The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Pence Is So Good at Being Evil

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

Author and Daily Beast Editor-at-Large Goldie Taylor is, um, not exactly Mike Pence’s biggest fan. “He does things that boil me,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Take that fake gentility of Pence’s. He’s the kind of guy who’s “always genteel when he tells you, you shouldn't be in the room with him. He's always genteel when he tells you that because of his manness, his whiteness, his superiority, that he's better than you.” Molly is right there with Goldie, saying of Pence, “he is good at being evil in a way that Trump is not.” Rick Wilson adds, “Mike Pence wasn't as shouty as Donald Trump [in this week’s debate], he was still as dickish as Donald Trump in every possible respect.” Speaking of debates, Rick sizes up Trump’s threat to skip the next one. (Bluff.) Molly muses about “Fox Business, the last bastion of the impossibly racist.” (“Imagine if Lou Dobbs gets me deported, that would be like the greatest moment of my life,” she says.) And Mike Espy talks about his run for U.S. Senate in Mississippi. Plus! Trump’s imaginary girlfriend! Pence’s shellacked head! Stephen Miller’s kitten rampage! Steroid rages! Bill Barr’s strange absence! Michigan militia-fails! And super-spreader events: the new Republican brand! Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, and editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, bestselling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our, kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers.

Hey, Molly. Yeah. What's that sound? I don't know. What is it? Ooh, that sounds like the wheels coming off the bus. Are you sure it's not Mike Pence's hairfly from last night? You know, the hairfly is a very symbolic moment.

I think the hair fly got stuck in his hair because it was in there for two entire minutes, and that's the longest. I mean, we better hope that fly wasn't a woman. because otherwise Mother Pence. Mother Pence would be very under the eye. It's adultery. I believe I'm going to refer to him now as Mike Pencilbub, Lord of the Flies. I don't know.

You know, I've had this theory for a long time that his hair is actually shalacked and sticky. And the fly scenario supports that. You know, the fly scenario was one of those things last night where you thought, maybe it'll be there for a minute. Maybe it'll be there for a second. It was there for over two minutes. And the delicious thing about it was it was one of those public moments where no one could yell, hey Mike, aside from burning your own ass off in this debate, there's a fucking

fly on your head. I'm curious, do you think he burned his own ass off in this debate? I do, but I hate him. And I'm curious to know you as like more of a sort of normal person. So the entire Trump predicate, the entire Pence predicate last night was Stoke the Base, Stoke the Base, Stoke the Base, Stoke the Base. They cannot win with their base. Their base has fallen apart. We are over what we call the Bannon line, Rowan Steve Bannon Famous who said, if three or four percent of Republicans walk away from this president, it's over. Well, now we're at like 8 to 12 percent of Republicans

given the various states are walking away. So Pence was trying to feed the monster, so there was plenty of Fox News and federalist content so that Sean Davis and Bad Molly Hemingway could call each other and go, ooh, that was dreamy. No, that was dreamy. You hang up first.

No, you hang up first. And it was meant to feed like the Lou Dobbsy and sort of hellmouth. So as this whole thing rolled on during the evening, All I could think of was stop looking at this as a 56-year-old white Republican hack. And look at this as a suburban woman target voter in McComb County, Michigan. Look at this as a suburban woman voter in Seminole County, Florida. And I thought, there's Mike Pence doing the basic, like, pat on the head.

Okay, little lady, I'll talk now. I'll let you have your time soon, sugar plum. I just think that if you're a woman watching that, and obviously I'm not. Tell me, what is it like as a woman watching that? There are many things I can imagine in this world, but I can't directly, like, paper it over that way. But I will say this. I'm an old enough dog in this business to sort of know attitudeally what I've seen in focus groups over the years. And if you were in a focus group, I can promise you that Mike Pence's stern-faced under-the-eye expression would not have played as well as they like to think.

Well, I wrote a piece for The Daily Beast today about being a woman watching that debate. It said that it was just enraging. And I actually thought the lack of respect he showed for Kamala was problematic, but the lack of respect he showed for the moderator was sort of shocking. Well, I like Susan, and she is what was, again, the Trumpian tactic overmatches any standard issue moderator. You cannot bring someone who is a civilized procedural person to these events. because even though Mike Pence wasn't as shouty as Donald Trump, he was still as dickish as Donald Trump in every possible respect.

So the number of times he overspoke was 45? Is that possible? Sure. Nine segments, at least three or four times, five times per segment? Absolutely. That seems like a lot. I think we covered a lot of the debate last night. And since, of course, after a debate day, the news is very, very quiet. Nothing else happens for several days after that. So obviously, Donald Trump really thought the debate went well, last night since he called Maria Bordoroma this morning, whatever Fox channel she's on. Business. Fox business, the last bastion of the impossibly racist. Don't you make Lou Dobbs ask for your papers, young lady. You won't like how it ends.

Can you imagine if Lou Dobbs gets me deported? That would be like the greatest moment of my life. Yes, so he called into Maria Barna Rolla and said a lot of crazy shit. You know what's funny? calling Kamala Harris a monster over and over again. As Junior would say, he was very triggered. Yes, well, I would say he was, it was a combination of triggered and ball-tripping once again for day five of Dexamethazone, which he's thinking now like, order me a bucket of this shit because I'm never coming off of it. Yeah, I think that's pretty right on assessment there.

But of course, just a rage rant to Maria Bardo, his imaginary girlfriend, it wasn't enough for him. The day also had to include Chicken Donald chickening out of the debate. like a chicken. And you know why I'm not using another word? Because our editor will say to me, Rick, you can't say over and over again. So I'm going to call Donald Trump a chicken over and over again. Chicken. What? Donald Trump is a chicken because he won't debate Joe Biden, even over a Zoom. I mean, think about it, Donald. Somebody could sit there with flashcards during the Zoom and help you because you're not smart. You're just not that bright, Donald. Look, this is part of a constellation

of bullshit going on in Trump world right now. And some people in Trump world are in a panic. Some are and a depression. Do you guys think that this is just temporary? Trump's going to say he's not doing the debate, or do you think he'll actually come around to the debate? Do you think this is just him acting out in an unstrategic way and then he'll get talked into doing it? What do you think happens from here? Oh, look, I think it's a certainty that Donald Trump, who will come to the opening of a phone booth, will do the debate. He will bitch and moan and complain, and he will finally in the end do it. But will he do it online, or will he do it? Well, I think they're going to try to do a fake debate. I think they're going to try to set up a debate stage and Trump will stand there and

hope the cameras come. Look, he needs the audience. One of the reasons he was so terrible at the first debate for his scale, there was no one there. There were 50 of his people there, most of whom are either paid sycophants or family members, which is... Which are paid sycophant. But I think he was so terrible and so off pace because he didn't have an audience to feed off up. That's why the Zoom scares him. That's why a FaceTime interview scares the shit out of him. But he shouldn't got have gotten COVID then. No, he should not have gotten COVID, but he's a fucking dipshit. So he got COVID.

He's a dumbass. Donald Trump has no one to blame but himself. Oh, wait, hold on. Who did Donald Trump blame today? He said, oh, maybe the Gold Star families gave him COVID. Yeah, that seems like a bad choice. Let's see. Let's see who I should attack now. And I'm sure these guys are, like,

stepping into these guys are like, oh, man, that's a great hit, Mr. President, where they're all actually sinking their heads into their elbows going, oh, dear God, he attacked the Veterans Wives. Fuck! How can he do worse than that? What he could do next is go to an animal shelter

and for each paragraph of his speech, walk to a cage and snap a kitten's neck. I mean, the guy's just so tone-deaf. But he would never get that close to an animal. No, that's true, too. Well, he would have Miller do it. And about every third one, he'd say, where are you, Stephen?

He'd look back and Miller would be draining the blood from a cat or something, you know. You know, the other thing, Molly, that I've been thinking about is, I know I've used Bill Barr for fuck that guy way too many times. Like he's like they're returning an all-time champ right now. Even Donald Trump is in second place. But the fact that today Bill Barr is seeking to weaken the protections against foreign interference in our elections. Yay! Good job, Bill. Heck of a job, Bill! Oh, it's a good job for him. Well, I'm just curious, where is Bill Barr? Do we know if he's okay? Did he get COVID, too?

Supposedly, he's isolating, but no one is reported whether he's even been tested as far as I have seen as of this moment. It's amazing. So, Molly, I'd like to propose a new national standard for public humiliation. Would you like to name that the unit of measurement in that standard? Yes. Tell me. I think you should, I think you should name it for us. What should it be? What should it be? U-Tal May. I think it should be a Parscal. On a scale of 1 to 10, with one being sort of, they discovered me in college wearing a gold lame bikini and a male dance troupe, which America, just so you know that is not about me,

to a solid 10, which is being shoved into a squad car in Fort Lauderdale after having been part of the Great Campaign robbery, but being shoved shirtless into a squad car on tape being recorded because you were upset because your wife wouldn't have sex with you because your name was Brad Parzcal. Therefore, it is now, a Parscal. I don't understand how he said he's like best friends with the police, and yet all of this really embarrassing shit has come out. The reality of Brad Parscale is that in Florida, the public

records laws are very, very broad, and it's very hard to keep body camera footage that isn't involved in an actual fatality out of the public record. And so everything that happened that day, everything that Brad or his wife said that day, will come to light. But he said he had all these friends in the police department, remember? Well, he did, but here's the thing. Even if you're friends with people in the police department, if you're holding a gun out, waving a gun around your wife and threatening to kill her or yourself or whatever it was he was doing, they still can't just look away from that. They can't go, oh, okay, no problem, cool, dude. But I mean, releasing the footage and the photos seems like they're not your friends. No, they're not. They're really not his friends. And I will say this, that degree to which the humiliation will continue is almost unimaginable because everything Trump touches dies. Just ask former high fly and Trump finance director, Elliot Broody.

Hey, Molly. Yeah. What's the greatest threat to American peace and security? Is it Donald Trump saying he won't abide by the peaceful transition of power? No, no, no, no. What's the most dangerous group in the country? Is it white supremacists? Oh, God, no.

Those guys, they're just like a rotary club. Who's the most dangerous group that? I think the president's only mentioned them several million times. No, I have no idea. Tell me who. Molly, you know perfectly well. The most dangerous group in America is Antifa. Which is why I was so shocked this morning to discover that a group of Antifa,

far-left progressive Antifa members, had been arrested by the FBI in a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. That doesn't sound right. These Antifa members were so committed to their George Soros-driven progressive worldview that they engaged in an ongoing conspiracy to target the police who protected her, use explosives and guns to kidnap the governor of a state. I'm shocked that we're letting Antifa get away with this kind of thing.

Yeah, I don't know. how Antifa does it. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. It wasn't Antifa. I guess I should have read on to the first paragraph of the article. It wasn't in fact Antifa, the imaginary group that Donald Trump's followers spank themselves asleep thinking about. There was in fact a bunch of right wing militia assholes. Yeah, who could have seen that coming? I'd like to make famous six of them. Mr. Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Caleb, Franks, Daniel Harris, Brandon Casserta, and Barry Croft of Delaware. All these other guys are from Michigan. And this one guy's like, man, Delaware's too quiet. I got to get on some real hardcore action. I'm headed to Michigan. So the FBI said that they wanted to try Whitmer for

treason and they were going to snatch her from her vacation home. It serves her right for having a vacation home, right? Right. Well, they talked about murdering tyrants and so on. And look, I get the whole sick, Simper Tyrannus thing. But if that applies to Gretchen Whitmer, you all better be careful because that's a pretty low bar for tyranny right there. Well, they're mad about the state home orders, which remember it was Trump who said liberate Michigan. Yes, he did. And you know what he was responsible for a COVID spike right after?

You know, amazing how that works out. Yeah, who could have seen it? Who could have imagined that could have happened? So yes, Governor Whitmer, we're glad to hear that she is a guest of the show in the past, and we like Governor Whitmer, and we're glad that a bunch of vicious, far-left progressive Antifa members. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Right-wing Trump suck-up members of a cosplaying militia fucked up and weren't able to kidnap her.

Goldie Taylor is an author, political pundit, as well as being an editor at large at The Daily Beast, just like Rick and I. And today we're going to talk about the vice presidential debate and a host of other topics. I as a white woman was enraged by last night, so I can only imagine that if I were a black woman, I would be ten times more enraged. You know, we had to worry about Pence's Midwestern nights. And I grew up in St. Louis. I've met this piece of shit before. Or pieces of shit like him. And so what happens is, you know, you get this guy and he's always white and he always

his boxy hair. I mean, maybe not the fly. He's always genteel when he tells you you shouldn't be in the room with him. He's always genteel when he tells you that because of his madness, his whiteness, his superiority, that he's better than you. When you jump in on someone else talking, you inherently saying that what you have to say is more important, more relevant than anything that could be coming out of their mouth at that time. So that's the very core of jumping in on somebody. But he did it with such a plumb

last night. And he did it to the moderator, Susan Page, repeatedly, repeatedly, repeatedly. He did it with such a plum last night. That I really was sort of taken it back. If there were, but for gravity and law enforcement, I might have dive choked them from my living room last night. Well, you're in Atlanta, so it's far to go. It is gravity. I didn't mention physics. Physics is a problem here. He really does do things that boil me in ways that Donald Trump does not, right? So I expect the malignant narcissist that is our president to do bad things.

I expect him to treat wildly. I expect him to be virulently racist and misogynistic. And I expect him to do all of these things. Mike Pence, the evangelical Christian, we are supposed to be able to expect something different from him. But I think somebody said it on Twitter last night and they said it best. He was basically the Klan's lawyer last night. He was litigating, defending the case against Donald Trump and white supremacy last night. And he did that with such vim and vigor that it made my blood boil.

I agree. I thought it was really interesting that he was good at being evil in a way that Trump is not. No, that's exactly right. Trump's evil sort of laid out on the lawn like a burning cross, right? Pence's evil is cloaked inside of this softspoken. spoken air of compassionate conservatism. He cloaks it inside of a, come on y'all, get in the car, we're all in this thing together. But at the same time, how dare you speak ill of a grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky? How dare you say that police officers that any of them could be racist, right?

How dare you say that there's any such thing as implicit bias or that there is systemic racism in this country? Don't you know who you're talking about? So I think that sort of sends you in a way that Trump doesn't necessarily do. That this guy, Pence could be your neighbor next door. Pence could be the manager down at the supermarket. Pence has that regular everyday average American look and feel. And that's the look and feel in which racism hides itself in. That is the armor that racism carries around with it

so that it doesn't feel quite so stingy. It doesn't feel quite so in your face. That, no, Mike Pence is not burning across in your front yard, but he's denying your job. He's the guy who's deciding that you're going to be pulled over because your tail light might be out, but suddenly you're going to wind up dead. He's that guy. It's insidious, right? But it is truly the most destructive kind of racism and bigotry that really pervades this country.

Her popularity went up. And some of that I thought was her. She was very good and she's quite smart and she's quite good at this debating. And I thought some of it was that she let him sort of hang himself on his own smart. me, Ness. You know, I think that's true. I think that there were, there were folks who will say Kamala Harris pulled punches last night. No, she didn't pull punches. When you see a man setting himself on fire, you let him burn. And so, no, she didn't pull any punches. She let him do himself his own disservice, right? She let him disqualify himself, right? And so there were a number

of cases where she could have hit him directly. She could have hit him as chair of, you know, this White House committee, coronavirus on the federalized response. And then, turned around and turned the attention back to Indiana where he took away a needle swapping program that drove up the infections of HIV around the state, killing largely black and brown people. There were many ways that she could have hit hints, but she let him off the hook sort of verbally from her perspective so that he could run himself aground. And he did exactly that. Even though he's got the sort of charming guy next door, you know, sort of tone about him. My gosh, you know, we couldn't be evil because we're so kind and soft-spoken. She really did allow for him.

him to defend this president in ways that even the most conservative among us understand is a lie. I thought it was interesting. The way he treated Susan Page in my mind told us more about him than the way he treated Kamala. You know, I think it was really one and the same because Susan Page could not step up in the way that Senator Harris could because she's demodered and feels like she should not be intrusive, that she should not make herself a part of the news. There is a perspective around that as being a moderator that you don't want to sort of involve yourself in the story. Last night, if any night, there was a time for her to involve herself in the story. There were times when she wanted to stop this vice president and then he would go on for

another 1530 seconds and then she'd kind of come in to try to stop him again. What I would say about Susan Page is although we owe this vice president all of our disdain for how he treated the women in that room, including Susan Page, Susan Page gave him an awful lot of quarter last night. She gave him an awful lot of space last night, space that she did not afford to Senator Harris. To yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man, yeah, man, man, yeah, man, man, man, man, man, yeah, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, man, Brianna Taylor's name came up. And I'm curious to know what you think can happen with Brianna Taylor now. You know, I'm one of those folks who went back and took a very deep look into

the case. I sort of created my very own TikTok of how things unfolded. What I will tell you about this case, if it continues to live inside the borders of Kentucky, it is dead, right? That there is not a way or there's not the political will to revive it inside of Kentucky. And so this state attorney general, this local prosecutor, none of these folks are ever going to go back to a grand jury and look for charges against the police officers who were involved here that involve murder, manslaughter, anything having to do with the death of Breonna Taylor. Typically in cases like this, we can look to our federal government, to our Department of Justice to begin to take a review of cases. They did it in any number of similar cases under the Obama administration.

They are less likely to do it almost impossible that it will be done under a Trump administration. Can you imagine Attorney General Bill Barr standing at a podium and announcing, I'm going to have my civil rights division, my gutted civil rights division, take a look at the Breonna Taylor case to understand if her rights were violated. I doubt it. This is a man who thinks wearing mask is akin to slavery. This is a man who thinks that the Black Lives Matter movement in general is simply built upon the notion of using black bodies as props, right? And he's looking at ways, actively looking at ways that he can prosecute peaceful protesters under sedition charges. So this is not the Department of Justice that we can rely on to take a hard look at the Brianna Taylor case. Here's the good news.

We win November 3rd. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sworn into office in January. the statute of limitations has not run out and will not have run out by the time. So a brand new DOJ can take a fresh look at the Bronna Taylor case. And that is really the only real path sort of forward on a criminal perspective, that there can be criminal charges coming from the federal government. If we're going to look to the state of Kentucky to make a move, the land of Mitch McConnell, I think we'll be waiting, you know, all day and into the next generation.

Let's talk about the debate. Trump called in to Maria Barteroma, the Money Honey, as I remember her, from the 90s, and said he, is not going to do a virtual debate. Do you have thoughts about that? Most folks who know me well know that I have run a good many political campaigns in my life. If I am Donald Trump's strategic team, I don't allow him to do any other debate, whether it be in person. So I mean, he simply lost two to three and in some cases four percentage points in terms of the spread between he and Joe Biden, that the spread between them nearly doubled pre and post debate. And so if I'm them,

I kiddie bar the door and I don't let him out of the White House to do anything. debate if I'm them. So if I am Donald Trump, I am looking for a way out and a change in the rules, a change in the way that the debate is engaged is an avenue out, in an avenue too far too precious to pass up. So if I'm their team, yeah, I bow out of this thing because I've got nothing to gain. But on the other side of this thing, neither this Joe Biden. There's something called the Rose Garden approach, right? Joe Biden is leading so many places that his best efforts right now is his money, his time, his volunteers, the folks on his team, the best efforts should be focused into the swing states where we can widen the gap and begin to focus on down-ticket races because we're

going to need a U.S. Senate that's democratically controlled in order for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's administration to really have the kind of impact that people are looking for to really turn the tide on this. I think that for neither of them is there a benefit to having another debate. And I mean, The only people that really benefit from a debate are our Twitter friends because we have a fielded, you know, posting about what's happening of the play-by-play of debates is this fear entertainment. Fly from last night, a wonderful thing. So, no, if I'm Trump, I don't debate because there's a way out. If there's Biden, I let him have that way out. Now I chide him for it.

Sure. I may, I make a that he backed out. But I'm not in any hurry to get into a debate stage with him either because I've got nothing to gain from debating this shit show of president. I have nothing to gain. And the American people really have made up their minds. I don't think they need to see any more from these two gentlemen to know really what they are about or to make a decision. What Senate races are you excited about? I'm excited about the notion that we could have black men and black Democratic men as U.S. Senate.

Of course, we have Senator Tim Scott in South Carolina. But we've had so few African Americans in the U.S. Senate because it's just, frankly, it's been tough for black candidates to win primaries and states and statewide. It's so shocking, Amé, that there have been so few. you black men and black women in the Senate? It is shocking to me, especially in deeply blue states, uh, and especially in areas that we control so much of dim primaries that more have not arisen through the ranks, you know, really before.

And so you've got Kamala Harris, of course, but she's only the second black woman. She's only the second black woman after Carol mostly brawn. And then I think you had an appointed fellow in the U.S. Senate. So I am excited that Mike S.B. is rising. I am excited that Raphael Warnock is rising really here in Georgia and that now he is leading a very packed field that includes Kelly Loeffler and Doug Collins here in the state. And so I am excited that there are African American men who have risen to become their party's nominee and who have a real shot at winning in November. I'm excited about the notion that we can, I think, look forward to capturing the U.S. Senate as a majority and extending that lead. And so I think Mark Kelly out in Arizona and what he's going to do to Mark and Max Sally is going to be downright delightful.

Really to watch, downright, downright delightful. And so there are a couple of races that I am super excited about. I wish Amy McGrath was closer in Kentucky. I don't think that's a win that we get to pick off. Although it's exciting to watch a rise. But I think in the places where we can win, the places that I think we're going to have a flip, I think. What about Jamie Harrison? Oh, God, how did I forget that?

Of all the places that I'm most excited, right? Of all the places that I'm most excited, Jamie Harrison lights up my soul. And from very early on, I watched his very initial story come out when he talked about where he had come from and where he was going. You know, there's lots of rags to riches stories out there. But there is something so compelling about Jamie Harrison and his spirit of service that kind of wanted to get aboard and get aboard early. And by the way, I was skeptical as to whether a black man could win outright in South Carolina who wasn't a Republican. But Jamie Harrison has proven us wrong again and again and again. And I think that our friend Lindsey Graham has real problems ahead.

I think that Susan Collins could lose. I think Joni Irsch could lose. I think that there are places that we could have such a significant number of Senate seat pickups. And frankly, I think the number will be historic. As Donald Front would say, unlike any you've ever seen. seen. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week

just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the New Abnormal. DailyBeast.com to become a beast inside member now.

That's new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com. Mike Espy is a former secretary of agriculture and is currently running for the Senate in Mississippi. And today we're going to have an amazing conversation about why he's in the race as well as his life growing up in the Jim Crow South. I'm so excited to have you here, Mike Espy. Well, I'm glad to be here. Thank you so much. So you've been on my radar for a long time because you ran in 2018.

Yes. For whose seat was that? It was Ed Cochran, who resigned because of ill health. He resigned in mid-March, 2018, and I was at my desk, in my law. As I said, my goodness, this is one of my heroes, my good friend, I said, you know, I wouldn't born to do this. It's not just I want to be something. I want to do something. So I spoke to my wife that next day, and we announced a lot of part of March,

which meant that we only had about six and a half months to actually run to announce, to get a message, to run, to raise the staff. money to travel around the country. And when the dust settled, we had 47% of the vote in Mississippi. Even though it was the last Senate race in the nation, we only had about six months to run. So I remember standing on November 27th conceding to Sydney Hotsmith. My heart was heavy because, you know, I did want to win. But my spirit was light because let's say, look, guy, you only had six months and you did this well. 99% of the black vote in the urban, 94% of the black vote in the rural areas and 18% of the white vote statewide. That's the makings of a coalition. He's just need more time to do it. So I knew I'd run again. So now we've been at it for a year and a half

and we've been working hard and it's showing now. It's showing that we're doing the way. What is the makeup of Mississippi? Mississippi, demographically, racially is 6040, 6% white and 40% African-American, like 39.6, something like that. And we have more black voters per capita in the nation than any other state, okay? So we got a lot of work. We got a lot to work with. That's a great basis on which to build a winning. coalition. So just looking at what we did last time, we're going to get 95% of the black vote. It's just a matter of getting them out to vote because in the last election of the universe of voters, only 32.5% were African-American. Now, I was a little bit disappointed at that because Barack Obama,

and I'm not saying I'm Barack Obama. But you did work in Barack Obama's administration. No, no, no. I worked in the Bill Clinton administration. Oh, you worked in the Clinton administration. That's right. Will you talk about that just for a minute? Absolutely. So I was a member of Congress. I won in 1986, and the 30-year-old had never run for any office before, and I ran in the district that was not majority black. And I won. So even then, I got 90% of the black vote and about 12% of the white vote. So I won election. I beat Jim Eastland's grandson, Pauby Johnson, the governor, Johnson's nephew, and then beat a Republican incumbent. So there are a lot of parallels to what we're trying to do now. Then I won 86, 88, 992. I became a surrogate speaker for Bill Clinton when he decided to run for president. I was all over. I was all over. I was all. also vice chairman of something that used to be called the DLC, the Democratic leadership of council. So Bill knew my work and my core values and all of that. And after he won, and this is interesting, after he won, we were at a DLC dinner and he was late. And I was supposed to introduce Al Gore. So that day, I had lost my attempt to become a member of the Appropriations Committee.

And so I said to myself, well, Mike, you're in your fourth term now. You're going to have less power than your first term. So maybe you ought to move on. So I decided. to try that night, to try to ask the president for consideration to be the sector of agriculture. Because it's world development, it's stuff I know, and I was on the agriculture committee. So I excused myself, and I went backstage and I wrote a note. And it was called 10 reasons why I should be considered as your sector of agriculture. I wrote the note. I mean, I had a little bit of humorous.

I love it. So I didn't want to bombard everything. So I gave it to Warren Christopher, who was the transition chairman, because I wanted to seem like I was doing it in an orderly fashion. So Warren took a note and put it in his pocket. So when Bill Clinton came in, he was shaking hands around the head table. He got to me. I said, well, Mr. President-elect, I wrote a note for you. He said, well, where's the note?

I said, I gave it to Warren, Christopher. He would write to Warren. He said, Warren, where's Mike's note? And Warren gave it to him. He put it in his pocket. I thought I'd never see it again. But just as I was about to get up to introduce Al Gore, I saw President Clinton elect reading my note.

And I followed his eyes from point one, two, three, four, five down to 10. When he got to 10, we locked eyes. we locked eyes and he lifted his thumb and my heart went, oh my gosh, I'm sector of agriculture. And I was. So it wasn't that easy. I had to go through the FBI, Brack Garland check and all of that. But I took about maybe a month and then I was offered the cabinet position. That's totally fascinating. So when Barack Obama came to Mississippi, what kind of voter turnout did he get? So this is his first race in 2008. So I got 32 and a half percent 19 months ago. He got about 38%. So I was disappointed. But it just showed me the upside, the amount yet to be received. And so right now, all we need to do is increase

African-American turnout by 3%. So I need to go from 32 and a half to somewhere around 35, 36, to be assured of getting two-thirds of that coalition that I need to get to win. And then the other one-third would be white voters. I got 18% of that 18 months ago. I need to get to about 22%. And in our latest poll, it shows strong SB white vote at 20. So, now we're on television and I need to make up 2%. I think we'll be able to do that. To build a coalition that we need to build, white and black, and I think we're well on the way to doing that in Mississippi 2020.

That is so cool. Your race, I'm sort of obsessed with it because I saw that there was a recent poll which showed you were like one point ahead or very, very close. One point down, yes. It's going from nine points down in February to five points down in early August to one point down about three, two or three weeks ago. And that shows that we are clearing our hurdles. You know, we've got now plus eight percent white independence. We match her with all white voters below age 35. So that's that new passionate white vote. These young people, black life matter.

People who aren't racist. Thank you. They want a new Mississippi. That Confederate flag now has come down. And I've been for that for three decades or more in my public life. And so that, that flag has now come down. And people just want to turn the page. They want to move on there. Tide. Mississippi where that's always last. And the health care and education and job opportunities, they're just tired of it. And they see my opponent as someone who's going to hold the state back. When the flag debate was happening, she just equivocated.

Yeah, I was surprised about the flag stuff because your statehouse rejected the flag, right, before she did. Right. Well, the flag was voted down by the state house. It didn't even go to a referendum. Yeah, will you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. Well, there are a lot of reasons that the flag.

came down so quickly. It came down in about three weeks. Honestly, I mean, I'm 66, Molly, and I never thought I'd see this in my lifetime. It happened just so fast. And that was just a combination of things, a confluence of factors. Number one was Black Lives Matter, George Floyd's murder. It just shocked everybody. And there was a march in Jackson, Mississippi, which was organized by the young black leadership. They expected 200 people, and they had 3,000 people. And I marched in their race. And so they were able to quickly see, there's great to march. And great to protest. That's our right. But for long-lasting changes, you need to let people, responsible people to office, who can already understand about systemic racism. So they just

kept working and working and working, and that created an impact in the legislature. And then we had, Mississippi does not have any professional sports teams, okay? We love our collegiate football. So the NCAA and the SEC officials said, until that flag comes down, that ugly, divisive flag that's not welcoming, we're not going to authorize any postseason NCAA or SEC events in your state at all. Good for them. They got the notice of the legislators. And then the Baptist preachers, you know, both black and white at a joint news conference that just said, this is not biblical. It's not holy.

You know, it's not treating your neighbor as yourself. All of those things created such an impact. So finally, the leaders of the state legislature said, you know what? It's just time to do it. Let's just do it quickly. And so the matter of two weeks that thing came down. And I was in the Senate chambers to listen to the speeches. And I just thought about Maker Evers and John Lewis, who was arrested in Mississippi

and Theronian, the Mississippi penitentiary for, you know, just riding on a bus. All of those folks that Fannie Lou Hamer and all those heroes and heroines who bled died and struggled for the right to vote and for that Confederate flag to come down. So it's great. And Senator H. Smith was the only, the only state by official who didn't say anything one way or the other. statement was very equivocal if they take it down fine, if they leave it up fine. And so I just told everybody to her right that okay, she wouldn't stand with you. And everybody on her left, you know that she never wanted this in the first place. And that's the kind of leadership she's

offering, just equivocating and backwards and just someone who's not befitting where the state wants to go in the third decade of the 21st century now. I'm curious because you are in this state, so you really see what's going on. Do you feel that things are changing in Mississippi? Yeah, for sure. Because between 2018, when I lost, we got 47% again. And now when I'm running again, we've had a state election. We've created it's almost like we had to run before to win now. The lessons I've learned is that we didn't have enough time to create the political infrastructure we needed to win. And we already tested it in 2019. So I'll just give you three examples very quickly. The white voters of Mississippi are becoming in many areas becoming purple and maybe even blue. they're in the suburbs of college towns and Mississippi Gulf Coast. So in 2019, we supported an African-American nurse who ran from the state legislature three times before and lost three times. And we got behind her, we gave out data, our endorsement, and we door knock with her. She ran in a Memphis suburb of Mississippi. Well, Donald Trump flew in in the 2018 cycle

against me. It's a very red place, but it's purple enough now in certain places. So she won that district about 14 votes. So now she's in the Mississippi Legislature. There was a young white lawyer, age 32, ran against a 30-year Republican incumbent. She beat him about 2,000 votes in the suburb of Jackson. And then there was an African-American man who ran for Central District Highway Commissioner. In Mississippi, they have three districts, northern, central, and southern. The southern is a microcosm of what I need to win in the state. On the west side, it's the Mississippi Delta, extremely poor, not informed, not well-educated, and all of that that you would expect.

And then it goes all the way east to the college towns where you have the white students, openly mobile, higher income. And he ran in that district and won. He's the first African-American to win this district in the history of our state. And we got behind him, supported him. I spoke for him, gave him money, gave him data. And he won. So I can see it happening.

It's happening. And we can see it in our polling. Besides your time in Washington, you've lived in Mississippi, right? Yeah, I grew up. I was born and raised in Mississippi. I left here, vowing never to return. I'm 66, Molly. I grew up in the Hidal Jim Crow. I remember all of that colored fountains, white water fountains. My mom, I'm going to the dress store and the white dress storeperson. She'll learn her. She had to buy it if she's going to try it on and waiting in the garage of my doctor's office while the white patients went in the front door. I remember all of that just so vividly.

So I grew up in it. And my reason for wanting to leave is because my twin sister and I integrated an old white public high school in 1968. This is way after Brownlee board, like, but... But it's Mississippi, so... It's Mississippi, and they weren't enforcing it. So my parents had my twin sister and I to this school, and it was the worst experience of my life. We were 17 black students among a student body of 800. I mean, every day I had to fight.

I run from a fight every day. I'm being called the N-word. One day I'm in chemistry class, and my teacher, Dr. Richardson, sprays me with a high-pressure water hose all over, foam all over, and I just left the class, never returned, got a D in the class. I said, Lord, if I ever just could get out of the state, I'm never returning.

So I went to Howard University 10 years before Kamala did. And then I went to law school in California on the full scholarship, expected to live there. But my father died. So I returned to the state, helped my mother with the business. Then I stayed. I mean, I'm here. And I became a legal service lawyer. But then after that, I became the first black assistant, sectarian state, first black

assistant attorney general. Then I ran for Congress, won the first time in 1986, State won four terms, then cabinet secretary, ran for Senate, of course, 18 months ago, did well, and now running again. So, you know, I tell everybody, been through all that Jim Crow stuff, and I'm not repeating it just to make you feel guilty. No, it's history. I mean, it's like my relatives of through the Holocaust. Like, we have to talk about the past. It's so important.

It makes me feel like we need to hear about it. I mean, I tell my wife, it's all over my video. And I just tell them, I'm not saying this to make you feel guilty. What your grandfather did. your great-grandfather did. I mean, that's what they did. But you have to acknowledge that it happens. And so we can never repeat this. We have to be responsible, one to the other, move forward together with the new vision for the state. And I'm the one to help us move forward. And I also feel like there's a phenomenon that I've seen over the midterms. And I'm curious to know if you've seen this

or if this is just my like white liberal fantasy. There has been a movement of African-Americans moving back to the South. Yes. And running for office to really represent themselves. Yes, you're right. I mean, they're moving to all parts of the South. And it's for the cost of living is a little bit less. The weather is less since August. You know, the day out of the summer, I mean, the weather is pretty pleasant.

Have all these weather vicissitudes that you have elsewhere. So, yeah, they're coming back. And they're coming back. They're educated. They're informed. They've seen other things happen. They have best practices that they can implement. And they're coming.

We welcome them. That's why the black population is growing like it is 40% in Mississippi. 40%. I mean, it's not like that anywhere else in the nation on a per capita basis. Doesn't that feel like a way eventually to heal some of the past is to have African Americans holding high office, fixing the government? Right. Yeah. Once you have an example, you have the example. So that's why I tell all of my friends and some of the democratic institutions and they're reticent to support races like mine. They are now and I'm so happy. We're doing really, really well. But I tell us, I tell us. everybody, it's a catch 22. They ignore you until you can prove your viability. Right. You can't prove your viability if they ignore you. Right. Exactly.

And here in Mississippi, I mean, we got a lot of black folks, but 20% of them are desperately poor. And within the 20% of the population that are below the poverty level, 60% of them are in this category they call persistent poverty poor for three decades. So those folks don't have, they can't give me $20. They don't have the discretionary income. They give me $50 for a political campaign. You can't write it off on your taxes. So that's why I tell everybody, they'll vote for me, but they don't have the discretionary income to give to us. We have to reach out and ask for help elsewhere, which is what we've been doing and people have really been responding lately. It's so exciting to me.

Tell me about when you go to the Senate, how can you help the people of Mississippi? Well, first thing is there's a statute there that I'm going to take down. There's two statues. You know, one is the head of the Confederacy. But the other is the guy called Jayze George, who wrote the 1890 Constitution in Mississippi that stop. Reconstruction. We used to have two black senators from Mississippi. Both of them were from Mississippi. Once that constitution came in, everything was gone. Blacks couldn't vote anymore and rise of the clan and all of that. So he has been celebrated in marble in the Senate. And I'm going to

get that down. That's like the flag, you know, it's symbolic. What I'm going to do materially is I'm going to be the health care senator. So in Mississippi, it's the number one issue in the campaign because Molly is the number one problem in the state. We have so many folks afraid to go to the doctor because they can't pay the bill. So we do have under the ACA, the Affordable Care Act, we have Medicaid expansion. There are only 13 states in the nation without it, and Mississippi, unfortunately, is one of them.

And I'm going to try to get that reverse because the day we can do this is the day that quarter of a million in Mississippi is what to have the benefit and the confidence of having medical insurance. So the diabetes and the hypertension and the arthritis, whatever it is. And the coronavirus, too, right?

Thank you. Thank you. I mean, we're sitting here in Mississippi with 3 million people and almost 3,000 dead. 100,000 being infected and of disproportionately, they're African-American. So what I want to do is I'll get this thing brought to Mississippi, which also is going to help a lot of our rural hospitals from closing because when the low-income folks go to the ER, they can't pay the bill and the hospital closes. So that is my number one goal.

I mean, honestly, I mean, I could talk about education and broadband connectivity and all of that, and I'm going to do all of that. But the first thing is to take care of this big, big problem where we already have a solution, at least until this Supreme Court maybe overturns it, but we need Medicaid expansion. And Oklahoma has it. Missouri has it and the other similarly situated conservative states have it. So it's no reason why we should.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You're so fabulous. I love you. I can't wait for you to be a senator. Could I leave it with one doc? Yeah. We've got a friend named Reverend Barber who's over the poor people's campaign. He said to me, Mike, Mississippi is not so much red as it is unorganized.

So that's why we've had a legacy of disinvestment. Mississippi where people just haven't given. So anyone who can give, we certainly want them to do that. So Rick Wilson, who's your fuck that guy today? You've never heard of my fuck that guy this time, but I'm going to make him famous, a little more famous than he already is. His name is Harlan Z. Hill. He has me blocked. He has you blocked. Oh, Molly, I am so sorry. It's very sad. That is a loss for you in many ways. Harlan Hill is a board member of real Donald Trump and his campaign. He's the president of the Logan Circle Group, a PR firm, which I'm sorry, but if you're If you're in PR, maybe you don't call the future vice president of the United States an insufferable lying bitch.

Multiple times. His Twitter handle for listeners who are curious, not that I would ever suggest that you do anything at all to harass him is at Harlan, H-A-R-L-A-N. Harlan Z. Hill, CEO of the Logan Circle PR group, who tweeted, Harris comes off as such an insufferable lying bitch. Sorry, it's just true. Yeah. And then he tweeted like five more times. My favorite response to him was in so much. But he's my fuck-that-guy today because these people lose their shit.

If you say anything about Donald Trump's hair or his attitude or his behavior or his weight or if you say that he's married to a mail-order bride or anything like that, they lose their damn minds. But that's pretty much par for the course right now. And Harlan Zee Hill, you're my fuck-that guy. And now I will never think of you again. My fuck that guy is Mark Meadows, the Trump chief of staff who has been trying to get COVID to show his allegiance to dear leader. He had a big wedding for his daughter in May and that broke all these social distancing rules.

Well, the rest of us were staying home and trying not to get each other sick. He was having another super spreader event, which tends, it seems to be now the Republican brand. Well, I would say this. If you're looking to get your vid on, you should go to any Trump rally. he's about to go back out on the trail and have many of them. And I'm sure that his catty, Mark Meadows, will be happy to accompany him unprotected in every way to show his faith and love of the Lord Trump. It really is a death called. Yes. I mean, we joke about it being a death cult, but it's actually a cult of people who actively now court a disease which can be fatal.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science, will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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