The Daily Beast Podcast - Zephyr Teachout on When Cuomo’s BFF Tried to Intimidate Her

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

The New Abnormal has a new co-host: political commentator Andy Levy! He joins Molly Jong-Fast in his first hosted episode of The New Abnormal to talk about a new Cuomo TV pitch for director Ryan Murphy and the only thing Kevin McCarthy is good at. Plus! New York DA candidate (and former Andrew Cuomo opponent) Zephyr Teachout recounts the ways that she experienced the “scary” part of Cuomo’s leadership style and WaPo’s Dana Milbank explains that very depressing media report about Biden vs Trump coverage. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes it's just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at The Atlantic and Vogue. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. And on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank will talk to us about the media coverage of President Joe Biden. Then we'll talk to Zephyr Teachout, who's running for Attorney General of New York, and she'll tell us all about what's important for her run. But first, we want to give a warm welcome to our new co-host, Andy Levy. Welcome. I don't even need to welcome you anymore because you will be as abnormal as I am soon. Andy Levy. I think I'm already as abnormal as you, just not in, you know, not in name until now.

It's going to get worse, baby. Hang out with me and Jesse for a little while. It can only get worse. Co-host, Andy Levy. We're going to talk about libertarianism today. Oh, fun. Our segue is Thomas Massey, the congressman from great state of Kentucky, who went to MIT. I have to say, you know, I for so long had so much respect for MIT.

Not any, no. So we did a Christmas picture. I don't know if it's his real Christmas picture or if it was to trigger the lives. But a picture of, I guess, a lot of blonde people, I assume his family, all of them holding very big weapons. The goal, I think, was to get a little bit of that performative moronics is what gets those small dollar donations in the Republican Party, and I think that was the goal. But I wanted your hot take because Massey, at least historically, claimed to be a libertarian at one time. Well, I actually was a libertarian at one time. I am not anymore. And I don't even know what libertarianism is anymore because there were a lot of people who I thought

were libertarians who somehow managed to align themselves with Donald Trump, which is, I think as far from libertarianism as I thought libertarianism was. But, you know, with Massey, it's just, it's like it was a picture of him and his wife and their kids, but basically it was a picture of they were, it was all children. Like all of this is just so childish. And it's just, you know, if it's, if it's meant as trolling, like, whatever, you're, you're a fucking sitting congressperson, you know, do you really, is that, is that your life now? Like, that makes you proud when you look in the mirror. that, oh, I trolled people on Twitter. Like, that's your resume.

I mean, come on. What's really interesting about it is that there was a columnist from reason. Yeah, it was, I think Billy Binion is the reason writer who, you know, he sort of basically said, like. Here we go. I say this as a libertarian. When people are confused and asks why I don't like gun culture, I should just show them this photo. They're not handbags. They're machines used to kill people.

Necessary in certain situations, yes. but I'm tired of folks acting like this stuff is cutesy. Pretty sane if you ask me. Yeah, he's 100, I mean, he's 100% correct. And, you know, which of course gets you in trouble these days. But, you know, and as you said, Massey then, you know, replied and sort of tagged, you know, at reason. When someone sort of called him on it, he basically admitted he said the donors care, you know. So he was basically like for a bunch of people who are obsessed with cancel culture, like,

look at what you're doing. You know, you're going after a columnist and trying to get him in trouble with the donors. And what really bothers me is I, you know, I follow a bunch of people who work at reason. And it's entirely, maybe I missed it or whatever, but I did not see a lot of jumping to Binion's defense. And that, you know, struck me as as troublesome and a little, uh, or troubling and a little problematic, you know, again, especially for, I just these people who are constantly obsessed with cancel culture, but they don't seem to really want it to go both ways. Well, here's Dave Rubin. Everyone at reason except for Nick is a tool, troll, slash irrelevant.

Okay. Coming from possibly the slowest person in right-wig and grifting, which is a real, real feat for Jabe. Yeah, I mean, Dave Rubin is not somebody who should ever be taken seriously. and it's unfortunate that he is by certain segments of the population. It's nice that he likes Nick Gillespie. I mean, we all love Nick Glewsby, but Dave Rubin's golden retriever energy is really something to be hold. But yeah, no, I think it's a good point.

They've really lost their shit on the guns. I mean, not everything, but really on the guns, especially. You know, I'm not an anti-gun person. I mean, I was in the Army. When I lived in Los Angeles, I owned a handgun. You know, I am not a hardcore anti-gun person, but I'd all. Also, like, this whole gun culture thing is so, again, it's just, it's just childish. And it's this fetishization of weapons of death.

It's like. But it's interesting because it does come back to this idea, right? Like, last week we had Marjorie Taylor Green and we had Lauren Boper, both of which are big small dollar donation getters. And we had, Lauren said this crazy lie of a story. story that was extremely Islamophobic about how Ilhan Omar, she didn't have a backpack, so the security guards weren't worried that she was going to blow them up. I mean, it was like the most racist, disturbing story. And it wasn't even, and of course, according to Ilhan Omar, and I'm sure this is right, it wasn't even true. But Bobert has been telling the story all over town for months and months,

and the goal was small dollar donations. And then Marjorie Taylor Green injected herself into it because it begot a wave of like, are these the fringe or are these really the mainstays as a Republican Party? Right. And the answer is they're the mainstays. They're not the fringe anymore. And the fringe is the mainstay, I think is maybe one way to put it. You know, all these Republican strategists said that the extremism gets the money on Facebook. So really, we now know the Republican Party is being guided by the most extreme part of their base. But we do now know that it's not a chicken or the egg thing. It's Facebook. book that drives this first and then it's that they follow along with the base because it gets the money, which doesn't seem like it may have a solution on like so many things we discuss in this podcast. What do you guys think of that? That's obviously true that it gets them the money and it gets them the small donations.

But I don't think that's all of it. I think that's maybe even just, I think that's kind of a reductive way of looking at it to think that that's the whole game. Because I really think that they do want to affect change in Washington. And I think it's, you know, I think we have to be a little bit careful. when we talk about people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Beaubord as just like, oh, they just want to raise money off it. And yes, that is obviously a big part of it. But they do have agendas and they do want to get those agendas passed.

And so I think, you know, it's sort of at our own peril that we dismiss them as I think for a long time we did. And I think I think people are starting to take them a little more, I hate to say seriously, but not their ideas, but the fact that they exist and are there. Right. No, I agree. And I think you make fun of them at your own peril. Well, that's the thing. And they're easy to make fun of because they're fucking idiots. And they're idiots in what should be just an incredibly, obviously goofy way. And yet, they have support, you know, because this is where we are now. And, you know, Kevin McCarthy doesn't give a shit. And he, you know, he's fine with it. He's made that clear. And, you know, he'll occasionally, you know, make some sort of half-ass gesture at, at, at, you know, that's sort of a wrist slap. But generally speaking, he doesn't care because, you know, again,

the money's coming in and they're part of his caucus. What's happening here is McCarthy, he's being Trumpy because he thinks Republicans are going to win back the house, which a lot of people think. And he wants to be the speaker. He wants to be more Trumpy than Paul Ryan. He's also quite stupid. I think it's fair to say, but he doesn't want to get replaced by a Jim Jordan. Now, he happens to be friends with Jim Jordan and is working really hard to placate the Jim Jordan side of the caucus, which is quickly becoming all of it. But I'm curious to know what you think. Where does this end? Unfortunately, I do think it ends in 2022 with Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. I think it's going to be, it's going to be a miracle if that's not the case. And I don't mean that it'll be, you know, some other

Republican. I mean, it'll be a miracle if the Democrats retain control. But, you know, Kevin McCarthy has, made this sort of, you know, he has no principles. His only principle is power. And he's made that deal. And, you know, and that's what we're seeing now. And he's going to continue making that deal. You know, he is not, he is not anyone that the Democrats can deal with. I don't think. You know, and I am sure. No, of course not. And that's, you know, and that's where we are. You know, at this point, I would say there's probably a better chance of dealing with McConnell than with McCarthy. which is damning with, you know, incredibly faint praise. Like praise so faint, most, you know, anyone over 30 can't hear it.

But it's, you know, I do think if you put them next to each other, McCarthy has, you know, and maybe it's a bit of an upset, but he's so far in terms, he's the bigger asshole right now, you know, I think then McConnell. Which is pretty disturbing. No, it really is. But that is, because I do think, I think the House gives you a better sense of where the Republican Party is nationwide than the Senate does. And, you know, look, for obvious reasons, there's a lot more of them. You know, I don't, you know, our listeners are very, very smart and they know what I need.

But I do think, you know, so I think you look to the House. This is a good start. I like this. This is a good interest. Absolutely. You know, I'm not above it. And I don't pretend to be. And if anyone says, I'm above it, they're lying.

The house to me is where you look to see where the future of the Republican Party is in this country. And that is fairly terrifying right now. I mean, you've got Kinzinger, who, you know, whether you agree with him and not on a lot of issues, has shown himself to be a fairly principled guy. And he's leaving. And, you know, you've got Liz Cheney, who, again, I never wanted to turn Liz Cheney into a hero. But for simply saying that the election wasn't stolen, the Wyoming Republican Party, you know, no longer recognizes her as a Republican. And this is where

the party is going. And this is, you know, and McCarthy, as dumb as he is, he, this is like the, he's like a savant, like the one thing he's not dumb about is, you know, gaining power and, and reading the tea leaves. And he knows what's going on. And, you know, so he, he has gone from someone who was like, you know, again, sort of, sort of fairly libertarianish, maybe earlier in his career. to someone who has just gone full-on Trumpy and he doesn't care. It's a game to him. It's a game of power for him. Since you have renounced libertarianism on this show, I'm going to talk about my worst hot take ever, which I'm still apologizing for. It's been like 500 years, but you know what?

The thing is, I'm sober 24 years, so I have no problem admitting that I was wrong about something. So, you know, take that right-wing medium. And media, and then my husband just walk by and goes except in the bosom of the family. Wow. So, fuck him, man. I need an office with a goddamn door. That's not the lesson you should take from that, Molly. I was wrong about Andrew Cuomo in February 2020, March, April, April 2020, when I said he was a good anything.

I was wrong. I've written out two pieces where I've said I was wrong. I was definitely wrong. The guy is an endless font. of scumbaggery. But this is not even about Andrew. We've moved on to Chris. What happened, man?

I would like to state for the record that I was always right about Andrew Cuomo. And I was always right about Chris Cuomo. Yeah, same. So there. Tell us your Chris Cuomo hot take. My Chris Cuomo hot take is he should have been fired a long time ago. He should never have been allowed to have his brother, the governor, on as a guest on his show.

That was one of the most embarrassing things. I have seen on cable news, and that is really, really, really saying a lot. I worked at Fox News for 10 or 11 years, and that is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever seen on cable news. Everything he did was a direct violation of the most journalism ethics 101. My jaw was just continually dropping, and then, you know, he should have been, at the very least he should have been fired when it first came out that he was helping his brother while still on the air at CNN. And I've said this before, you know, he talks a big game about, you know,

he wants to make this about helping his brother. And, you know, and unfortunately, we saw some people in journalism sort of, if not leaping to his defense, but basically saying, well, I would help my brother out if they were in trouble, you know, and sort of not pointing out that, first of all, what he was helping his brother out with was trying to, you know, dig up, dirt on people who accused him of sexual harassment, which if you would do that for your brother, yeah, you shouldn't do that even for your brother. That was such an interesting moment because, I mean, nobody asked them. You know, there was a perfectly good opportunity not to get involved in a terrible scandal,

and they did it anyway. Yeah, no, exactly. They couldn't help themselves, basically. Yeah, nobody asked you. That has nothing to do with you. Like, just sit it out, man. Right. Family first, job second.

that was what he kept saying, then take a goddamn leave of absence from your job and help your family. Because you know what? In journalism, it can't be family first job. There are a lot of jobs where, you know, fortunately or unfortunately or not, it can't be family first. And you can't throw out your ethics at a job for a family member. You can take a leave of absence from your job, which Chris Cuomo could easily have afforded to do, by the way. This is not some, you know, this is not some poor. person who has to keep working while helping their family. This is an ungodly rich person who couldn't even take, you know, because he couldn't bear to not have his mug in front of people every night, you know, lecturing us while he was, you know, doing horrible things. So he should have been fired as far as I'm concerned back then. You know, the fact that he was fired now, great. I don't think, you know, Jeff Zucker's statement that this was a tough decision, well, it shouldn't have been a tough

decision. I know what you mean. It's a guy you've employed for a number of years, but sorry, this was not a tough decision. He made it real, real easy for you, Jeff. You know, this was not a borderline case. There's no plot it's here for CNN for doing what they should have done a long time ago. I mean, for me, in my mind, I just always thought there was so many problematic conflicts, you know, and then there was also allegations of sexual harassment. You know, I just don't I understand there are so many talented women and men who are in the cable news space. It's okay to have someone new. It's not the Supreme Court.

Yeah. And other people, you know, I'm not the first to point this out. But it's not like Chris Cuomo was Walter Cronkite, you know, or someone where you're like, well, and again, if Walter Cronkite had done what Chris Cuomo done, he should have been fired too. You know, I'm not saying he shouldn't have. But it's not even that. It's basically, you know, baseball has this metric wins above replacement, which ranks a player by like how many wins they get their team above what like sort of an ordinary player would get them. And if you did that for cable news, I don't think you're sitting there going Chris Cuomo's wins above replacement or ratings above replacement.

Is that fantastic? He's not like, this is the guy you're going to the mat for, you know, he's not a generational talent. And like you said, Molly, there are a lot of people who could do the job as good as, if not better than him. And many of them are, you know, I know this is a shock. Many of them are not even white guys, you know? So to keep a guy around who has all these issues and, you know, believe me, the sexual harassment stuff that's come out about him, I'm not at all saying that CNN knew about those before this investigation. But his reputation was not minty fresh before these things came out.

There were stories that would go around and whatever. And I don't know if they're true or not. But there were definitely stories about him. I'm going to save you from having to finish that sentence because who knows. But as someone myself who has been a beneficiary of nepotism, right? I had a famous mother. And I love to talk. No, listen, man, I'm not a fucking hypocrite.

I'm who I am, right? I had a famous mother, famous grandfather. I mean, not as famous as Mario Cuomo. But, you know, they didn't have a catchphrase or anything. They weren't governor of New York. but they were famous. Nobody gives a fuck. Like, just fire him.

Who cares? You know, it's a nice novelty. It's fun for party games. But if you're not, you know, it's, I guess it's relevant for Jeopardy or whatever. But it really doesn't make you any better at anything than anyone else. So why the fuck do it? Yeah. I just, I want a Ryan Murphy show on FX.

Oh, I was just thinking that. I have to say when it came down, I was like, I would watch the hell out of a Ryan Murphy show about that. Yeah. It would be called The. family, you know, or something like that. And it would be, I think, John Tuturo and Bobby Canna Valley as Chris and Andrew. And then you bring in Al Pacino as the ghost of Mario Cuomo, who like, you know, pops up to give his kids advice in various situations. And I would watch the hell.

I don't even like Ryan Murphy and I would watch the hell out of that. I mean, I would watch that. That would be incredible. The only thing I don't like of this is thinking of all the. conservative takes of we used to represent Italian culture by showing people killing each other and doing manly things. Yeah, but I don't think that would happen because conservatives hate the comas. Yeah, well, you know, but they'll do anything to win a point against the Hollywood liberals.

Yeah, you did see some people on Fox News. You saw Tucker Carlson kind of defending them? Yeah, I'm shocked. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker. or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media, like Jim Acosta or Soledadadad O'Brien.

Sometimes we just have fun to talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. That's New Abnormal.com.

That's new abnormal. That the daily beast.com. Dana Middlebank is a columnist at the Washington Post. Welcome to the new abnormal Dana Milbank. Thank you, Molly. It's a pleasure. I'm very excited to have you. The first thing I want to ask you, and I may have made this up, but I really want to talk about it.

Were you an inspiration for a character on Veep? Or is that urban legend? Like the way your mind works. No, not to the best of my knowledge. Oh, okay. You weren't. Okay. Is there some sort of cynical hack character?

He's very difficult on the administration. And you've never seen it? Yeah, I've seen the show. I haven't identified with anybody. Leon West. I was always told that Leon West was based on you, but obviously not. Wow. Well, I'd be honored if that were the case.

So anyway, I wanted to talk to you about your piece last week, or was it this weekend? It was Saturday. It came in on Saturday. Is that right? Yeah, it published on the Webster. Friday, and it's in the Sunday newspaper, which is that thing that... Which I know. ...land on people's doorsteps with lots of supermarket ads and car ads in it.

Exactly. Explain to our listeners what you did, because it's pretty interesting. Yeah, so, I mean, we've always talked about, you know, is the media too negative to positive? And for the most part, it's all just speculation because it's not really something you can measure. Pew Research Center does the first three months. They have, you know, I guess a bunch of interns sit down and go through the process of analyzing every article, which sounds dreadful. But, you know, artificial intelligence allows us to do what they call sentiment analysis.

It's usually done to analyze investment language. You know, people know where to put their money. So I ask people who do this, the company is called Fiscal Note. big information company, asked them to do an analysis of the press coverage of Biden and the press coverage of Trump. They look through some 200,000 article, tens of millions of words, 65 publications. You know, there's all kinds of algorithms about the adjectives where they are in story, where they are relative to candidates or the president's name, all kinds of considerations like that. And they come up with a negative or positive on a scale from minus one to positive one.

You know, the sort of the headline finding was for the last four months, Biden has been getting as negative as the coverage that Trump got. And in some cases, more negative in certain months, particularly August than Trump got during the same four months in 2020. And you remember what that time was when he was embracing the proud boys and QAnon and, you know, undermining the postal service and then refusing to commit to the acceptance. the results and then refusing to accept the results of a free and fair election. So I think it's pretty startling that we collectively in the media have been as negative on Biden and in some cases more so than we were on Trump during those infamous four months last year. Yeah, it is. Now, the methodology here, what do you think? Well, look, I mean, people say there are problems with sentiment analysis, this, and, you know, it's not a human being, so it can't really tell. And I'm not really disputing that

when people say, you know, there's a lot of problems. But on the other hand, it's compared to what? We don't have any, we don't have any other tools. I do note that, you know, I mentioned the Pew Research Center does the first three months of a presidency, the first 100 days. The artificial intelligence study that I had done is consistent with that Pew findings. That gives me some comfort. I mean, Another issue that can be raised fairly, I think, is we're comparing Biden's first year to Trump's last year and also to 2019. That wasn't to, you know, cook the books in some way. It's basically because the database doesn't go back to 2017. They incidentally are trying to expand it so we can get that kind of a comparison.

But if anything, you would think the coverage of Trump in that final year when all this craziness was going on would have been more negative. So I think in that sense, it doesn't really disrupt the finding. In fact, it makes it all the more startling. Right. And it's impossible to live in this media ecosystem without being like something is very wrong here, right? We have found ourselves in a place where there is a lot of negative coverage of Biden in ways that I didn't even think were possible. Yeah. And it is interesting.

It's a, you know, we are, the negativity about Biden is different. And so with Trump, it's like, this is. really bad that the President of the United States is trying to overturn democracy. And now we're saying, boy, this is really bad that Biden can't get his majority in Congress to enact his social infrastructure bill. They're not exactly the same thing. I mean, look, there is a problem in the media now. But I think we've come by it honest in the sense that we're in this uncharted territory here. We haven't in any of our lifetimes been in a situation before where there is a major political party in the United States is basically not participating with our democratic institutions as

trying to disenfranchise voters to tighten the electorate. And it's just consistently using the most outrageous lies and conspiracy theories against Biden and the Democrats. And I think we've sort of gone back to our old pre-Trump default and say, well, there's two sides here. But it just doesn't seem like that works. I don't think anybody's doing it in some sinister way. there's certainly no conspiracy in the press. I just think the old methods don't really work here anymore. I don't think of you as like a crazy, woke activist. I'm crazy, Molly, but I don't have any pronouns whatsoever.

But you've also been at this for about 20 plus years. So you've really covered a lot of politics. And I think that's an important thing to talk about when we talk about this, because, for example, I know that a lot of people, on the left considered Bush to be a war criminal, but he's not the same as Trump. Not at all. And, you know, I covered Georgia Bush's first term for the Washington Post as a regular White House reporter. And, you know, I was pretty tough on them the way I think a journalist should be. And, you know, we fought like cats and dogs. I have to tell you, now when I talk to Andy Card or, you know,

any of these people who are in the Bush White House, I say, remind me what everybody was fighting about. back then because it doesn't seem at all important. And they agree. I mean, you know, in the in the fight we're in today between democracy and authoritarianism, we're all on the same side, the people who worked at Bush White House. I mean, maybe there are a couple of exceptions, but most of them and me. And I mean, and I don't think there's anything wrong with journalists, you know, I'm a columnist, but, you know, regular beat reporters taking sides in the struggle between democracy and authoritarianism between fact and fiction. It's just like, you know,

traditionally we're not partisans, but you can be a partisan for the facts and you can be a, you know, a partisan for democracy. I think we have to be. I think that's really an important point. So, Data, you had a tweet that piqued my interest after Ryan Lizzo was pushing back on your piece a little bit,

that it's interesting that Germany's Axel Springer completed its takeover of Politico on October 18th, and that's exactly when Politico took its sharply negative turn against Biden. And can you give us some background of this and like what you're seeing here? Yeah. And let me take a step back from this. Ryan Liz is an old friend of mine. We worked at the New Republic together, you know, starting 1998.

You guys are so old. And we're friends. I was startled by his reaction. And I didn't mean to, you know, I mean, I wrote about political playbook. I didn't think he or they would take it personally. But I can see why they did. So I accept my responsibility for starting that brawl. And I want to be clear, I think Politico is an offender. I think the Washington Post is an offender. I think we pretty much all are in the media. So I didn't mean to say they're worse than anybody else. They're not. They're worse than some. They're better than some. But this is a media-wide problem. This is not a Politico problem. The narrow point I was making about Politico is they took a distinctly negative turn in November. So I was doing a little bit of conspiracy theory mongering there. And you know what? It's not right when others

it and I shouldn't do it either. So there are plenty of other reasons to explain why they would have gone negative at that time. And from what I understand, Axel Springer is pretty hands off. Yeah, except when it comes to Israel. But I've read other reporting, which says that a lot of the Biden administration coverage turned sharply negative in around August. Yeah. And you can see why. That was the messy Afghanistan pullout. We started to focus on the inflation problems. You know, the Delta wave was at its high flow. at that point. You know, you can kind of understand that, and that was the most negative month in the analysis for Biden, but it hasn't really returned to equilibrium. Now, you know, and maybe it is

the media, as usual, just sort of follow the polls, but I think it's, you know, it's a chicken and egg, and I think the media also drive the polls. So I think we're in that kind of a rut now and looking for bad news, you know, very excited if the jobs report is not good, kind of not so interesting, If it is good. You know, we've been here before. At best, it's news bias. At worst, it's bias bias. Right.

I mean, I don't even know, you know, I'm talking about sentiment as opposed to bias, because I don't know, you know, we can't know what's going on in people's heads. We can only know what they type out of their computers. But I think it's basically we've just, it's nothing nefarious in the sense that we've returned to our roots of just being sort of adversarial journalists.

You know, we like conflict. And there's really nothing wrong with that. But, you know, the conflict now is between, as we were saying, democracy and its opposite. I think that's the conflict we need to be focusing on, not the Republicans are blaming Biden for COVID deaths now after, you know, spending the year discouraging people from getting vaccines. So they're dying. So we're silly to be neutral in that kind of an argument. It is interesting to me that we have a right-wing media that is completely focused on GOP messaging to the point of like, you. You know, the Washington Free Beacon is basically an op-o shop.

They found this story of the Veep buying these copper pots. They wrote it up. It went to Fox. It was retweeted by the GOP. I mean, there is a real messaging arm on the right. Oh, yeah, I think so. And there is not the equivalent on the left. That was the interesting.

Another interesting thing about the analysis is you would think that the right-wing outlets would get particularly negative on Biden, but the left wing outlets would get positive. It doesn't work that way because the left wing outlets are not partisan. They're ideological. So they've been taking wax at Biden for not being progressive enough. So it is a very different thing. There's a partisan media on the right. Even, you know, august publications like the National Review, which were, you know, William F. Buckley, it's now a shill for Trumpism, which is astonishing to me. We don't really have that on the left. There certainly. ideological, but they do not see it as their role at all to defend the cult of Biden. It's even

funny to say cult of Biden. Right. There is no cult of Biden. No, everybody's after him just for different reasons. Right. It is interesting. I'm writing about how the media has failed to cover the fall of row with the kind of gravitas it should have. What do you think the failure here is? What could you do to fix it? Well, this is a little different from democracy versus authoritarian. I mean, this is in the, you know, this is within the bounds of argument. But I do think a lot of the row coverage has been, you know, who's it going to benefit, you know, will there be a wave of, you know, outrage among women that will benefit Democrats next year? Or will that not, in fact, be the case? And that may or may not happen one way or the other, but we have had, as the

justices say, a super precedent. And there's most people alive today. do not remember in America where men did not have access to legal abortion. It's an enormous societal change that the Supreme Court is about to bring about. And I think that's getting lost in sort of the calculations of, you know, who wins, who loses in the short term, whereas this is much bigger than partisan advantage. Yeah. So interesting. Thank you so much for joining us. It has been my pleasure, and I look forward to reading your excellent newsletter. Zephyr Teachout is running for Attorney General of New York State. Welcome to New Abnormal, Zephyr.

Hi, I'm so excited to be on. Great to talk to you. We're excited to have you. The first thing we have to talk about is you were bright about Andrew Cuomo. Yeah, obviously I remember very clearly when I decided to run against him. And frankly, it was a little scary because it wasn't. just, this is back in 2014, and I chose to run against him for several reasons, including that he refused to enact campaign finance reform, refused to do anything for kids in terms of what was

happening with school funding, was shutting down an anti-corruption investigation before it really got started. But, you know, so I was making this decision, I made the decision to run against him because we had real substantive differences, and I really believe New York deserved a lot better. But I got to tell you, his reputation for vengeance and retaliation was so strong that it was a little scary. And that after I started running, I would hear these stories and I continue to hear them about, you know, if I would just talk to somebody, they would get a call from Joe Pococo. Who is for the for our dads explain who Joe Proko is. Perko was Andrew Cuomo's right-hand man who is now in prison for bribery. But at the time, everybody knew him as Andrew Cuomo's right-hand man.

Cuomo said he's like a brother to me. And he would call people for talking to me. I mean, I wasn't getting endorsements. This was this was for having conversations. to say, what are you doing even giving her the time of day? So, you know, I am really happy that Andrew Cuomo is no longer the governor in New York, but I am, it's hard not to be a little sad about the lost years. You know, like New York is just so much better than Andrew. And his economic development policy alone, this isn't technical stuff. This is money that went to donors

instead of going to places that really needed infrastructure support. There's a real lost years in New York from years of bad leadership and abusive leadership. Andrew represented on a personal and power level a really toxic style. I don't even want to use the word style. That's way too generous. A really abusive approach, a use of power for his own ends. And I think it's really important that we connect the sexual harassment. and retaliation with the nursing home cover up, with the use of public power and of public resources to write his own book to make himself rich.

Because these are all just using the governor's office and the power of the state as an extension of himself. So that's one part of Andrew Cuomo. But the other part, which I think you're talking about, Molly, is the way in which he basically parroted a lot of Ronald Reagan talking points. You know, he was a trickle down. He had a trickle down approach towards the economy. It is important to insist on leadership that recognizes that trickle-down is often just another, you know, just another way, basically, to talk about cronyism. And we do have to demand, like, real actual results for poor and working class people for the environment, for kids, and not just a D. not just a D. Yeah. I want to talk to you about your antitrust piece in the Atlantic, because that is

something we've really had a lot of problems with. And it seems like there's not a lot of solutions. What's your solution? Oh, there's a lot of solutions. Okay, let's hear them. Great. Yeah, there's some intractable problems. This is an area where there is so much that can be done and is starting to be done, and it's so exciting. And a little tidbit here in 2014, when I remember, ran against Andrew Cuomo, I had a running mate. Tim Wu, who coined the term net neutrality, is also a great trust buster and is now at the Biden White House. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I was really excited about that they tapped him because he's such a great mind. He's truly ahead of the curve, has already done really exciting things at the White House. So here's the Shakespeare in 30

seconds history of antitrust. You ready? Yes. Okay. We have a a hundreds of years of history of understanding you can't allow concentrated private power. If you allow sort of the pipes to be owned by a handful or one company, it's really bad for consumer prices. It's really bad for workers because if you work in that industry, then the three bosses are all winking at each other and suppressing wages because you don't really have anywhere else to go. And it's really bad for democracy. It's also really bad for innovation. Like if everybody who's running advertising is basically working for one of two guys named Bob, if you follow up the chain because of the mergers and the advertising sphere, guess what? You're going to have less

interesting advertising because everybody's trying to work for Bob. So it's bad for all kinds of different things. Everybody understood this, you know, significant debates, but these were the core principles, workers, consumers, and democracy. And then in the late 1970s and early 1980s, all of that history was just chopped to pieces, largely by Reagan, but not just by Reagan. We've got to be clear, Democrats have been involved in this too. And we have for 50 years now lived within a system where antitrust is really just for outlier cases.

it's hard to stop mergers, you rarely engage in divestitures. And actually, a lot of the antitrust enforcement isn't just around mergers and divestitures, but banning abusive business practices, like things companies can't do. For 50 years, we just haven't been doing it, not in a serious way. And it's, you know, talk about the power of ideas. It's because of this wrong idea that antitrust, is just about, quote unquote, efficiency and consumer welfare. And I and Tim and Lena Kahn before she became the new chair of the Federal Trade Commission,

Jonathan Cantor, before he became the new head of the DOJ antitrust division, Barry Lynn. I mean, there's so many people have been pushing to say, we've got to change this entire way of thinking, ramp up enforcement, fix our laws, and get back to a more equal and fair economy. And we do that through, this is a long answer to a short question. Obviously, I have a lot of thoughts on this. So come me off when you have a question. We get there through two basic ways. One is actually enforcing the laws on the books. And the other is through improving the laws. You know, there's a lot of things that you can be anxious about. This is an area. Biden has been a real leader. Oh, that's good. It's not just the appointments. I mean, we were just talking about

Wu, Tim Wu at the White House, Rina Khan at the FTC, cancer at the DOJ. He gave a killer speech this summer. And he talked about how the last 40 years of antitrust policy had failed, failed. And my jaw dropped when he used the word failed. I was jaw dropped and cheering at the same time. time. And then he talked about how it's an incredible impact on workers. That, you know, it's basically led to thousands of dollars a year of workers' wages being stolen because of the concentration in our markets. So he's showing real leadership in this field. And that's exciting. But what's exciting to me, as I'm running to be the next attorney general of New York, is when you look at antitrust enforcement. You've got the DOJ, but then you've got New York and California are really, really key

in enforcement. And we can really make a big difference in New York, but also in setting the terms for what's acceptable, acceptable in the country. And yeah, I just want to triple underline what Biden said. Yes, this is about consumer prices. And right now, look, we're seeing, you know, the prices of diapers are rising. The prices of basic goods are rising. And as Robert Reich has talked about, this is about concentration in the markets. That's one of the key reasons we're seeing rising prices. And it's about workers who've seen these stagnated, you know, stagnated wages and abusive terms. We've got to be much more aggressive at trust busting. Yeah. And I mean, I think one of the things that maybe Biden hasn't gotten enough good, we're talking about media

coverage a lot here, enough good coverage about is how he's really been very unapologetically pro-worker. Yeah, I agree. You know, when you look at what's happening in the Department of Labor and Biden himself, I'm just going back to that speech, but you can tell, and I talk to people who know him that when he talks about non-competes, Biden is just like, what the hell? And he's right. Why do we allow companies to say, you can only come work for me if you agree to not work in this field for a year if you quit? I mean, what the hell? And I don't know about his exact phrase, but I think he's really good at being a real champion for workers. And Lord knows we need that. I wrote a lot about the sexual harassment stuff at Fox and various other places. And all of these women had these NDAs. Oh, my gosh.

Right. And I mean, these NDAs have served no purpose but protecting sexual harassers. Yeah. No, all of these things that we sort of weirdly got used to, and I say we, it's that when you're looking for a job, you typically don't say it to your, potential employer, and this is true, whether you're getting a job in an ad agency or a media company or Burger King, and you need a job, and your potential employer says, hey, I'd really like to hire you, but you have to sign this NDA. Most people don't say, don't feel the power,

and they aren't wrong, that they can negotiate around that. Right. So there's just this fantasy of meaningful competition in labor markets. And when you start seeing the rise of all of these coercive terms, it's really strong evidence of gross market power. Because if you actually had 20 options, employers wouldn't dare put these terms out there. They'd be trying to offer you better terms instead of more and more coercive terms. So what's exciting to me is that this is an area where, I mean, the bad news and the good news are related. The bad news is we're in really bad shape in terms of employees. lawyer abuse of workers. The good news is there's a lot we can do about it. And as the New York

Attorney General, you know, one of the exciting things about the job is you can, you have incredible investigatory power. And when you see bad actors, you can investigate, make sure they know the penalties, and make it too costly for them to engage in illegal behavior. Like, you remember when DoorDash was stealing tips? Oh, yeah. The AG Carl Racine brought a great lawsuit, shut that down, changed policy for the country. Because DoorDash now knows they can't get away with it. So the potential reach of, you know, progressive enforcement that understands the power of the AG's office against corporate abuses is just enormous. And really important.

Let's go to a fictitious universe where Donald Trump somehow, horrendously gets reelected and you are AG. What can you do to protect us from him? Well, I actually think we should start right now, even before we're talking about 24, and say that the New York Attorney General's office dissolved the Trump Foundation, the nonprofit. Do you remember this a couple of years ago? Because it was riddled with illegality. The Trump organization, the corporate arm, still exists. and is totally intertwined as the foundation investigation showed and later civil investigations have shown the foundation and the Trump organization are totally intertwined with each other

and also riddled riddled with illegality. The New York State AG has shut down companies, corporations organized in New York previously when you have such a degree of persistent lawlessness that you can't separate the fraud from the corporate form. And I think we have the evidence to start an investigation to dissolve the Trump organization, the sort of key source of power for Donald Trump. So he shouldn't be in a position where he can run for office again using the Trump organization as a power source. The other thing I want to say about whether it's Trump or somebody else who,

has lawlessness, bigotry, and violence at their core is that the state AGs play absolutely the frontline role in defending democracy and defending the possibility of government doing its job. You know, when you have a federal government, as we had with Donald Trump, which doesn't believe in enforcing its own laws, whether those are anti-discrimination laws or environmental protection laws, the state attorneys general are the protection. And they're both a protection because they can enforce those laws, but also they're a show of what government can do when it's actually fighting for people and representing people to make sure they can't get abused either by elite politicians

or by, you know, grossly abusive corporations. So I see the AG's office as sort of as one of the most exciting areas, for our future in which we have Democratic presidents, but regardless of what kind of, you know, Democratic-Republicans split we have at the federal level, we need really strong action-focused AGs in the states. Thank you, Zephyr. Great to talk to you guys.

I feel like we just got started. Okay, thank you for having us. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizagate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is, what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast,

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That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly Junkfest. Who is your fuck that guy? We've got a memo that was now leaked to, I guess, Politico, an army colonel named Earl Matthews says that two of the top army generals are, I think he called them unmitigated liars and is accusing them of making a Stalinist effort to rewrite the history of the response to the January 6th. insurrection or whatever you, riots, whatever you want to call them at the Capitol. And according to Colonel Matthews, these two generals, Charles Flynn and Walter Piat have completely lied and that they are the

ones who failed to act decisively and deploy the National Guard and that the delay in deploying everything is on those two fellow shoulders. So the question here is, or the thing is, if Colonel Matthews is correct, then absolutely fuck those two generals, one of whom is, I guess the brother of Michael Flynn. Right. Yes. We'd be remiss to not remind people that might have been some fuckery here. Yeah.

So I'm already inclined to believe Colonel Matthews, I think, on this one. So I'm just going to go ahead and say fuck those guys. So, Molly, who's your fuck that guy for today? My fuck that guy is a little bit unusual. It is the coverage of Vice President Harris. Rumors started circulating in July. Vice President Harris' staff was witting in a dysfunctional and frustrated office. Burned out just a few months after her historic swearing in and pondering exit strategies. There's a lot of, like, soon-to-be empty desks, and we spoke to 18 people off the record.

And there's a lot of this. You know, all these pieces then get picked up. The New York Post then had a headline from this. Kamala Harris described as a bully and soul-destroying. I mean, ex-Harris staffer says AIDS had to endure a constant amount of criticism. Soul-destroying criticism. Fuck you, man. Like, that's the job.

I just can't imagine, like, can you imagine a man having his staff complain that they were critical? A lot of criticism. I mean, I'm sorry. She's the vice president. It seems very sexist and racist to me. Andy, do you think it's sexist and racist? And if not, I will reach through the computer and punch you. In that case, yes, I do, Molly.

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