The Daily Beast Podcast - Will Bill Barr Go to Jail When This Is All Done?

Episode Date: June 12, 2020

Attorney General Bill Barr was in on Trump’s scheme to bribe and lean on Ukraine’s president. He let his boss’ criminal cronies off the hook. But the worst part, former DOJ prosecutor Glenn Kirschner says, was Barr’s crackdown in Lafayette Square on people just expressing their First Amendment rights. And if Barr isn’t under criminal investigation in 2021 for that, he tells Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast, then “shame on us.” It’s part of a jam-packed episode of The New Abnormal. Rachel Bitecofer of the Niskansen Center for Public Policy, joined Molly and Rick to present her forecast for this November. Of course, the dynamic duo tackle the ultimate fuckery that is the Donald Trump White House, including the president “playing footsie” with Confederate flag truthers, his Twitter-gasm over his Tulsa rally and how the “Bitch Boy” and his minions did the seeming impossible: became even more racist. 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, an editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling 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. Rick Wilson, what do you want to talk about today? I don't know, Molly. What about the blazing racist hellscape that is our country? Can we talk about Juneteenth and Tulsa? You mean the Trump administration's

deliberate provocation? At least that's how I and a lot of other people are reading it. So Trump is going to give his first rally since coronavirus, and he's planned to do it on the day, June 19th, that was the end of slavery, right? Mm-hmm. So he's going to do it in the place that is the home of the largest massacre of African-Americans ever, Tulsa. Mm-hmm. So I think the really important thing here is that they released the announcement that they were going to go to Tulsa. On the same day, Donald Trump went on one of his Twitter gasms defending the names of military facilities around the country that are named after Confederate generals and Confederate soldiers.

Several of whom combine both records of unbelievable failure as military leaders, but also, of course, the usual delight in slavery and racism. I think treason is the right word. I think treason is the word you're looking for. And look, this has become, we've entered an era of the inverted culture war. For a long time, Donald Trump has winked and nodded at these racists that are out there in part of his base. And, you know, here's the usual disclaimer for you, Maga listeners.

Not every Trump voter is a racist mouth-breathing shitbag who proudly displays the treasonous banner of a dead nation that sought to destroy American perpetuate slavery. But every single racist mouth-breathing shitbag who proudly displays the treasonous banner of a dead nation that sought to destroy American perpetuate slavery is a Trump supporter. Every fucking one of them. And these people, they are always playing footsie with them. They're always winking and nodding at them. They're always playing this little game.

It's heritage, not hate. Listen. Yesterday, the Navy banned the Confederate flag. And so did NASCAR. I think the Air Force. I think the Air Force is coming. Right. And NASCAR.

When you've lost NASCAR on the Confederate flag issue, what's next? World Wrestling? I have a question for you. You're from the South. I am from the South. Things and eat fried animals, but I am from the North. And they are, let me just point out, we are the apotheosis of the preparation of delicious fried animals, and you don't know what you're missing. Yes.

Okay. I'll live with it. I was just going to say, so I'm from the North where people are normal. Are you? I had not noticed that. Yeah, I don't know if you noticed this. Here, we don't have Confederate flags because it's fucking ridiculous. So I didn't know that they weren't banned.

I was shocked that that needed. I mean, it is the year 2020, right? Here's the thing. As a matter of free speech, I believe people are free to say and display dumb shit that proves that they are racist, mouth-breathing shitbags who display the murders, the treasonous banner of a dead nation. But I also believe institutions in modern America, both public and private, it both have the right and the responsibility to say, hey, you know what? When you try to defeat our country to perpetuate slavery or totalitarianism, you know, that's not something we want our members or

our clients or our participants or our employees to do. Look, no one would say, hey, wow, it's really cool that this guy working, you know, in Cubicle 17, Ernst & Young accounting services has a Nazi flag over his desk. No one would say that. And they should treat the Confederate flag at this point in our history the same way. And the whole thin veneer of the culture war that Trump thinks he's going to win by doing this, that culture war has been inverted. This is not some symbol now of southern culture

or heritage or anything else. None of that is real for the vast majority of people in the South. He's going to lose more people on this than he will gain. He is going to have a bigger blowback in places in the South where the New South ideal was always flawed, It has always been a long road to repairing and mitigating the damage of slavery and the long history of Jim Crow culture. But it's a road that people in the South were legitimately proud to be on, where they legitimately felt like, you know, we are so far from getting there, but we're going to put the work in. And it was slow and spotty and incoherent in places and never worked out like you thought it would work out, fast enough or deep enough.

But the vast majority of people in the South look at that display now. and it has become something that Trump doesn't understand. It's not the cultural signifier he thinks it is. It's now a cultural signifier almost purely of racism and ignorance. I think it's interesting. I was reading this article in The Washington Post yesterday about his poll numbers dropping and how, and we're going to have Rachel on to talk about all of the Senate races that are now in play and Democrats. But the culture of war stuff worked really well for him in the beginning, you know, where he was fighting against the media instead of,

He was able to sort of express this racism and all of this, but in a way that was veiled enough so people didn't quite know how to fight back against it. But now I feel like it's not working anymore, right? Remember, the kneeling was such a cultural touchstone, but people just don't care. Right. I think what it comes down to. And the reason that my group has been pounding Donald Trump's head in on the Confederate flag is because it has become this symbol disconnected from anything except the oppositional defamation. Defiant Disorder Politics of Donald Trump's followers. Right.

Where when they're told, hey, don't fly the flag of treason, all they can think of is, wow, let's fly the flag of treason. When they're told, hey, George Floyd being murdered is a bad thing. You have pictures of a Trump supporter in New Jersey recreating the murder of George Floyd. And on the pickup truck right next to the scene is a Confederate flag and a Trump flag. That to me was this crystallizing moment of just who these fucking people are. And it's also a moment, by the way, of who. all Trump's gentry enablers are, okay? All those people that pretend that they are, I'm just here for

the judges and the tax cuts. You know what? You're here for the judges and the tax cuts, but sitting next to you on the Trump Express is the guy who recreates murdering George Floyd in front of a Trump flag on a Confederate flag. They own those people. What's interesting to me, though, is we saw this week Tom Cotton, who I think is the worst senator, except for maybe Marsha Blackburn, say that he was against racism, which I was like, really? Because that's not what I've seen. And then you saw also Mitch McConnell say that America is struggling with the sin of racism. Now, I don't believe they're sincere at all, but it clearly is speaking to some polling that shows that racism is no longer a winning issue. Well, let me say this. His pollsters, his professional pollsters, not the jackasses

that are writing memos to CNN and angry memos to CNN. There may be some people who don't totally know the story, but basically Trump was mad at a CNN poll because it showed he was losing. So he found pollsters who wrote to CNN and told them they were wrong and then he wanted CNN to apologize because he's petty. But Trump wrote that memo. Its incoherence was the tell. Well, also, I mean, I don't know if you wrote it, but yes, perhaps. The one thing I wanted to circle back with you for, for one second, was we were talking about this Juneteenth rally. There's a lot of talk now. Does Trump, in his ignorance, know about how meaningful this day is in American history? And to hold it in Tulsa is this intentional or is this just more Trump's stupidity?

But in fact, our friend of the show and friend of both of ours, Philippe Rhinis, who used to work for Hillary Clinton, actually pointed out that last year, the Trump administration, they actually wrote a press release. Melani and I send our best wishes for a memorable celebration to all those commemorating Juneteenth. So the Trump administration has actually gotten more racist. I think that's sort of the definitional characteristic of the Trump administration. They are bending the archivistry towards racism. Hey, Molly. Yes, Rick Wilson. After many, many, many years, I still keep my various contacts up in my defense world.

Is this going to be news? Are we getting some news here, Rickulson? I don't know if this is news or not. But a contact of mine yesterday morning said to me, he said, Millie is under the gun from the professional side of the services. The chiefs are furious about this. they still don't think he's owned it. And today, General Millie is out saying, I should not have been there.

I got played. I was told we were doing one thing and it was another. What do you make of that? Well, look, there's two things. First off, inside the Defense Department and the uniform services, there is a growing sense

that Donald Trump's desire to be reelected is going to push them further and further into dangerous positions. We all think that, right? I mean, don't we all think that pretty much? But here's the thing. There is always a deference inside the Defense Department, and properly so to legitimate executive authority.

They swear an oath to the Constitution, not to the man. And there is always an inclination towards deferring to the orders of the executive, even if you don't like them. Right. Now, there is also deeply ingrained in the military culture, the knowledge that you must not, not that you should not, that you must not obey an illegal order. Right. There is a sense that the military is being drawn into Trump's political orbit. More and more. Inside the E-ring at the Pentagon, there's a growing sense of that, and it is causing some tremendous distress.

So everybody's worried in the Pentagon that he's not going to leave when he loses? Well, I wouldn't say that. They're worried that he is going to continue to do things that deploy the military into situations where they could be called to kill Americans. I don't know if you saw this story yesterday, but it was a little note that one of the armories from which the troops, the National Guard troops, were staging in D.C., there were state by state, depending on the number of soldiers, there were the ammunition loadouts with live rounds that were there as a contingency. And to everyone's relief, they weren't deployed with hot weapons. They weren't deployed with actual lethal ammunition. But God forbid, those guys end up in a situation where Donald Trump says, I think they're too close to the

seventh ring of the fence, shoot them. Right. And it trickles down. And then the fear right now inside the defense world is that, okay, so let's say General Millie says, no, sir, not doing Okay, you're fired. Steps up to the next guy and the next guy and the next guy until you find the guy that will pull the trigger on civilians. Right. That's not fearmongering. That's not some lurid idea that he's such a madman. Oh, Trump brought in the National Guard. This is how close we were to a scenario where a frightened bitch boy like Donald Trump, who is scared of what are mostly a bunch of college kids chanting and carrying signs in the streets, had deployed lethal military force or was close to deploying lethal military force in Washington. It has frightened them a lot. They're not happy, and they are talking, by the way, which is also something they don't do. And when we had Mayor Bowser on, she talked about that, that she had these unmarked guards in Washington, D.C.,

and she didn't know where they were from, and they sent her list, but she really couldn't tell you who was who. The fact that a lot of these people were not military, the fact that a lot of them were Bill Barr's little green men. Or ICE or corrections. Anything that's under the Justice or Department of Homeland Security, I'd be really fucking worried about. For one thing, on the Justice Department side, you had Bill Barr's Bureau of Prisons guys who had no uniforms, no name badges.

Hey, so, Molly, have you been to Seattle lately? I have not been to Seattle. Why, what's happening? Tell me what's happening in Seattle. Apparently, Antifa has established a zone inside Seattle that is what they're calling the autonomous zone. I've seen Antifa's work.

It's, you know, oh no, wait, Antifa, sorry. You mean Antifa. Antifa. So there are these protesters in Seattle who have taken over a couple square block radius. They're calling it the Chaz, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. The Chaz. I didn't hear about this because I read normal media, but if you read right-wing media, this is all you hear about. If you listen to Trump today his tweets and the right-wing media's tweets, the Chaz is surrounded by tens of thousands of Antifa super soldiers.

and in the center of the jazz is a volcano layer. And inside that volcano layer is George Soros, clad in nothing but a silver lame Mancini. These people, look, in the history of irony, a lot of the people right now on right-wing Twitter and on Trump Twitter who are losing their damn minds about a bunch of jackasses, temporarily having a couple square block radius

in Seattle to protest in, were mysteriously silent when the Bundy family, the Bundy Ranch thing took off and a family of Trumpish right-wing wackos tried to hold off the federal government from preventing them from grazing their cattle on government land and had a multi-week standoff

with the federal government. A lot of the same people today who are losing their shit about the child is an antifa. But I'm just saying, as Trump continually loses these culture wars, I have to wonder, like, they seem to be getting more insane.

Like, the idea that the 75-year-old peace activist was an Antifa. Scout. With a secret electronic device to blank out their systems. Right. Who, quote, fell harder than he was pushed. Physics. Antifa has beaten physics.

You know, you have to wonder what he'll do. Like, if he'll just get crazier and crazier, as these things don't work. If you have to ask the question, will Trump get crazier? The answer is always yes. With us today is Glenn Kersner. You've seen Glenn on NBC and MSNBC's a legal analyst. He's a former U.S. Jack, a former Department of Justice Prosecutor, and a guy who has made a name for himself

in dealing with some of the most difficult questions around the Russia investigation against Donald Trump and as a noted critic of the way that Bill Barr has handled his role as Attorney General. Glenn, thank you so much for being with us today, and I want to just jump right in, so our audience knows a little bit more about you and about your background. I started out in the 80s as an Army Jag prosecuting court-martial cases, so I always wanted to serve in the Army, did about six and a half years active duty. First, as a trial court prosecutor handling court martial cases up in Alaska at Fort Richardson, which was then the sixth infantry division Arctic Light, a little chilly, a little dark. And then I left and joined

the U.S. Attorney's Office, and Eric Holder was good enough to make me a federal prosecutor in early 94, so I feel like I owe him a debt of gratitude. And then after a couple of years, there was an opening in the homicide section, and Bob Mueller was the chief of homicide at the time, So I interviewed with Bob, and he took a chance on me, and I ended up spending 22 years in the federal homicide practice in Washington, D.C. This was back when the Department of Justice operated the way it was supposed to. But ever since it's been turned over, I would say under Donald Trump, first to Jeff Sessions, then to Matt Whitaker and then to Bill Barr, it has gone from bad to worse to criminal. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean under Bill Barr, there is no allegiance to the rule of law anymore.

There is allegiance to Donald Trump. And when I see Bill Barr doing favors, though, for Donald Trump's criminal associates, like Roger Stone, like Mike Flynn, arguably Paul Manafort, I mean, just transparently lying about the reasons that he is doing those favors, we all know he's doing the favors because these people are plugged into Donald Trump. It makes me sick. And I've had friends walk off trial teams. One of my former homicide colleagues was John Cravis, fantastic prosecutor. He not only walked off the Roger Stone case, he instantly resigned from the federal government because of the gross abuse perpetrated by Bill Barr and company. So Bill Barr has no business being the Attorney General,

and I look forward to January when he will vacate his position. and hopefully the federal government will begin criminally investigating Bill Barr and Donald Trump and all of Trump's criminal associates and enablers. What do you think happened was Mueller? First of all, I have a very difficult time saying a critical word of Bob Mueller because, well, he was my direct supervisor. So I was in his office every day. And he, in a very real sense, taught me how to be a federal homicide prosecutor.

Now, I think when he took over a special counsel, I think he was a special counsel, I think he was a he is such a by the book guy, and that's what ordinarily we want in our public servants, but I think he stayed inside of a box that perhaps the Rod Rosenstein's mandate of the scope of his investigation put him in, and he was either unable or unwilling to break out of that box. Now, here's the thing. When he returned the Mueller report, and when volume two details meticulously up to 10 felony obstruction of justice offenses. I can predict that Bob Mueller thought, okay, the machinery of government is going to work the way it's supposed to work. I'm going to turn this over. It is a blueprint for impeachment. It is a blueprint for a prosecution after Donald Trump leaves office. And the system

is going to rise to the challenge and do the right thing. And I think Bob Mueller underestimated just how pitiful a place our federal government is in at the moment. I still don't think they understand the degree to which Bill Barr sabotaged the Mueller report. Can you go in a little more detail on that? Yeah, and he's been called out for sabotaging the Mueller report directly in writing in a court opinion

by Judge Reggie Walton, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But when Bill Barr stood up with the Mueller report hot off the presses and lied to the American people about Bob Mueller's findings and conclusions, saying that first of all, there really was no

coordination with Russia. Bull, there were up to 140 contacts, there was intense communication between Trump campaign members and Russians. Now, Bob Mueller concluded there wasn't quite enough to prove a conspiracy because you need a criminal agreement, you need an overt act, you know, there are some legal elements, some bases that we have to touch if we want to charge a conspiracy. And he concluded there was not enough evidence to charge a conspiracy. But he also just meticulously detailed all of the abysmal. obstruction of justice committed by Donald Trump. And he said, look, I'm not permitted under the rules of the Department of Justice, and I understand why he said this, to announce to the world

Donald Trump committed felony offenses. And like it or not, that was a standard that he took very seriously and he abided by. So he said, I'm not permitted to say he committed offenses. He said, if he didn't commit offenses, I would scream it from the rooftops, and I cannot, and I will not scream it from the rooftops. Well, guess what? Two plus two equals four. Donald Trump committed offenses. Bill Barr stood up and told the American people, he is fully exonerated in the clear, no obstruction, no collusion, did nothing wrong, didn't commit any offenses. And the truth could never catch up to Bill Barr's lies. But you know what? Caught up to Bill Barr's lies, and ultimately, I think this is what will win the day. When Judge Reggie Walton, who I had murder cases

before, back in the mid-90s, before he became a federal court judge, when he was litigating this FOIA request, trying to get the unredacted Mueller report into the hands of the American people, he said a number of things in writing. He said, and I can pretty much quote it, he said, Bill Barr spun the results of the Mueller report. Bill Barr mischaracterized the findings and conclusions of the Mueller report. Bill Barr's characterization of the Mueller report is contradicted by the contents of the Mueller report and then he capped it all off with Bill Barr lacks

candor. And of course the inclination. That's a code for a fucking liar. Exactly. And the inclination is to do what? Is to attack the messenger? Well, Reggie Walton must be an angry Democrat, right? Just like he was first appointed as a judge in Washington, D.C.

in 1981 by Ronald Reagan. Then he was reappointed by George H.W. Bush. Then he was appointed to the federal bench in Washington, D.C. by George W. Bush, then he was elevated, designated a FISA court judge by Chief Justice Roberts. You're going to tell me that Reggie Walton is an angry Democrat? Yeah, it's definitely part of the MO of the Trump world that anyone who has any reservation about their criminality or their corruption, no matter what their pedigree is part of the evil deep state and the conspiracy against Donald Trump.

Glenn, I have a question for you. What kind of recourse is there if Trump decides he's not going to leave in January? Yeah, if Trump decides he's not going to leave, I still have confidence in both the military and in our law enforcement agencies, particularly the federal ones in D.C. that I worked with, not just the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, MPD, but I worked with FBI, ATF, DEA, Park Police, Capitol Police, Marshal Service, Secret Service, Uniform Division, Amtrak Police, Postal Police. It goes on and on and on endlessly. I still have faith in both the military and in our law enforcement agencies that when Trump loses in a landslide, if he tries to sort of grab hold of something in the Oval Office and not leave, they will drag him out. They will

drag him out. Now, Bill Barr will try to find any trumped up, no pun intended, reason to try to negate the election results and declare that they should be thrown out and Trump should remain president. I think all of that will fail, and I think the desperation you can begin to it gets more pungent by the day in both Donald Trump's tweets and Bill Barr's conduct. But let's face it, Bill Barr gasped the American people, and he flashbang, grenade the American people while they were exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances. That is kind of a cardinal sin and crime.

And if Bill Barr isn't held accountable for that beginning in January, with a robust, full, fair, apolitical, nonpartisan criminal investigation, hopefully to be followed by an indictment trial and imprisonment of Barr and others, then shame on us. Tell us a little bit about, like, how justice was supposed to operate as a fairly independent part of the executive branch. Yeah, there's traditionally been separation between the Department of Justice and the law enforcement function of the FBI, which is an organization within the Department of Justice and the White House, the administration. And that's important because really the only law enforcement agency that can police abuses

and corruption and criminal conduct by executive branch officials, by administration officials, is the Department of Justice, the FBI by and large. So if you don't have that separation, well, then basically the cops are in bed with the criminals and the whole system falls apart, which is exactly what we've seen. You know, one of the prime examples is when Donald Trump is on that phone call with President Zelensky and he says, look, I know you want the congressionally appropriated money because you want to protect the lives of the Ukrainian citizens against unlawful Russian aggression. However, I need a favor, though.

I need you to announce some phony dirt on Joe Biden. And here's what I want you to do in furtherance of my... criminal scheme, which if you crack open a law dictionary and look up soliciting a bribe, that's what he just did. I want you to get with my man, Bill Barr. Well, the minute that phrase left Donald Trump's mouth, Bill Barr is forever conflicted out of almost anything that has to be investigated about Donald Trump. Because think of it, only two things can be true about Donald Trump telling Zelensky, get with my man Bill Barr to work out the details. One, it's the truth, which means Bill Barr is part of a criminal conspiracy to solicit a bribe,

and it's a conspiracy to commit an offense against the United States under 18 U.S.C. 371, or it's false, and think about it, if Donald Trump just falsely put Bill Barr in a conspiracy that he was not part of, well, now you have potentially even a bigger conflict because you have to exonerate your own name, your own good reputation, not that Bill Barr has a good reputation. So Bill Barr, from that moment on, should have been conflicted out of almost anything that touched Donald Trump. But of course, he instantly cleared himself and continued to be Donald Trump's lawyer and enabler. Could he be prosecuted for all of this? Yes. But it's very unlikely, right? If it's very unlikely, then shame on us, we are slouching toward the end of our republic.

Because here, listen, we didn't put our long national nightmare behind us when Ford pardoned Nixon, right? You never heal. You never obtain justice by declining to hold criminals accountable. If you're a rapist, we don't say we've got to let the victim heal by giving the rapist a pass and putting the long national nightmare behind us. You have to hold people accountable if you're going to put the long national nightmare behind us. So I have been saying we cannot turn the other cheek, we can't let bygones be bygones, because of what these people, Trump and Barr and Pence and Pompeo and Mulvaney and DeVos and Mnuchin and Ross and Wheeler, all of them, what they have put the American people through and how they have so debased our government,

if we don't hold them accountable beginning in January with a full fair, independent, apolitical, nonpartisan investigation, where we let the evidence be our guide. We'll present it all to the grand jury, and if the grand jury decides there's not enough to indict these folks, we will live with that. Just like Trump, I'm sure much to his chagrin, had to live with it in the Andrew McCabe investigation, which is probably why he yanked my friend and former colleague,

Jesse Liu, out of her position as U.S. attorney because she wouldn't indict Andrew McCabe. But if we don't hold these folks accountable beginning in January, I think we can kiss our republic goodbye, because we will be giving birth to something 10 times worse than Donald Trump. I had another former DOJ person say to me a few months ago. I said, how do you want to see this all in? How do you want to see this all over?

And he said, I will walk back in the door tomorrow and do this pro bono to prosecute every one of these motherfuckers. And it struck me that there must be an awful lot of folks of good conscience who left DOJ or were forced out of DOJ, who look at the scope of the criminality, the scope of the corruption, the scope of the abasement of our government. and would be more than willing to get back in this fight. It's so unusual to prosecute a former government, even no matter how corrupt. It's like a new precedent.

I'm just curious how you think that we could thread that needle. So I love when people say there's no precedent for it, because the only way you create precedent is by doing something the first time. You think about it. If we needed precedent for every legal move we were contemplating making, we would never make a legal move because we never would have created precedent. So I am not at all deterred by a lack of precedent that we have not prosecuted a criminal president. I wasn't deterred when I was a federal prosecutor and I did things that had never been done before.

And some of my superiors and some other critics said, you can't do that because it's never been done before. I said, well, watch me. What's the worst that could happen? I fail. Guess what? I failed plenty in life. And I'll fail again in the name of justice and the name of vindicating the rights of victims and protecting the community. If a judge tells me that my legal theory is novel and there's no support for it and he throws it out of court or she throws it out of court, have at it.

I've got, you know, 15 other cases back at the office that I'll start working on. But if ever there was a time to do something for the first time, we should have prosecuted Richard Nixon. But because we didn't, that gave birth to Donald Trump. If we don't prosecute Donald Trump, what is 10 times worse than Donald Trump? I can't even envision that, but that's what we will have to look forward to. I think you're right on target there, Glenn. I mean, there is a pendant moment before us of whether or not we're going to have a nation where the rule of law matters at all.

It's quite obvious that a lot of my former fellow Republicans don't give a damn. And they're perfectly willing to let this clack of Barr and Trump and the others at the top of this corrupt enterprise get away with murder if they have to. And that's the part that has surprised me the most. I think, Rick. I always believed, I guess now naively, that there was some baseline of patriotism below which people would not sink, and yet the Republicans have sunk below it and so much farther. I mean, I'm not a political guy. I grew up in a household where we didn't really do politics for 30 years as a federal prosecutor. I was governed by the Hatch Act, so I wasn't

allowed to be political. All I ever did was vote sometimes for an R, sometimes. Sometimes. for a D, depending on the character of the person. I'm not political, but I always believe whether you're an R or a D or an I, there was a baseline of patriotism. And if you saw the country about to go down in flames, you would stand up and stop it. And apparently, I was dead wrong. It is a sad realization that a lot of people have had that there is no bottom when it comes to being around Trump.

He always finds the thing that makes the people who are weak become corrupt and finds the thing that makes the corrupt become empowered. Hey folks, if you're a fan of the new abnormal podcast, you're going to love The Last Laugh, hosted by The Daily Beast Matt Wilstein. The Last Laugh is a podcast where comedians get real. Every week, Matt talks to some of the biggest names in comedy, including Sarah Silverman, Sasha Baron Cohen, Samantha B, Larry Wilmore, and Steve Bannon, oh wait, not Steve Bannon, about how they're staying funny as the world falls apart around them. Righto Bicoffer is an assistant director of the Watson Center for Public Policy,

And she's also a Democratic pollster and a member of the Lincoln Project. Rachel, thank you so much for joining us today. I have been here to have you on the pod since we started because you and I are, and you are much more so than I, but you and I are both numbers nerds when it comes to politics and people who enjoy watching the secret machinery that hides underneath all the polling and the voter files and everything else in this country. And so I wanted to welcome you to the show and to have you tell folks a little bit about what you do, what you study and what you think the layout of the 2020 landscape looks like. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm excited too. And you're right. We're both number nerds, data nerd, Lincoln Project, mischief people.

And it's great to be together on that with you. And I'm pleased to be on your board. I'm going to election forecasting from the perspective of a trained political scientist, bringing a lot of theoretical elements to the data. So I think that's a really important distinction that I draw between myself and what you might be familiar with out there in, terms of election analysis. And particularly what I'm bringing is this change in the electorate due to polarization. So, you know, we've gotten used to hearing the word polarization, but it's not a buzzword. It's an actual tangible, empirical, measurable phenomenon. And it causes actual, like, behavioral changes. And the research into it first centered on political elites. So when you hear that word,

we're talking about members of Congress, president, the Supreme Court, media. But it was a very lagged effect. Initial research said, oh, look, the public's fine. But actually, in the late 2000s, the public starts to register in public opinion data, severe polarization effects. And it really does shape every part of our politics now, particularly election outcomes and the way elections play out. So what I do is I bring that perspective to forecasting, analyzing election outcomes, talking about the party coalitions and shape of the demographics of the electorate.

And using that information to help people to understand, okay, you know, an election outcome, it might be that independent voters preference changed, but it also might be that the composition of who voted in that election, independence and partisans also changed. And that might have had as much of an impact on the two-party vote share swing as a pure preference change. So what do you think November's going to look like for the Senate? So my election forecasting has always predicted a strong democratic wave, predominantly because the demographics are destiny. Problem for the Republican Party is there. I mean, there's a reason Reince Previs authored the autopsy report in 2013, having Trump come, you know, turn the revolution into a civil war,

waged the civil war, win the civil war and kick poor Rick out of his own political party, right? Those things happened, but it didn't change the basic underlying data. That data problem was still there for the GOP. In 2016, the reason it didn't manifest was, is basically laziness out of the Democratic coalition. They were being told that they couldn't lose an election, that they'd never lose another national election, that they could be picky, basically, and that every poll and forecast showed them winning. So it really did create a situation of complacency. A perfect storm, I would argue, for Donald Trump, but we had a lot of voters who didn't show up, and many who did and voted their hearts instead of their brains. There's Stanley Greenberg as a guy who looks at the demographics and argues, oh, we've got this

inevitable win. That's not true. The demographics are there, but the democratic machine in terms of electioneering is very bad at electioneering. And so you need additional help. And 2020, the fundamental additional help that's been helping Democrats in 2017 and Virginia, 2018 in those midterms, is the presence of Donald Trump. That is causing a massive blowback effect, not only on card-carrying Democrats, but independents who lean left, because not all independents are center-right voters. Many of them are center-left, and some of them are actually much more ideological than your card-carrying Democrat is. The Democratic-mean ideology is actually moderate. What we're really looking at is the perfect storm of motivation, which I call negative partisanship, and demographic

advantage for the Democrats. So what we're saying now, though, is an additional, I mean, who could have ever guessed, a pandemic, an economic collapse, and an initiative of a finally of millennial and Gen Z, basically pushing the country liberally on race. We know that liberalization has been there in public opinion data for a long time, but I'd be lying if I told you, like two weeks ago, I told you that Black Lives Matter would be a mainstream social movement, right? I think both of us have spent enough time watching incremental motion in polling, and mostly that sort of centrifugal thing that we've witnessed of people.

going out into their partisan silos. That's basically where the motion has been in survey work for a long time. There hasn't been a major social alteration with the sweep of Black Lives Matter that I've seen in the numbers in decades. I mean, we've seen a few bumps where the country had a post-2010 rightward scooch, but nothing like this. We're not talking like inside the margin or just outside the margin. We're talking about gigantic numbers right now, especially on race matters. So what Senate seats would you see like being in play for? My forecast, even before the events of the last like a couple of months, always considered in order, Colorado, Arizona and Maine to be very winnable races for the Democrats.

Certainly they have to be competed for and millions of dollars will be spent there. And I, in my forecasting work, I consider the presence of a group which will do for Democrats, that Democrats struggle to do for themselves, bring an effective national. message to the voters of Maine that says, okay, Susan Collins is Donald Trump and Donald Trump is Susan Collins. And there ain't a dimes bit of difference between these two, right? Democrats get stuck up on the logic of that and they don't want to make that. Republicans don't care about logic. That message will get delivered one way or the other to the voters in Maine. So those three have, to me, have always been in the bucket for the Democrats. I assure you that message will get delivered

to the voters in May. But what about like TILUS or, like, TILUS or, Lindsey Graham. And then Tillis is the pivotal seat. He's the fourth seat because probably going to have to come, and it's probably going to have to come to replace that Alabama Senate seat. I mean, it's possible that Doug Jones could hold that seat. But I think we just have to notice operandus that it's gone and look for a four-seat. And that pivotal seat, that majority maker for the Democrats right now is that North Carolina Senate seat. Again, it's about tying Tillis to Trump. It's about copying the illusion of moderation for him and nationalizing the hell out of the race. about working that set of ring. That election's going to be won or loss in Mecklenburg County at Charlotte. Turnout, yeah. Yes, and turnout. If the Democrats can drive up African-American turnout in the Charlotte Metro, that's the ballgame. I want to know what you guys, both of you think about Charlotte hosting the Republican

National Convention and whether or not that will help Tillis or not. None of that shit matters. What matters at the end of the day is, does Tillis get tied to Trump? Does turnout get driven up by the Democrats in that Mecklenburg suburban area? Because ultimately, my research is so focused on this political math equation. What is the percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners, basically, relative to Republican and Republican leaners? When that equation is solved for Democrats fairly equally, though in 2018, they didn't really ever beat Republicans anywhere, but they at least equalize them. They're going to win because pure Indies, this election are going to break at least 55-45 in favor of Democrats and probably 60-40.

A lot of our traditional modeling inside the GOP in swing states was that we knew with a certain pallet of issues in a generic kind of race, we could break independence. I call it 60% to the R side. Those numbers have slipped everywhere. And especially, as we talked about a minute ago, the numbers I'm seeing out of Arizona, that's the apocalypse right now with leaning ours for McSally. In Maricopa County, leaning ours are like, no, thank you. We're done with her. She's with Trump. We're done.

So I think you're right. I think it's going to be in the 50 plus percent. range breaking for the Democrats, 55% range breaking for Democrats. No doubt, no doubt. You think there's a chance of taking, like, Lindsay Graham's seat? If we were to hold the election today before these white-leaning independence, so we've seen erosion this week, this month, the trifect of the pandemic, the economic collapse, and the salience of George Floyd's murder and the coverage and the protest and Trump's reaction

to it has actually done something pretty freaking remarkable from polarized era, okay? Trump's been 43, 44, 45%, through it all, through all of these horrible things that he's done for the four years that he's been in there. He's never moved, but he has dropped down to 41, 40%, 309, and the erosion's coming from two things. It's coming from those stalwart, right-leaning independence who have stuck with him through it all and always said, oh, it's the media's picking on him and this Ukraine thing is blown out, or whatever. They always found a reason. Until this week, a few of them have been like, no, it's too early to say it's. a trend, but I did find a poll in which Republican support dropped below 90%. If that happens and that becomes a trend, it's going to be, like, we could be looking at Lindsay Graham lives in that South

Carolina C. Yes, we could. That is a heavy lift and a lot of things have to go right for that seat to happen. But not a single one of these folks right now can close their eyes at night and think, I've got this in the bag. That's right. That drop off at the top with independence, as even Steve Bannon said, you know, if we end up on the outside of the outside groups like, L.P. and others end up moving three or four percent of the vote. It's not only over for Trump. It's over in the Senate. Yes. But is it over for MET? So the problem in Kentucky is you've got a mostly white electorate and low levels of education. Yeah, and an R plus 30 state. So like South Carolina's also got fairly low levels of education, but it's higher education than Kentucky.

But the real reference maker is the African American population. Right. And the suburban areas around the metros in South Carolina are becoming much more purple than they were. even five years ago because of the growth in the state. What about Georgia? Like, there are two seats up in Georgia. So, like I was just telling my followers, primary turnout for Democrats is not a significant predictor of whether they're going to have a wave election in the fall.

I tracked it extensively through 2017, 2018, to see how does it perform as a predictor in 2018. It's a noisy signal. But here's the one thing about the model. In situations where Democrats do have a turnout surge in a primary, they won every single one of the three. And so in Georgia, what we saw was like basically a doubling of democratic primary turnout over normal cycles, right? And that was with the state making it as hard as humanly possible for black citizens of the state to vote. So I would say if Georgia didn't have the institutional constraints, i.e. suppressive system in place, like I would feel a lot better about Georgia, but it is definitely possible. Because of Brian Kemp. It's a definite toss-up state. There's no doubt.

out about that. Here's the thing we've got to keep in mind. Thinking of Georgia as a swing state before Trump would have gotten people just laughing. When you look at those counties in the double ring and the donut of counties around Atlanta itself, the formerly deep red northern tier has turned purple. And you're going to probably have 62 to 64% of the vote within a 60 mile radius of Atlanta for the whole state. And as that has changed, if you can get African-American turn out and overcome the systemic problems. And by the way, those problems, as an old Georgia Republican hand said to me the other day, he said, I think these things are much more a design problem than an accident. Right. Oh, no question. The fact that Brian Kemp is ass deep and his

chief lobbyist is the guy who sold these voting systems. And that guy is apparently now also on the Pascal train. I think we should keep a very close eye on the great state of Georgia. What about Joni Ernst? Yeah, Joni's in trouble as well, right? She's in trouble. Iowa. is a swingy state. Yeah, and so you know what the Iowa state Republican legislature majority is doing, and they, of course, have a trifecta there so they can do what they want to do, is they took a look at the primary there, which did exactly what it did in Georgia. It was through the roof.

I mean, the Democratic primary turnout in that race was just ginormous, and so now they're like, okay, well, let's see. How can we limit voting access? In a functioning democracy, like if citizens that were capable of, doing democratic accountability, the party wouldn't be able to get away with these kinds of things. But, you know, we have failures on many fronts going on in America, and citizens are certainly not innocent. Can we talk about Montana for a second? Sure. I think it's one of the most exciting races out there, because in Montana, a couple million dollars will decide the race. And it's a real

test of the fact that Bullock's faves are so high. Yeah. And he had a reputation as a governor who went up the middle. It's a great lesson for Democrats. in red and purple states to maybe not indulge all of your ideological wish list and put a guy in there who could win. I think that is going to be, that's a, that's a case with a state with a lot of test case things to come. Yeah, you don't want to throw like a squad member out to Montana. There's so, like I preach two things. I mean, I definitely say you don't need to go out to Montana though and pretend to be a Republican and run as a Democrat, okay? I certainly don't want to confuse my fans and suggest that I'm saying that. That said, that doesn't mean you go out there and run on the

Green New Deal and Medicare for all. A lot of gray area going on between those two things. Do we think, though, Rachel, that Montana's winnable for Democrat? Yeah, so for Bullock, I think it is. And I think what really has helped him is the economic collapse. I mean, I think pain's going to be big and rural Montana. I think that might depress a little bit of the Trump enthusiasm that was there before the pandemic.

I think that the economic stability was allowing a lot of Trump voters to ignore the other stuff and be enthusiastic. about him and now it's a little bit harder to be that enthusiastic. I'm showing me the data, you know, the problem is I'm trying to think about data that I can't see yet because it doesn't exist yet and it won't exist until the fall. So, you know, but I know what I need to look for. I just, I have to count on other firms to collect it and then trying to raise money to collect my own survey data as well. But the data just can't exist until we get into that fall season and we'll have a much better idea of what's going on. Absolutely. Okay, talk to us about the Kansas Senate.

Yeah, so Kansas Senate, right? I mean, that is a race that is completely contingent on the nominee. If it's Chris Kovac, then the Democrats are looking at Kansas being just as competitive for them for that pivotal seat, I think, as the North Carolina Senate seat, it's a totally different pathway. We're not talking about minority voters being critical there so much as suburban white college educated surge out of the, you know, the Kansas cities. But it changes the race. So it's really just so contingent on whether the Republican establishment, can beat back that Kobach effort to win the nomination. I will say this, having Kobach was a client we fired one time. That is a guy who has a very strong appeal to the most likely Republican voters. But he has something about him that, and I remember this from the focus groups back in the day on him,

there's something about him that creeps out everyone else. He's like Corey Stewart over in Virginia, right? Chris has always managed to not actually put the Confederate flag sticker on back of his pickup truck. But the fact of the matter is, and people underestimate this also, Kansas, like a lot of states, has a growing Hispanic population. Yes. I don't, yes. I don't know why Hispanics would have problems with Chris Kolbach. I can hardly think of it. I have no idea why, right? What could be happening? My question for you is also because Kansas has a Democratic governor, do you think that that will

affect? I mean, I always feel like states with Democratic governors let people vote. Certainly any place that doesn't have a Republican trifecta, especially right now, is going to have better voting. It's unfortunate that we've hit this point. The fact of the matter is our country's history has permeated the entire history with moving parties using access to the ballot box to maintain power. It's certainly not a new thing. It's a shameless part of our history. Hey, Rachel, I've got one more question for you today. What is your opinion on the effects for both Republicans and Democrats of the question of mail-in voting?

So the research on mail-in voting is really conditional, right? Depends on the state, right? And Rick knows better than anyone that the party that pioneered absentee voting, mail-in voting, in terms of turnout increases, is not a Democratic party for Republican party. So, like, the day that Trump made his statements on Fox and Friends about coming after absentee balloting, the chair of the Florida GOP, I always like to think about what he must have been like to be in his living room, right? It is coffee. People look at Florida, like, okay, what happened in 2018?

I mean, because people wouldn't vote for Gillum because he's black. No, because really there's not much difference in the vote shares between Nelson and Gillum. Why do these polls that thought, you know, this 10-point win? I mean, my own forecasting model always thinks Florida's going to win. I have to handicap it and say, like, no, you know. And the reason is is because the Florida GOP's turnout machine using absentee palating is so well-tuned that, like, the GOP turnout. It was the secret sauce of the Florida GOP, since I'm ancient. The Florida GOP chairman, a guy named Tom Slade back in 1994, did a plan called Operation Sledgehammer.

It was a 20-year plan to fuck the Florida Democrats. But a big part of it was absentee and early voting. Yeah, because I've actually put this all together on conjecture. You know, I have no very little, like, actual data. I see the data. So I know the Republican Party's turning out in the high 70s in some of these elections, and I know that shit doesn't happen by accident. So.

Hey, Rachel, tell us again about your new video podcast. Yeah, so my new video podcast YouTube show is called The Election Whisper, pre-muing in a couple of weeks on YouTube. You'll also be available in a podcast form. First show should drop on June 23rd. And it is going to be fantastic. It's actually going to be like an election nerd Disneyland. I mean, bringing in people like Rick.

And also a lot of people who are more off the radar. So we have a segment called Fuck That Guy. It's very exciting. And my fuck that guy for Friday is going to be Donald Trump Jr. We recently learned that last summer he took a trip to Mongolia to kill endangered cheap. And that cost the taxpayers $77,000 in Secret Service costs. And there's probably more, but that's what we saw. That is like taxpayer money I would like to never, ever, ever, ever, ever spend ever again on the Trump sons killing semi-endangered, fluffy animals.

All right, Rick Wilson, who's your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy this week is time traveler. Senator Steve Huffman of the great state of Ohio. He's a doctor. Now, he's not a real senator. He's a state senator. He's a state senator. That's correct.

He's a doctor from Tip City, north of Dayton, Ohio. Apparently, Tip City has a rift in time because I'm just going to read this quote on the air because you can't believe this fucking guy. I think it's worse that he's a doctor, honestly. I'm just going to read this quote. quote on the air because you can't believe this fucking guy. He's referring to COVID in the African-American community. And he said, we know it's twice as often, correct? Could it be that African-Americans, the colored population, do not wash their hands as well as other groups or wear a mask or not

socially distance themselves? Could that just be maybe the explanation of why there's a higher incidence? Do you want to know the punchline of that horrendous quote? Could I please? He was saying that to an African-American woman. How does he still have teeth? I don't know. I actually said she should have just punched him, but she was classier than that, and she just punched him with facts and science. This is the kind of thing where they've elected somebody who is either, again, there are only two theories here. Either he's a dumb and racist guy, or he's a time traveler from another era who uses the language of 70 years ago. I think he's a dumb and racist guy. That's my money's on a dumb.

He's my fuck-the-sky for this week. That's a good one. 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, who 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.

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