The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Thinks Jan 6ers Deserve Taxpayer Dollars

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

On this episode of The New Abnormal, President Donald Trump gives some very Trumpy reasons for why he wants to give pardoned January 6 rioters taxpayer money—“but they’re all bad,” said co-host Andy Levy. Plus, congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh, a former Media Matters video editor, on how she aims to change the Democratic Party for good. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty 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 Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Welcome back to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here today.

We have an extra special guest. Kat Abigazale is a former Media Matters video editor and a current congressional candidate in Illinois's 9th district, and she's here to tell us all about why she decided to rant what she plans to do with her candidacy and how she hopes to impact the Democratic Party in the future. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clips. Clips, Daniel. Say it with me. Clips. Daniel, did we lose you?

No, I'm here. No, she just refuses. She has had it with you and your clips, Jesse. Well, I understand why, especially with this batch. You know, guys, the left, they're pesky reparations. You know, it's so problematic. It's so bad that they discuss things like this. Very, very terrible. Donald Trump has some thoughts on who deserves reparations.

It's the January 6th rioters. No, but I took care of them. I said I was going to, and I did. Is there any talk of, because they lost opportunity, they lost income, any kind of compensation fund. Well, there's talk about that. There are a lot of people talk about, a lot of the people that are in government now talk about it, because a lot of the people in government really like that group of people. They were patriots, as far as I was concerned.

I talked about, I talk about them a lot. They were treated very unfairly. You know, the thing they show is they show a group of 1,000, whatever it may have been, 1,500 people down. What they don't show, you never see the crowd that day. It was the biggest crowd I've ever spoken before. It went all the way to the Washington Monument. It was so wide. You virtually couldn't see anything else but people.

They never show that whether it was a million people or less than a million. I don't know what it was. But, you know, I see Bernie Sanders has a few people out there. They say, oh, the crowd is so big. They don't talk about the crowds. But a group of people went down there peacefully and patriotically. Remember that. No, I'm pretty sure we did talk about the crowds.

We talked about it with the January 6th hearings. We talked about it when Jack Smith was providing evidence to Eileen Cannon. We've talked about it. And I think that the whole world has talked about these people. What you have to realize is that Donald Trump, is following a long line of American presidents that love to provide reparations to white domestic terrorists.

It's the same way that instead of providing reparations to the enslaved, America decided to provide reparations to the slave owners that would lose wages because of emancipation. Like, that's the fucking mindset. It's not new. Yeah, I don't even know how to describe. Like, there are so many ways to describe this, but they're all bad.

I'm just at the point where I don't even think he's not the president. I think he's only the president in name. I don't think he does anything except go talk to people like Greg Kelly and go to the Daytona 500 and go to the Super Bowl. I mean, he had absolutely nothing to do with the war plans. In reading those, it wasn't even clear that he was informed about what was going on. And I think this is just like he has his little pet things now and they all revolve around him. And his day is filled with how can I get money to the people who supported me? How can I get money to myself and my family? And this is just more of that. And it's just the idea that he can sit there and say that everything on January 6th was peaceful when we literally have, we've all seen the video. We have seen it. We know it wasn't peaceful.

It's just so depressing that he keeps getting away with it. Yeah. It's funny because they love sharing that meme of Joe Biden being the auto pen president that he was just siding things. But it's like, hmm, you know what Donald Trump did that with? Yeah. Pardoning the January 6th people. And that seems to be his vibe these days.

And it seems like real, real deflection. Yep. Mm-hmm. So as we know, part of our job is to explain the world to people. and we all take this very seriously. We also have other people in our field who do this too, like Fox News is Jesse Waters, and he's here to explain Signal Gazi.

I try to start a group text. You're adding people, and you accidentally add the wrong person. All of a sudden, your Aunt Mary knows all your raunchy plans for the Bachelor Party. Well, that kind of happened today with the Trump administration. Mike Walsh was putting together a group chat on Signal, an encrypted app with the Secretary of Defense,

the VP, and a bunch of other national security officials, to collaborate on whether to strike Iranian proxies in Yemen who keep firing missiles and shutting down shipping. Well, National Security Advisor Mike Waldz accidentally added a reporter to the group text, and not a good reporter. Jeffrey Goldberg from the Atlantic, one of the biggest hoax artists around. Well, he heard some things he probably shouldn't have,

but could have been a wee bit of a security breach. But it's not like they homebrewed a server and then bleached it or kept classified documents in their garages next to. to their Corvette, I'm sure it won't happen again. I'm sorry. No, it's also not like they kept classified documents inside of their fucking toilet. Yeah. Or all over one of their gaudy golf resorts or used it as a look at me, look how cool I am,

let me show you what I have here. Or like, you know, fuck off. I fucking hate this guy. I don't know, Andy, how you worked with him? I couldn't have because I would have gone to jail. I worked in the same building as him. I never worked with him. Thank God.

In fact, just off topic, very quick story when Red Eye ended, and they didn't have a clue what to do with me because I just didn't fit there. And I met with one of the execs, and they were like, well, what shows would you like to go on? What would you like to be guest on? And I said, look, I'll pretty much go on anything except Jesse Waters. And she got this stunned look on her face.

She was like, why not Jesse Waters? And I realized I had to be a little politic. So I said, I just don't think we vibe well. That is the understatement of the world. Yeah, yeah. But no, I am thankful that I never had to sit on a show with him because I don't know how I would have handled it. I really don't.

Understandably so. Not doing the best work. Speaking of not doing the best work, here we have Chuck Grassley, who in this video looks 90 years old. Oh, wait, he's 91 years old, sorry. Here he is talking about Trump and Mike Johnson's moves to impeach judges. How do you feel about calls for impeaching these lower court judges? Say that again, please.

How do you feel about the calls for impeachment of some of these lower court judges? You can't impeach a judge just because you disagree with their opinion, but we want to cover up or overcome some of that problem. by having these cases that hang around for a long time, and they may have a national injunction after the money's already been spent or some appeal goes on, and the person has been wrong. That's why we want to have legislation that would appeal these decisions very quickly. Nice for you'd slip in there.

You can't just impeach people because you don't like them. Isn't that what you all always do? Look, I'll give him credit that first sentence. A made sense and B was correct. After that, I think by the end I vaguely understood what he was trying to say. The sun was going down fast. Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it. Yeah, there was a time-lapse thing going on in the background.

Poor thing. 91, eh? 91 years young. Seems like he's really well fit to still be, uh, legislating and helping make decisions for this country. Really, I'm sure no one else in Iowa could do it except him. I'm sure he has very, very well-thought-out opinions on the internet. Y'all, we do often talk about that President Trump had mandates coming in, you know, lower egg prices, curb inflation.

Oh, I forgot about all of those things. Well, there's another mandate, yes. We need a fertilization president. Oh, fuck. It's been great on it. And we're going to have tremendous, tremendous goodies in the bag for women, too. The women between the fertilization and all of the other things that we're talking about, it's going to be great.

We're joined today. I'm still very proud of it. I don't care. I'll be known as the Fertilization President that that's okay. That's not bad. That's not bad. I've been called, I've been called, I've been called Muddly. Much worse.

Actually, I like it, right? I like it. I mean, it's not the worst name in the world for a sexual assaulter, I guess. Yeah. I don't know if you all saw on Thursday. I think it was the White House Twitter account put out a picture of J.D. Vance at a gun range. Oh, yeah. That was some good stuff.

Referred to bullets as freedom seeds. Yeah. I don't know. It just made me think of the fertilization president. They're disgusting. That's all I can say. Like what killed me about that fucking video clip is the people laughing. Yeah.

And thinking that like, this is funny. They're just a bunch of mindless fucking seals. Just like sitting, clapping and laughing like, oh, isn't this great? A bunch of goodies in the bag? What is it? A fucking Halloween? Like, trick or treat? Whatever.

I, you know, Jesse, success because my blood pressure is up. Kat Abu Ghazale is a former Media Matters video editor who has now thrown her hat in the ring to represent Illinois's 9th district in the halls of Congress. She joins me now. Kat, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. So start by telling the listeners about yourself. Who is Kat Abu Ghazale? And is she related at all to Kat Abu? I've never seen the two of them in the same room together.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm cat. I have spent my adult career reporting on fascists on the internet and Congress in other bad places. I really like my cat with a sea. Her name is Heater. She is orange. I play video games. I knit. Once again, I love my cat. And I'm running for Congress. And what's your background? Tell people who you are. Tell people where you come from. So I started my career at Media Matters. I actually grew up conservative, but after, moving to Tucson and being exposed to poverty for the first time, I was like, maybe this isn't right. So I started my career after college at Media Matters, which is a progressive watchdog organization that targets misinformation, specifically right-wing misinformation, or especially, I should say, considering there's a lot of it. I watched Fox News every night with my team from

4 p.m. to 11 p.m. My specialty was Tucker Carlson. And then because of a dayside report about how there were companies whose ads were put next to, you know, pro-Holocaust content. Twitter lost some advertisers. Elon Musk sued my company. And I got laid off because the costs were too much, me and 11 other people. In the past years since I got laid off, I have worked with Mother Jones, Zateo News, and Musk even deposed me here in Chicago. He paid his lawyers to do a video deposition here in Chicago, which is very expensive.

And once again, I can't stress this enough. I love my cat. Yeah, I might want to talk about that more later. Amazing. But before I do, what made you decide? Because you had a, or you have, a pretty nice following on TikTok, et cetera. So what made you decide, hey, I like making my video skewering the right, and I've got a, you know, I've got a good size audience for them.

But I want to take it up a notch and run for Congress. You know, when you're watching people and you're like, I can do that. better, kind of like that, except not in a presumptuous way, because this is going to be really, really difficult and require a lot of people and money and time and effort and heart and all those things. I just think there's a better way we can do politics and a better way we can campaign. And watching the Democrats just have absolutely no spine in like the first two weeks of the Trump administration, oh, I just couldn't sit around anymore. I feel like we wait for these mythical figures that are supposed to arise when things get really bad. But that's what happens in

movies. And real life is not a movie. It is a series of weird, uncomfortable things that happen over time. We're all we've got. We have to be the ones to step up. And so I wanted to try to do something. And so I'm trying to use my platform and my idea is to do something better, help others who also want to run for office, who might not be feeling represented or want to see a change in culture in the Democratic Party in our country. And also, you know, with our campaign, we want to use the money and our, I guess, clout to help people in the district tangibly. So on your campaign website, catforillinois.com, and listeners, please don't go to catforcongress.com by mistake like I did, because that is the home of awful Florida congresswoman Kat Kamik or Kamak.

But over at catforilinois.com, I want to talk about a couple of things you say. You say, democratic leaders are abandoning us. And then you ask, what if we didn't suck? Why do we suck? I'm agreeing with you. I'm just saying why, why, Kat? Why do we suck? And how can you make them or suck less?

There's that saying that Democrats live to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. I felt that a lot last year when we thought we were getting a change candidate with Kamala Harris. And then she said multiple times, she was like, nope, I'm the exact same as Biden. I'm just a woman. That's kind of an example of that suckiness. But I think a lot of it is just this unwillingness to think bigger. everything is always compromised or it's always rooted in an idea that doesn't exist anymore. Like the playbook a lot of Democrats are working from isn't even from 2015. It's from 2005.

And honey, we are in 2025. You've got to update your browser. Jesus. I think if we didn't strive for the bare minimum and if we didn't set up these barriers ahead of time, oh, that could never happen because that's not how politics works or that could never happen because it'd be too difficult. You need to work with both sides of the aisle. What if we all thought bigger and said, what if we tried it? That's kind of what this entire campaign is about. What if we tried to do something different?

I don't like when someone says, oh, we can't do that because this is how it's always been done. That's not true. Things change. We don't live in a monarchy anymore. Or wait, we might now. We didn't for a while there. Right. You know, it's things change.

Systems of government change. Otherwise, you know, we'd all, we wouldn't have a system of writing. So the Illinois 9th is currently represented by Jan Chikowsky. One of the more progressive Dems in Congress. She's the chief deputy whip. She co-chairs the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues. Back in the day, she was one of the few people of either party who opposed the Iraq war. Why primary her? I mean, I'm not primarying anyone. She hasn't announced I'm the only candidate in this race right now. Okay, fair. This is not a referendum on her. Jan Chikovsky has been one of the most progressive members of Congress. Like you said, you know, she stood against the Iraq War.

She has done a lot of really great service. And if she wants to run again, you know, she should. That is her choice. This district, though, hasn't had a competitive primary since 1998, about five months before I was born. I think that the pearl clutching over even entering a primary race that I've seen just in the past few days shows us an issue that's at the core of the Democratic Party, which is When someone gets in power, especially if they are a part of the establishment, even if their views like Jan Shikowsky's are more progressive than a lot of the other establishment Dems, a lot of people in power think that they are entitled to that power. Not necessarily saying that about Jan Shikowsky.

Sure. But the idea that I shouldn't run just because Shikowski is an office is ludicrous. You know, this is not, I can't, once again, I want to say this is not a monarchy, but where are we today? It's like, you know, also the issue of saying, well, there are people waiting in the wings. There are people waiting in line. Okay, they should also run. I don't know why we're waiting around. If any of us think we can do better or we can do something different, we should try instead of waiting for a congressperson to maybe step down.

Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe not. Why not? Yeah, absolutely. I don't want to ask you because I've seen chatter on blue sky. And I'm sure you have too.

there are people saying, oh, cat doesn't even live in the district. Why is she running in that district? What's the deal there? So I moved to Chicago on very short notice last year, and we kind of just picked the first decent furnished apartment we could. I am a bus stop away from this district. I am there all the time. We are planning to move to the Andersonville, Edgewater, Rogers Park area sometime this year

before I even decided to run for Congress. So, like, that was already in the works. Chicago was also extremely gerrymandered. pull up a map of Chicago congressional districts right now. It is insane. But, you know, this district also, I think it has a lot of the values that this type of campaign could really work in. It's historically, extremely progressive. It has a lot of very politically involved people. You know, Northwestern and Loyola are here. I think that what we want to do will be well received, especially in a district that, you know, there's a huge amount of people here that are foreign born. I think it's like 20%, 25%. They are

welcome in this district and I think I'm also welcome as someone coming from DC or Texas. Okay. What are the biggest issues for you? Like if you're elected, what congressional committees would you want to be on? Yeah. So I think the biggest thing right now is just kind of trying to keep our government from going full tilt into an authoritarian nightmare. That's the main thing and trying to stop that in any way you can. Pass that. Like my vision is really about basic existence. I think that we are at, it's insane how expensive it is just to live, unless you're really rich. And I feel like a lot of politicians right now don't understand that. And it's not their fault.

They aren't in the same position as a lot of millennials and Gen Z people are. You know, I don't have health insurance. These people haven't had to deal like out-of-pocket costs in years. People who are dealing with student loans, a lot of people. people in Congress have never had student loans. I think that there just needs to be like a radical change in who is in Congress because we need people that represent us and understand the issues. Besides that, you can check out the issues page on my website. I care about a lot of stuff, but I don't want to keep up all your time. Okay. You're already making some waves on the right.

You've been attacked by the Chicago Republican Party. You've been attacked by Fox's chief idiot, Jesse Waters. What are they saying about you? Oh, I've heard so many things about me. I've learned a lot about myself. I am a MAGA GOP Hamas Republican was something from last night. I didn't know that existed, but I am one of those. Someone accused me of being Galane Maxwell's daughter, and I'm pretending I'm not by dyeing my hair blonde, which implies that anyone who's died their hair blonde could be Galane Maxwell's daughter. Sure. My favorite is that I am a GOP op that has since my childhood been taking every step of my career to get into this point so I can run for Congress and then win the Democratic primary, win the general, and then flip the seat red.

But as far as the right, a lot of it's just like dumb culture worship. They say, you know, they pull out pictures of my Instagram that's completely public that I didn't delete on purpose. And they're like, see this whore? And it's like, no, I'm trying to show you. We're normal people. Everyone is normal here. I feel like we hold public office on a pet.

a stole when it should really be like the most relatable, accessible position you can get. A lot of complaints about me being Palestinian, which, you know, I expected. Of course, being a woman, that's a negative. I really should have reconsidered being a woman, but unfortunately, I didn't. So are you now or have you ever been a member of Hamas cat? No, I know I haven't. I know. It's a shocker. Yeah. It's a shocker. I do have to say my crack production staff has unearthed evidence that you are going on trans podcasts that make Pokemon fuckless? Do you deny this as well? No, I am going on trans podcasts that make Pokemon fuckless.

Okay. Can you explain what that means to our listeners? Yeah, so I went on my friend's podcast, Juniper, her podcast, Western Kabuki. Juniper is a trans woman, and she has a discord for her podcast where some of the people, and they were making jokes about, like, which Pokemon were the sexiest. And this is another MAGA criticism, I guess, is they took those screenshots from the Discord and then just kept replying to people being like, this woman is going on trans podcasts with Pokemon fucklists that I'm going to explain to every senior in Evanston and they're not going to vote for her. To which I say, please take a video. I would love to watch you explain.

She's going on trans podcasts that make Pokemon fuckless to your grandmother. I would love to watch that. Actually, can you invite me? Yeah, that was actually one of the fun. moneyer things that was going around blue sky the other day. There is something that I want to ask you about because it's also a thing I've seen from like, I guess you would call them moderate Democrats, K-I of whatever, on blue sky, which is this grave concern that you were brought up in a conservative household and were a Republican earlier in your life. And I want to get to something you said on

blue sky and you said, you should be skeptical of someone running for office. I'm asking for power and that deserves scrutiny, especially if you're unfamiliar with me. First of all, I thought that was a really good thing to say. But also, why is it that people are unable to understand that, you know, yeah, I was raised a certain way by my parents, maybe, and I bought into it. And then as you said, I saw a little more of the world and I decided, oh, I don't actually believe those same things. Yeah, I don't know why so many people are upset with this idea of like changing your mind. And, you know, some people are given the proof and they're like, okay, well, I'll begrudgingly admit this is where she's at.

And then someone was like, look, even if she was, you know, 15 or 16 in that picture, I don't want that person in public office. I don't want anyone that was an idiot when they were 16. And I'm like, were you smart when you were 16. But like, once again, people should be skeptical. I have stressed over and over the last. you know, four years as a, you know, online figure. Ugh, I want to throw up saying that.

Your leaders need to earn your vote. And I've gotten some very aggressive, occasionally violent responses to that, implying that I love Donald Trump because I think that Democrats need to feel less entitled to our votes. But I truly believe that. And part of this is, you know, I've talked a lot of shit. And I'm trying to stand by what I've said. And that means, you know, I have to.

in your vote too. Yeah, for sure. It boggles my mind, but look, I say this as a former libertarian, so I guess I sort of empathize with you here because I know there are people who don't quote unquote trust me or whatever because I used to believe different things. So anyway, I think the whole thing is silly. How much money have you raised already? I think we're at 300K now. Damn, that was fast. I know, right? But, you know, the primaries a year away. And that's on purpose. We want as long as we can to like show what we can do with this campaign and work with people that want to run as well. 300,000 is amazing. I am absolutely blown away.

But we still got a while to go. Yeah, for sure. Are you getting merch made up that says I'm a cat person? And if not, why not? I like that. Do I need to give you a cut of it? No, no. Just speak kindly of me.

That's really all I ever ask. I only do. I was looking through your videos on TikTok. And I noticed that. your hair changes a lot. Is that something that you're going to do for the campaign, or are you going to settle on a campaign hairstyle? Oh, my God.

No, I love having fun with my hair. Okay. I mean, for our first event, which was also kind of my birthday party, it was just like friends and family. I had, you know, space buns up, and space buns are going to be on the campaign trail. Really? Absolutely.

So, like, full-on Princess Leia? I mean, Princess Leia is, like, closer to the ears. These are more up on top. Oh, yours are higher up. We're keeping the high pony. We're doing, you know, straight, curly, wavy, pig tails, braids, the whole nine yards. And look, I know it was a silly and dumb question, but it does sort of get it something that before you wrap up, I wanted to get into. And that is that it seems like what you're pretty much doing is saying, hey, I am going to be myself in this campaign.

You're not going to have the James Carville types and the Neurotan types in your ear telling you what you need to say or focus groups telling you. oh, that doesn't play well, I need to change what I'm doing. Yeah. Maybe we can do better with this word is so overused now, but a bit more authenticity. And so really all of this is just me like trying, trying something new. And that something new is all the stuff I do usually. Like I have no interest in changing who I am and what I care about for an image of a voter that I'm not even sure exists. Or is made up as Chuck Schumer's mythical couple is.

Kat, thanks so much for being here. Listeners, if you want to learn more, go to catforillinois.com, where you can see her various positions on issues and donate if you feel like you should. Best of luck to you in this campaign. Thanks, Andy. 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.

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