The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Biden Needs to End the So-Called ‘War on Terror’

Episode Date: July 30, 2024

On this week’s The New Abnormal, guest Spencer Ackerman asks for the political equivalent of a pony. Then, jack-of-all-trades film producer, political commentator, former White House aide and author of the book Why Does Everything Have to be About Race?, Keith Boykin, joins the program to discuss Democrats’ renewed sense of energy since Vice President Kamala Harris’ rapid ascent to presumptive 2024 nominee. 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 Kedden, 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.

Welcome back to the new abnormal. We're on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean we didn't record you an excellent show in advance. Spencer Ackerman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writer of the Forever War's newsletter, and a contributor to Zateo is here to talk about his recent piece. Biden must abolish war on terror now or re-risk Trump's political retribution campaign. Then, the author of Why Does Everything Have to Be about race, Keith Boykin, joins us to talk about the right-wing's attacks on presumptive Democratic nominee Vice President

Kamala Harris and why it might distance female and black voters. But first, let's have some fun. Let's get to know you guys a little bit better with some questions. The way he just said that, though, like you don't really care to get to know us, Jesse. I think I know you guys pretty well. He's like, I already know I'm so sick, I'm so over there bullshit. You're bullshit, I'm not interested in this at all. I also know what these questions are. And I can't say I think that this is definitely what's going to happen. What's a lesser-known policy initiative that you're passionate about that you wish got more attention? I will preface this by saying this will probably be my only serious answer.

Maybe not lesser-known in the sense that there are, you know, people, some people are talking about it. But I wish more people would pay attention to the various bills like COSA, the Kids Online Safety Act, because it will be absolutely horrible for free speech and privacy. And when I say pay attention to, I really mean learn what something like COSA would actually do as opposed to what politicians say it'll do. I've had a bunch of people on the show to explain why it's so bad. But basically, it establishes what's called a duty of care for online platforms, whether it's video games, instant messaging apps, streaming services, anything that might be used by minors. It will force all these companies to heavily censor users so as not to possibly provide any content. that might be inappropriate or upsetting to minors. And the biggest thing about this is that Republican attorneys general have already said

that they're going to use this to go after LGBTQ-related stuff in the guise of, quote, unquote, protecting the children. It will make children actually less safe. Particularly we're talking about, like, maybe at-risk kids who might not have access to suicide hotlines or to information about why they're feeling a certain way. And it's being pushed by both parties, including Chuck Scher, and the Democratic leadership and Joe Biden. And I think it's absolutely shameful. Love that answer, Andy. I don't think anyone expected that. No.

Go off. Yeah, and he did. And I love that for him. And I think it's important, incredibly important. This is not an unknown policy, but it's something that I think that we have kind of shrugged off, which is our paid maternity leave policy in the United States. So with the Family and Medical Leave Act, We have just 12 weeks, 12 weeks of unpaid leave with job protections in the United States. And we know that in countries around the world, in other quote unquote, industrialized, wealthy nations, that parents receive six months, some 12 months of leave. And it's something that we kind of, again, we love to say that America is exceptional and America is great. And America cares about families.

And we really don't. because largely a lot of people don't even take the full 12 weeks. It really does depend state by state and up to the discretion of your employer. And it is something that we saw and was highlighted child care during COVID. And it's something that I think needs to be pushed on a regular basis in the mainstream in this country because there's no reason why we don't have longer maternity leave for families. And also, you know, just overall better care for children. So that's my issue.

Great answers. Yeah, that's a good one. All right. If your career was a movie, what would the title be? And who would play you? Okay. I actually want to hear Andy. Oh, okay, yeah.

So I have to assume that either Jeremy Renner or the guy from the bear, who oddly is also named Jeremy, would play me because those are the two people. I get the most where people say I look like them or I guess they look like me since I was here first. first. The movie would simply be called ally. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Oh, my God. Amazing. Okay, so my movie would be called, for fuck's sake.

And honestly, I want Carrie Washington to play me, but I want her to play me as her character Olivia Pope. I like this. I would accept Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope playing me as well. I don't know what mine would be, but I know I want Pitbull to play me because if... I love Pitbull dearly, and I say this not even with an ounce of irony,

but it would also get him so glorified because if he could pull off playing me, people would say greatest actor a little time. Amazing. I want glory for pit bull. That's fantastic. That's really great. If someone told you they wanted to be you when they grew up, what advice would you give them? Buckle up.

Don't. Yeah. Don't would be my only answer. My advice would be find a quiet place where you can still have windows because you're going to be sitting in a quiet room a lot. That's true. And I was like, oh, is it an insane asylum? No, he's an executive of pot. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Same, same, but different. What's a hobby or activity that's been keeping you amused lately? I mean, my biggest activity, or like the 30 minutes it takes for me to water all of the plants in my apartment. And I enjoy doing that. So it's that I have a lot of plants. Yeah, sounds like it. Mine is extremely geeky and it is e-book organizing. Oh, yeah.

And I know, Jesse, I've told you a little bit about this. And I promise I won't bore all our listeners to tears. But I just switch from the Kindle ecosystem in Amazon to the Kobo ecosystem. Kobo is another company that makes e-readers. And as part of this, it took me like a month. I had to download all my books from Amazon, which was like close to 2000. And I had to put them in a program called Calibur on my computer. and then I had to fix all the metadata and organized them into series and all that fun stuff.

And it sounds tedious and it sounds boring probably to most people. I could not have had more fun. And I know that says volumes about me, but I'm okay with that. I love that for you. Well, I'm biking as far as I can to eat good slices of pizza each weekend each summer. So I'm trying to do 20 miles each day to get a slice of pizza because then you almost biked off all the calories. Yeah, it's perfect. It's like carbon offsets.

Yes, yes. It's carb offsets. Carb offsets, yes, yes, yes. What beloved fictional character do you see absolutely 100% being a Trump supporter? And no Hank Hill here. I have long said that Phoebe from Friends would be Qaemon. Oh, shit. I don't know if she would fully go with Trump.

I think Kramer from Seinfeld would somehow be a Trumpist. I could definitely see that. Oh, wow. These are good. Oh, what was the guy? What is his name? He had a show, the handyman. Tim Allen.

Yeah. Him. And then J.D. Vance is his next door neighbor. Correct. That's who I think. Or not his next story. His best friend. Yeah.

I think it would be Tim Allen on what's the show? Home Improvement. I'm going with Job from Arrested Development. That's a good one. Nice. 100% gets a true. That's a really good one. Gets built for a by bad and for a build the wall stamp.

Yep. If you think the war on terror no longer exists, I don't blame you. So writes my next guest before explaining that it absolutely does still exist. And also why President Joe Biden must end it before he leaves office. Joining me now is writer of the great Forever Wars newsletter at forever dashwors.com. Contributed to Medi Hassan's new journalistic endeavor Zetao, creator along with Evan Narciss of the flat-out fantastic comic book series Waller v. Wildstorm, which is now available in hardcover, the upcoming writer of Iron Man and Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Spencer Ackerman. Spencer, thank you so much for being here.

Hey, thank you so much for having you. So before we get into why you say the war on terror must be ended in the next few months, I want to point out a couple things. First, you wrote this piece for Zateo a few weeks ago. Before Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and Vice President Kamala Harris became the president. of the Democratic Party. But that change is absolutely nothing about what you say, right? Nothing, nothing at all. I am writing, as I often do, about the dangers of this apparatus of security that is extremely easy to turn into an apparatus of domestic repression or to use as an apparatus of domestic oppression, no matter who the president is. Presidents that any given list may like presidents, any, you know, given listener may not like. The driving factor behind this column specifically was surely, you know, Donald Trump, we shouldn't think that Trump can't win

the presidency just because he's facing Harris now and not Biden, but also the fact that the Supreme Court has just transformed the presidency structurally. Yeah, for sure. I want to get ready to The headline of your piece is, Biden must abolish war on terror now, or we risk Trump's political retribution campaign. I will get to the retribution campaign in a minute. But first, tell us more specifically what you're talking about when you refer to the war on terror in the year of our Lord 2024. We no longer have troops in Afghanistan or Iraq. So the war on terror is over, Spencer. Are you trying to gaslight us here? So the thing about that is that the authorities, institutions and many, if not most of the operations of the war on terror persist past Afghanistan

and Iraq. Now, what do I mean by that? So, for instance, the 2001 authorization to use military force is still in place, and that gives the president the authority to wage war anywhere on earth that he or she pleases. It is at this point something that, while is technically a grant of power by Congress and definitely needs an act of Congress to repeal, now functions as a normal and nearly plenary power of the United States president. And this is something that makes it so that when we no longer have troops in Afghanistan or something like that, it's more like a temporary reprieve. They can always ramp, you know, there are sustainment issues that will make Afghanistan specifically, not, you know, a viable place to ramp out back up. But like really anywhere

in the Middle East that the United States still has a military presence, which is a substantial number of places in the Middle East, including still in Iraq and in Syria. So unless you get rid of the 2001 to know as the AUMF, you know, you can use this in matters that will, you know, potentially allow a ramp back up rather than a concluding era. You can do this, you know, down the line. The Department of Homeland and security still exists. The hyper-militarization of immigration still exists. And very importantly, the apparatus of mass surveillance created after 9-11 and now pretty much symbiotic with the 21st century economy still remains in place. And under Biden earlier this year, received a tremendous expansion of what that means. To just anticipate an objection, there's a lot of stuff

that Biden can't unilaterally get rid of. But there's also a lot of aspects of this enterprise where if Biden just pulled the plug on an operation, starting back up is going to be more difficult than I think a lot of advocates, particularly within the surveillance apparatus, give it credit. That's actually a really interesting point. And I want to talk more about, you know, you mentioned surveillance and the rise of mass surveillance that we've seen in this country since 9-11. Is there even any difference between our government's ability to surveil American citizens now

than there was at, say, the height of the war on terror? You would like to think, and look, I know the answer to this, but I want to get details from you. Like, you would like to think that many of the tools that were just handed over to intelligence and law enforcement communities in the wake of 9-11, that somebody at some point would have said, hey, it's time to end this stuff. And I know some people have Ron Wyden in particular, but we haven't gotten rid of any of it, have we? And as you say, some of it's even been expanded. We've kept a lot more than we've gotten rid of. The major thing that when it comes to surveillance, two major things

that are gone are first something that we, when I wrote for the Guardian, we exposed after the Edwards Snowden revelations, which is that purely domestic phone call metadata, records of who you called, who called you, how long the call lasted and so on. Pure collection of that is gone. And also an important aspect of the Patriot Act known as Section 215, which had been used to shoehorn that authority into it was something that, despite a lot of political effort on the part of the security services and the bipartisan leadership of Congress, that expired as well.

However, in the interim, the security apparatus kind of recognized that it could deal with losing the domestic phone records collection because much less of the way communications operate in 2024, and even back then when they did it in 2015, has to do with phone calls. You get a lot more intelligence relevant data from siphoning messages from the internet. And where we are now is that while formally there needs to be a warrant in place before the collection of purely domestic internet communications can be siphon. The reality is the way dragnets that the NSA establishes to collect domestic to foreign communications operate so that there is so much over-collection of purely domestic communications or privacy impacting,

revealing information about the Americans collected in communications that happen overseas and those communications across borders do not necessarily have to do with terrorism, with the commission of espionage, and the other crimes and security circumstances, threats to national security, that these authorities were set up to redress. You mentioned that all of this has been bipartisan. And I want to be clear about that, that keeping the surveillance powers that have been kept, expanding whatever has been expanded, all of this. has been a bipartisan effort, hasn't it? Which is not to say that there aren't people in both parties

or opposed to it, but it has been an achievement by Democratic congressional leadership, by Republican congressional leadership, and by President Biden, has it not? It's very much like that. It is an interesting circumstance that kind of works in the inverse of what we see a lot of national level politics inside Congress and in the electoral realm play out is. So this is a circumstance where the more stridently ideological members of both the Republican and the Democratic parties, the people who are more progressive and the people who are more, shall we say, conservative to nationalist, the further away they get from leadership and leadership in the parties and the chairmanships, the judiciary, intelligence, and armed services

committees, the more likely they are to want to restrict surveillance. The closer they get to those leadership positions, the more influence they become by the leadership of the security agencies. And that's been a really durable way since 9-11 that surveillance, detentions, the other aspects of the war on terror can withstand challenges from the more ideological components of the different parties and those that I think is fair to say closer to what the voters want. All right. So I want to get to what makes this so urgent, why you say it's so urgent that a lot of this dismantling happened really in the next several months.

And as you said earlier, it has to do with the recent decision by the Supreme Court in Trump v. U.S. that gives president's immunity. from prosecution for quote unquote official acts that they take while in office. So you've got a combination of that plus this unbelievable surveillance, et cetera, apparatus. And in your mind, you're saying this is unbelievably combustible and dangerous. Yes. So to go through it, the implications of Trump v. U.S. is that the president as the Supreme Court wrote has absolute immunity for official acts. Now, let's remember that as we move over to look at, at what the surveillance apparatus has been since 9-11 and definitely since the 2008 passage

of an important surveillance law that created what is known in the circles that follow mass surveillance as Section 702. Right. Every single time, the security chiefs have to explain why it's okay to continue to operate an apparatus of mass surveillance that necessarily is. impacts the communications of an untold number, but in the millions, tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions. It's always to say that there are robust and thorough safeguards placed internally to those agencies. There's submissions to a secret court,

nor as the FISA court, that keep the intelligence agencies in line and make sure that they're not trampling on the privacy rights of American citizens. Consistently for 15 years, that very same court, when these opinions are declassified, show that the intelligence agencies violate the rules that they submit to this secret court. Again and again and again, this has happened. This is such a consistent practice over 15 years that it blurs the line between what's use and what's abuse. Now, the president doesn't have anyone to answer to, not just politically, but criminally, for eradicating that distinction at all. So we can no longer have any confidence, if we ever could before, that there will be any, like, substantive meaning to the safeguards that the intelligence agencies say they place on on this extremely intrusive, all-encompassing,

apparatus of surveillance. If before they had to pantomime to the FISA court that they are going to abide by these restrictions, I would expect they would still say that they do. But in practice, there's not going to be any consequence for violation conceivable. That means you've got a circumstance where, you know, one political party is saying like Biden did after the Supreme Court ruling, I promise to always abide by the rules in the Constitution. And the other side, the Republican side, the Trumpist side, is saying, I can't wait to redefine the Constitution according to whatever I want it to me. In just like a 30,000 foot view, that's a recipe for disaster no matter what. I am looking specifically at this one really urgent area where I don't mean to be

dramatic about this, but I think it's fair to say, our freedoms as Americans, Our threat. The way surveillance is already weaponized, we saw in 2020 when the Department of Homeland Security went after left-wing protesters for Black Lives in Portland, put drones over 15 American cities protesting for such things, and unleashed joint terrorism task forces, which are local police to federal law enforcement partnerships predicated on eradicating terrorist threats inside the country against protesters. The movie already happened. I'm talking about getting rid of the stuff that will also feature in the sequel before the sequel airs. And it's also not a circumstance where the answer is just elect Democrats. Because what we just saw from Joe Biden is an expansion of this surveillance apparatus. I would expect pretty similar behavior from President Kamala Harris. Yeah, which leads me to my next question.

and I suspect I know the answer to this. So what do you think are the actual chances of Joe Biden taking any actions to curb the security and surveillance state? And I'll give you a scale of one to 10 with one being LOL, LMAO, and 10 being God is good. I've got to go with zero and falling. We're at ROF. It's not going to happen. My piece doesn't. I was writing this piece to point out the danger and then at the end of it, point out the

bleakness of how I am asking for the political equivalent of a pony here. Right. Like, this is not something that our elected leadership will naturally incline toward doing. I'm writing this to point out that there needs to be popular movements incorporating, as some of them already do, to their immense credit, the anti-surveillance, anti-war on terror, generally anti-war perspective, into pressure. their public officials at all levels of government to accomplish this, even at levels that can't actually produce this thing. This has to be part of an actual democratic cultures demands on

its leadership. Yeah, as you point out, all of this stuff, it's so important. I completely agree that you are not exaggerating when you say that our freedom in a large sense hinges on this stuff, not being just a thing that we shrug at and say, well, that's the way things. are it actually made me think when you were talking about the AUMF earlier, I have sort of forgotten that that wasn't always the case, that that's only been in place since 9-11. And granted, part of that is because, you know, presidents found ways to sort of declare war without Congress before that. But the fact that it's been basically codified since 2001 to 2002, it's hard to believe that it hasn't been that way forever. We become inured to stuff like this and we just forget that

it doesn't have to be this way. That's right. And I think that circles back to your first question. The War on Terror hasn't ended. It's been normalized. And I think a really important function of journalism is to combat that normalization wherever possible. Spencer, thank you so much for being here. I'm sorry I didn't have time to ask you about your upcoming Iron Man series for Marvel Comics, but I can't wait to read it. People go out and read everything Spencer's written, whether it's books or comic books or whether it's at Forever Wars or Zateo. Just, He never misses. Spencer, thanks again. Hey, thank you so much, Andy. Be well.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. Keith Boykin, who is a film producer, author, national political commentator, former White House aide, all of the things, an author of the book, which we discuss on the new abnormal. Why does everything have to be about race? Keith, it is a new day. It is a new day with three and a half months until the most consequential. election of our time. We have a new presumptive nominee in Vice President Kamala Harris.

Over the course of the announcement, there has seems to be renewed energy that was desperately lacking in the Biden campaign. As we're beginning to look ahead, I want to get your reactions to where we find ourselves right now, where Democrats find themselves right now, making this historic change and how many people are hailing President Biden as a true patriot, putting country above ego? Yeah, it's a new day. I like the way you said that. It is a brand new day. Can you feel a brand new day? I'm not going to let me sing that song. But yeah, it's a new day. It feels new and refreshing. Now the choice is crystal clear. Do you want a 59-year-old black woman who's an accomplished prosecutor, U.S. Senator and Vice President, or do you want Donald Trump, a 78-year-old convicted felon,

who's an adjudicated rapist, who is twice impeached quadruple indicted, who is now the oldest nominee for the presidency in American history? That's the choice. I mean, do you want the past, Do you want the future? Do you want the guy who's going to settle his grievances and make it festivist every day and retribution and relitigate the battles of the past eight years? Or do you want somebody to move our country forward? And I think the choice of Kamala Harris for the Democratic Party helps to clarify the choice for the American people between Donald Trump and the Democrats. There will be no project 2025, no agenda 47, and no effort. to implement a national abortion ban or take away rights for LGBTQIA people or to eliminate the Department of Education or to take away head start or cuts social security of Medicare if we have Kamala Harris as our next president. But we have Donald Trump as president is going to be

four more years of chaos and crisis and controversy and all the nonsense we've witnessed since he came down that golden escalator in 2015. I don't think Americans want that. I think we're tired of that. That's part of the reason why. there was an effort to push Joe Biden now. And by the way, I strongly supported Joe Biden's candidacy, not because I strongly supported Joe Biden, but because I strongly supported the idea of wanting the election. And my biggest fear all along in picking an alternative to Biden was that if you picked Kamala Harris, the party might not unite behind her. And if you pick something else, the party might engage in the civil war because the black voters were the base of the party

would be pissed off if you skipped over her. So I'm pleased. pleased to see that the party did not escape over her, that she immediately gathered the endorsements of the people that she needed in order to win the nomination. She immediately gathered more than half of the delegate she needed in just the first day and immediately got nearly $100 million for the Democratic Party in the first day. So I think that the record shows that she will be a strong, effective candidate, that the Democrat Party is now united, that we have people all up and down the ballot who are finally excited and energized that we're not on defense, we're on offense, and the wind is at our back. I love all of that. I do. I too feel the energy and this renewed

belief that we have a fighting chance against fascism, that so many people that I've talked to who are academics and studied on fascism and authoritarianism, I always ask the question of, you know, have you ever seen a backsliding democracy reverse itself? Have you ever seen you know, a time when fascism was breathing down the neck of a nation for them to make a pivot. And many of them at the time had said, no, the grips and the claws are very deep. And we also know that the pockets that are funding Project 2025 and funding Donald Trump are very deep. And so for the last month or so, the media's attention had been moved away from the threat, the existential threat of Project 2025 and just consumed with.

Joe Biden, his age, his perceived health. Do you think now, how does VP Harris, how do Democrats make this hard pivot and really make the case that we need to rid ourselves of Donald Trump and Trumpism once and for all? How do we make that hard pivot with three and a half months to go? I'm not sure it's such a hard pivot anymore. I mean, it's hard in the sense that you're making a dramatic shift, but what makes it less hard, you know, they talk a lot about a soft landing with the economy. It feels like we had a very soft landing with this transition because this could have gone left really quickly, I mean, left in a bad way. This could have really been a disaster right from the start. And there was an inclination that there might be some ruffles when

Joe Manchin announced that he might become a Democrat again and he might run against her challenger, but he quickly, wisely backed down. And actually, I think he couldn't do it anyway, according to the rules that I read in the party that he would not have been qualified to run. I think that there are, you know, legitimate concerns about making that type of hard pivot that you talk about. But I don't think that's undoable. I think we've seen it happen right now. I think that the Democratic Party, more than anything else, wants to win. They want to defeat Donald Trump. And I think a lot of people were reluctantly going along with Joe Biden because they thought that he was the best chance to beat Donald Trump, but they had concerns about his age.

And now they don't have those concerns to deal with. Now we're the ones who get to litigate the case about Donald Trump being too old to be president. We don't have to defend someone who's older than him. Now we don't have to carry the baggage if there is any of Joe Biden making a mistake every now and then, which, you know, people do on a regular basis, but the media narrative translates every mistake into a question about his competence for office. We don't have to be on defense about those things. So we can be an offense. We can start attacking the Republicans for what they're doing about Project 2025. And we can start pushing them because we know that it's working on. Donald Trump wouldn't be trying to run away from me. It wouldn't be trying to hide connection

to Project 2025. And he keeps talking about, oh, he's responsible for agenda of 47 instead of Project 2025. Well, you know what? That's not true because he's responsible for the people who put together Project 2025, which although he claims he doesn't know them. And secondly, and most importantly, Agenda 47 isn't very different from Project 2025. It sounds very similar to Project 2025. So they both want to limit the Department of Education. They both want to make dramatic changes in terms of cuts to federal government programs. They both want to be able to hire Trump loyalists to replace civil servants. They both want mass deportations of immigrants. They both want to curtail women's reproductive rights to control her own body.

All those things are very deadly and anathema to where the American public is. And I think the Trump campaign is going to have a difficult time selling its message. I also think that picking J.D. Vance was a huge mistake. Yeah. I wanted to get to that because J.D. Vans, as of the time of us recording, I want to read you. You probably have seen it, but I want to read you what he has said now about this shift with Kamala Harris now being the presumptive nominee. Brace yourself. Quote, she is a childless cat lady who is, quote, miserable with her life because she didn't have children. And that not having children means that she doesn't have a direct stake in America. Yeah, I mean, that's an offensive thing to state.

You know, J. Yvans has a lot of nerd to talk about this ad hominem attack, first of all, on the first black woman vice president, the first woman vice president, the first Asian vice president. These attacks on Kamala Harris are going to backfire on the Republican Party because what Donald Trump failed to do in picking J.D. Vance was to expand his reach. What mentions try to do, most candidates try to do when picking and running me is they try to go beyond the base. You can't just talk to the base and expect to win. Donald Trump has never won a majority of the vote in any of his elections. He didn't even win a plurality. He lost in both elections. And so if you want to get those soccer moms or those independent voters, those suburban voters, those people who are out there who have a little question about Donald Trump, but maybe, maybe have been inclined to vote Republican in the past, he's done nothing to reach out to them. I mean, he told the story about his assassination attempt and tried to curry some sympathy for that. But then he launched into these scurrilous attacks on Democrats calling Nancy Pelosi crazy and attacking people who were his enemies. And then he picked J.D. Vance.

guy who wants to abortion practically all circumstances, and it doesn't do anything to incur a favor with women voters, who are the majority of the population, doesn't do anything to reach out to suburban voters. And then to have JD Vance to make offensive statements about women, regardless whether they're married or not, have children or not, it shows how just how tone-left they are. And these are the people who were upset because Hillary Clinton used the word deplorables. They are deplorable, and they continue to be deplorable because they are dividing the country. And we need people who aren't going to try to divide us, try to bring us together.

It seems that, you know, because J.D. Vance is not the first person since this announcement has happened from the Republican Party to come out and directly attack the vice president for not having children. We've seen Laura Lumer do that and it will begin to mount. We've seen some of these right-wing white supremacist, quote-unquote, preachers, reverence say things. How do you think that Democrats, the establishment, should rally around what we know is going to be a barrage of misogy noir, a barrage of attacks that probably rival and will surpass those that were lauded at Hillary Clinton? Oh, yeah. Oh, I think we should expect it. And I think we should let them hang themselves with their own ropes.

I mean, they clearly are going to go too far as they already have, and I think it's going to turn off the American people. What is attacking Kamala Harris for being his cool, childless cat lady? What does it have to do with where America is? How does that create a single job or raise the minimum wage? How does that bring health care to people who want health care or reduce the price of health care? How does that lower the cost of college tuition or leave the debt that students are bearing for the loans that they've taken out. How does that fix the schools?

How does that improve the quality of housing or reduce the cost of housing in our country? How does that take care of the threat of climate change or the environment? How does that fix the criminal justice system in America? How does that create a system that develops trust in democracy? Those attacks don't do a thing to make our country stronger or safer or better. It just alienates people who want the country to be unified. You know, I talk a lot about this. And I mentioned this in, I think, our previous interview, about my book.

I started my book with a quote from Tony Morrison about the function of racism, she says, is distraction. And I think the same is true of all these forms of bigotry, racism, sexism, misogyny, massaging war, homophobia, heterosexual, sexism, cultural imperialism, xenophobia. It's all related to the same fear, this fear of the other. And as long as the people in power can convince the people who are powerless that they should be fearful. of those others instead of being fearful the people who actually have power. That's how they stay in power. They want to distract your attention. They don't want you to ask them questions about jobs, housing, or education, or climate change, or any of those things. They want you to focus on immigrants coming over across the border and to focus on trans kids and drag queens and diversionary issues about

AP history courses that teach African American history and critical race theory. And whether a woman has children or not. Now, this is particularly ironic considering the Republican Party doesn't seem to trust women to decide what to do with their bodies, what to do with the number of children they choose to have or not to have. So I just think that the message will backfire blatantly. And I think that, you know, two old white guys, well, I guess J.D. Vance isn't old, but he reads old.

Yeah, he does. Two white men on the ticket led by a 78-year-old billionaire, aren't exactly the. representative where America is in the country where the majority of the population is winning. I mean, it's not like I want to give the Republicans any advice, but I agree with you, in fact that now after the fact that Kamala Harris is at the top of the ticket, that J.D. Vance was the wrong pick, that they would have done better to pick Nikki Haley. But if we all remember that Donald Trump says she doesn't have the complexion for that job. But Nikki Haley found herself on that R&C convention stage. She found herself giving it.

the credit to Donald Trump and kissing the ring. But one of the clips that are going around right now is when she was competing against him and said that if Donald Trump remains at the top of the ticket, we will have a president Kamala Harris. And I pray that that is the foreshadowing of what's to come. Keith, as we look forward now in just a few weeks to the Democratic Convention, you know, like I said, we all witnessed the clown show and the foolishness, the utter foolishness that was the RNC convention from Hulk Hogan, ripping off his shirt to other things.

What do you hope to see and what do you expect to see at this Democratic convention to draw, again, the stark contrast between where America should be going and where Republicans want America to stay? We've got Jim Justice talking to his dog. Oh, that too. Sorry, yes, the bulldog. And Amber Rose telling people that she felt at home in the Republican. party with their tattoo on their head knowing that they don't really like black people or black

women. But there was so much hypocrisy and dishonesty at that convention. And I just want to add something too before I talk about what's going to Democratic convention. When you mentioned Nikki Haley, I mean, it's not just Nikki Haley, but the Vecke Rameh. Remember, Anne Coulter said that she's support Vivek because he was the wrong complexion as well. She couldn't support someone who's of that background. And let's not get started about Tim Scott. You know, poor Tim Scott got engaged to be married and everything, and he didn't even get picked. And he had no children either, but I guess they don't care about that, you know. So it's a sad state of affairs that the Republican Party and the Republican Convention has devolved into a clown show. And I think the Democratic Party

has an opportunity now at its convention in Chicago next month to really show a party that is unified. It's not just putting on a performance that's not embarrassed by its nominee because our nominee will not be a convicted felon. Our nominee will not be in a judge. And it's a judge. educated rapist. Our nominee will not have been impeached twice or indicted four times. And I think the Democrats can show a sense of unity that wasn't certain they were going to be able to have just a few days ago. I'm confident about this convention. I'm looking forward to the convention. There were a lot of parallels that people were drawing to 1968 before this. And there were negative parallels because in 1968, of course, Lyndon Johnson dropped out of the race. And then there was a big battle at the convention

in Chicago in 68, and there were protests in the streets. And it was just the best, and Democrats ended up losing to Richard Nixon. And we know where history went on for there. I don't think that those same fears are there anymore because there will be, at least at this point, it doesn't appear to me there won't be any sort of conflict about the nomination. It will be not a coronation, not necessarily a quote-unquote love fest, but an honest conversation with the party and the country about where Democrats want to move us in the future.

And Republicans had to hide their platform, had to hide their values, they had to hide the fact that they took away Roe versus Wade and won a national abortion ban. They had to remove that from their party platform after decades of having been there because they knew that it didn't poll well. Democrats don't have to do that. We know that we're on the right side of the abortion issue. We know that we're on the right side of the gun control issue. We know that we're on the right side of the issue of minimum wage. We know that we're on the right side of the issue of health care for everyone. And so we don't have to be ashamed of our principles like they do. We don't have to disguise them. We don't have to distract your attention and get people to focus on these stupid

diversionary issues about other people who they hate. So I think that's being a strong position going into the convention. Amazing. Well, Keith, we will leave it there for today. Always appreciate your insight and analysis into where we are having to. in the next three and a half months and I'd certainly love to talk to you again before we make it to November 5th. Thank you, Danielle. Always a pleasure to be with you. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal.

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