The Daily Beast Podcast - What Mika Brzezinski Did When She Read Trump’s ‘Bleeding Facelift’ Tweet

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Trump’s tweet about Mika Brzezinski “bleeding badly from a face-lift” originated from a conversation between her and the former first couple in their bedroom. Really. In this episode of The New Abnormal, the Morning Joe co-host gives her hilarious retelling of the events that led up to this infamous tweet, and exactly how she responded when she found out about it: “I'm talking to Melania about it, woman to woman, then Donald came up and said, you know, Melania has had no work done. She's perfect. I'm like, ‘that's great.’” Then! The National’s Elie Mystal breaks down the Derek Chauvin trial and why it’s unlike any other cop murder trial he’s ever seen. Plus! Why are Matt Gaetz’s Republican enablers just as skeezy? 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 Jongfast 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 upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how we get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon,

and I'm here to make sure everything doesn't go too far off the rails, while we have fun discussions about our world gone mad. And while I take that duty seriously, ourselves, not so much. On today's episode, we have the one and only Mika Bersinski, co-host of Morning Joe, an author of the Know Your Value series, and she's going to tell us one hell of a story about her time interacting with Trump throughout his presidency, that you won't want to miss.

But first today, we have one of Molly and I's favorite people to talk to, the Justice Correspondent at the nation, Ellie Mistal, who's going to talk to us all about the fuckery happening right now. Welcome Ellie Mistal back to the new abnormal. Thank you so much for having me. You are like a favorite guest. In fact, I think every week, I'm like, can we just have Ellie on? The fact check says true, yes.

And Jesse's like, we can't just have him on every week. And I'm like, but he knows so much. Stuff. That's true. But all the stuff I know about is horrible stuff. Well, that may be a function of what's happening, right? And not you. Can we talk about the Chauvin trial?

Yeah, I mean, I guess we have to. We're being re-traumatized by this mess every day for four weeks now. I think of you as an expert on, among other things, the law and the Supreme Court and trials in general. what are you seeing? I'm seeing whiteness, right? I'm seeing how it worked. What we're seeing at the trial is what we see at every trial

where a cop is accused of murder. It's a conservative defense by the cops to blame the victim, to cast aspersions on the dead black man's character, to suggest to the jury that they hope is sympathetic that basically the black guy had it coming for one reason or another. And then to, and I want to,

And I want to say hide because it's what lawyers are supposed to do. And then, but to, you know, really latch upon the fact that the law doesn't really make it illegal for cops to kill black people. That's just not, like, we like to say, oh, murder is, it's not illegal. It's not, it's just not illegal for cops to hysterically shoot black people. The legal standard here is so permissive of police violence. it's very easy for these cops to take a walk. Right. Sorry, taking a walk being the scientific term.

Achieving the acquittal after an obvious crime. I heard, and I'm having trouble placing where I heard it, but somebody very smart that I respected seemed to say this trial seemed to be a little bit, though, of a turn in good news that it really is seeming like the police force is like, no, this guy fucked up, which we haven't really seen happen much before. Do you feel that way, or do you feel other? This is the same old bullshit. Maybe you heard it from me.

It may have been. I wrote an article in The Nation where I did talk about the one, I cannot tell you how this trial is going to end. I can tell you what's different. And what's different is the cops testifying against one of their own. Right. Cops testifying against cops is just not something that we usually see. I cannot think of another trial where police was accused of murder. Right.

where the chief of police, where his own chief of police testified against him. I just can't recall a situation where that has happened in America. So what does that mean? There are two things that it could mean. Let's start with the positive. The legal standard at play through all of this, and I've written about this as well, is the Supreme Court case called Graham v. Conner. Graham v. Conner is what sets the national use of force guidelines to the extent there are any.

And what Graham B. Conner says is that you can't judge a cop's action based on the reasonable person standard. It's not what you or I would have done in that situation. It's what a reasonable cop on the scene would have done in that situation. That's the standard for cops, right? They're not required to behave like human beings. They're only required to behave like the least common denominator cop. Well, in most comp trials, other cops are like, oh, I also would have shot that black guy to death. Oh, that black guy definitely deserved to be shot death.

In this cop trial, other cops are testifying to say, that ain't reasonable. Right. That ain't right. That ain't what we do. And that legally is significant. That legally should really be, and I've written, this should be case close. When the chief of police and the police training officers and the police supervisors all say this cop was acting unreasonably, that should close off legal recourse for Derek Scho. So that's the good.

part of this cop testimony. That was my hot take, too, and I have not a lawyer. The cynical way of looking at this cop testimony is that it perfectly feeds into the general police narrative of it's just a few bad apples, right? You've got all these kinds of, oh, it's just, it was just Chauvin who acted against police policy. And it's all, you know, it's individually blaming him as opposed to really looking at the system. You know, I've noted there have been more cops willing to testify against Chauvin, then there were willing to stop Chauvin, because Chauvin had a long history of violence and complaints about his behavior, and he was still on the streets. There were three other cops watching Chauvin kill George Floyd, and they did nothing to stop him.

So, you know, let's... And Chauvin had done this before. Yeah. He had done this to a young boy, right? Molly, if there wasn't video, Chauvin would do it again. Yeah. If there wasn't video, Chauvin would still be on. And that's something I want people to really hone in on because it is to me one of the problems with whiteness in this country.

If there wasn't video, Chauvin would say he was resisting arrest and he was on drugs. The bystanders who still would have been there, even if they didn't have camera phones in their hand, which said, no, no, no, that man killed him, and Chauvin would not be charged. That's just the reality of our world. But for the video, Chauvin is on the streets doing what he did. and so are his three accomplice cops. It's so funny because as someone who's sober, you know, I was reading about the drugs that they said he was on,

and those are drugs that make you very mellow. You know what I mean? Like, they're trying to make it sound, like the defense is so all over the place that they're trying to sort of get him. There's a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the defense case, right? On the one hand, the defense is arguing that George Floyd was the Incredible Hulk, And at any moment, he could have holked up, ripped off his short, and beat up the crap out of these four cops.

If Chauvin didn't keep his knee on his neck, then Floyd would have used his gamma radiation powers to eat all the, like, that's one part of their argument, right? That's why they had, like, that was the whole point of bringing, of their cross-examination of the jiu-jitsu expert, right? Oh, isn't it possible that people who were once unconscious can regain consciousness and kick yo ass? Like, that was actually their defense, right? On the other hand, they got to say that Floyd was some pathetic drug user who was teetering on the brink of an overdose and that Chauvin didn't really do anything. It was really the drugs, the alleged I ate too many drugs, which is not what George Floyd said, but what the defense was trying to literally gaslight the jury into thinking that he said, that Floyd was some kind of, you know, adult drug addict who was, you know, teetering on the edge of life. before Chauvin even showed up. It's a contradiction.

So when it comes to terrifying cops who kill unarmed black men, Republicans have an innocent till innocent, but when it comes to Republicans like Matt Gates, let's talk about Matt Gates. Not guilty until proven guilty. And even then, still not guilty. One of the things about Republicans that one has to realize.

It's not that they cannot see their hypocrisy. It's that they don't care. Right? Like the Republicans know that Matt Gates is dirty. They don't care. They just don't, this is a party that does not care, especially when it comes to sexual assault, sexual misconduct, and generally disrepresent.

respect of women, right? They don't care about respecting women. They certainly don't care about violating women. This is just not the party that thinks that's important. And we see it all the time. We see it when they support a president who was a former president now, who was accused by 25 women of sexual assault or misconduct, and one woman accused him of rape. They didn't give a crap about that. We saw that they didn't care when they put an alleged attempt to rapist on the Supreme Court without conducting a thorough investigation into those charges. They just don't care. And that's something that I think non-white women notice that. I feel like Republicans could have like a new motto, which is like crimes against women.

Are they really crimes? Yeah. And they tell them themselves, right? They tell them themselves about how they think sexual politics is supposed to work. They tell them. themselves in terms of how they big dating is supposed to work. I mean, one of Matt Gase's defenses for, let's remember here, sex trafficking and statutory rape. One of his defenses to a charge of sex trafficking and statutory rape is, you know, before I was engaged, I was just a monk. Right. That's what the way of your fence. You know, I also am not a monk and yet have not had sex with 17-year-olds after enticing them across state lines and Venmoing them tuition. Yes.

I mean, I'm waiting for what his defense changes to that Venmo's theme is that it's for minor transactions. I mean, I have to say the whole thing is pretty incredible. And the people who are defending him, you know, like a Glenn Greenwald, who is now the biggest Republican in the entire world, oddly. You know, they're saying, well, like, 17 is the age of consent in some states. And so, right? I mean, always winning.

Always winning. That's the defense. Right. I mean, why is this the hell that Republicans want to die on? It makes no sense. Sorry, I said it makes no sense to me, and that's not true. It makes a lot of sense to me because they're Republicans. And again, it goes back to this fundamental, they don't care about these crimes against women.

They fundamentally don't get it, right? When they say that it's all locker room talk, right? Right. It really goes to what Republicans say in a locker room, apparently, because it's not what I say, right? It's not who I hang out with. You know, I don't have friends who are showing me naked pictures of their sexual conquests at work. I just, that's not something that's happened to me. Part of part of that is because of who I choose to associate with versus who Republicans

choose to associate with. I think Alexandra Petrie actually had so far the best article on the entire Gate saga when she wrote this is the whole showing the pictures. That's the kind of thing that if it happens at all should really only happen

once. Because when you do it once, the person you show the pictures to should be like, you are a weird, sick person. Get that out of my face, right? But clearly that didn't happen to Gates. Clearly, he was in an environment where that kind of behavior was permissive. And that environment is the Republican Party. Right.

I also think fundamentally, though, if you think about it, he's in an R plus 22, right? Ruby Red District, the Florida Panhandle, anyone with an R next their name can get elected in that district. So why are Republicans keeping him? Right. Like, he is a gift to the Democratic Party. He is the MTG of the alleged sex traffickers. So, like, why are they keeping him? There's only one thing that Republicans are actually afraid of, and that's their own voting.

Right. That's the only thing that scares them, their own base voters. Democrats are not like that, right? Democrats are not worried about what AOC and her fans are going to do when they disrespect AOC. They don't care, you know? They don't lose sleep at night wondering what the hard left is going to do to them at a primary. Republicans, all they care about is what the hard right and the Klan right and the MAGA right is going to do to them in a primary. Right.

And so they are worried that by not embrace, that's the thing, it's not enough to just be like, ew, go away. They're worried that by not embracing gates, the other sick people in their base, the other sexist, racist, racist, and misogynist in their base will take that as an indication as that they're rhino. Right. Respecting women makes you a rhino in that party. And so that's why Gates has institutional support for his apparent alleged crimes. I also think the video of them making the fake IDs is pretty bad. You know, if you're a congressman, maybe don't make fake IDs for teenage girls you're having sex with just an idea. Now, let's talk about another bright line, shall we?

I don't know if you know about this, the former guy. But the former guy, he called Cocaine Mitch a stone cold loser and a dumb son of a bitch. Show me the lie. And he said it to a group of Republicans. And then after that, those same Republicans gave him a silver bowl that is a made-up award called the N-R-S-C, it's the first one of its kind and likely the last, champion for freedom award, which gave him a little bowl, which made his hands look. Actually, the bowl must be so small because his hands looked normal-sized. So what do you think? Republican Party gone awry,

ours in disarray? Let them fight. There's nothing wrong to me with Republican-in-fighting. I love it. To be honest, Lolly, I don't care. I mean, I just, I don't, I refuse. The thing that I won on November 3rd, and then again on November 17th, and then again, on December 12th, that I won. And then on January 6th. Right, like five or six times. Right.

Is the privilege to know that he is unimportant. The former one is unimportant. And all he can do right now, his only value right now, is making things harder from the collection of sycophants in his own party. So I love that he thinks that Mitch is a loser, and I love that he thinks that Nikki Haley is great, because him thinking that Nicky Haley is going to make it easier for us to beat Mickey Haley if it comes, if we have to, right? I just need to correct you a stone-called loser. The reality is that all of these Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, signed up for this for power.

They were willing to take the humiliation that Trump brings, that Trump continues to bring to them in exchange for power. That was always the deal. Their ongoing humiliation, their ongoing debasement just furthers the point that these are not people who have, I think the scientific word is dignity. They don't have personal dignity. they just have a disgusting thirst for power. That's all there is. It's power for power's sake. It's not power to help anybody, right?

It's not power to save anybody. It's power for power's sake. Yeah, I don't think helping people was ever on this agenda here. Not even the collection of racist and misogynist and deplorables and horrible people in their base. They're not in it for them. I'm trying to help those people. They want the power for the power's sake. And they're mad about the sneakers.

And Dr. Seuss. And Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss is the biggest, is the thing that they're worried about canceling. They'll cancel Delta. Yes. They'll cancel baseball. They'll cancel Coca-Cola. They'll cancel companies if they speak out for justice.

But what we should really be worried about is six Dr. Seuss books that I swear to God, nobody's read. Yeah. Being taken off the shelves by the publisher. Can we talk about Supreme Court for a minute because there were sort of one and half decisions? Can you explain to me how that works? Well, the larger issue here is that there's this shadow docket as it's dubbed by the insiders. Can you explain to people who didn't go to law school what that means? Yeah. So most court cases are supposed to have a case and then you have an argument that's now on the radio and the lawyers argue for an hour and then the judges go and they deliberate and

they write an opinion and there's a majority opinion and it's a court case. It's a Supreme Court case. It's what you heard in Obamacare or Roe v. Ways or something like that. There's this other kind of Supreme Court case that is basically appealed on kind of an emergency basis. They don't hear arguments about it. They just read the briefs of those arguments. And they issue opinions whenever they want, sometimes without explaining why they issued an opinion, just, you know, motion denied or motion accepted, without any kind of argument or discussion, mainly designed so that people don't notice what they're doing. And it works because a lot of times people don't notice what they're doing. They don't, you know, when you see these always, always, always terribly wrong lists about who's

more conservative and who's more liberal, those lists are always wrong. You should never pay any attention to them. But one of the reasons is that they don't always count these shadow docket cases where the judges are making major decisions, but not doing it in the formalistic way. Some of these just don't even count those cases. So the shadow docket is a way for the Supreme Court to really change, have kind of a more immediate than usual impact on the law without a lot of people knowing and without the court having to give its reason. And that's what we saw last, that's what we saw last week. That's what we've seen a couple of times now during the pandemic. The Supreme Court has used its shadow docket to knock down COVID restrictions. Last week was another. there was a restriction and they said, oh, but it applied to a church or a gathering so you couldn't do it. And it basically took away the CDC recommendations. They've been doing this throughout the pandemic. They did it a lot during the election season where they would knock down various rules designed to make it easier and safer to vote.

The Supreme Court used its shadow docket to knock you down. So there's no like John Roberts said. It's just a per curiam that means unsigned opinion, you know, knocking down a restriction without an explanation. That's what they did last week. And it's one of the things I've written about this, too, in the nation, actually have the cover story this week of the nation, about this, that if you care about something as basic as having the right CDC recommendations,

having people have to follow those CDC recommendations, and certainly giving money to people who have been affected by the pandemic, you're going to have to pack the Supreme Court, because the Supreme Court has shown itself fairly concerned. to be against COVID regulations and to be against, you know, emergency pandemic measures. They've done it on the shadow docket so people kind of don't know how anti-COVID amelioration to Supreme Court is. But the six of the justices on the Supreme Court are like one step beyond anti-vaxxers, right? Like they're not, like they're just one step removed from that kind of anti-science.

viewpoint on the world. So it's many of these CDC regulations that we've heard about, when they're able to get themselves in the Supreme Court, they lose. Right. And that's what happened to. So this week, they decided to overrule California's COVID restrictions when it came to churches. Do we think some of that is because they're a super conservative Supreme Court? I think there are two reasons. One is because there's a super conservative Supreme Court. But two is because it's a religious fanatic screen. Right. Yeah, that's what I thought.

Like people, you know, what makes a Republican justice at this point? Right. Right. And one of the things that makes a Republican justice is a very hardcore Catholic, not just Catholic belief structure. Amy Coney Barrett being the most recent and most obvious example. But Brett Kavanaugh is a religious ideologue. Sam Alito is maybe the biggest religious. ideologue, at least until

Amy Coney Barrett showed up. We don't know how much her personal views are going to influence her decisions, but if there are anything close to what she was on the lower circuit, she will eventually overtake Alito, but right now Alito is pretty crazy ideologue. Antenis Scalia was, Clarence Thomas is. I mean,

these are people who who, I'm trying to be nice here, because I don't want to get hit by a bolt of light. But, These are people who have no problem with the establishment of Christian theology as a secular principle. And they act like it time and time and time again. And so one of the games on the right, like if you're a right-wing lawyer, you're trying to get a law knocked down, a regulation knocked down.

One of the games is to try to get it into a religious concern. And I'm not making that up. If you think about it, most of the anti-gay rights decisions are based on trying to find religious objectors, right? Most of the anti-trans lawsuits are based around religious objections. Certainly all the COVID stuff that they're trying to get thrown out are based around religious objections. Right-wing lawyers know that if they can bring a religious objection to our ideologically fundamentally, mentalist Supreme Court justices. They send a much better chance of winning

than if they just bring a regular secular army. It's a problem. And I keep trying to get people to understand. It's going to be a problem for 50 years unless Democrats do something. This is not a problem that goes away. These people are appointed for life. Amy Coney Barrett is my age.

He's really young. Works out. Unlike me. Like, it's a problem. Yeah. No, I know. That's really serious. The other Supreme Court decision, can you just talk to us about? The real decision decision? So they decided to throw out the Trump Twitter lawsuit that he was blocking people on Twitter.

You know, it was whether or not he had to, whether or not he was allowed to block people on Twitter, First Amendment issues. They threw it out on mootness because pro-tip, one of John Roberts's favorite things. to do is to not decide cases. Like it's actually, like he, I think he, like, it's his favorite thing to find a way that the Supreme Court doesn't have to make a ruling and using the technicalities of mootness, which just means that the case is no longer a live issue is how they threw away the Trump lawsuit. Obviously, Trump doesn't have a Twitter account no more.

Right. So we don't have to rule on what he can do with his Twitter account is how Rob is basically the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the of what the court did. That was the decision. Clarence Thomas, while agreeing with the decision, decided to go on a long screen, supported by Neil Gorsuch and Alito, I believe, about how actually, even though yes, yes, yes, this particular case is moot. We need to really rethink about how we regulate, you know, free speech on the internet

and basically made a full-on Josh Hawley, Conservatives are being canceled on Twitter and we've got to do something about it. He went into Section 230, which is the rule that says that companies are not liable for user-generated content. Also note as why the internet works,

he railed against that. He railed against basically the concept that these private companies should have the ability to regulate speech on their platforms. That is something that is coming. That is something that conservatives, for reasons still passing understanding to me,

want to do. They want to make these social media platforms liable for user-generated content because for some reason, they think that that will make these social media platforms allow the kind of racist, sexist, and violent content that the right-wing base likes to post on these platforms. I actually think that it will turn the other way. I think at the point where social media companies are liable for defamation or illegal. or legal liability for user-generated content, they'll just ban a whole lot. They'll just ban more stuff to keep away from liability.

But Thomas has this argument where not only will they be not protected from liability, they'll also be held to a completely different First Amendment standard than a normal publisher or citizen. They'll be treated like a public utility that would therefore require them to allow any kind of violent racist or sexist content that the right being wants to put up. It's pretty scary. Yeah, that is scary. And you know, this is coming from Thomas, and that's, you know, people notice Thomas as the only African-American Supreme Court justice that we have right now. And I like to point out to people that it's not surprising that this is coming from Thomas

because of Thomas's particular views on race. People like to say that he's like a sellout or Uncle Tom or something like that. And that's not, that's not accurate. I mean, trust me, I could spend the rest of my life disagreeing Clarence Thomas. It's not because he's an uncle Tom. He's more like Jigsaw from Saw, right? Clarence Thomas believes that the only way that black people can have real values if they overcome the worst that white people can throw at them. And so then he wants to make sure that white people have complete free reign to do their worst

because somehow that will make black people better. And I'm serious, that is also the philosophy. of the bad guy in the sunlooms. Like, you put people in these horrible situations, and if they cut off their hand, that shows that they want to live. I mean, that is really, really dark. I think he's wrong.

Mika Brzezinski is the co-host of Morning Joe, an author of the Know Your Value series, and she's going to talk to us today about her experience with the former guy and a handful of other thoughts on today's political climate. And if you enjoy this conversation, I have great news. This is only half of it, and the rest of it can be heard on this Sunday's bonus edition of the new abnormal.

To get access to it, be sure to become a member of Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. To do that, head to New Abnormal. That's New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com. So talk to me about how you figured out how to cover the Trump era, because I feel like you had a real shift and you figured out how to do it. And it's fascinating and useful for all of us in media. Well, I had a couple of shifts.

Boy, there were a lot of iterations. And all I can ask is that your listeners have an open mind and you as you edit, try and keep the arc of this story. No, we were. But it's hard for people. I mean, I validate that it's very hard to understand for some people because Donald Trump was at NBC as the host. of The Apprentice. He appeared on our show. We, you know, laughed with him about him being, I think, like America's Lincoln or something or a modernist Lincoln. Like, we would joke about him running for president. I had ongoing conversations with him about his pageants because I hated his pageants,

and it was half joking, half on honesty. Right. I wasn't going to, the guy wasn't going to stop doing his pageants, but I used to, you know, sort of talk about them with him on the air. I think we had lunch with him. We knew him, as a lot of people did. And there was a huge shift when he became the nominee and he started saying things that were unbelievable. And there was a period of shock that Joe and I went through, like, what the hell is going on here? A lot of conversations happened off the air because we were like, what the hell is going on here? And then we started happening on the air. And you'll see that he made a comment about Russia that just gobsmacked us. And in real time, Joe hung up on him on the air. We were like, we're done with you. There were also times when he became president that he felt he could

get us to do stuff for him and invited us to the White House. And we went just like anybody else would go. And we then were back on the air lambasting him. And he and Joe had a fight so loud on the phone that we had a driver in a big black SUV. I had to get out because my ears hurt so badly. And the driver got out because he was so freaking scared. Joe was screaming so loud. Trump was screaming so loud. And I believe this was about the Muslim ban. And it was an ugly conversation. And I believe Trump thought we were like useful idiots. And it took a while for him to understand we were not. During the time that this adjustment was taking place, we were separating ourselves from him. And yes, there was an entire arc in a process. And yes, do I wish I had known he was the ugliest that he appeared became to be

much earlier in my life? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But, you know, when he became the worst president this country has ever seen, I went through several iterations. I went through a period of time where I was saying openly, I thought he was mentally ill. I still think he is. I was given, you know, a lot of pushback and people were like, you cannot, I think even doctors. And I, you know, I know a number of psychiatrists who are like, we refuse to diagnose people on the air and therefore you can't. So I realized like that was probably, I just truly thought I didn't know where else to go with this. I've never seen such evil behavior. I went through that stage.

And then, you know, by the end of his presidency, it was all I could do to get up. in the morning and do the show. It was so painful to watch what he was doing to our country. It was so painful. And, you know, he lashed out at us. He did a tweet about my... Yeah, the tweet. Can we talk about the tweet? Sure.

Because I interviewed, you know, I did, like, the one of the first interviews with, the first interview with this woman, Lisa Page. And she had just been like this continual victim of Trump. Like, every time Trump, yeah. And so I always am curious to know what that's like. For me, that wasn't so bad. For Lisa, it must have been horrible.

He's tweeted about us a lot. Crazy Mika, Psycho Mika, Psycho Joe. I was like something else. What was I? I think there was a great word for me. Like, half true, actually. But anyhow, Psycho Joe and whatever I was. Bleeding badly from a facelift, the way that went down,

I'll give you the TikTok on that, like my ring from CBS. So, New Year, the week of New Year's, I had gone. down to Jupiter, Florida, and I actually had gotten like a thing on the sides of my neck, like I guess they call it like a chin tuck. I had had a rough patch. Listen, man, I've been doing Botox since I was like 28, so I have no. I so much. And my neck was like, I'll send you the before. I'll text it to you. My neck was like turkey. And so I just was like, all right, this is the last thing I'm going to do. It has been the last thing. I can't believe I've actually stuck to it.

you know, life is long. So, you know, I still could change. But anyhow, I was like, this is the last thing, but I'm, my mom actually did it. It was fabulous. But we, like, tightened our neck under our chin. I don't know why I'm trying to downplay the fact that I had surgery. Okay.

So I did. Listen, I mean, I could get, we could do a whole like my, you know, and my mother had a facelift and, you know. I had this neck surgery. And my mom met, my mom, like, was my inspiration. and I told all my friends about it. In fact, really unfortunate side note is that I was on some drugs after I had it done. It was like in and out, but I was super on whatever it was.

They put me on it. And I started FaceTiming all my friends. Joe is like, oh, my God. Take the iPad away from her. And our best friend, Rachel, was like trying so hard to take the iPad away from me. But I'm like, guys, look, look at me. And so it's not like I'm. embarrassed about these things. I'm kind of those women who are like, I want to be open about

everything because I have a platform and because I'm on TV, I don't want people like, I want them to know what's real. Yeah. You know, and sort of, and I've got a lot of wrinkles under my eyes, and I'm not going to do anything about it. They're just going to be there. So this was my choice. It was my thing. And I did it. So four days later, it's New Year's Eve. And Trump is calling Joe. and he's like, where's Mika? He's always obsessed with me. How's Mika doing? Where's Mika?

And he invites, so actually, this is actually the day I had it done. He called Joe. And he's like, where's Mika? Why don't you guys come over? Joe went over himself. And he was like, but where's Mika? Where's Mika? Joe talked with Trump, sat at that table where he used his phone at Marilago.

Right. He sat with, I think, Melania and Hope and Corey were at the table. And he chatted for 30 minutes. the bottom line is we're trying to get an interview. Right. We're trying to get like a first presidential interview. Joe gets bored, 30 minutes later he leaves. Trump keeps calling.

Where's Mika? How's Mika? How's Mika? I mean, we've lambassed. This has been a bad relationship. He can't stop calling. And he can stop asking where I am. And so he's like, come on out.

Come out. We're having a fundraiser. It's New Year's Eve. Bring Mika. And I'm like still by FaceTiming all my friends. Not well. And I'm like, Joe, I'll go, let's go.

And he's like, I really don't think you can go. He's, I'm like, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm a turtleneck. I'm good, I'm good. And so we go. And I've got a turtleneck on in jeans. And there are, by the way, it is facelift central. I know. I'm feeling good at Palm Beach, yeah.

I walk in there, I'm like, oh, I'm not compared to this crowd here at Mar-a-Lago. And so I'm feeling chipper. and less kind of like, I don't know, the feelings women have when they do these things to themselves. So we're like, where's Trump? We need to talk to them. We've got to get the hell out of here. Like, I'm tired. I don't want to be at the hate events.

I hate them. I mean, you find one that I've been to in the past 10 years and you'll be a liar. There's not. There's not one. I'm literally in most rates all the time. I did the events I had to do when I had to do them. And now I don't have to do them anymore. So anyhow, we're like, we're tromping through.

this Mara Lago crowd, and we find them. And I'm like, I really don't feel well. I've, I've sort of, I've got some stuff going on with me, and I'm holding my ears. And Trump and Melani are like, come into the bedroom. Come into the bedroom. And in the bedroom is Barron. And who is the really cute, the tennis player, the female tennis player, Anna Kornikova is there. No, her little sister is there. Okay. So he's like, there's Baron. And there's, Anna Kourn to Kornav of his little sister, I'm pretty sure. And so they're in there, and they're like playing and running out of the room. And Melania and I start talking.

And I do the thing that I do, which is tell people what I've done. Right. I'm talking to Melania about it, woman to woman. Okay? Yes. She's not a stranger to the, to the scalpel. Then Donald came up and said, you know, Melania's had no work done. She's perfect.

What? And I'm like, that's great. So I probably shouldn't. Now I know Joe is going to be really mad at me. I talked about myself and like overshared. And, but you couldn't see. I mean, I really looked very good. I mean, this was a very small thing. And you'd have to like really, really get a microscope out to sort of see. But Melania was curious about it. I am literally still on the idea that Trump said Melania's had no work. Okay. Well, that's what. And he's like, and she's, she's very beautiful. And so I said you're very beautiful.

And so I said, you're very beautiful. How anyhow, we finished talking in the bedroom. Right. I noticed two things, number one, that I'm oversharing and number two, that both sides of the bed they used for the nap, they share a bed. So I'm like fascinated by that right there. And so unless, you know, the kids, I don't know, but that was their bedroom, they said. And so I leave and we don't think another thing about it because the only thing that was annoying is we never really could talk to him about getting an interview. Right. Next thing I know, I don't know how many months later it was. He gets angry because we're being honest on the air.

Right. And he tweets something about Mika and Joe came to Mar-a-Lago, something, something, and she was bleeding badly from a facelift. I said, no way. So the tweet happens just before the end of our show. And I don't know if you've noticed, but Joe tends to wander up like John McCain during a debate. It leads me to doing the show myself. It's long. It's a lot of hours. Joe is in the newsroom. Right. And me and Willie are on the set. And the tweet comes through.

And I see like something weird happens. It's almost like a wave of air went through the room. And everybody got quiet. And Willie is doing this thing where he's tilting his phone away from me. And I was like, oh, no. Oh, no, no, no, no. Nobody's doing the hide the cell phone shit to me. Okay.

someone's texting about me or someone's talking about me, give me that thumb. And he's like, um, and he gives it to me. And I literally laugh out loud uproariously. I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever read. And everyone else in the room, like behind the cameras, stage manager, people in the newsroom, they were like, some of them were just like typing with their eyes open looking like, they didn't even want to like look at me. And they were freaked out. So I end the show and I go downstairs and the newsroom is freaked out. Everyone's like typing. You know what I mean? Like looking at their computers like they're busy. And Joe is like, hi. And I'm like, guys, this is hilarious. We need a response ASAP. This is hilarious. Come on. Let's go. And we go into the office.

It's me, Joe, Alex, and we get Mark Pornblah on the phone. And Lori, who's amazing, Lori a CEO at MSNBCPR. I'm like, guys, this is amazing. Let's think of. I have a response. I have to give Alex course in the credit, but sitting in front of us was my Cheerios box. And on the back of it, it says, made for tiny little hands. And I'm like, what to tweet this picture? Alex is the one who actually picked it up and showed it to me.

And I'm like, oh, my God, thank you, Lord. So we tweeted that picture as a response. And that was her only response. And so we came back on the air the next day. And I was like, guys, I did this to my neck. I think it looks good and the president decided to face shame me. And quite frankly, all I can say is the response to this speaks for itself. Republicans, Democrats, world leaders are all chiming in and saying, no, you've gone too far. In fact, the response to this tweet was so negative that the only thing I really regret is that I wish

the response to other things that he has done would have been as negative. as the response to this tweet. Like, I appreciate Republicans coming to my defense. I appreciate world leaders coming to my defense. But you know what? I wish they had done that to, like, the insurrection or, like, anything else he's done. It would have been better than I really don't care about my face being shamed, except as it pertains to how women are treated.

It's just wrong. But the response was unbelievable. That is such a cool story and so important. You've said, and I have also said this, if Facebook is destroying this country, which it doesn't even seem like a controversial opinion anymore. I know. What can we do? I think Congress needs to, they need to be treated like any publisher out there, and they need to be suable. And until that day, they are going to continue to destroy everything that we have built.

And I don't think they're actively trying to, but I think they have a platform where that is happening, and they are responsible. And listen, great things happen on social media. If you look at the movement of Alexei Navalny and the support of him in Russia as he wanes away in a Russian prison. But what he's putting out there is truth. And truth is being amplified. What about when lies are being amplified? What about when little ads show up in targeted communities that defame someone like my husband or like someone running for president? in a way that is defamatory.

Why is there no accountability for this? Are we going to continue to watch our conversation and our ability to believe truth be decimated by these platforms? I don't think we should. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that's totally right. You have a quote under Twitter bio that says bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances.

It causes compromise and accommodations. So let's cooperate. How can we have this in this world right now? It's a quote from your dad. Yeah, you know that. Yes, that was my dad. Just for listeners. It was almost impossible to have that in the Trump years themselves, but we're still in it.

It is very, very hard. And I have a brother who is a Republican and a brother who is a Democrat. And I speak to my Republican brother about the struggle he has with this party. And he, too, is very worried. Like, how do I fit into this party? I am a conservative. My husband, Joe, is a conservative. These people who claim to own the Republican Party are not conservatives.

And they are following Trump, a man who egged on an insurrection against our democracy. And so it's kind of hard to have a conversation with that as a backdrop. And what I'm talking about is a conversation between liberals and conservatives, Democrats, and Republicans, as we used to know. And that balance is important. I believe that power on both sides is important for a great conversation, a great balance, a great country. But right now, we have extremism, we have racism, we have xenophobia, we have cruelty, we have insurrections, we have constant threat to our democracy. we have people who are emboldened by someone who refuses to respect our democracy, and they continue to do so even now.

He's raising more money than the Republicans for himself, and people still think he's going to give it back to the party. I mean, we have a cult that's not acceptable. There's no way to have a conversation with a cult leader. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely right. This was so great. Thank you so much. It was so interesting.

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Jesse Cannon. Wally Jong Fast. Hello. Who are you going to come down on today? Let's talk about all the people. People who suck. So today, he's the senator from the great state of Texas, but not that senator. Oh, I was thinking of this one for mine.

I'm glad I chose different. Yeah. His name is John Cornyn. He's the only person less charismatic of a Chuck Grassley. Yes, yes, yes. I want to talk about John Gordon because he sucks so much. What did he do, Molly? Let's cut to the tweets here.

I'm going to read you two tweets here. The president is not doing cable news interviews. tweets from his account are limited, and when they come, they're unimaginably conventional. Oh, really? They're too boring for you, John? The public comments are largely scripted.

Biden has opted for fewer sit-down interviews with mainstream media outlets and reporters, and then John follows it up, inviting the question, who's really in charge? Oh, oh, you know who's really in charge? Joe Biden. Go fuck yourself, John Corrin.

Cornyn. Fuck you. Go fuck yourself. We long for a president who retweets cat turd number two. Okay? Thank you. All right. Who's your fuck that guy, Jesse?

Well, my fuck that guy is one I'm glad that I'm getting the job to insult today. A person I've hated forever as being a former resident of New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie. Infrastructure. So, Governor Christie, not always the tweetiest, but, you know, he's got a mouth on him that loves to rile up people who really hate things. and he has tweeted, President Biden needs to level with the American people about the fact that his infrastructure package is a 2.25 trillion liberal wish list

with only 25% being spent on traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges, tunnels, and rails. Be honest with us, Mr. President. Now, this is yet again, I think like some of my other fuck that guys, very rich coming from the guy starting to care about infrastructure who shut down a bridge to make sure that he got some revenge on some rivals,

got away with it. And also pretty rich from the debate prep specialist that came on to debate President Biden and help Trump. He did a great job with that debate. He did a great job catching COVID helping with that as a matter of all he did

a good job with. That's right. But possibly the worst debate performance in modern history. But, you know, like truly too as well. Be honest with us, Mr. President. You sat there until the end helping this guy who lied about

fucking infrastructure week every fucking week after week. Get fucking real. Yeah, I think if you're most famous for Bridgegate, perhaps you want to stay away from infrastructure tweets. Yes. 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.

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