The Daily Beast Podcast - White House Insider: Trump Wanted to 'Maim' Immigrants

Episode Date: August 25, 2020

It’s the first night of the Republican National Convention and Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast are joined by Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, who shares eye-watering tales of what Trump is really like when the cameras are switched off. You thought what happened on screen on night one of the convention was crazy? It’s nothing compared to Trump behind the scenes, where national security officials couldn’t get through a meeting “without him doing 20 tangents, becoming irascible, turning red in the face, demanding a diet Coke, spewing spit,” Taylor explained. “Literally out of goddamn nowhere, he'd be like, ‘You know, who’s just my favorite guy? The MyPillow guy. Do any of you have those pillows?’ When it came to the issue of the border wall, Trump would be dreaming up “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants, rip all the families apart, “maim,” and gas them. “This was a man with no humanity whatsoever,” Taylor says. “He says, we got to do this, this, this, and this, all of which are probably impossible, illegal unethical,” Taylor recalls, but he was writing them down as the president spoke. “And he looks over me and he goes, you fucking taken notes?” All that, and there was still time for the “Fuck that guy” segment, and Jerry Falwell Jr. won a hotly contested race after it was claimed that the anti-LGBT preacher had encouraged the pool boy to have sex with his wife while he watched from the corner of the room. “I would like to salute you for providing the most meta and self-referential ‘Fuck that guy’ ever,” Rick says to Molly. “Because Jerry Falwell said to his wife, ‘Fuck that guy.’” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respect.

Ladies and gentlemen, Americans from all walks of life and all corners of this great nation, welcome to the Daily Beast, the new abnormals, very special. Fuck that guy week. Oh, yes, it's the beginning. It's the first day of the Republican National Convention, and we are here sitting in our virtual studios spread out across the grapefruited plain of America with my co-host, Molly John Fass, our brilliant editor, Jesse Cannon, and of course, the masterful Miles Taylor, the former and now very much ex-chief of staff to the Department of Homeland Security,

an ex-Trump administration official who has gone into the full side of the light and has joined us not only in rejecting Donald Trump, but here this evening. Miles, welcome to the show. Rick, I'm so glad to be here. And actually, I've never been so flattered to be called someone's ex than me. And seriously, if I get to be counted among his exes for the rest of my life, it'll be something I put at a minimum in my Twitter bio, but maybe even on my tombstone. It's a mark of honor. It'll be you and Nirvana. I'll be in great company.

Great company. That's right. So welcome, Miles. Because we're doing the show in a little bit tighter format during our Fuck That Guy week, we're going to launch right into it with the news the day, which was that the RNC, as predicted, transformed itself into a full-blown personality cult with everything but people yelling Kalima and throwing guys into a volcano.

And shit, that might come on night three. You don't know. We're only on night one. I think there's time. Rick, there were so many highlights. I'm sure you've got ones that you want to point out. Aside from the fact that Kimberly Guilfoyle spooked the hell out of Americans, I really think that the winner of the night was the Lochness monster.

I don't know if anyone remembers it was. What was that from? That was the most... DJ Jr. had an extended metaphor about the Lochness monster that I couldn't even follow by the end. But I was so hoping there would be a cameo sort of thing. But we'll get there. The memes will start tomorrow. Oh, the memes have taken wing, my friend. They are out and running.

My question about Kimberly Guilfoyle was it was like a terrifying Eva Perron kind of kind of thing, right? She was like a robot Eva Perron from the future come to kill us all by screaming at us. Miles, you were in this administration. Can you talk about being a Republican and watching this? I don't even know where you start with this convention in of itself. I mean, this was like a movie flop with sort of a B-list production, right? C-list actors and D-List content.

I mean, it's pretty, but like, that's kind of what you come to expect. of Trump world, right? I mean, think about any Trump product that was ever hawked and the stakes in the university, and this was kind of, you know, the Trump campaign. Now, with the exception of, you know, he set peace folks, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, who, look, in some ways did a decent job, but other than that, this is just kind of the exclamation point this week on the near death of the party under Donald Trump. But, you know, it began basically on day one or before day one during the campaign, right? I helped out a little bit with the campaign, came in, ultimately wound up, you know, as is Trump's chief of staff over at DHS. This has been a slow, slow slide into the total

dissolution of the party under the president. So, you know, I think this convention and the sort of cheesy nature of it is indicative of where this whole thing's gone under him. And, and by the way, his just vice-like grip over the party, I mean, real people who we thought for the past few years had a conscience in the Republican Party or staying mum or, you know, like tweeting out Bible verses and like, you know, that sort of cowardice throughout the party, I think,'s been really disheartening to watch. It was, it certainly was from the inside, so disheartening that that's why last year I had to get the hell out. Yeah, I feel your pain, brother. But I think you're right. I mean, look, if you took Nikki Haley or Tim Scott and de contextualized them and put them in the 2012 convention, their speeches

would have been perfectly normal and well-regarded. But when you put them in the context of the administration that they're supporting every day, and in fact, the context of the administration, she gladly serve, it comes off looking absurdist. It comes off looking just completely discordant with what we actually know about this administration and what we know about Donald Trump as a person and as a president. I mean, I think your point there, it's like a B-List production of something. It's like those Philippine knockoff movies of the BOR or whatever.

I always think of it, it's the ishtar of conventions. But you kind of, didn't you expect, like, after Nikki and before Tim Scott, it felt weird that there wasn't a catheter commercial, right? I felt like, it was just supposed to happen somewhere in the night, and it didn't. Mypillow.com. That didn't happen either. I do have to say, you know, the MyPillow things become such a thing with the president, but really before he was talking about it publicly, I was in a number of meetings

with the president where, I don't know, we'd be in there talking a border security issue, right, 95% of the time. And literally out of goddamn nowhere, he'd be like, you know who's like just my favorite guy? He's like, the my pillow guy. Is anyone, do any of you, do any of you have those pillows? I mean, he's just the greatest guy. He knows that. They're magnificent. These are like my early exposures to the president. And I'm like, what the actual fuck is happening? You know? Miles, you do a deal with Trump imitation. And that is a criteria for a return. I'd be sitting there and I actually remember one of them. I mean, look, and I, you know, I'm not trying to overblow this. It's not like Trump and I were best buddies, you know, watching movies every night in

the West Wing, right? But there is a picture of you and him, which I love. There's so, so many, many pictures. I mean, when he said, yeah, I've never met the guy, I was going to do a whole stream of like 30 of them and just be like this time, this time, this time. So, you know, more than his memory, you know, I'm just worried about his whether or not he's actually even using that My Pillow because I get great sleep online. If he got better sleep, he'd know what was going on. But no, you know, in fact, in that actual specific meeting, as I'm kind of just, you know, experiencing first kind of. contact with this guy, I had to write that down when he said it. I had to make a note of it. But when you're in meetings with him, like any other president, right, you're taking notes because the boss is telling you, look, here's my direction, here's what we're going to do, and you got to

take notes. Donald Trump hates it when people take notes in the room, right? And so in that meeting, I'm actually writing down, okay, he says we've got to do this, this, this, this, all of which are probably impossible, illegal, unethical. So we'll have to come back, and we'll say, like, we can't do this? And he looks over me and he goes, be fucking taking notes? And I was what do I say? I was like, I'm just, I'm just writing down and he just kind of looked at me. I was like, well, I won't do that. And I just closed my book. Noted. I've actually seen him do that so many times in meetings. So look at you, like, why the hell are you taking notes? It's like, because I thought it was the administration of a president of the United States, not a fucking mob family.

Can you imagine if like your ninth grade English teacher is like a, a, expecting you to do well in the test and says, but are you fucking taking notes right now? Are you listening? I mean, it's like, this is the president. And he's telling us what he wants to, what he wants to do.

That was the experience. That's unbelievable. Well, I think that you've shown more courage about coming out and talking than a lot of people who, you know, were senior to you and should have made that jump before. And they've had all these, what I think are fairly bullshit compunctions.

Like, oh, I can't, of course, I want to steal people inside. They're hoping. Maybe the grown-ups will finally triumph. Yeah. I think we all know that there are no grown-ups left in the room. That's true. Look, if there's one theme right now,

I mean, look, and this is just for me personally. I feel like almost all my heroes have, you know, died here in Washington, D.C., or they're, like, on hospice care right now. I don't mean in terms of their actual age. I just mean in terms of their moral codes and their consciences. And a lot of that is at the hands of Donald Trump. I mean, look, bottom line is this. Everyone who served in this administration, with the exception of a handful of sycophants that are still around the president, understand that he's truly unfit for office. I mean, this was a topic of daily and frequent conversation at people at all levels of the administration, White House cabinet, everybody knows it. If they deny it, it's because they're lying out of fear of him or they're trying not to lose their jobs or both. And that's concerning. And look, you're absolutely right. I mean, a lot of really great people.

that I looked up to have been hesitant to come out. In some cases, I don't buy the excuse that, you know, we have a duty to silence towards the president when we leave. I absolutely fundamentally and furiously disagree with that, right? I think Teddy Roosevelt's the one who has that quote that says, Patriotism's not, right, standing by the president. It's standing by the country. And look, I don't think we should be quoting French generals about how, you know, we hold our tongues. No, now's the time. The voters are deciding whether we hire the president. We're reviewing his CV. we need to make it a very complete C-B and explain what we saw. So, I mean, you know, all the joking aside, I mean, that's been very concerning that more people haven't come out and they feel the same way. But I think

you're going to see a few more. And steadily, we're going to be getting more voices out there because this really was the universal sentiment. And I'm not saying this as like some sort of closet Democrat. I mean, I'm a lifelong Republican, a national security conservative. This is what I've dedicated my career to. I came into the administration with the full intent of helping the president be a good president, but we realized, I think, pretty quickly that he was, he was truly unfit for the job and incapable of carrying it out on a daily basis. I mean, genuinely, you couldn't go into a meeting with the president and get the one point across that you needed to get across without him doing 20 tangents, becoming arsible, turning right in the face, demanding a Diet Coke, you know,

spewing, spit. I mean, just really is just something, like, you just wouldn't expect. It's, it's not, that's not even a B movie, you know, it's like a bad Seth Rovey. skit on SML that doesn't land. But it turns out every single day, it's the man with the, you know, the finger on the nuclear button. So, yeah, that was concerning. Americans should be spooked. They should be really spooked about this. You know, I always tell people, and you, you and I will get this more than some people. If you knew how easy and how little friction there is and the actual National Command Authority to launch a weapon, you would never sleep again. Of course. Of course. When did you know you had to leave?

Oh, God. I mean, there were a lot of, there were a lot of different points where it got worse and worse and worse. One of the key ones, honestly, one of the key ones was on family separation because it was a disastrous policymaking process that led into it. Were you in that room with the hand-raising? No, I wasn't there in that moment. And actually, when the Attorney General announced the zero-tolerance policy, I'd actually just become the Deputy Chief of Staff. And so before that, I'd been John Kelly's National Security Advisor. And so had been doing nothing immigration and was glad not to be doing immigration, because everyone who was doing immigration was just suffering daily

at the president's unstoppable obsession with building the wall and blocking caravans. But when I took the Deputy Chief job, look, all issues of the department came under my purview. then obviously the same thing with the chief job. Then once they'd made the policy decision to do it, I got involved when it came to implementation. And what's not really well known is at the time, there was this big delay between Jeff Sessions making a speech in April and saying, zero talents, we're going to prosecute everyone at the border. And then for like maybe six weeks, nothing happened. The reason nothing happened is because behind the scenes, Secretary Nielsen was like, we don't have the resources to quickly get these people to the places

where you're going to prosecute them and back to their kids in time. Right? It's going to be a disaster. In a backlog, unless you guys throw money and bodies and cars and judges and attorneys and everything at us to do this. The numbers are too big. And she warned and warned and warned. And then as you guys saw, you know, look, the White House got fed up with it. And they said, stopped Elaine. We're going to take a vote. And everyone raised their hands but the secretary. And she said, we're not ready to go. And they said, well, we're going to go anyway. And she ended up being right. It was a predictable disaster. Now it's sad that she ended up getting tagged, you know, with it because she went and stood at the podium. But frankly, she was the one that tried to put the brakes on it. And then rightfully, you know, we got the president. to sign an executive order to end it, but the reason to your question, I decided I had to go is pretty much every month after that. The president kept saying, I want to restart it, and I want to make it 10 times as bad. Every kid, with every parent, you got to rip them apart. And it was just sickening to listen to. And it was clear that he really just, this was a man with no humanity

whatsoever. So look, the bottom line is when saying no was no longer enough is when we decided it's time to get out of Dodge. Did you feel there were other moral people in the administration who had the same kind of, I mean, the children stuff, those videos. I mean, did you just like go home? I mean, I can't even imagine. But it's even worse than that. I mean, like, here's the thing. The children, of course, yes. You know, at the end of the day, the kind of rule of thumb down at the border is DHS has 72 hours under law to make sure a child's back with their parent. And if they aren't in time because the parents being prosecuted for crossing illegally, then the child has to go to health and human services, right? Because

border stations, if you've been to them, they're not places for children, right? They're concrete slabs. That's not okay. And so always the department strives to very quickly reunite children with their parents, just like now. Like if Rick got arrested today and has a kid, the kids don't get to come to jail with, okay? And that happens wherever you get arrested. Same thing at the border. But the goal is you do it real quickly, and so the parents can be reunited. But when you then start prosecuting thousands and thousands of people, the system gets clogged and it's a disaster. So that happened. But what I was going to say is, even worse than that, are some of the ideas that the president had for dealing with migrants at the border. So he wanted to maim them and tear gas them and shoot them.

And I'm not even being hyperbolic. So like we sat in a meeting one time where the president was, well, this was actually several occasions, but where he was talking about what he wanted us, how he wanted us to design the border wall. And one day, the focus was on the spikes. And he was really upset because from the pictures we were showing him of the steel bollards, he said the spikes aren't sharp enough. And he said, I want you to go back and run me a cost estimate. How can they be sharper? And we said, well, Mr. President, like, you know, look, this has been designed by the operators. This is what the operators say they need.

And he said, yeah, but I want them so sharp that I want it to pierce human flesh. So it'll go right through their hands or arms if they try to climb it, right? And this is only like a couple of weeks before. Then we had an incident at the border. A caravan was rushing a border station. And look, when that happens and people are actually rushing a border station, you've got to do crowd control, right? Because it could be a threat to the officers and a danger. And so there was a limited instance where officers had to deploy tear gas because they were worried that some of the people in the caravan were armed and they were storming the gates.

The president thought, not that this was an isolated incident, he thought this was a new policy we were instituting where we were just gassing people across the border. So he called up the secretary and said, you know, he's like, Kiyushin, this is just absolutely amazing. I mean, what you're doing, this is so tough. The gassing of the migrant is so tough. And I remember we're sitting there. He was on speakerphone. I was like, he has no idea. I said he has no idea that this is like a incident, isolated, and that we didn't order it.

I mean, his perception was, oh, the secretary must have ordered. Let's start gassing them. And then worse than that, as people know, because he later said it publicly, which we tried to get him not to, were the multiple occasions he suggested. Why don't we just shoot them? Like, why can't we just shoot them coming towards the border? And we had to explain to the president that the rules of engagement don't work that way. Unless all of these women and children fleeing violence and persecution have AK-47s on them,

no, they're not an imminent threat. That's not how it happens. And then he dialed it back of it. He's like, okay, I understand. You don't want to kill him. It's like, but couldn't we just shoot him in like the legs to slow them down? This is the president of the United States talking here. That was a little bit more than alarming, a little bit more than gut-wrenching to hear him go down that route. But look, you can't lie. I mean, he's irreverent. And sometimes they would be so outlandish that they would be funny. I mean, those were gut-wrenching and disgusting. And obviously we stood in the way of those proposals and didn't let those things happen. But I mean, I remember when he called us and he wanted to have us do a cost estimate on what it would take to build a moat in front of the wall. I want robot alligators in the moat. Wait. No, that's, I mean, Rick, you're halfway there. So he asked us to do a cost estimate on, in addition to the wall, he said, I don't think the wall's enough.

I want them to have to be able to go down into a moat. And his point was, it doubles the height of the wall, right? Because you have to go then down and then way up. And we were like, this is truly insane. And then he goes further. We're talking to him on the phone. And he says, I want you to. run the estimate and also what would it take to put alligators and snakes in the moat?

No, he did not. Oh my God. He's an absolutely honest to God and to God. He said, how much would it cost us to put alligators and snakes in the moat? And we're sitting there and like our jaws are on the floor. And I'm like, doubled over laughing because I'm like, this can't be real. It's got to be a joke. He was dead serious. He called back again. He's like, where are my cost estimates? So what do you do in that situation? When you were trying to run a $250,000 person, $60 billion a year department, that's responsible for protecting Americans against cyber threats and terrorists and foreign meddling from the Russians and border security. And then the president wants you to drop everything and tell them how much it would cost to build a moat. You're in kind of a tough spot because the last thing I want to do is tell one of our agency heads,

hey, the president needs you to do cost estimates on moats and how do you keep snakes alive long enough in the moats to like, you know, that's not a thing. Do you mean put snakes? I don't understand. Don't the alligators eat the snakes? It's not even a coherent way of thinking about a moat in like medieval times, let alone a moat at the southern border. So look, you know, all you would do is like, okay, let's have as few people involved in this as possible, because it's crazy and clearly we're not going to do it. But can someone please do a back of the envelope on how insanely it's expensive it is? Because if there's one thing you know about Donald Trump, it's that while he may be quote rich, he's also quote, very cheap. So if you go to him with a big number and you say this is going to be crazy prohibitively expensive, he'll say, say, you know, that's absolutely right. We can't do it. That's what we did. We went back to him on the

moat and we're like, you know, this is billions and billions and billions to build you a moat. And he's like, yeah, okay, I understand we won't do it. But of course he'd bring it up later. That's not how I should spend a full day trying to run this department where we're stopping threats. Instead of focusing on those 250,000 people, we had to focus way too much on that one person, that audience have won, which, by the way, I think is a good tie back to the convention tonight because I think the biggest thing out of the convention was it was a whole event designed around them talking to that one person. I don't feel like that convention was talking to America. They were all talking to an audience of one. I don't think in our lifetimes, we've seen such a

sycophantic approach to nominating someone to be present. I've been going to a Republican convention since I was but a wee lad. And no, nothing ever even close to this. So, Miles, one of the things that I noticed tonight was that the president used the both not only used the White House itself as a prop for the political campaign, but a lot of the hostages that the State Department and other agencies worked very hard to free in the last few years. What did you think about that whole thing? It was very discordant for me. It was like, aren't you happy? I helped you? Yeah, I mean, look, a couple things. First, on the point of using the White House as a setting for the convention, it goes without sight. This is wildly inappropriate and corrupt. right, to use the American People's House as a site for a political event. And it's something that, you know, in a previous administration, I was, you know, in the Bush administration towards the end. I don't think anyone would have ever even conceived of something like that happening, right? But ethics and propriety have gone out the window in this White House. That's piece number one. But two,

it was the perfect example of the president trying to do something that he thought would, you know, seem heroic and beneficial. And he ends up with his foot in his mouth in one particular moment. And I'm sure you guys noticed it, is one of the individuals who'd been released was telling the story about how he'd been let out of his Turkish prison. A prison he was in because of Erdogan's oppressive police state that he's creating. And within seconds of telling the story of getting out of Turkey, the president in front of this man who's effectively been imprisoned by the Turkish dictator, then lads Erdogan and basically says, you know, Erdogan's a really great man. I mean, I couldn't even believe it. Here we are. The whole point of this was to say we freed hostages from autocratic, repressive places around the world. And then Trump can't even resist patting one of those dictators on the back. That was pretty nauseating to see.

One last question for you, and you and I both came out of the national security side of this equation originally, although me a much longer time ago. Do you feel like the intelligence community writ large? I mean, the shell shock, some of the folks I've talked to in the last three, four years, has been so extraordinary, and they've been so, like, I don't understand why he won't listen. I don't understand why he can't put this shit past him and understand there are real threats out there. Were you, I mean, by the time you left, it must have gotten pretty, the whispering must have gotten to be pretty loud. Unquestionably. I mean, so I did two and a half years in there, and from the get-go, it was clear that the president

was hell-bent on waging an all-out war against the civil service of the United States, right? It was the whole government, because the whole government was the deep state, and you couldn't trust any of them, and they were around every corner. And look, I'll say, in our 250,000 person department, I found no indication whatsoever that there was like a nefarious deep state focused on unseeding the president, right? It's not a real thing. It's paranoia. It's conspiracy theory. But there was no greater target than the intelligence community. And the reasons to me are very, very obvious. Of any part of the entire government, the one part that's charged every day with literally speaking truth to power, no matter what they see,

is the intelligence community. It's their job to say, here's what's happening, unvarnished, and we're going to give it to you straight so you can address a threat. That naturally was the place President Trump gravitated to, to attack, because he hates the truth, right? Especially he hates anything that's discordant with his worldview.

So the fact that the intelligence community was so often coming to him and telling him things that didn't comport with how he saw the world meant that they were probably going to be excoriated more than others. definitely took a toll. I mean, all the way down to line analysts, who I think felt just the morale was in the tank. We were talking about people who risk their lives to tell us about enemies threatening our country at home and abroad. These should be the people that are the patriots Donald Trump's applauding every day, not the ones who he's deriding in presidential speeches. And by the way, then bringing in their leadership into the Oval Office to humiliate them for telling the truth to Congress.

Do you feel like if Trump loses that he'll leave? It's a great question. And I hate to speculate because it's such a dangerous thing. Because when he speculates, it's dangerous, right? But my fear is that the president tries to litigate the hell out of the 2020 election results if he loses. And in the meantime, tries to cast it as illegitimate. And in doing so, inspires nationwide civil unrest. I mean, look, we've seen the country is a.

Tinder box right now. And Trump knows it and he takes advantage of it. And if that happens, I think he'll want to try to make it as hard as possible for the electors to certify for Joe Biden. And what will that mean for us? That will create a lot of turmoil and I think further undermine our democratic process. So that's my biggest worry about what he'll do. But here's the last thing I'll say on that point. I'm also worried about what's going to happen before November 3rd on that front because we have built, when we were in the administration, we built this elaborate, and robust apparatus to fight back against Russian or any other nation-state intervention. So believe it or not since 2016, we've come a long way.

People like Chris Krebs, who runs our cybersecurity agency, Director Ray at the FBI, Dan Coates, when he was at DNI, they build a great system. There's all kinds of incredible tools now to deter the bad guys, go after the bad guys, really punish them for interfering in our democracy. Sanctions, the whole bit, right? But what the bureaucracy can't plan for is when the commander-in-chief himself is the one amplifying the misinformation and siding with the enemy. When that happens, what are they going to do? They're going to go after and attack their boss. They're going to counter message him. They're going to

sanction the president. So the danger here is if the president falls victim to this misinformation because it's convenient for him, let's say, if the Russians are so in discord in the United States, that's favorable towards Trump. So if he really embraces it in a full-throated way, that apparatus is completely unable to protect this country. And then I think, I think we're in a pretty scary position. So I worry about that in October. And I think ultimately, really, the only people there are to hold him to account, I mean, the American people are going to have a tough time knowing which ways up and down.

It's going to be on Congress. And they're going to be out of town and they're going to be campaigning. But it's going to be the responsibility of people, especially in the Republican Party, if the president goes down that route, to condemn him and to tell him it's inappropriate. So we'll see what happens. But I hope he demonstrates a little responsible. Good luck. Yeah, I was going to say you're going to have to talk to them because they're kind of coward.

There's a cowardice epidemic sweeping the Republican Party second only to the coronavirus pandemic. Because I like to call it profiles in chicken shit. The new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks. Starting in August, we'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to New Abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com to join now.

Your Beast Inside membership helps support the great reporting at The Beast and podcasts like the new abnormal. Thanks. With all of this excitement and having such an incredibly interesting guest, we almost forgot that this week is actually Fuck That Guy week. It is Fuck That Guy Week. And as you know, America, Fuck That Guy is the only required formation on the new Abnormal. This week, you're getting all the bonus Fuck That Guys you can handle. And so, Molly Jong Fast, who is your Fuck That Guy for today? I think my fuck, that guy has to be Jerry Falwell Jr.

Jerry Falwell Jr. Would he be what the kids, those wacky kids on the alt-right call a cuck? The thing I'm not getting in the story, right? Remember, Falwell tried to beat it at, beat. This is how much. Very careful, Molly. We don't have that information yet. Falwell released a sort of fallow.

well sanctioned story yesterday that said the wife had been cheating on him with the pool boy. Today, the pool boy came out and said, actually... Is it still cheating if he asked the pool boy to screw his wife? Is it still cheating if he's paying the pool boy to not say anything? Is it still cheating if he has the pool boy there while he's... See, Rick is trying to be good. Servicing his own needs? Is it my...

Is it still cheating? My favorite... If he says his favorite novel is Cuckleberry Finn. Oh, stop. My favorite part of this whole story is that... Did he drink Diet Cuck? My favorite part of this whole story is that Liberty University announced that Jerry Falwell Jr. was stepping down. And Jerry Falwell Jr. said he wasn't.

You know, he just went out and said, look, let's let the balls fall where they may. I'm going to take a swing at sticking with a job. You can feel our producer. rolling his eyes. If your waitress, try the veal. I'll be your whole fucking week. But, and next week, too. I'm, I'm not even going to touch this. I'm just going to step back and watch. Well played, sir. Well played. So anyway, Jerry Falwell is still the president of Liberty University as we record this podcast. Stay tuned. Molly, I would like to salute you for providing the most meta. and self-referential fuck that guy ever

because you know what? Not only did you just say fuck that guy about Jerry Falwell but it was because Jerry Falwell said to his wife fuck that guy. Rick is never going to let this go. I'm never letting it go. Ever.

It's important that you mentioned. In one week, I have seen Steve Bannon and Jerry Falwell Jr. crushed beneath the wheels of fate and I'm loving it. But I will say this. There's a missing element to your fuck that guy. It's Michael Cohen.

Yes. Remember, Michael Cohen was a lawyer with three clients. Client number one, Donald John Trump. Client number two, Sean Hannity. No, Sean Hannity is client number three. Oh, I'm sorry. Client number three is Sean Hannity. These are the things I know. Client number two is Jerry Falwell Jr.

And Cohen had previously stated that he was helping Falwell with a matter of some embarrassing or incriminating photographs. Yes, the wife in the pool. Weirdly, not long after Michael Cohen became engaged with Donald Trump, I mean, excuse me, with Jerry Fallwell Jr. suddenly this pillar of moral rectitude, this stalwart of the evangelical movement, this man who speaks to God on a direct hotline every night, managed in a race where people like Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and other evangelicals, because Marco is not a Catholic, he's an evangelical, we're still in the race. For some reason, Jerry Falwell Jr.

chose to endorse a degenerate casino-owning scumback. Somehow, some mysterious mechanism that no mortal man saved Michael Cohen under. understands, caused him to endorse Donald Trump. And it was a surprise. I remember talking to evangelicals at the time, some of whom were like very active evangelical political space people who were like, how the F did that happen? Well, we now know. It is worth the reexamination of that question because I suspect I smell a well-oiled rat. Or a pool boy. Or a pool boy. It may be some sort of suntan product. That's right. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode. episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with

smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly Zhang Fast and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your

podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.