why he lost. God, I can't remember his name at all. He had this theory, and he was spreading it around that in the middle of the night, there was a Korean airline jet that landed in Sky Harbor, which is, by the way, airport is in the middle of the city. Right. Makes sense.

And offloaded 40,000 ballots from China that were made of bamboo. Because if you're going to go through all the steps of trying to. trying to insert fake ballots by landing a Korean airline plane in the middle of Phoenix, you wouldn't take the next step and actually make sure those ballots are made with, you know, regular paper, right? Right. Right. So now what they're doing is they're looking through all the ballots to make sure that

there are no ballots made from bamboo. I'm worried that the Republican Party is getting stupider. You have is. There is no is. I mean, it's bad. It's bad. I mean, I have some great Republican friends that don't act this way and don't think this way. But they're slowly and slowly getting, they're getting crowded out.

They can't all be Adam Kinsinger. Or Don Young, Don Young, who like literally pulled a knife on a member of Congress a couple of years ago here. He's now the moderate. And I love him. He's like, I work with him well. But like, he's one of the same voice. The man threatened to gut another member of Congress. Yeah, that's great.

I feel really good about this. Talk to me about Arizona. Democrats, there's a source of enormous consternation, one of your senators. Explain to me what is happening there. I know Senator Sinema very well. I think she's an amazing person,

great senator. You know, she truly believes in bipartisanship, and she thinks that, you know, upholding the filibuster, I don't agree with this, but I hope that filibuster's a great way to creep by our bipartisanship. Now, I just agree with that. If I ever, you know, find myself way later in the Senate, I'd be the first one to get rid of it.

But to give credit to Kirsten, she knows how to get things done. And if at the end of the day, you know, I, you know, that this is being held up or some really important piece of legislation is going to be held up because of the filibuster, she will find a way. She will get it done. So you have faith. I have faith. I was in Arizona Democrat back in 2005. So, like, I have nothing but hope and faith because look at where we are now.

I'm always curious when a piece of legislation is introduced on the Dem side that I don't fully understand. So I saw that you are introducing legislation to improve diversity and teacher recruitment and retention. I wondered if you could tell us about why that's important. Well, it's really important because we've seen a lot of studies that minority students actually do better and have better outcomes if they actually have come in contact with a teacher at some point in their educational attainment, especially African-American. boys or students, I should say. But the problem that we have is that as the population keeps the white older population

keeps aging out of the workforce, it's actually not necessarily being replaced by a younger, more diverse teacher pool. So what I did is I'm trying to shift some money to two types of institutions, HBCUs is struggling by

colleges and universities and MSIs, minority serving institutions to help train teachers there retrain teachers and have a good recruitment program. That's really cool. And that makes a lot of sense. Talk to me about what's going to happen about the January 6th insurrection, because it feels like there needs to be something.

There's going to be a committee that's going to start, and we're going to start having an investigation about actually what happened and who was involved and how it evolved to the point where we are right now. But, you know, the Republicans are trying to really memory hold this whole thing, as if it never happened or if it was a peaceful approach. Let me tell you, it was not peaceful. I mean, it was not anywhere near peaceful. I mean, I saw police officers barricading doors.

You know, I saw, as I said, I saw a Republican take apart a tan sanitizer stand and turn it into a club because he thought he was about to get overrun, you know, by his, you know, I would say, you know, sounds like he's a Trump supporter, but by Trump supporters. I saw police officers bloody after their, you know, the altercations. And I, you know, I saw them bruised up. So this whole idea that nothing occurred. No, it occurred. I haven't been in combat in 16 years, but that was as close to it that I've been in it since then. This was so amazing. I hope you'll come back when you have something you're working on.

Yeah, great. Thank you for coming. Not a problem. Have a good one. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcast. from the Daily Beast tracking the conspiracy slingers,

orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Economist Marshall Steinbaum is a professor at the University of Utah. Hi, Marshall. Welcome to the new abnormal.

Great to be here. Thanks for having me. We're very excited to have you. Are you supposed to fill your shopping bags with gasoline? According to the Consumer of Product Safety Commission, absolutely not, which I was glad to have because otherwise I would have been unsure. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it seems like a good plan. I know that I'm being crazy here, but like gas lines, inflation, what decade is it? Well, you know, everything old is new again. I actually haven't really followed the story of this pipeline as closely as I would have. I guess this is because people are stockpiling gas because a pipeline was shut down due to a cyber attack. Yes, from Russia, where they got paid $5 million, which if you know anything about New York, that is our New York, as our New York mayors have decided, we have two mayoral candidates who now believe that houses in Brooklyn cost $100,000. Yeah, one of them being the former federal secretary of housing and urban development.

Yeah, he's just killing it. He was either the Bronx Borough president or he had a like housing job in New York City politics before he had the job in Washington. Yeah, yeah. And he lives in a $2 million or Brownstone in Brooklyn. So that's just beguiling. But anyway, you know, I'm very worried about everything all the time, but I've been quite worried about inflation and you were like, this is preposterous. Explain to us why. Yeah, so we've known for a while that the inflation data release.

that are coming out in these couple of months are going to be high. Because essentially, this is a story about what happened exactly a year ago when the pandemic was beginning, when shutdowns were beginning, where there was a anomalous period of deflation. And the way that inflation is calculated is that you look at the change in prices from one year ago. So prices were going down one year ago. Like, for example, remember gas prices plunged at the start of the pandemic because there was, you know, a lot of gas that had been oil. had been pumped out of the ground and, you know, assuming that people would be going to work and

commuting as they normally do, that's deflation, which is in general not a common occurrence in modern economies. And consequently, exactly one calendar year after that deflation occurs, when prices are more back to normal, it looks like inflation is happening because of that one-year change. So I saw, for example, after we talked yesterday, I looked into, you know, kind of what had happened if you measure inflation by a two-year window rather than a one-year window. And it's exactly what you would have expected on average, which is to say exactly one year ago there was deflation in the one year since that one year ago there's been inflation per that measure. But if you look back two years to now, the rate of inflation is exactly 2% or something like

that, which is what the Federal Reserve targets is the average rate of inflation for our monetary policy. So I thought it was interesting that the stock market seems to have decline when those numbers came out. I assume the reason why is because they perceive the risk that there will be contractionary monetary policy that the Fed will raise interest rates or do something else to sort of tamp down economic growth, seeing the risk of inflation since that is normally their mandate, and that that will have negative effects for the macroeconomy. What you're saying is that inflation is actually not out of line. That's right. Yes. We had one anomalous period one year ago.

Because of the shutdown. Because of the shutdown. And that makes it look like, that makes it look like inflation now is high because deflation was going on a year ago. I watch cable news, which is one of my many failings, and on cable news, they tell me that this is all because of the stimulus. I would say that in general, the fact that the economy is, I perceive pretty strong right now is because of robust stimulus and the government has not held back in terms of spending the way that they did in the Great Recession. But I don't perceive that that's gone too far. I mean, usually the reason why inflation is considered a risk for the macro economy is because it suggests that too much demand is outstripping the supply. So like people want to buy too much stuff,

but there's just not enough stuff to buy. So the price of the stuff that is available goes up because, you know, too many people want it. In this case, it's really because we have never, in history, had a time when we shut down the economy, even during the 1918 pandemic, and then we reopened it. Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've had deflation, you know, long ago in history, but that's not a common occurrence in modern economies. So this snapback is really not about the Biden administration's monetary policy right now. No, definitely not.

The nude talking point on Fox News is that, and I hear this, by the way, anytime I go to dinner or with any of the people I know in New York. This is the new thing they say. They say unemployment benefits are too good. And so McDonald's can't find anyone to work. And the Biden administration is messing up the economy by being too nice to people who are unemployed. Yeah. So this is something that economists have looked into pretty substantially since the pandemic began.

I mean, in general, it's the effect of unemployment insurance on employment as a, you know, hot topic in economics research, but especially so in the last year plus. when we've had these enhanced unemployment benefits, and comprehensively, the conclusion of those investigations is that increasing the unemployment insurance replacement rate is the technical term, meaning the amount of money that you get in relation to your previous salary has not had an effect on reducing employment. So, for example, earlier in the pandemic, when there weren't very many jobs available because a lot of the hospitality and leisure sector had shut down, unemployment, insurance, the fact that it was, that unemployment insurance was generous did stop people relatively

from looking for work, but that was actually good because there weren't very many jobs. So had there been more workers desperately looking for work in the absence of unemployment insurance benefits, that would have just not resulted in more employment, but rather just more job searches. Right. And also more sick people because of the pandemic. Yes. Yeah. So I would say in the context of a public health crisis, you want people not to go to unsafe workplaces and to spread the pandemic, spread the disease from there to their home. So there's certainly a logic to that. We would rather have people collecting unemployment insurance benefits than competing for too few jobs in an unsafe way. Now, so, you know, and then what happened was, if you remember the sort of history of unemployment

insurance in the last year, there was this generous $600 PUC supplement in the CARES Act in March 2020. that went away, I think, in August 2020, so the $600 supplement went down to zero, meaning, I think that's what happened, meaning that the unemployment insurance benefit was at its regular level, whatever its regular level is in the state that you live in. And that did not cause an increase in employment. So separate set of finding shows that that didn't bring about, you know, people rushing back into the workforce and thus getting jobs, which suggests that unemployment insurance is not the reason why employment, unemployment, or why employment was low. So now the, I mean, and I would say, you know, the narrative that you hear on cable news is not responsive to academic research on this

question because, you know, they kind of say what they and what they perceive their audience wants to hear. The idea that people don't want to work is like a long-time conservative trope. So it makes sense that they would lean into that idea. But I hear what you're saying, which is that the fundamentals explain that people don't not. go to work because unemployment is good. Yeah, that's right. And I think some of the more kind of meta-analysis of this that's come out because of this renewed interest in this particular research question says that, you know, workers rightly perceive that unemployment insurance, even if it's the case that what you can get on a weekly basis from an employment insurance is higher than

what a job pays, a job is still a better deal because it's, you know, at least not nominally permanent. Right. As opposed to unemployment insurance has an expiration date. No one is thinking, oh, you know, I compare my salary this week to what's available on unemployment insurance this week, and I choose unemployment insurance. Right. I mean, I would say the lesson of the history of research into this question is that unemployment insurance does not have long-term disemployment effects because people would prefer to be working than not. Right. And they're a temporary solution to a problem. Yeah, exactly. So I'm curious to know now what you think Biden should do. All of a sudden, everyone, including the mainstream media, is starting to feel like all of this is very expensive. Biden wants to raise the corporate tax rate has gone from... I think it went from 35 to 21 and 2017, yeah.

Right. Democrats want to raise it. Republicans are like, this is our line in the sand. What the fuck? I should say it's useful to split this into two different policy questions. One is, what should the corporate tax rate be? And the other is, how do you, quote, unquote, fund an infrastructure package or two infrastructure packages, as the president has proposed. And I view those as two very different things. So I view the 2017 corporate tax. rate reduction as being a policy error. I think that the corporate tax system does need an overhaul, and that overhaul should be aimed at increasing the federal revenue from the corporate tax system. The corporate tax system used to produce, like, if not half, you know, nearly half of the federal government's revenue back in like the 1950s, and now it produces a tiny percentage of that because

corporations have become very good at escaping from taxation. So they're actually more profitable than they've ever been before, meaning that the tax base for this portion of the tax system should be very high. And yet, the government's not actually collecting any revenue from those corporate profits because the corporations are so good at dodging taxes. And meanwhile, I just want to add that on television, people are saying you can't raise corporate taxes because then things will be more expensive. Yeah, I think that's pretty outrageous. You know, corporations have become much more profitable and they should be put in a position of having to pay their share to the government for that profitability. I mean, the rest of us have to pay taxes when we do well. If our incomes go up,

and that's not the case for corporations. And corporations, as I said, are more profitable than they've ever been. So there's definitely a logic to reviving the corporate tax system. I guess it's possible that, you know, given how powerful corporations are, if their taxes go up, they are in a position to basically force other counterparties to pay for them. But I think plenty of other things, both in the president's proposal on that he should be proposing would mitigate those concerns as well. So you feel this is an empty thread? Yeah, I mean, I think the idea that increasing corporate taxes would cause, you know, major problematic repercussions for anyone who doesn't own a corporation is false. Like it's the shareholders of corporations who are going to be harmed by that. That's

why they're the ones lobbying against it. And, you know, that's what we should probably understand the political stakes as a question of, of that pertains to sort of, you know, who's going to shoulder the burden of funding the federal government, should it be extremely profitable corporations and the people own them, or should it be working people or consumers or whoever else? So that's sort of the tax policy angle of this. Then there's the macroeconomic policy or federal budget angle, which is you've put down a spending proposal that has, you know, that numbers in the trillions, how are you going to pay for that? And I think that that is a chimerical red herring or to mix metaphors in terms of sort of what should be guiding public debate. I think to get back to this inflation question,

but would tell us that federal spending needed to be funded is robust long-term inflation. And that hasn't happened. As I was saying, I don't view the last couple of months of inflation data releases as evidence of that. If it were the case that the federal government was, quote-unquote, spending too much money, you would see that show up. How? Much higher inflation. Okay. You know, not the statistical artifacts that we're talking about in a few months releases, but every month, much higher increases than we have now, and probably wage increases as well. So That's why I feel like the sort of inflation discussion is exactly oriented in the wrong direction towards this, you know, pandering over a data artifact that's like, you know, one percentage point higher than it should be, or two percentage points higher than it should be, when what you should be looking at inflation to discover is whether the federal budget is excessive. And so far it's not even close. So that's what would tell us that that spending needed to be funded. And that's why I say split these questions into two. There's the macroeconomics slash federal budget question, which is to say, how do you fund or not fund a spending proposal? And then there's the

tax policy question, which is let's make the corporate tax system actually work. Right. Interesting. So this is all very, very helpful. I am so glad to have you. I hope you will come back and explain more stuff to us because it does feel to me, and again, everyone can disagree with me, and I hope you will write to me and tell me how I'm wrong. But it does feel to me like we are not getting enough economists in on the economy. In media. certainly economists would have to agree with that statement. There's a lot of hand-wringing right now about sort of where are the economists in the debate. I think actually the unemployment insurance question is a telling in this respect because here you have economists who've done very good

research, in my opinion, pretty much all coming to the same conclusion that is unemployment insurance is not reducing employment. So I don't think there's any deficiency on the sort of like legwork side. You still don't see that view represented in public debate or on cable news, as you said. And I think that's because, you know, economists will get named and quoted on cable news and be guests there if they're saying what the hosts want to hear. But if they're not, if they're saying the opposite of what the host want to hear, then they're not on the air anymore. Right. So interesting. Please come back soon, Marshall. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Hey, new abnormal listeners. I want to give you a heads up that this week, the bonus episode is with Alex Gibney, the director of HBO's new documentary, The Crime of the Century, all about Oxycontin and the Sacklers. This interview is really, amazing and to hear it you need to become a member of Beast Inside. So to do that, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com.

Hi, Jesse Cannon. Hi, Molly Jungfest. So tell me who's the asshole of the day. You know what's interesting is that there was so much Republican shittiness yesterday that you and I both, sometimes we have trouble figuring out who we should nominate for this fancy an illustrious position of being, yes, the shittiest. But yesterday, the Republicans in Congress

really did it. They had, first they dumped Liz Cheney who, by the way, neither of us is a big fan of, but who... You could say that again. The best thing about the Cheney's

is that Dick, like, shot a guy and the guy apologized. It's a very alpha move, if you ask me. I mean, if you're going to shoot someone and they're going to apologize, like, that's pretty amazing. Should have read.

names himself Chad Shady after that move. Yeah, I mean, so that I thought was pretty impressive, but otherwise they're the fucking worst people in the entire world. But I would like to say that my fuck that guy is Representative Gosar. He is not the only dentist in Congress, but he is the worst of them. And yesterday, he said that the insurrectionists were just like tourists. And for that reason, among other things. things, he is my fuck that guy. I'm going to take Representative Gossar's siblings point of

view and say, fuck that guy. And mine is for the exact same reason, which is Congressman Clyde, who had not heard of before, and unfortunately now I do know who he is, who said yesterday, there was no insurrection. And to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a bold-faced lie. Watching the TV footage of those who enter the Capitol and walked through the statutory hall, showed people in an orderly fashion. Stay between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures. You know, if you didn't know the TV footage

was a video from January the 6th, you'd actually think it was a normal tourist visit. This is just so disgusting. This is like... The guy carrying the lectern was just staying high. Yeah, yeah. I mean... The woman who stole Nancy Pelosi's laptop.

Yeah, the families of the many police officers who were injured or lost their lives would strongly disagree with you. And I really hope that they cut ads against this horrible, horrible person. Because the erasure of January 6th is getting really, really disgusting on their part. Yeah. Well, and we knew it would come and they've managed to do it. Actually, I think the only shock is how long it took them to do it. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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