The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Biden Is Likely to Bridge Polling Gap Against Trump

Episode Date: January 5, 2024

The Daily Beast’s senior political reporter Roger Sollenberger tells The New Abnormal why Trump’s lead in the polls compared with Biden is set to narrow as the election nears. Plus! Danielle Moodie talks to psychiatrist Jonathan Metzl about his new book What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms. Moodie will also host Metzl at the Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn on Feb. 5 where they will further explore how our collective failure to stop mass shootings is betraying the democracy envisaged by the framers of the Constitution. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Not all of us are quite back from ours yet, but that doesn't mean we don't have some exciting content for you today. Senior political reporter for The Daily Beast, Roger Soul Murder, is here to break down most of the Trump drama that happened during the holiday, including the newest scandal about him receiving foreign money while he was still president. Then Jonathan Metzell, the author of Dying of Whiteness, is here to talk to us about the unfortunate reason, realities of gun violence in America and how he addresses it in his upcoming book, What We've Become, Living and Dying in a Country of Arms. But first, so let's have some fun. Folks, welcome back to the new abnormal with fresh episodes.

Happy New Year to everyone. We are slowly but surely going to begin to tackle this new cycle and joining us as our friend Andy Levy is out sick is senior political report. at the Daily Beast, Roger Salenberger, to kind of get us up to speed on what's transpired while hopefully folks were able to take a little bit of break at the end of the year for the holidays and are just getting their sea legs back.

Roger, I will start off with this. When I go on vacation, I turn the news all the way off because the noise is just too much and I'm trying to get to a tranquil place. I came back and I turned the news on for what felt like forever and a day and I wanted to scream. Let's start here. Democrats in the House released a, I guess it's over 80 pages of a report that once again shows us that Donald Trump is a crook that over two years of his four-year term,

because that's the only time that they had access to with the banks, Donald Trump and his businesses made roughly $8 million while he was president. If folks remember, unlike every single president before him, Donald Trump refused to put his businesses in a trust. He refused to step down from boards and running of his companies. And everyone said, okay, that's cool. And so now Democrats release this report. Tell us what your initial thoughts are on what, if anything, this says and if at all, at this stage, it matters. Well, happy New Year to everybody. I am very grateful that you were able to take a break from the news, but for us, like, Rust never sleeps, right?

So, yeah, we've got quite a bit to catch up on. The latest story, as you point out about the foreign government payments, the House Oversight Committee was investigating this for quite some time. And the White House and Trump put up a defense trying to block them from acquiring all this information. That case ended up getting just shut down when Republicans took over the House, right? So as you pointed out, first of all, there is just like a fraction of the spending here. Like they weren't able to finish their investigation because Comer just quashed it, right? So what we have is an investigation that covers less than 1% of the 560 or so,

like entities that that Trump controls either directly or indirectly. So it's a tiny fraction of what we see in Trump, his accounting firm, I believe, only produced. I think 20% of the documents that were required. So we only have like a like a thumbnail here, but that thumbnail does show $8 million from 20 different foreign countries, right? These are these are from government-backed entities. The biggest coming from China with $5.5 million. And some that even came from China's embassy in the U.S., right? And Trump and the Republican Party, have just been nailing China again and again again as a political talking point, trying to tie it to Joe Biden and dealings of his son, Hunter. There have been absolutely, there's no evidence

at all of any wrongdoing or any foreign money flowing into Joe Biden's accounts. But we do see millions coming from China into Trump's accounts. And remember, like pretty recently, Trump was revealed, I think it was like a year ago, that he had a bank account in check after denying it. And so, you know, in the political context here of the impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, it's a thesis in search of evidence. And they really haven't come up with any, but they say, oh, we need to investigate it. At the same time, Comer shuts down this investigation into Trump when it wasn't, you know, it wasn't even nearly complete. Comer says that the difference between Biden and Trump is that Biden's businesses or Hunter Biden's, you know, businesses really not Joe Biden at

all, were not legitimate, that they didn't do anything except make money off of Joe Biden's name. That's Comer, obviously saying that. But he just thinks it's enough to investigate. However, he doesn't seem to think that it's enough to investigate, you know, $8 million coming into Donald Trump. while he was president, by the way, as you pointed out, the issue here is that Trump did not, is like you said, he's the first president to break the precedent and not adhere to the emoluments clause in the constitution. And the emoluments clause says that, you know, a president cannot accept basically anything of value from foreign companies while he's in office. Trump had millions flowing through from foreign entities while he was in office. One small correction to what you said was that, you know, you said Trump did not put his assets into a trust.

Did do that at the very beginning of his presidency. However, those assets were placed into a trust that his son's control. Right. And so the business, you know, was still coming into his family, again, point to the Hunter Biden thing. want to. Like, that's the family too, right? But what I think has gone missing in some of this reporting is that about a month after Trump started this trust, like a month, he quietly changed the terms to allow him to access cash directly. Well, I'm not kidding. No, I know. I know. I know you're not kidding. But I have to laugh. Otherwise, I'm just going to sit here and just

cry hysterically like a lunatic. Yeah, it's pretty wild. Eric Trump says that they paid the money from some of these hotel stays. A lot of them were hotel stays and that they paid the money to the U.S. Treasury and some like annual agreement. I'm not sure about the details of that agreement, how much money that really covered, but that's sort of their explanation for that. However, you know, Jamie Raskin says, he's the Democratic lead on the Oversight Committee who helped, you know, spearhead this investigation in the first place. Raskin points out that that still does not satisfy the Emoluments Clause, which is like you cannot accept it, period, right? And the Democrats point out, importantly, that this money wasn't just coming into Trump from countries, just doesn't

seem by happenstance. Right. It seems he was, you know, the House Democrats say that this money was coming in to the Trump administration from countries who had very significant political interests, policy goals that they were trying to further. They were able to, because Trump did not obey the amendments clause, they were able to try to exploit that by spending money at a number of properties in New York, in Las Vegas as well. And, you know, at hotels, but also, you know, leasing to Donald Trump that has been longstanding. I mean, Donald Trump got elected with this deal with a Chinese bank, right, that from 2008 has kept paying the Trump entities for this lease. So he came into office with this. He was elected and continued to accept the money. There are so many distinctions between what's

going on here and the bullshit that Comer has tried to pass off in the Biden impeachment inquiry. And I appreciate this like really thorough rundown that you just gave because the issue is that for those that are listening to this, they know Donald Trump is a crook, right? Like it's literally just more fuel. It's just more binders, right? Just more information on what it is that we knew before Donald Trump became president while he was president and since he's left office. And I guess my question is, what does this actually fucking? matter. As we have now changed the calendar year into 2024, you have multiple lawsuits that Donald Trump is putting up obstacles to slow them down and it's working, right? So we know that he will unlikely go to trial, let alone probably be convicted of anything before the November election. So when Democrats are doing this, knowing that the only thing that they can put out is a report, because

without Republican cooperation, this goes nowhere. And we know that Republicans are not going to cooperate because they're lawless. So at the end of the day, in your opinion, what is the point of this and how does it play, if at all? Yeah, I mean, there's a good point that's sort of always been there with Donald Trump, which is there are just so many scandals, so many allegations that, you know, relatively adding a new one in, you know, you put a drop of water into an eyedropper and it fills up the eyedropper, right? But you put a drop of water into a lake or an ocean and it just doesn't have the same effect. This is sort of like that. Like the Republicans have an eye dropper for Joe Biden and they can focus on, you know, basically this one critique in their impeachment inquiry. But there's just so much

with Donald Trump that it, I think it's like impossible for someone to actually process how serious all of this is. Like you point out all these lawsuits he's facing, you know, just this month he's going to be the first trial, I think, this month is actually a lawsuit about a multi-level marketing company, a video phone that Trump was pushing and not like disclosing that he was getting paid for back in the 2000s on The Apprentice. So that's there. There's a lawsuit against Eddie. grant over the rights of Electric Avenue. There's E. Gene Carroll. And then, you know, on top of that, you've got all of the indictments. And then you have, you know, this report. I think that this report does tie in in some important ways, however, and could be pretty useful politically to sort of

deflate some of the allegations that the Democrats are trotting out against Biden, right? Well, every time they can accuse Biden of something, you can point to this, and it is much more, right? It appears much more serious than Joe Biden's allegations. So it's sort of useful there as a counterpoint. There's another interesting part of this in that Donald Trump's foreign entanglements seem to be relevant, you know, potentially relevant to the documents case at Mar-a-Lago. We still don't know exactly why Donald Trump took those documents. We don't know what they all are, but we do know that they are, you know, exceedingly, exceedingly sensitive documents like nuclear secrets, sources and methods, things like that, things that foreign governments would love to know about the United States. And we really don't know what happened to that information.

One of the foreign governments, you know, aside from China, the second highest spender at Trump properties was Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia also now has a deal with Trump and his golf courses for their live golf, you know, sort of sports washing tour that they've launched in recent years. But, you know, Saudi Arabia is very friendly with Donald Trump and could be a financial backer, right? We don't really know exactly the depth of that relationship either, but it does seem that there are different tie-ins for this story to sort of keep hammering a few points. I'm not sure if this compels somebody to look twice at Donald Trump, if they're not looking twice at him already. It was already reported that foreign money was coming to Donald Trump. this just, you know, really puts a bow on that reporting. But we still don't know the full scope of it either.

Stuff like this does tend to get lost, you know, amid the storm of different allegations against the guy. It's really, it's really a problem of too much information. And that's, you know, that's the thing, though, Roger. And I'm so glad that you brought that up because I think that the strategy with the Trump administration and with the Trump sycophants, you know, following his administration is just throw as much shit at the wall as possible. It doesn't matter what sticks. Something will stick. So if you overwhelm everyone, the American public, with the barrage of crimes that Donald Trump

is committed, basically they begin to cancel themselves out because it's just so much crime. And everyone who is paying attention or tuning back in is just like, if it were me, I would be in jail. So like how much more fucking clarity do you need? How much more analysis do we need to provide? Oh, we don't know the full scope of X, Y, and Z. And it's just like, if this were any other official, former official or current official, they'd be in jail. And so I'm like, it seems to me that the entire push by the Democrats, which I believe is failing, is let us continue to paint Donald Trump as the man we've always known Donald Trump to be. And in your opinion, do you think that this is January?

We got months ahead of us. But is this strategy going to play in Democrats' favor? Is it enough to just continue to paint Donald Trump for the criminal that we know that he is? When you look at the matchup with Biden and his numbers are in the sewer? I mean, I have a take on this that I haven't really heard echoed too much. It's an optimistic sort of take. And I think that the polling that shows Biden losing to Trump right now doesn't quite capture what I believe the sentiment will be in November. And I say that because there was a really big New York Times poll a couple of months ago. You might remember it. I think they surveyed like 3,500 voters. It was pretty broad. for a survey, right? And one finding in that survey is that fewer people today, fewer people think that Trump is unfit for office than they did before the election in 2020. And that is before

January 6th even happened. So how could that be, right? How could Trump be more fit for office after he tried to overthrow an election. And I think the answer is that people not like, I guess not like me, I don't know about you guys, maybe not like you either, just don't have their finger on the pulse, right? We're not as exposed daily to Donald Trump as we were when he was the president. And he had, every day was ridiculous. And people became exhausted with it. I do think that in that election, election, you could actually see all of this stuff just stacking up. Maybe people did not know all of the different claims against Donald Trump. They couldn't articulate them. But they were aware that this guy was a complete mess. I mean, you had the COVID response too, right? There were all of these. People were just

sick of Donald Trump in office. They wanted somebody there who could, you know, competently steer the ship. Trump is also off Twitter so we don't have that constant drumbeat, especially not cited in the press, right? The press has not been covering Trump as closely, right, in sort of a horse race, a scandal horse race fashion that they were doing for the four years while he was president in a much more newsworthy position. But as the election approaches, we are going to see far more from Donald Trump, receive far more coverage. People are going to be reminded over the next 11 months of Donald Trump himself. And he's going to do some of that reminding by becoming a more and more present force in the media, right? We also have these trials coming up. I think your point is probably mostly correct in that we're not going to see many of these trials before the election. However, we might see a couple. There might be the New York case about hush money. If you guys remember that one, the hush money payments is first ever indictment to Stormy Daniels. That is scheduled to go in March. I haven't heard anything about a possible delay there. Any delay might be because of the DC case, the January 6th case, which is still

scheduled for March, but depending on these appeals to the Supreme Court, how this goes, that that case might get pushed back as well. I actually believe that that case will be tried before the election. The judge in that case, Tanya Chutkin, seems pretty committed to getting this trial done as quickly as possible. She understands the urgency of this. It is possible that Trump gets convicted before the election. That alone, right? If you want to pull one thing out, one claim out against Donald Trump, that would seem to be it, right? That he got convicted for. for trying to overturn the last election. So why would you elect him now?

You would think I do want to pivot to, you know, the ballots, which is Colorado and Maine have both taken Donald Trump off of the ballot, citing the 14th Amendment, Section 3, stating that if you've been involved as an officer of the United States in an insurrection, then you cannot hold office. And we are seeing this play out. It hasn't been as big. of a domino effect as I would like to see, but you are seeing people go, huh, well, if these federal judges and the Supreme Court love to paint themselves as strict constitutionalists, right,

what kind of contortion exercise are they going to do in order to read this in another way? And so what do you make of the news around that? You don't see too many of Trump's defenders arguing on the specific merits of the case, right. Most of their arguments are like, well, this is just generally undemocratic. There are plenty of arguments against that, by the way. This is a constitutional question for the courts. It's plainly constitutional. Leaving it up to the voters is not what the Constitution says, right? But, you know, I also encourage everybody out there to read what the Colorado Supreme Court wrote about him engaging in election. They took it very seriously and overwhelmingly said, yeah, he did engage in

election, right? But you do have a few arguments that exit ramps for the Supreme Court to, you know, reject these rulings or possibly decide the narrowly ways out, right? The exit ramps are, one of them is the question of whether Donald Trump was an officer of the United States at the time. That sort of seems up for debate. legal experts, constitutional experts say that that's not really an obvious reading of the Constitution. However, if you're a strict, strict constructionist, right? Like a Clarence Thomas, you can see in the Constitution, it says, shall not hold office. So there is an argument that the court could make narrowly saying, well, this doesn't say that you can't run for office. It says, you can't hold office, which is an interesting argument, meaning that, you know, theoretically,

Trump could get elected, but Congress would then decide whether he's capable of holding office. And they might decide that, again, on January 6th, 2025, if the Democrats flip the house in 2024, then the people who are going to be seated in the House determining that would be a Democratic majority. And you might have a crazy uproar again over January 6th and the reading of the counting of the electoral ballots. It could be completely crazy. I also think that the Supreme Court is taking this more seriously than, you know, the cynics. might say, I, by the way, am totally cynical. It's not like I'm, you know, blind to those other arguments. I thought about this a lot. And the Supreme Court actually has a strange exit ramp to deny Trump, right?

Which is that this court is uniquely positioned if they wanted to to make a legitimate claim here. I mean, you have three Donald Trump appointees on this court. None of them seem to be actual fans of him. They have bucked him in rulings before that have really upset him. If they wanted to get rid of Donald Trump politically, if they wanted to sort of spare their own legacy, who knows if Donald Trump tries to sidestep the Supreme Court, quash them in different ways, pack the court with more just handpicked appointees from himself, he could do that as well. If the Supreme Court sees a threat to itself, they might rule in their own favor here, right? A betting man would place money against that, that they would find some way to get out of this. But I would encourage people

to not be so just, you know, reflexively dismissive and cynical about it. It's a real case here. I will do my best, Roger. I will do my best not to be, not to be cynical. Thank you so much for making the time for us today and waiting through the beginning of the year. I'm certain will be in conversation throughout it. Of course. Thanks a lot, guys. There's a fun conversation. Folks, I am so excited to welcome back to the new abnormal, my friend Jonathan Metzell, who is the author of a little book, you know, that kind of was viral, Dying of Whiteness, which basically makes him an Oracle. And now his upcoming book, which will be out at the end of this month,

what we've become, living and dying in a country of arms, asks a lot of questions. about how we have framed the gun debate in this country and what we need to do in order to pivot. And for those that are in New York, just a quick shout out, Jonathan and I will be live together on February 5th. That's right. Yeah, February 5th in Brooklyn at Greenlight Bookstores. So you can head to jonathanmetzel.com and get more deeds there. But happy new year, friend. Happy, happy new year. It's kind of, of course, this is the first conversation we're having of the new year.

Of course it is. And, but a hand full of days into 2024, we have the unfortunate job of talking about the first school shooting of the year. And it's unfortunate that I even say the first school shooting of the year because we know, as you know, Jonathan, that there will be more. And that the only time that we don't experience school shootings is when there is no school or we're in the midst of a, global health pandemic and kids are being taught from home. So just give me your first thoughts on what we are seeing and hearing. The story is still unfolding, but we know this story. Well, yeah, I think it's important to start by saying that this particular story we don't know as we're having this conversation. There are still our families being notified and details emerging. And so there is a lot we don't know. And even though it definitely all, I mean, fits a pattern is, kind of an understatement about these kind of things. And I'll say in a minute why I think this shooting seems, at least in our first news from it, to fit a pattern. But it is important to say

we don't know the specifics yet. That being said, what seems to be emerging so far, first of all, is this was the first day of school. And so somebody was waiting and planning for school to come back and started the shooting even before school had started in the morning. And so I've known nothing about this, except if that was the case, somebody was probably planning this over the break. then started it that morning. And again, it looks like, again, not knowing for sure an aggrieved student at this school. Horrific tragedy, we know already a sixth grader was killed. It looks like the principal and others were shot and injured. We don't know how badly. And so it really does fit a pattern of obviously school and mass shootings, but also it used to be a student had a beef with the school

and they would do all different kinds of things or things like that. But now with easy access to weapons. And again, we're seeing a shooting in a state like Iowa that has virtually done away with every kind of check and balance in this system. And so the pattern is easy access to guns, a grieved student, horrible outcome for innocent kids in schools and traumatized communities. You know, one of the students who has been interviewed thus far, her comments after leaving the lockdown on the campus was glass everywhere. blood everywhere. And I just think to myself, Jonathan, like America and our representatives who could care less about childhood trauma that is being inflicted on generations of kids.

I mean, generations. The first school shooting was in what, the late 90s, right? In Columbine. We're talking about the fact that those students, are now adults with their own kids, and we're talking about multiple generations of school trauma. I just don't, I don't, it's like I am at a place where I find myself numb, where it's just like, what else is there to say?

So you tell me, because your upcoming book is the new things to say, but I'm just like for lay Americans, regular Americans that have just, you know, acquiesced to this is just, life in America. Well, there are two parts of answers to this that are part of the same reality, and they're also diametrically opposed in many ways. On one hand, you mentioned my new book, what we've become. And what I argue in the book is that mass shootings were early tests of our

democracy in a way, even though we didn't see them that way. That language is kind of new to our political conversation, but a country that couldn't come together across its political divides to really address what are such profound threats to daily life, to education, entertainment, workplaces, even with political divides, if you can't come together to address these fatal and fatalizing murders that happen across political divides, that it's a warning sign that our democracy really isn't functioning the way it should. And that's been the case, that in a way these shootings are so polarizing, and it represented, for me, like a really early warning sign that not being able to come together across these political divides and come up with measures

that spoke to both sides or tried to tie together both sides, it really was a warning for me for what we're seeing play out in so many other avenues right now across the country, which is that our political divides become lethal, become unbridgeable. And so that's part of the argument on my book is that the fact that we can't come together, about this is a much bigger story than just about guns. It's a sign of a failing of our political system, a death in a way of our public sphere in a way. And so that's the book argument. But the other part of it, of course, is I was watching these interviews today. And you hear all these people say, I can't believe it happened here. Like, you hear that after every mass shooting. I can't believe it happened here.

And so even though when you're following this cycle closely on the news or things like that, it's also important to remember that, I mean, certainly they happen again and again in the same place, but there is a level of disbelief. In other words, people don't think, oh my God, here we go again. They think, I can't believe this is happening to me because there is something so newly traumatizing and just shattering for people who probably never thought twice about dropping their kids off at school before and now are going to do so for the rest of their lives, for the rest of the time their kids are in school, for the time they pass that school. That school will now be named in relation to a mass shooting. And so, So I just think that habituation is what we do, but it's also important to remember that it's, you know, it's not, if you're like on the ground in a way, that's, I found this a lot in my research. It doesn't feel like, here we go again. It feels like I can't believe what these people are saying. I can't believe it happened here. You know, and I think that what's interesting too is that this shooting happened in a town of, what,

8,000 people? Do you know what I'm saying? So just walk with me for a minute because the narrative that consistently comes out, of the right wing as a pushback against any type of gun control is, well, look at Chicago, look at New York City, look at these areas. And I'm just like you had a school shooting and a neighboring middle school in Tennessee, a Christian religious school where there was a shooting that took place. It doesn't matter whether you are quote unquote in the inner city that the radical right

has turned into this bastion of hell, or if you're in a small, you know, to them, real American town, these types of mass shootings happen. You know, if you remember the conversation we had about the small town Jason Aldean song in a way, that's kind of what fucked of my mind when you were saying that, this idea that like safety is here. In my last book, I also showed that most gun death actually happens statistically in rural right areas because gun suicide is by far the biggest cause of gun death. I agree with you. This is happening everywhere. Now, you mentioned the Covenant School shooting. Yes. And what's interesting, I think there are going to be maybe parallels between the shooting that we, you know, early suggestions, possibly the Covenant shooting and this one. But shootings that happen in largely conservative communities, what we've seen is parents are fed up and they're demanding more from their elected officials. So Covenant is a great example that Republican conservative moms are now literally screaming every day. at GO representatives. What the hell are you doing, trying to get things to change course? And I think

this is an important part of the coalition that's forming now. I certainly think we're going to hear a lot more about the families of covenant because a lot of them are running for office now on gun safety profiles. And maybe Iowa will be the same thing. I mean, Iowa has equally horrendous gun laws. They've overturned pretty much every check and balance. You can pretty much just go get a gun with no training, no permit, anything like that. But the other interesting thing about Iowa, of course, is that, It's a great opportunity, right? There's a caucus happening right there. Every Republican, except for the other guy, whatever's name is, is there. So here's a chance to say, hey, look, we've gone too far. Let's come together. Let's meet in the middle. To say some kind

of conciliatory thing. And I'm really curious to see what the candidates say about this in the debate, what the candidates say about this on the trail. Of course, they're beholden in some ways to the NRA line in some ways. But what's a guy like, for example, Chris Christie going to say, who's already rebutting the Trump narrative in a way. What's he going to say about this? He comes from a state that actually has relatively tight gun laws. So it's an opportunity, right? The eyes of the nation are on Iowa right now. And it's an opportunity for the Republicans to break from the party line. I don't for a second think they're going to do so. But I do think that if they don't, it then becomes another real point of distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans. Speaking of the Republican caucuses that will be happening in a few weeks, one of the grossest members of that clown car, Vivek Ramoswamy, was having an event there and now has turned it into a prayer circle. Because apparently prayer actually stops bullets and not legislation. I say that because there will be no breaking that these Republicans do. There has been no breaking from what it is that they do. And the only thing that stops them is, is what you were seeing and what you had mentioned with regard to Tennessee, is that these largely white Republican women deciding that enough is enough,

that they are not just going to stand by and watch their children become target practice. You know, I think that what Tennessee also showed, I mean, we learned about the Tennessee three, the Justin's being booted from their seats and then having to run for special election, is just there is no end to the, suppression of the voices of the people who demand better. And so I'm wondering, you know, again, as these shootings happen everywhere, but particularly happen in conservative, Trump-stamped, cities and towns, do Democrats essentially just sit back and let the narrative unfold? Or is there

a way to actually drive conversation? And again, I say this with an exhausted tone, because here we go again? I think we'll have to see how this plays out. Maybe we're building a broader coalition. You know, we were talking about my book before, and I think it's going to raise some eyebrows, honestly, because I try to stay away from the Democrats or the Good Guys and the Republicans or the Bad Guys narrative. And part of what I talk about in the book is that these shootings happen, and then Democrats rush in and they advocate for more regulation, more government. I mean, a background check, for example, is a government database, a red flag law, really involves expanded authority for safety officers. And so all the things we advocate for are more government. And I do

think we need that. Like that's how our country works is you have a government. But I will say that at least I've spent so much time in Red State America interviewing gun owners. And in a way, what I came to realize is there's these horrible shootings. These communities are traumatized. And at least from their perspective, then Democrats rush in and they say more government, which is the very thing they've been primed to resist or fear. And so, I guess I spend a lot of time thinking about it, and I'm writing a couple of pieces now trying to say, like, is there a different way, first of all, for us to go about this? Can we rebuild structures? Can we intervene in a way that doesn't suggest the very thing that many people in Red State America are, and it's a hard question, right?

Because, of course, you need some kind of regulation and regulation works. But at least in the book, I argue that, you know, we also need to do a bunch of other interventions around these gun laws to make them kind of make sense to people, kind of rebuild communities connected to entrepreneurialism. connected to different kinds of safety. I go through a bunch of different stuff in the book. But I guess in a way, you know, it's hard because the narrative is like, what's wrong with you guys for not doing gun laws? And for people in places like Iowa, guns are almost their safety, you know? It's just so weird. Like I saw these mass shootings happening during my research, and people will respond by running out and buying more guns. And so maybe that's a total point of disconnect between the Democratic and Republican mindset. But at least I sought out to understand what it is. Now, I don't know if people in Iowa are feeling

that way right now, but I certainly can tell you that's what played out after the mass shootings that I saw. And it just made me think, like, how can we really talk about this? Like, what's really going to get people to the table? Is there a way to rethink this debate? So I just think it's important to note, I mean, you can hear my frustration, right? Because I believe strongly in gun laws, but I also, I'm frustrated because it's just again and again and again and again. So I do spend a lot of time thinking, like, let me try to understand why people are rejecting this in the first place. And then is there some other way that we might go about this that ruptures the narrative? And we'll see.

We'll see how the reception plays out. But I just think that it's kind of the, oh, my God, here we go again, feeling that really leads to a kind of a real kind of learned helplessness about life and death matters for our nation. I recently spoke to a local representative who was becoming a supervisor, a county supervisor in Mississippi. And he was talking to me about the fact that when he's a supervisor, he's a supervisor. talking to his constituents, he's like, you know, we care about climate change and climate change issues. He's like, but when I speak to constituents, when I was on the stump, he's like, I never mentioned the phrase. What I talked about was high utility bills. Have you noticed a difference

in your utility bills over from year to year, from month to month, from season to season? And he's like, because that is what drew people into the conversation about, again, just talking about real life effects that are happening. And so I wonder, is there something there that is, we stop talking about regulations and bigger government and more government, and we talk about something else as a trick. I'm going to end on a note that sounds like I'm closing with nihilism, and maybe I am, but it'll end with an uplift, which is to say that I think if we're trying to talk each other into each other's positions, there's a chance that the reinforcement mechanisms that exist in the world right now and just the ways that people are so hardened in these positions, it almost makes it almost impossible.

I mean, I'm not saying impossible because I've seen again after Covenant, a lot of people really change their positions when it happens to them. But there's a level of kind of if we're just talking to people about just this one thing, decontextualize. I'm just going to try to talk you into background checks or red flag laws. I think having a conversation with somebody is likely not going to work. But if you build the culture and the context and the framework around it, that's why I really like what David, Vod Hogg is doing right now, starting a political organization that's using the framework of gun safety, but also running candidates for all the other positions that impact daily life in the world, you know, school board and election officials and county clerk and all this kind of stuff.

So it's more like, let's start locally and really engage people and win elections by listening to people and not just about gun policy, but gun policy is part of a bigger agenda where gun safety is part of school policy and it's part of infrastructure policy and all these things. That's why I think for me, at least the future is what David and other people are doing, which is let's not just look at guns. Let's look at the context of local communities and run candidates who are listening to people's needs across a variety of things and kind of build safety structurally in that way. Well, Jonathan, unfortunately, we will continue this conversation because these things will continue to happen. Folks, Jonathan's upcoming book, which you can

pre-order now, is what we've become, living and dying in a country. of arms coming out January 30th, but you can pre-order it now. Thank you, my friend. And I don't know, we'll just keep talking. Hang in there. Take everybody. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. 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.

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