The Daily Beast Podcast - What Trump’s Alleged Crimes and Costco Have in Common w/ Rep. Eric Swalwell

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Rep. Eric Swalwell joins this episode of The New Abnormal to weigh in on the Don Jr. texts and explain what he calls the Costco Effect—and how it relates to the Trumps. Plus, Jodi Hicks, Planned Parenthood California’s President and CEO, explains what happened with the Texas woman who was held on $500K bail for having an abortion. Naturally, co-hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast have a lot to say about all of the above, and more. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. And on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Congressman Eric Swalwell, who represents California's 15th District, is going to talk to us about what's going on in the House.

Then we'll talk to the president of Planned Parenthood Action, California, Jody Hicks, and she's going to talk to us about the latest in the war on reproductive rights. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. Friday night, we learned that Don Jr. was not just running. running his father's businesses. He was actually texting with his father's chief of staff, one Mark Meadows. Are you surprised?

I can't say that I am. I would like to pretend to be surprised. But no, I'm not surprised at all that Donald Jr. was front and center in the efforts to subvert the election results in which his father lost. One of my favorite things about Don Jr. is that he's such a moron. So Don Jr.'s texting Meadows, this is two days after the... election, this plan, which obviously he has not cooked up because we saw Earl, you know, there were also texts from the guy from reality television, Rick Perry, from Dancing

with the Stars, perhaps you've heard of him, that Rick Perry was also texting these ideas to Meadows. So either Rick Perry and Don Jr. talk every day or this was just what they were all shopping in Trump World. But I love this. Don Jr. put it together. Republicans controlled 28 states, Democrats, 22 states down junior tax. Once again, Trump wins. We either have a vote, we, capital, W.E. control, or we win or caps. It gets kicked to Congress on 6th January 2001, he texts Meadows. Yeah, it's just, I mean, he basically, you know, one of the other things he says, it's very

simple. We have multiple paths. We control them all. And it's like he does not. give a shit that the one path they don't control, of course, is the actual voting. He doesn't care about that, because it's not about who actually won the election and who more Americans voted for, who won the electoral college. It's about keeping his family in power. That's all they care about. That's all they've ever cared about. And we know this. And it's just, you know, to have the

evidence that he was part of this is great. But again, it's obviously not surprising. This is what they've been after the whole time. I would like to draw your attention back to 2016. When Donald Trump Jr. wrote the following text, if it's what you say it is, I love it. Do you remember that? Oh, yes. Was that about meeting with Russia? Yes, tried to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russia,

and they met in Trump Tower. Yes. After that, Bob Mueller, you'll remember the great Bob Mueller, who saved us all, decided that, Junior was too stupid to collude. We live in a country where people who have developmental disabilities are put to death on death row for crimes pretty regularly. But this guy is too stupid to understand that asking Russia for dirt on his dad's enemy is somehow a crime. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I never bought that. You never bought that. Bob Mueller, for some reason, bought it. I don't understand a lot of what he did as 20s. 16th Merrick Garland. This whole idea that you've got the president's son communicating with the chief of staff talking about multiple ways to basically overturn the will of the American people. And we just have to take it. Are there going to be any ramifications from this?

Because I'm increasingly thinking that there are not. Like real real world ramifications. And that's bad. That's really bad for the country. I mean, besides the fact that, you know, know, all these people belong in jail. It's bad for the country that they can do stuff like this and not end up in jail. I think that's right. What are we even doing, right? Like if the law doesn't apply to Don Jr., then who does it apply to, right? It just seems crazy to me. And again, we don't know what's going to happen. There are a lot of referrals to be made and there's a lot of stuff happening with Merrick Garland, but the clock is ticking. And if Democrats lose the House in November, it's going to be a very different world we're looking at. Exactly. I mean,

the clock is absolutely ticking. You know, it's now April. So we're inching closer and closer to November every day. Yes, Andy, that's how time works. Thank you for pointing that out to everyone. And nothing's being done. And I just, I really hope that I'm wrong and that the people who are saying trust Merrick Garland are right. It's just, it gets increasingly harder to believe that every day. I do want to point out, though, that CNN asked Donald Trump Jr.'s lawyer for comment about these texts. And his defense was, after the election, Don received numerous messages from supporters and others. Given the date, this message likely originated from someone else and was forwarded. So his defense is, Don Jr. didn't say this stuff. He just forwarded on to the president's chief of staff,

this stuff. What's the, there's no difference. There's absolutely no difference in that. I'm not sure that's better. Well, right. Exactly. It's like, I don't know, maybe Donald Trump Jr's lawyer isn't smart enough to be doing what he's doing in the same way that. It cannot be. Donald Trump Jr. himself was not smart enough to collude. But man, it's just like, if that's your best defense, you're giving away the ballgame. Like you're saying, well, my client did pass on these to the White House Chief of Staff saying that we should subvert the election. So I don't really see the difference there. I really hope something comes of all this and it sucks so badly to watch this smarmy,

I can't say that word, to watch this smarmy gentleman. Delightful fellow. Yes, just continually get away with this stuff. It's just so depressing. I would like to mention that Don Jr. was not the only member of the Trump children group to get in trouble this weekend. We also had this humongous revelation, a very sort of fulsome.

I want to use the word fulsome about writing because it's the most pretentious thing you can do. The reported piece about Jared Kushner and how he got to do a $2 billion investment for a fund. You'll notice that I think it's important to mention that Jared Kushner had never, ever managed money. before he ran peace in the Middle East for his father-in-law, which he also never did or accomplished. But when he left after not having brought peace to the Middle East, he decided he would start a private equity fund, even though he had no experience in private equity.

Though he did, you know, he did buy and ruin a newspaper. So that's something. And then he got $2 billion, $2 billion, not million, billion, billion dollars from Mohamed. Mohammed bin Salman, who you will remember from the previous season where he killed journalist Jamal Khashoggi in an embassy with a bone saw. Yeah, while Kushner was basically defending him even after, you know, U.S. intelligence had pretty definitively concluded that the Crown Prince was behind the killing of Khashoggi. You defend a killer and then you get $2 billion for your fund, but it's okay because, Hunter Biden had a laptop? I am going to guarantee that the Kushner story and the Donald Trump Jr. story will not be heard on certain news outlets today who will not stop talking about Hunter Biden's laptop.

Hunter Biden's laptop, Ashley Biden's diary. These are the things these people care about, but $2 billion, $2 billion from Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. that's no biggie. And we should point out that like the board of this public investment fund in Saudi Arabia, which bin Salman sits on and leads, but it's a board, the board's pretty much like, like,

yeah, like there was a, the panel that was set up to, you know, to look into Kushner's fund or into whether they should fund Kushner basically said, ah, this is not a great idea for all the reasons,

Molly, that you said earlier. He's never done this before. He's got no one else on board. board, all this stuff. And he was over, they were, this panel was overruled by the board, which is led by the crown prince. So it's not even like you can say, like, like there was another deal made with Steve Mnuchin that the Saudis made. Right, which was only a billion dollars. Right. And Mnuchin, at least garbage person that he is, has a history of doing these kinds of things

and, you know, doing them actually successfully. So I'm sure his Trump connections didn't hurt in this case. but at least you could make a judgment there that, all right, you know, Manuchin knows what he's doing. Jared Kushner does not know what he's doing. And by the way, that's an evergreen statement. Like, I can't think of anything that that wouldn't apply to. And yet somehow he just keeps making more and more money and ain't that America, folks. Yeah, I will say that failing upwards is one of the hallmarks of a certain type of money class in America. But still, this is particularly a.

agree just because of the, you know, that our tax dollars are really involved in this in any number of ways. So, you know, employing him at something he didn't know how to do, setting him up. And then, you know, MBS is making a gamble that hopefully someday this family will be back in power, which is in its own way pretty scary. I know. That's exactly right. You know, that's obviously what's going on here. I mean, it's partially, I guess, quid pro quo for Kushner and the Trump administration's sort of defense of MBS in the Khashoggi killing. But you're right. It's also a bet that the next election may not turn out so great for this country. Right. But I guess we'll turn out great for MBS.

Yeah. I mean, it's pretty worrying stuff. It's grim, Molly. It's all grim. It's a grim Monday here on the new abnormal. As opposed to those happy ones. Monday's day. I know. And then the question, which everyone wants to know, is what did the president know and when did he know it? Did he know on November 5th that his stupidest child was texting with his chief of staff and this moral high gun stuff, or did he not know? Hard to imagine he didn't know, but there are a lot of people in Trump world who are going to make the argument that he didn't. Yeah, I mean, let's dispel that

right now. He knew. And this is the defense that Trump gets, like, it's a lot of, it's, It's the one minute he's this, you know, canny mastermind who can, you know, make things happen in the next minute. It's like, oh, well, he wasn't aware of this. And we're seeing this now actually with, you know, this is off topic, but with him endorsing Dr. Oz in the Pennsylvania Senate race. And I see all these conservatives, Eric Erickson and people like that being like, Trump is getting horrible advice from his staff. Seriously, they're all blaming it on his staff. And it's like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, this is what he does.

Conservatives are mad because they don't, you know, these people don't like Dr. Oz and they think Trump made a mistake endorsing him, but they won't blame Trump for it. Every single one of them is like, this is horrible staff work, horrible advice from his staff. It's the same exact thing with January 6th. It's not staff doing this without Trump knowing it. He knew everything. He knew everything that was going on on the day of January 6th. He knew everything and was part of everything that was going on in the days, you know, following election day regarding, you know, know, what his son was doing, what Ginny Thomas was doing, all of that stuff. He was part of it.

He was in it up to his, you know, eyeballs. And it's absolutely ridiculous to try to pretend that he wasn't. Yeah, I agree. And I think the most important thing, and again, the January 6th panel has evidence for criminal referral of Trump, but split on sending. On Saturday, we saw that. And Liz Cheney was on the Sunday shows, and she sort of said, well, that's not really true. We're not split, but obviously the Times is not going to run that story unless it's pretty well sourced. So my guess is there's some internal conflict. The thing that made me crazy about that story was that it did have, you know, it had this idea that it was symbol, that these criminal referrals are symbolic and they really

shouldn't be. They are referrals and they should lead to prosecution. I couldn't agree more. It really annoys me to hear them described as a largely symbolic act. But you know what? even if they are a largely symbolic act, it's a good symbol. Sending criminal referrals for someone who committed crimes while president is a really good symbol for the country. What the New York Times said is that there are members of the committee who think that it would backfire by politically

tainting the Justice Department's investigation. Come on. This is absolutely ridiculous. This is what Democrats do all the time. Molly, we've been talking on this about this on this podcast for a while, like how Democrats always do this kind of thing. And it really did look like the January 6th committee was not doing the usual kind of, you know, Democratic half-assery being afraid of offending Republicans or whatever. And I really hope they don't go down that road and end up there. You know, I hope that what Liz Cheney was saying is true and that there is no dispute right now, but seems hard to believe that the Times would run with that article if there were, you know,

a large amount of truth to it. So you've got a federal judge saying that, what did he say, more likely than not that Donald Trump was engaged in criminal activity? Yeah. Yeah. You've got that. You've got all this evidence. You've got all these texts. And you're not going to send a criminal referral coming out of the committee.

Come on. You can't do that. You've got to finish the job. It's such a crazy thing because it's like Democrats are worried that if they pursue this, Republicans will get mad. and come after them next time. But there won't be a next time if Democrats don't pursue this. Like, democracy is not a given. You know, we came very close to not having free and fair elections in 2020.

And if you don't uphold the rule of law, the next time you may not have free and fair elections. Right. And not to mention that the Republicans are going to go after Democrats no matter what. This is the part that I don't know how they don't understand this. It has happened every time. this is the same logic that says, well, you can't nominate Bernie Sanders because they'll go after him and say he's a socialist. And then so you nominate Joe Biden, who's about as milk toast moderate as it gets.

And what do you have? You have them saying he's the furthest left candidate this country has ever had. Socialist Joe Biden. It's like they're going to do it anyway. They do it every time. Like you don't have to be a genius political analyst to know this. You just have to have some common sense. So they just, they always put their tail between their legs because they're afraid of what the Republicans are going to do.

And then the Republicans do it anyway. This has to be the one time they don't fall into that trap. It's too important. Yeah, well, and we'll see. And we have to hope. I mean, the good news is that if anyone, you know, can be brave, it's, and again, I'm not a fan of hers and I'm not a fan of her fathers. But she is very tough, Liz Cheney. And hopefully she will make the Democratic.

Democrats be tougher. Look, you don't have to like her and you don't have to agree with her, nor, quite frankly, should you, because, you know, she's done a lot, you know, she has a lot of pretty egregious beliefs. But she's on the right side of this. 100%. Eric Swalwell represents California's 15th district. It sits on the Select Committee on Intelligence, the Committee on Judiciary, and the community on Homeland Security. Welcome back to New Abnormal Congressman Eric Swalwell. Thank you for having me back. How are you guys doing?

Good. We're always happy to have you here, and you are a frequent flyer on the new abnormal. It seems like we're in a moment. It was a weekend of like Trump kid revelations between junior texting with Meadows about how they were going to keep his dad in power. Were you surprised by that? And what does this mean? No, no, not surprised at all. Of course, I mean, the kids knew that they would be totally screwed, right? if dad lost power, they would lose, you know, much of the protections that they had enjoyed. And so that's not surprising at all. What I do think it's really important for the January 6th Commission to show is how much of this made its way to Trump. And in any investigation like this, you know, bottom up or outside end investigation, do you want to see where all the arrows are pointing to?

And you just can't imagine that all of this noise would be taking place and that Trump was completely sealed off from it. It just doesn't make sense at all. And explain to us what it would mean if Trump wasn't sealed off from it, because I think that's important for our listeners. It just shows that he, of course, was in on the coup. That he, this is what he wanted. And the reason he didn't stop it is because, as his son was saying, like, we want to keep him in power. and stopping it takes him out of powder. Honestly, guys, I mean, let's be real.

All of this has already happened in plain sight. The curse of having an investigation like this is you're expected to show, you know, some sort of smoking gun, but he's detonated multiple, like, you know, nuclear devices in plain view for all of us, like leading up to the election after the election, and then, of course, on January 6th. And we're still waiting to just learn something that, like, we didn't already know. And I think that is kind of the brilliance of Trump in how he escapes responsibility. When I was a prosecutor, I would call it the Costco effect where a defense attorney would bring me a case.

Someone has maybe five or six, you know, DUIs spread out over a year. The defense attorney will say to me, well, maybe we can just plead him out for one of these DUIs and dismiss the rest. And because in criminal cases, like more is like less. And I would call it the Costco effect. Like sometimes just, you know, the way you think is, well, if he takes responsibility for one, we get rid of all the others. And I would always, I would always push back and say, look, this isn't Costco. It's not, you know, you buy 10 paper towels and you pay the cost of, you know, just two. And with Donald Trump, it feels like we have somebody who's committed an insane amount of crimes in front of us.

And we just are so numb to it that more. in a weird way becomes lost. Yeah. I mean, that's so interesting to me, and I think that's right now. Another thing we learned this weekend in the weekend of Trump kids doing crimes was that we learned that Jared

got $2 billion from Saudis, and the Saudis were like, maybe this is too much. It was too crimy for the Saudi government. Can you explain to us what Congress can do there I think we absolutely have an interest in understanding the contours of that deal, particularly if it was struck or if it had began to get warmed up while Jared was still in the White House working on what is referred to as the Abraham Accord involving Saudi Israel and other countries in the region. It certainly smells. and if U.S. government resources were used, you know, to tighten that relationship so that he could leverage it later, then, yeah, that's something that we would absolutely want to know about. It's just, you know, do we have the will, you know, to look? And if we want to take this mindset that, well, you know, what, Trump's out of power. Trump is yesterday. When you talk about Trump, you know, you're not, you know, helping Democrats, then we're not going to look. I happen to think that, you know, this guy is the most corrupt person who's ever served as president has put our democracy in the most fragile.

position it's ever been in. He's not coming away. He's not likely nominee to be president and will come close again one way or the other. And so if we don't understand he and his family's corruption and expose it, we'll regret it. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing I'm struck by is like now we have this reporting this weekend that the January 6th committee is conflicted. I wonder on whether or not to make a criminal referral. In the second paragraph of that piece, it read this line, which is still haunting me, a largely symbolic referral. It wouldn't be a symbolic referral if Merritt Garland just followed it. Well, Bannon was not a symbolic referral, right? They referred Bannon. Congress voted on it. And Bannon ended up in handcuffs. And he's been a trial. I get the argument

that, well, we don't need to tell the Department of Justice what to do. But this is the large crime that ever occurred in America. There has been no incident in America that has yielded more arrests, more prosecutions than this single event. And, oh, by the way, it happened to, you know, occur, you know, to prevent the peaceful transition of power. So I would disagree. If you have the goods, send along the goods. And if it's redundant, well, that's great. It's nice to have an insurance policy for a crime this large. Yeah. I mean, it just is so striking to me. So what do you think about the January 6th committee and where, if you were the head of it, where would you send it? Well, they've got a great team. And aside from the members who I know

very well, the investigative side, I mean, they, you're talking thousand plus interviews and to just give you the size and scale, you know, we did plus or minus a hundred or so in the Russia investigation on the Intelligence Committee, of course, limited by as far as Devin Nunes would let us go, that took so much member time, staff time, and then, of course, writing the report, you know, took weeks to put together. They have, you know, gone leaps and bounds beyond that very, very substantive investigation. So it's a massive investigation team. And I imagine that part of the delay, I hope part of the delay, is that they keep learning new information. And it's kind of like you're a victim of your own success, that you start learning stuff and you have to follow it up.

And I think the complicating factor here, the decision point when you have a public hearing is going to be this. It's the sweet spot of putting in front of the public somebody who has something new and illuminating to say who is cooperative. And it's likely that they've learned a lot of information from uncooperative, reluctant witnesses, and much of it must be. be through text message and electronic correspondence. So if you have all these text messages from Meadows and you haven't shown all of them yet,

putting Meadows in the chair for the public is not going to be a very great presentation because he's probably going to be Mark fucking Meadows, right? And that's not going to look good for any. Right. You see hearings coming at televised primetime hearings? That's always been the goal expressed, you know, to me and our colleagues, as well as by the chairman and public. And so, yes, there are going to be hearings.

And again, I think the challenge is just to figure out who tells the story, because this is really, you know, telling the American people a story of what was done, you know, to their government, to the officers that protected it. And the threat that we still face is the storm, I think, is starting to reemerge. What do you think are some things Democrats could do if to shore themselves up? We have a midterm coming, a super important one. Do you have any thoughts of things Democrats could do? Keep punching, right?

Keep showing in a very concise, potent, pithy way, the contrast here. And I think we have a good story to tell, a comeback story to tell, that before Biden steeped in a pandemic economy and a free fall, world leaders did not respect us. And now the rescue plan put people back to work. helped restaurants. The infrastructure plan is going to connect the disconnected. We're going to take on China with the Competes Act that's about to be signed into law, but also acknowledge, I think, the vulnerabilities. And voters, they know that government can't wave a wand and fix inflation overnight. And they can't wave a wand and fix the rising crime we see in America overnight, but acknowledging it and then putting forth solutions on it and then showing the other side,

They don't have any ideas. They don't want to fix the problem. They just want to exploit the problem. That's the pathway. And then, oh, by the way, the other side is absolutely bat-shit, crazy, irresponsible. Don't give them the keys to government. They're going to drive the country over the cliff if you do. And we don't have to make anything up about them.

They do that up to us all the time. But we don't even need to make anything up about them because of what they say and how they tell us who they are. And so if we can't tell that story, we're not going to earn. another, you know, two years of having the responsibility to cover. You've had a lot of success with your lawsuit against the Trump insurrectionists, including the recently unendorsed Mo Brooks. Can you just talk to us a tiny bit about that? And I saw poor Mo on Twitter yesterday saying that, again,

because he can't attack Trump. So he has to blame the unendorsment on the McConnell people who are now advising Trump, but he's just not in the MO. So on the lawsuit, the biggest hurdle that we faced, and we knew this, we're clear-eyed going into it, was Trump's motion to dismiss. Essentially, Trump's saying that because he was president at the time, he had absolute immunity, can't sue him, and that he has free speech protections as well. And so he can say whatever he wants, no matter what I say in the lawsuit, he has those protections. And in a very long deliberative opinion, about 90 plus pages, Judge Meta on the district court in D.C. said nonsense and said that he could be sued

throughout the motion to dismiss. And now we will soon be in front of the circuit court of appeals. And, you know, I imagine that could take another four to six months to resolve there, a good timeline, a fast timeline. And then, of course, depending on what happens, could be in front the Supreme Court, again, probably within a year. So this has always been about accountability, and the January 6th Commission has shown how much information you can learn when you're dogged about it. And actually, in our ability to depose and seek evidence, we'll be able to go places that the January 6th committee cannot go, because we will not run into some of the privilege issues that they're able to exert against the January 6th commission in a Congress versus executive branch,

you know, standoff. We are just a private plaintiff bringing this party, and they would not be able to assert those privileges against us. But I think it really is important, and it'll bring together Rudy and Trump and Mo Brooks, right? So actually, they dropped Rudy and Brooks from the suit. They had not, according to the judge, they didn't go far enough as Trump, which shows just how far Trump went that, you know, Rudy called for, you know, trial by combat. And Brooks said, you know, let's kick ass and take names. And they, the judge said, and I respect the judge's opinion, that that had not gone far enough to incite, but that Trump's, you know, words before the election on the six had gone far enough.

God, that's so striking. Is there anything Democrats can do to shore up voting, like just the mechanics of voting? for the midterms? By the way, conventional wisdom said we were going to be mathematically eliminated at this point because of redistricting. We're not. It turns out under the redistricting effort

from Eric Holder and Mark Elias, we have netted four to six seats. So we're not going to lose because of redistricting. On the money, there's not this donor fatigue that I hear about all the time. We keep beating the D-TCCC keeps bidding the Republicans $5 to $10 million each quarter. On the candidates, we've got incredible candidates.

We've got a candidate who can flip a seat in the L.A. County area named Quay Cortay, who, you know, there's a Republican in L.A. County, Mike Garcia, voted for the insurrection on January 6th. Quay Cortay, Naval Intelligence Officer, played football at the Naval Academy, small business owner. First generation, Ghanaian American, his family came over from Ghana, just an amazing candidate. He's going to Congress. That district went from Biden plus two to Biden plus six. not going to lose because of redistricting, not going to lose because of money, not going to lose because of candidates. And so I really think we have to tell the voters who these people are. And as I said, we don't have to make things up because Rick Scott is telling the voters that he wants most Americans to pay more taxes. And so for working families who are already struggling under inflation, Rick Scott thinks you're not paying enough.

And if we can pierce through the noise as we're going to the midterms with, you know, a crisp message like that, I think you're going to look at us staying in the majority. Yeah, that was really stuff that I hadn't known about. Thank you so much for joining us. Eric, I hope you'll come back soon. Of course, of course. Thank you, Molly. Thank you, Jessie. Jody Hicks is president of Planned Parenthood Action, California.

Welcome to the new abnormal Jody Hicks. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me today. I have a lot of things I want to talk. talk to you about, but first let's talk about California. You're the head of Planned Parenthood, California. You guys are doing something really important. Can you tell our listeners what it is? So I represent seven affiliates in California that have over 100 health centers. And so when SB8 happened and we were hearing quickly from our Texas colleagues what they were dealing with on the ground,

and we were already seeing patients coming over from Texas and frankly from all around the country. We decided to put together as many experts as we could and get everyone in a room and really look at what are all the things that are barriers to access to abortion both here in California and also as we imagined what would be happening as people needed to come into the state. And so we put together a council of over 40 organizations. And I think the last meeting there was over 120 folks on a call. And they, within three months, put together 45 recommendations for the state. And we included policymakers in those conversations. They were able to hear what was happening on the ground, both as problems and then what could be solutions. And so we're just moving forward with a really robust agenda for.

for California, both in our budget, as our legislative package, and then we're already talking with other folks from other states to really be looking at a federal strategy as well as we prepare for what's about to happen this summer with the Supreme Court decision. So it looks like in my mind, this Supreme Court that's very conservative with these three Trump justices, is likely going to overturn row. And if they overturn row, what happens are these trigger laws, which will then make abortion illegal in Texas and it will set off dominoes. What is your California Planned Parenthood Consortium sort of planning for that? Well, let me start with the Supreme Court.

I mean, I think it's important to note that the Supreme Court's inaction is already an action where states are already. banning access to abortion. So what happened in Texas is clearly unconstitutional. There's other states that have been doing copycat laws. And then there's other states that are just doing straight bans knowing that this summer, all indicators point to they are poised to either gut or overturn row and allow for bans in, we're looking at 26 states that will end up banning action. access to abortion. And so knowing that to be true, what we've done in California is really the council looked at everything from a patient perspective. Let me say this, it's really difficult to plan for a post-Roe world when for most of us, you know, Roe has been the law of the

land for 50 years. And so for most of us, that's the world we know. And we're really having to reimagined what a post-row world would look like. But looking at it from a patient perspective, we're really talking about people that sometimes have never traveled outside of the state that they live in. And now they're looking to navigate a public health system that's really poised to not be beneficial for them in any way and how they need to access really timely services. And so what they would need to figure out travel, to figure out payment, sometimes childcare, sometimes lodging, and then the services themselves. And so we're doing some really bold steps, like we have a bill that would have for California a landing page that the state would run that would have all of that

information all in one place. So where there are providers, what kind of abortion funds are available, what kinds of services are available and where, all of those things. So when somebody's looking where to go and we're being very loud and proud that here in California, we are a refuge and you can come to California, they can find all of that information, including having funding that's both public and private to help providers that are doing this work be able to provide those services, whether it's practical support or health care support. And then other things like ensuring that as we're providing those services, we have legal protections here in California, ensuring that the infrastructure for our folks is right, including things like security and

workforce capacity and all of those things that are needed to ensure that we can take care of the influx of patients. And, you know, none of us in this field want this to be. true, but I do want, if it is true, I do want an influx of patients because I think my worst nightmare is if no one comes to California or the other states that are abortion access states because that means that they couldn't find the means to get there. And that that would be the real tragedy in this whole scenario. Let's talk about what happened this weekend in Texas. This is kind of like when I I saw the story, I was completely shocked. A woman was arrested and held on half a million dollars bail.

And it wasn't totally clear to me if she was the one or if she had helped someone have an abortion. So my understanding of that case is she had a medication abortion and then sought care after at a hospital. And then there was from everything I can guess is a lot of HIPAA violations where then she was turned in for what they originally indicted her for was an illegal abortion and tried to say it was murder. And so this is the dangerous new world that is very clear that people are trying to do and certainly trying to see what the appetite is for criminalizing. people for making decisions about their own health care. I was like very horrified, but also I knew this is coming. Correct. I mean, here in California, we're actually passing legislation and getting quite a bit of,

you know, anti-abortion harassment because of it, but passing legislation to ensure and make it very clear to local DAs because here in California, we do have certain jurisdictions that are not as progressive as other parts of California and can also have viewpoints where they also try and criminalize pregnant people for a variety of things, but making it crystal clear that you cannot go after pregnant people for any kind of miscarriage or pregnancy outcome. And we're having to run legislation to make that very clear even in our own state. So I can't say I was shot that this happened first in Texas. And by the way, they're throwing it out now because the way the Texas law is it's a civil action that happens. So they sue people in civil court. But that doesn't

mean that after a decision like Dobbs and after if there is an overturning or gutting of row, that there won't be other legislation that does criminalize abortion for people that seek it. And so I wasn't shocked. I was enraged and heartbroken, especially for this person who was traumatized by the system from start to finish, where there's a health care system that they don't feel safe going to all the way to having a bail bond of $50,000 and being subject to other organizations to help her get out of jail. The whole thing is a, it's horrible. I just am so incredibly shocked. It's like the dystopia is already here. What else are you able to do? In California, I mean, I think we're doing quite a bit of things. We're looking at even local pilot projects. There's pilot projects in L.A. County where those supervisors are looking within their county on what they can do to prepare. We're looking at anything from, you know, how we can invest in workforce to make sure that we do have. have enough providers within our state, certainly enhancing and ensuring privacy protections.

So we're not missing anything and ensuring that people's medical records are kept private and kept safe. So really just looking at our system as a whole and what we need to do to invest to ensure that we have capacity and have legal protections and ensure that we are sort of that safety net and that Haven State where people can come. And then most importantly, I think ensuring that we have funding and investments that we can help people get here. Our health centers, for instance, are already hiring abortion navigators. And they really serve as if you think about it as people coming from a different state. There's a lot of websites right now where you can put in, for instance, put in your zip code. And it'll come up with all the providers that will provide abortion in

that zip code. But if you think about it from a patient perspective, if I had to go to a completely different state that I've never traveled to, I wouldn't know how to navigate that. I wouldn't know what the zip codes are. And so we have hired navigators that really do things like explain to them which airport they should fly into or if they need to take a bus or if they're driving and where they can, where the closest lodging is, things like that. It's a whole new world we're trying to imagine, but really doing the best we can with the information we know already from what's happened in Texas and building, building from there. I just want to take a minute to talk about what's happening in Oklahoma. That's a sort of Texas style, but it's a complete ban. What's your

take on that? Is the digest too cast? Yeah, I mean, I think we're waiting for that governor to sign that legislation. I'm sure that everyone will do. everything they can to try and stop it. But if it goes the way of Texas, again, our Supreme Court's inaction is really action for allowing these. Right now, they're still unconstitutional, but they've found a workaround and are banning access to the people that need services there. And what scares me, I mean, they're all frightening and they're all happening really fast and we're working to do the best we can right now. But what scares me about Oklahoma, is right now, about half the patients that are being seen in Oklahoma right now are from Texas.

So once the Oklahoma ban happens, you're looking at not just people from Oklahoma and not getting services, but all of those patients from Texas that were going to Oklahoma now needing to find a different state to get those services. And so it just, you know, the barriers that that exist for people as they're trying to travel outside of the state by which they live are just getting higher and higher. And we just have to keep working harder in states where we do have as our value the ability to continue to be a reproductive freedom state. It seems like there's also legislation coming down the pike to sort of penalize women for ordering medical abortion bills online. Were you surprised by that?

I don't think I'm surprised by very much right now. I think it's more disappointed and frustrated because I think technology exists to try and increase access to care. And we've seen that, you know, even during the pandemic, we went for telehealth. We, you know, went from a two-year plan to implementing it in two weeks during the pandemic. But and what we saw very quickly is we were reaching folks. farm workers, people that otherwise couldn't take the time to go into a brick and mortar clinic, were able to get access to care and really good access to care. And it really works for people differently and better in many circumstances.

And so medication abortion is another one of those technological advances that should be allowing easier and more unfettered access to abortion. and better privacy and all of the things. And the fact that legislatively, they just continue to do things that really harm people. But it's things like that where it becomes really cruel because they're definitely harming people that, you know, it's disproportionately black and brown women, disproportionately people of low income that rely on these advances. and that's where they continue to target. It's frustrating. It's really, it's maddening.

It seems like wealthy people, Republicans, will not have any trouble getting abortions if they want them. Yes, and that's always been true, right? I mean, I think what we can learn from is that Roe v. Wade has always and should always be the floor and not the ceiling. The ceiling should really be access for everyone. But we've known that to be true, even with the Hyde Amendment where many states,

at the federal level, they don't pay for or won't allow funds to pay for abortion. And so here in California, our Medicaid, our local Medicaid service does pay for abortion. And so people that are on that type of health coverage are able to access abortion, but in other states, that's simply not true. And so if they have some sort of Medicaid coverage in their state, that particular service is not covered. And so they're still having to go pay for it out of pocket or look for other funds if they are available. And oftentimes, they're just not. And so they're forced to be in a situation that they wouldn't have otherwise

made that decision. And the hardest part is we know. We know what the outcomes are. There's been studies. The turnaway study is very clear that for people that are seeking abortion that aren't able to access that service, whether it's because there's not enough providers or they have economic barriers or whatever the reason is, they're four times more likely to end up in poverty. So we know what the outcomes are. Extremist politicians continue to push this legislation.

and knowing that they're doing harm to the most vulnerable folks. And it's, you know, it continues to be true. And we're seeing it here. We're also seeing it as copycat with all of the LGBTQ legislation and going after gender affirming care and trans kids. And, you know, it just, it's going to require people to be really clear talking about abortion services as a fundamental part of health care, but also talking about people's rights,

not only for their privacy and their health care decisions, but their right to seek a future that they deserve and that politicians should not be putting barriers in front of them to not live the life that they choose to live. Thank you so much, Jody. Thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. What's crazier than QAnon,

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you get your podcasts. Andy. Molly. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is, I guess not our usual fuck that guy in the sense that he's not a politician. Ooh. But he is, in fact, a playwright and screenwriter named David Mamet. And he's written a lot of very good plays, very famous, written a lot of good movies.

Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross. Yeah, American Buffalo. A whole bunch of really good movies made out of his plays and just out of his scripts. So he was on with Mark Levine on Sunday on the Fox News. He was basically defending like the don't say gay kind of bills and stuff like that. He said, this is a quote, teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia. Now, I want to make sure everyone understand.

that he is saying that teachers, the people who... Yeah, teacher children. Yeah. Are inclined to pedophilia, particularly the men. This is just the most batchit, awful thing to say. And, you know, I'm a little sensitive to this issue because both my parents were teachers. And I can assure you, they were not inclined to pedophilia. Nor were any of the teachers that I had in, you know, the decades of schooling that I had.

they, I don't think we're inclined to pedophilia. And it's just such a horrible thing to say, but this is where, this is where the right is right now. And it's homophobia and transphobia in a little bit of disguise, but it's an attack on schools, it's an attack on teachers. And the thing is, it's probably going to get someone hurt or killed, because this is what generally happens, you know, as we saw with like the Pizza Gate thing ending up with a shooting. And you keep talking about teachers being green.

groomers and you keep calling people groomers and tell people that teachers are inclined to be pedophiles and someone innocent is going to get hurt and they don't seem to care and they're just it's just a god-awful thing that's going on right now so just absolutely fuck david mammott yeah it's amazing just absolutely incredible stuff i was shocked when i saw it i know he had gone very Trumpy, but that was bad. He knew he was bad. This is going to sound bad. But I got an invitation from my

synagogue for an event he was doing with Barry Weiss. And that was what I knew. Probably. I thought, oh yeah, that's not good. Yeah, that tracks. Yeah. So do you want to know who my fuck that guy is? I'm not exaggerating,

Molly. I am sitting on the edge of my couch. So my fact that guy is not a guy. She's a woman. She is running for president of France. Her name is Marie Le Pen. She sucks. And she is a pro-Russia candidate. Her party borrowed money from Vladimir Putin, which they still haven't paid off. Oh, interesting. Yeah, she's real sketchy. And she loves Putin. And if France ends up under. very pro-Pudin president, it's going to be really messy and really bad. And remember that they targeted Macron with this Macron leaks, remember in 2017 in the last election. So there certainly is a sense in which there's been a sort of, again, I don't know if it's Russia, but I would assume that the

people running the bot farm just tend to be Russia. There was a bot farm attack on him before. And the People who are pro-Lapan are just about the, you know, they're the Pizza Jax, Jack Posobiac, PizzaGate proprietor. They're the Mike Sernovich's. They're all the people you would suspect. And there's a pretty good case for, they're the worst people in the Internet. So for all this and more, Marie Lippon gets a hearty fuck you. And the hope that she won't win in two weeks. Yeah.

I mean, we've got what the, we've got a run off with her and McCrone. Yeah. But I guess she was in second place in the general, so hopefully that bodes well for her losing the runoff. Fingers crossed. Hopefully that holds. But we don't know how that goes. Of course. Of course.

Yeah. Very scary stuff over in France. Yeah. Fuck that gal. Fucker. 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, will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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