The Daily Beast Podcast - Why JD Vance’s Latest Immigration Claim Is Just Plain Wrong

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

The New Abnormal team dismantles JD Vance’s claim that bringing in migrants to work in Springfield, Ohio is not the “path to prosperity.’ Plus! Journalist Jessica Pishko joins the podcast to talk about her new book, The Highest Law In The Land: How The Unchecked Power Of Sheriffs Threatens Democracy 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 Campbell 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. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal.

We thank you so much for being here. Journalist Jessica Pishko is here to tell us about her new book, The Highest Law in the Land, how the unchecked power of sheriffs threatens democracy. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clips. All right. Well, we've had many reoccurring segments.

of stupidity on this podcast throughout our time doing clips. Who can forget Jesse Waters being a clueless moron. Herschel Walker be one of the worst candidates of all time. And now we return to our latest. J.D. Vance doing an interview where he says something psychotic about women. This is one of the great tricks

that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is this idea that like, well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them, and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear,

that's going to make people happier in the long term. And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, so I'm skeptical. But it really didn't work out for the kids of those marriages. And I think that's what all of us shabler. So wait a second. So he just said people may have gotten divorces because of violence, of violence in their marriages. and that that may have worked out well to leave a violent situation

for the moms and the dads, but staying in violence would have been better for the kids? Did I interpret that okay? You did, but you left out the fact that he also said that he's skeptical of the fact that it even worked out better for the mom and dad. Yo. Yeah. Who lets this guy speak?

When they show you who they are? Mm-mm. How any woman can vote for this ticket, look, how any person can vote for this ticket is beyond me. But women in particular. Yeah. Like this man is telling you to stay in abusive situations. By the way, any doctor, psychologist, psychiatrist has said,

the sooner that people with children leave a violent situation, the less likely it is to imprint on their kids. Yep. Yeah. Let me not, let me not combat that with logic. because I just keep going back and it's starting to become a thing. But, you know, when we're making comparisons to him and Sarah Palin, it's a funny thing because Sarah Palin, I do you think we could all agree, was equipped intellectually for the thing.

This is like the most brain poison of like this guy sees a bad idea and a stupid idea every time it goes, man, I shouldn't really think about how I could wrap that up into a podcast saying, an answer. Like, I gotta really get on this thing. Like, I'm like literally waiting for the day that somebody hands him some Charles Murray and we start to hear about bell curves at this point. Like, yes, Sarah Palin was, let's just say, she was dumber than he is. Sure.

However, whatever Pete you want to put on that shack. Yeah, I think lipstick on a pig, I think is where we want to go to. Oh, oh, well done. Well done. But J.D. Vance is, A, he's more dangerous because he's not. as stupid as her. And B, it's a different kind of dumb. It's not like, I don't want to get into an IQ thing because I think IQs are generally stupid. But if you want to use that just as a thing, it's like it's not a low IQ kind of stupid. It's similar to Elon Musk to me, who I'm sure he's

taking an IQ test because whatever, I'm sure he would score high on it. He also is one of the most credulous people in the world and falls for hoaxes and misinformation and disinformation and disinformation on a daily basis, multiple times on a daily basis. So it's a different kind of stupid, I guess, is what I'm saying. Well, the bad news is, is we have to hear more from JD-Vince. Why? Well, you know. So he's taken to also branding himself as a policy man.

He refutes, common with policies, even though his wholly qualification to do this was being a billionaire's intern and writing a shitty book. Let's have him demonstrate some of his grasp on policy. See. To prosperity of town, if the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants, then Springfield, Ohio would be the most prosperous country and the prosperous city in the world. America would be the most prosperous country in the world because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million legal aliens. What's actually happened is that over the past three and a half years, while we've had this massive influx of illegal labor,

what's happened? We've had skyrocketing inflation, lower take-home pay, Americans more dissatisfied with directions, the country and the economy than they've been in a generation. This is not the path to prosperity, no matter how much a Wall Street bank says that it is. Who's going to tell him? You tell him. So, first of all, I've said this on a number of times, and all folks need to do is Google. Springfield, Ohio was in economic turmoil prior to four years ago.

Like, the city was on the verge, I think, of, like, just crumbling. because of the lack of labor, because of the dying factory industry, all of these things. Over the last four years, they've had an influx of about 20,000 Haitian workers, right, people, families that have come into and been placed in Ohio.

And do you know what is happening in Springfield, Ohio? They're seeing an economic boom that they have not seen in decades. So that's number one. Number two, America only thrives on not fucking Dunkin' Donuts Coffee, but immigrant fucking labor. And is one of the wealthiest countries in the world. So what we need to do is invest in education because clearly that is something that J.D. Vance does not utilize at all. I hate him.

Yeah. The only thing I want to add to this is I agree with everything that Danielle just said. It's good to have immigration because it does make us more prosperous. Even if it didn't, it's good to have immigration because immigrants come here because they want a better life. And we should let them do that. And it doesn't have to enrich me for them to come here to make it a good thing. It's just morally a good thing, in my opinion, to let people come here, let people who want to leave a place that is dangerous to them or where they're not prospering to come here. Or torn down by earthquakes like Haiti.

Yeah, exactly. Or, you know, destroyed by colonialism. Yes. So I sometimes think we miss this. And this is one of the things that have a little bugaboo about this with the Democratic Party is that they always sound Republican light on immigration. And it's always like, you know, oh, they're good for the economy. Yes to all of that.

I believe all of that is true. I just also think it's also a sign of moral goodness when you say, hey, come here if you want a better life. You're a person. You deserve a better life. And hopefully we can help make that happen. Yeah, this is trans issues. I kind of wish we didn't always have to tie it to GDP or some ridiculous thing.

Yeah, exactly. And just say this is the right thing to do and this is what America was founded on. Yeah. God, we're so woke. Okay. The bad news is we have another JD Vance clip. The good news is after this, it gets great. You hate us.

Like, that's what I'm convinced. You know, every time you say this, I make sure to have a contingency plan, which will happen after. after this terrible, terrible clip, because this one's the worst yet. Oh, dear God. But Mike once told me that American history is a constant war between Northern Yankees and Southern Bourbons where whichever side the hillbillies are on wins, right?

And that's kind of how I think about American politics today is like the Northern Yankees are now the hyper-wokes, sort of coastal elites. The southern bourbons are sort of the, you know, the same old school southern folks that have been around and influential in this country for 200 years. And it's like the hillbillies have really started to migrate towards the southern bourbon instead of the northern woke people. It's just like a fundamental thing that's happening in American politics. Oh, dear God. So the southern bourbons who are the what, the real Americans? Oh, yes. Of course. First of all, they're the ones that left America.

Mm-hmm. Kind of puts a damper on that real American thing, in my opinion. You know, I don't know if this thought crossed either of your minds. They're also the ones that fought a civil war because they wanted slaves. Uh-huh. That seems to be kind of what he's saying is he's on the side of the Confederacy. But look, on the other hand, they weren't hyper-woke coastal elites. God forbid.

Does he ever offer legislation? Like, I'm just curious. Like, he's a senator, right? He is a senator. Has he written a bill? Like, what comes out? of his office other than like these podcast clips like does he have a podcast studio in there it's just unbelievable to me this is how you get picked to be donald trump's vice president though he doesn't

even like you man like he doesn't even fucking like you he just clowns you on tv this is truly unbelievable though this whole thing with with these old school southern bourbons and trying to paint them as i i just okay what a fucking idiot. I take back everything I said about him being a different kind of dumb. He's just dumb. Okay, let me finish us off with some dessert. This is John

Stewart's post-debat analysis. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if this debate's going to change anything. I really don't. People are awfully set in the manner that they view these proceedings. What I think is a home run answer for one candidate, someone else views as a Dodge or a lie or any of those other

things. In some ways, it doesn't matter. what they say anymore, but one thing will always be true. And it is the quality of the former president I respect the least. Whenever he is cornered and forced to face even the smallest of

consequences for his own mendacity and scheming, he reverts to the greatest refuge of scoundrels, as Shaggy would say, it wasn't me. I didn't know, them wrong, I just showed up. They're the ones who went crazy.

This man who constantly professes to be your champion, who says they're going to have to go through him to get to you, will always, when the boat is going down, be the first into the lifeboats, because in that moment he will always say the same thing. I didn't know anything about it. I was just told to show up for a cruise, even though everybody knows he was the fucking captain of the ship. In any other country, in any other country, in any other country, that lack of account. ability would be disqualifying. But in this country, it means the race is tighter than a... Excuse me for just one second.

Back after... Oh, bless him. Yeah. No, I mean, that is, you know, 100% accurate. His first instinct is to throw anyone under the bus who isn't him. And it always has been. And we saw it at the debate. We saw it. I assume what John Stewart was. was talking about was when he said of January 6th, I just, I just showed up. They told me to show up and give the speech. Right. Yep. Yep. Do you have any regrets? Was the was the question about January 6th? And I just gave a speech. Yeah. Yeah. And it wasn't just I just gave a speech. It was, you know, they told me to give a

speech. Right. Yes. And he did the same thing with J.D. Vance when he said, you know, I don't talk to him. That is, as Stuart pointed out, that is always his first instinct is to cover his ass and throw anyone under the bus. And the fact that we have a decent percentage of people in this country who think that this guy fights for them is unreal. Truly, somebody once said, like, that is the way you talk to Trump voters is like you really try to make them think of their own terms of like, does this guy actually ever do anything? And some will parse like, yes, he punishes immigrants who I want punished because that's what they want. But some people, it could be argued, that they've bought the bullshit that he's fighting for you. And then when you really think about it and you come to your own conclusion, that man has never, you know, he's not saving a cat, duck, or you. No, he's not.

And, you know, and whenever I think it was like the Titanic reference where they said, you know, women and children first, Donald Trump will be the first to throw on a dress. Do you know what I'm saying? in order to make his way. Elbow the children out of the way, you know, knock the women over, throw on a dress and a hat, and he'll be the first in a fucking lifeboat. Like, that is who that man is. It's nauseating to, like Andy said, to believe that there are 30% of Americans think that that is what leadership should look like. Yeah. Awful. Jessica Pishko has been writing about the political power of sheriffs since 2016, and her new book is an invaluable look at just how much authority this group of mostly white men wield and why many of

them believe they are above the law. It's called the highest law in the land, how the unchecked power of sheriffs threatens democracy. It's already been shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School's J. Anthony Lucas Prize, and it comes out Tuesday. She joins me now. Jessica, thank you so much for being here. Glad to be here. So I want to start with, I guess, the most basic question because I think a lot of folks, particularly those who live in urban areas like I do, aren't really aware of the answer. What exactly are sheriffs in 2024 America? And how many of them are there? I grew up in Texas. And so when I'm asked this question, I often think about what I thought sheriffs were growing up, right? So I frequently thought of like a character on Tombstone or John Wayne

or sometimes like Walker, Texas Ranger, although he wasn't technically a sheriff. But there's over 3,000 sheriffs in the United States. It's actually a little bit of a funny thing about the way things are counted. It's a little bit unclear, like, to the precise number, exactly how many there are. So it's about 3,080. There's sort of like a plus or minus one or two. Okay. An interesting quirk of our criminal legal system is that numbers are hard to come by. What can you say? We couldn't figure it out. We did the best we could. And so little we know. Sheriffs are, I think, easily compared to police chief, which is what, as you point out, most people who live in urban areas are used to. And the main difference is that sheriffs are elected on the county level.

So one thing I realized while I was researching this book is that everybody lives in a county. This is probably really obvious if you don't live in a city. But we all live in a county and not everyone lives in a city. So sheriffs are, it says, everywhere, even though they're elected. on this county level and the elected tend to be kind of low turnout. Police chiefs on the other hand are appointed usually by a mayor or a city council or something like that. And I sometimes compare police chiefs to like CEOs because they move around. Right. So police chiefs might be in like Oakland and then Miami and then Houston and they move

around the country whereas sheriffs are intensely local. They have to live in the county where they're elected. It's like the one requirement of sheriffs. And a lot of them went to high school in the counties where they serve. So you have people serving as an elected county sheriff that are supposed to have really deep roots in the community. They're really connected to maybe the people there and like the institutions and that kind of thing. The other biggest difference I think that is important everywhere is that sheriffs both have policing power, but they also run jails. About 85% of sheriffs run jails. And that means a little bit like they both arrest people, but then they also take care of those people post arrest. And so whatever happens to

them after arrest, when they're booked into jail and whatever may happen to them inside that jail, that is also under the control of the sheriff. Briefly, because I do want to get into a lot of the stories from the book. But one of the things you say is that sheriffs are the least diverse of any democratically elected officials. What are the numbers? What are the stats here? It is a little over 90% white men. So one thing is like that chicks are a little bit in flux. So we do know that it's like less than 3% women, maybe 5% black sheriff.

It's a little bit in flux actually because of demographics. Sometimes don't distinguish Latino sheriff from white sheriff. So it's like self-reported. So there's like a little bit of flux in the numbers. But we can't say with pretty good confidence that around 90% are white men. All right. So let's jump into the book and we have to, of course, talk about a guy named Richard Mack. And as I was telling you before we started recording, I honestly could just ask you about him

for the entire interview because he is just everywhere. And he started an organization called the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. So tell us about him and about CSPOA. Richard Mack was a sheriff. So he called himself Sheriff Mack, but he hasn't been a sheriff for a pretty long time. He was a sheriff in a place called Graham County, Arizona. It's rather rural. The backstory of Richard Beck is actually kind of interesting because he wanted to be an FBI agent.

He grew up in Utah. He was a very religious Mormon. And the story goes that he didn't get into the FBI for whatever reason. And then he worked at like the city police department for a period of time. And he says he didn't like it. So he ran for sheriff in Arizona. He served two terms. And while he was serving as sheriff, he joined a lawsuit that the NRA brought against the Clinton administration over the Brady handgun bill.

He, along with about five other sheriffs across the country, joined this lawsuit. It's a little bit funny because the lawsuit is called France, the United States, after another sheriff. It's a sheriff in Montana. But Richard Mack has a virgin you could purchase that says Mack the United States, even though. Of course he does. That's not the name of the case, but regardless, there's a different sheriff, Jay Prince, who ended up the named individual. But all the lawsuits all kind of got consolidated when it got to the Supreme Court.

And the net of this lawsuit was that the Supreme Court, the decision written by Justice Antoinette Scalia, said that the federal government couldn't require county sheriff or police to do background check under the Brady Bill. How is the main issue of this lawsuit? And honestly, at the time, I don't think people who watched the Supreme Court thought this was the biggest deal. Probably the most important thing about the lawsuit is that Clarence Thomas wrote a concurring opinion in which he started to articulate what is now the law.

So this idea that there's an individual right to firearm ownership. That's probably the most notable thing. But at the time, it's not clear to me that people thought that much of it. But Richard Mack took this lawsuit. It kind of went on the road using it as like street cred for the far right. So, you know, he talked to a lot of militia groups. This is where he starts popping up everywhere, and kind of like Forrest Gump of the militia movement. Right.

He pops up at Ruby Ridge. He pops up at Waco. He claims that Timothy McVeigh asked to talk to him after the Oklahoma City bombing, which I could not quite. confirm exactly if this is true or not. When I talked to Richard Beck, he said that he got a fact from someone saying that Timothy McVeigh wanted to talk to him. It was the time of faxes were popular. Right. So he sort of pops up. He keeps popping up, right? He keeps popping up in Tea Party stuff. Then he becomes friends with Stuart Rhodes of the Oathkeepers. And so they

sort of are like a match made in heaven. He meets Stewart Rhodes. And depending on who you talk to, either Stewart Rhodes made Mac more famous or they were equals, kind of a little bit of a dispute. Richard Mack all this time was basically trying to get like some kind of movement off the ground. And what's a little funny about it is before he settled on sheriffs and formed the CSPOA, the constitutional Sheriff of Peace Officer Association, he ran for a lot of offices. He ran like for sheriff again. He ran for Senate. He ran for the Texas House.

He ran a fake presidential campaign on an old Showtime show that I wish I could find video of. But he ran this like so he, and he lost all of them. Like he just every single election he ran, he lost. So it seems like he finally had this idea like, oh, I'm going to get together Sheriff. We're going to form a group in which Sheriff can sort of get together and talk about how we could better support right-wing movements like the militia movement. And he had tried actually before the CSPOA to form a different sheriff movement, called it the county movement, and it just never worked, which is, again, didn't get any traction. Seems like finally when he met Stewart Rhodes and Barack Obama was elected and the Tea Party was becoming more popular, that he got like a little more traction and people started to listen to him. I want to talk about the CSPA because one of the things you point out on their website is what they say is that the law enforcement powers held by the sheriff super,

proceed those of any agent officer, elected official, or employee from any level of government. And this is part of this movement, this constitutional sheriff's movement, right? That's correct. So the root of Richard Back's constitutional sheriff movement is that the sheriff in essence has a unique power to decide what laws are constitutional. He says, you know, at various points that no one can tell the sheriff what to do. And that includes president, the Supreme Court, governor, the FBI, pretty much anyone in government.

And the name constitutional sheriff does to clarify is not because sheriffs are in the Constitution because they are not. He's using it as they're a constitutional sheriff because they like uphold the Constitution. Right. In this view,

they are basically the final say on the Constitution. That's right. He would say they are the final say on the Constitution in their county. It's just why. How widespread is this constitutional sheriff movement? Because obviously this sounds like not a great thing. To be fair, the core of the constitutional sheriff movement is not large.

It's not a majority of sheriffs. We think it's about 300. And the reason why I hedge the numbers again is somewhat because, one, we don't know because it's a bit of a self-identified category. Right. And two, because I do think there's a lot of sheriffs who agree with some parts of this, particularly ever since 2020. They've agreed with some parts of it.

A lot of parts of the constitutional sheriff movement have been absorbed into just mainstream politics and mainstream policing. So we actually have a moment where a lot of these ideas I think are actually kind of mainstream and no longer as shocking as they might seem. And it puts Richard back at an interesting position where I do think he's occasionally running to catch up

to the right in certain ways. So I do think like a lot of this idea has really penetrated how people think about sheriffs, how people, how sheriff see themselves. Again, particularly we saw around COVID in terms of enforcement of business closures and mask mandate. We saw this post the protests in the summer of 2020 when sheriff argued that they couldn't be legislated or forced to reform. And we still see quite a lot of that today. That's a thing I want to get to because you talk about it extensively in the book. And it's what, at least at one point, you call the mythos of the American sheriff.

And this mythos, this mythology that we're talking about is pretty much, it seems, gospel for a lot of sheriffs. What is this mythos? In the book, I argue that the constitutional sheriff movement is an outgrowth of this myth of the sheriff. And the myth of the sheriff is very interesting, I think, because it's really connected to how we think about the United States as a country and what the United States thinks about itself. So when I began the book, I wanted to know. know what's the real history of the sheriff as distinguished from what sheriffs write about themselves, right? There's a lot of writings of sheriff's departments. They'll write their own history.

There's a lot of things people say about sheriffs, but they're kind of very little about sheriffs themselves. A lot of the history is about, they recount the deeds of specific sheriff, kind of like king. Like you'll have like, this sheriff did this and this sheriff did that. But not a lot about what they were doing, particularly not a lot about the bad things they were doing. And I found that sheriff, for example, if you think about the westward expansion of the United States, there were a really key component in protecting Anglo-Settlers while also committing acts of violence and genocide against Native Americans and people who were Mexican who were already living in the land to the West. But I think for most people, at least for me when I learned U.S. history, we learned

Western Expansit is a positive thing. And most movie depictions of that with sheriff are rather positive, right? Like there's sheriffs protecting people from either Native Americans or trains from the savages. Right. Or train thieves or, you know, all sorts of various elements. And I thought it was really interesting that the mythologies were so thoroughly wrapped together. And I do think that helps make the sheriff seem both so important to the country that they can. not be either eliminated, which is a very important thing that sheriffs think about themselves,

but also sort of like we count on them to make good decisions rather than regulating them. I think a lot of cities, you know, we've had many years of police reform. And a lot of cities regulate their police, right? They have like civilian oversight. They have rules. Not to argue that they're working maybe particularly well. but I think it's a pretty systemic idea that we're supposed to regulate the police. But for some reason, sheriffs, we don't have that same idea.

We have this idea that, like, you elect a person and we trust their good judgment. Even if the sheriff, let's say, is good. Like, I would think of TV depictions of, like, the sheriff who doesn't follow the rules but meets out justice. Right. Even if they're that sheriff, we still think that, well, it's okay if they're not, like, totally following the rules. rules because at the end of the day, they're generating some kind of justice. And so that was the part that I was most interested in was this myth that, oh, there's these people who we trust their individual judgment to meet out justice.

And yet, who are they, right? They're mostly white men. They're mostly very, very conservative that we could say, like, whether they're full on far right. They mostly support Donald Trump and Maga. And so these are the sort of people where, and trusting to make, you know, good decisions. Never mind that these are also the people who manage jails.

And I think we now know that jails are very dangerous. They're the site for people with a lot of issues like mental health concerns or substitute disorder. It's very unstable and people die quite a lot in jails. So we have this individual whose judgment is supposed to be good overseeing a place that's, you know, really like a lot of very vulnerable people. which began to strike me as this bizarre contradiction. Like, why should this person who seems to believe they are the law,

then they go into a jail. And they can institute in the jail all sorts of bizarre sorts of rules. Like things kind of ranging from violent and cruel to bizarre. So things like how people are searched, you know, what kind of food you get, whether you have family visits, like can you hug your kids, to things like when sheriff used to make people march up and down the hallway every day, singing songs about the sheriff, which just seems sort of weird. Like a display of power, right?

But that's sort of also that it's like display of power. Like, I can make these people do what I want. There was a sheriff of Massachusetts told Trump he would send people in his jail to help build the border wall. I mean, legally you can't do. But that's like an incredibly. Of course, yeah. A really bizarre thing to say, right? Why would people in a Massachusetts jail want to go to Texas or Arizona to construct a wall?

Yeah. COVID and Black Lives Matter were flashpoints for this notion of the constitutional sheriff, weren't they? Yes, absolutely. So I point out in the book that while the movement had been going on for some time, these movements in 2020 certainly reinvigorated the constitutional sheriff movement. movement. Largely because given both of those things, terrorists were kind of left wondering what they should do. And Richard Matt kind of popped up with a CSPOA and was like, I'm going to offer you guys really good advice and instructions on how to manage these sticky issues. That was kind of what he did.

And look, like I said, they're conservative anyway. So they looked at Black Lives Matter and they looked at how Democrat governors were managing COVID and were prone to not like it. Right. It's kind of also not a coincidence that like many of their great, you know, COVID villains became people like Gretchen Whitmer, female Democrat governors that right winning sheriffs were sort of prone to dislike very much. And so they were looking for some direction and Richard Mack sort of arrived and was able to fill this void by saying, oh, well, if you're a constitutional sheriff, you're just

upholding the Constitution, which seems right and good. So you could say, well, I'm not enforcing, you know, mask mandates because the Constitution says I don't have to. You know, I don't like, I'm going to allow right-wing militia to counter protest Black Lives Matter protesters because the Constitution says that cool. So it sounds better when you can frame it that way, right? Rather than suggesting you're sort of like a political entity, which, of course, I argue that The constitutional sheriff is inherently right-wing political.

It is not like a politically neutral movement. Yeah, absolutely. We've barely been able to scratch the surface of everything that's in this book. It's called The Highest Law in the Land, how the unchecked power of sheriffs threatens democracy. It comes out Tuesday. Jessica Piscoe, thank you so much for coming on. And I really encourage everyone to read this book.

Thank you so much. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest time. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.