The Daily Beast Podcast - What Conservative Author Bethany Mandel’s Viral Flub Taught Us About ‘Woke’

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan talk to us about this week’s viral moment surrounding conservative “woke” critic, Bethany Mandel. Plus, New York Times bestselling author and policy advocate Heather McGee talks about the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and how we got here. 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'll be joined by MSNBC's Medi Hassan, who will talk to us about his new book, How to Win Any Argument. Then we'll talk to former president of Demos, Heather McGee, about the new YAA version of her book, The Sum of Us. What racism costs everyone and how we could prosper together. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, as we get towards the end of this week, we start with a subject that I know is of special importance to you. And that is that the Biden administration is now calling on TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese, a company called Bite Dance, calling on them to be sold or possibly be banned in the United States. This started back in the Trump administration. He had threatened to ban them and, you know, never followed up on it.

Surprise, surprise. now the Biden administration wants to, and it's all about security concerns and that the Chinese are gathering data on American citizens who are using the app and stuff like that. As an up-and-coming TikTok star, Danielle, I need to know how you feel about this. So I can't fucking stand this conversation around TikTok. Why? Because meta has all my fucking data. Apple has all my fucking data. So I'm so confused about why we need to be concerned also about the Chinese. When we have in this country tech companies that have been mining our data are creating like AI voiceover and doing the most. And we're not asking for them to be sold.

Like I get it. Yes. The Chinese should be the boogeyman forever in a day. We always make them in the United States. But you know what would be amazing is that if the resistance to TikTok would be some type of, like, like mob dance off slash march that happened in like Lafayette Square. Like that's the kind of resistance I could get down with. All TikTok dancers unite to push back against the Biden administration.

We'd see a lot of bad cheerleading. I want a flash mob. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Look, there are some problems that are unique to TikTok. And I don't know if it's still the case, but I do remember that a year ago reports came out that were authenticated, that TikTok was actually or had the capability to monitor your keystrokes in its browser. And that's a really, really big deal. And I don't believe that meta can do that

or Twitter or most of the other social networks. So that's a bit of a problem. I get exactly what you're saying. I quit, I mean, I ditched Facebook like 15 years ago, but I quit Instagram a couple years ago because I got tired of making Mark Zuckerberg money and also just the insane tracking that that company does. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. You talk about a pajama and it is in your feed for like 16 weeks. Yeah. It's fucking frightening. It's frightening. And I was like, you know what? I don't need to do this anymore. And I just, I just nuked my account. But at the same point, like, you know, I use TikTok for fun. It's sort of my late night can't sleep, kill an hour scrolling through TikTok. And and watching old comedy clips and sports clips and, you know, whatever the algorithm feeds me.

And it's a little scary that the algorithm knows how much I like comedy series bloopers. I'm a little leery of TikTok also because the algorithm is so damn good. And that is the point of the algorithm, but it's also obviously the better the algorithm is it means the better it knows you. And that scares the hell out of me. But I haven't ditched it yet. But I hear what you're saying. I do understand that there are national security concerns because it is another country. whether, and look, I think whether it's China or, you know, I think it could be a lot of countries,

and that would still be a problem as opposed to an American company from a national security standpoint, not from a personal standpoint. I completely agree with you, Danielle, from a personal standpoint, like all these companies are mining our data and selling it. They're mining our data to be able to turn around and to market to us. I mean, I think that the scariest thing about what the Chinese do with TikTok is what do we think is happening with all of the filters that we put on our faces? What do we think that they're able to do with that? Right?

So there are a lot of different ways in which we are being controlled, in which we are being mined. And I think that the Chinese are very obvious about it. I think that the United States is real undercover about the ways in which they mine and use our data and our facial recognition and all of these things and what they are going to be using it for.

So, you know, I say you jump from, the frying pan into the fire outside of the international security risk. But I also find Donald Trump to be an international security risk, but we can't seem to fucking ban him. Speaking of international security risks, Bethany Mandel. She's not an international security risk. She's at risk for making a fool of herself. And she did just that on a show called, I think was The Rising.

Rising with Brianna Joy Gray. That is part of the Hill. And let's hear the clip. Native Americans consider themselves very liberal. And probably fewer of them consider themselves to be woke. And so, you know, when we talk about traditional... What does that mean to you? Would you mind defining woke?

Because it's come up a couple of times that I just want to make sure we're on the same page. So, I mean, woke is sort of the idea that... Um... I... This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral. I mean, woke is something that's very hard to define, and we've spent an entire chapter defining it. It is sort of the understanding that we need to totally reimagine and we redo society in order to create hierarchies of oppression. Sorry, it's hard to explain in a 15-second sound bite.

It was the you could take your time piece for me. Oh, yeah. I listened to Bethany Mendel stutter like an absolute fucking. like she was the physical embodiment of Adairn headlights. And what shocked me so much about this clip was it was the first time that a journalist had asked one of these conservative fucking talking heads to define what they mean by woke. It's a first time. We've been running with headlines.

You've had Ron DeSantis running with entire policies talking about the war on wokeness, talking about this, that, and the other thing. And no one until now has asked them. to define what it is that they mean. And then when they do, they have no definition for it. Why? Because in order for them to define

wokeness for themselves, which they stole from the black community who created the vernacular around fucking wokeness, they would have to talk about why they're the antithesis to being conscious and aware of layered

social injustices and oppression. Because that's what wokeness means. So to be anti-woke means to be asleep and a fucking ostrich. But if you were to be asked that and then explain, you sound fucking stupid, which is what the USA Today's poll identified

when they reported that over 60% of the country actually is aligned with what it means to be woke, not their twisted idea of trying to figure out how to say the N-word without saying the N-word. First of all, you're absolutely right. Obviously, it's been lifted from the black vernacular. And my feeling is that white people who lift things from the black vernacular should take a seat.

And they need to chill. It's enough. I think what you said at the end of that is the key here. And it's like, Bethany knew that she had to be real careful about what she was going to say because she didn't want to sound racist. She wanted to be racist without sounding racist. Yep. Which, at least in my opinion, is anytime they use the word woke, that's what's going on there. I've seen people defend her, Jonathan Chate, who just, God, he sucks.

He just sucks. Yep. He's sitting there giving her the benefit of the doubt, and as he always does from his centrist perch to people to his right. He fails to extend that same benefit of the doubt to people on his left for some reason, but that's between him and his shrink. And he was like, you know, this happens when you're on TV sometime. And yes, I get that. I was, I did TV for over a decade. I don't think I ever failed that badly. But there were definitely times when, you know, your mind just goes blank and you forget. But she wasn't asked some obscure question. It wasn't a gotcha question. She was asked to

define a word she will not stop using. Yep. And to me, that's like, like if she kept saying the sky is blue and the clouds are in the sky and someone said to you, what do you mean by sky? Mm-hmm. Okay, fine. You don't need to give a scientific definition of the atmosphere, but you can at least say it's the blue thing above your head. Like, you can say something. Right. I mean, she wrote a whole chapter about it, right? Like, that's, that's what she said as she was stammering in her reply, which is, oh, it's so hard to define. I wrote a whole chapter on it. Okay, bitch, take one sentence then. Well, that's the thing. And then the next, like, her whole thing, well, it's really hard to boil down to 15 seconds. And then the very next day, she tweets out, okay, fine, here's what

woke means, and she tweets out, like, one sentence. Yes. I was like, that would not have taken you 15 seconds to say. So, so much for that. I am actually a little surprised. I thought for sure by the next day, and I think I haven't tweeted this, that they would have all gotten on the same page and had the same sort of copy-pasted definition or quote-unquote definition of woke. But instead, what we got was even funnier. We had a whole bunch of people on the right saying, we all know what woke is, it's X. And then another person would say, yes, we all know what woke is, it's Y. And then another person saying something, and it would be completely different. And it's like, you all keep using this word and you all don't even agree on what it means. What I try to do is I run

these definitions through the way they use them. And I'm like, okay, so when you're saying, when you talk about Silicon Valley Bank and you say it's a woke bank, this is what you mean, this is what you mean, this is what your definition is, because it doesn't work. Because of course it doesn't work because SVB is not a woke bank. And everything that they call woke, you know, for the most part, is not what woke actually means. So it was just amazing to watch them flail around and all just full of confidence that they know what woke means and all have completely different meanings for it. You know, to have the confidence level of mediocre white people is really just something, you know. It's pretty cool, actually, I have to say.

You are not mediocre, Andy. I think that when you look at the breakdown, all of this just goes back to the Southern strategy. It's the recognition like we can no longer say certain words because they're not acceptable anymore in society. They're not acceptable in quote unquote mixed company. So we got to move and we can't say welfare queen anymore, right? We can't say these words. So now everything is woke. And why did they call Silicon Valley Bank woke?

Because there was one queer person on the board and one black person on the board and a couple of women. So for them then using Silicon Valley Bank as a example, to be woke is to have at least one person of color or queer person and it not just be all white men. So again, to be anti-woke is to be a white supremacist, is to be a misogynist, is to be a person that believes that the universe must be centered around whiteness and patriarchy because everything else is too woke for them. But you can't say that in mixed company. So you just got to use terminology that wasn't created by you, that you don't know the fucking definition of, but you throw around and lesson to journalists, again, ask the fucking questions and then ask a follow-up. It's not that hard. No, it really isn't.

And you're right. Going back to the Southern strategy, I mean, that's where the phrase law and order was born. It was right-wing code for black people, basically, for getting rid of black people and stuff like that and putting black people in prison, et cetera, et cetera. But as you said, they knew that at a certain point, they couldn't actually say what they meant, but they also knew that the people that they were talking to would know what they meant when they said law and order. And you're right. It's the same thing with Woke. Now it's just code for a million other things. The only difference is that they can't, like, they could at least define law and order, you know, metrically or whatever, but they absolutely cannot define Woke. And going back to the

bank, like, all I keep thinking is Peter Thiel's fund, his founder's fund, had their money in Silicon Valley Bank. Peter Thiel is not exactly who you think of when you think of woke. And I find it really hard to believe that he would put his money into a woke bank. It is the most insane thing in the world that, like the first time I heard someone say that the bank was woke, I was like, that's even too stupid for them. That's not going to stick. And then within like three hours, it was the conservative talking point. And I'm like, once again, I underestimated their stupidity. When will I learn, Danielle? I don't know. We always, we can, keeps saying, where is the bar in the other day?

I know. The other day I said, there is no bar. The bar has become the fucking plunger. There isn't one. So speaking of plungers. Bottons. Oh. Oh.

Ron DeSantis finds himself in, I guess. Wait, I didn't mean it that way. Uh-huh. Uh-huh, Mr. Freud. I meant like he's an ass. Correct. Anyway. Anyway.

But Ron DeSantis finds himself in, hot water, I guess, with some Republicans who are pushing back and it's not against him trying to ban AP Black History. They're not pushing back against his abortion ban. They're not pushing back his bans on books or any of the other hot shit that he's doing in Florida. But Ron DeSantis found himself speaking out of the side of his mouth about Ukraine and saying that essentially we don't need to be backing Ukraine as the United States. That this is just a land dispute. that is happening. The war that Russia started against the Ukrainian people is just about land. And it isn't any of our business. So Republicans have now come out and said, they don't know what the hell

he's talking about. And that this has never been about a land dispute. And that for your border country to be able to wake up one day and say, you know what, I kind of want more of your land. And be able to make that decision and push their way in is kind of a big. deal. It's kind of a big deal to try and defend global democracy. But Ron DeSantis doesn't think so, and his talking point was for an audience of one, Putin, which was just like, hang on, buddy, because 2024 is coming and you won't have to worry about us defending the Ukraine anymore with our billions of dollars if I'm in the White House. Andy, there was a time, you know, when we were collectively on the same page in America about who our allies,

and who our enemies were. But these Republicans, boy, I don't understand. Yeah, DeSantis has been trying for a while now to sort of thread the needle between the pro-helping Ukraine Republicans and the anti-helping Ukraine Republicans or pro-Russian Republicans, as I like to call them. And I don't know if maybe he's now figured out that doesn't work anymore or if he fucked up and said something he didn't mean to.

But regardless, he is now. firmly, I mean, that statement, calling it a territorial dispute is that's just, that's a red flag. That's a dead giveaway because that's the Russian talking point. That's the straight up Russian, you know, that was Russia's argument for invading. And look, that's been the argument for a lot of countries who invade other countries throughout history is that land really belongs to us. So he's now just full on on that side. And I don't know how he backs away from that. and it'll be interesting to see if this hurts him. Because the Republican Party, I think, is pretty split.

I think there are polls that show that, you know, up to 40% of Republican voters sort of agree with what dissentist said. Look, 6040 is not an even split, but it ain't nothing. And I don't know, again, I'm trying to figure out, because I don't, I am not taking him at his word that that's what he believes because he's just a generally full of shit person. So I have to look for the motive behind him saying it. Yeah.

You know, with some people, you could say, oh, well, that's what they believe. I know, Desantis does not get that benefit of the doubt ever. And I do feel like it wasn't that long ago. I think it was two, three years ago where DeSantis did not hold this opinion. And even more recently than that, his position appeared to be more nuanced than what he said. So his people must see an advantage in him moving to this side. Hopefully they're wrong. But it'll be interesting to see how this plays out because, again, it is, oh, here it is,

a pew poll, 40% of Republicans think the U.S. is giving too much aid to Ukraine. 41% believe America is giving Ukraine the right amount of aid or not enough. And so that's, you know, that's a fairly even split. I don't know if he's decided that the 40% who think we're given too much is that those are the people he's going to try to court or those are his voters. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, assuming he does become an official presidential candidate. It'll play out in his bank account. that's how it'll play out. Yeah, it always does.

Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal. Medi Hassan, who is the host of the Medi Hassan show on MSNBC and on Peacock, an author of the new book, Win Every Argument, the Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking. Medi, one, I adore you. I think that you are one of my favorite hosts on MSNBC, and I see. say this and I tell my other favorites, Amen, Mohedin, the same thing. Thank you very much. Absolutely.

The reason being is that you cut through bullshit in a way that I think journalism, particularly at this time in this climate, in this political climate, in this cultural climate, needs to do. And so I want to start off with asking you about your book. And you have said in several interviews that I have seen that the point is to hold power to account. And that's what I think that the point of journalism is, and I wanted to give you an opportunity to speak more to that, this idea of holding power to account. Yeah, I think that is fundamentally what we're supposed to be about, whether that always comes across is another matter.

But yes, my approach to what I do on my show, whether it's on cable or on streaming, my approach to writing this book was to talk about the need to hold people in influential and powerful positions to account, to ask them tough questions, to make them answer your questions, to have the rhetorical toolkit that enables us to be able to say to people who are trying to evade a question or trying to lie or gaslight or get themselves out of a hole that they put themselves in, to be able to basically pin them down. And I have always done that in my own journalistic career. I've done that when I was at Al Jazeera English with governments around the world. I've done it since joining MSNBC, even with a Democratic Biden administration.

People think, oh, MSNBC, you're the liberal equivalent of Fox. Well, no, Fox is a propaganda channel on behalf of the Republican Party. At MSNBC, we still have news standards, editorial standards, and I still hold White House officials, Democratic members of Congress, senators to account when they come on my show. Because otherwise, I might as well go off and be an accountant. Not that there's anything wrong with being an accountant. That is the purpose of journalism.

I often correct people when they think that I am a journalist because I'm not. I'm an opinionator. I'm someone that analyzes the world through the lens of my perspective and lived experience. This is not something that I went to school for, but it doesn't mean that, you know, the opinions aren't valid. The problem that we have, though, with those that refer to themselves as journalists that say that they are in this field is that there seems to be a revolving door where you say the goal should be to hold power to account. But the goal, it seems, in journalism today, is to get these powerful people to want to come back or to get them to want to like you. The liking part is a very American thing. I've lived here nearly a decade. I'd be visiting this country for over 20 years. And, you know,

the liking part is just a very cultural thing. I think there's a people often ask me like, how come you do these tough interviews and people, others don't? I think it's because my British background and upbringing allows me to get in people's face, which is ruder, I think, from the UK, whereas Americans want to be liked a lot more. You know, when you go in a British store, if you go shopping in England, nobody says, do you have a nice day? That's just a very American thing. It's a very nice American thing. So I think the niceness part is a cultural thing. You're right to like that. I think the access part, the idea of I want to have access to this politician or this administration or this leadership, I want them to come back on my show. That is a real problem.

It's a real tension. And I don't pretend like it's not an actual issue. It is an issue. Do people take it too far? Yes. It's a real issue, though. Like, even I have to think about, like, I want people to come on my show. I don't want it to be a place where no one will come on the show. But on the other hand, I'm not willing to sacrifice my journalistic integrity and give somebody a soft right just because I'm worried they may get offended or upset with me or may not come back. Like when I interviewed John Bolton on my show a couple of years ago in a famous clip that went viral that I talked about in my book, in every argument, I didn't really care if he wasn't going to come back. I assumed he's not going to come back because I asked him questions. He'd never been asked

before. Questions that really annoyed and upset him. But that's a reality. Now, look, if I was doing another kind of show where I need kind of John Bolton to come back regularly, you know, maybe the person presenting that show might pull a punch. But I just think we have to take a step back and think big picture right now. Right now, there are multiple politicians, an entire political party and movement that is bent on gas-liding us, that is turned lying into an art form, lying with every breath. I think when you're confronted with that, you cannot give a damn about whether they're going to come back on it. You just have to do what's right in the moment. I want to bring up a recent viral clip that we saw this past week with self-proclaimed conservative

columnist Bethany Mando. She wrote the book, Stolen Youth, blah, blah, blah, I don't need to give her a plug. When asked point blank, as she's throwing around the word wokeness, as Ron DeSantis has become famous for in Florida. She and other Republicans now, whether their politicians or not, have picked up on stealing black vernacular, because this is where it came from, from black people, and using it as a negative, using it as their dog whistle for white supremacy. So when asked by a black reporter, can you define wokeness? Like, I just want to make sure that we're talking about the same thing.

It wasn't a you gotcha moment, right? It wasn't like, what periodicals do you read? It was simply asking you to define this word that you're using over and over again so that the audience understands and she couldn't do it. I mean, if a person were a deer in headlights, that would have been Bethany Mandel. And of course, other conservatives have come out and said, oh, TV is hard, evidently. TV is hard. But if you're a journalist, if you're a talking head, it's part of your fucking job.

So here's the thing. This was the first time, Medi, that a, journalists had asked a conservative to define what it is. We have been hearing about the war on wokeness for over a fucking year. And I, like you, have been screaming from my social media platform, from my TV show. Why aren't conservatives of Republicans being asked to define it? Every time Ron DeSanders says, Florida is where woke goes to die, the war on woke, just tell me what you mean by that.

Interestingly, Daniel, in December, a federal judge in Florida asked one of DeSantis's lawyers to define woke. And the lawyer for DeSandis, he didn't do what Bethany Mandel did and, you know, freeze, which was embarrassing and revealing enough. But he said something else even more revealing. He actually did define it.

And he said, and I quote, I have the quote here, the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them. Wow. That's actually a really good definition. I actually agree with that definition. I would argue the majority of Americans would support that definition.

In fact, a recent poll by USA Today found that a majority of Americans, Americans, despite the DeSantis war on woke, have a positive view of woke. 56% of American think it means to be informed about, educated by, aware of social injustices. Only 39% said they thought it was about overly politically correct or policing of other people's words. So what's interesting is they can't define it. When they do define it, the definition actually is something most Americans agree with, and their war on the word hasn't had the impact that a lot of scared liberals who run away from it thought it might have.

One thing I would say is, let's just be very blunt here. Woke for Republicans and conservatives means black. That's what it means. This is not new. This is Lee Atwater, 1981, saying, we can't say the N word, so we said states rights. We couldn't say states' rights, but we said forced busing. We couldn't say forced busing, so we said cut taxes and cut spending. It was always abstract.

It was always coded. Those are Lee Atwater's words. Today, woke plays that same role. And don't take my word for it. when a Newsmax host in December says, my six-year-old white daughter couldn't find an American doll because the whole place was wokeified. What is he saying there?

He's saying his white daughter can't find a doll that looks white. It was wokeified, i.e. it was black or brown. When Disney's live-action Little Mermaid is a black actress, and everyone says Disney has a woke agenda, they mean it has a black agenda. That is what's going on in. Let's stop beating around the bush. One thing that killed me during the Trump era, era. And I talk about this in the book, like the importance of language. We couldn't say,

the media industry couldn't say the word racist. It was racially coded, racially tinged, racially tainted, racially divisive. Hold on. Just say racist. It's a shorter word, fewer letters. I would just add that woke doesn't mean black. For them, it means the N word, right? Yes. That's what it means. It is, I don't want this N-word type of stuff. When Ronda Santos is telling us that we had a train derail and cause an environmental disaster catastrophe in Ohio, he says it's because, oh, well, the company is too woke because they have diversity and inclusion. What about the bank?

What about Silicon Valley Bank? Oh, the Silicon Valley Bank, diversity and inclusion. DeSantis and Foxe and Tucker, they say, oh, it's woke because they've got black board members and LGBTQ board members. Okay. Just kidding. They have one black board member. They have one blackboard member and one gay.

One too many, Danielle. One too many. You know, what kills me here and what was evidence by Bethany Mendel's Deer and Headlights moment is the fear that you brought up, the fear that journalists have in just asking the question. Right. And in the interviews that you talked about with your book, Win Every Argument, it is about coming with receipts, doing your homework. if you have time asking the follow-up question.

And what I find, I want to ask you, why don't journalists ask these bullshit conservative white supremacist follow-up questions? Where's the harm here? And why do you think that they still have this fear? I think there's multiple reasons. Number one, we have a two-party system. So if one of the two parties gets taken over by QAnon weirdos and conspiracy theorists and Trump cultists and white supremacists and bigots and nutcases,

it becomes very hard to acknowledge that as a political journalist because what you're basically then saying is you can't say both sides, you can't play view from nowhere, you can't position yourself in the center, in the midpoint between the two extreme parties, because one of them is not comparable to the other. And that's very hard. I don't think reporters are necessarily being dishonest or disingenuous.

I think they're actually struggling with their entire world of having been tossed upside down by the rise of Trump and Marjorie Taylor Green and others. So I think that's one thing. If you've been trained to be a journalist one way your entire life based on a two-party system in which you treat both sides equally, it's very hard to shift. I think another reason is what we talked about earlier. People are generally nice, you know, to ask a follow-up question, to see as rude. To badger, to ask the question several times, that's seen as a little bit rude, crossing a line.

And then there's, of course, the time challenge. You just mentioned a moment ago. You know, when you're on cable news, the realities you do have time challenges. I don't get to do as long interviews as I used to do when I was at Al Jazeera English or the interstate. I have to recognize that I'm on cable. There are ad breaks. There is time constraints. There are other guests.

You know, there is someone in your ear saying, you know, two minutes left, 30 seconds to go. And therefore, people want to jump around. What I say is the solution to that. What I say in the chapter on Gish Galloping, which is this strategy by conservatives by Trump and co to kind of throw as much crap and nonsense and lies and BS at you in a shortest, various of times so that you're unable to rebut it all. What I say is one thing you do is less is more, right? If I'm doing an interview, I don't want to ask 17 questions and do, you know, there's often a desire on the part of an interview to say, I've got the, I don't know, Senate majority,

or the Secretary of State on my show. I'm going to ask about every topic that's in the news to see what newsland I can get. Great. But that gives them a get-out. Do fewer topics. Pick two or three things you want to hit and ask your questions on that. Don't budge when they don't answer. Repeat the question. Follow it up. Say, hey, you didn't answer my question. I'm not moving on to the next topic because they guessed, the politician, your opponent, they want you to move on. And I say in the book, don't budge. You know, I love that because, you know, that's Chapter 11 in your book, which basically could be a book within and of itself, right? Because this is the tactic that Trump has perfected. The Gish Gallop. The Gish Gallop. This is.

the tactic that Trump has perfected that the rest of the Republican Party has now copycatted, which is that every time they're in front of a microphone, they throw so much bullshit at the wall. They're leaving our head spinning. You offer a three-step process for folks to get past the Gish Gallupor. And I want you to be able to offer that. That is for the interviewer. But I also, Medi, what do we do as the audience, right?

As the people who are being consistently berated and gaslit with the Gish Gallupor, what do we do? So it's a great question. And what I say in the book is there's no silver bullet. There's no easy way of stopping the Gish Gala. That's why it's such an effective, if cynical tactic that Trump has wittingly or unwittingly adopted. But what I say is there's three things you can do. And I give the example of my interview with a Trump advisor called Steve Rogers, sadly not Captain America back in 2018, in which he was basically trying to defend Trump, who had made a claim, if you remember at the time, Danielle, where Trump had

said, U.S. Steel says there's six steel mills. And I said to him, that's not true. There are, US Steel mill has not said there are six new steelmen. There aren't. And they didn't announce six new steel mills. So why did Trump lie? He said, no, no, I'm not going to say Trump lied. He was talking about manufacturing. He was talking about anything. I said, no, but specifically, on this. So what I did was first, I picked my battle. Number one, pick your battle. You're never going to be able to stop all of Trump's lies, all of a mini-Trump's long list of BS. Pick your battle and focus on that one to undermine the rest. So I did that.

I just kept asking about the steel mills. Number two, I didn't move on. He wanted to move on to the next question. I said, nope, you still haven't answered me on the steel mills. Where are the steel mills? Why did he say stick steel mills? That's a lie, isn't it? Don't budge.

That's step number two. At one point, Roger said to me, just move on because he wasn't used to an interviewer, not moving on. That's his get out. I didn't give him the get out. And number three, to come back to your audience point, call it out. Yeah. If you are up against someone who is B.

who is gas sliding, who is gish galloping. Remind the audience, that's what's going on, that this is a strategy. They are trying to disorient. They're trying to deflect. They're trying to distract. They're trying to confuse and bewilder and bamboozle. Make that clear to your audience. The Rand Corporation talking about Vladimir Putin's gish galloping says, this is a fire hose of falsehood that they are producing. So your job is to put raincoats on your audience, to protect them from that falsehood and remind them that that is what's going on. I say in the book, Steve Bannon, famously said, it's don't take it from me. Bannon said to Michael Lewis in an interview, our opponents are not the Democratic Party. They are the media. And the way you deal with the media

is to flood the zone with shit. That was his life. And that is what Trump does. That is what Carrie Lake does. That is what Marjorie Taylor Green does. That is what Lauren Bobat does. That is what Tucker Carlson does. It's what they all do. So yes, the audience has to be protected by those of us in the media who know what's going on. And the audience also, you know, I say there's a lot of confirmation bias. I talk about that in the book as well. We've kind of trapped ourselves in information silos. We have to be more questioning. When someone is throwing BS at us, we have to be able to say, citizens, what's your source for that? What is your evidence for that? What is the basis for that? We live in an era of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter and WhatsApp and a lot of crap is traded around.

A lot of nonsense is passed around, not just amongst conservatives, amongst liberals too. And we just need to be way more questioning. And one of the reasons I wrote this book was not just to say to people, Here's how you become a better debater. Here's how you become a better public speaker. It's also, I say in the book, here's how you become a critical thinker. Here's how you open up your mind. Here's how you challenge the evidence.

Here's how you think through the argument. Here's how you put yourself in your opponent's shoes and steal man an argument. Because we don't do that enough. We're lazy. We cut corners. You know, and with just a few minutes that I have left with you, I do want to stay on the critical thinking piece

because in my humble opinion, Medi, what is happening right now, using Florida and Ron DeSantis' war on curriculum, on AP Black History, on taking control over Disney, on taking control over the curriculum on college campuses. All of these things are made to make people dumber, are made to actually not just... Less question, less critical. Right? To make people less critical to have no thought.

To actually make folks be the cog folks. Like, I can do what the factory is telling me to do. is my part. It's the Orban playbook, right? It's Hungary. It's authoritarianism. It's Orwellian in many ways. And yet, the line I tend to use most these days on social media is every accusation is a confession. What they are accusing everyone else of doing is what they are busy doing. So they're obsessed with saying, oh, there's a deep state that's trying to control us and brainwash us. They're trying to put chips inside of us. Liberals, one can to control our minds and brainwash our children. It's exactly what they're doing in a place like Florida. That's exactly what. It's

They don't have a problem with liberals allegedly doing that. It's that they want to do it. It's like cancel culture. They don't object to cancel culture. They just want to be the ones who are doing the canceling. And Florida is a classic example of both. It's the home of cancel culture where they're kind of firing people that anyone who speaks up against dissandos, the prosecutor who doesn't do what Desanis once gets removed illegally.

And therefore, the way to really understand what's going on is to say, hey, they actually want to do what they're obsessed with complaining about. They want that power of authoritarianism, that power of tyranny. They want to be able to, as you say, control the curriculum, control the media, control the libraries, control voting so that the populace is not speaking. This is all about authoritarianism. One of the reasons I wrote a book is because we live in an age where authoritarianism is on the rise.

And part of that is controlling the way we speak, how we think, how we argue, how we debate, how we question. These people have degraded the public square. And I wrote in every argument to say, hey, it's not enough. just to have good facts and figures in your possession. It's not enough to be right. How are you going to convince other people? How are you going to persuade the undecided middle? How are you going to rhetorically push back against the gasliders and the BS merchants and the Gish Gallupers? Let me try and show you how. And that's why I wrote the book because I genuinely believe our

public spaces, our public square, our democracy, our free press is under attack. That is not hyperbole, that is not exaggeration. That is what is going on in front of our eyes. Authoritarianism. It thrives in an era of confusion, in an era of gas-sliding, in an era where people are being constantly, constantly distracted and deflected. Medi Hassan, let me tell you something. The book, When Every Argument is a must read for everyone. Thank you so much. Or a must listen to if you get it on audio. And your show, the Medi Hassan's show, is a must watch. I just want to thank you not only for joining the new abnormal, but for everything that you do on a daily basis. I think that it is needed, I think that it is a model.

And I hope, you know, if all goes to shit that we get to be in the same prison together, because that would be nice. That's all we can say, sadly, at the moment. Let's bring on January 2025. Daniel, thanks so much for having me on the show. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Fever Dreams is a Daily Beast podcast, taking you inside the rights push to retake power, from the Maga Acolytes to the straight-up grifters. They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast. combe slash fever dreams to check it out.

Friends, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal friend of mine and one of the most salient, brilliant minds around the economy, former co-chair of the Systemic Risk Task Force with Americans for Financial Reform that helped win Dodd-Frank, you know, that thing that was supposed to protect us from, financial collapse and from greed and capitalism in the way that we are witnessing it now. Heather McGee, who is also the author of The Sum of Us. Heather, welcome to the new abnormal. Thank you, Danielle. Let's start out with something that is driving me crazy, which is that the fall, you know,

when I use fall with quotations of Silicon Valley Bank, signature bank, and now as we're talking about this, probably credit suites, a Swedish bank. All of this is not coming out of nowhere, Heather. Like, these things were predicted and the part of Dodd-Frank was to protect our economy, to protect in a way ourselves from greed and deregulation. Tell us how we got here again. So in the wake of the financial crash of 2008, which was driven by a toxic mix, actually, of racism and greed. And for more about that, see the financial crisis chapter in my book The Sum of Us. We had a once-in-a-generation opportunity to regulate the big banks and Wall Street.

And when I was the president of Demos, a think tank, we volunteered to be part of this big coalition of grassroots organizations and labor unions called Americans of Financial Reform to work with some pro-reform-minded members of Congress and President Obama to write the rule. for Wall Street banks so that this would never happen again. And we did it. It was a David and Goliath moment. They were on their knees, hat and hand, and we were able to fundamentally bring a lot more safety and fairness to the financial industry. And one of the key parts of that was actually the thing that I was most focused on, which was this question of systemic risk. When does a risky decision by a banker become a risk to the system? And we realized that because all the big Wall Street trading firms had either gone under,

or been, you know, merged in a fire sale in the wake of the crash of fall 2008, that we needed to put a lot more rules and safeguards around how much money they needed to keep in the bank, literally for themselves, capital requirements, liquidity requirements, all of this. If they were going to be so big that it wasn't just going to be their problem, it was going to be our problem if they were too risky. Now, that worked. then the Trump administration came along, 2018, these banks that were the biggest, most important banks, the ones that were on the smaller end of them, but still over $50 billion in assets. So this is not like, you know, your local community credit union, came crying and whining to Congress saying, oh, these regulations and safeguards are so onerous. We're not systemically risky. We're not that big of a deal. You're never going to. have to bail us out. Please don't make us save for a rainy day. Please don't subject us to stress tests

to see if X happened, then would Y happen? And you know who was leading the charge? These kinds of banks like signature bank, like Silicon Valley Bank, said, we are never going to fail. You won't have to have any problems with us. Please get us out of this onerous regulation. And you know what? Republicans and a handful of Democrats said, yeah, that's a great idea. not five years later, those same mid-sized banks took risks. Silicon Valley, particularly, for some reason, had the vast majority of its own securities in one type of long-term bond, which, I mean, literally, it was $117 billion out of the company's $211 billion in assets, were in one type of thing. Like, that just makes zero sense. It's a heck of a lot of risk. And then when that

became clear they didn't have enough capital, enough liquidity to safeguard themselves against it. And there was a bank run. And it really would have probably been prevented had they not carved themselves out of the kinds of safeguards that protect bigger banks from this kind of foolishness, is what we're calling it. Foolishness. Let me ask this, because here's the thing. I'm not, you know, economics person, but I'm also not. a dummy. And what seems to be the issue here is that this does not seem to just be a Republicans don't want regulation only problem. Because you said that a handful of Democrats also move to deregulate these small banks because of these pesky regulations that they would need to follow

in order to make sure that those that are depositors into their bank are safe as well as, you know, the entire industry. Then it comes up that one person started this bankroom, Peter Thiel. He tweets and says, pull your money. Like, I'm taking my money out. So y'all take your money out. And Peter Thiel, as folks know, multi, multi, multi billionaire, one person has enough power, Heather, to be able to create this level of fucking disruption. And I want to say to myself, how do we get into this place where one billionaire can send shockwaves through an entire industry? Listen, how do we get into this place where one billionaire can be a conspiracy theory captured disruptive force who can take down and distort what has been one of the most important platforms for grassroots organizing and democracy around the world? They just have

too much money and too much power. And they don't have a sense of accountability. I mean, yes, I ended up becoming an expert in financial regulation, but it only took me watching It's a Wonderful Life to know what a bank run is, right? And to know that you shouldn't be, and you have all not just Peter Thiel, but a lot of other ones too, these tech billionaires who feel so disconnected from the real world that they think that they can encourage a bank run. And then there was another guy who was like, oh, I'll encourage the bank run and I'm going to try to buy the stock short because I think that, right, right, that I can play both sides

and have a perpetual upside. They're really disconnected from reality. You know, a lot of them, like Peter Thiel is a huge right-winger and a quote-unquote economic libertarian who's against a lot of the kinds of social welfare programs that could make our economy really thrive. And yet, here they are hat in hand making sure that they get made whole when their excess capital is over the FDI insurance limit of $250,000. I mean, what drives me crazy here is always the ability for us to figure out so quickly how to make multimillionaires and billionaires whole. And yet, when it comes to student loan debt relief, we see multiple court cases that pop up in order to push back against President Biden and his Secretary of Education's ability to provide relief to

middle America and working class America. We're not going to see court cases pop up to push back against what's happening with SVB, what's happening with signature bank and credits. So how do you explain what doesn't feel like an overcomplicated issue to regular people? In the court hearing from the Republican-led lawsuit to try to take $10,000 and $20,000 out of the court. of the pockets of hardworking people all over this country who've done everything right and done everything we told them to do and go to college. One of the conservative Supreme Court justice is tried to whine unfairness, right? Try to say that it's not fair for student borrowers to get debt relief because what about a small business owner who had a lawn care company who can't

get that kind of debt relief. Now, first of all, he's making this zero-sum argument, which is totally ridiculous because, one, it doesn't matter to the small business owner that his neighbor is getting some kind of debt relief. First of all, there is debt relief for a small business owner. It's called being able to actually discharge those loans and bankruptcy if his business goes belly up. Student loan borrowers can't do that, right? Student loans are carved out of bankruptcy protections. Also, there are PPP loans for business owners that were, I mean, immediately, completely not a loan, but a grant. And so free money was shoveled out the door if you happen to have a corporation and be a business owner. So first of all, it's not true, right? That it's like,

oh, student loan borrowers are getting something that small business owners don't. Second of all, though, the deeper thing here is that the right-wing narrative is one that says that we are not connected at all. And this is why you're not going to see progressives suing about the bailouts. I can't believe the Supreme Court justice. What does a small business owner who takes care of lawns want most more people to buy houses and have some extra money, right, to be able to hire somebody to mow the damn laws? And what is the number one reason why young adults are not buying houses? Because they have too much student loan debt, right? I'm sorry. Literally, $20,000 gets wiped out of your student loan debt payments.

What are you going to do? You know what I'm saying? Probably buy a home. It's just such a silly myopic view. It's this us versus them, okay, let's resent progress for some group because it's going to come at the expense of the other group. That's not the way the economy works. So listen, was I pissed that Silicon Valley Bank made basically a bad bet, a huge, outsized bad bet in a certain type of long-term bond?

and therefore, you know, open themselves up to a bank run? Absolutely. Was I pissed that the people and the businesses and the startups that depended on Silicon Valley Bank didn't get their savings wiped out overnight? Actually, I wasn't. 62% of the community solar operations in the country banked with Silicon Valley, right? That's something we desperately need in society. I don't mind. I wish that those capitalists had said, yes, I want to be able to depend on the government when things go wrong. And in exchange for that, I'm going to make it harder for things to go wrong by subjecting myself to the kinds of safeguards and rules that smart people put in place the last time this happened. Right. So it's a give and a take.

They should be regulated and therefore it will be much less likely that this happens in the first place. And the problem with the right wing and these arch-capitalists is they think, I don't want the regulations, but I also don't want to be left on my own. Right. And that socialism only works and comes into effect when the government is bailing them out. But if you seek to supply people back their tax dollars that they're putting in in order to lift them up, then that's where things become problematic. I think that it's really important here to also articulate the fact that this is the right-wing ideology is a zero-sum. that if my neighbor down the street, who happens to be black or brown or queer, happens to have, then that means that as a white cis hetero-cristo-fascist person, they've taken something away from me. That's the core story, Daniel. You see it everywhere.

Everywhere. And this is in your book, some of us, you write about the fact that racism is something that doesn't just harm those that are directly oppressed by the policies and positions that are put in place to, literally consistently have a boot on their neck, that it is also the person wearing the boot. Can you explain that and how this kind of fits into our understanding of capitalism and where we are with this sense of greed and entanglement of white supremacy? Listen, racism is a justification for greed. Always has been. Always will be. I'm talking about racism in our politics and our policymaking. I'm talking about slavery. I'm talking about discrimination. Follow the money. Mass incarceration, all of this, right? Follow the money. It is a justification by the wealthy, self-interested for greed. When you dehumanize someone, you can exploit

that, full stop. So if you think about that and you think about who all people and planet suffers from concentrated wealth and greed, that net expands a lot more than just people of color. And so I started to think, as a person who studies all these things that are going wrong in our economy, I began to see the hidden fingerprints of racism in our politics and our policymaking. Why is it that we have a $2 trillion student loan burden and sky high tuition when this country invented the idea of free and practically free college back when 90 plus percent of the population was white? And when we had more and more students of color, we had what I call. called drained pool politics, which is basically when the public swimming pools were segregated. They were lavishly funded, grand resort-style public swimming pools in the first half of the century.

And then once they were integrated, towns and cities across this country drained their pools rather than integrate them. And I use drain pool politics as a metaphor for what happens when anti-government, anti-collective action ideology gets sort of drawn out on a sort of common sense that tells white people, you don't want to swim in the same pool as those other people. You don't want to be in a union with those other people. You don't want to depend on the government like those other people. If they're getting something, you need to be afraid that it's going to come at your expense. And so you'd rather have nobody have anything than have your neighbor be better off

because there's something fundamentally at odds and different about you. And that has been the core right-wing story. and again, follow the money. It's always a justification for an economic agenda. Up and down, if you look at all of these examples in The Sum of Us, they all ultimately are economic stories driven by racism with a cost for basically everybody except for the very narrow, self-interested, wealthy elite. You know, in your book and also in my other friend's book, Jonathan Metzell's Dying of Whiteness,

basically we look at this and we say, but white people are willing to give up prosperity? They're willing to give up the pool. They're willing to give up all of these things so long as they can perpetuate scarcity and discrimination across this country. And so, Heather, with the couple of minutes that we have left, if I'm willing to cut off my nose to spite my face, if I'm willing to live in a less abundant reality because I want to make sure and ensure that other people don't have, how do you fight back against that? Well, first of all, I think that scarcity creates a scarcity mindset. So that has been one of the things that made it so hard over the past 50 years of the inequality era for us to have these cross-racial coalitions and have white people realize their common self-interest with other struggling people has been that it felt like we were all living in the bottom of a drained pool, right? Manufacturing jobs were being shipped overseas. It was getting harder and harder to make ends meet. And you're not going to feel abundant, right? There's a, a lot of social science that says that part of the conditions for the civil rights movement were that they were, you know, a job in every pot, right? A well-unionized job. And, you know,

things where everybody was, you know, it was a boom time economy that made it feel like we could do everything and not let's be the last person off a sinking ship, right? So I do think that the tremendous, you know, reinvestment in American manufacturing, right? We've got more manufacturing jobs that we have since the 1970s helps. It helps men see that there's a future. of work for them, right? Like, let's just call it what it is, right? I do think that the economic piece, the canceling the student debt, the pushing on child care, the raising of wages, all of that is really, really important. But I also think that fundamentally, in my journey to write the sum of us, the thing I saw was that it was one-on-one grassroots organizing, the kind that

happens in labor unions, particularly today's race-conscious, multiracial labor unions. That is what shifts consciousness, because everything that we believe comes from a story we've been told. And if you're only hearing stories from Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump, and you're not hearing stories of the other low-paid worker who's saying, you know what, actually we have more in common than what we have that puts us apart, and only together are we going to have the power to strike and raise wages, then people are going to believe what they've been told. And so we need more organizing, more people joining together across lines of race to win the kinds of power for working people

that can only happen together. It can never happen when we're divided. Heather McGee, my dear friend, thank you so much for your continued work, logic, sanity, and clarity that you offer up on a regular basis. Folks, the book is The Sum of Us, what racism costs everyone,

and how we can prosper together. Heather McGee, come back and join us again. Thank you so much, Danielle. And it's now available for middle and high school students, a young reader's version. Get it for your educator, your student, your librarian in your life. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Who is your fuck-that-guy to end this spectacular week in America?

My fuck-that-guy is a Republican congressman. That's not really a surprise. It often is. But it's someone I don't think we've featured on this show before. It's a guy out of Tennessee named Andy Ogles, which has never been a Nick name for me, and I would like to just deny that right up front. I am very respectful. He had a son who was stillborn, and he started to go fund me to pay for a burial garden that would, quote, be a place for Lincoln's new play friends as they wait in heaven for their families. He raised $24,000

from this. It now seems like the garden was never built. A bunch of the people who gave him the money basically said that they felt kind of bad about this because, you know, he had just lost a child, but they have no idea where this money went. And a News Channel 5 in Nashville got wind of this story and they approached him and asked him what happened to the money and he refused to answer. He has since put out a statement saying that they did use the money to help, quote, families covering the cost of funeral expenses and other needs for their children. He offered no proof of this. What we do know is that the original GoFundMe was supposed to be for this burial garden. There is no such burial garden. And he cannot provide proof of where the $24,000 went. GoFundMe

has confirmed that he received the $24,000. So we know that. If he used the money to help other people pay for funeral expenses for children, fine. That's great. I'm not sure I buy it. And if he didn't, And if he raised 24 grand from people who wanted to be nice and generous to a person who had just been struck by tragedy, and then he used that money for other purposes, that's disgusting. And that is a, I mean, to use your dead child as a front to raise money, like, it doesn't get any worse than that. And it does appear that that's what's happened. Again, he's offered no proof that he had given this money to other families. and as per the GoFundMe,

this was supposed to be for this burial garden, and this burial garden does not exist, but he got the $24,000. So that is about as low as it gets. So why fuck that guy for today? Taking a break from the Ron DeSantis's and the George Santos's and the Marjorie Taylor Greens of the world

and going to Andy Ogles of Tennessee. Fuck that guy. Oh my God. Like the level of disgust that I have right now that grifting has no fucking limit for these people to use your dead child as a way to get 24 grand. And if you actually used it to help other families grieving to cover the costs of burying a child, then you would have receipts of that. You would be able to point to that.

It still would go against what it is that you put down on your fucking go fund me to get people to open up their pockets. But my God, they really have no fucking bounds. Disgusting. Yeah, you also would think that if that's what he did, that's what he would have told News Channel 5 when they originally asked instead of refusing to answer. Particularly as a politician, you know, that's not the kind of thing you keep secret. That's the kind of thing you tell everybody you did because it makes you look good.

So the fact that it took him a day to come up with this, just the whole thing just seems really icky and gross. And so yeah, fuck that guy. Danielle, who's your fuck that guy? Staying on theme of Republicans and apparently children, a state senator Steve Dreskowski from Minnesota has said this. He's getting ready to vote against a bill that would provide free and reduced school lunch to the kids in Minnesota. And his response to this was,

I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry. Well, according to actual facts and statistics, roughly one in six years, children in Minnesota are food insecure. And what does food insecure mean? Because he thinks it means a kind bar in between his snacks. Because he also used the fact that, you know, we don't really know what people mean by hungry because I had a granola bar for breakfast. He used as an example.

And maybe now I'm hungry. Oh my gosh. No, sir. You're just a dick. But food insecurity, because he doesn't understand what that means, means that a child does not know when or where their next meal will be available. And that is one in six children in this state. And so this is the same fucking party that uses children as political pawns to defend against the evils of drag queens who want to entertain and expand imagination, who want to ban books,

who want to do all of these things. And then you turn around, you know, and then to protect the child, they want to ban abortion. But then when children are actually fucking high, hungry, this motherfucker is saying, let them eat cake, but not really, right? Right. But actually, no. Don't let them eat cake. Don't let them eat cake. Don't let them eat. And who cares if they can't really learn in the first place? And because he's never seen a hungry person, so then they must not exist. You know, I've never seen an asshole actually speak, but I know based on him that they fucking exist. Well, it's going to say you have now. So for that reason, Steve Driskowski is my fuck that guy and the entire Republican Party. But my God, you can't find it in your heart to feed hungry children. Like draconian, barbarian, disgusting. Yeah.

You know, and then he had Ben Shapiro was out there. And I don't know if this was based off of this story, but he was out there saying, you know, if your child is starving one meal a day isn't going to make a difference or a free lunch isn't going to make a difference. And it's like, what? The idea that if someone has food insecurity and whatever their living situation is, they're not getting three square meals a day or even maybe two square meals a day, the fact that at least getting one from the school makes no difference. I mean, if you want like the perfect example of privilege, it's Ben Shapiro's sitting there going,

oh, missing a meal is no big deal. Yeah. Because that's what he thinks this is, I guess. Like if they didn't get this free lunch, that they would just be missing a meal. Like, that's not how this works. You absolute, I don't even want to use the words that I want to use. So fuck all these guys. There are no words, Andy.

I know. Fuck all of them. Because, you know, their new mantra should just be, Republican Party. Fuck them kids. So long as they start breathing oxygen, we could give a fuck. They want kids to be hungry and to not see fine entertainment. Or read.

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