The Daily Beast Podcast - What If We Tried Treating Donald Trump Like Everyone Else?

Episode Date: October 31, 2023

The U.S. justice system is handling former President Donald Trump with kid gloves, The New Abnormal host Danielle Moodie says. Plus! A discussion about the disconnect between an increasingly technology-reliant world and the aging lawmakers who do not seem to understand the systems that make society tick. 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 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 Kedin, 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.

With Election Day a week away, Bolts editor-in-chief Daniel Lekanian is here to break down the facts on some important state and local elections all across the country. Then former White House Senior Director and Professor at Syracuse University, Niera Huck, is here to talk about this country's need to embrace a youth movement on what's the deal with Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, we've got a new week and we've got a new poll from NBC News and the Des Moines Register that shows that Donald Trump has a nearly 30-point lead over his nearest rival in that state, that state being Iowa, where Des Moines is, I'm told. It confirms what we have known, that there is no Republican primary anymore, if they're ever was and Donald Trump is going to be the nominee.

Trump gets 43% in this latest poll. The closest to that is Rhonda Sandus with 16%. That is tied with Nikki Haley. And then you have to go down to 7% to find Tim Scott. And then even lower than that is Chris Christie. And Vivek Ramoswami down at 4%. I think it's safe to say that his performances in the debates have turned a hell of a lot of people off. Like I said, we are looking at a Trump nomination, barring something happening,

and I can't even conceive of what that could be because obviously everything that already has happened with the 420,000 indictments or whatever the current number is, and it doesn't seem to matter. And if anything just makes him stronger with the Republican base, it's over before it even began. It's clear that the Republican Party has no viable candidates anywhere. It took three weeks for them to find a speaker of the house. So the reality is that Donald Trump has had this party in a death grip, which they love, by the way, for the last eight years. And so when he decided to dust himself off because he needed a new path to grift on,

because otherwise, how else is he paying all of his legal fees? Let's be honest. Donald Trump doesn't have a vision for the country. He's offering nothing in any of the rallies that he's doing. He basically is going with a collection plate to these places. and these people are stupid enough to want to give them their hard-earned money. Because what working class or middle class want to be, you know, upper-class person doesn't want to shell out money to somebody who says that they're a self-professed multi-billionaire?

It's wild. The perspective that I have now, which is that there are no reasonable Republicans, even though apparently Arnold Schwarzenegger thinks that there's nothing wrong with this party that he's a part of and says that he doesn't see the crazies anywhere. I guess it would take you actually looking in the mirror if that is the case. They're nuts. And Donald Trump is their leader. They want fascism.

They want authoritarianism. They want white power. They want white control. They want women attached to their ovens with no rights. They want black people invisible but docile and back into the realm of the help. And this is their man. This is their last shot at getting all of those things done. So from the handmaiden in the house to Donald Trump in the White House, all of their white evangelical

Christian anti-progress, anti-hope, anti-everything can come to fruition. That's what they are planting their flag in. And it's disgusting. Yeah, I guess we should point out that one name not in that poll anymore is Mike Pence, who suspended his campaign after, I guess, finding out, someone must have whispered in his ear that the people who were saying Hanging Mike Pence weren't joking. and he finally realized that, oh, shit, I'm probably not going to win a primary in a party filled with people who, you know, want to kill me.

So he's out of the race, so his numbers are taken out of that poll. I guess the good news about Trump is that if nothing else, he is 100% mentally there. And he is, you know, continuing to crush it when he gives speeches. And, oh, I'm sorry, I'm being told this is not. true. No, it's not. In fact, over the weekend, while he was giving a speech in Sioux City, Iowa, greeted the crowd by saying hello to a place where we've done very well, Sue Falls, which is in a different

state. So to use a phrase that Trump likes to say, we're seeing this more and more, and we're hearing this more and more, that the man is, he's mentally incompetent at this point. I'm talking about beyond whatever issues he's had through his whole life. We've talked about it before, Daniel. He talks about he gets the numbers of World Wars wrong. He gets the cities that he's in wrong. Boy, for all the talk, Republicans can't stop saying about Joe Biden.

I don't know, man. It feels like Donald Trump is maybe the one who we need to have a serious conversation about. No. Don't you get it, Andy? Like, this is all okay if Donald Trump is doing it. It's like it's a joke. It's funny. He mixes up what war America.

was in. He mixes up cities. He doesn't actually just going back to one of his trials. He didn't even know the difference between E. Jean Carroll and, you know, and one of his ex-wives. So like clearly, everything is fine. And he just needs more time like the lovely lady Senator from Maine has said, just give him time. He'll learn. What we really should be concerned with is anytime that Biden trips should have wall-to-wall coverage. Anything that he misspeaks because of his speech impediment should absolutely be played over and over and over again. But Donald Trump is totally fine and I really wish that you would stop being hysterical. As men get, we should stop being hysterical. We need to talk about men and whether we should be allowed to vote and a whole bunch of things because we are

just way too emotional about this stuff. Another thing Donald Trump is confused about, apparently, is why all his co-defendants down in Georgia are taking guilty, please. Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenny the cheese, cheese, bro, have all pled guilty or have all pleaded guilty. Apparently, Trump is very confused by all this and doesn't understand why they have done that. On the other hand, he also is now confused as to whether Sidney Powell was even his lawyer or not. And I know Danielle, I'm getting irrational and I'm getting, you know, hysterical again. But boy, this troubles me. But explain to me why I'm wrong.

Yeah, because, look, Donald Trump is concerned because he assumed that once people pledge allegiance, not to the flag, but to him, that that works, you know, until death do them part. But as a man that's been thrice married, he knows that no contracts hold. So if you're not going to pay for people's legal fees, which he doesn't even like to pay for his own, chances of them staying in allegiance with you when their freedom is on the fucking line, probably not that high. Jenna Ellis and what's his face, you know, Mr. sweat dripping down the side, Giuliani, have all gone to cameras and said that they are paupers, that they need help. And Donald Trump said, let them eat cake. And so they have decided that their freedom

taste better than anything Donald Trump could possibly fucking serve up, which he has refused to do. So his confusion really is not that deep. Like, you know, we saw it play out with Casey Hutchinson, who Donald Trump gave her attorneys. And then she's just like, you know what? I don't like. The sound of prison. The sound of prison doesn't like seem to ring in my 20-something-year-old heart for the next several years, nor does having like a record seem to be good for somebody just starting out in politics and decided to get her own attorneys. So it's just, you know, it's funny to me who the Trump goons decide that they're going to back and who they leave flapping out in the wind. And maybe it's because they were attorneys. He felt like they could just talk their way out of

this. But if he was paying attention, they brought up, what, 60 different lawsuits to try and hand him the election, all of which were laughed out of court. their peers. Donald Trump's confusion is running amok because the walls are closing in on him and he's going to find himself. That little slate that Fannie Willis put together, oh, it's going to be whittled down to one. I truly believe. As we come into the end of this year, I think you are going to see more people flip when they realize like, oh, these big hitters, these people are done. Yeah, I don't stand a chance trying to do anything. other than plead my way out of this.

You mentioned legal fees with Trump, and in that same speech that was either in Sioux City or Sioux Falls, there's really no way to know. He said that he has racked up more than $100 million in said fees from all of these court cases. This is just more evidence that he is, as he said, that he really is just like Nelson Mandela, who famously racked up billions and billions of dollars in legal fees while sitting in his small-ass sell for 20-plus years, whatever it was. First of all, who the hell knows?

Like, Trump says it's $100 million. It could be $100 billion or it could be $10. There's really no way to know. Also, we know that probably none of that money is coming out of his pocket. But you raised the idea of these legal fees, and you're absolutely right, in that he can get away with having to spend millions of dollars in legal fees in a way that a lot of the other defendants can't, and that that's a very good reason for them to flip, I think, and to take guilty things.

Yeah, because, I mean, the reality is that these drawn out, I mean, this is not law and order, right? Like, these drawn out court cases that go on for months and years at a time, these attorneys that you're hiring are billed by the hour. Like, do you know what I'm saying? It's not cheap, right? And so when you have folks who have deep pockets, like, they don't care. Trump has teams of lawyers, half of which, again, he does not pay. So if he's able, he has this constituency that he can go and panhandle to any day of the week, whether it's selling a mug or

telling people to go to his website when he's supposed to be at a presidential rally, getting them excited about the future of America. Everything comes back to give me your money. And these fools are more than happy to open up their pockets to a man they say is a multi-billionaire. I don't know what the fuck they get from it. You know, that's really, I mean, that's a question for a psychologist. Like, I really don't know what these people who themselves are probably a paycheck or a crisis away from needing government assistance, right? Like, that give Donald Trump money, but then want to turn around and tell you, he's the

richest man. What? How does that make sense? Yeah, I don't even know if psychologists could figure this out. I feel like you could have a seance and contact Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and ask them that question. They'd be like, how the fuck should we know? This is way beyond our pay grade. Like, you know, I can't tell you what's wrong with these people.

Another thing that's been going on here is we keep seeing and we keep talking about these gag orders and how like he just instantly violates them. And then we saw over the weekend, Judge Chutkin in D.C., earlier in the month, she had issued a, what was sort of described as a limited gag order against Trump. And then Trump appealed it and she halted it pending his appeal. And then on Sunday, she reinstated it because basically he just kept on shooting his mouth off. Being himself. Yeah. And within literally like minutes of her reinstating this gag order, he probably violated again because on truth social, he went off on Bill Barr, who is a witness. against Trump. He doesn't care. You know, they can impose these gag orders all they want.

And we've talked about this before. Short of telling him, it's time for you to spend a night in the clink, nothing is going to make him stop violating these gag orders, I guess. I mean, the fact is, is that it would be wonderful, wonderful, Andy, if once in Donald Trump's miserable fucking life, if he was treated like everybody else. Because I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure that if a gag order was imposed on us and we violated it, it wouldn't even be a question about waiting on anybody's fucking appeal. We would be in jail awaiting that appeal. So it would be great if for all the bullshit talk that we hear from the bench,

that we hear from the DOJ, no one is above the law, then fucking treat him like that. Because he's going to run his mouth until someone is killed, until someone is harmed. And then all of these same people that had the opportunity to make us all safe, we'll be like, I don't know where this came from. Oh my God, how could this have happened?

Do you think Trump had anything to do with it? Like, that will be the refrain. We could stop that, but no. Let Donald Trump continue to talk himself until he's right in the face and until somebody loses their life. Yeah, because the thing is, as you said, you know, when someone does lose their life,

which unfortunately increasingly seems like it's not a remote possibility, like you said, there'll be a lot of hands ringing about how did we get here? How did this happen? Oh, God. There's going to be a bunch of us sitting here going, we know exactly how we got here. We know exactly why this happened because Donald Trump and others in the Republican Party have been calling for this exact shit to happen. And some of them have been clever about the way they're going about it in a way that probably lets them off the hook legally. But it's still very clear what they want to happen. It's already escalating. And we've talked numerous times on this podcast. about different incidents that have happened. And look, I understand, believe me, there are a lot of things that people say that are awful that are not crimes. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess,

depending on how you want to look at this, as you want to look at it as just a pure First Amendment intellectual exercise, then the answer is fortunately. Even Trump seems to, for the most part, know where, like in that sort of instinctive way that mob bosses know, to not specifically say go kill that guy and to just say, you know, take care of him or something like that in a way that can't get back to them legally. All these guys, all these types, they have this, it's this sort of instinctive knowledge of how to walk up to the line without crossing it. So then afterwards they can just go, what?

I never, I never said kill them. I never said set their house on fire. I never said any of that. The thing about Trump is, even though he instinctively knows that, at some point, you have to think. he's going to snap and he's just going to say the words that he shouldn't say. But in the meantime, none of these gag orders seem to have an effect on them. He violates them, again, within minutes. And I really do think these judges, if they're going to impose these gag orders, then they've got to put some teeth behind them. And a $10,000 fine ain't it? No, it's not because that is what he

uses to go to lunch. So like, if you're going to impose any type of financial fine, then it needs to hurt and that money needs to be immediately in the court's hands. So start fining Donald Trump, I don't know, half a million dollars. If he's so super rich as he says that he is, he's a multi-billionaire, then start charging him half a million dollars every fucking time he breaks a gag order and that money needs to go into the court's hands immediately. 10,000 fucking dollars, give me a break. Oh, so disgusted. Election Day is in one week, and while it's obviously an off year for Congress and the presidency, there are important state and local races all across the country. And who better to tell us about them

than the editor-in-chief of Bolts, the great website slash digital magazine that focuses on local government and local elections. Daniel, thank you so much for being here. It's great to be back. Thanks for having me. So Bolts does essential work on this stuff. Like from the minute I wake up to the minute I go to sleep, there's great stuff on this website, but you put together a cheat sheet for dozens of state and local elections ranging from governors to lawmakers to DAs to ballot measures. It couldn't be more complete. So let's go through a lot of the stuff that you have on the cheat sheet. We have a bunch of states that what you call are on the trifecta watch, which is there's a chance that all three, not branches, but the governorship and both houses of the the legislature could end up in the control of one party? What states are we looking at there? And how much might this matter? Oh, you're absolutely right that that's a great place to start. You know, we're all thinking about the presidency already and the primaries that are coming up in a few months. But when we talk about so many issues that people really care about, you know,

from housing to criminal justice to transportation, state governments are really where a lot of things are happening. Five states have their state elections on an off year, on an odd year. so 2023 is when it's happening. And actually, one of the five just already took care of business a few weeks ago, Louisiana votes on an off-off cycle because they voted in early October. And Republicans actually gained full control of the state government there for the first time. I mean, eight years because they won back the governor's seat. A very, very conservative Republican there is going to replace a Democrat who was not allowed to run for third term.

And that itself already is going to have. huge consequences because the incoming governor has, again, very conservative ideas when it comes to things like the death penalty. He also helped Donald Trump try and overturn the election three years ago by filing lawsuits against Pennsylvania, against Arizona and other states. So that still leaves four states that we're watching in a week. And two of them, let's maybe start there, have governor races. And there are Kentucky and Mississippi. So those are sort of the obvious thing to watch, there's a governor's race in each that's getting the headlines. Interestingly, in Kentucky, there's a Democratic governor running for re-election. In Mississippi, there's a Republican governor

running for re-election. And both of those races seem to be competitive at the moment. And the GOP is trying to get control of both of those states, full control. And then, you know, we can talk about them in Mauritana second, but the other two states I would flag are New Jersey, where that Democrats are trying to keep control of the entire state government by keeping control of the state house and the state senate. And maybe the one that a lot of people I've heard of is Virginia. So Virginia right now, Virginia has a reputation of having leaned blue in the past 10, 20 years, but actually Republicans have a shot at gaining full control of the state government in Virginia. If they managed to flip the state senate, that would also have huge consequences for things like abortion rights,

for things like voting procedures next year. So those really are the four states people should be watching next week. So in two of those states, Mississippi and New Jersey, the entire legislature is up for election. What are we looking at there in terms of key races or just the number of key races or what we think, you know, the odds might be that either of those becomes a trifecta? Right. So Mississippi and New Jersey, when it comes to lawmakers, those feel pretty safe. Republican in Mississippi and Democratic in New Jersey. So Democrats are likely to keep the control of the government in New Jersey, though Republicans are still running hard around the state, but you know,

it's a democratic-leaning state. In Mississippi, on the other hand, Republicans are actually extraordinarily likely handy to keep the legislature just because Democrats have not filed candidates in the majority of districts. So it's the same thing happened in Louisiana a few weeks ago. So that also gives you a window into the degree of dominance for Republicans, but also into what's happening with the state parties on the Democratic side in those states. But Democrats already cannot, without a single ballot being counted, cannot win a majority of the state house and state senate there, which is very striking, right? What's interesting there is, despite the GOP dominance, the governor's race in Mississippi, has been interesting in part because there's a scandal that is surrounding the GOP

governor there. A fraud scandal. A lot of his advisors have been engulfed into it. And Democrats have poured in some money to try and really run on that scandal and on effectively a corruption situation that is unfolding in Mississippi. And a Democratic nominee, Brandon Presley, if you were to win, which is possible just based on funding, though obviously it would still be an upset, would be the first Democrat to win the governorship there in, I believe, 25 years. So that turned back the clock in Mississippi. That's the, the scandal in Mississippi is the one that involves former NFL quarterback Brett Farve, is it not? Yes. Yes. So talk about Kentucky for one second before we move on because, as you noted, there's a Democratic governor there, Andy Bashir, and people off the top of their head if they were asked, what party does the governor of Kentucky come from?

I think most people would think it was a Republican, but in fact, that's not the case. That's absolutely right. Kentucky has a reputation and is a conservative state. It has a Democratic governor, and Andy Bashir was actually the son of a former Democratic governor. And he's running for a second term. he came into office at the end of the Trump presidency when Republicans were having some trouble in Senate local elections. He beat a very governor who at the time was very unpopular. And now he's seeking a second term against an ally of Trump,

the current attorney general of the state. He, according to polling, seems to be slightly favored. It has become very difficult for Democrats to win in Kentucky. That would allow Democrats to keep a foothold in the region. In a state like Kentucky where Republicans have such, huge leads in the state house and state senate, the governor also is inherently going to not be able to do as much as elsewhere, right? But it is important to remember that governors keep a lot of authority in their hands. So for instance, within days of coming into office in 2019,

Governor Bashir, the Kentucky governor, issued an executive order that restored the voting rights of roughly 5% of Kentucky residents who had been barred from voting until then, which is just an insane number. About 10% of state residents were barred from voting because of past convictions. And this one executive order, just like that, was enough to restore the voting rights of 5%. Now, that still leaves a lot of people, you know, who are barred from voting. But it also means that there are hundreds of thousands of voters who can vote this month or next week in Kentucky, who were not allowed to vote for life four years ago. That really just captures, I think, how important a race like that can be for how it affects a lot of lives.

That sounds like a really good segue into the topic of voting rights in general and also something that maybe as recently as four years ago wouldn't have seemed like a big deal. And that's election administration. But suddenly in the wake of 2020 and all the attempts to not certify or decertify elections, election administration has become a big deal. So talk to me about election administration and voting rights and beyond Kentucky where these are going to be big on the ballot. I really can imagine that in 12, month, a lot of people are going to be sitting around feeling very anxious about the presidential election. Right. And not just who's going to win, but what's going to happen after and what ballots are being excluded and there are going to be headlines about this county having purged voters and that count. This happens every two years, of course. But I think it's important for people to know that in possibly the most important state in the country when it comes to presidential elections, Pennsylvania, the people who are going to be making those decisions in a year are being elected right now, meaning in a week. And the headlines you'll read and be stressed about in a year

are going to be the product of people who are going to be elected this coming week in Pennsylvania. Again, the biggest swing state in the country. So it's very important to just think about that in this country, it's an unusual and bizarre thing to do in many ways, right, that we elect the people who are going to run elections. And those offices have always been important because there's a lot of things that these offices can do that is better or worse. Obviously, they've come even under more attention since 2020. And Trump's attempt, and, you know, we all remember in December, the anxiety produced by some board of elections, some counties that were resisting finalizing the results of the election, you know, in places like Wayne County in Michigan. So this is really what we're watching in

Pennsylvania next week. And what's really interesting, Andy, and I actually was doing some writing about this myself earlier this month, is that in the last elections that were equivalent to this one, which were four years ago in 2019, the suburbs of, of, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia really didn't like Trump. And they swung blue for the first time in 20 years and 30 years in some places and elected Democratic majorities. And then ironically, the following year, when Trump was running to win re-election, these Democratic majorities in places like Bucks County were quite important in stopping his efforts to game the election. Because when Trump came to the door of these counties, asking them to change the rules on mail balloting, this was during the

pandemic, make it harder to vote by mail to toss out after. and T ballots. These are the counties that we're saying no and that Trump tried to sue unsuccessfully. Now, in all of these counties, and I mentioned Bucks because it's really the one place to look for people around Philadelphia, it's in the suburbs of Philly. It's a very big swing county. Places like that are electing their county commissions, and those are the counties that are going to really have a major role next year. So it's very important to be watching those. And there's a lot of judges races in Pennsylvania as well that I assume will have possible implications regarding voting rules and stuff like that? Absolutely. It's so important, possibly

one of the most important elections next week, at least for people in Pennsylvania, but also for national stakes, is the Supreme Court election in Pennsylvania. It's actually the only Supreme Court election happening anywhere in the country this fall. And it just so happens to be in, again, the most important swing state. And there's only one seat at play. And perhaps one reason that it hasn't gotten as much attention, Andy, is that Democrats are sure to keep a majority on the court this year because they currently have four-two majority Democratic Chief Justice died last year. It was 5-2. So even if Republicans win this coming seat, it would only be 4-3. But that doesn't mean that it's not important for two reasons. One, Republicans, if they win this year, it would really set

them up to potentially flip the court in 2025. And that would have huge consequences for gerrymandering going forward. What we've seen in recent years is that state Supreme Court's flipping has had huge effects on whether states can gerrymander their maps. In North Carolina, the state court flipped and Republicans are now going to win three to four seats in the U.S. House next year as a result. So Pennsylvania's Supreme Court is very important for really the rest of the decade in national stakes. It's also very important for voting rights in the state because there have been voting cases in Pennsylvania that haven't gone party line where a Democrat has crossed over and we are sure to see extremely important lawsuits next year on mail ballots,

on how easy it is to cast mail ballots and how much counties can toss mail ballots. And those are going to come down to the state court. So one thing that's very interesting is that the Republican nominee for Supreme Court in Pennsylvania has tried to not look like an election denier and have a more centrist profile. But she has said, for instance, that she thinks that mail ballots in Pennsylvania have been tied to fraud or the perception of fraud. And just a few weeks ago, when she was asked by the Philadelphia inquirer, who won the 2020 election, she said, I don't know, or I cannot know, I forget the exact quote, but you get

the gist of the sentiment. Yeah. Oh, boy. And again, that's the nominee for one of the seven seats on the state Supreme Court of the nation's biggest swing state, where we know, we can, we can very likely speculate that if Trump loses Pennsylvania, they will be a lot of loss with happening again. in 12 months. Absolutely. Oh, boy. Talk about abortion. I know there's a big referendum in Ohio, and I know there are also other places where abortion in some form and other might be on the ballot.

Absolutely, you know, a huge issue really always, but even more so since Saddam's ruling happened. And we have seen, you know, over the past year and a half, a number of referendums in states that we're looking to enshrine abortion rights, and they've been very successful. But it's specific to Ohio is that unlike a lot of the referendums we've seen so far, which were in states that already allowed abortion access, but we're just trying to further enshrine those rights. Ohio has very restrictive rules at the moment. It's a Republican states. Republicans looking to restrict abortion.

We've actually seen a lot of headlines already right out of Ohio since Dobbs. It's been a state that has generated a lot of those headlines about very, very atrocious situations for people who are caught without access to abortion, right? there's been a huge, huge battle in Ohio throughout the year for organizers to put this measure on the ballot. They had to collect a lot of signatures in the spring. And then they had to fight back a Republican effort to change the rules of referendums in Ohio and make the threshold of passing them higher. That Republican effort failed over the summer. So now we are in the important moment. in a week, Ohio will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution.

You know, it's a big state, huge, huge stakes. And clearly, the polling indicates that abortion access, that the result is probably going to be favorable, but obviously that that's the major question potentially going into next week. Quickly, the other state, I think, where abortion access is most obviously on the ballot is Virginia. Republicans have been surprisingly explicit in Virginia that if they get control of the full state government, you know, which I was talking about earlier, if they take full control of the state government, they will introduce restrictions on abortion. The governor of Virginia has said this.

The Republicans have ran ads on the issue. It's been a bit surprising just to the extent that since Dobbs, Republicans have sort of tried to hide their intentions around abortion rights in many places, have not been explicit about this, have not tried to embrace it as a campaign issue. And it does seem like a lot of Republicans around the country are watching what's happening in Virginia to see if they can get away with a similar set of messages elsewhere. That's, I think, the other big place to watch on this issue next week. And lastly, before I let you go, talk about criminal justice reform, because that's a big concern over at Bolt's, and you all read about it a lot.

What are the big criminal justice issues that we're looking at? Right. So, you know, there's been a lot of changes happening at the local level around criminal justice reform. And in recent years, a lot of progress on the progressive side to electing local officials who want to reduce incarceration. and more and more pushback on the right against those policies. And that is playing out in some ways in selection.

I think Pittsburgh is really where I would invite people to pay attention to. If those are issues and interest, you it possibly has the biggest test for criminal justice reform in the country this fall. It's a big county and it has a DA who's been very tough on crime persona. He's been in office for almost 25 years. Has almost never even faced an opponent. But he lost the Democratic primary in May to a public defender who, ran on a reform platform. And actually, the DA has since flipped parties and is now running as a Republican, again, to keep a seat against this more progressive challenger. And there's been

some national attention to this, Andrew Yang's Poho Party for people who have been wondering what he's been up to since losing the presidential race a few years ago has jumped in to endorse the Republican nominee there. And that's what a race a lot of people are watching. One other thing I would point to, to go back to Ohio, abortion access has gotten a lot of attention understandably, but Ohio is also voting on legalizing weed. That's also an interesting interesting case. It's always interesting to see states that sort of lean a bit red that have embraced marijuana legalization in recent years, and Ohio is another test case of whether that will happen. Daniel, thank you so much for being here. I would encourage all our listeners

to head to boltmag.org to check out just really essential stuff on some very important local elections that we're looking at in just a week from now. Daniel Nishaney, and thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. I don't want to say that it's for the first time. I hope that it's not. And if it is, it sure as hell will not be the last.

Naira Huck, who is a former White House senior director, professor at Syracuse University on narrative diplomacy and war. My God, I think we are all taking that class right now. just jump right in, which is this. The latest is that Trump's poll numbers, according to like Des Moines Register and another poll that was done, is 30 points ahead of any potential Republican candidate. We've known this. Now, we've known this. Now it's like official official as we're heading into 2024. There is nobody else. How does that land for you? Are you even paying attention to the polls? because we're still about to be next week a year out from Election Day 2024. How does it land?

Oh, I mean, it doesn't land good because I certainly would like to think that we have better choices in front of us heading into this next election cycle as opposed to a repeat of the same thing we saw last time, except adding a dash of insurrection and a bottle of war into there, too. So I don't like this witch's brew that's happening right now heading into another election cycle because it's, these are the circumstances that bring out the worst in humans, along with the best in people too. But the best of people tends to go towards charity, humanitarian work, you know, touching each other in a community way. When it comes to politics, that stuff gets weaponized. And people tend to get angry and vote as opposed to get a little more hopeful. And I see on the Democratic side of the aisle that the looming Trump, rather than seeing that as an opportunity to really double down on American values and our coalition and what progressives can really do in this moment, I see Democrat trying to chase after this mythical center voter that for a younger age range, for anybody in millennial and younger, which by the way is going to be the plurality of voters. next cycle. That center right mythical thing simply doesn't exist because younger voters start from such a different perspective. And it's something I experienced seeing the students in my class who, whether they are defined as Republican or Democrat, they all believe in climate change. They all

think it's the biggest crisis. So I see every day the disconnect between what elected officials and power players are saying and doing from what a younger generation of people who do care and want to be involved and are voting in record numbers, what those people care about, that should be prime opportunity for Democrats and for Biden to double down on who we are. But I don't see that happening right now. I don't see it happening. And as a professor, you are educating and guiding folks that are, you know, what, largely in their early 20s is what I would imagine. They're late teens, 18, 19, and then their early 20s. And we often say the cliche is that the children, the young people are the future.

And then as young people age and they get more money and more responsibility, they tend to move towards conservatism. I don't think that we have seen a generation do that in quite some time. And I wonder, like, is there an ire that you feel the sentiments coming from your young students about government in general and how government has failed them, or are they party specific? It is definitely a generational difference and to the degree that they are keenly aware that the people in power right now do not even understand the basic forms in which they communicate. So one of the studies that we looked at was how the people most susceptible to misinformation are boomers

because they were not digital natives did not grow up with this. In a study, looking at having students identify what was misinformation and why, whether it be, oh, well, that could tell that image is Photoshopped or, oh, the URL in that page isn't addressed two out of 10. They figured out. They missed two out of 10. Boomers, older folks, missed eight to nine out of 10. So you have this information environment in which the people who are by and large, still sitting in those jobs, still in charge making decisions are making them potentially based on information that is not truly reflective of what is happening in society and how or even how other people are thinking.

So one of the things that the Russians do really well in which their disinformation is very different than Chinese propaganda, Russian propaganda will take existing divisive issues and exacerbate them. So for example, in the last election, they made sure to flood Facebook. with extreme Black Lives Matter sentiment. So pretending, for example, to be a Black Lives Matter activist that was saying you need to riot and blow stuff up and then pretending to be somebody who is white and keen on white supremacy to exaggerate that. That is what they do. So you come into these platforms, you come into these information spaces and you look and you think there is something going on that's been created for you. It's not actually how people are thinking and feeling. And

the people who are most cynical about that are the people who are not able to differentiate and understand when something sounds fake, when it's not real, and they're being targeted specifically in the ways that they receive information. So there is a, from every one of my students, a sense of like, oh, yeah, we kind of feel bad for them because they don't really know what's going on. But also, what is it with this Congress that can't even seem to understand the possibilities of AI technology or how to regulate it. And you had people sitting in the Senate who were confusing the Twitter founder from the Facebook founder. Let me tell you something. The technology committee hearings, right, whether it be on how to regulate social media

of platforms to differentiate like we're talking about fakes, deep fakes, AI generated content, all of these things. I am not trying to be agist, but we're talking about almost Octanajarians who without their staff don't really actually understand how this technology works. If you don't understand how it works, how are you creating policy that's going to keep us all safe? And I think that to that point, like you have young people looking and being like, they shouldn't be leading us. We're on the precipice, if not actually in the future in a lot of ways, where AI is here. We're not having a conversation about AI. We saw how misinformation and troll farms were used in 2016 and again in 2020.

So we know that it's a political weapon, right? And so I think that to that point, it is a function of where we are and how our government has been set up to allow for young voices to kind of trail off in the distance. And it still be the older generation that is supposed to be creating a pathway to. for the future. Well, Senator Mitt Romney decided he was not going to run again. And what did he say? He said he's not going to run again because a new generation of leaders needs to be able to make the decisions about the world they're going to live in. Now, that does not mean that Mitt Romney's not going to stay an active, healthy contributing to society. Like, there are ways to do that. But that does not mean you get to be president of the United States and run the Senate. This is the

oldest Congress we have ever had. And let's not forget, granted our founding, fathers, they actually lived to healthy ages, they were all really young. So young people are capable of doing quite a bit. But the people that Biden and Trump often dismissed as young are people in their 40s who are married with kids and drowning in student loan payments and cannot afford to buy a home. That is a very American problem right now. And that is not a problem of young people, right? Like quote unquote, the MTV voter. So it is also a matter of perspective of time. parents got to vote for people in their cohort around their same age range. So it is not by default that our two choices have to be people in their late 70s and early 80s, right? Clinton wasn't,

Bush wasn't, Obama wasn't. That's three presidents right there. And to close that off, there are really great ways. And we need seniors to contribute to society and be steady hands. Jimmy Carter is one of the world's most beloved humanitarians because of a statesmanship. He did not do that as president of the United States. Facts. That is true. When we see this moment, though, I mean, there is despair everywhere, right? It is, sure, student loan debt, the inability to buy a home, but the inability to have economic security as you're watching workers across industries strike, right?

Right? Right now. Against CEOs and shareholders that have been able to make a great fortune at their expense. So there's like, there's that aspect. There is collective despair in this idea, this false idea and sentiment that the Republican white supremacist party would like to put up, which is that the yester years are what we need to return to. I want to talk now about Mike Johnson, the new Speaker of the House, after three weeks of a vacancy and continued escalating and infighting of the Republican Party, they elect a man who is anti-Muslim, who is anti-Muslim, who is anti-Muslim, who is, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-woman, who believes that there should be a national abortion ban, who believes that divorce should be illegal, who has been recorded as saying that we are where we are because we abandoned values from the 18th century. This is who they have elected to be two heartbeats away from the presidency. What does that say to you and what should that say to the voters?

Yeah, it's the do not think that the wolf is always going to come on as a wolf. The wolf in sheep clothing is very much a challenge that we face when it comes to protecting civil liberties and the advancement in human progress in general. And I've always been more worried about the deeply coherent younger package version of that than the one that we have with Trump, right? Because it's the deeply coherent. younger version that knows how to wear a proper fitting suit also knows how to get things done. Now, it is very clear that the only reason he was able to advance and become a speaker, even though he had never been seen as anybody within the leadership or political power, was because he's the one that Trump would get behind and would get their crazy conference in line to actually allow us to be a functioning governing body. Now, he's already creating drama within the Republican Party this week saying that he's going to put forward a bill that only supports funding for Israel. Mitch McConnell, not interested in that,

wants to fund Ukraine. And so we're no closer to actually having a functioning government, because all of that is up against the looming deadline of a government shutdown on November 17th. So they have to pass what's known as a continuing resolution on previous year's budget, somewhat in the next like, you know, 15 days, if anything is going to actually work. The administration sent over a request for national security funding, hoping that that would force a conversation because, you know, often helping your allies in war is a thing that people can generally agree on, but the Republicans can't do that right now. I think that what is troubling is that what is still on the table is that Johnson can be ousted by one member. That was

not removed in terms of us having any type of stability, even if that stability is a character out of The Handmaid's Tale. What I find really concerning is that although I tell everyone who listens to me that I do not pay attention to polls, particularly this far out, but I do pay attention to how people comment. And I've been watching the comments being posted on POTUS's Instagram. I'm watching the poll numbers dip well below 40%, which is where he's been most of his first term. And people are angry. People are angry at the United States and what they are seeing as their involvement in these conflicts. They are angry with a president that has no problem, it seems, calling out Islamophobia and anti-Semitism in this country, but not everywhere else.

And support seems to be eroding. And I want to get your thoughts on, if you're looking in a crystal ball, how you see this playing out. if there isn't some type of course correction that centers our humanity, our collective humanity, and not just profit and known allegiances and waning democracy. I am concerned about voter enthusiasm in this next election, which is why I said that they're those who are angry about what America looks like and the types of things America stands for, and they tend to get angry enough that they vote. the ones who feel disaffected and that the government really didn't do enough for them

or that our government is failing and standing up for a set of values that they believe are, you know, this is what our country should be and should stand for. If those voters stay home, then I think our country is going to be in trouble. And I say that as the part of the bigger discussion of the miscalculation of where America is right now, Wall Street Journal had a poll last week and that was widely covered. that showed how that adage of as you age, you become more conservative, right? If you're liberal and if you're young and conservative, you have no heart. If you're old and liberal, you have no brain. That adage no longer applies because the starting point is so far what used to be called the left that they're moving center. And the center is now so much more steeped in a sense of justice, fairness, human rights, what systems should look like. It's, part of why we're seeing a younger generation ally themselves and unionize, right? We're seeing solidarity movements that cut across racial and religious lines. All of these are good things.

These are things that should make us happy about where society is going, but they are not things that elected officials or politicians have seen as an opportunity, right, as something to lean in on. And I see, like I said, I see it in my classroom every day. I see it in just even the conversations I'm in, about people from across the country. And there's generally a disappointment about where the country is going. And the people who are disappointed are the ones who may stay home and hurt Biden's chances. The ones who are angry and love Trump guarantee they're going to show up to vote. Yeah. This is indeed the conundrum that we find ourselves in. We will have to leave it there today, my friend, but I really do hope that you make the time to join the new abnormal again soon.

Thank you, thank you for allowing me to vent a little bit of my frustration here. But I do want to say truly, truly, truly, the young people will save us. They're great. I love him. Here's hoping. Did your booty. Andy leaving. I'm just, I'm rushing through this because I cannot wait to hear who your fuck that guy is.

It's an oldie but a goodie. You know, I'll give you a hint. Everyone thinks that he's great because he wears a vest. Everyone thinks that he's totally safe because he wears some type of sporting vest. Any idea? Any idea? No. Morris Day used to wear a vest.

It's not Morris Day? Okay. No. Damn it. It is the one and only governor of Virginia, Glenn Yunkin. Oh, that's definitely not Morris Day. That is definitely not Morris Day. But I do have the time to go through this with you.

right now. I pulled an Andy joke. I pulled an Andrew. I feel so good about them. Can I make the terrible joke that he is kind of the master of the jerk out? So Glenn Yonkin and his team, according to the Washington Post, have admitted, you know, an oops, Andy. They had it. They made a boo-boo. And I don't want anybody to flip out about it. Because, you know, it's, you know, it's. not like our elections are really fucking, you know, closer or anything. But they admitted in the run-up to the pivotal general assembly election that it removed nearly 3,400 qualified voters from the state's roles. Far higher than what the administration previously estimated was just 270. This is according to The Washington Post. And things like this, which we know, we can say are not an accident.

It isn't an oops. It isn't an oops that they knew the actual number and that they lied and said, oh, it was just 270. That's not consequential to the outcome of an election. And it was 3,400. When things like this become obvious and transparent to those that are voting in that state, this should trigger an immediate special election. How is it that you can remove over three, three,

thousand qualified voters from the roster, hold an election where their voices don't count, and then just say, ooh, we made a mistake, but continue going on with business as usual. Just, you know, ceding the path to Republicans to keep doing their fucked up gerrymandering, they're throwing out of ballots, their disregard of voter rolls, and then just being able to turn around and say it was a fucking accident with no repercussions. It's just, I don't know, I don't know, but I will tell you, he's the devil in a vest, not in a blue dress, but in a vest. And this man, just like everybody else that comes out of this party, they have one goal in mind, and it is to silence and erase the voters who they don't like. They want a society

where they are the ones that get to pick who gets to vote and who does not. This was not an accident, this was intentional, and the people of Virginia should be fucking outrage and should call for a new election. So for that reason, this best wearing MFer is my fuck that guy to start out the week. I like that you said MFER immediately followed by fuck that guy. Yeah, I know. Sometimes, you know, the MEPR hits too heavy. It's true. It's true. I do want to say, Danielle, I think you're being very one-sided here. I think you're not giving the listeners all the facts. For instance, you fail to tell them that Yonkin's secretary of administration says that the governor is deeply concerned about these errant removals.

Oh, good. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. And I think that is proof that there's two sides here, Danielle. And yes, they made a boo-boo and 3,400 people got an alley. But he is deeply concerned about this. And that's really, I think, all that matters. That is all that matters. Thank you.

I will put their concern in a... a bottle next to their thoughts and prayers. Yeah. Andy, so who are you kicking off this good, good week with your fuck that guy? On Sunday, or Saturday, I guess, we found out that Matthew Perry died, 54 years old and apparently drowned in his hot tub, and as of now, they're still pending results of an autopsy. The fact of the matter is, and the point is that we don't know what happens. happened and obviously he had a long and very public history of drug and alcohol problems that he

worked very hard to try to overcome. And I'm not going to speculate that that had anything to do with his death because we just, we just don't know. I'm just stating that as a fact. And to reiterate that we don't know, but the fact that we don't know didn't stop a whole mess of people on the right from immediately trying to tie this to the fact that, Perry was pro-vaccine, pro-COVID vaccine. A bunch of people on the right, a guy named Robbie Starbuck, who has, you know, three, four hundred thousand followers on Twitter, immediately posted. Matthew Perry has died at age 54. The call was for a suspected cardiac arrest. While anything is possible, many will point out that Matthew was a big supporter of the COVID vaccines.

So I think it's fair to ask that it be investigated as a potential cause of any cardiac issues, blah, blah, blah. We saw Laura Lumer, one of the luminaries of the Idiot Right, post something similar talking about vaccines. We saw one of Elon Musk's former favorites, at least, cat turd on Twitter, posting Rip Matthew Perry dead at 54 over a picture of Perry in a shirt that said, could I be any more vaccinated? This is a thing. And it's not just limited to Matthew Perry. Anytime someone dies who's not, you know, 90 plus years old, They immediately just start asking questions about vaccines, and it's gross and it's disgusting, and it's obviously got no basis whatsoever in science or reality, but we knew that.

But it's just fucking gross. And all these people are just terrible people. They're all pathetic little creeps. So I just wanted to highlight that and make clear that they need to be fuck those guys for today and for forever. They're just fucking vultures. Do you know? Yeah. And they will.

pray on anything and anyone to twist it into their fucking fantastical belief system that is based in absolutely nothing. There is never a moment for this, but this was not it and shouldn't have been, and they're gross. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production. by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder.

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