The Daily Beast Podcast - Why GOP Won’t Stop Tuberville’s Military Nominees Tantrum

Episode Date: November 17, 2023

Veteran Jason Kander tells The New Abnormal there are two main reasons why Republicans are afraid to take on Senator Tommy Tuberville’s military blockade. Plus, Andy Norma, founder of CIRCE, or the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative, talks about the Mental Immunity Project and how it is trying to combat the crisis of disinformation and people’s susceptibility to it. 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.

What an excellent show we have today. Jason Kander, the host of Majority 54, and author of Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of Politics and PTSD, is here to tell us about Senator Tommy Tuberville's months-long temper tantrum and its effects in the U.S. military. Then we'll talk to Andy Norman, who's the founder of Circe, the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative. They'll tell us about the Mental Immunity Project, a new initiative to combat the crisis of disinformation and people's susceptibility to it.

But first, let's have some fun. So while I was out, thank you for holding down the fort, Andy. It also seems as if everyone has lost their fucking minds. Like, I needed a mental break, which I took, but it seems as if the Republicans have taken that far with a lobotomy and turned, oh, I don't know, committee meetings in the Senate into a cage match, I guess, because that's what toxic masculinity looks like when you're calling to folks out to fight, like literally go to blows. I just, I'm so confused with where we are. Like, I feel it's Black Mirror meets, I don't know, like just Hannah Barbera meets just

pure fuckery where we are. And I just can't believe that people voted for. these people to make decisions about the rest of the country. I am at a loss. As the Huffington Post has said in their latest, the least productive Congress since the Great Depression, that's comforting. I will say that actually is a little comforting given the makeup of Congress right now. I'm more than happy for them not to get anything done. I have a feeling we would not like the shit they did get done. But as far as the fighting goes, I'll defer to Sean Hannity on this. And I will ask, when did we become so woke that fistfights are no longer the solution to congressional problems? Back in my day, people used their canes and we had duels and men were men.

And now, because of woke, we can't do that anymore. And I think it's absolutely shameful. And I think it's why we are losing everything to China, Danielle. That is my answer. And that is a great answer if in fact we are living in the upside down world that we're in. These motherfuckers have only put through 21 bills. Like, they are such failures. Like, they are literally doing no work.

I just don't understand where else you can show up, get into a fight with management, with people walking into the store, and still have a fucking job. Congress is a joke right now. This Republican Party is a joke. And I'm like, and nothing that is happening in this country or around the world is funny. When they wake up in the morning and they're just like, oh, we have a committee hearing today. Let me see what an ass I can make of myself so that what? Fox wants to have me on.

This is their major thing. Like, they don't care about the people that voted them in. They don't care about making their constituents' lives any better. It's like they just want to hit. They're all a bunch of fucking toxic masculinity. Like they're addicts. And Fox News gives them their. They're fucking hit every single day.

The worst that they are, the more screen time they get. Well, and that's exactly it. They get rewarded for this behavior, and they know they're going to get rewarded for this behavior. So, like Pavlov's dog or whatever, they just keep committing this behavior. And like with anything else, it has to become more and more extreme to get noticed. So it's just building to this. But the key point here is exactly what you said is someone like Mark Wayne Mullen, who

who literally stands up and starts taking off his wedding ring to get ready to throw fists with the president of the teamsters, Sean O'Brien. He goes on Hannity, which is exactly where Hannity, you know, brought up that idiocy about we've become so woke that you can't fight anymore. And in addition to that, he also fundraises off it. He's selling, you know, he's selling merch. Mark Wayne Mullin is on his website based off of this. They have found out that they get rewarded for this behavior. and this is all Trump. This is Trumpism.

This is what they learned from Trump. This is what they have been taught since 2016. And it's odious and it's beyond stupid and pathetic. And they're all just giant losers. On the other hand, you can't really blame them because this is literally the lesson that they have learned from Donald Trump and from Trumpism, et cetera, that this is the shit that their people want. The people who are voting for them apparently don't care that they've only passed

21 bills or whatever. The people who are voting for them want them to pretend to get in fights. You can't live on that. Do you know what I'm saying? Like long term, sure. Does that type of foe anger and bullshit? Does that put gas in your tank? Does that put food in your table? Does that send your kids to better schools? Does that fix anybody's roads? It fucking doesn't. I don't know where the end is. Like right now, Congress's approval rating, according to Gallup, is at 13%. 13. Like, what can you look at and point to and say that your approval rating is that far in the fucking sewer and like you still have a place to show up in and call work? This is what happens when you hire people that wanted to break government that didn't believe in government

to then be the ones to govern. They go in and they break it and ruin it and destroy it, decimate it from the inside out. Yeah. Look, all of that is absolutely true. But it's, It's all going to come down to the voters in these people's districts. Congress can have an approval rating of 13%. But until Marjorie Taylor Green has an approval rating of 49% or whatever percentage of the vote she gets where she loses, she's going to keep doing this. It all comes down to that. But again, they all learn this from Trump. And Trump himself continues to do this.

He is sitting there, you know, he's got his 47 different trials, I think, going on. Something like that. Something like that. Yeah. he's out there on his busted ass Twitter truth social talking about how New York judge Arthur and Gorin, how New York

Attorney General Letitia James should be placed under citizens' arrest. He has now filed, I guess, a lawsuit going for a mistrial in this case. And this is what he does. He breaks shit too. And people respond to that. And look, there is, call it what you want, but there's part of being human that viscerally responds to shit.

being broken. And, you know, it's when you rubberneck, when there's a car crash, when you say, you know, you can't take your eyes off of something when it's so horrible. So there are people who respond to this in a positive way. And this is where all these people have learned it from Trump. He continues to do it. He continues to go after judges. He goes after prosecutors. He goes after Lettician James. He goes after Fawney Willis. And this is what they have learned from him, is that that's what you do and that's what works. And like you said, long term, none of this shit works, but none of these people are thinking long term.

They're thinking to the next election. Because they're all a bunch of fucking naps. The funny thing here is we continue, I think, collectively. Donald Trump is on his, you know, broke-ass Twitter. He's retruthing whatever the fuck. Like, honestly, the fact that it's called that is ridiculous. What he's doing is what he did back in 2016, what he did in 2020 is seeding violence, normalizing and escalating his violent rhetoric.

What I want people to realize is as much of a liar as Donald Trump is, everything that he said that he was going to do when he became president of the United States, he did and worse. He said that he was going to build a wall. He tried to. He grifted, as did Steve Badden, which caught him a case, telling people, oh, you know, buy a brick from me. Put your name on it.

He said that he was going to ban Muslim people. from entering the country. The first time at bat, oh, it was unconstitutional. Let's find our way around it. He did. He said that he was going to appoint right-wing judges to take over the Supreme Court. He did. He told those motherfuckers, the proud boys and the oathkeepers to stand back and stand by and told us that January 6, 2021 was going to be wild. And guess what? It was. So right now, Donald Trump is taking to these social media platforms and at every single rally. And he's begun to refer to his political opponents as vermin that need to be, quote, exterminated. He's talking about getting rid of people, dropping indictments on those that dissent against him, digging out anyone inside of agencies, meaning those

civil servants that are in there that are not aligned with his fascism and his anti-democratic and anti-American desires, and getting rid of those people and putting them in, quote-unquote, camps. So it's like he's saying all of this shit and we are like, ah, it's just crazy. It's like, no, let's all take a beat and realize that his rhetoric has been escalating to not Hitler light, but just pure Nazism that we've heard before. And that what he said he would do in 2016, he did and worse. And we know that those people that were in there like Mattis, who, let's just be honest, I didn't. like, dude, but apparently he kept us from going to war isn't going to be there anymore.

None of those people are going to be there. They're going to be on their book tours, but nonetheless, they're not going to be there to save the country from careening into World War III or for whichever one Donald Trump thinks that he's going to bring us into because he don't know. Look, once again, I will just say that, you know, you can't even sound like Hitler anymore because of woke. I don't know where our society has gone where you can't even say. sound like Hitler anymore without people, you know, being upset about it. No, it's absolutely true.

Take him at his word. Stop making excuses for what he says. Stop saying, oh, that's just Donald, you know, oh, when he goes off prompter, he says things. No, Trump says things and then tries to act on them. And you're right. Like, he either did what he said he was going to do in his first term, or he, at the very least, he tried to. And sometimes, you know, like he said, there was a general Mattis who could put a stop to it or there was, you know, the pesky constitution might get in the way every once in a while. But he absolutely tried to do everything he said he was going to do. And I don't see any reason to think that that's not going to be the case. And like you said, even more so in a second term, because in a second term, we've spoken about this a whole bunch of times, too, this project

2025. They are setting this up so that there won't be a Mattis around him. And there won't even be a Bill Barr who obviously was mostly terrible, but on the rare occasion could actually, you know, sit there and go, well, this is too much even for me and sort of put a stop to it. You won't even have that. You'll just have the people who are 100% terrible that nothing Trump does will be too far for them. And they will do everything in their power to help get these policies passed or just implement them and allow Trump to act on his worst impulses 100% of the time. And so, no, we have to take all this shit seriously. When he starts talking about people and calling basically everyone on the left in America Vermin, we have to take note of that and we can't say, oh, he's being hyperbolic. No, fuck that. This is what

he thinks. And vermin is as, you know, many, many people have pointed out is the exact same kind of language that you heard from Adolf Hitler. And so we're beyond the point where it's like, you don't like to make comparisons to Hitler. They're usually overwrought and whatever. I think we're beyond that now. And I think we can look at Trump's rhetoric and draw a clear line back to 1930s and 1940s Germany. And let's just be clear that the Holocaust did not begin with the camps. That's the thing that we remember. It began with a duly elected person. It began with language and narrative to create a villain that you could take out and then eventually no one would really care about because you'd spent so much time putting poisonous seeds in the ground. That's how it

begins. And so to shrug off Donald Trump's escalating rhetoric, escalating violence that is being directed at those that are prosecuting him, understand that it will become everyone. I just want to say it didn't begin with the end. It began with the book banning. It began with the calling people out. it began with the labeling. It began with a really strong narrative that just spread like wildfire. And speaking of things that spread. The tapes, people who backed up Donald Trump, like Sidney Powell and Jenna Ellis, who walked into courtrooms around this country to keep this man in power, are on tape,

on tape saying that Donald Trump had no fucking intention of leaving the White House, no intention whatsoever, that it wasn't a joke, it wasn't like, oh, the boss is just speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He had no intention. And it failed that time around. Do we honestly believe in these people's own voices, in their own taped confessions to prosecutors, that given everything, all the ways that they've been able to test the boundaries the first time around, that Donald Trump would leave after four years when he's telling them. you that they stole four years from me, so I'll just take another four?

Yeah. And look, you know, what you're referring to is Jenna Ellis in her testimony has said that Danz Kavino, who was the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications and ran like the White House social media, that he approached her at the White House Christmas Party and basically said that they didn't care about the legal challenges failing because, quote, we're not going leave. And then Ellis says that she said, what do you mean? And Skavino said, well, the boss is not going to leave under any circumstances. We're just going to stay in power. And she says, well, it doesn't quite work that way. And he said, we don't care. And look, again, you have to take these people at their word. That's their mindset. I'm a little unclear to me why Dan Skavino isn't rotting in a cell somewhere.

I don't know. Maybe it's because he hasn't committed any actual crimes. But I just feel like on general purpose he should not be allowed in general society. But this is their mindset. This was their mindset in 2020 and 2021. What do you think their mindset is going to be if they get back in power in 2024? Do you think that come 2028, they're not going to find a way to try to do an end run around the Constitution and the amendment that prohibits Trump from running again? I don't trust any of that. I mean, these people have shown no fealty to the Constitution so far. I hate sounding like this because I realize that it sounds extreme and it sounds like, you know, like I guess what people on the right would call Trump derangement syndrome. But at this point, it's basically, I don't put anything past them.

No, and you would be deranged to think that they wouldn't try. It is like the Bond villain telling you exactly how they're going to kill you and where they're going to do it. And then just so long as you don't go over there and get the key that will unlock your handcuffs, this is how I'm going to take you out. They are telling you. They're not disguising it. And so we get into power again. We're not leaving.

Oh, you can't do that. We don't care. What else do you need to know? And the fact is that you have put in, if we're not able, Democrats are not able, to take the House back, to hold on to the fucking Senate for dear life, you got Mike Johnson sitting in the speaker's chair who voted to overturn the election, who will be the person that is supposed to certify. I'm like everyone is in place and they're just waiting.

And I just, it is not hyperbolic for us to think like, oh, Donald Trump couldn't win. I'm like, do you see Biden's poll numbers right now? Yes, we are a year out. But it don't look fucking good right now. and a whole lot can happen in this country in the next 12 months. I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to suggest that Donald Trump could win the 2024 election. I think there's at minimum there's a 50% chance. And I'm not saying that because, duh, there are two people running.

I don't mean it in that sense. I mean, there is a legitimate 50% chance at base right now that he could win the election. I don't think it's hyperbolic at all to suggest that as a possibility. I think it's a very, very real possibility. Since February, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville has been holding up military nominations and promotions because he doesn't like the Pentagon's policy that allows for travel reimbursement for personnel who go out of state for reproductive care, including abortion. Democrats and the Pentagon have been pointing out for months that this is hurting our military readiness,

and it's now reached the point that even some Republicans have had it with Tuberville, who refuses to back down. My next guest is a veterans advocate, the host of the Majority 54 podcast, and the author of of Invisible Storm, a Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD. Jason Kander joins me now to talk about this and more. Jason, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for me back, Andy. So Jason, as the host here, I feel I have an obligation to be objective. So let me objectively say that while Tommy Tuberville is incredibly dumb, he's also a dick.

Your thoughts? Yeah, I agree. I think at this point, that's kind of a fact. I would say that in addition to that, I think he's embarrassed. Like, I think at this point, he's dug in so far because I don't think, I think he's just dug in so far you can't see the top. A lot of people have tried to give him a graceful exit from this hole that he's dug. Yeah. And he passed so many of those exits that now he has no choice to just force the Senate to go around him.

How much is he hurting the military here? I keep seeing numbers thrown around. Senator Amy Klobuchar says that by the end of the year, we're probably looking at around 650 vacant leadership positions solely because of him. I've seen numbers that suggest it's already at 350 people. All of this sounds less than optimal for military readiness. It's certainly less than optimal for a few reasons. One, you were, I think, a former enlisted guy, right? Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm a former officer who got out at captain. So we are both inclined. That doesn't make you better than me. I just want to point that out. No, no, it doesn't. In fact, the point I was trying to make is we are equally inclined to look at general officers and be like, oh, it's so sad. And yet, it's very important.

what general officers do. So on the one hand, you know, like when I'm in a ballgame and they put a, you know, a veteran up on the Jumbotron and everything, if it's a general, honestly, I'm like, I'm not standing. That general gets enough accolades. And then people around me are like, oh my God, this guy, what is his deal? And I'm like, you'd understand. Now, with all that said, generals do important stuff and having good generals. And by the way, good carnal's too, because if you're not, if you are not promoting the generals, then what you're doing is you're also stagnating the career. of some of the best most upwardly mobile and effective and most educated and most experienced colonels, they're more likely to exit the military and choose their retirement. So yes, it hurts our readiness. It hurts our ability to keep some of the most skilled, talented, and prepared people in positions moving up the ladder so that they can continue to get more and more responsibility. But on top of that, you know, for anybody listening, think of the organization where you work. Maybe you work at a corporation. Imagine that there's an interim CEO and there's an interim CFO and there's an interim, people who don't know how long they're going to work together,

aren't the people who otherwise would have been in that position, you're not going to get the same quality of leadership and the same ability to look long term and work together as a team. It's just a simple fact. I mean, the fact that we have vacancies like on the Joint Chiefs and we have vacancies where people are supposed to be leading their own branches and they don't have any certainty about how long they're going to be there if they are filling those positions, that is hugely problematic for any organization. But what it all goes back to is people like Tuberville and the Republicans who won't stand up to him, most of them, including Tuberville, have never served in the military. So they don't understand that it's not

just pointing and shooting. Like, there's an actual profession at play here. And it matters who does the jobs. But if you zoom out, this is their Republican approach to government generally. I'm going to bore you with a quick anecdote that hopefully won't be so. No, please do. A hundred years ago when I was on the state budget committee in Missouri, there was this thing that the Republicans would do every single year. which is they would have these amendments to cut the salaries of every single person who was employed by the state government who made more than the lieutenant governor because their argument was, if the lieutenant governor is the second highest person in our state government, then nobody should make more than him. And the lieutenant governor, by the way, was a part-time job that paid $80,000.

And so you had scientists at the Department of Health getting their salaries cut and it drove a lot of people. Now, this didn't make it all the way, right? The governor would veto it, but it would have driven a lot of people out of government. But what it all comes from is this really, really bedrock belief that Republicans have, Republicans inelected office have. And that belief is that if you were any good at your job and if you had any value at all, you clearly would not work in the public sector. You obviously would have a corporate job somewhere making more money. So why would we pay to actually recruit talented people? And this is just them applying. that to the military. No, I think that's an excellent point. And along these same lines, earlier this

week, the Senate Rules Committee voted 9-7, and this was a party-line vote, nine Democrats to seven Republicans. They voted to modify the rule that Tuberville has been using and temporarily allow the Senate to approve promotions in bulk with a simple majority vote. Like I said, not a single Republican on the committee voted for it. It would require 60 votes in the full Senate to take effect. So that seems to be far from a sure thing. You know, we've seen Republicans start to say that they're not happy with what Tuberville is doing, but they don't seem to want to actually do anything about it. Yeah, because a bunch of cowards. Now, I'm going to hold out some hope, right? Because the Senate probably works like a lot of other legislative bodies in that when you are taking a procedural vote,

there is a certain expectation that on the procedural vote about the rules, it's sort of sacrosanct that you will not go against a member of your own party, right? Like, you don't vote the previous question if it's been moved for by somebody in the other party, that kind of thing, especially in a situation when they know that it's going to pass out of the Rules Committee and whether they vote for it or not. So I have some modicum of hope that once it comes to an actual vote, because with the rules being changed, maybe you get 60 votes for it. That would be the hope. But yeah, the fact that McConnell went back on it makes no sense. I don't know, man. I wish I had a better answer other than at the end of the day, they're afraid of two things.

One, they're afraid of upsetting a member of their caucus who then turns on them. And two, because we've become so polarized, they're all scared to death of a primary. And the underlying thing that Tuberville's talking about are trying to make this about is abortion. I think they're really scared of looking like they voted the wrong way on abortion in a Republican primary. Both of those are excellent points. And I think 100% true. But there's a third thing here. And this is the one that really starts to annoy me is you see Republican senators saying things like,

well, I don't like what he's doing, but I'm not going to vote for a mechanism to bypass him because this will undermine Senate traditions. And they start talking about traditions and, again, the sort of the sanctity of the Senate rules. And I look at this and I'm like, but if the rules are hampering you and you have the ability to change the rules, the idea of just sitting there and saying, well, but those are the rules. We've been doing this for 200 years. We can't change them. It really gets under my skin. Yeah. I got no use for Senate tradition. All right. I got use for Senate tradition. way that I would have any use for the idea that baseball can't make the bases bigger because they've been the same side. No, it's not a real thing. Like, Senate tradition, our country is not

that old. Like, we get so exercised about Senate tradition when a lot of the tradition, like, is a result of things like trying to keep segregation in place or, yeah, and every single tradition that we have, heck, every single law that we have is a product of a moment in time. I remember when I was in law school, we'd be working on some case and we'd be looking at a law. And everybody would try to assign some sort of logic to why the law was what it was. Well, maybe they were thinking this. And then when you dug into it, it was always like, oh, no, like the milk lobby wanted this. And Jefferson was mad about this.

You know, it's like everything we have is the product of the politics of a certain moment in time. I mean, even the fact that you have to be a natural born citizen in order to run for president. It goes back to like, they didn't want Hamilton to be president, right? I mean, so it's all about personalities and moments and time. And so I got no use for that kind of stuff. And I think it is, I think they're hiding behind it. And what I also think it comes down to is I do think that there are some of them who genuinely believe that these traditions are important.

And that's because there's a sickness that takes place. And this is in all legislative bodies, in the U.S. at least, because capitals, whether they be the U.S. capital or the state capital, have a habit of having very impressive ceilings and very impressive architecture. And when people are in there, they feel like they're in some sort of very special place. And it's like a church. And it's like, no, man, it's just a good ceiling. And you're just at a job and you have a responsibility and a mission to actually achieve.

So you got to get over the ceiling. You got to get over the stained glass. And you got to just like do what makes sense. Yeah. Thank you so much for saying that. Because I just like I look at this and it's like they start to think that because the building has, you know, ionic columns or Doric columns or whatever they are, that they're upholding some traditions that go back to ancient Greece.

It's just a ceiling, man. Right. When I first got to the state legislature in Missouri, there was a tradition that you did not reach out to the hometown paper of another representative because it was up to them to speak to that hometown paper. And I thought that made no sense. So when other representatives were putting out press releases about how wonderful they were, when they were actually doing the opposite of their press releases,

I started calling people's hometown papers. And man, it's like the closest I ever came to being a fist fight on the house floor. It was like I had dated somebody's sister or something. It was truly amazing how upset they got. I know this wasn't part of the plan. Can we talk about fist fights on the house floor for a second? Let's do it. We can do matchups if you want.

We can do odds, whatever you want. I'm curious what you make of this. The pseudo alpha male stuff drives me absolutely bat shit crazy. You know, we saw this last week. There was Mark Wayne Mullen. tried to pick a fight with a labor leader, and he's now selling merchandise based off of that. And Kevin McCarthy apparently gives somebody a shove and then says, oh, we're not in a fight. If I was in a fight with him, he'd know it.

Like, I look at this, and something that strikes me is all of these guys, none of them have ever served in the military. And they sit there and they spout this alpha macho bullshit and not a single one of them that does this, it seems to me, has ever even. come close to thinking, hey, maybe I should go serve my country and in a place that might actually be dangerous. Like they, they instinctively don't do that. But then they walk around and they do these little playground stunts and act like they're just the epitome of the macho man. Yeah, I would separate them into a couple of categories. A guy like Mark Wayne Mullen,

who I disagree with on absolutely everything and I think is a real danger in his beliefs, is also a dude from Oklahoma who's been an MMA fighter. And it, right. It sort of reminds me of, you know, I'm from Kansas City. And when I first started going to college, I was in D.C. So I was in school with a lot of kids from the East Coast. And I remember, and I was not like a kid who got in a lot of fights growing up. I got in a regular Kansas City, middle school, and high school amount of fights, you know. And then I go to school on the East Coast.

And I remember, like, in the first few weeks, I got this reputation as like a hothead. And I didn't know why. And then I realized it was because the way people spoke to each other on the East Coast. I wasn't that I was trying to fight people. It's just like, if you were to say that kind of thing to me back. home, I assumed that we were in a fight. And so I didn't like throw a first punch. I would just be like, all right, man, well, I guess let's go outside. And they'd be like, whoa, calm down. And I hesitate to ever give Mark Wayne Mullen a pass on anything. But I do think that this is a guy who, you know, he's the only

member of the Senate without a college degree. He comes up, you know, in Oklahoma. He's a UFC fighter. I think where he's from, if people say the kind of things to you that people say to each other in Congress, you're just like, okay, so I guess we're going to fight. And if you look back to the clip, The dude is like, okay, so should we do this? You know what I mean? He's not like, let's go, man. Now, I'm going to set him aside for a minute. Now let's talk about everybody else. Everybody else, starting with Kevin McCarthy, they're the dude who they get hit with a pitch

and then they immediately arrange themselves behind the catcher and act like they really want to get to the pitcher. And what they're really doing is they're waiting for the bullpins and the benches to jog in so that they can look tough. They don't want it. Kevin McCarthy, I heard the clip of him saying that like if I was going to get in a fight. And I swear I didn't hit him. Like, first of all, Kevin McCarthy definitely elbowed him.

There's no question. And Kevin McCarthy definitely doesn't want to fight him. Because Kevin McCarthy is one soft dude. What it all comes down to is like, these are people who were not cool. They were not cool in school. They were not cool at any point. They became cool when they got elected to something for the most part. And so as a result, now, now they can be the bullies and they kind of want to be.

But it's different than walking around on the street, right? If you're walking around on the street and you pick a fight, you're going to get in a fight. Like, you're in a place where people wear suits. There's a huge cost for the other person to actually fight you. Political cost, they look ridiculous. So it's easy to talk a bunch of smack. And it's no surprise that the decline in our discourse has taken us to this pretend fighting place. Yeah.

And look, I agree with you that Mark Wayne Mullen is different than Kevin McCarthy. And Mark Wayne Mullen would have actually fought. I guess my only thing is it's like, Dude, you're at a congressional hearing. You don't need to do that. It's sad. I'm just saying, I'm not saying he's right. I'm saying I separate his childishness from all the rest of the childishness.

It just belongs in its own little category. No, absolutely. Okay. Before I let you go, I want to talk about a piece by Tim Dickinson that came out in Rolling Stone earlier this week with the headline, mass murder is a choice. The gun industry made it. You're quoted in it fairly extensively. And you talk a lot about how the AR-15 is not a civilian weapon.

and we've sort of been, or the gun lobby has tricked us into believing or has tricked a lot of people into believing that the AR-15 is a civilian weapon. Explain what you mean. Yeah, they do this whole thing where they'll act like, look, it's not a weapon of war because the M-16, the M-4, that's what the military uses. They use the AR-15. And at first, it's very helpful to revisit the fact that the era 15 was originally designed as an answer to the AK-47 on the battlefield. It was modified into the M16 and 4, but it's not really modified, as you well know. The only difference between the two is that there's a switch on the side for the M16 or M4 where you can go to three round burst, so fire right, pop, pop, pop at the same time, or full auto, boom. So you and I understand that,

and you and I had marksmanship instructors that were very clear with us that you are wasting ammunition and you are exercising poor ammo discipline if you use three round burst or if you use foliotto. The only time that I was ever taught to, you know, use three-round burst was when laying down suppressive fire so that another element could move in and attack, right? Now, the other time was Foliato, there were times when they were like teaching us clear a bunker drill where they would say like, you know, point your weapon around the corner and just fall out, right?

There were, but that's it. That is it. Everything else. And even then, it's questionable. Like most of the time you're going to stay on semi-auto, which makes it the exact same weapon as the AR-15. And what I pointed out in the article is, is that, you know, I became very well-known for this ad I did where I was blindfolded and I assembled an AR-R-R.

15 and talked about why we need background checks. And the reason that I could do that is because assembling an AR-15 is identical to assembling an M-4 or M-16. And so it's the exact same weapon. So tell me about the protection of lawful commerce in arms act or the PLCAA because you in the article, you say that you think that ending that is the best way to stop gun violence. Absolutely. Think about how reduced smoking is in this country versus when you and I were kids. Like when I drive down the road, if there's somebody in the car next to me smoking, my son, who's 10 years old, will often be like, dad, look at that. That person is smoking. When you and I were growing up, it was like, everyone was smoking. There were smoking sections on airplanes. It was just everywhere,

right? Yeah. And people think that that stopped because of legislation in Congress. No, it has been significantly reduced because of juries and because of trial lawyers and courts because cigarettes and tobacco companies were treated like any other industry in the country. And so as a result, you could go to court and you could say, look, they did these things that weren't reasonable. They marketed this product to people who a community can come together. That's what a jury is and say, that is not reasonable for you to market it to these people and for you to market this product in this way. If we had not passed the protection of lawful commerce and arms act, which was a law that was signed by George W. Bush, if we had not passed that, gun companies would be tobacco

companies, right? Instead, we have a law that says you cannot sue gun companies and only gun companies for making guns, that you can't just say that this product should be marketed in a different way, that you have the technology to make this product differently. So when people talk about we need to make laws that say you have to have smart guns, when people talk about how we need to have a ban on assault weapons, we need to have registration of guns, all these different things, background checks, all of it. I'm for all of that. But there is a shortcut. to get to that, which is just go back to making gun companies treated under the law the same way everybody else is treated. Because if juries pose the question after mass shootings of,

did this gun company take reasonable steps to avoid their product being used in this way, a lot of juries are going to say, no, they didn't, especially when lawyers can introduce the fact that the technology for smart guns exists and that the companies could easily make them, that the capability exists for the gun companies to conduct their own background checks, for them to have their own system of registration for who buys them. All of these things already exist. And with any other product that is as dangerous as this, juries would simply start requiring that the manufacturer of the product take necessary steps to exercise reasonable care.

If we would just repeal that law, then you would have gun violence go down at the same rate that smoking has gone down in this country. Jason Kander, always a pleasure talking to you. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for your tireless work on behalf of veterans. And hopefully we'll talk again soon. for me. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. The author of a very interesting book, in my humble opinion, mental immunity. Andy Norman writes about infectious ideas,

mind parasites, and the search for a better way to think. You also have founded a very interesting group called the Cognitive Immunology Research Collaborative Mental Immunity Project, which is a new public initiative aimed at helping people everywhere decrease their susceptibility to misleading and manipulative information. Tell us a bit about this initiative, why it's needed and important, and how you've had so many other leading experts sign on to. this important group? Yeah. So, I mean, human beings have been battling the effects of bad information for a long time.

What's really interesting about recent developments is that we now actually have a interesting new science of misinformation susceptibility that is helping us figure out how to inoculate people, so to speak, against some of the worst forms of manipulative information or even infectious information. So we talk a lot about viral ideas going viral these days. Some of these viral ideas that are spreading are not doing us any favors. They don't help the minds they find harbor in. We think we can help everyone and help everyone create a better society together by enhancing mental immunity to misinformation. And now we have an evidence-based science that can teach us how to do that. So much like any, let's say, illness.

whether it is, you know, a cancer, a virus, a wound that you have, in order to actually tend to it, in order to heal it, you have to admit that it's there. Yes. And I think that a part of where I find myself so concerned with our intensified climate around misinformation is that there's about 30% of the country who are the Maga diehards right now, who are those that believe everything that comes out of the mouths of Donald Trump and his sycophants, for example, they believe that the information that they have is the right information, that the rest of us, the majority, the 70%, are the ones that are crazy, are the ones that are

suffering from the mind viruses. And they're the ones that also disavow science. We saw that in the pandemic and continue with vaccine lies and these things. And so if part of healing and part of inoculating ourselves is about recognizing that we are being harmed. How do we meet those people where they are, where they think that everything that they've been consuming is right? So let's start with what we have in common with, say, the Maga types. Hey, we're all susceptible to mis and disinformation. Another way to put that point is that we're susceptible to mind bugs, who are mind parasites, but we can all get better at spotting them. So we're all basically blind to our own mind parasites. We need the help of others to spot them. And this is where a community

of people who are willing to challenge your beliefs, to question your convictions, comes in really helpful. We all need to sort of debug our own mental software, our own brain software, but we need to listen to others who see things differently. Now, we need to actually reconcile ourselves to the fact that each and every one of us is massively infected with bits and pieces of bad information. We need to get used to the humility that entails and then bring that humility to the task of revising our beliefs when the evidence suggests a need to. What is interesting, and I think that, I mean, one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to is just that the idea that we can create a defense mechanism in the way that, again, vaccines create a defense mechanism,

to viruses, that we can actually prep our minds to recognize and ward off misinformation. Can you talk to us? I mean, again, we have seen this over the last nine plus years now. We've watched in other countries over patterns of history in the ways that information has been manipulated to control the masses. We see this in the rise of authoritarian regimes and fascism around the world, and we're seeing it again right now. And I'm just wondering, for those of us who do see the writing on the wall, like yourself,

like other researchers, but folks who are analysts like myself and see the writing on the wall, what is the danger in people not waking up, Andy? Can you spell it out for us in terms of what happens if we don't inoculate the population in order to hold on to, for instance, in this country, our democracy. Yeah, I think our democracy is certainly at stake. Basically, our minds develop resistance to myths and disinformation the same way our bodies develop resistance to infectious microbes. You have to actually develop antibodies to it. So the research now shows that to develop antibodies to, for example, I don't know, pseudoscience, you actually have to be exposed to weakened

doses of pseudoscience and then have it explain why it's not worth accepting. So, Exposure to bad information under controlled conditions is actually critical to developing the cognitive antibodies that we need to navigate this crazy new digital world we have. Cognitive antibodies, by the way, we experience them as doubts. I like to say the doubts are actually the antibodies of the mind. But of course, you can doubt the wrong things. You can doubt things that aren't really worth doubting. And you can fail to doubt things that really should be doubted. So a healthy mental immune system generates the right kind of antibodies to information that is not.

genuinely problematic or false. But you can actually develop the wrong, like, think about the person who's reflexively suspicious of anything that comes from the mainstream media. That person has crazy doubts that don't really deserve the kind of sway over their thinking that they should have. So your own mind's immune system can get knocked out of kilter and it can attack your own mind. It can attack your belief system and turn it upside down and turn it into somebody who's genuinely unhinged. And in today's digital world, we're all in danger of becoming unhinged by unreliable information. That's when we all have to develop our mental immunity so that we can live well and be good citizens and preserve our democratic freedom. I mean, I just find the time

that we're living in, Andy, so incredibly scary. And I wonder, as you were doing the research for your book and beginning this collective, this public initiative, did you ever think, that what we are experiencing right now in America would come to pass, that it was just a matter of time, that we were kind of primed for this over decades, frankly. Yeah, I mean, for decades, I've been waiting for sort of America to wake up and say, wait a minute, this is crazy, this is nuts. And it keeps not happening, right? Or at least the significant portion of the population seems to keep doubling down on the delusions that they've bought into in part because it's really hard to admit that you've been fooled. We've got semi-authoritarian

sort of demagogic people, mostly in the Republican Party these days, who gain power and keep it by fooling their own base. They're manipulating them thinking of their own base. And they're not doing them any favors. They're not making their base any happier by, for example, indulging in anger attainment. Have you heard this term anger tainment? Yes, I have. Lauren Bowbert's opponent in a recent Colorado election, almost knocked her off by telling the voters in their district that he didn't think the voters in the district wanted to hear any more of her anger attainment. And that idea, by just spreading the concept of angeredainment, helped to inoculate many of the voters against Bobert's form of angeredainment, helped many of them recover their sanity. And he almost upset

Bobert in the election, which is a testament to how powerful mind inoculation can be. If we use the right concepts to alert people to the dangers of mind manipulators. What is the best way, you know, people are getting ready to, like, gather with families and friends that have differing opinions? What is the best way, the smelling salt, if you will, to begin to wake people up? The best thing you can do is listen. Listen without judgment. I'm a huge fan of the use of clarifying questions. So if your crazy Uncle Frank starts railing about the government wanting to steal his guns, the best thing you can do is not disengage, not to attack his arguments, not attack him, but just to say, tell me more about that,

Uncle Frank. Do you know of any examples of where the government has taken away your friend's guns? Because I'd like to hear about that. Just being a sympathetic listener is a wonderfully powerful way to get people to hear themselves think and begin to rethink things. But it takes time and it takes patience. Folks, the book is mental immunity, infectious ideas, mind parasites, and the search for a better way to think. Check it out. Andy Norman. Thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. I hope that you will come back and join us again soon because this topic is worth discussing over and over again. I'd love that Danielle Moodie. Andy Levy. All right, let's close out this week. Who's your fuck that guy? You said that with such exasperated. I've had it, Daniel. I've had it as well.

Fuck That guy is an oldie but a goodie. He is no stranger to this segment. And it is Joe Manchin. Yes. Joe Manchin receives a fuck that guy for so many fucking reasons. But most recently is decided that he is not going to run for re-election in West Virginia, which I'm sure is a really big loss to the Democrats. I haven't decided honestly how I feel about him not running again,

being as how I can't fucking stand him. We don't share any of the same values. He doesn't believe in climate change or care about it so long as he can drive around in this Maserati. But on top of this, you know, there's still rumblings about the fact that he may still want to run for the presidency. And he says in a recent interview that Donald Trump, quote, will destroy democracy in America. And he doesn't want to be a quote unquote spoiler candidate. Andy, but he says that if they said, I don't know who they are, but if they said, you're the only person to do it, I'll do whatever I can to save this nation.

The question is, A, who are they? B, who the fuck does he think his constituency is? Because again, I'm unclear because his entire fucking state, every single county voted for Donald Trump, right? And actual Democrats, ones that believe in progressivism, ones that believe in progressivism, ones that believe in, you know, in climate change and doing something about it. Manchin ain't they a fucking guy. He's been the thorn in the side of our progress for so long. So I just, even that idea, if they want me to do it, I will. Just shut the fuck up, mansion. Like, honestly, just shut up. Go on your yacht,

you know, put your Maserati on it and go away. So for that reason, you are my forever and always, fuck that guy. I mean, what if he only ran for president in West Virginia? Great. Awesome. And then maybe he could split the vote enough between him and Trump that we could get five electoral votes for Biden. I love this. I love this idea. You should go work for the DNC.

That's the only way I can think of where he can even come close to saving the country. Mm-mm-mm. He can't save his state. Do you know, like he can't save his fucking state? I just, I love these guys who are like, Like the fucking, the ego. It's just like, well, if they tell me that I'm the only person who can save America, shut up. Oh, my God.

Yeah, fuck that guy. So, Andy, how are you closing out this amazing, inspiring week in America? I'm going to go with, I feel like she's maybe been a fuck that guy before, but I'm not positive. And it's a Republican presidential candidate. And now, I guess, second runner, Nikki Halley. Oh, she's been to fuck that guy. I was pretty sure she had been. But, you know, in recent polls are showing her possibly in second place.

And on Tuesday, on Fox News, she said something. She said every person on social media should be verified by their name. It's a national security threat. I can't overstate how stupid that is. And so she might have been fuck that guy enough just for saying that. And there are myriad reasons why that's a bad idea. and there are people who use anonymity for good on social media and elsewhere. I mean, a zillion people pointed out that, you know, back in the day,

the Federalist papers were written anonymously, and there were reasons for that. And there are reasons to be anonymous on social media for personal safety, for stuff like that. So it's an absolutely ignorant statement to say that every person on social media should be verified by their name and trying to basically intimate that that should be the law of the land. But then she walked it back a little bit the day after on Wednesday. I looked at what she said in her walk back. Let me just read it to you. She said, I don't mind anonymous American people having free speech.

What I don't like is anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech. What she's talking about or what she's referencing here are the bot farms, the Russian bots, the Chinese bots, whatever. I understand that. But the idea that you're going to look at three of the most repressive regimes on the planet and say that you don't like the idea that citizens of those countries should be able to be anonymous on free speech. These are countries where legitimately, if you say something that the government doesn't like, you could be killed. That's not an exaggeration. That shit happens. And her walk back is, oh, I think Americans should have anonymous free speech. not people in these other countries. What annoys me the most about this is she is not a stupid person. Like there are plenty of stupid Republicans. I don't think she's one of them. I think she actually is a fairly smart person. This is such a dumb thing to say and such an evil thing to say.

She has to understand what she's saying here. And that regardless of what she thinks about bots and about disinformation being spread by agents of the Iranian government or the Russian government, that what she's also doing here is disempowering people in those countries who want to speak up against repressive regimes but are afraid to put their name on it because again, they don't want to die or they don't want their families to die or they don't want to be put in prison or in a camp. So for her to say this, and this is her walkback, like, I saw that and I was like, all right, that's it. You're my fuck that guy. So that is why she is today. And I have a feeling not for the last time, my fuck that guy. I mean, walk back.

She needs to sit the fuck down. Like what she said, I mean, what she said was just so blatantly wrong. Do these people, are they trying to become president of democracy? Are they trying to like remind people of the beacon of the hill? There were so many different ways that you could have made that statement and you laid out so many of them. If you want to talk about bots, if you want to talk about misinformation, there were ways to say that without saying that only Americans should have freedom of speech. when we are watching literally. They just put people to death in Iran

for protesting against that regime. Right. Right. Like, are we kidding? Oh, my God. It's just, you know, and you're right, as opposed to the other buffoons that have grace that stage,

that Republican, you know, candidate circus. She was a governor. She did at one time have brains in her head, but, you know, Maga Mush prevails. Yep. Hope you enjoy checking out. 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

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