The Daily Beast Podcast - What to Expect Next After Texas AG Ken Paxton’s Impeachment

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Texas Observer’s Special Investigative correspondent Steven Monacelli talks Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment problems. Then, climate tech investor Molly Wood joins the show to discuss the impact of the Canadian wildfires. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Special investigative correspondent for the Texas Observer Stephen Monticelli joins us to talk to the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and all the craziness surrounding it. Then we'll talk to Molly Wood, host of Everybody in the Pool, a climate solutions podcast. And she'll talk to us about some of the lesser understood issues of climate change. But first, let's have some fun. Andy, you know, normally we try and start off with something light and funny and ha ha. But these days, those moments are far and few in between. And this story I want to share is probably one of the most eye-opening and jaw-dropping stories that I think that the New York Times has put out as of late with regard to the Republican Party and what they're planning.

So the Heritage Foundation, which folks may know, has been around in Republican circles, putting together lists for new administrations and who should be on staff and who should be judicial nominees and all of these things, going back to the Reagan era. But they are doing something so very different this time around for the 2025 presidential, the 2024 election, but it's called what they're doing is Project 2025. And they have put $22 million behind a presidential transition operation. and it is to begin on day one. Now, the scary thing about this of what I want people to really understand is that this has

nothing to do with Donald Trump. It has nothing to do with any particular candidate. The Republican Party, regardless of who their Manchurian candidate is, the Heritage Foundation, along with several other right-wing groups, have put together a bundle of money to make sure that on day one, they are moving with roughly. 20,000 potential administration officials, many of whom do not believe in democracy, do not believe in government, and their sole purpose is going to be to kill our government and democracy from the inside out. Do you know how we normally look at the first 100 days of a presidency, how much they can do?

Well, the Heritage Foundation is taking that to a significantly different level of how much they're going to be able to destroy on day fucking one. And this, again, has nothing to do with whoever the fucking nominee turns out to be, whether it's Trump, DeSantis, or hell no way, Nikki Haley. It is incredible the infrastructure that they're putting together in order to decimate, decimate our democracy from the inside out. Okay. But what you left out from that, Danielle, is the democratic comeback to that, which is... Hold on. Let me think. Let me think. Let me think. Let me think. Nothing. Oh, that's why you left it out. Yeah. This is a little terrifying. And to me, it kind of mirrors Maga

conservatives in particular have been doing at state and local levels, which is realizing that there's real power in infiltrating school boards and county governments and town governments and state governments, obviously as well, but I'm talking about even more granularly on a local level. And this feels a lot like that. This feels like someone there has figured out that while it's great to have for them to have like a Donald Trump as president or a Ronda Santis, the key for them is to control those administrations. And if it's not one of those two guys, to still control, if it's, I don't know, I'll say this for a laugh, Nikki Halley. But they would still still. be in position to fill these positions. And like you said, these are going to be people or jobs

that are supposed to be dealing with, you know, making the economy better, defending us from foreign threats. And it ain't going to be that. It's going to be an ideologically driven bunch of MAGA folks who basically want to crawl into your bedroom and outlaw shit you do on your free time and engage in, God knows what, against people of color and queer people and Jews and women and whoever else they decide needs to be othered on a particular day. And, you know, what's terrifying about this to me is the fact that there's no sort of democratic response to this. There's no, and I get that because, look, I'm not here to sing the praises of the Democratic Party.

I don't think it's all that good. It's just that it's our best option. But the Democratic Party doesn't play that game for the most part. And that's generally a good thing. I don't want a bureaucracy staffed with ideologues. I want, if you got to staff a bureaucracy, that's where you need the people that just makes shit happen. You know, I don't want people with a strong ideological bent in those positions.

This is like basically a war on democracy. A hundred percent. And I just, I want to read for folks what Kevin Roberts, the president of the heritage, Foundation said. This is in the New York Times article, and it reads like this. Quote, in 2016, the conservative movement was not prepared to flood the zone with conservative personnel, Dr. Roberts said. On January 20, 2025, things will be different.

This database will prepare an army a vetted, trained staff to begin dismantling the administrative state from day one. Yeah, exactly. Thanks to Dr. Roberts for saying it better than I did and for making their, you know, intentions extremely clear. And this is why I'm saying that there are times when the Democratic Party needs to say to itself, look, this ain't our shit. We're not looking to dismantle the administrative state, but we need to have an answer for if and when they try to do this. And they don't. What bothers me is I question whether they're even thinking about it because I often feel like the Democratic Party doesn't think very far in advance. And I think the Diane Feinstein situation is a perfect example of that. Like, it seemed like nobody really thought about what her absence would mean until she was not there. And I'm sorry, when you have a member at that age, you have to plan for shit like that. And it feels like they didn't. This feels sort of along the same line. It just seems to me that they are seeding this territory to places like the Heritage Foundation and to, you know, MAGA-ism in general.

And that their solution is, you know, as it always is for them, vote. And it's, you know, make sure they don't win. Great. Obviously, I hope they don't win. But, man, you look at the electoral. Look, I don't think the Republicans are going to win a majority of the votes. But that doesn't mean they're not going to win the presidency. And that's the thing that I feel like you're so right is that for the last several years,

Donald Trump's administration and Magadam has been like Jurassic Park, just testing the fucking fences of our democracy to find where all the weak points were. What could be infiltrated? Who could be bought? What could be mowed over? How far can you push something before somebody knows that it's broken? And here we are in this place where they have been testing. They test out their new fucking cruel policies in place.

like Florida with Ronda Santis and Texas with Greg Abbott and throughout the South, they see how far they can go to just outright ban abortion. How far can you go to criminalize the LGBTQ community? How far can you go to taking on private companies that don't bend to your will? How far can you go to protesting and trying to boycott and overturn inclusivity policies like at Target and Bud Light. How far can you go? And it's like all of this is fucking happening.

And by the way, started with the fucking vest-wearing Glenn Yonkin, who used critical race theory and parental choice to win back Virginia after it had been blue for well over a fucking decade. But because Democrats had no response to the culture war that he was starting in a very blue state that Democrats had worked time and time again. Barack Obama had won twice. I'm just saying like there was no response. And so here we go again, but this isn't just a quote unquote culture war. This is about dismantling government, democracy, as we know it, after over 240 some odd years. Yeah, I might even argue that this is the

real culture war that they're trying to do here. What they want to do is completely remake the administrative state, the bureaucracy, whatever you want to call it. I know they like to call it the deep state because it sounds nice and conspiratorial. And I really think anyone that's ever had to deal with a bureaucrat knows that that's not on their mind at all. So they want to completely overturn the culture that we have sort of set up where the administrative state's job is, again, to run shit and not to make policy, not to look at different ways of denying rights to people. I like your Jurassic Park analogy or metaphor a lot because they really are. They're dinosaurs. Somehow they have come back to life. We thought maybe they were gone, but somehow they've been

brought back to life. I think what you said was absolutely perfect about how, you know, that they've been prodding the defenses and looking for weaknesses and stuff like that. And to me, the Democratic response has been a lot like, this is how I feel about the TSA. And I don't even mean so much now, but in the immediate post-9-11 era and the years after that. The TSA would have, you know, they would be sitting there. And then someone would try to do something. with, I don't know, with their shoe. And then the next day, the TSA would say, okay, now you have to take your shoes off when you go on a plane.

And it's like everything is reactive and nothing was sort of, you know, thought out in advance or gamed out, you know, and it was like, well, maybe someone could use their shoe as a bomb and we should make you take your shoes off. They have to wait until it happens in order to come up with a policy. And I'm not, it's an imperfect analogy because I really dislike the TSA. and I think most of their rules are garbage. But it's the same mindset is what I'm getting at. Like, the Democrats don't think of these things in advance and they don't think that maybe this is what

they're going to try next. We should get ahead of that. Right. We should maybe play some offense for once. What they do is they're completely reactive and after something happens, they say, oh, we have to make sure this doesn't happen again. Well, it's already happened the one time. And you know what? All it takes sometimes is the one time. Look, I don't think January 6th ever could have toppled our government, but man, shit could have been a lot worse than it was. And that's the kind of things you have to think about in advance. That's sort of what, you know, people are being paid to do at places like the FBI and Homeland Security and in presidential administrations and in Democratic think tanks and stuff like that. Like, you're supposed to think in advance. What if this happens? What would

our response be so that you're not having to respond constantly on like an ad hoc basis and being completely reactive is, oh, we never thought of the shoes. Yeah, y'all better take your shoes off from now on. And that's what their mentality seems to be. And that's dangerous. And that's the problem is that Republicans are always thinking 20, 30, 50 years ahead. We're here in this point because Republicans had been plotting to overturn Roe v. Wade, have been plotting to turn the Supreme Court into a right-wing juggernaut for three-plus decades. decades. The judiciary was always important to them. It's why Leonard Leo has a job and they created the Federalist Society. What was the fucking progressive and democratic response to Leonard Leo?

Like, where the fuck is ours? There will always be coordinated evil at play. It doesn't matter what country you're in. It doesn't matter what century we're in. It will always be. There will always be that kind of breakdown and dichotomy. And it's just like, if you know that to be true, then you must build the infrastructure in order to support the future you want to live in. You cannot just say to people that voting is the way. Voting is important, but voting is not the only fucking thing, particularly when they are changing out the Secretary of States, when they are putting in fake electors, when they are creating Jerry Mell. and voting suppression policies.

Like, how will you tell the motherfuckers that voting is the only way? Yep. It's not. No, it's not enough. And look, you can harp on how important voting is, you know, all the damn day long. But like you said, they're dismantling that system as well. And every example you just named, gerrymandering, voter suppression, trying to limit mail-in ballots, anything they can do to make it harder to vote. Because they know they generally don't win in the court of public opinion.

And the only way they win is to stack the decks. It's to stack the judges. It's to suppress the actual votes. And now it's this. This is all of a piece. And I was working in Hollywood. I was at the Directors Guild when 9-11 happened. And one of the things the Bush administration did after that was they gathered a bunch of,

I want to say directors and writers, maybe producers as well, to sort of game out possible future attack scenarios. And they got pretty well laughed at for doing that. And I always kind of thought, you know what? That's not the dumbest idea in the world. Like it's a little scary that they can't do that themselves at the CIA and places like that. But all right, you know, talk to some creative people who have made movies about things like this and get some ideas. Think outside of the box. And I am not saying the Democrats need to go to Hollywood and talk to directors and writers.

I do think there's that kind of mentality, though, that's needed where forget about reaching across the aisle. Like those days are gone. They might come back. I'm not saying they're gone for good. Right now they're dead. Yeah. You know, we may get a zombie version of it at some point. It may come back to life, but it's dead right now.

And instead, you have got to start working. You need people who can think like them is what I'm saying. And I'm not saying you want to do the things they're doing. Again, I don't think you should be flooding the zone in the administrative state like that. But you need to have people sitting there going, what if they try this? What if they try that? And no matter how outlandish, the idea is, create a fucking plan for it.

Yeah. And we've seen in the last seven years that no matter how outlandish and ideas, they'll probably try it. So start thinking like that. Just start thinking outside the box and stop pretending that we still live in a world where Democrats and Republicans in the House, in the Senate, whatever, are all best friends outside of work. We can agree to disagree.

And then we go get a beer. We go to a meal afterwards. You know, those days are gone. And stop pretending that they're not. not and start acting like they are. Yeah, we're at war. They use war language and they use militaristic language about what it is that they want to do. And I'm not saying that Democrats need to be as mischievous, as undermining, but they need to absolutely create the playbook to beat back what Republicans are preparing for. And you need to be doing that. Not in the moment. You need to be

thinking 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years down the road because they're not going to stop. And it doesn't matter who is at the head because they're going to continue. They have one mission and one mission only and it is to destroy democracy. Yeah. I mean, you look at the Republican field. Trump, shit. Trump has made no secret of the fact that he wants, as far as he's concerned, everyone who works in the government is a member of the deep state.

DeSantis, I don't think will be any different than that. All he'll want is loyalists around him. I think the only person on the Republican side that I would actually trust not to do this is someone like Asa Hutchinson, who, you know, is, I believe. has surged to like 0.2%. So I don't think we're going to be seeing a president Hutchinson. And look, I'm not defending him. I don't agree with him on most issues.

But I do think he is sort of an old school Republican and not a maga type and not even a pretend maga type like Nikki Haley. My point is any pretty much any other of these potential candidates, including like you said, Yonkin, who if he decides to run, you know, a lot of people talk about him. I was like, well, he's a good moderate candidate. No, as you correctly pointed out, he got. where he is by demonizing critical race theory and by making shit up, he's no different in that regard than Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump. So yeah, none of those people should be trusted at the head of a

state to not do this same shit that Heritage wants to do and that MAGA world in general wants to do. So absolutely, the Democrats have got to get off their ass and start planning for this shit. And they have to plan for what might happen if, God forbid, the Republican. bookings win in 2024. 100%. Politically speaking, the great state of Texas has seen some things lately that I think can be summed up as weird shit. Maybe most notably the impeachment of its attorney general, Ken Paxton.

Here to tell us all about it is Texas Observer Special Investigative Correspondent and publisher of the non-profit literary publication Protein magazine, Steve Monicelli. Steve, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me, Andy. Absolutely. So, okay, I know you haven't been specifically covering. the Paxton beat. But give us a general rundown of the situation. How did we get here? How did we end up on May 27th with the Republican-controlled Texas House voting 121 to 23 to adopt? I think it's 23 articles of impeachment.

Did Paxton mess with Texas or something? Oh boy. Messing with Texas is never a good idea. I've heard. And in that sense, you could say that Paxton has indeed messed with the state of Texas. It's highly unusual to see Texas Republicans overwhelmingly support an impeachment vote for the Attorney General. But to understand how we got here, I think people need to go back all the way to 2015 to understand exactly who Ken Paxton is. He was first elected to Attorney General in 2015. Just so happens to be the same year that Mr. Paxton was indicted by a state grand jury on felony charges for securities fraud. which I believe bears up to a 99-year prison sentence. And that was sort of the first of a long list of controversial incidents involving Mr. Paxton

that have, you know, tailed him throughout his entire tenure as Attorney General. That case is still ongoing. And actually, just this month, it was finally decided where the trial would take place in Harris County after a long fight over the venue for that trial, Mr. Paxton was seeking for it to be in his home turf of Collin County, Texas. So that was sort of the first red flag in terms of Mr. Paxton's tenure as Attorney General. Prior to that, he had been elected to the State House in 2002 and later a state senator in 2013. Let's fast forward a bit, five years later. So after a long, you know, series of court battles over the securities fraud case, a new issue emerged in the Paxton saga.

That was when several high-level assistants in Paxton's Attorney General's office accused him of, I quote, bribery, abuse of office and other crimes. Pretty damning, to say the least, in terms of allegations. Four of those former members of the Attorney General's office sued the Office of the Attorney General. alleging that Paxton fired them for basically blowing the whistle, which they argued as a form of a legal retaliation under the state's whistleblower act. And they said they had been fired several weeks after bringing their concerns to the FBI and the Texas Rangers. Around this time, not much longer after that, a few months, that happened in October 2020. In December 2020, this is just some context for who Paxton is. He filed an unsuccessful lawsuit challenging the 2020

election. And on January 6th, he spoke at a rally in Washington, D.C. in support of Donald Trump. So those were certainly some concerning developments in Paxton's saga. And they factored into the recent impeachment, but things got really juicy in terms of the involvement of one man named Nate Paul, who is allegedly at the center of the corruption scandal in Paxton's office. So to give you a sense of how quickly things have moved in recent months, that news of the, you know, alleged corruption emerged three years ago. In February, DC-based Department of Justice investigators took over the corruption probe for Ken Paxton. Around that same time, Paxton agreed to a tentative settlement with the whistleblowers to the tune of $3.5 million. But the catch there was that he had made it so that the settlement payment was content. upon the state government approving the funds. What happened shortly after that was that the House indicated they had no desire to approve this payment. And things tumbled out pretty quickly after that. In May, Texas House investigators secured the impeachment of Attorney General

Ken Paxton with bipartisan support. It was an overwhelming vote. And at the center of those impeachment charges are his relationship with Nate Paul, who I already mentioned, an Austin real estate investor, and a major Paxton donor. And these articles impeachment also include a number of salacious allegations such as Nate Paul hiring, a woman who Ken Paxton was allegedly having an affair with, amongst other improper actions. And so now we are in June. The House committee has issued a number of new subpoenas at the end of May. And some recent analysis from the Dallas Morning News shows that many of the subpoenaed entities are, as they write, inextricably linked to the personal and political finances of both Paxton, Ken Paxton, the attorney general, and his wife, who is now a state

senator, Angela Paxton. And she represents Collin County, where Mr. Paxton has been hoping for his securities fraud trial to take place in. And, you. no longer will. So now we're at the stage where after having been impeached, the state Senate of Texas will have to conduct a trial. Some really powerful big name lawyers are involved, both on the prosecution and defense side. But there's some questions around exactly how this will shake out. I'm not going to pull out an eight ball and say, I know it will happen. But one thing that is raising some red flags for people is that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who leads the Senate, gave Ken Paxton a $125,000 loan pretty recently that I believe Ken Paxton

actually only recently reported after he refiled an adjustment to some campaign finance records. Funny how that seems to happen. Yeah. So, you know, now we're at this place where someone who is quite closely tied to Paxton, at least in, you know, this financial sense has some attachment to Paxton. Paxson has a liability towards will now be. one of the people deciding his fate along with his wife, who is apparently also under investigation. So I'm going to pause there because I know that's quite a twisted tale. Yes. But to sum it all up, our top cop in Texas has been impeached and is under multiple investigations

for various forms of corruption and fraud. Okay. So I have so many questions stemming out of this. I'm not sure where to start. But I guess my first one is, can you paint me a word picture of the dinner conversation between Ken Paxton and his wife? Oh, my God. There are details here that involve him having an affair. And she is sitting in the Senate.

And I'm assuming, I don't know, like, are there any conflict of interest statutes or rules down there? Or is she going to be sitting, you know, basically in judgment of her husband? So to actually try to attempt to answer your question, maybe it was should we come out as polyamorous? Ah. All jokes aside, no, I don't believe there's anything that would necessarily force her to recuse herself. As I understand it, it's not unlike how other recusals are supposed to operate. It's kind of on the honor system. Okay.

If I'm wrong about that, legal scholars, you can rip me apart in the DMs and in public and I will have learned something. But I have not seen any reporting to suggest that, you know, she would have some sort of enforced reason to not be involved in that hearing. Okay. Another question I have is the Texas Republican Party, I think it's fair to say, is one of the most powerful GOP state parties, if not the most powerful GOP state parties in the country? Has Paxton run afoul of the powers that be in the party? Is there some sort of schism here? Because as you said, it was, you know, it was, you know, it was. sort of an overwhelming vote to impeach in a Republican-controlled House. Right. There is indeed a bit of a schism within the Texas Republican Party that has become increasingly apparent around a couple of different issues. Right now, we're in the midst of a special session because the way the Texas legislature works, it only meets once every two years. And if they don't

pass everything, the governor can basically say, we are going to keep meeting having another session to focus on certain priorities. Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick are dueling right now about basically a homeowner tax relief plan. And it's really boiled over in ways that isn't really common. Another indicator that there's been some strange sort of feuding and, you know, fighting within the Republican Party of Texas is the removal of Representative Brian Slayton, who was a pretty hard right representative and got caught up in a scandal where he apparently was having an inappropriate sexual relationship with one of his interns. A staffer or an intern.

Either way, it was not good. Yeah. And he is no longer in office. And it was quite a remarkable thing to see that happen. And now this. Whether Paxton has done something specifically to upset a specific person, I can't really say, you know, one of the big sources of feuding in the Texas sort of Republican Party in the government ecosystem is between the Speaker of the House, Dade Phelan and Governor Abbott and some other more hard right Republicans. And Dade Phelan has sort of been cast as Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor calls him California Dade. Also accused of being drunk,

I believe. Yes, yes. That is one of the last big things that Attorney General Paxton did right before the sort of announcement of the intention to impeach him was that he called Dade Phelan drunk. There's a video that went viral of Dade kind of seeming to slur his words for reasons that are unclear as of this moment. It's not unusual that reps drink on the house floor. It's been reported. It's happened. But, you know, I certainly wouldn't want to say that that was the reason that the impeachment proceedings went forward simply because the timing of it was all just too coincidental. Too close together, right? Exactly. Way too close together. The timing wouldn't have made sense, but it certainly gave the appearance that it was the straw that broke the camel's

back. I would say it was more just an indicator that there was deeper-seeded, you know, conflicts already in place, and that arguably Ken Paxson was trying to get ahead of what he knew was coming, perhaps unsuccessfully. The push to impeach him also, as I mentioned earlier, it does seem to come after the federal government taking over the investigation into Mr. Paxton and the settlement that he negotiated. One way that you may interpret that is certain Republicans in the House wanted nothing to do with a hush payment and certainly didn't want the state of Texas to be paying that money to these whistleblowers if there are any sort of indictments or charges that come down as a result of that corruption probe. Or in other words,

they don't want to be implicated in potential crimes that are being investigated by the federal government. That's the most sensible reason that I've come up with of why so many Republicans, you know, turned against Mr. Paxson. The other being that perhaps the litany of reasons he was impeached is just so impressive that, you know, you can't really assail it. You have to just accept that they have this evidence and it's pretty damning. First of all, just quickly, what is the timing of this in the Senate? When does the, I guess, the trial begin? And do you have any, just any kind of predictions on what you think might happen or is it just completely unknown? So it has to happen no later than August 28th. Okay. How it's going to play out? I have no idea. As I mentioned, neither Patrick or Angela Paxton have indicated they plan to accuse themselves. These sorts of conflicts of interest are almost impossible to avoid. in a highly political body. I wouldn't have been able to predict any of what we have just been talking about happening. So certainly I'm not going to be able to predict what happens with the

Senate, but it will be certainly something to watch. All right. I do. I want to talk to you about something that you have specifically been covering last month mass murder at the Outlet Center in Allen, Texas, and specifically Republican elected officials' reaction to the, what turned out to be the sort of the virulent white supremacist beliefs of the murderer, the, the, Nazi tattoos, et cetera. I'm just going to assume that they have all rushed to condemn these beliefs, right? Because that's a pretty easy slam dunk. Right. Right. There are examples of, for, you know, to draw another example, in Florida, the mobilizations around neo-Nazis drew condemnation from Republicans because they happened to happen around a dissantis event, I believe. And so there

was, you know, clear statements we condemn neo-Nazis. Texas, unfortunately, we have not had that sort of reaction. I contacted 15 elected representatives. The vast majority of them are either nonpartisan city council people or Republican elected. There was only one Democrat who represents a portion of Allen. The majority of them didn't respond. Those that did respond, the majority of the responses were either no comment or in the most jarring case, a response that doubted that the shooter was a neo-Nazi. And I unpacked this in two different articles where we get into, sort of what exactly these responses were, what responsibility to organizations that focus on extremism think that elected officials have in terms of condemning this sort of extremist ideology and

hateful politics, but also the disinformation that was spread in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. Most notably, probably by Marjorie Taylor Green, who tried to assert that this must have been some sort of conspiracy to attach white supremacist beliefs to a shooter that didn't have them, there were people promoting the idea that he was a member of a prison gang, including people who work with Tim Poole. It seems like it landed pretty close to home in the sense that one of those responses, as I mentioned, which doubted the Nazi beliefs, that city council person had shared a video that was originally posted by this account called the Red-Headed Libertarian. She's a member of Tim Poole's staff.

And is this Dave Schaefer that we're talking about here? Yes, I should just name the guy, right? So this is city councilman Dave Schaefer. He describes himself as a Texas conservative. Mr. Schaefer, you know, at first he claimed that I never asked him to condemn, you know, white supremacism or neo-Nazism, which is certainly not the case. I posted my emails on Twitter. But he went on to eventually say, you know, I condemn Nazism, but I'm not certain that this guy who had swastika tattoos on his chest. was a Nazi. And so the video that he ended up sharing around the same time that he, you know,

sort of issued this muddled response, it was a video shared by the red-headed libertarian, which compared Nazi flags to pride flags, basically equating the two. So, you know, in other words, Dave Schaefer said, I don't think the guy with a swastika tattoo is certainly a Nazi, but those gay people, they were like the Nazis. It all makes sense when you realize that, that same account that he shared the video from was also promoting the idea that this guy was not a neo-Nazi, that he was a, you know, a cartel member or a gang member, or that this was a sci-op, literally any reason to deny the reality of white supremacist violence in our country at the same time as they're trying to suggest that the real threat to America during Pride Month

is gay people. It's been a bit of an experience of whiplash, to say the least. Well, Steve, it sounds like you're running a hell of a state down there. And I'd just like to congratulate you on the job you're doing running that state, which is my understanding that you do. Thank you. Everything is bigger in Texas, including my responsibility to run the state. It's a big deal. And I thank you for the recognition. Steve Monticelli, thank you so much for being with us.

Check out Steve stuff at the Texas Observer. Check out Protein magazine. And I can say from personal experience, Steve is a great follow on Twitter and blue sky and probably elsewhere. but those I can't speak to. Steve, thanks again. I really appreciate it. Thank you, Andy. Folks, I'd like to welcome to the new abnormal for the first time, Molly Wood, who is the host

of everybody in the pool and is a climate tech investor. And, you know, Molly, you are coming to the new abnormal right on time because essentially over the last week or so, we've experienced at least on the east coast in the middle Atlantic, what you have experienced, I'm certain, in California, which is the smoke that was coming down continent from the Canada wildfires that gripped the city of New York, as well as, you know, 100 million people in its path with its toxins. We all grabbed our masks again. And this time, the air outside wasn't safe as well. To sit here and watch the sky, Molly, turn and an apocalyptic yellow that I have never seen in my life outside of a horror movie.

Go outside on my own patio and need to put on a mask in order to water my plants that look like they were just wilting before my eyes and dying. It was really terrifying. And we kind of just keep rolling with the punches from global health pandemic to climate pandemic. And I just wanted to get your thoughts on how we take moments. Like these that happen, whether it be the wildfires that are raging out of control, because the earth is warmer, whether it be the hurricanes and the tornadoes that are raging out of control, I don't know how many times we can see a headline that says historic fill in the blank. How we use these moments and turn them into a renewed movement.

Yeah, absolutely. And first of all, I'm so sorry that that happened. I mean, you know, I didn't cause it. But you know what I mean? I can empathize and relate so much. to that experience and that feeling of that sort of uniquely horrible claustrophobia where you can't breathe inside and you can't breathe outside and you look at a map and you try to think, where can I go to get away from the smoke for a couple days and you realize nowhere? You know, there's nowhere that you can drive to. It is truly terrible. And if there is a silver lining at all, I can say that, you know, just related to wildfires and the kind of the awareness that that experience can bring. In 2020, in the San Francisco Bay Area,

where I live, we had one of those days where the sun didn't come up and the sky was just orange. And actually, I think that the air quality in downtown Manhattan was worse than it was in San Francisco and Oakland during those days. That event catalyzed what I'm loosely estimating to be in the maybe $50 billion in private capital investment, venture capital investment. You had venture capitalists saying, I'm devoting the rest of my career to climate change. You had startup entrepreneurs saying, I'm starting a business. In some cases, people started venture capital funds just to fund companies that deal with wildfires in some way, whether it's prevention or helping firefighters spite them more effectively. You had entrepreneurs say, I'm starting a climate solutions company. So the one thing that does happen when the apocalypse gets really close is that it triggers a thing that humans are really good at, which is survival instinct. And so I am curious to see, you know, that's what happened in the Bay Area where there is a ton of sort of private capital allocation. Now it happened in the center of finance. And I'm really hopeful in a way

that these are the moments of kind of shared reality that make us go, huh. So you're saying the worst case can occur. We should do something. Yeah, that to me is what is so wild. It's not as if climate scientists have been talking to us since there was a whole. in the ozone layer since there were rivers that were on fire in the 1960s and 70s, which prompted the start of the EPA. Environmental threats are not anything that's new, but the fact that we have gotten to about 8 billion people on the planet, the fact that we have had very unregulated industry in terms of what can go into the atmosphere, it had been something that if I can't see it, touch it, or taste it, then it's not happening. And I think that what we are seeing over the last several years,

and you tell me, is that what seemed like it was impending, 30 years, 40 years down the road and maybe some very selfish older politicians are just like, I'll be dead by then, so I could care less. What was impending has now arrived. It is thinking about as a collective how we shift, how we are living, how we are coexisting with our environment instead of just extracting from it at a rate that only really provides wealth to a select few. And I'm just like, is it that things have increased? Is it that we are more aware? What do you make of one storm, fire place at a time that we've seen? I think that we are both aware and these extreme events have increased. no question. And in fact, if you look at the last kind of, even just the last six months, but certainly the last year, I heard it described recently by somebody who said that this, you know, the signs from nature have gotten a lot more urgent. Like these signs are now big neon flashing Times Square billboards. The pace of change that people thought would take decades or even hundreds of years is speeding up. The oceans, you know, are warming way faster than anybody.

expected, the kind of grooves from warm water that are being carved into the Thwaites Glacier, which is the one they call the doomsday glacier that's happening faster than people thought. And we're seeing the emergence of more storms. And now we're headed into, now listen, I host a solutions-oriented podcast. So I hate to like spend too much time on the terror. But we got we got a prime people, Molly. That's what we're doing here. We got to prime people. That said, some real terror is on the horizon. So now we're headed into an El Nino season. where we have unusually warm ocean water that's going to collide with this kind of atmospheric current. We're starting to talk about mega hurricanes, which are already occurring in some parts of the world.

And so it's likely that in the next couple of years of this particular weather pattern, you know, first of all, the entire globe will hit that kind of amorphous, like nobody knows what it means, 1.5 degree Celsius warming. Right. We will live the impacts of that. The other thing that's happening is that this incredibly, like the awareness that carbon dioxide emissions cause warming, that's actually a hundred-year-old science. It was a woman scientist, actually, who discovered this. Like some guy presented it and took credit for her work, obviously.

So weird. Shocking. What do you know? But we have known this for 100 years. What we didn't exactly know is this thing called attribution science. We didn't know how to attribute the warming to the extreme weather events. So for years you had scientists saying, look, it's sort of like steroids for existing weather events. That's true.

And that helps to answer the question of if it's warming, why do I still have such a bad winter? It's that, you know, it makes existing weather that much more extreme. But also, we are now starting to see these events that we didn't think about. We didn't understand that there would be this kind of paper cut effect that like in the Bay Area, for example, this winter, we had 12 what are called atmospheric Riveric rivers, just wild storms coming through. And every one of them did a little more damage and weakened trees that much more and, you know, took down one extra transformer so that you couldn't go anywhere. There would be trees across freeways and major thoroughfares and, you know, power outages that lasted four or five days in the San Francisco Bay Area. That's the stuff that's just like,

it's a knock-on effect, right? And there are climate models that never took into account wildfire smoke. Oh, wow. Like everybody thought that the Eastern Seaboard in some ways would probably be a little bit of a climate haven, like Maine. It'll be great because the weather won't get that bad. And now they're realizing those models didn't account for the fact that a huge chunk of the continent might be on fire and the air might be actually unbreatable. Just you saying those points, it's the fact that there is going to be nowhere to go. There is going to be no place to escape to. So this is really and has been stated as such a global crisis.

It is a global crisis that unfortunately initially will affect those countries and areas that have done the least amount of polluting because they have the least amount of industry and the smallest populations. And then it will move to the wealthier nations that have done most of the damage. And I think that those who primarily operate from a place of greed felt that there was going to be enough time. There are certain people, countries that are expendable. There was going to be enough time before it was actually going to affect them. But that time has arrived.

I want to shift gears for a bit to talk about how we return, if you even see it possible in the current political climate, to return this issue to be a nonpartisan one. because literally we all drink the same fucking water and breathe the same air. So that being true and knowing that the cost, if you don't even care about the human cost, about the health cost, the actual economic cost to the damage that is being done is astronomical. We cannot afford it. So how do we move what has become a partisan issue, because of Republicans and some fake Democrats, like Senator Joe Manchin in West Virginia,

that wants to be able to drive around in his Maserati and wave to the coal miners, who he doesn't want to give health care to. How do we move it back to a nonpartisan issue? Yes, this is my daily storytelling challenge and hope. First of all, we should say it genuinely did used to be. There was always sort of a love of oil that happened. But it was George H. W. Bush, George Bush, Sr. His Secretary of State's office was writing him increasingly urgent memo saying that if the things that they're predicting around global warming come to pass, that will be an economic nightmare for the United States. It will be a national security nightmare. There will be food concerns. There will be skyrocketing energy costs. There will be massive insurance costs and outcomes from this. And we should do something. And it was that Bush senior administration that actually ordered. a national environmental assessment to be conducted every four years on behalf of the United

States government. When that came out in 2018, President Trump looked at it and said, I just don't believe it. It was no longer even, it wasn't even like tobacco. It wasn't even the kind of exon disinformation playbook that we now know has existed for 50 years, where they actually had remarkably accurate, consistent science about this and instead pulled a tobacco on us and tried to undermine the science. Now you have Republicans effectively just saying, nope, not true, don't believe it. And I think there are still pockets of people who think this is settled science and we're not having this conversation. But just in the last couple of years, it's been reopened again. It's gotten unbelievably partisan. You have state lawmakers basically telling their constituents, we're staying on coal,

even though it is more expensive, renewable energy is now the cheapest electrons on the planet. So they're saying, we're going to stick you with more expensive energy that pollutes. And in terms of how we get back, you know, one of the things that I have tried to do consistently and I'm continuing to try to do is frame this as what it is, which is the biggest business and economic story on the planet. Fundamentally, just the sheer economics of saying I'm going to stick you with coal, which is more expensive, don't make any sense. This is a job creation opportunity, as we've already seen from the Inflation Reduction Act. we're seeing a massive investment in construction and project development and project finance,

all of which is job creating and economically beneficial. And then on top of that, there's just this kind of messaging question. You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger recently gave a speech where he said, like, stop talking about climate change. No one cares, which I would argue that Gen Z, for example, speaks a different language and younger millennials. Yeah. But if you're talking to the people who, you know, the gerontocracy that runs the country,

then sure, don't talk about climate change. talk about pollution, talk about conservation. I grew up in Montana where a group of young people are suing. I literally was just about to say, have you seen this? Yes, exactly. And they're suing the state saying, you ruined our water, you ruined our hunting, you ruined our land, and you're ruining our air. And that is a violation of our civil rights. And by the way, did you read what Montana said in response? No. No. Climate change isn't real. Well, the judge is allowing it to go forward and And folks, just so that you know, the case is held v. Montana, and it is being brought by 16 Montana kids that range in age, I believe, from 19 to five. And what they are saying is that the state's

contribution to climate change violates its constitution, which explicitly guarantees a right to a quote, clean and healthful environment. That's something that we will definitely be watching in this space, but the fact that you would have a governor respond and be like, oh, no, this is not true. It's like, do you think that your constituents are stupid? Is like, do you think that we all can't just like open up the window or not and see what is outside and recognize that things don't seem or feel right, that even if you are a person that is in your 40s, that over the last 40 years of your life that the class, that the climate, the environment has shifted radically in that short period of time. Molly, with the time that

we have, I do want to move into what it is that you are focused on, which is solutions, which is how, and you'd mention this at the top, venture capital and tech are looking at ways, I guess, I want to say, probably as workarounds to politicians that really ultimately could be doing good on behalf of this country on behalf of the globe, but are choosing not to. So tell us about some of the solutions that are being worked on. It is a hopeful time, I think, if you're an economist or an investor or an entrepreneur, because you see, you know, one of the things that, like America is probably not going to lead on climate policy. We're kind of a long time petrochemical state. We have made good steps recently, but as you can see from the political fight, it's far from settled. We are very good at innovation.

And that is important because we will need a lot of invention and innovation to get our way out of this. That's everything from, you know, and on the show, I cover everything from solutions like buying a shampoo bar instead of buying a plastic bottle of shampoo that's mostly water that got shipped to you in, you know, and it used a ton of diesel because it's heavy and bulky. Those are sort of, there's these simple solutions that we don't think about that are very adoptable. and over time really drive consumer choice and drive what's on the shelves. And that's fantastic. All the way to companies who have developed modular green hydrogen fuel cells and are literally retrofitting and flying regional aircraft in the United States and are acting as basically a green hydrogen delivery system for clean fuel that only emits water to companies who

have figured out how to make leather faux leather out of mushrooms, out of mycelium networks. And by the way, mushrooms can do everything. There are companies that have figured out how to take construction waste, run them through this kind of fungus process that extracts and consumes all of the toxins and produces, you know, green carbon neutral and sometimes carbon negative new building materials. So they're like the innovation landscape, in my opinion, is incredible and really heartening because those are the solutions that we can create here, adopt here. We need wealthy people and wealthy countries to adopt these solutions so that they become. cheap and available around the world. Molly, you know, we just have about like 30 seconds left, but I want you to tell people how they can get involved, how they can follow your work, get connected with the work that you're doing, you know, so that they can feel like they are doing

something and not just waiting on doomsday. Totally. Well, the podcast is called Everybody in the pool and you can find it wherever you podcast. I write a weekly newsletter that goes along with it at mollywood.com. And then I have a simple three-point strategy like any good politicians. for what you can do. Vote, invest, whether it's what you buy or where you actually direct your money and adopt. If there is a climate solution and you have the money to adopt it, you're a climate criminal if you don't. Amazing. Molly Wood, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. Really appreciate you. Thrilled to be here. Thank you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Who is your fuck that guy to kick off this good, good week? All right. So my fuck

that guy is a dude that works for the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's hideous organization. And fuck that organization. Let's just get that out of the way. Michael Nosell is probably not as well known as, say, a Matt Walsh or Ben Shapiro himself, obviously. But he's out there. He's yet another one of these failed actors who reinvented himself as a right-wing nutjob and has been fairly successful at it. And he went out on his podcast the other day. And again, you know, we've talked about this. And I've said this. there are no quiet parts anymore. They just say everything out loud.

And what he said was, I want our civilization to be as socially conservative as we were in 1220. That's the year 1220, before all the modern ideology started corroding our civilization. I don't know if he thought this through. I'm not entirely sure what he thinks life would be like for most people in this country if we were as socially conservative as you were in 1220. But maybe he has, which is even scary. because that would not be a pretty world for, I would say, probably 80, roughly 80% of Americans right now. It certainly wouldn't for Jews.

It certainly wouldn't for people of color. It certainly wouldn't for queer folk. And look, I know that's basically what they want, although they tend to hide the part about the Jewishness at the Daily Wire. I assume because Ben Shapiro is their boss. But I do think that inside, people like Michael Knows and Matt Walsh do include Jews in their list of people who should be, you know, whatever. I don't want to say anything more than that about that. I should point out that in this same podcast, Michael Nullo said that he thought gay pride

flag should be banned in public, showing himself to be a real fan of the First Amendment and the Constitution in general. But look, these people are about as corrosive as it gets, and they've all become really, really popular in the last few years. Rolling Stone just did a story about Matt Walsh and others. Look, I know Twitter count metric is not much, but they basically pointed out that Walsh had like 700,000 followers a few years ago and he has like 2.1 million now. And he, of course, put out that awful movie called What Is a Woman? This horrible anti-trans movie.

But all of these guys have just become incredibly popular on the right in the past several years. And it's unbelievably corrosive and it's unbelievably disgusting. And to be openly talking about wanting to, like I always say, they want to go back to the 1950s. And then, you know, for the past six months or so, I've been saying, well, maybe it's the 1850s. I don't even know. This motherfucker wants to go back to 1220.

I'm pretty sure because you could burn women at the stake. Well, yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I'm pretty sure, like, when you think about that time period, you could burn people at the stake. You know, you could execute people in public, all of that good stuff. Yeah. It was bad enough when I had to adjust from 1950 to 1850.

So just a big old fuck that guy to Michael Knowles and a big old fuck that or organization to the Daily Wire. I would like to chisel them in our Hall of Fame. Let's just put a light on them, you know, as always. Yeah. So who is your fuck that guy for this glorious week? An oldie but a goody. Rudy Giuliani.

According to Talking Points memo, this man, you know, if the dye running down his sweaty face in front of a lance. escaping company in a parking lot. Everything about that image is indicative of who Rudy Giuliani is from the inside out. Do you know what I'm saying? And it gets better because Talking Points Memo is reporting that Rudy Giuliani used a female email address, a female, what do they say? Rudy Giuliani used a female alias in emails about the plan to overturn the election. This is what they say. Rudy Giuliani he used an email address with the name Helen in some of his communications about his efforts to oppose former President Trump's 2020 election loss.

Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and personal attorney to Trump, had discussed his use of the email address, R. Helen, 058 at gmail.com. Let me tell you, and this is, and this was all part of, he used this email address to scheme, defame Ruby Freeman and Shea Moss, the two Georgia election workers, who's a lot of were turned upside down just because they wanted to volunteer and help their community get out the vote. But this is where it gets even worse. So get this, Andy, which is that where did Giuliani come up with this alias, right? You say to yourself, you know, so many names to pick out of a hat, Giuliani, however, used the name of his dead mother, whose name was Helen and she died in two

2002. And that is the name that Giuliani used in order to spread lies and scheme to try and overturn the 2020 election. You know how people say like, not on my mama's name and like all of these things. I don't talk about my mom. Like this motherfucker used his mother's, his dead mother's name to spread election fraud lies. Like Giuliani is the disgusting of the disgusting, not to mention, like, like the hot trash that he has said, two women about women, the sexual harassment, the how he was caught on tape. I mean, it's just, he's gross. He's gross. You're disgusting. I think about you. And all I see is that nasty, you know, die running down your face.

And I think about what the odor was that probably surrounded you that day. And for that reason, Giuliani, you are my fuck that guy. Yeah, this is real Norman Bates stuff from Psycho. This is real, you know, mother, she's just a stranger. Mother, oh God, mother, blood, blood. I mean, look, there's doing things that are sort of like an homage to your parents. And then there's... And then there's this.

And this is just, like you said, this is just creepy. And it's just, oh, God. I just keep thinking of Norman Bates saying, Mother isn't quite herself today while she's, you know, dead. And yeah, this is just unbelievably creepy. Be fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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