The Daily Beast Podcast - Watching the Last Jan. 6 Hearing Was Utterly ‘Heartbreaking’

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

There were two moments that stood out to The New Abnormal host Andy Levy the most while watching the last Jan. 6 committee hearing on December 19, which made four scathing criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump for his alleged involvement in what happened that day. He and co-host Danielle Moodie also discuss other evidence presented during the hearings, the smartest thing the Jan. 6 committee ever did (Shonda Rhimes is brought up in this part of the conversation), and Merrick Garland. Also on this episode: Techdirt founder and CEO of The Copia Institute Mike Masnick tries to answer Andy Levy’s burning Elon Musk questions, such as whether or not the Twitter CEO will step down after a “very scientific” poll on the platform. Last, Brooking Institute’s Angela Stent, author of Putin’s World: Russia Against the West and with the Rest, breaks down the weird infatuation Trump’s Republicans have with Russia, why she thinks former marine Paul Whelan is still in Russian custody and the ways the country was mocking the U.S. for the Brittney Griner trade. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

First we're joined by TechDard editor Mike Maznik, who's going to talk to us about all the chaos over at Elon Musk's Twitter. Then we're going to talk to the Brookings Institute's Angela Strendt, who's the author of Putin's world, Russia against the West and with the rest. And she'll break down all the chaos happening over in Russia for us. But first, let's have some fun. Hi, Andy. Hi, Danielle. How are you? I'm hanging on by a thread, Andy. I know.

I understand. I understand. So today was the, this is, I think the reason why Danielle is hanging on by a thread. Today was the series finale, as I like to call it, of the January 6th committee show. I thought it was a pretty good series finale. Curious to see, I know they've greenlit a sequel called Garland, but I'm a little nervous that it might be kind of boring. So I hope not. I hope it's full of action and things actually happen in it, but we'll see.

So today was the last hearing. they started out with sort of a recap previously on to continue my tortured metaphor. It was good. I thought it did a good job of reminding us exactly why we were here and, you know, all the different things that had happened. And just to start with the recap, there were a couple of things that stood out for me. There was, I think the Trump quote that above all else is, it's the little snippet of the phone call he had with the Georgia officials where he said, fellas, what are we going to do here? I only need 11,000 votes. Give me a break. Like that to me just sums all of this up. And then the other thing that really stood out to me was the testimony that we saw again, because we had already seen it, the testimony of Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Shea Moss. Shea Moss was a Georgia, a volunteer, I believe, election worker, as was her mom. Ruby Freeman is her mom. And Rudy Giuliani accused them of shenanigans. And they, the thing that really stuck out was he accused Freeman of passing a suspicious USB stick to Shea. And, you know, we got to see Shay. testimony again where she told them that it was not a USB stick, it was in fact a ginger mint.

And it's just the callous life ruining because both Ruby and Shea got unbelievable amounts of shit, like feared for their safety, got threats and stuff like that because of what people like Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump put them through. And it's just this callous disregard for anyone else's fucking life if they think they're in, you know, their way. And those two things, sort of that and the just find me 11,000 votes just crystallized what this is all about. You know, when I hear you, Andy, talk about Ruby and Shea, and I remember listening in real time to their testimony and thinking to myself, these people's lives are ruined, right? Shea said that her name meant something to her. It was her pride and people knew her and they

knew her business and, you know, she is an embedded part of her community. And now when she finds herself in a grocery store and people call out her name, she's terrified. Yep. And she said, the president is supposed to be the president of all Americans. And she's like, can you imagine what it's like to be the target of the president of the United States? And I think about that. And I don't think that, again, mainstream media has done this entire situation, this entire insurrection, the lives that have been lost and ruined. Police officers having to leave their profession because of the trauma and the physical pain that the insurrection has caused them. And we just kind of have gone all about business as usual.

That it's normal that Donald Trump continues on his broke down fucking social media app to continue to threaten people, to continue to threaten and encourage political violence. And you have real people who we watched in tears shaking and yet still had the courage, more fucking courage than a Kevin McCarthy and a Biggs and a Jim Jordan to testify before the committee to say what happened on that day. They didn't swear an oath.

They were fucking volunteers doing right by their community to say, hey, we're going to get out the vote. And they're the person that gives you the sticker that ushers you over to the booth to go fucking vote. And their lives are ruined because they tried to do a service to their community. And we just kind of scoff this off as if that's, Par for the course. It's not. It's not part for the course. It is not supposed to be normal political discourse that people are scared to death and fear for their lives. They're not police officers. And so, yeah, for me, it was the same. Their testimony, once again, that those clips and just the shaking bodies and their heads down and the daughter talking about how she gained nearly 60, 70 pounds in the course of a few months because she doesn't want to leave her home. And the depression is real. The officers, you know, they do jobs to put their bodies on the line, right? Like, that's what they do.

But never in their lives would they expect to have to stop an insurrection, stepping through their colleague's blood on the floor. There was the female police officer who said that, like, she was stepping in her colleagues, fellow police officers' blood that day. I am, I continue to be beside myself that it is almost two years. and Donald Trump is freeing clear to announce his run for third term. I just, I don't get it. It's all too much.

And as you said, watching their testimony again was, it was heartbreaking all over again. And it's obviously not an accident that we're talking about two black women here and that people like Rudy Giuliani felt free to treat them like this because they're black women. It gets into so many sad things about our country's history. And I sort of don't want to move on, but I guess we should because we, I think, I think, we could just fill the time talking about this. But let's, I guess, talk about the fact that there were four criminal referrals that came out of this, because that's the big news. The criminal referrals for Donald Trump specifically. And those are obstruction of an official proceeding

and that proceeding being the peaceful transfer of power in the United States. Conspiracy to defraud the United States. The committee says that Trump entered into agreements with numerous co-conspirators who agreed to help him to impair, obstruct, and defeat the cause of the United States through the election, conspiracy to make a false statement, which is the fake electors, and also to incite, assist aid or comfort, and insurrection. So those are four pretty big charges that the committee is referring to the Justice Department. And again, we've said this numerous times on this podcast, and you hopefully have seen it other places. There's no force of law behind those referrals. they are basically just saying to the Justice Department,

hey, here's what we think. Hopefully you'll act on these and maybe more. Like, just because we only sent you this for doesn't mean that there might be more. So the ball is now firmly in Merrick Garland's court and hopefully he'll actually pick it up and not just stare at it like a baby with keys. You know, I want to say, too,

that while the committee does not have legal recourse, right, they cannot offer up indictments, that these four criminal charges against a twice impeached former president of the United States is a historic and sad, sad moment in our country's history. And I continue to say that regardless of your political party, a political affiliation, and I know that it's so hard to say in the climate that we are currently living in, you should be beside yourself, that we have this kind of, recommendation and over a million documents, hundreds of interviews that were conducted by this committee, 10 public hearings, there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Donald Trump directed,

incited, crafted the insurrection, that when Donald Trump was given so many options, even on, this comes from his trusted aid, Hope Hicks, on January 4th and 5th, to say, let's have a peaceful protest, let's peacefully show up, because they were concerned. His own staff were concerned that these people were coming locked and loaded to the nation's capital to take, quote, unquote, their country back. And even then, Donald Trump refused. Yeah, I mean, and that's exactly right. That's something we learned today that this happened even before, as you said,

even before the events of January 6th in the days leading up, that there were people on Trump's staff who were really nervous about what was going to happen and they asked him to kind of help make sure it doesn't happen. And he thought he didn't have to do that. They also in the sort of, I guess it was an executive summary or an introduction to their full report that's coming out on Wednesday. They talked about hundreds of different weapons that were seized. Oh, we got to run down that list, Andy. Over 200 canisters of pepper spray, over 200 knives, brass knuckles, tasers, body armor, gas masks, tons, miscellaneous items like scissors, needles, or screwdrivers. And that's, again, that's only the people that went through the magnetometers. And as we have learned from the previous committee

hearings, there were thousands of people who purposely stayed outside of the magnetometers or didn't bring their packs inside with them when they passed through the magnetometers. So, we don't even know what the total weapons number was. But it's just absolutely insane. And And it's just thing after thing. And he knew. That was the thing, too, is that again. That he wanted. Yeah.

What the committee was able to unveil in one of their hearings is that Donald Trump was told, hey, these people have weapons. The Secret Service is confiscating weapons from them. And what did Donald Trump say, Andy? He said, take down the magnetometers. Take them down. Remove the mags. He said, remove the mags.

Let my people in. They're not here to hurt me. Yep. That's what at the time, the sitting president of the United States said. And I'm just like, how is this not a consistent, bold, top of the fold headline every single day until Donald Trump is indicted? I don't get it. Like when I saw the list of weapons and they're like, this is from the Post, they said,

28,000 people they confiscated weapons from. And the Republican Party, the R&C, after the fact says that's normal political discourse? What? Yeah. And look, there are still people on Fox News trying to say that this was all like a vacation for those people. I mean, it was a vacation because they were staying at the fucking holiday inn and allowed to go home right the fuck after. But my God. Yeah, it's unreal. Another thing we learned today from California Congresswoman Zolofgren was that there's evidence that some of the lawyers involved in this on Trump's side, they couldn't connect this to Trump himself.

personally, but some of the lawyers on Trump's side basically tried to tamper with witnesses who were coming before the committee and through things as potential job offers. And it's absolutely unbelievable this obstruction of justice, even after the fact. Like now, then they just want to tamper with the witnesses and cover up everything that happened. It's just everything about this was unbelievable. And I have to say, my, you know, I was a little skeptical, cynical, whatever you want to call it, about these committee hearings before they started. And I ended up thinking, and I've said this throughout the past, you know, year or however long it's been since the hearings have started,

that I actually think they did a really good job. And after this last hearing, I was watching some of the press gaggle. And Jamie Raskin was asked what he thought the legacy of the committee would be. And he basically said, look, it's been five minutes since our final meeting, you know, give us, give it time on that. And I think that's a totally fair answer. And he went out to say what he hoped the legacy would be. But I do think there's a case to be made that part of that legacy, we've already seen it in this year's midterms, because a lot of 2020 election deniers lost, and a lot of them lost big. And I don't know that that happens without the committee's work and without the committee keeping this sort of in the consciousness of the public for the last year.

And maybe I'm wrong about that. Maybe it would have happened anyway, and maybe people would just have ended up with, you know, election denial fatigue regardless. But I don't think so. I really think that the work they did helped that to happen in this past midterm. And so I already think that they've done some good. You know, and I think, too, one of the smartest decisions that they did make was to hire a television producer. Yeah. Right? They hired somebody who could clearly tell the story of the insurrection because the reality is what we what we know about our attention span as a Americans, you know, you're competing for screens, whether it's your phone, your computer, your television, or what have you, is that we are a microwavable society or TikTok society.

We have the attention span of a fucking net. And so you have to make things, right, into either a large style reality TV production, right, or some type of Shonda Rhymes spectacular in order to capture America's attention. And I think that they knew that going forward, that if they were to just go away, and move this as a as regular committee hearings with the dryness of these members of Congress without video. And I think that that is really, to me, what played a large part in this was the splicing of the videos that people could see very clearly. Look at the police officer that is jammed in between the doors, having his body squeezed. Look at the actions. Look at them using the American flag and these Trump flags.

Look at the video of the gallows with the noose hanging. Right? Without those videos, you could have the Republican Party continue to try and gaslight the public that, oh, this was just normal. I lived in Washington, D.C. for close to 20 years, have participated in so many protests, so many marches. And never in my fucking life had I ever seen anything or participated in anything that looked even marginally like what we saw on January 6th. So I think that for their part, without those visual effects that really burned into the minds of people and those clips continuing to go viral, I think that you would have seen more election deniers be elected because we wouldn't have been making the connections. This committee connected the dots in the way that we're waiting on Merrick Garland and now Jack Smith, too, connect the dots in terms of indictments. No, I think that's absolutely right.

And, you know, it was the video presentations. But like you said, it was the dot connecting. And the way they structured the hearings, I thought, was really, really smart. And they did exactly that. They laid out cases. I think maybe we've talked about this before, it was almost like a closing argument in a trial. There was part of me before the hearing started that sort of wanted every hearing to be public. Like all the interviews, all the depositions, I wanted it to be like old school Watergate style where it was just on the TV, you know, eight hours a day, five days a week.

just thrust in front of people and sort of forcing them to, even if they didn't watch, to at least know that this was going on. But yeah, I was probably wrong about that for exactly the reasons that you said. Like, we don't have anywhere near that kind of attention span. And I think the way they did it to go about their work and then every, you know, every month or so or every couple of weeks or however long it was between them, pop up and say, hey, here's what we've been doing. And lay out the case and lay out the various different forms of criminality.

that were going on. I honestly think they can't be commended enough. And I'm shocked that I'm saying this because I was, as I said, I was sort of cynical and doubtful beforehand. Not because I thought they didn't want to. I just thought, ah, it's going to be one of those Washington committee hearings, you know, and they never, they always turn into circuses. But we actually owe, we owe Kevin McCarthy a huge debt of thanks for pulling his members from being on this committee because it would have been just a shit show if you had people like Jim Jordan and, oh God, what's her name from New York? Elise, Stefanik, and people like that, it would have been an absolute shit show to have to watch them just lie and obfuscate their way through everything.

And so kudos to Kevin McCarthy. He actually, even though it was accidental, for once in his life, he did this country a great service. And I also want to shout out Nancy Pelosi because she rejected the people that he offered up because she didn't want it to be a circus. She wanted it to be a serious committee, bipartisan committee, whether they like the Republicans that were chosen or not, to discuss this. And so now, like you said, Andy, the ball is in Merrick Garland's court.

If he decides to pick it up, actually fucking acknowledge it and bring this home for the American people after two fucking years, we will see. The past couple of weeks have been, I'm going to understate it a bit, absolutely fucking insane over at Twitter. And joining me now to make as much sense about it as is possible is Mike Maznick, founder and editor of the invaluable techdirt blog at techdirt.com. and CEO of the Copia Institute. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Sure. I'm happy to be here. I do not know that I can make sense of what it's happened the last few days. Well, that's the thing. I don't even know where to start. I am very glad I didn't write this interview way in advance because every day brings us another crazy Elon Musk Twitter story and sometimes even more than one, it feels like. Am I wrong? No, it's, you know,

the pace of this is crazy. You know, I think lots of people expected lots of crazy stuff to happen. But I think most people expected at some point he would recognize that maybe it was time to take a step back and pause and evaluate things rather than just going on whims. And that doesn't seem to be happening. Yeah. So as of this taping, which is Monday afternoon, we have poll results. On Sunday night, Musk decided to put his continuation as Twitter CEO up to a vote. And he chose the notoriously scientific method of a Twitter poll, which is something he's been doing a lot of. And the poll question read, should I step down as head of Twitter? I will abide by the results of the poll. The poll ended early Monday morning and by a 15 point margin, the vote was,

yes, you should step down. As of this taping, he has not tweeted in 15 hours, which has got to be a record for him, I think. So I'm not really sure where we go with this, but I'm assuming he is now going to step down. I would assume so. I mean, he had some other tweets sort of suggesting that there was nobody who could take the job. So I don't know what that means, but I assume for all his many, many faults, he has tended to abide by the results of these stupid, unscientific, problematic polls. And therefore, I would assume that he is planning to step down as CEO of Twitter. Yeah, it's wild. And I go back and forth between thinking, well, he wants to step down and he put this pull up, hoping he would lose, and then at the same time, just going by his personality,

thinking, this guy doesn't want to lose this pole. This will be crushing to him. So I don't know which way to break on this. I don't know either. And there are certain things about his mind that are impenetrable. So I could see both of those things being true or some combination. People are complicated beings, you know, I really don't know. Yeah. All right. Maybe by time you're listening to listeners out there, you'll have an answer. But as of the time of this taping, we just don't know. So let's get into all the other stuff that he's done over the past week or so. Let's start with, it was a big one that happened last Thursday night. He banned an account known as Elon Jet that sort of tracked his private plane using publicly available data. He banned it. And then he suspended

journalists who reported on the banning, people like Drew Harwell from the Washington Post, Ryan Mack from the New York Times, Donnie Sullivan from CNN, Matt Binder from Mashable, Aaron Rupar, It was insane. He accused all of them of doxing him, and basically, I think he used the phrase providing assassination coordinates. None of that is true. But he banned them all, and then he did a poll asking if he should bring them back, and the poll vote was yes, so he brought them back. How do you run any kind of company this way? Well, we're seeing it. I think we're learning how you run a company this way. Not well, I guess the answer is. And the answer is not well. You left out. There were two versions of poll about whether or not he should bring them back because there was one that had multiple

choices. And it felt like he didn't really like where that one was going and so and said too many choices. And then so he reset the poll with just two choices and still lost that poll. You know, it felt like he wanted to suspend them longer. And then he brought them back. But he actually also did not really bring them all back because as I understand it, all of those reporters received notification saying, you have this tweet, which mentions Elon Jet, that violates our policies, you need to remove it. So I believe some of them have and others have chosen not to remove it and therefore are still suspended technically. Yeah, and I know that the Elon stands, as we like to call them online, love to point out, well, that's just standard policy. If you get

suspended over a tweet, you have to delete the tweet in order to come back. And they don't seem to care that the tweets in question were not supporting Hitler. They were journalists doing their job. Well, you know, also kind of the exact same situation that the New York Post was in in October of 2020, which was, you know, they got suspended. That was a big scandal. Still is a big scandal for lots of people, especially, you know, Elon's biggest fans seem to think that was the scandal of the century. And in that case, also, Twitter actually changed their policy the next day, but they did not reinstate the New York Post account for a couple weeks because of that same thing. They said they have to delete that tweet. So again, we can disagree. with that policy. I think there are reasons that you could say that policy is kind of silly, but that was the policy. So it is kind of funny that, you know, the people who think that that was like a treasonous example of problematic behavior by Twitter are suddenly super happy with this, you know, oh, that's standard policy. I mean, we're seeing a lot of that with almost everything that Elon is doing. People are saying, well, you know, his fans are like, well, that's standard policy.

It's like, well, when that was standard policy, when the old regime did it, you talk about it, Like it was, you know, something that they should be hung up for. So the whole thing is just bizarre. Yeah. Again, it's insane. There's another reporter, Lynette Lopez from Insider, who did not do what Musk suspended the other journalists for doing. She, as far as I can tell, didn't comment at all on the whole Elon's plane thing or any

of that. She's reported critically on him for a while now. He has suspended her and she is still suspended. And I feel like that's not getting enough attention. Yeah, the thing that happened right before she was suspended was he was going on his, you know, doxing is obviously unacceptable and putting people's lives at risk is unacceptable. And she started to discuss all of the different ways that he had gone after her over the previous five years for her reporting and really targeted her in particular and had people like going through her Facebook and picking out information and sending people after her and all sorts of pretty terrible behavior that he had brought. upon her. And so I don't know how he wants to twist that into claiming that, you know, that was some sort of rules violation. But as far as I know that there hasn't been a clear explanation for why she was

suspended. And you're right. It hasn't gotten nearly as much coverage as the others. Like I said, I find it troubling. And it feels like we're just sort of letting that one go. Not we, you and me. I think we're doing a fantastic job of talking about it, but media in general. But this gets to sort of another thing. And you wrote a really good piece about this, which I think is why I originally wanted to have you on the show. But as we said, that was so many things ago. I can't even remember. But I get really squirrely when people start talking about things like hauling Musk before Congress for banning reporters. I'm sort of a recovering libertarian, but I still have that strain in me. As far as I can tell, there's absolutely no need for the government to be involved in this kind of thing.

Is there? It depends on which kind of thing you're talking about. The banning of the reporters. We'll get to the other thing in a minute. We're not even there yet. There are things that he has done that almost certainly violate various laws and various countries around the world. But the banning of reporters, no, I think that that is very clearly he is allowed to do it. It may be stupid. It may be ridiculous. It may be hypocritical. It may be worth calling him out for it, as we are doing right now. But I don't see any role. And in fact, I find it somewhat dangerous for the government to then suggest that they can come in and say, you can't ban this person. I mean, we had this discussion before, except lots of people flip

sides, it seems, you know, when it came to like Donald Trump being banned. And again, in that case, you could argue that that was a mistake or that was problematic. But again, it was the company's choice. And the government had no role in that and shouldn't have any role in that. As far as I'm concerned, it is editorial discretion in the same way that you get to choose who to put on your podcast, you know, or who to host articles. by or Fox News gets to choose who they put on air, that's editorial discretion. And if we had Congress calling, you know, any, any publishers, any producers to appear before them to explain their determination on who they put on the air and who they don't, I think most people would recognize

the free speech implications of that and the intimidation aspect of it, even if they're not actually threatening, you know, some other thing. This is not something that the government should necessarily involve themselves in, no matter how offensive, we might think it is for him to ban journalists. Yeah, and I have to give a shout out to Congressman Ted Liu, who I don't always agree with, but he quickly kind of jumped in and said that Elon can do what he wants, and he basically said exactly what you said this, and what I'm saying and what the correct opinion is here, which is that it's really stupid to ban these journalists, and you know, you could even say it's dangerous and an incredibly bad precedent, but there's no constitutional violation here.

And I was happy to see at least one Democratic Congressperson come out and say that. I should know, too, because I wrote something about that and I said that. And I also pointed out that the EU is threatening him as well. And I said, that's bad, too. And then people yelled to me, you know, the First Amendment doesn't exist in the EU, which is like, yeah, duh, I understand that. But I still think it's bad for any government to be trying to interfere in editorial decisions. And so, yes, like, the EU, they can do that, you know, under their laws. I think they do

have human rights rules that they have agreed to, which they sort of treat as a little more flexible than we view things like the First Amendment in the U.S. But, like, I just think as a pure value statement, no government should be interfering in editorial policy. And that's what this is. And I think that the EU is looking silly and they're making him appear like a victim, which I think is, is not a very helpful stance either. 100%. Yeah, I hate that. But let's get to, so there's another thing that Musk did and then undid, as far as we know, that may, as you alluded to earlier, may actually run him a foul of governments.

And that is on Sunday he decided that he was going to ban anyone on Twitter from linking to a bunch of other social media platforms, places like Instagram, Facebook. and there was a huge uproar and people pointed out that this almost definitely violated EU policy and might even cause him some trouble with the FTC here at home. And he later in the day rescinded that policy and sort of apologized for it. And I feel like that's probably because some lawyers got in his ear maybe. I don't know if it was lawyers got in his ear or just like enough people were kind of yelling at him about how stupid it was, including.

some of his friends. Yeah. Can we agree that it was either lawyers in his year or cat turd? I mean, these days, you know, his most trusted legal advisor might be cat turd. I know. I'm sorry. I apologize for interrupting. No, no.

I mean, what else can you do in this scenario? The whole thing was weird. And the thing is, too, like, even the rescinding of the policy was weird because he never quite came out and said he rescinded the policy. policy, he sort of posted an apology and said, like, policy changes will no longer happen without votes. But it wasn't even entirely clear that that was exactly the policy that he was talking about, except that the page that Twitter had put out explaining this new rule suddenly disappeared. Right. It's this sort of like back and forth arbitrariness, like not very clear rules. This is the

kind of thing that happens when you have no idea what's going on and you're just like scrambling. There were a few different things that I think sort of contributed to. this policy making decision, which was that, you know, a lot of this is sort of like retconning explanations for things because he got really mad at the journalist for pointing to the ElonJet story. And so he made up this rule that like the assassination coordinates rule. Right. You know, and then like people were pointing out that some of the journalists he banned hadn't really pointed to that. So then he had to come up with sort of a second rule to sort of justify

that. And so then it became the, oh, they're linking to. Elon Jett on other social media and therefore that has to be the problem. But that's that seems way too narrowly specific. So let's just expand it out and say no no other social media because that makes sense, right? Like why should we allow people to post to other social media? And I think part of it also was he saw jack Dorsey had just tweeted this thing about you know his vision of a future social media and for the last few days he had been posting about this thing called noster N-o-S-T-R which is right this incredibly early, incredibly buggy, very, very simple social media type protocol. I mean, I wouldn't even call it that.

If there are 500 people using it right now, and I'll admit, I've been using it. I've been playing around with it. And it's, you know, it's sort of a little toy. You know, I would be amazed if there were 500 people using it. Just to prove how small it is, as far as I can tell, everybody who comes on Noster and says, hello, gets a greeting back from Jack Dorsey himself. So, so, so I wrote, I wrote, you know, hello, testing no-star. And four minutes later, Jack Dorsey said, hi, welcome.

You know, so it's a very, very small thing. But it got included in this ban. And so, you know, I think he just got to this point where he's like, I need to, I need to make a rule that covers the bands I've already done. And while I'm at it, like, let's stop this, you know, drain to competition. And somebody just like scramble and put together a list. And they, you know, they left out parlor and gas. and TikTok, you know, which was kind of a weird set of choices.

And I don't know if that was on purpose or just like in the mad dash to come up with some sort of policy justification. It's this sort of weird, like we have to justify this decision that we're making and therefore we're going to sort of write a rule to make that happen, which is, again, the kind of thing that people were really mad about when it came to the Donald Trump suspension and the New York Post, Hunter Biden laptop story suspension, which is that the company said, oh, we have something bad. But, you know, what has been revealed, though misleadingly in the various Twitter files, and as I understand it, as we're talking, there's another Twitter file being

released. Oh, God. Yeah. It's basically like something bad is happening, and we need to figure out, doesn't violate our rules. And if it doesn't violate a rules, do we need to change the rules? Now, that is a standard process by which trust and safety works. Right. Like, that's the process. Right. And when they did it before, they kind of, did it in a fairly thoughtful manner. You could still disagree with the final decisions and say like they should have thought this through more, whatever. But he's doing the same thing.

But in such a ham-fisted, silly, like, totally, you know, spur of the moment, whim-based method, that then he feels like he has to cover up. And then it just leads to these ridiculous, you know, obviously stupid policies that his fans have to justify even as he walks them back 12 hours later. We should talk about that because I forget who I tweeted. that yesterday, but that to me is just, it is such a replay of what we saw with Donald Trump over the, you know, the four years of his presidency where he would say something and people would be like, that's insane. And his defenders would explain why it wasn't insane and say why it was a great

idea. And then like four hours later or the next day, he would completely walk it back. Right. And this is the, it's the exact same mindset here. Yeah. Yeah. And even even to the point that his mother came out and defended him, which was so bizarre. Because like, Even her defense was so dumb because she's like, you know, if I'm paid to give a speech for some company, you know, I don't name check their competitors. And it's like, yeah, because you're paid to give a speech for them. We're not being paid to give a speech for Twitter. Just everything about this is so bizarre.

And it's just like people are concocting these stories about just trying to come up with any way possible to defend it. And, you know, it's the same thing like David Sachs, who's one of his biggest defenders. I had found this tweet from, I think last year at some point where he said, my content moderation policy is the First Amendment and all these people cheer him on. Like, yeah, that's really deep. Right. And then now he's defending all of these things.

He's like, oh, you know, I see Musk's big content moderation's decisions are like no swastika. Actually, what he said was like no swastikas on the Jewish flag, which I'm not even going to touch that. No. But he's like no swastikas and like, you know, no doxing. Like, why is everybody so mad? It's like, because that's not the policy that he came up with. Right. Right.

He didn't come up with thoughtful policies, and you were the one who said, like, my content moderation policy is the First Amendment. Neither of those things violate the First Amendment. So, you know, like, get what the program realize. Like, this is how content moderation works. This is how trust and safety works. This is how social media, like, if you want to have a social media platform that isn't just a garbage dump of nonsense and hate and anger and abuse and harassment and whatever, like you have some rules of the road. And Twitter, for all its faults, and it had many, many, many faults. they actually had a team in place that was pretty thoughtful about it. Right. The fact is, like, nobody's ever going to agree with every decision. I had so many differences with them. Like, I know some of the people or knew some of the people who were there. And I used to communicate with them all the time and say, like, this is stupid. Why are you doing this?

Like, you know, think this through more. But they were trying. They were really sort of trying to understand these things and trying to be as thoughtful and trying to balance all of the different equities that were involved there. And, you know, that's not what's happening with Elon. It's just pure whims and his own personal feelings, mostly based on, like, how he feels. And when he feels endangered, suddenly it's okay to change the policy. But when he endangers someone else, including maybe his former head of trust and safety,

who has been nothing but kind to him, frankly, you know, he has no problem sending people after him and allowing other publications, which I'm not going to say who, to basically post where that guy lives and, you know, making him have to leave his house. And that's a big deal. if he's really about safety. Why is he allowing his former employees to have to, like, run from their house and leave up the tweet that caused it? Yeah, I feel like we've kind of learned what it must have been like to have lived sort of

like under a parliamentary rule and then suddenly the parliament is gone and a boy king is in charge. Yeah. And it's just, like you said, it's all, it's whim-based. I would almost feel sorry for the people that have to put out his policies, except they've sort of chosen that life. So I don't feel bad for them. But I guess I had two more questions, but one of them I've realized is insane.

It was, is there any way at all to predict where we might go from here? And I think the answer to that is just no. So instead, my exit question is going to be, have we officially burst the sort of the social bubble that we had where we thought the Silicon Valley Boys were the best and the brightest? Because that was sort of our cultural, you know, stance for a lot of years. And we all sort of, or at least most of us, bought into that. And we're like, these guys are going to save us. they're going to save the planet. They're heroes. And I think that bubble might be just a little puddle of water on the floor now.

I mean, I would hope so, but I doubt it, honestly. I mean, I think just, you know, human psychology, we're going to just go back to, you know, some other millionaire or billionaire or boy genius or whatever is going to come along with some different solution. And people are going to get all excited about them. They're going to think that, oh, this is, you know, you know, that last guy, he was an idiot. it and yeah, okay, he was a fake. But this next guy, you know, it just happens. You know, I am hopeful that at least some people will begin to recognize this and start to experiment with things like Mastodon and other kinds of protocols that aren't fully owned by, you know, one person who might go crazy. But I don't know. This is unprecedented in lots of ways. It really is. Mike, thanks so much for being here. I highly advise people to go check out techdirt.com. It's just a fantastic blog. And you can find Mike on Twitter and also on Macedon, which he is a huge champion of.

Mike, thanks so much for being here. Yeah, thanks for having me. I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal. Angela Stent, who is a foreign policy expert specializing in U.S. and European relationship and is the author of the book Putin's World, Russia Against the West and with the Rest. Angela, thank you so much for joining the new abnormal. I want to jump right in with asking you, it has been a little over nine months since the beginning of Russia's war with Ukraine. And we have as a nation spent billions of dollars trying to help the Ukrainian people defend their country, defend democracy.

Thousands of lives have been lost, millions altered as at the beginning of the war, Ukraine. Russians rush the borders to neighboring European nations to evacuate what has now just become a terrible war zone. Angela, I want to get just your thoughts on where we are now and how we got here. Well, where we are now is that without our help, the Ukrainians would not have been able to push back this unprovoked and extremely brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine. I don't think anyone thought that this war would last that long when Russia first invaded on February 24th. Most people overestimated, including in the U.S., and of course Vladimir Putin himself, overestimated the capabilities of the Russian military and they underestimated the capabilities of the Ukrainian military and the will of the Ukrainian people to resist this invasion.

So, as you say, the war has gone on nine months. We're now into its 10th months. The Russian army has performed pretty badly. This is, of course, the second invasion of Ukraine. The first was in 2014, when Russia took Crimea and part of the southeastern part of Ukraine. Russia has taken some more territory, but the Ukrainians have managed to push back the Russian forces in the northeast, in the Harcath area in the south in the Gerson area, you have a very bloody battle going on at the moment in a town called Bahmoud, but the Russians are definitely on their back feet. And in retaliation for the fact that the Ukrainians are doing so much better than they are on the battlefield, they have, of course, begun for the last month or so, this indiscriminate, horrendous

bombing campaign against all of the infrastructure in Ukraine, leaving people without electricity without heat and without running water. We know that this is not the first time, right? As you just mentioned, that Russia has waged a campaign against Ukraine, that it happened in the early 2000s. The difference with this time, however, Angela, to me, is that we as a nation are quite divided in our understanding and our feelings towards Vladimir Putin.

It was once that as a nation, we knew very clearly who our quote-unquote enemies were and who our friends were. And yet now the difference between the early 2000s and to where we are today is that we have a Republican Party that seems to be quite aligned with the desires of Vladimir Putin and have said that when they take over power, there'll be quote-unquote no more blank checks for President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine. Can you speak to this kind of shift in perception and positioning

of the Republican Party and their belief or allegiance with Putin as opposed to the Biden administration and democracy. So I think we have to be quite clear. First of all, over 70 percent of Democrats support us backing up Ukraine in this war and are very critical of Putin. In the Republican Party as a whole, it's, I think, slightly less than 50 percent. So this is the Trump wing of the Republican Party. I would say the mainstream Republicans, and particularly those who have been in Congress up till now, in this current Congress,

there's been bipartisan support for all this assistance to Ukraine. Another big bill was just passed with more help there. Mitch McConnell, for instance, has said that he, you know, would continue to support Ukraine as much as it has been supported before. But it is the Trump wing. It's Donald Trump, who himself appears to have this infatuation. with Russia, admiration for Putin as a strong man and the people who follow him. And I think you can explain this partly because Putin puts Russia forward as a country that upholds traditional family values. They've criminalized all LGBTQ activity in their most recent

bill. So some of this support for Russia, I think, has to do with apparently these people's image of Russia as anti-woke Russia. And this is an image which, Putin certainly is very careful to propagate all the time. So I see that really, I see that's the main part of the Republican Party that supports, that is much more supportive of Russia. And, you know, I think what we'll see coming up in the next Congress, at least in the House, is greater scrutiny of all the assistance that's going to Ukraine. But many of the kind of pro-Trump candidates did not get elected in the midterms. You have a few of them, like J.D. Vance in the Senate and some in the House, but I would still expect bipartisan support to be there going forward, but maybe not at the

same level. I agree to an extent, you know, after the last package was passed that, again, provided hundreds of millions of dollars to support the Ukrainian people and President Zelensky, it was Kevin McCarthy, who is going to potentially be the next speaker of the House of Representatives that actually pushed back against Mitch McConnell, seemingly saying, don't know why you've allowed this to pass and giving, quote, unquote, Biden a win. Can you explain why American support of Ukraine and their democracy is so important and extricably linked to the health and well-being of global democracy altogether? I certainly can. I mean, what you have in Putin is a Russian leader who wants to relitigate

the end of the Cold War and doesn't believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was legitimate. and wants to reverse it. If Russia is able to win in Ukraine, to subjugate Ukraine, it's not going to stop there. I mean, at the moment, clearly it's not in a position to invade any more countries, but it could be down the road when it's, you know, refurbished its army. So if Ukraine is defeated in this contest, there will be much greater instability in Europe. We may see Putin. He set his sights on taking other countries invading them. He said that countries like Poland belong in the Russian sphere of influence. And if you have this kind of instability in Europe, the United States can't insulate itself from it.

And so I think, you know, this is not just an issue between Russia and Ukraine and we're far away and it doesn't mean anything to us. It really does have to do with global stability and particularly stability in Europe. You know, in your time, Angela, researching, investigating, analyzing this area of the world, What makes this moment so unique from previous decades, previous conversations and debate that we've had about Russia and Europe? So I think part of it is that during the Cold War, the U.S. Soviet relationship was most of the time stable, not always. But there were certain rules of the game. There were institutions in the Soviet Union with which the United States dealt.

And so we had regular channels of communication. there, which at least after Stalin died in 1953, worked most of the time. Today, you have a system in Russia, which is highly personalized. There are very few institutions that function properly. It's really very much dominated by Putin and a few people around him. And we don't really have very many regular channels of communication. I mean, we know that Jake Sullivan talks to his counterparts. We know that CIA director Bill Burns recently met with his counterpart in Turkey.

There are a few channels open still, but not as many as they were, certainly in the 70s and the 80s and really later 60s. And so it's very, very unpredictable. And then you also, I think what makes this different is, again, you have a Russian leader who seems to have unbounded ambitions, as I said, to take back territories that he thinks should be under Russia's control. And again, once the Cold War had stabilized, and that's by the end of the 1940s, that really wasn't the case anymore. I want to go back to a comment that you made earlier about the anti-kind of wokeness, right?

And Russia presenting that kind of, quote-unquote, strength or positioning to the world as they stand against LGBTQ people and, you know, their humanity. We just saw the release of WNBA player two-time Olympian Britney Greiner from the, Russian penal colony after being held on criminal charges, trumped up criminal charges for possession of cannabis. And I want to get your thoughts on how she was used as a political pawn in many ways by Putin, by Russia. And what that signaled, because her being one, a black woman, but also being very outwardly LGBTQ, she has been an advocate, is married, has a wife, how that was playing out not only in this country, but on the world stage? Well, so the Russians have for a long time wanted to get back,

Victor Bout, the notorious arms dealer, responsible for, you know, thousands of deaths, probably, including American ones. And they had been unable to get him back so far. And so they seized this opportunity. Ms. Grinner was arrested just before the war began. But, of course, Putin at that point, knew that the war would begin. And so she was obviously a very useful. hostage for them to hold. They understood that there would be a lot of domestic pressure on President

Biden. She's a very well-known and well-regarded athletic figure, obviously. And by the way, she was playing with her Russian team for a number of years. And, you know, they wanted her there. Very well respected here. And so they knew that that pressure would be there. And they played it, I think, for all they could. Obviously, the U.S. wanted to also get Paul Whelan released, the Marine, who's been in prison for a number of years. But the Russians insisted they would only do that if the Germans gave back to them an assassin who had killed a Chechen opposition leader in Germany, the Germans wouldn't go with that. So I think the Russians used this very skillfully. And all I can tell you is that once she was out and back in the United States, I watched

some of the domestic programming that they have. They have these talk shows at night with these very extremist views. The way they were talking about her and sort of mocking the United States was really quite unpalatable. So they've used that for their domestic audience to say, see, we kind of fool the United States and look what they got back. So it's unfortunate, but of course it's extremely fortunate that she was returned. And we just hope, and I know she herself has said that she's also going to try and work now for the release of the other prisoners.

Why do you think that Paul Whelan wasn't released? What is it? I mean, obviously, it's a completely different case. They're holding Paul Willing supposedly on conspiracy, charges as he is seen in their eyes, in Russian eyes, as a spy. The United States has denounced that many, many times. But what is it about the Wheelan case that has Russia holding onto him for so many years at this point through, you know, two administrations? Because mind you, I just want folks to remember that Trump had an opportunity to be negotiating on the release of Paul Whelan

and did not do so during his time as president. The faux outrage from Republicans on Wheelan not being released and Greiner being released. Well, I don't remember hearing anything on Paul Wheelan's behalf. And as a matter of fact, his own family, Wheelan's family said that President Trump uttered his name more in the past several months than he had at all during his own presidency. What is it about Paul Wheelan? So the Russians planted this flash drive on him.

Then they accused him of espionage. And so they are holding him as a spy, whereas of course, Brittany Greiner was not held as a spy. And so they are now holding out for something bigger. We don't quite know how many more Russians we have in jail here that would be acceptable trades for the Kremlin. And if we do know, it's obviously not public information. I suspect that they're holding him now because they maybe want other concessions.

Maybe it's not the release of a Russian here, but the U.S. lifting sanctions or doing something else. And because they have said he's a spy, they have said that the charges are much more serious and therefore they have to get more, you know, for releasing him. That's, I think, is the only explanation for it. Where do you see, Angela, as we get ready to change calendar years and we reach the one year, I guess, anniversary or day of recognition of the beginning of the war that Russia has started in Ukraine, as we see more civilian targets being made by Russia, we see infrastructure being

damage beyond repair. There is still this seemingly threat of, you know, nuclear war of possession of the plant. Where do you see us moving? One, as the United States continues to be the most aggressive backer of Ukraine, both monetarily and on the world staging conversation, where do you see this going? Well, I think the war is just going to continue. There's no end in sight. The Russians would be interested, I think, in a ceasefire now, which would allow them to regroup and make sure that they can have another offensive in the spring, but they're not willing at the moment to sit down and say that, you know, they haven't annexed territories which they don't control. And the Ukrainians are not interested in sitting down at the moment if that means they have to make more territorial

concessions. So this is going to go on through next year. Even the Ukrainians themselves have said that there's going to be a new Russian offensive in the spring that we should wait for. It means more death and destruction in Ukraine. As you probably know, the figures are that maybe up to 100,000 Russians are either dead or so badly wounded that they can't fight again. And the number may be the same for Ukraine. We don't have really authoritative figures on that yet. And so we'll grind on. And I think the challenge will be for both the United States and the transatlantic community,

we with our European allies, to maintain this commitment to Ukraine as we go through a winter that's affecting, the Europeans worse than we are in terms of energy prices and things like that. Can we sustain that? Again, will we domestically sustain the commitment to Ukraine? So there is really no end in sight for this at the moment. And this is a war of attrition. And Putin thinks that he can wait out the West. He thinks that we'll cave, that the U.S. will say we can't go on supporting Ukraine. The Europeans will say this is too hard. The impact of the sanctions is too great. And we can't do that either. We will continue to hear the veiled nuclear threats from Putin and those around him. I think that we shouldn't respond too aggressively to that. We shouldn't get too worried about that.

You can't dismiss these threats, but we shouldn't base our policies on the fear that Russia's going to do something with a nuclear weapon. We just have to, you know, keep monitoring that. But, you know, unless something that we can't foresee now happens on the battlefield or maybe in Russia, this is going to for some time. Last question for you, Angela. Do you foresee there being American boots on the ground? There being a need for our military to actually not just be providing resources and be providing, you know, strategy, but that we will actually provide boots on the ground. Does Biden administration has made it clear that there won't be boots on the ground? Because once, if you got into a direct conflict between American and Russian troops in Ukraine, that indeed could

lead to a nuclear confrontation. So I think we will not see U.S. boots on the ground. We see a heightened U.S. military presence in our NATO allies that are on the front line. But you're not going to see them on the ground in Ukraine. Angela Stent, thank you so much for making time for the new abnormal folks. The book is Putin's world, Russia against the West and with the rest. Really appreciate your your insight. Thank you very much. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Who is your last fuck that guy for the year? Oh my God.

I know. Pressure. A lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. It's a lot of pressure. But luckily, my pick makes the job really fucking easy on a regular basis. And that would be representative. And I use that in quotation marks, Marjorie Taylor Green, a Republican of Georgia. Now, what could she possibly have done this time that she hasn't done for the last fucking year. So Marjorie Taylor Green is continuing on her crusade to paint every Democrat, to paint every corporation as some type of groomer or pedophile or what have you. And now her latest target, Andy, is Walmart. And she took to Twitter to basically say that Walmart, because they also sell, you know, everything. It's

It's a big friggin' store, warehouse store that sells a whole host of things, from jeans to food to to apparently sex toys and, you know, regular toys for children. She has now said that they are, quote, groomers. And this is what she said in one of her tweets. She puts up a picture, which we don't know if this picture is real. We have no idea. But it is a picture of a couple of vibrators, some kids toothbrushes, recola, and, you know, and some other things. and she says at Walmart, many of your customers in my district are reaching out to me about

sex toys being sold in your Dalton store. They're extremely upset and absolutely horrified that sex toys are being sold openly right next to children's toothbrushes. This is grooming. I don't know what the obsession is that Republicans have with sex. And the fact that what? They want everyone in society to be some like puritanical, pressed fucking in-sell? I have no idea. But here's the thing. Do I say, oh, yeah, sell sex toys next to

kid shit? No. And do I think that that was purposefully done in order for a photo op? Absolutely. Do I also think that Marjorie Taylor Green is probably the most repressed individual? Yes. Yes, I fucking do. It's why her eyes look so scary and she looks really off-killed her. And so I just, I'm so tired of the fucking grooming pedophile bullshit because, again, this is another way to incite violence against stores, against people that you do not like, right? It's by creating and concocting these Q&on style conspiracy theories like they did with the comet pizza, right, that ends up with people getting killed like they do with Club Q that ends up getting people killed, right? And so I'm just, I'm tired of the bullshit. We're not some repressed society where you're not going to be able to buy a sex toy, right? Like, we should maybe have open, healthy conversations about sex education.

And maybe we wouldn't have so many fucking, you know, teen pregnancies and the like. I'm just, I hate them. I hate them and I hate her. And she is my last of the year. Fuck you, Marjorie Taylor Green. Fuck that guy. Fuck that girl. Fuck them all.

Andy, who's yours? Yeah. Before I go, I just want to piggyback. off something you said, like, I think it's okay to be like, hey, maybe you don't need to sell the vibrators right next to the Scooby-Doo toothbrush. And I think it's okay to feel that way and to let the store know that maybe that was a bad choice. But the problem is the grooming, the jumping to the word grooming and the use of the word groomers, as you said, because all that is, it's just straight up Q&ON stuff and it's trying to get people hurt. And it's impugning motives where I'm sure none exist. I don't really

even know how that would be grooming. But in their mind, anything, anytime a child steps out of the home, I think they think they're being groomed for something. So whatever. I don't have anything else to add. Just, yeah, fuck that gal. So my fuck that guy is,

well, let me start with a story. There's a guy who got elected to Congress here in New York in a district that is part queen. which is a borough of New York City and Port Nassau County, which is the western county on Long Island. His name is George Santos, and he's a Republican. And he had a really evocative campaign bio.

The son of Brazilian immigrants. He's an openly gay, a seasoned Wall Street financier and investor. His family owned 13 properties in a real estate portfolio. He had an animal rescue charity that saved over 2,500 dollars. and cats. I'm reading this all out of a New York Times piece, by the way. I want to make sure they get credit for that. As it turns out, a lot of those things, not so much. He claimed to have worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. Both companies told the New York Times they have no record of his ever working there. He said he graduated from Baruch College here in New York. There is no record of

anyone matching his name and date of birth graduating in 2010 when he says he does. There is pretty much no evidence that his animal rescue group that he says is a tax exempt charity. The IRS had no record of any such charity registered with that name. It goes on and on. And it seems like he basically made up his American Dream bio out of whole cloth. And so you'd think he would be my fuck that guy. And ordinarily, he would be. But he's not.

My fuck that guy is instead a guy named Jay Jacobs, who I've talked about on the show before. he is the chair of the New York State Democratic Committee. And I don't know how to put this in any other way, but he fucking sucks. And he is the guy who might be the most responsible for the Democrats losing the house because of the gains that the Republicans made in New York State in house races. And this guy is the chair of the New York State Democratic Committee. And this is the second time that George Santos has run for office. and you are telling me that do they not have an opposition research department?

No one in the New York State Democratic Party, again, of which Jay Jacobs is the chair, no one looked into this guy, and it's not until after he gets elected that we have, you know, journalists actually finding this stuff out and not getting this from the people who are running against him. This is malpractice. It's malpractice. It's malpractice. It's dereliction of duty. I mean, the dude should have resigned. or Governor Hockel should fire him and replace him ASAP, even before we knew about this.

But if this doesn't remove any doubt about that, that this guy is just absolutely incompetent and should not be leading the Democratic Party in Peoria, let alone New York State. I just, I don't know what is. So just fuck that guy and fuck what his incompetence has done to this country. I mean, we can just say it. you know, the House Republicans have, it's either four or five more members.

We lost four seats. Yeah. We lost four seats because it is fucking incompetence. Mm-hmm. So fuck him. Fuck him. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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