The Daily Beast Podcast - We Need an Interpreter to Work Out Trump’s ‘Debanking’ Rant

Episode Date: January 21, 2024

The former president’s latest rant about “debanking” and electric cars has left The New Abnormal team scratching their heads.  Plus! Danielle Moodie talks to Keith Boykin, the political commentator, film producer and Bill Clinton’s former White House aide, about his new book Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race? 25 Arguments That Won’t Go Away.   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 Campbell News conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, 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. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with author Keith Boykin, who will join us to talk about his upcoming book, Why Is Everything Have to Be About Race? And he'll tell us all about that.

But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clips. Clips. All right. We're going to start off light. I hate when you say that.

Listen, listen. Got it ease you to hell. So we often save this part of the show for a little later where we talk about saying the quiet part out loud. But here we have the five's Greg Gutfeld, ranting against podcasts, a subject very near to my heart. And I'm sure you choose as well. And then Jesse Waters, well, he does his usual thing of telling on himself. Because podcast, two hours long, three hours long, you're dealing now in the real world. That's why I don't go on podcasts because I'm exposed as an idiot after two minutes.

Exactly. First of all, two minutes is a long time. It's giving yourself a lot of credit there. Yeah. Oh. It is funny, though, because, like, I think one of the old discussions we used to have about Fox News is, like, how much. they get away with this because there's never any confrontation to their ideas.

Oh, yeah. The only thing that surprises me about this is that Jesse Waters has even that small degree of self-awareness. It's true. Unless he was, he probably thinks he was joking. But he wasn't. Yeah. Oh, my God. God, he's so dumb.

It really makes me think, though. I think, you know, you just need to tell me which of you is putting the interview request in and I'll make sure to invite him on for now. Oh, please let it be me. Okay, so now we come to dementia J. Trump, who is not looking so hot out on the campaign trail. Frankly, it's always hard to choose which of his insane ramblings for this segment to use, but now the criteria has gone from what is the most insane sundown and confused one to well.

I'm going to let him do the talking and we can figure out what the fuck this is. But we're also going to play strong protections to stop banks and regulators from trying to debank you from your, you know, your political beliefs, what they do. They want to debank you and we're going to debank. Think of this. They want to take away your rights. They want to take away your country. The things you're doing, all electric cars, give me a break.

If you want an electric car, but they don't go far. They're very expensive. They're going to be made. What does debank you mean? Like debank you from your rights? What is he saying? I think he's trying to say take away your money, but the brain on that one.

Is the bank demanding I get a electric car? I didn't see that in my recent statement. Did you guys see that in your recent bank statement? I mean, the interesting thing here is that most of this debanking is done against sex workers. Good point. Where, you know, places like PayPal will not allow it to be used as a payment method for only fans and for stuff like that. Generally, this sort of thing is used to target sex workers, and Donald Trump has his own history with sex workers.

And I guess that didn't work out too well for him, so maybe you'd think he would be in favor of this debanking. I love when he throws in, like the electric cars thing was clearly not in the prompter. Yeah. He was talking about whales the other day in the speech too. Yeah. It's just like, you know, he's not sundowning. I mean, it's midnight.

But thought pops in his brain. And somehow he's talking. about, you know, banks not letting you use it for specific businesses or whatever. And then suddenly that makes him think of electric cars. And apparently everyone is now being forced to buy an electric car or whatever. It's bizarre. And it's the kind of thing that, again, you know, might be funny if he weren't going to be the... Running for president. Yeah. If he weren't going to be the first official dictator of the United States. Do you know what I think? I don't think that anything is in the teleprompter. I think it's like an etch a sketch.

I think he's just like up there, like, turning the knobs and, you know. Like, that's what I think it is. I could see Stephen Miller being a really bad artist. That would explain it a lot. Yeah. So it's like they're playing. Pictionary? And he's like, and he's like, ah, ah, a electric car.

Electric car. It makes sense. It's like, no, that's an ATM. It's an ATM. No, let your car. Let's your car. I don't know, y'all. Personally, I saw him carry pizzas this week

and I thought it was pretty presidential. Or as he calls it, an hors d'oe. So speaking of telling on themselves, Meatball Ron is increasingly turning against Mr. Trump. As he sees his chances of not being yelled up nightly by Casey being pretty likely, he's going to probably be enduring that a lot about how bad and weird he was as a candidate on this trail.

So he decided to spit some facts. and for once, I agree with Meatball Ron. We've got basically a praetorian guard of the conservative media, Fox News, you know, the websites, all the stuff. They just don't hold them accountable because they're worried about losing viewers and they don't want to have the ratings go down. And that's just the reality, that's just the truth.

And I'm not complaining about it. I'd rather that not be the case, but that's just, I think, an objective reality. I mean, broken clock is right twice a day. I mean, this would mean more if, I don't know if people remember, but at the beginning of Rob's campaign, he wouldn't talk to the media, the quote-unquote mainstream media. And he wanted to very much control which media he spoke to and which media got to talk to him. So he's sort of ironically complaining about the very thing that he was trying to do. I guess his complaint here is, as always, Trump is better at it than him.

And, you know, that explains everything about this campaign. You know, that thing that went around, like, how many times date as a man think of the Roman Empire? I think Ron DeSantis is one of those guys. Yeah, definitely. Andy, are you? I have got to say, I remember when that was going around and I was like, really? Or dude's thinking of the Roman Empire? I don't know. I don't really think about the Roman Empire.

Same. I spend most of my day thinking about the shameful treatment of women in our society, Jesse. I love that for you. I love being a stereotype. So to finish this out, do you guys remember that movie The Sixth Sense? Yes, yes, I see dead people. Exactly, yeah. So for those are spoilers. There was a kid who said, even in the trailer, Andy, so it's not a spoiler.

that he sees dead people. In the land of telling on themselves, I think whenever Marjorie Taylor Green leaves her district where she feels safe around her fowlers, the triggered little snowflake she is, well, whenever she sees a person of color, something along those lines that she sees something the rest of us don't see happens.

The Biden administration is guilty of the largest human trafficking operation in history. This is human trafficking. I just traveled in airports across the country just the past few days. you know what I saw in our airports, migrants, illegal aliens, all over in the airports? So whenever she goes to an airport and it's not the whites only airport that apparently she's more accustomed to in Georgia,

that somehow all of those people that are there at Chipotle or McDonald's are migrants, that's what she's just said. Right? Yes. And she also managed to throw in the word illegal there, which, I don't know, did she go up to each of them and ask for their citizenship status? I'm sure she'd like to. I would not put it past her. Well, that's true.

That's true. You just, you run out of things to say about people like this. You see anyone who doesn't look like you, and that's your reaction? Like, that's just, there's something wrong with your brain, lady. I would love to see Marjorie Taylor Green in an airport. I really would. I would. Honestly, guys, I'm going to say right here, I'd risk it all.

I would love to see Monterey Taylor Green in a fucking airport. But you'd have to put on a fake accent. Mm-hmm. Easy. I do it. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal Keith Boykin, who is an author, a national political commentator, a TV and film producer, and so many things. Keith is author of the new book, his latest book, Why Does Everything Have to Be About Race?

Keith, why does everything have to be about race? My answer to that question is because white people make everything about race. But please, tell me. Spoiler alert. Wow, that's the, if I tell you the answer to that, then no one will buy the book. Well, I think you're very perceptive, obviously, Danielle. And clearly, that is the reason why. everything is about race, but we've been gaslit into believing that black people, people of color,

are making everything about race. Progressives are always making everything about race. Why are you talking about all the racist things that are going on in America? Why are you talking about voting rights? And why are you talking about police brutality? Why are you talking about employment discrimination? Why are you talking about all these issues that affect black people disproportionately or people of color disproportionately? Because we're affected by it. And we didn't create the system. We are the victim. of that system. So you're exactly right. That's why everything is about race. What makes this book, which is going to be on stands this week, is the fact that it is a book about debunking. 25 of the

myths or the things that people say that tell us, for instance, you like everybody else, were watching when Nikki Haley asked very clearly, very clear question, Keith. I did not think it was a gotcha question about why the civil war was started, she seemed to get tripped up about it. It was about states' rights. Oh, it wasn't about slavery. This country doesn't have a racist bone in its body. What do you make of just the outright gaslighting that is happening? And does it feel different to you this time around than previous? Well, when Nikki Healy was first asked the question, her initial response was to walk away from the questioner. turn around and then say, well, you have to start with a tough question, you know.

She thought it was a hard question to answer, a question that should have been resolved 160 years ago, that we all know the Civil War was about slavery. And she knows that because she's from the state of South Carolina, which was the first state to secede from the Union. And she knows it because South Carolina is a state that started the Civil War when they fired on Fort Sumter, and fired on Union Forces in Fort Sumter in April 1861. So what's going on here is not just that Nikki Haley has some sort of temporary memory lapse, is that she is playing to a particular set of people, a base of people in Donald Trump's Republican Party who are invested in not believing the truth

and not perpetuating the truth. In fact, in covering up and hiding that truth. That's why we're being gasped. They all know better. But they know that this mentality of white victimhood plays so well with their Trump MAGA base that they have to lean into it, even when it's patently false. I mean, just a few days ago, even after the slavery question, and she fumbled that, just a few days ago, Nikki Haley had the audacity to say that America has never been a racist country. Now, there are some people, a lot of politicians say America is not a racist country. and you can debate that point and talk about what progress we've made and all that kind of stuff.

But to go that extra step and say that America has never been a racist country is to deny so much history of slavery and segregation and lynching and mass incarceration and disproportionate treatment of African-Americans and people of color is to be grotesquely irresponsible and disqualifying for office. I wish that it was disqualifying for office because then we wouldn't have a Republican primary. What I find, really interesting about the way that you lay out your book in terms of busting these myths is that obviously you're using facts and you're using points in history. And I'm just curious as to, for you, who is this book for? Because you have 30% of the population who, it doesn't matter if you

put facts in front of them. It doesn't matter if you tell them, well, it's raining outside. If Donald Trump tells them that it's snowing, then they're going to say that it's, snowing outside, even though it's rain. Do you know what I'm saying? So I'm like, I'm curious if 30% of the population, in my humble opinion, is lost for generations because they refuse facts, because they are part of the don't look up group, you know, from the movie, don't look up. That is who they are. Who is your book for? And is it a tool for the rest of us, I guess? Well, it's definitely not for the 30% of people who will never listen to facts in history because I, like you, agree that those people are not going to change and be persuaded. There's so much evidence out there that is already

available. I got an email just yesterday from a colleague in Memphis who's invited me to Tennessee for a book signing next month. And he sent me this post and said that we should all be out here saying this. That'll really change things for the election. And I sent him a response. I said, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you say. You can inundate them with facts, shower them with facts. But as long as Trump continues to be a racist, he will continue to get their support. You know, you say he could stay in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn't

lose any supporters. That's true because they're not investing in his policies. They're not invest in anything except for his grievance, this idea that he represents the grievance of white people who feel like they're oppressed in America. That's an audience that I don't ever hope to reach. But I do hope that this book does reach the. Millions and millions of other people who are tired of that, sick and tired of hearing those arguments and want some sort of quick reference book, an arsenal of information to be able

to respond to the lies and to the misinformation. When people say these ridiculous things, civil war is not about slavery, or Barack Obama solved the problem with America's history or white people were treated just as bad as black people were and all these other myths that could perpetuate in society that just need to be debunk. One of the things that you also talk about in the book is critical race theory. From your stance as a commentator, did Democrats go about refuting critical race theory in the wrong way? Meaning, did we spend too much time saying it's not taught in schools?

It's not taught in schools when we should have been saying, why isn't it taught in schools? Don't you think we would be better off if we started teaching young people? people to think critically about race and the world, wouldn't we be a better country for it? Do you think that we played that hand wrong? That's a very good question. I'm not inclined to think that there is a right way or wrong way to handle this. I mean, this was a manufactured controversy, and it was manufactured out of thin air. I wrote about this in the book, but the person who started this controversy actually

was a guy named Chris Ruffo, who we've seen recently. he's the one who helped to spearhead the effort to push out Claudine Gay as president of Harvard. But when I wrote about him in the book and starting the whole critical race theory controversy, I didn't mention him by name because I didn't think anybody knew who he was and wasn't worth mentioning. Surprise. This whole controversy has blown up since that time with Harvard. But I do think that this is another example of the fact that there is a significant number of people

who will not listen to any sort of facts for information. and it's a waste of time to try to pick a strategy to reach them. I agree with you in one point, though, I think, and maybe this is the point you're making was a larger point in terms of how Democrats and people on the left should fight back, is that we need to be less defensive. We need to start being more aggressive about what we believe in. But I think what we did in this case,

I don't think necessarily defensive, I think what we did in the critical race theory case is that we were trying to be factual and logical. And the people who are against us aren't factual or logical. They don't care about that. It's all emotional for them. And so we have to figure out ways to do both, to be aggressive and not defensive and still be factual and logical because that's who we are as progressive.

We like to make our decisions and base our actions on information, not based on mythology. How much do you think, Keith, that this election measured against 2020, 2016, is going to be about race, is going to be about race, racism, and white supremacy. Well, I'm of the belief that every election in our history has been about racism and white supremacy. It hasn't gotten any better. There was an interview on CNN the other day with Natasha Offer talking with Scott Jennings,

who's a Republican political commentator. And they're talking about Nikki Haley. And Scott responded to Natasha's statement and to Nikki Haley's statements by saying, well, you know, the country has improved so much. And we're a lot better off than we were on race issues. We were 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago. I don't believe that. I think we're moving backwards on race issues, especially within the past 10, 15 years.

There has been a concerted movement of backsliding since Barack Obama was elected president. That's what animated the Tea Party. That's what caused Donald Trump to spend five and a half years lying about President Obama's birth certificate. That's the reason why Donald Trump ran his campaign by attacking Mexicans and Muslims in his first campaign. That's the reason why Donald Trump in 2020 tried to throw out millions of votes of black people in Atlanta and Detroit and Philadelphia and other black cities. Because race has been the animating factor for quite some time. And it's only gotten worse in the Trump era. And there's a lot of people, you recall this, I'm sure you do, because we were all talking about this back in 2016.

A lot of people, a lot of white commentators and white progressive commentators were saying, oh, it's just economic anxiety. Yeah. It's not racist. It's just economic anxiety. We have to figure out a way to Democrats just appeal to respond to their economic anxiety. Well, that's baloney. It's not about economic anxiety. It never has been because the policies that the Democrats are advocating actually benefit

the white middle class and lower class much more than the Republican policies do. But what doesn't benefit them, and this is something that one of my critical race theory heroes, Derek Bell, who is one of my law professors, talks about, is that there is a property interest in whiteness. And so even though they may not benefit financially or economically from Republican or conservative policies, they do benefit in some sort of economic way by virtue of creating a sense of hierarchy and perpetuating a hierarchy in which white people are on top. There is an economic value to that.

And that is what they're clinging on to. You know, Barack Obama used that phrase back in the 2008 campaign, I think it was. He said, when people get disaffected, they cling to their guns. religion and people attacked him for saying that. But it's true. It's not just guns and religion. They're clinging to their racism. And we're seeing that much more evident in every election in recent years. And I think it's going to be much worse than 2024. They're going to be attacking Kamala Harris, even though she's not at the top of the ticket, because that's part of the reason why they're attacking Joe Biden's age because they're saying, oh, this black woman is going to be

the next president if you elect Joe Biden. And they're going to be using every trick in the book from Donald Trump on down to perpetuate those racist lies. Let me ask you this, which is about the 2024 election when we have 10 months to go, which is that progressives, Democrats, liberals, whatever we want to say who is inside of the tent, are fairly divided right now. The president, the Biden campaign has come out with save democracy as their campaign slogan, right, as the theme that they are going. going to build their campaign around.

And it's not registering. And folks are saying, well, it's not enough to just, you know, say all of the bad things that Donald Trump has done and all of the indictments that he has. Like, it's not going to be enough. In 2024, and I've said it on every show that I, that I'm on, is the last election if a Democrat does not win the White House, right? I don't have to love Joe Biden in order to like love rights. That's the message that I have.

And I'm just wondering, what is it, if anything, that has us coalesce around this greater, not only domestic threat, but global threat to our stability? People have a very short memory. And a lot of people have forgotten what chaos we lived through for four years under Donald Trump. I haven't forgotten because I had to spend every single day covering Trump on CNN and watching all of his tweets. and responding to every ridiculous thing he said and all of his policies. But a lot of people have forgotten that and they've moved on to, well, Joe Biden is the problem

because he didn't fix this and he didn't fix that. Joe Biden has never been my favorite candidate for president. I have to be very upfront about that. He's run for president three times before this one. I didn't support him in any of those elections. And we ran in the 2020 election. I supported Kamala Harris and Julien Castro and Elizabeth Warren, anybody but Joe Biden, but I voted for him.

I can't even begin to say how much better he was than Donald Trump. But almost any Democrat would be better than Donald Trump, almost. And so the truth is that we are so far ahead now of November that I'm hopeful that in the next few months, when the election becomes more focused, definitely by the time we get to the fall general election cycle, that people will start to realize just what a threat Donald Trump is. I don't know what the right message is. I don't know what there is one single right message. I don't know the threat to democracy is it, the taking way of voting rights, the taking way of women's rights to control their own body,

it's the assassination of LGBTQIA rights, which is on the horizon, the assault on the government itself and the administrative state, which is what they're trying to do in the Supreme Court yesterday, or even just the idea that they're going to stack the Supreme Court and all the lower courts with judges who will overturn any progressive legislation or any progressive government action for decades to come, because these judges won't have life term tenure, and they will give Donald Trump the ability to do whatever he wants as a dictator or an autocrat. So I think we have many reasons to be concerned, but people right now aren't fully paying attention in part because they're focused on Biden. And Donald Trump is still not that figure. But he could be indicted. And I mean, he could be, excuse me, he's already been indicted four times. I was going to say.

He could be convicted. And I don't think he would lose many supporters in the Republican base for being convicted, to be honest. He wants this election because he wants to protect himself from going to jail. I think that's the reason why he ran for office in the first place. I don't think he wants to be president. And I certainly don't think he cares anything about the Republican Party agenda. He doesn't even care about the Republican Party. There was some discussion some time ago about what would happen if Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis were in the primary.

And I've been telling people this for the past year. There is no chance to any other person but Donald Trump will win the primary. Zero. As long as Donald Trump is alive, he will be the nominee. And the reason why is because even if some other candidate beats him in one primary or caucus or another or beats him in the nomination, he will tear down the entire Republican Party before he allows anyone else to take that position. And I also think that that was just a false dream that we had. And I say we, I mean, you know, Democrats that somehow the Republican Party was going to implode. Somehow they were going to have a come to Jesus moment that, oh, what have we done and reconcile with who they truly. are when in fact I think Donald Trump has revealed who they truly are. Keith Boykin, I thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal folks. The book is 25 arguments that won't go away.

Why does everything have to be about race? Get it. Pre-order it. It is out this week and it's necessary. It's necessary for your kitchen table conversations, your dinner table conversations, and just what kind of America we want to become. Keith, thank you so much. Really appreciate you. Thanks so much, Daniel. It's great to speak to you again. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.

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