The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Libs of TikTok Is a Ticking Time Bomb

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Michael Edison Hayden tells The New Abnormal why Chaya Raichik, the woman behind Libs of TikTok, is so dangerous and why the Anti-Defamation League needs to stand up against her. Plus, The Daily Beast’s political reporter Jake Lahut discusses Congressman Dean Phillips' not so great start to his presidential campaign. 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. What an excellent show we have today.

Southern Poverty Law Centers Michael Edison Hayden joins us to talk about lives of TikTok and how people are underestimating the implications of what she's doing and how much harm it's causing. Then we'll talk to Daily Beast reporter Jake LaHut about Congressman Dean Phillips who's challenging President Biden in the primary and the awful start his campaign is off to. But first, let's have some fun. So I am looking at my head of lettuce, and it's still green but wilting, kind of like all of the fanfare around the new speaker of the house, Mike Johnson. This man has already begun to make waves in ways that I don't even think that the people in Trump world are excited and happy about because guess what? No one did any fucking vetting on this guy. it feels like that what they they rallied around because three weeks of a vacancy in the house. But now the things that are coming up about this man, first of all being asked a question about

where you stand on the issues, he tells us to look at the Bible. I look at the Bible and I'm like, oh, so is this the same Bible that white evangelical Christians used in order to confirm and celebrate slavery, right? that some people are just better than others and others should be oppressed? Is it the same Bible that told men as head of the household that it was okay to beat women? I'm concerned and confused about which parts of the Bible that he wants us to pull from that are aligned with what he thinks. But what we do know is that he has made a career out of hating the LGBTQ community,

that if he had it his way being only two heartbeats away from the White House, that he would recriminalize every aspect of the LGBTQ life, experience, and existence, that he thinks very little of women. I'm pretty sure that we are going to enter into a government shutdown because I don't think that this man has the power or wherewithal to be able to corral the circus that is the Republican Party. And so Mike Johnson, I don't know, a week into this gig, I'm pretty certain, Andy, that he may not last as long as Kevin McCarthy lasted. So what is that saying to us? It's like there is a dense clown car filled with hooded white supremacist circus fools known as the Republican Party and they'll just keep picking one right after the other. But this one, to me, he's he's it. He's Stephen King's it. He's the scary clown. He's the clown I don't want to see in a dark alley in terms of where his philosophies, where his mindset is. So I'm watching

my lettuce, but with a bit of fear around Mike Johnson and the power that he's been given by the Republican Party. What are your thoughts about the new head of lettuce? Well, it's kind of interesting because all those things you named, all of which obviously are very, very true and very bad and scary and everything else that Pennywise is, as you pointed out. We're also seeing a lot of the The people in the Trump orbit are not all that happy with him. Zach Petrozo wrote a piece here at The Daily Beast talking about how Trump world is already suspicious of him. And I don't need to say this probably, but it's not for the reasons you just named.

No. Because those are views they all pretty much share. It's things like, you know, wanting to continue to send aid to Ukraine. There are some people, Laura Lumer and James Lindsay, who, if you're a listener and those names are not familiar to you. Congratulations, you're living your life, right? Unfortunately, they are familiar to us, and they are hardcore, wacko conservatives. And they seem to think for some bizarre reason that Mike Johnson is in favor of a critical race theory, which I am fairly certain is not actually the case. But I guess at one point in his life, he did mention something to the effect of,

yes, it's harder for black people in this country than it is for white people. And that self-evident truth was enough to set off the Lindsay's and the Loomers of the world. So I guess the point is that, yeah, the more people on the left and liberals are finding out about Mike Johnson, the worse he seems. So you couple that with the fact that now you have a bunch of maggot conservatives who seem unhappy with him and seem to think that. he is a, I'm trying to find the word that Laura Lumer used. She tweeted, I told you all yesterday, he would be a disaster. Looks like I was right. So he's already a disaster from their end. So I don't know how many allies he's going to have left. He does consider Marjorie Taylor Green and Thomas

Massey to be close friends. So that'll be helpful to him, maybe. But I don't know. He's kind of just all over the place right now with where he's getting hate from me. the left and he's getting hate from the MAGA conservatives. And that doesn't leave a lot of middle ground for him, I don't think. So let me get this clear. I mean, they started off by calling the man Maga Mike. So, but Maga Mike is now a disaster because if you at all acknowledge reality and acknowledge that black people in this country have it more difficult, just by saying that, this man is not anyone's D.E. and I counselor or head of diversity initiative. He just saying that right. He's not the head of D.E. and I don't think. I'm confused. So you have to live in a full

blanketed, delusional bubble in order to be accepted by MAGA. Am I getting that right? Like, you can't have any rational opinion about anything. Like, you need to be mindless. Because I'm like, No one like, what is the show? It was like, everybody hates Chris. Everybody hates Mike at this moment. Everybody, everybody hates Mike, but we all don't like him for different reasons. And I'm just like, is it the same person? I do have to say, though, so there is reporting Roger Sullenberger at the Daily Beast also did reporting that got picked up a lot of other places, basically saying that Roger did a bunch of digging and discovered that Mike Johnson has never listed a bank account on his financial disclosure. I guess you have to.

list it if you have over $5,000 in an account. So the idea is he probably does have a bank account, but he doesn't have a bank account with more than $5,000 in it. And look, in my life, I don't think I have never related more to a speaker of the house. So I get it. But it's very, very weird. There's just all these weird little things are coming up about him. I don't know what the not declaring a bank account means. I mean, he apparently declared no. assets in his most recent financial disclosure. Did he declare a mattress size? Like, did he?

You know what I'm saying? Because like it's not a bank account. He has to be stuffing it under the mattress. So I have a king. I have a king mattress. What? Maybe he is a friend of Menendez. And maybe there's gold bars in the, in the freezer.

I don't know. He did make, like a congressional salary is over 200 grand. His wife has two jobs. So he's made money. money, but we don't know where he keeps it. And again, I'm not accusing him of committing a crime here. Like, I have no idea what's going on here. It's just weird. And it just gets to what you said at the very top that this guy was never vetted. I don't think he was vetted. You know, forget about APO research. This guy was not vetted by his own party, it feels like. So, yeah, we'll see how it plays out.

I mean, I suspect he'll last longer than McCarthy only because I don't think even the Republicans have the stomach for going through that again. So I think it's more like a fine, whatever. We'll keep them for another year and then we'll see what happens in 2024. But yeah, he's just all over the place, man. And let me bring this up as the resident queer of the new abnormal. His obsession with the LGBTQ plus community is crazy. For 20 years being associated with a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center had labeled a hate group, a group that believes in conversion therapy. Conversion therapy. And I want people to understand that that has been outlawed in many states in this country because it has been seen as abusive, as torture. It is harmed

people physically, emotionally, mentally. They use certain things in certain places like shock therapy, things that hadn't been notably outlawed, beating the gay away, not just praying it way. This is who Mike Johnson is. This is the work that he has done for two decades before getting on top of the MAGA wave in 2016 that brought him to Congress. What troubles me in so many different ways is, in fact, Andy, the lack of vetting that was done that even as we were waiting on who the Republican Party was going to put up for the speakership is just like, who is a part of this Republican Party, who is in power, are people that have been part and associated with groups that are labeled hate groups. These things used to be unseemly. You wouldn't be in

Congress with some of the things that we are now hearing on the floor, being freely associated with folks even 10 years ago. And so it's just, it's incredibly terrifying to see the normalization of this type of bigotry that we've spent the last several decades trying to fight is now in power with a pin on making policy for the country and is now two heartbeats away from the presidency. This is honestly what Maga has seen as winning. What they do with that power, Lord only knows because they can't get their shit together. But the fact is is that this is a victory for them and that's why.

To further what you're saying, just a few days ago, Johnson's wife, Kelly, is the owner and CEO of this company called Onward Christian Counseling Services, which among other things likens homosexuality to beastiality and incest and a lot of other super fun stuff. Their website was taken offline just a couple days ago. And it is no longer accessible online. They can pull the website down all they want. it was up there and it's still accessible through the wayback machine and you can see exactly what's on it. Mike Johnson is not responsible for his wife's views, but I think it's fairly safe to assume that he shares them in this instance. He's made that very clear. Like you said, pre-Trump, there was like a slight period of time where Republicans and conservatives are like, well, we can't

say this stuff anymore. And then Trump did away with all of that. And Trump gave them their freedom back, I guess would be an ironic way of putting it. Well, he calls himself Mandela, so there's that. Right. No, exactly. And this is, yes, these are the people he freed. He has basically given everyone license and he's shown that there is a strong base of the Republican Party that wants these people to say God awful things and believe God awful things.

And to use a metaphor that I assume they would hate, he's allowed them to come out of the closet and just be right up and in your face about it. And, you know, I guess it's basically what they're saying is we're here, we're queer bashing, deal with it. But that's what Trump has allowed to happen in this party is for the id to be completely released and for there to be no more quiet parts. And it's not that they didn't believe this stuff, as you point out, it's that they at least knew that their beliefs were so far from the mainstream and considered so reprehensible by a lot of people that they should be quiet about it. But they've now realized that there's currency and there's cachet in having, you know, extreme and reprehensible views within the Republican Party. So it is not only safe for

them to say these things and to believe these things, it is actually beneficial to them in the Republican Party circa 2020. Mike Johnson comes into office in 2016. Folks, in 2015 is when marriage equality became law of the land is when we won the Supreme Court case that allowed for same-sex marriage to exist in all 50 states. So just to juxtapose that with then the rise of Donald Trump, the rise of Maga hate, this is what it's coming on the heels of, which is a black man in office, the White House turns rainbow, and then unleash Maga. So that's how that's how we land in this place. Speaking of being unleashed. So here's somebody that can never be confused with having brilliance.

And that is Don Jr. You know how Donald Trump always says, how come nobody ever says I'm a genius? Did you know that the United States and us US share the same fucking letters? Yeah, we have since we learned the alphabet here in America. Now we know that the apple doesn't fall too far from the poisonous tree, which is that Don Trump Jr., graces us with his presence on the stand in one of his father's many trials in New York City

to tell us what we already know. He doesn't know anything. He has no recollection. He knows nothing about accounting. He knows nothing about numbers. And we can just say full stop period. He knows nothing. This is a man that was said to be too dumb to prosecute. And he admitted it on the stand. too much to his father's anger and rage, it is just wild to me. I think about this often. With all the money, all the access to information, all the access to education that Don Jr. was afforded. This is what is the outcome of that.

My God, what a waste. What a waste. What a waste of resources. The only thing I want to point out before we go on about Don Jr. is by the the time people are hearing this podcast, Eric Trump will have testified. And at that point, it may well seem like Don Jr. is a genius. Because I think as dumb as DTJ is, I think Eric might have him beat. But yeah, to go back to Don, no, you're absolutely right. But I think, you know, that's a pattern we see a lot where rich people get the best education and have everything,

you know, the best opportunities. And because of that, Don Trump, knew he didn't have to study in college. True. Yep. He knew it didn't matter. Whereas, you know, someone from less affluent means probably did need to study in college and probably did need to educate themselves to the best of their ability. And in order to get ahead in the world, Don Jr. has never had to worry about getting ahead in the world.

He started off ahead in the world. And, you know, and he knew that's where he was going to be. So why bother, you know, actually learning stuff? Why would you waste your time doing that? Intellectual curiosity? I mean, my God. But intellectual curiosity, yes, is a thing for some people. I don't think it runs in the Trump family.

If you want to talk about genetics, I haven't seen much indication that that runs in the family from the head to the toe. So barring intellectual curiosity, I'm not sure that's the kind of thing you can teach. I think that's the kind of thing. Like some people are intellectually curious and some people just aren't. And he just aren't, as he would probably. we say. Yes, we know that the smart train and brilliance and intellectual curiosity definitely ran past that family, screaming. So there you have it. A few weeks ago or so, my pick for today's

Fuck That Guy segment was a woman named Chaya Reichick, also known by her social media name, Libs of TikTok. And some of you out there may have been thinking, oh, this is just Andy going off the rails again. I'm sure she's fine. Don't lie. You know that's something you do. So here to explain why she's not fine and why I am always right is senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the Southern Poverty Law Center, Michael Edison Hayden. Michael, thanks so much for coming on. Hey, I'm excited to be here again, Andy. So you wrote a thing about Rai-Chic called More Like Libs of Ticking Bomb. Talk to me about Davis, California, a very liberal, progressive city and home to the University of California, Davis. And tell me what's been going on there, which you've written about also,

more extensively for SPLC's hate watch column. Davis, California, I don't know how familiar everybody is with the college town, but it's kind of in a mostly reactionary pocket of California, particularly relative to the rest of the state. But it is a progressive haven in that area of California to a strong degree. And it was a place that has been very pro-LGBQ plus going back many years. So what has happened there is, I think, illustrative of a larger pattern of what libs of TikTok posts have done throughout the country.

And we'll just start with like in 2022, this woman who is an administrator, I believe, at UC Davis, the college, which is the central hub of the city, her child came out as non-binary. The mom did not take this well and began to blame education and different things and began to promote anti-trans conspiracy theories and rhetoric and started to post very sensational things about trans all the time. Basically, she suffers from Elon Musk syndrome. Yes, this seems to be actually a big part of it, where it's just parents cannot accept when their children come out as non-binary or trans, and it spurs them into a kind of activism.

It's a phenomenon. This woman whose name is Beth-Borne, she. begins to clash with folks in town and starts to organize with Moms for Liberty, the anti-student inclusion group. What happens, essentially, is that Ritechik either picks up on her posts or she reaches out to hire Ritechuk, who is Libs of TikTok, and begins to, through their dialogue, according to Beth Bourne, who is the person who says that she's in touch with Rijik, feed Libs of TikTok with information about Davis. One more thing I want to put in here before giving you a chance to speak, is that there isn't a ton of support for either Moms for Liberty

or anti-trans stuff in Davis. So this is really limited to maybe one or two moms and outside forces, people who are not in California like Rijick. And so after Beth Bourne gets in touch with Chaya and Ritechik starts posting about stuff going on in what she says, what's going on in Davis and at UC Davis, what happened? This is the familiar pattern. There was a clash at a library where a person was speaking against trans women being included in female sports. The speaker was cut off.

This was a Moms for Liberty sponsored event. After that, and with the attention of Ritech, a series of bomb threats started to target Davis. The bomb threats were focused on the library that. ultimately cut short this event. And they were focused on elementary schools, high schools, and other schools in the Davis area that Beth Bourne had highlighted and that lives of TikTok had amplified. And these bomb threats caused schools to go into lockdown and have created a lot of fear in Davis. And what is interesting about that is the reason that these folks are animated to do the activism that they do is supposedly the raison to Etrus to protect children. And it's, in fact,

children who have been suffering from the bomb threats because they are getting, going into these lockdown drills when these bomb threats arrive. And I think there have been six so far. And there's a Moms for Liberty event, I believe, scheduled on Friday. Whether it's Mons for Liberty or it's merely Beth born acting on her own, I'm not familiar yet. This is Rijick's M.O. She posts about a place or an event that offends her bigoted sensibilities. Threats of vise. violence, maybe even acts of violence, then follow. And then she gets offended or pretends to anyway, if you point out that there's a pattern here. USA Today just published a huge piece based on research done by Media Matters that highlights over 20 incidents where this happened. So talk about one of those

other incidents that you wrote about a pride event in Kirtleene, Idaho last year. Yeah, that was an interesting one. So in June of 2022, Kirtleene is, for people who don't know, is, pretty small, like most places in Idaho relative to major cities. It's a dead red state. They have a small and often unfairly maligned LGBTQ plus culture there, unfairly maligned by Christian extremists. They were scheduled to have their event, and Rijik basically started to hype this little event on her Twitter account. Now, I want to just highlight something very important here, which is, I believe, yes, Elon Musk had not taken over at this point. So the people who are involved in promoting Ritechek are not only people like Elon Musk.

Her rise predates his version of the website. But she starts to hype this Patriot Front event, and then sure enough, I believe 31 or something like that, members of Patriot Front end up coming out of a U-Haul in an attempt to harass and outnumber the people who are there to celebrate pride together in Cardalane. Through a series of mishaps and bumbling, which is not uncommon for Patriot Front, for people Bouda aren't familiar. They are a pro-Hitler white supremacist group. They're extremely far-right and extremely anti-Semitic, which is interesting because Ritechuk is, of course, Jewish. Yes.

They bumbled this thing, and they ended up, cops were onto it, and everyone got arrested as soon as they got out of the U-Haul and nothing happened. But could something have happened that would have been extremely violent? Absolutely. And it's an important one to fly, because there's so many events like this, where Ritech flagged something about the LGBTQ-plus community or the trans community, and then threats of violence follow. It's important one to flag and to highlight in part because of how extreme Patriot Front's ideology is. And this is the type of group that Rijchev would say, oh, I have nothing to do with Patriot Front. And she'd be right to some degree. But there is this synergy between people who celebrate Hitler

and people who read her posts. Yeah, it really is a bizarre confluence, as you point out. Another thing that you point out on your piece, and I want to make sure to say here, is that in a lot of the cases involving the threats, particularly like in Davis, we don't know who's been making the threats. The police haven't discovered their identities yet. But there's absolutely no reason to believe that it's right chick herself. And nobody is saying that she's the one actually making the threats. The connection here is, I guess, what's called these days stochastic terrorism. Yeah. I mean, that's the word people use. I don't know if that's the word I'm going to necessarily use or not because I feel like that's a job of an academic and not an investigative reporter.

There are folks on our LGBTQ plus tests. I'd like them to weigh in. What I would say about it is not only do I have no evidence that she did, I haven't seen her to anything but post. She is a poster. And, you know, as I also mentioned in my newsletter, I don't perceive her as having any particular talents whatsoever, with the exception of one thing, which is that she strikes me as being completely obsessed with this issue and reliant on the response. She gets from reactionaries of all stripes in some way. There seems to be some thing. I mean, for people who post that much, right?

It's very difficult sometimes to get me motivated to post anything more than a couple jokes and shit posts every day or two days. For people who are that dedicated to posting, it eventually there becomes a financial incentive involved. And clearly there are some of that with her. But to get where she was, she had to be really obsessed with this issue. and just preoccupied with it. And people who get like that, you know, sometimes they wind up becoming complete, obscure freaks who never have more than 300 followers and are just posting into the void about something. But it just so happened that this person who used to be in the real estate business,

where I check, happened to find a massive audience because it coincided with this broader reactionary anti-LGBQ wave where kind of the Republican essentially, establishment and the conservative establishment felt that they could organize around spreading fear around that issue. Yeah, I was going to ask you about that because I thought what you said in your piece was incredibly spot on. And you said to expand on what you just said now in the interview, what you said in the piece was she doesn't seem like a particularly impressive person to me. She doesn't appear to be smart. She doesn't appear to have any artistic talents. She's just a social media grifter who happened to be at the right place at the right time

to cash in on a wave of anti-trans hate. And yes, I, I think that's an absolutely apt description of her, but not just her. That seems to be a lot of the right-wing media complex in general. And even getting into this, whether you want to call it stochastic terrorism or not, but the idea that there are these people out there who, again, are not particularly smart, not particularly talented, but they throw out words like groomer and they post anti-trans, hatred, and stuff like that. And then we see other people read that stuff.

and unfortunately either call in bomb threats or sometimes perpetrate violence. And this is just the standard MO right now for a lot of the right wing, it feels like. Yeah. So I'm going to go slightly, you know, off field here for a second and just say that I think that this phenomenon really comes from the fact, you know, in the aftermath of Trump's election, the reliance on policy for the right became so invisible. It just, It's like they completely abandoned it, right? They completely succumb to this engine of grievance that had been built up on Fox News for so long, right? The Jebs and the Marco Rubios or whatever, Ann Coulter talks about Trump having picked a $1,000 bill off the ground when he started to talk

about immigration. Like, he just got super lucky and whatever. But it was really like he just started saying build the wall and people liked it and we know that Trump likes that. And he doubled down on this white identity, white grievance politics. And now, of course, this anti-queer movement as well. It's very similar. And I think that the reason why people like this are able to take off so much is because they're filling a vacuum for where there used to be like, oh, we'll cut taxes and we'll be this and the military. It's like so little of that exists on the right now. And maybe it was always a bit of a facade. But it is now pure grievance all the time. And that's why somebody who is just obsessed like this can rise to such a huge position. Somebody like Jack

Pizobic who just makes up stories about himself, kind of, and presents himself as like some kind of secret agent or whatever when he's just some weird rummy from the, you know, from the naval reserves. You know, not to get on the sidetrack of people who don't know Jack Posobic. They also remember something. There was like a kind of a, again, very flimsy infrastructure around the right, people from the National Review and all these places who would come up with the, they'd be their idea people and whatever joke that they were doing. All that disappeared. And then like when those people didn't endorse Trump right away. And, you know, who filled the vacuum? It was like Mike Sernovich. It was like these, you know,

so this is how people like Ritechak become so influential is they are filling this vacuum where there once was at least a superficial nod to policy. And now it's just doing what the people who vote for Republicans want, which is feed grievances. No, I think you're absolutely right. The whole the semblance of policy discussion is just completely gone at this point. Talk to me about the Anti-Defamation League because they just did a thing involving Rijchik that is very troubling to a lot of people. Yeah, this was hugely disappointing to me personally. I mean, I'm bisexual. I'm part of the SPLC's affinity group for the LGBTQIA affinity group. She basically made some threats, legal threats, and they pulled her off of whatever

extremist list that they do. And if these threats, for instance, Media Matters, produce the research that's in that USA Today article, you see what we're doing, what Media Matters is doing. I think some of that comes from an emotional place to say, no, we cannot let this person kind of get away with this material and be considered to be mainstream and normal. I mean, just to be repeatedly doing that, to be flagging, if everyone I wrote about was harassed and tormented and there were widespread threats of violence, although they like to claim that that's the case. That is something I would have to think very deeply about and have to reconsider. The fact that she continues to just do this with total abandon apparently. You know, it's very disappointing. You know, I'm very disappointed in their decision.

It really lets a lot of LGBTQIA people down. Additionally, not only that, the ADL's decision to advertise on Elon Musk's X and allow him to use them to promote the fact that, you know, it's like that he's taking on anti-Semitism, which he absolutely is not, not that I can see at least. It's very discouraging. It feels reactionary to me, and I don't think it reflects well on a civil rights organization. Yeah, just to clarify, so she was on a list that they have a thing called the glossary of extremism, and her name was on the list, and she threatened some sort of unspecified legal action, and they have now taken her off that list, and they issued a statement basically saying,

oh, we still think you have, I think they called them odious views, but they said they were going to review her inclusion on that list. It just seems like an awful, awful cave to a legal threat that, you know, I can't imagine even really existed. One other thing I just want to point out is that it kind of coincides with a few reactionary events around ADL, and I really hope that they reconsider this one in particular. We do need a collaborative approach to tackling somebody like her right now, particularly because it looks like there's almost no hope of getting her de-platformed, whereas there might have been an era before Elon Musk. Yeah, I think it's fair to say that the ADL in general hasn't exactly been covering itself

in glory lately. Michael, thank you so much for being here and eliminating the very disturbing nature of her posts and what they lead to and come back anytime. Yes, and let's go Islanders, by the way. Yes, absolutely. Let's go Islanders. Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal politics reporter at the Daily Beast, Jake LaHutt, who has a couple of members, folks, a couple of congressional members that we need to do some deep dives into. And I keep saying that what we see in Congress these days, my God, and oh dear, and what is wrong here? So let us, Jake, start off with a campaign event that you recently attended of Dean Benson Phillips

and tell us, who is a representative in Minnesota's third congressional district, been in office since 2019. Tell us about the curious case of Dean Phillips. Hey, well, great to be back on, first of all. So Dean Phillips is President Biden's new primary challenger. You can sort of think of him as basically just taking the place that RFK Jr. vacated by doing his whole independent thing. And he's decided to do this mostly New Hampshire-centric campaign, bear in mind for the not official New Hampshire primary, what they call the unsanctioned primary,

which would be on the same day their Republicans vote. And basically, this guy could get a whole new cycle to himself, but there wouldn't be any delegates for the win. So he registered for the ballot in New Hampshire, like, about as late as possible. I mean, literally on the last day, when I think like two hours in change to spare. So he rolls up to the state house and conquered. And this is just a weird scene from the get-go. So first of all, he's got a campaign bus, which still, you know, who doesn't have campaign bus? Who doesn't love a campaign bus? But they've also got this weird little, like, milk truck thing, which was important for his 2018 congressional campaign in those midterms.

It was a whole thing where he drove around the district with it and yada yada. But they just kind of had it like parked in front of the New Hampshire state capital with like a little merch table. And then there was like some corn and a bales, which people thought for a while was part of the campaign. And it turned out it was just like inconveniently nearby for a Halloween fest or something in downtown Concord. So people are like, what's the corn doing here? This is New Hampshire or not Iowa.

A lot of other longtime New Hampshire local news reporters were pretty irked by the fact. by the fact that the Phillips people didn't really give them much of a heads up. And then when you roll up there, pretty much everyone you talk to is from Minnesota, which was pretty notable right off the bat. And eventually Dean shows up. He goes in, pays his, you know, fee and signs his name on the New Hampshire ballot, and he takes a couple questions. We were lucky enough to get one in.

So I'm like standing to the side of Dean and his family, like literally on top of a radiator because we're all backed like sardines in this tiny little room in the secretary State's office, and we had just learned that morning that there was donation that he received from none other than Harlan Crow, who you know from Thomas and all, yeah, all the other scandals therein. So Harlan Crow, for some reason, maxed out to Dean Phillips' primary campaign in 2021, which wasn't, by the way, as competitive as what he was dealing with in 2018. And also, Dean Phillips, a very important part of his bio here from Minnesota is that he's very, very independently wealthy comes from a big liquor distilling family, which is, when we can get into his childhood

and stuff in a little bit because it's very interesting. But his net worth is estimated at around like 50 something million bucks. So he's been able to, you know, self-fund the early part of this campaign and past congressional ones. So like why he would need this money was odd. And he gave this very roundabout answer that didn't really answer the question. But he did leave the door open to the fact that he may have solicited the donation himself. And he had kind of a caveated answer of not remembering ever meeting Harlan Crow. So my colleague Roger Sullenberg has had a couple of follows on Dean's money situation that are good reading the latest page newsletter on the site.

And then Dean as a second event that I was at last night at a theater in Manchester. So this was, again, not like your normal New Hampshire primary event. First of all, there are like staffed cameras everywhere, as if we're at like a live comedy special taping or something like that. So they've got this like boom camera thing. that's like swiveling around above everybody's heads. And then they've got other people coming in. You've got like a producer guy saying like camera one, camera two, camera three.

And his wife sang with the opening act. I'm pretty sure I've never seen that before at a campaign event. Like a variety situation? I don't know how to explain it. It was just like there was this band that was doing like, you know, a live show. People were coming in. And then all of a sudden this guest singer joins them on stage. And I'm like, wait a minute.

Is that T. Phil's his wife? And then like, I go to like Steve Schmidt, who's there. I'm like, is that his wife? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, oh, okay. To be fair, her singing was good as far as I can tell, like no bones to speak there, but just a very interesting choice for, you know, the big emphasis here is that Dean is young. He's 54. He's got a young family. And sometimes, you know, they're clearly just stretching it a little bit. So where this event last night gets interesting is he basically says like, hey, I'm going to take as many questions as possible for as long as possible. This thing went on for around like three hours. And most of the people in the audience were people who knew him, again, like from Minnesota, from his family. His mom was there. I I think every possible New Hampshire voter who was there, like, got to ask at least a question or two in the middle of it.

Again, we're talking about a crowd of like 50 people. Like, if 20 to 30 of them from, this was kind of our high mind estimate among the reporters and the embeds, if like 20 or 30 of them are from Minnesota. There's not a lot left. So it was a bit like fishing a barrel for him, I guess. And he gets to one questioner who was probably one of maybe only three black people in the room, and she had a very prepared, detailed question on Israel and Gaza, and it all boiled down to her oppressing Phillips on why he hasn't called for a ceasefire yet.

So this thing went off the rails immediately. Dean tells this young lady who is 23, I believe I'd met her in an event when I was at a local paper in Hampshire because she went to Keene State. That's a separate thing. She was willing to go back and forth with them. But basically the first thing he said after she finally boiled down her question to do you support a ceasefire, he responds with, well, how do you feel about the murdered babies? The murdered Israeli babies.

And I was looking at each other in the press section, like, what is going on here? So it just got tense, as you would imagine right away. It ended in, like, quite literally, like a one-way shouting match where she was just like, you're evading my question, you know, there are people being murdered, do you support ceasefire? And then security, like, had her removed. Nothing dramatic. Anyway, I caught up with her outside with a couple other reporters.

And it was really interesting because this. Young woman was a two-time Biden voter in the New Hampshire primary and the general in 2020. And now she's considering like sitting out the race altogether. So by the time this comes out, I think we'll have more on this in trail mix. But it was a really illustrative exchange of, I think, one, how like, you know, Dean is maybe not the most tested. And this was a voter question that he probably may not have expected in New Hampshire, which is usually in the top five whitest states in the country.

But like, there are black voters here. is like going to come up, you know. And what was interesting in the buildup to this exchange he had with the voter was he kind of hit back at Congressman Jim Clyburn, who had said that Phillips was essentially disrespecting black voters by, you know, only doing his campaigning in New Hampshire so far. And, you know, South Carolina is technically now the first state that votes in the Democratic primary, which is, you know, largely thanks to Clyburn. He literally muttered under her breath kind of like, is it, though? When he was, you know, saying that kind of like all voter demographics are the same and I'm you know that there's kind of no big deal here at another point it seemed like he might have

been winning her over but this thing was just off the rails he just kept taking these extended questions and had these kind of meandering answers at first he agreed not to do a little press gaggle at the end of the reporters then he caved and did and like scolded us for wanting to focus on the clearly like high point of the event with this you know tense emotional exchange with a voter where you know ultimately we had two voters kicked out one left who basically like was was siding with the young woman who got into it with Phillips over Israel. And that dude just walked out. And Dean said he wanted to have a beer with that guy after he left the room.

Like, I think that ship has sailed. Good sir. This also just sounds like, I am rich and I am bored. Because I want to ask you, who does he think that his constituency is? When he says statements like, you know, that he thinks that Biden has done a spectacular job, but that this is not about Biden. It's just about looking to the future. If you can distill down for us, where is his constituency? Who is it? Just because I have $50 million

means I can do a whole lot of things. Doesn't mean that I have to make sense. It doesn't mean that I really have to espouse democratic values. It means I have the money to do whatever the hell I want. What lane, what place does he fall in? This is a really good question. And I love this show because basically this is like a midlife crisis campaign all around. Like if you look at the people involved, Steve Schmidt on his kind of like long redemption arc from introducing the nation to Sarah Palin and then, you know, inadvertently setting in motion a lot of things that landed us with Trump. He was there last night in like a leather jacket and we talked a couple times. So once on the record, the other is off. You've got this Nashville based political consultant who is there in like a top hat,

the wife singing. All these ingredients together are weird. And yet like there's no clear demand for this guy specifically. Now, I think what's more interesting is, I don't think he's really running this is a pure vanity campaign. I actually think that he revealed maybe a little bit more than he would. I don't know because he has such a this kind of like, he tries to be so hyper authentic that it's almost off-putting. But toward the end of the, I think this was an exchange of the voter about the VA or veterans rights.

And a key thing about Phillips in his childhood is that his father was killed in Vietnam when he was like only a year old in a helicopter crash. And the family has been convinced from what I've, read that there may have been a cover-up involved. So Dean just kind of was on this tangent about going to Vietnam and visiting the site where his father died, which, you know, like, heavy, heavy stuff. Definitely, like, brought the mood in the room, you know, down and you could hear a pin drop. Then you realize, like, oh, this is a guy whose entire life has been shaped by ultimately the decision of a president to send his father to war. And, you know, he's clearly one of these politicians where,

And you just see it when you see him in person. Because he looks like central casting of a guy who would play a presidential candidate in a movie. But he's one of these dudes who you can tell. There was a moment early on when he looked in the mirror and saw a future president. And it's kind of all been building up to this point. So I do think there is a real authentic reason why he's in the race. And he has a philosophy of like New Hampshire still offers this chance, just do a relatively low budget, hit a bunch of town halls, talk with a lot of voters.

and also it's just something that Biden's clearly not going to do or willing to do for this campaign as long as he's still in the race. How much that ultimately hurts Biden, I don't know. Another great point you brought up, Danielle, about Dean talking about, you know, how he agrees with Biden and then insisting it's not about age and this kind of, you know, he's essentially saying like he wants to open a robust primary, but it's way too late in the game for people to do that. I would say not only is it too late in the game, let's also be clear that it's fucking dangerous to do.

We're not in a time where it's just like, oh, well, we have all of this space. there's no crises, there's no worry, there's no concern. So let's play around and see who can carry the water of the presidency. Like, this is not that fucking time. I look at this and while you say, you know, and I agree, it seems like a midlife crisis campaign. It seems like a vanity campaign. It seems like I am bored and I have too much money campaign. Let me just throw some stuff at the wall and see what sticks.

That is not at all in contradiction with his very genuine reasons for running too. Like they're all kind of ammeshed in the same thing. thing. But also, I think Dean and, you know, Nancy Mace will talk about. They both have something to say about the incentive structure of Congress and just, you know, U.S. politics real large of basically we're talking about the attention economy at the end of the day. And, you know, these are different ways of trying to get attention. I mean, you know, to extent like it's working because we're talking about it. You brought up Nancy Mace, Miss Scarlett Letter herself, who has clearly never, never read anything with regard to the Scarlet Letter and the reason why. But she is a Republican who is

on her own vanity campaign, on her own PR junket, it seems, of trying to get her name in the press as much as possible. And you wrote a piece that's up at the Daily Beast right now. Nancy Mace's staff guide shows her true priority, Nancy Mace. So give us, you know, with the few minutes that we have left, a view on Nancy Mace's vanity campaign, because that seems to be we're dealing with the egocentric congressional house, please. This began. when I was working on a story about how Nancy Mace had been telling Republicans on Capitol Hill and some people around Trump world that she was being considered for Trump's VP list. And then people around Trump were like, wait, what?

And so we had a story that was making sense of how that came about. And really, this is all in the, you know, broader context of her being one of the eight Republicans voted to House Kevin McCarthy. And she basically torched any goodwill she has left on Capitol Hill. Plus, her redistricting is not going to be favorable for re-election. She also had a Trump-endors primary challenger run against her the last time, and, like, Trump kind of hates her. So all those are some severe stressors from her point of view, even though she's been a member who has always been willing to get in front of the camera or kind of have that splashy

quote of the day to get attention. It's, like, been turned up to 11 in the aftermath of the McCarthy thing. So in the reporting for that VP story, I first heard of this employee handbook. from these former May staffers I was talking to. And they were just referring to it as this like totally nutty document that she wrote herself. And I'm like, I would love to see that. Of course she did. I wasn't able to do it in time for that story, but did get it eventually.

And when we went through it, it was just basically one of the former staffers summed it up best, I think, where this person is like, just saying to themselves one day working on the desk, like, am I working for a PR from here? Or am I working for a member of Congress? And what it really shows is that she runs her office like, kind of consultant slash PR firm where everyone has these deliverables and these kind of just, you know, vague corporate euphemisms. A couple of weird things about the job descriptions that I think stood out. One is like all the communications related positions are like two or three times

longer than everything else, including, you know, like the legislative director or like the deputy chief of staff, like really important roles like that. Yet somehow everyone, like literally everyone from the top to the bottom in this document in their job description was supposed to be pitching one tweet a day. And this is for this year's version. I'd heard that in the 2020 one was even more wild in terms of like these kind of onerous requirements and vague, quote unquote, deliverables for people. Like, for example, getting, you know, a bill signed into law every year having the legislative folks introduced a ton of bills when, you know, the staff say she had no patience to ever listen to legislation. And so one of the former staffers said that most members of

Congress they've worked for have tried to use their messaging capacity to further legislation or some goal. But I think what this, you know, Mace example shows is that it's the opposite and that the heavy, heavy focus on comms. We're talking like a third of the budget being reserved for what is referred to as marketing in this document. This is just a whole new, you know, beast of modern DC camera thirstiness for dealing with. What I will say about your reporting is that it does, absolutely reveal that the Donald Trump effect, we had two different folks, Phillips, presumed Democrat and Mace, the Donald Trump effect is about reality TV politics. It is about look at me, look at me, look at me. And it is disgusting. It has nothing to do with what can I do for the people.

It is what can the people do for me to elevate me so that I can get an anchor slot or a seat someplace with cameras pointed at me. And that is just sad and depressing. But Jake, I thank you, as always, for bringing in these shining lights. Well said, Danielle, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you. Great to be out again.

Thanks again. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy Levy, how are we closing out this good, good week with your fuck that guy? Daniel, my fuck that guy is a buck that guy. and by that I mean it is Colorado Representative Ken Buck. I mentioned this on a previous episode. Ken Buck for a good couple weeks ran around saying,

I can't vote for Steve Scalise. I can't vote for Jim Jordan because they're election deniers. So I will not vote for them for Speaker of the House. And he got a lot of air time on places like CNN. And there was, you know, Ken Buck, welcome to the resistance and all this fun stuff. And then he went ahead and voted for Mike Johnson. who, as we've pointed out before, many people, a word you hear a lot with regard to election denialism and Mike Johnson is architect, as in he was one of the people leading the strategies

to try to not certify the election in 2020. But Ken Buck went ahead and voted for him. That, to me, renders all the stuff he was saying over the previous two weeks, Null and Void, and he showed who he really was at the end. Well, now he has announced that he has announced that he will not seek re-election next year. And the reason he gave is because so many Republicans are out there continuing to insist that the 2020 election was stolen. He said in a video, he said, Our Nation is on a collision course with reality and a steadfast commitment to truth, even uncomfortable truths, is the only way forward. Too many Republican leaders are lying to America. All of which is true. But I would include in that list of Republicans lying to

America, I would include Ken Buck. Because again, Ken Buck said he would not vote for an election denier for Speaker and then he voted for Mike Johnson. So, fuck the Buck. And, you know, for those two glorious weeks when it seemed like Ken Buck had come to his senses, that's nostalgia now. That shit is gone. And he is now retiring for the very reason or so he claims that he is a part of. and so I am more than fine with the buck stopping here. Fuck that guy. Fuck the buck. Okay.

We are in agreement. Fuck the buck. So Danielle, finish out this week. Tell us who your fuck that guy is. Oh, God, an oldie, but a goody. This story just won't die. If this is what sinks, Ron DeSantis, who has had a failure to launch, right? The man has had more fits and stops and restarts than like a 19-year-old.

90s computer. Ron DeSantis is my fuck that guy. I could care less about what DeSantis thinks is fashion forward or not, but the story that won't die that his campaign wishes would is the fact that the man loves cowboy boots. Now, normally, that's not an issue, right? Like we all can choose whatever footwear we want. But it's the fact that these cowboy boots have what some would call an aggressive heel and believe that he, in addition to wearing this aggressive heel, also puts lifts in his shoes to make him appear taller because there's nothing that says toxic masculinity and my need for it than lifts. It is in a lot of stories. There are so many memes about DeSantis and his choice of footwear and it's always a boot and it always has a heel.

And if this were the 1970s, no one would be the wiser. But the fact is, not only is he a small thinking man, he is a small statured man, and he has issue with that instead of just embracing it because of the Republican Party and their belief in big, strong, tough men in the way that you see Donald Trump in the fan fiction that they created him looking like a cross between Rambo and Schwarzenegger back in the 80s. It's so insane to me. But that is the reality. And so this man, Ron DeSantis, this little man, feels like he needs to change the perception of him, change our lying eyes to believe that somehow he is six foot four and is a baller in heels.

So that is why his campaign. Like the campaign has so many fucking issues. This shouldn't be one of them, but it's the funniest fucking one. And for that reason, Ron DeSantis and your high heels are my. fuck that guy. Yeah, this is the dumbest fucking thing in the world. And the idea that, like, this is what is ultimately going to sink him after years of his horrible policies and his bigotry and all of that. And it's going to turn out to be boots is like who we does. John Cougar, Mellencamp one said, ain't that America. You're right, though. He should embrace his height or

lack thereof. I mean, we live in the era. of the short king. He needs to be calling himself a short king. Just get out there and embrace it. And I will tell you the other thing that I have zero respect for Ron DeSantis. If he did this one thing, I would at least have a little bit of respect for him. And that is if he walked out on stage at the next Republican debate wearing stilettos, basically just poking fun at himself, that would be fucking incredible. And I would have at least a modicum of respect for him. He would never do it, so I feel safe in saying that. But just embrace the shit, man.

Lean into it. Nothing's going to sink faster than a stiletto in a backyard. You know what I'm saying? Nothing's going to drown faster than a short person. 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 Shamis Calder.

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