The Daily Beast Podcast - What if This Is Just the Tip of Trumpworld’s Iceberg of Crazy?

Episode Date: June 8, 2021

It was unhinged, even by Trumpworld standards. In the dying days of the Donald’s administration, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows asked the Justice Department to investigate a bizarre conspiracy theory, that an Italian defense contractor somehow swung the election to Joe Biden. Emails between Meadows and the DOJ were uncovered over the weekend. And there’s likely to be more to come. This is only “tip of the iceberg of all the crazy stuff that went on this winter,” George Conway tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “These guys were doing some wild, wild stuff. And it wasn't just the campaign and the kooky campaign hangers-on, and the lawyers who were working on the campaign, like Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell. This stuff was going on in the White House.” Plus! Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel talks about the militia movement, which has become so alarmingly potent in her state. And Dallas high school valedictorian Paxton Smith describes the reaction to her instantly-viral speech against Texas’ new anti-abortion law. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Today we have a great show with Attorney General, Michigan, Dana Nessel, who's going to talk to us about redistricting, militia movements, and radicalized GOP secretaries of state who are threatening democracy. Then we'll talk to Paxton Smith, whose valedictorian speech on Texas's heartbeat bill went viral, and she's going to tell us her story. But first, we have Washington Post-contributing columnist George Conway. Welcome back, George Conway, to the new abnormal. I see this is episode 123. Yes, and this is your 123 appearance on the pod. I don't know about that, maybe 100. Oh, we kill it.

But this weekend, you and I talked on the phone, and we were talking about this speech by the former guy that was very hyped up. And my pillow guy was involved, right? I don't know. Was he? My pillow guy? I saw him on the advertisement, but then it said it was in a North Carolina GOP event. No, no, my pillow guy has something going on in Wisconsin. Oh, yes.

Later on. And former guy is going to be be beamed in. Oh, yeah. He's from electronic means. Lucky them. So this weekend, it was his first speech since CPAC. He came. His pants were very wrinkled.

and maybe on incorrectly. No, no, they were on correctly. There's a Snopes for this. Come on. There's a Snopes for this. I mean, what happened with the pants was somebody was, look, I don't think there was an attempt to create some kind of a fake image. I think what happened was somebody was watching it on their computer,

and the video was of low quality. And if you zoom in on the low quality video, you cannot see it. Right. You can't really see his fly. And in fact, in some images from the same video, I noticed you can't even see the edge of his lapel. Right. And I think it's just due to the poor quality video and the lighting. But anyway, this set off a whole thing on Twitter is like, wait a minute. Is this guy wearing his pants on backwards? Look at the wrinkles. Right. Is he just wearing a pair of pull-ons because he's wearing diapers? And, you know, I mean, it was just a lot of, a whole lot of fun for a Sunday morning. In my mind, it seems that that is not the discourse you want after a speech. No, although the thing is he's so crazy and he behaved so crazily, you know, the image of him doing something that bizarre and not, you know, and not being fully of sound mind is something that is, you know, that has people wondering. And he did say some typically crazy things. And that's what he does. But some people like that.

that. But it was 90 minutes. Yeah, I didn't. I could only make it through about the first 10. Yeah. I mean, after the first fusillate of lies, I just, I just couldn't bear it. And he hadn't even gotten to his full election. Election was stolen. The biggest deal in history rant, which apparently came later. I definitely thought that he was tired and kind of sleepy and diminished. I mean, I saw some clips and he was clearly slurring things. You know, he was no more incoherent than he usually is. Right. I mean, it was just, I mean, it was just boring word salad and predictable word salad. You know, and I, you know, I guess the crowd there may like some of that. It just isn't terribly exciting anymore. It's interesting to me that one of the things I think that is sort of the most

notable of the whole speech was that he was like, I did these vaccines. I created the vaccines in a lab, you know, and then his audience was pretty unexcited about the vaccines. Yeah, I think that's just one of the bizarre aspects of all this. I mean, he does deserve, along with the Democratic Congress that funded it, you know, he does deserve credit for the government throwing a whole pile of money at the vaccine. We weren't developing and distributing vaccines. I mean, it was something that was done. I mean, the one thing that we Americans are good at is, is throwing money at stuff when we're really desperate and we have to do it. And look, the whole world is looking at us now and say, hey, that was, we wish we had done that.

But, I mean, I think there's a lot of credit for that to go around. I think there's obviously Congress funded it and the Biden people have carried it through the home stretch. And then, of course, it was, you know, one of the better vaccines, of course, is Pfizer. And they didn't take the seed money from the federal government. So it's just a lot of things happened. that happened right. And he deserved, you know, in fairness to him, he deserves some credit. And what's sad about this is that he didn't, he's so busy saying, look at me, look at me, look at me. He didn't really say, you really should take this vaccine. Right. If you want, you should

get your shot, if you really want to go around not wearing masks and get the economy moving again. and, you know, he had an opportunity to do that before January 20th. In fact, he did get vaccinated before he left in Milania. He could have done that. But he was, for some reason, he was focused on other things in January. But what could he have been focused on, George Connolly? You know, himself. And not the betterment of his fellow citizens.

Right. And his violent insurrection. Now, I just want to get back to COVID. for one second because I think it's important we talk about this. Liberals can never get enough of COVID. Oh, we love that, baby. But conservatives are very, you know, conservative media and also a lot of the mainstream media believes that this lab leak theory needs more investigation.

I say bring it on, but why can't we have hearings about Trump's COVID response? Carrie Cordero and I wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post probably now more than a year ago, saying we need to have some kind of an investigation as to how all of this came about and happened. And I think that, you know, it would be part. Sure, LabLeak would be part of it. We didn't focus on LabLeak then, but that would be part of it. The origins will be part of it. What our intelligence agencies knew about it in January and February and maybe even December, which was the focus of our op-ed piece way back when, would be a critical part of it because the question is what what did what did the government do when it was

receiving intelligence reports about you know Wuhan right the place being locked down and people right right and that you know meanwhile Trump was out there telling people it wasn't going to be a problem and he was at CPAC yeah well February remember he was watching the Lisa page and Peter Strick play when he should have been in a fucking COVID briefing. Right. And then and then also toward the end of February, there was a woman at CD, I think the CDC, who basically said, her, Deb, Deborah Messioneer, I don't know how to pronounce her name. Messing. She basically said, look, this is, we're looking at this very seriously as a possible pandemic. She said something like that. Yeah. And this is, she said your whole life is going to change.

He was in India at the time, getting, being worshipped. Rined and dined by Modi. And having a big rally at a soccer stadium. And he hears about this, I think, on the way back. And he wants to fire the woman. And she was right. Yeah, and she was right. And if they had done things just two weeks earlier.

Yeah. Right? If things had been shut down a week or two earlier, I mean, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been safe. This thing, you know, I think at the end of the day, it would have been, there would have been a significant death toll anyway. But, you know, it spread out of control before the community spread was so great by the time March 13 rolled around, and people started to take it seriously. You'd think now with all the fever about Fauci's emails that they'd say, oh, yeah, we should investigate this further, but we all know that they're only going to do that if it blocks their guy from being investigated.

Well, they don't actually want an investigation. They want a distraction from an investigation. So they make a big deal out of these emails. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out what they were talking about with emails. They were just saying, aha. He was just this guy getting, you know, trying to do his job and getting 10,000 emails a day and responding to a few of them and not others. And the notion that somehow he overlooked the lab leak there, I mean, that wasn't his job. I mean, his job was to figure out what to get the public and the government to do to stop the spread of this thing,

not play, you know, international detective to figure out where it came from, because it really didn't matter at that point where it came from. The problem was it was killing people. And all that being said, we still don't, you know, just because all people are saying now is, hey, this is a possibility that should not be excluded. And there's no, you know, there's no clear evidence one way or the other that could demonstrate that whether this theory will hold water or not. It's just, hey, it's a possibility. And there are some reasons to believe that it was a possibility. And then we don't have full evidence to be able to figure out whether it's the fact or not. Look, I'm happy to investigate the lab leap. Hold China responsible. I don't have a horse in this race. Exactly. And it doesn't excuse any failures of the government to respond. And that doesn't just include Trump. I mean, includes the CDC's screwing up of the test kits. early on that. Test kits and the masks getting out there and saying don't wear a mask when you needed to wear a mask. Right. And then, you know, Fauci does bear some, you know, responsibility for that. I think they had their reasons at the time. I don't think they fully focused on exactly how the thing spread. And I think they were concerned about the shortage of PPP, PPE at hospitals and other facilities.

The fact of the matter is just because just because that the masks, we were a little late on the masks doesn't undermine the fact that they actually did us a lot of good and it was the right thing to do at the end. You know, it's just funny to hear the wingers who are trying to defend Trump criticize Fauci for not getting on the mask bandwax. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. Remember the reporting that Jared Kushner said, like, if these governors don't pound the pavement hard enough, like, their people are going to die. Yeah, well, it was a total. It was an evasion of responsibility. So George Conway, you were a Republican.

Three years and two months ago, I was. The thing I keep thinking as Mansion is now completely like Mansion and cinema, but really Manchin has, you know, this weekend, there was this op-ed, there was this, there was that. There were people on Twitter saying that Manchin should get removed from his committees. Spoiler. You do that. You have a Republican majority in the Senate. Don't you feel like if this, if Mansion were Republican and Mitch McConnell were whipping this vote, we would not be having this conversation? I don't know that Mitch McConnell has 100% success in whipping his people. He's pretty high success, though. Look, the fact of the matter is, if you are a senator on the edge of your party, you have a lot of power.

And that includes Susan Collins's, the Lisa Mikowski's of the world, as well as the cinemas and the mansions. I mean, that's just, you have a, you know, it's in any multi-member voting body. I mean, the most powerful justice for many was Sandra Day O'Connor and then Anthony Kennedy. Because when you're a swing vote, it's basically sometimes things, when they're close, become your call. And I just think there is, you know, there is always going to be the temptation for people who are from states that could go either way to play that role. And it may be also because that's the where, you know, their ideology reflects the tenuous or the balanced nature of the state from which they're elected. So I don't necessarily want to be as critical of them. and I would not necessarily say that there is much, that there is always much that a majority leader or minority leader can do to influence their vote.

At the end of the day, these people do what's in their own political best interest and in what they ultimately believe. Do you think that there is, so what Manchin said this weekend, which I think is interesting, was that he wouldn't support this HB1, but he would support the John Lewis vote. Voting Rights Act, which conveniently has not been written. Well, look, I think there's a lot of people like that. Right. I think there are more people more than Manchin in the Senate. I mean, I think a lot of people talk about HR1 and say, oh, my God, this is the thing to save democracy. Right.

I mean, there are things in there that I think are probably good. There are, it's a 900-page bill. I thought it was much more than that. It's at least 900 pages. I actually kind of skimmed through it. and, you know, at least read the table of contents. And there's a lot of stuff in there I wouldn't vote for. Well, there's government funding of elections, which is a big sticking point.

There's a lot of stuff in there. There's a lot of stuff in there that has nothing to do with voting. Nothing. And protecting people's rights to votes. And, you know, what happens, this is kind of what happens sometimes when power shifts in Washington is you get these bills. And as a securities lawyer, I've seen it twice happen in the financial industry. You get these mega bills where people just throw everything they've ever wanted and wanted to stick in other bills for the last several years. And you get this bloated monster that has all sorts of things in there that know that they're hoping just to slip by.

And I think that if you really want to protect the franchise in the United States, I think a better way to do it would be with a narrower bill focused on a few things that are achievable. And maybe you can pick off some Republicans for it. And I think there are some Republicans who can pick off on this stuff, I'm pretty sure. There aren't 10. There aren't 10. Yeah, well, there's the filibuster problem. And I know people are dumping on Mansion for that.

But the fact of the matter is, I mean, people are looking at the filibuster these days as this kind of Republican, awful Republican creation. Right. And, you know, the fact of the matter is Democrats have used it to quite... Right. Everybody's used it. Everybody's used it because, you know, because when the Democrats use it, the liberals view it as this is the way we save democracy from this horrible, these horrible people who have the Senate majority. And to me, it's just, you know, it cuts both ways. And to me, it just doesn't make any sense because what happened was this wasn't some, you know, longstanding creation that made a lot of sense from the... the get-go. What we have today was not the filibuster that they had 30, I mean, 40, 50 years ago or 100 years ago. This is, this is just an insane thing that's not a filibuster, but really is, you know, it's become this 60, 60 vote requirement for all legislation, which isn't consistent with the Constitution. And there really are not 10 sane Republicans. Well, they are on some

things, I think, but, but not a lot, you know, these days, you're not going to get 10 of them. McConnell has enough control over his caucus that he can get 40 out of 50 out of 50 on anything. And these people on both sides had gotten into the habit of, you know, assuming that 60 votes requires to pass just about everything. And that you know, unless you have 60 votes, you don't put anything to a vote. And both sides have gotten into this habit of this is what a filibuster is. And that's why it's been so hard to get rid of because both parties got used to this. I mean, the Democrat used it to great effect 15 years ago to block President George W. Bush's nominees for federal appeals courts. I feel like you're still upset about that.

No, I think the whole, well, I think it's, look, yeah, I thought that was ridiculous. Yeah, it's what's going on now is ridiculous. It's like, you know, if you want to have a 60 vote requirement and they want to have a filibuster, you only use that for extreme situations when you're really trying to. make a point about something true. Not, not every single time. And the way to guarantee that is to go back to the old rule that required people to actually yap on the floor. Right. But I don't want to give you a hard time, and yet I do want to give you a hard time and say that this is like about more than just judges, right? I mean, though. No, it's more, but no, I'm just using that as an example of how, you know, the other side used it for something and then, you know, it's been, it just, it got out of hand. Right. But,

We can agree that, like, there may be porky things in that bill, but fundamentally, Republicans have gone, like, all into authoritarianism, and Democrats have a very small window to stop it. I don't disagree with that, but I do think that there are things in there that would be harder to resist if it was, if they were focused on them. That's all. Right. No, no.

I mean, look, the problem of getting it passed is fundamentally a failure on the part of Democratic leadership, right? Because that should be, you know, this should be a no-brainer. Again, I don't know about that because I think there's just a lot of crap in there. Right. Just a lot of junk in there. They should have a bill that can be passed. Yeah, but I don't know whether there is a bill that can be passed for the reason that you say. I mean, you make a good point.

They may not, you know, at this point, there may not be 10 Republicans to vote for anything. Right. But you can make it a lot harder on these people by saying, come on, you're not against this, you're not against that with a stripped down bill and to really focus the effort, focus the issues on certain things. So anyway, this weekend in the sort of Saturday news dump that Mark Meadows, Trump's chief of staff, had been pushing the DOJ to investigate this QAnononic rumor that Italy had been changing. the balance by using their military.

Yeah, and put it in more context. What happened is that a Senate committee subpoenaed the National Archives for emails. And this was an investigation that came out of an earlier news story, broken, I think, by the Times, about how the White House was communicating with the job. Justice Department, and there was a guy in the Justice Department who was head of the Environmental Division and an acting head of the Civil Division who was in direct touch with Trump about the possibility of the Justice Department supporting that crazy Texas lawsuit that they filed in the Supreme Court. And this prompted a subpoena to the National Archives

for everything relating to that, I guess, and some other things. things. And one of the things that was produced was a whole cache of emails from then chief of staff Mark Meadows that included this attempt to get the FBI and the DOJ interested in this crazy conspiracy theory that you could find online where some guy was saying that Barack Obama took one of the pallets of cash that was sent to the Iranians as part of the Iranian nuclear deal. gave it to some Italians, and the Italians used the money to create some software that they downloaded into American voting systems by satellite that switched votes from Trump to Biden. This is the chief of staff of the White House pushing this theory on the Justice Department. We only have the tip of the iceberg of all the crazy stuff that went on this.

winter. You know, this is another thing that ought to be investigated. It might be part of a January 6th commission that isn't going to happen. But these guys were doing some wild, wild stuff, and it wasn't just the campaign and the cookie campaign hangers on and the lawyers who were working on the campaign or wanted to work on the campaign like Rudy Giuliani and, and Sidney Powell. This stuff was going on in the White House. And I got to say, yeah, I, I, I have to wonder whether there weren't some illegalities in all of this. Wait, what? You're a lawyer.

Yes. Do you notice that there was crime? I'm wondering whether there was crime. I'm not saying there was criming, and I'm not completely sure what the theory might be, but this stuff is political, okay? This is political, and you're trying to get the Justice Department essentially to aid the election litigation strategy. of a political campaign, I'm not sure that isn't a criminal violation of the Hatch Act.

Yeah. I wonder about that. And also, I mean, you know, it's, you're running close to sedition here, trying to get, you know, government officials to act in support of a bullshit conspiracy theory to overturn the results of an election. I mean, there, I mean, there could be a criminal conspiracy involved here. I don't think that's not protected by free speech. The question is, I think it's going to be a question of what it was they were asking people to do and what their state of mind was. But I'm not confident that any of this is ever going to be fully investigated, but it should be. And, you know, maybe the Justice Department will move on up from the people, the five or 600 people who they're looking at, who were at the Capitol to the other things, like who organized the rally.

and who at the White House was communicating with those people and what else those people were doing at the White House to try to keep Trump in office. And I think all these things relate at a certain level and ought to be fully investigated. Do you think that the Democrats should have a sort of like Benghazi-esque select committee because they're not going to get a bipartisan anything? Well, I don't think that it should be Benghazi-esque. I think a select committee is, not a bad idea because there should be some form of investigation. I don't like the idea of it being like the Benghazi committee because that was purely a political stunt. I think if they do conduct an investigation, they should make heavy use of counsel and not put on, you know, these, you know, have these hearings where every member gets five minutes to rant and rage in some disorganized

fashion and it looks like a, you know, it allows the Republicans to turn it into a political the shit show. And I think I do, I mean, if it's possible, and I briefly scanned the House rules a couple of weeks ago or a few days ago about how this might be done, I think the speaker has a great deal

of power in determining who is the member, who becomes a member of a select committee. And maybe she could pick a select committee where the Republicans are the people who voted responsibly in favor of the

January 6th commission and include some of the members who voted for the impeachment of Donald Trump. Right. Like an Adam Kinsinger and Liz Cheney. Yes, exactly. The minority of a leader on the committee could be the ranking member could be Liz Cheney. That would be great. Most importantly, though, is Trey Gowdy a vampire? I have no idea. So yes. You're saying yes. Okay. But as I pointed out to you, Yesterday, Mo Brooks blocked me. I know. He shouldn't have done a better job blocking his password in that photo. Mo Brooks still hasn't blocked me, but I have his password, his email passwords.

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That's new abnormal dot the daily beast.com Dana Nessle is the Attorney General of the state of Michigan Welcome to the new abnormal AG Nestle from this great state of Michigan. We are very excited to have you. Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So Michigan's such an interesting state, and I always want, we had Governor Whitmer on, and we always have, and I've had a lot of Congresspeople from Michigan,

Michigan to me is like such an important state for Democrats and such an important state because you have everything going on there. Yeah, we've really been ground zero for everything here. So whether it's acts of domestic terrorism, whether it's claims, false claims of election fraud and having to defend the 5.5 million voters that voted in our election in 2020, which was a record turnout. You know, we've had it all in this day. We've had Trump go after all of our lady executive office holders. So not only did he really take on Governor Whitmer, but he came out through our Secretary of State, Justin Benson. and myself as well, which was an odd set of circumstances. But, yeah, we've had a lot of activity in the state of Michigan.

Unfortunately, not all of the good. I have a lot of things I want to talk to you about, but I really want to talk to you about the Michigan militia. I had Representative Debbie Dingell on the podcast, and she talked about the experience of being a woman Democrat in Michigan and the sort of scary threat that is the Michigan militia. but it's also a place where today's Republican Party is very much. It's an onset of circumstances.

So our executive branch now is, you know, all Democrats and mostly female Democrats, but our legislature is still very, very badly gerrymandered, one of the most jerrymated states in the nation. And as a result, we have a very far right wing state house and state Senate. Now, that, fortunately, will likely not be the case, as of after the 2022 election, because for the first time ever, we passed in 2018, nonpartisan redistricting commission that will redraw the lines. Fairly, one hopes.

But right now, we have a very, very, very far right-wing legislature and a very, you know, very progressive women who are in our executive offices. And then most of our congressional delegation of our seven Democrats, five are women. And one of our two senators is a woman. So there's been a lot of anger and hostility targeting the female electives in this state. We also, by the way, have a majority of women on our state Supreme Court. So we have a lot of women elected Democrats primarily. And the men that are in elected office in higher positions as Republicans don't seem to really care for that set of circumstances.

I love to see it. This is amazing. How do you know the redistricting is going to be fair? Because this is like, as a Democrat, one of my big things that keeps me up at night is redistricting. Well, I mean, honestly, that's why we passed the, it's called the name of the proposal was voters, not politicians. And the idea was that the voters should pick who their elected officials are. The elected officials should not pick who their voters are. So we have this, you know, bipartisan redistricting commission that is under the auspices.

of our Secretary of State, and those members have been selected, and they are independent, really, from the other branches of government. They have their own communications director, their own legal counsel, all of that. And I'm very confident that they will do a good job in drawing the lines. Certainly a better job than the Republican legislature did in 2010. The problem, as I see it, more than anything, is going to revolve around the census data, because as we know, just like everything else, Trump touched in his four years in office. Great damage was done to the Census Bureau intentionally, not just because of COVID. Yeah.

And so the numbers are coming in very late, which means that the districts are not going to be drawn in time to comply with our constitutional mandate. And that case now is going to our state Supreme Court. Wait, Matt Gates? Mandates. Oh, mandates. You could see where my head is at. Yeah, I guess, I mean, you know, I will say this.

Michigan has a lot. of scary things going on, but at least we don't have Matt Gates. So don't, we're not to blame for everything, apparently. Right. Okay, good. Yes. So you trust the redistricting will be fair. I think so, yes. That is good news for at least one state. The rest we can just focus on worrying about the rest. So talk to me about, like, there have been so many photographs of the militia coming into the state house. Have you been scared for your life?

Very much so. And I will say this. I know we're supposed to be strong. We're supposed to be tough. And, you know, lady elected, we're not allowed to be emotional, you know,

or pretend that we have a menstrual cycle or anything like that. But I will be honest, the death threats have been so prevalent. It's a scary set of circumstances. We have had people out at our secretary of state's house, at my house, we're handling a case right now involving a plot to kidnap and execute Governor Whitmer.

You know, on more than one occasion, I've had people outside my house who, you know, taking pictures of my children and threatening to kill me. And, you know, quite candidly, have there been time for I wondered whether it was worth it to stay in this position because I was concerned about threats to myself or to my family members? Yeah, I'll concede it. I have thought about it more than once whether it was worth it and whether it was appropriate to risk the lives of my family members. But ultimately, I've decided to stick with it. I've been very aggressive about going after those that threaten the lives of our officials. So whether they're Republicans or Democrats, I brought a number of cases because my perspective is if you're not going to go after people

who threaten the lives of elected, you know, government officials and not just elected, sometimes appointed officials, sometimes people on the board of canvassers or, you know, township clerks or what have you, you know, then good people are not going to want to have these jobs anymore. Yeah. And I can think it's worth it. And also, while you certainly are free to disagree with the policy. or the work of government officials, you cannot threaten their lives, period.

That is still against the law. And I think we've just gotten so numb to this that we just sit back and think somehow that's fine for people on social media or certain, I'll say, quote-unquote news outlets to use this kind of violent rhetoric, but it's not okay. And I will say in our state, you know, just a few months ago, we had the co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, threatened assassination against two Republicans that voted to impeach, you know, Trump. And then threatened, let's see, he called myself, the Secretary of State and the governor of Witches, who should be burned at the state. That's the head of the Republican Party

in our state. Our Senate Majority Leader has called the insurrection on January 6th a hoax. He's a top Republican in the state. He openly talks about. meeting with militia members behind closed doors and assisting them with their, quote, messaging. And he brags about not being vaccinated and says that he's been naturally vaccinated by catching COVID. So there's no need to get vaccinated and urges others not to get vaccinated. So that's our Republican Party in Michigan. It's been a struggle. There's no question about it.

These state party chairs seem like positively even more deranged than the Republican elected. Yeah. And in fact, the other chair, the co-chair, you know, she was at the insurrection on January the 6th. She routinely, she refers to Democrats as evil. Again, for the three women elected to the top of our ticket, calls us, let's say, the three-headed monster. And, you know, just routinely, routinely uses the kinds of phrases that I think are more akin to, certainly not a democracy. like ours. And I think it's very much whole tested. It's used to dehumanized us and to demean us

to the extent that it gets Trump supporters excited about coming out to the polls to vote against Democrats because not only you know, might you not agree with our policies, but you know, after all, we're witches and you know, it's

really concerning and what it does is it escalates this kind of a rhetoric escalates the violence in our states. And it leads to death threats and it leads to people, you know, clotting to kill the governor. And it's a very scary time to be in America and to be here in the state of Michigan. Have you seen crimes that you feel relate to this heightened rhetoric? Oh, absolutely.

And, you know, people I'm sure have seen them across the globe. We saw what happened as a precursor to the, events at the Capitol in January 6th last year on April 30th, when you had a number of militia members who overtook our state capital. Fortunately, there was not further violence, although I think we really were lucky to have escaped it. And later on, we were to find out that there, you know, were those that intended to potentially be violence against our state legislators, but maybe got cold feet. And that it was actually one of the plans that some of these individuals had in place as an alternative to the plot against the governor,

was to either bomb the Capitol building or to stay hostages or to have a mass shooting. But we've seen a number of instances where, I mean, if you looked at the events at the TCF Center that happened after the election, you know, in Detroit, where you had angry mobs that tried to take over the voting center there. It's very concerning, but it is all attributable to, you know, these Republican elected leaders and party chairs that disseminate this misinformation about the election and get individuals to a place where they truly believe that the election was stolen from them. And then you have, in addition to that, you have your, you know, Sydney Powell types and your Rudy Giuliani's

that in legal proceedings will, you know, make these massive misrepresentations. And even if the courts don't buy them, the audience they're really looking for is the electorate. And, you know, a lot of, as we know statistically, many Republicans have, you know, they have gotten this, you know, hookline and stinker. And as I have often said, if these individuals truly believe that the election was stolen, and if they've, if they've drunk the Kool-Aid, then it was these lawyers that mixed it, served it up to them in Dixie Cops, you know. Yeah. Do you, how are you going to avoid having, I mean, what's happening in Arizona seems absolutely insane. There's, you know, there's some that, you know, the Trump, Trump administration would like to do this everywhere. How can you avoid this in Michigan?

I don't think the law allows for it. In fact, I think it could have been prevented in Arizona. But again, this might be a good reason why you have Democratic attorneys general. I think it would be illegal. I think we could stop it. tried to do it here. You know, we had a, we had a hand recount in Antrim County, and we know that the results of the, the hand-counted ballots, we have paper ballots here, and that it matched the election results. So we know it was accurate. Any type of so-called audit, but it was really a fraud,

it's even like using that word, because it's a misrepresentation of the ridiculousness that we're seeing in Arizona right now. We know that that would be illegal. So I think given the fact that that we have myself as Attorney General and Jocelyn as Secretary of State. I don't see how that could possibly happen here illegally. Right. Oh, well, that's good to hear. So what do you think? Another thing that I have been hearing about and reading about is this idea that Republicans are trying to install Trumpy or more sort of morally questionable secretaries of state because then for the next election, have more ability to override elections? Oh, absolutely.

That's their plan. And we've been very clear about that. And I will say this in terms of attorneys general. You know, I heard Kevin Paxton just the other day bragging about the fact that he had, you know, his work as attorney general had been utilized to suppress the vote. And I heard them talking about Harris County. I heard them talking about other counties that have large communities of color and where they working very, very hard to ensure that they could limit the drop boxes and that there would be

other procedures that would not be implemented that would have allowed for more legal voters to be able to cast their ballot. So let's talk about Ken Paxton for one second because I just, I want to give a little intro because he's not the big celebrity that he is to you and I. He is the Texas Attorney General. He's a Republican. He has several indictments against him and an FBI investigation. Yeah, he's a treat, doesn't it? Yeah, he seems great. So continue on, yes.

Ken Paxton, I mean, he worked very hard to ensure that in a number of lawsuits that were filed, you know, the vote can be suppressed. And so if there were challenges to some ridiculous laws that were implemented by the, you know, the legislature in Texas or by the governor in Texas, Texas that would limit people's ability to vote, especially during the course of a global pandemic, where, of course, people were so afraid to go to the polls, he defended those laws vigorously. And I think he initiated some lawsuits on his own, actually, against municipalities, to make it harder for them to be able to vote. And then he bragged about it. He bragged about

him being the reason why Texas went to Trump instead of Biden. There may be a man. Maybe he's right. He probably does deserve credit to that. He also attended the events at the Capitol on January of the 6th and urged the angry crowd to fight and to go to the Capitol and fight. And I think one could definitely argue that he played a role in that. He also sued several states, including my own. He sued four states, Georgia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan to overturn our elections in our states, which has never been done before by interstate. attorney generally another state, we were successful. He brought a case at the United States Supreme Court and was similarly rebuked. But, you know, he got 16 other Republican attorneys general could join him in doing so. And, you know, it was just absolutely astounding and horrifying. And after all that, he still didn't get a pardon from Trump. He still didn't. All that sucking up got him to wear. And now I hear that George Bush's nephew, was going to be running against him potentially.

So things really didn't go his way and probably will continue not to go his way when it comes to the legal matters that are against him. But it's very unfortunate because there was a time where attorneys general, I think, were much more collegial with each other and worked together on all kinds of issues that were very important.

Consumer protection issues, certainly the opioid litigation against drug manufacturing, and distributors around the country. But it's just very, very difficult to form close relationships with AGs trying to overturn the election of my state residents. And all I could say is, like, what happened in 2024 if Michigan were to go Republican? And then you have the AGs of California or New York or Massachusetts trying to overturn

our election here. Is this going to happen in every swing state with every election? It's insane. No, it's completely insane. And I think it's a really important point. I mean, I think like what it is. And also attorneys generals are supposed to be above the partisan fray. Well, you know, traditionally, yes.

But unfortunately, you know, what is to be done when you had, for instance, the Trump administration who didn't hesitate to violate, the Constitution to violate, you know, federal law. I mean, it really was up to the state e.g. It used to hold them accountable. And we did. We filed dozens and dozens of lawsuits. We want to follow them.

We want 86% of the cases that we filed because his policies were both so flagrantly illegal. But right now, we're waiting to see if the ACA will still be in existence. And every day that goes by, I mean, by the end of June, we're going to know whether we still have the Affordable Peer Act in that, right? And that's because Republican attorneys general brought the case that would dismantle the ACA and almost all the Republican Aegees, even in the states where they have millions of their own state residents that rely on the ACA to have any health insurance. You know, they participated in that case. And it's the Democratic agencies that have to defend that and did defend it throughout the course of this case. So we'll find out really any day now whether that act is

exist or not. I'm more worried now. Please come back soon and also stay safe. You're up for re-election in 2022. I am. I am. And, you know, I just for your, you know, listeners, I think it is important. You know, you brought up secretaries of state. You brought up attorneys general.

And yes, of course, it's important for us to not just win the Senate, apparently, as Democrats, but win it by a lot because we can't own on every Democratic senator to care about things like voting rights. But I have to say that everything really comes down to the states. And even if you don't live in the state of Michigan, you ought to care who the Attorney General and the Secretary of State are in the state of Michigan. And in all the swing states, it matters and it matters a lot. And it could be whether or not our democracy survives.

Yeah. One party's for democracy and the other party is just out of its mind. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back soon, A.G. Nassal. Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it. What's crazier than QAnon? More outlandish than Pizza Gate?

And scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers. orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts,

or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Paxton Smith is the valedictorian of Lakeland Highlands High School in Dallas, Texas, who had her valedictorian speech go viral this week, which I'm going to play now before our interview. As we leave high school, we need to make our voices heard. Today, I was going to talk about TV and media and content because it's something that's very important to me.

However, under light of recent events, it feels wrong to talk about anything but what is currently affecting me and millions of other women in the state. Recently, the heartbeat bill was passed in Texas. Starting in September, there will be a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy,

regardless of whether the pregnancy was a result of rape or incest. Six weeks. That's all women get. And so before they realize, most of them don't realize that they're pregnant by six weeks. So before they have a chance to decide if they are emotionally, physically, and financially stable enough

to carry out a full-term pregnancy, before they have the chance to decide if they can take on the responsibility of bringing another human being into the world, that decision is made for them by a stranger. A decision that will affect the rest of their lives is made by a stranger. I have dreams and hopes and ambitions. Every girl graduating today does,

and we have spent our entire lives working towards our future, and without our input and without our consent, our control over that future has been stripped away from us. I am terrified that if my contraceptives fail, I am terrified that if I am raped, then my hopes and aspirations and dreams and efforts for my future will no longer matter. I hope that you can feel how gut-wrenching that is. I hope you can feel how dehumanizing it is to have the autonomy over your own body taken away from you. And I'm talking about this today, on a day as important as this, on a day honoring 12 years of hard academic work, on a day where we are all gathered together, on a day where you are most inclined to listen to a voice like mine, a woman's voice, to tell you that this is a problem, and it's a problem that cannot wait. and I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace

when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights, a war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters. We cannot stay silent. Thank you. Welcome Paxton Smith to the new abnormal. Thank you.

We are so excited to have you. First of all, you're valedictorian in your class. Yes. Does the valedictorian always give the speech? Yes. And when did you know you were going to be valedictorian? I've known for quite a while. We got our ranked freshman year, and I was number one then.

And so I knew for a while that there was a high likelihood that I was going to stay number one, and I did. And so did you always write two speech? did you always know you were going to do this? How did you come up with us? I did not. Initially, when I was working on my speech, I was writing one about content and media and how it has affected the way that I view reality. Yeah. And I was all in on that speech. It took me about two weeks to write it. And after the passing of the heartbeat bill, there was really a turning point for me where I thought that it would be essential that I talked about that instead. And tell me, like, when you found out that the heartbeat bill passed,

were you like, I mean, what was your thinking there? When I found out the heartbeat bill was passed, I was genuinely shocked and I was very surprised and upset. And a part of me felt like it couldn't even be real. You had this other speech, you put it aside, you wrote this new speech, which has some of really incredible writing in it. I tweeted out like a, like a transcription of some of the, you know, because your idea is very simple, right? And it's something that all girls in Texas should be worried about. Right. So when you switched it out, what happened? You sent them the old speech?

I did. And they approved that speech. Were your parents on board with this? Well, mostly. I told them at different times. I told my dad and my stepmom initially. and both of them were kind of apprehensive at first because I could imagine as a parent being afraid for your child to put their face on something so controversial like that. But I told them that I had thought out the consequences of what might happen and that that was something that I was willing to take on because I thought it was the right thing to do to make that speech.

And so they were supportive after that. That's pretty awesome. I have to say like, so when you got up there, how did you feel? Very calm. Interesting. I was dreading making the speech for a long time. And it was something that I wrestled with myself a little bit before I did it. But ultimately, I thought that it was the right thing to do. And so when I got on the stage, I wasn't really nervous because I had already played out a lot of the scenarios in my head.

It was just a very calm feeling of like, okay, it's time to do this. When you said it, did you, what was the reaction in the crowd like? Incredibly positive. You can't tell on the recording. But there were tears starting about halfway through the speech. And they just kept going up until the end, which is when you start hearing them on the video. I mean, is your town very conservative? I think it is.

It's hard to say. It's very easy to surround yourself with people who share the same ideologies as you do. So maybe I haven't seen that presence as much, but I'm pretty sure there is a very large conservative group. When you came off stage, did teachers were they supportive? Yes, incredibly supportive. There was almost nobody who had something negative to say about it that day. So, I mean, are you scared for the future of women in Texas? Of course I am.

Do you think there's a world in which Texas goes blue? I do think so. I think that is definitely a possibility. But I don't have enough information on that to be able to give you a good opinion on that, you know? Right. But you're feeling in your, with your, your generation, like you definitely see hope. Yes. I think that's a really great thing. So now you're going to go to University of Texas. What do you want to do with the rest of your life? Because you're

18, so you should definitely know that. Absolutely. I should have my entire life planned out right. Yes, it's time. Let's go. It's about time. Yeah, I need to get myself together. The plan right now is to study music and see if I can pull off a career in music. And I'm very excited for you. I think you're just, you know, awesome. And it's very cool to have you. Thank you so much, Paxton. Thank you.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. Hi, Jesse Cannon. Hi, Molly Jungfast. So, I think you got a different fuck that guy than usual this week. You know, I try never to punch left or down. Not that this is down. Definitely no down.

But I don't like to punch left. But when the left is doing something that seems really, like, stupid, I have to say something. And the idea of primaring a Joe Manchin is not going to happen. You guys, Joe Manchin is in a state called West Virginia. It is an R plus 10 billion. It is a red state. In fact, the governor of West Virginia, Jim Justice, was a Democrat and changed to be Republican. because it's a very Republican state.

So even though I understand that people are mad at Joe Manchin, I understand that people are sick of his bullshit. I understand that everyone is very cranky, but unfortunately, you've got to love the one you're with here. And if Joe Manchin, if Democrats try to punish Joe Manchin for not going along with them, they are going to not have the majority anymore, because Joe Manton is just going to go over to Mitch McConnell and have a cigar and that's it. So you guys, I love the energy and the excitement.

And I'm very pleased go take that energy and register some voters in North Carolina so that Democrats can win a Senate seat there. But there is some things they can do that's not arguing that his committee assignments be stripped. If we're in the streets and we're really pushing for this voter reform and change, public favor so it's really, really popular. It's getting sunlight on it. That helps pressure him to lift the filibuster for this or change it back to a talking filibuster and allowing him to support that. Yeah, no, it's true. And look, there are ways to get Joe Manchin on board. And, you know, Democrats have earmarks that West Virginia desperately needs, right? Money and bridges and infrastructure. sure, like, West Virginia really needs federal government assistance.

Joe Manchin is the person to get it for them, but threatening him is not going to get him there. And so for those people, I say, very gentle and warm and fuzzy. Stop doing that. Which it's like, fuck you, but it's for the left. So it's just a let's stop doing that. And they are my, let's stop doing that guy of today. What's yours, Jesse? Well, you know, for balance, because, you know, if there's two people who really

care about keeping a left-right parody and pretending that they're both the same. It's definitely you and I. That's right. You're the right-winger. We're trying to outdo Chris Saliza these days. Jesus Christ. How does Soliza, why don't you make Soliza your fuck that guy? I mean, I could do it every single time he makes a piece of content.

It's just be boring at this point. But I am going to punch very far right because the far right is demanding that after the most boring emails on earth came out from Dr. Fauci who sounded like he was writing a every email with the energy that we've all had at some point of, oh, God, just get this inbox clean, that they're demanding he'd be investigated. But it's very apparent that if you want to talk about the fuckery that went on during this pandemic to cause so many desks,

let's start opening up some other inboxes. And to them, I say, cherry picking Fauci, when we should be investigating all of your people, the Scott Atlases. And the Jared Kushners and the Don Juniors. Every one of these from the PPP being shifted around to punishing the states, let's get some foias going. Let's get some emails open.

That sounds like a lot of fun, guys. Let's get to it. Let's have some hearings. Where the fuck are my hearings? That's what I'm saying. Where the fuck are my hearings? I'm going to do a wrap where that's going to be the course. Where the fuck my hearings at?

Don't do that. Don't do that. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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