The Daily Beast Podcast

For years, he’s gotten away with it. He lied. He cheated. He treated the government like a get-rich-quick-scheme and his most ardent followers like marks. But now, Donald Trump could be facing serious criminal charges. The kind of charges that might lead to the former president going to jail. The Supreme Court turned down Trump’s final appeal, and that means his accounting firm has to turn over his tax records and business documents to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance ASAP. “Trump's lawyers will always come up with something, but there should be no reason why the grand jury won't get these financial records tomorrow,” Daily Beast legal analyst Jay Michaelson tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “Basically, what we all know happened was: Trump inflated the value of his business when it suited him, which is in order to get on the Forbes list [of richest people] and also to get loans from Deutsche Bank. And then he deflated his worth in order to save on taxes. So that's illegal... Not only is that insurance fraud and bank fraud, but that could affect those loans,” Michaelson adds. “Will he go to jail for, like, the rest of his life? Probably no. Is it possible that this would lead to criminal charges that would carry jail time? I would say that's pretty likely, and we could have a grand jury indictment fairly soon,” Michaelson continues. “A lot of these kinds of white collar crimes are settled, and they're settled out for large financial settlements. In this case, I'm not sure that Cy Vance is interested in settling with Donald Trump—even if Donald Trump could afford the fines that he would have to pay, which I don't think he can.” To which Jong-Fast asks, “Can he borrow it from Jared?” “Unfortunately, he's not the financial wizard that he makes himself out to be.” “Wait. But Jared made $200 trillion.” “Don't fall for it. I mean, he's cute, but he's not really that smart.” Also on a packed episode of The New Abnormal: Tommy ‘Quentin Quarantino’ Marcus talks about all the cash he raised for Planned Parenthood—in Rush Limbaugh’s name. ‘How to Be a Liberal’ author Ian Dunt tells us how post-Trump Americans should see still-Boris Brits like him: “So what you should do is look at us like we were like someone you used to date that is still taking heroin. ‘I'm so glad I left that behind,’ because that's where we are.” Finally, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Mark Warner about how the fight against the far-right needs to be taken international. “We're going to do a deep dive on this anti-government extremism—and particularly some of these groups, their ties to right-wing groups in Europe, oftentimes amplified by Russia,” he says. “I know the threat is real. I know it's not just in this country.” 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 Rick & Molly 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

We know how the story went: Trump was impeached for a second time. There is a trial. He is found not guilty because there not enough votes needed to make it happen, despite the majority of the Senate voting against the former president. Lots of people have questions in regards to this process. Namely, what the hell? But also, why didn’t the Democrats forgo their right to call witnesses? Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CA) told co-host Molly Jong-Fast his perspective on things in this member-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal. “Whether it's five witnesses or 5,000 witnesses, it would not have changed the ultimate outcome,” he says, echoing Rep. Jamie Raskin has said on the issue. They did consider witnesses nonetheless, says Neguse, but to him, it came down to timing. “It was clear that other witnesses whom had been speculated about in the media in terms of potential witnesses that we could have heard from were unlikely to voluntarily comply and voluntarily appear, which meant we would have to issue subpoenas. And they could very well contest those subpoenas in court,” he says. Ultimately, he feels the point was made, and everyone knows Trump was responsible: “That is something that obviously was crystal clear by virtue of the evidence that we showed during the course of the trial, which of course the American public had a chance to see as well.” He shares his own experience during the Capitol insurrection, including the moment he realized things had gotten bad. “I texted my wife and told her that, uh, I loved her and our daughter,” he says. Plus! He and Molly discuss what plans the House has to make sure this doesn’t happen again and that people in power are held responsible. And is Medicare for All and federal legalization of marijuana on the horizon? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We know how the story went: Trump was impeached for a second time. There is a trial. He is found not guilty because there not enough votes needed to make it happen, despite the majority of the Senate voting against the former president. Lots of people have questions in regards to this process. Namely, what the hell? But also, why didn’t the Democrats forgo their right to call witnesses? Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CA) told co-host Molly Jong-Fast his perspective on things in this member-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal. “Whether it's five witnesses or 5,000 witnesses, it would not have changed the ultimate outcome,” he says, echoing Rep. Jamie Raskin has said on the issue. They did consider witnesses nonetheless, says Neguse, but to him, it came down to timing. “It was clear that other witnesses whom had been speculated about in the media in terms of potential witnesses that we could have heard from were unlikely to voluntarily comply and voluntarily appear, which meant we would have to issue subpoenas. And they could very well contest those subpoenas in court,” he says. Ultimately, he feels the point was made, and everyone knows Trump was responsible: “That is something that obviously was crystal clear by virtue of the evidence that we showed during the course of the trial, which of course the American public had a chance to see as well.” He shares his own experience during the Capitol insurrection, including the moment he realized things had gotten bad. “I texted my wife and told her that, uh, I loved her and our daughter,” he says. Plus! He and Molly discuss what plans the House has to make sure this doesn’t happen again and that people in power are held responsible. And is Medicare for All and federal legalization of marijuana on the horizon? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Andy Slavitt was shocked when he joined the Biden administration. “I was under the impression coming in—as many, many Americans were—that there were big stockpiles of vaccines waiting to go out the door that were produced over the course of the last year. It's been much, much less the case than I think we'd been led to believe,” the White House senior adviser for COVID response tells Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. It was one of a host of shortcomings the Biden team found, Slavitt says: “Not enough vaccines, not enough vaccinators, not enough places for people to get vaccines.” “So when we got here January 20th, one of the things we learned as an only 46% of the vaccines delivered to states had actually made its way into people's arms. Now you'd never expect that to be 100%. But 46%? It was low,” Slavitt adds. There’s now a plan in place to purchase as many as 600 million doses, hopefully enough for every American. States are now using 75% of their doses, a big step up from a few weeks ago. And there may be another vaccine around the corner, from Johnson and Johnson. “I would love to tell you, we weren't going to be starting with a huge stockpile of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The truth is we're starting with a small number and we've got to build it as quickly as possible.” Meanwhile, the virus is evolving. More contagious, deadlier variants are spreading, fast. But even here, Slavitt sees some signs for hope. “All of the vaccines work very well against the English B117 variant. So that's good. The South African variant—and there's another one that looks like the South African, that's the Brazilian variant—that one it's interesting. There is a degradation of performance of the vaccines against the South African variant. However, that degradation is thankfully still above the scientific threshold for effectiveness,” Slavitt says. “It still generates antibodies. It doesn't generate as many. But it’s good.” The vaccines may even be a bit better than advertised, Slavitt says. “You know, we may have done a little bit of a disservice to ourselves when with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, we talked about the end point as including [serve] and mild [COVID-19 cases], because we really don't care as much about the mild. And so we get very fixated on the fact that they're 95% percent effective against both, right. And we probably should have stepped back and said, ‘you know what, let’s just measure it against more severe symptoms.’ In which case, the Johnson and Johnson does very close to comparable.” And all of the vaccines seem to stop severe cases—from all the variants. There are even some indications that “viral load”—the amount of virus a person carries—“is decreased for people who are vaccinated,” indicating “that these vaccines not only reduce disease and save lives, but these vaccines also will reduce the ability of people to affect one another, which if it holds up, will be terrific news.” But only if the vaccine gets into the arms of the people who need it the most, Slavitt cautions. “It's not just how many vaccines are being administered, but also how equitable equitably they're being distributed. Because look, we all know there are half the population or more would crawl over broken glass to get the vaccine, right. But the problem is they’re crawling over other people,” he adds. “You know, they're getting online and going into communities, maybe neighborhoods they've never visited or visited in a long time, but [where] we put vaccines that are really hard hit by the virus. People are coming in, refreshing their browser, and going in and getting these appointments. It's really important that we not just focus on how many people we vaccinated, but that we do it as equitably as possible. And that's a big, big push for us.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

That impeachment vote in the Senate was tough to swallow, with 43 Republicans voting to acquit Trump for the insurrection done in his name, by people waving his flag. Even more gag-worthy was Sen. Mitch McConnell’s speech afterwards—blaming Trump for the wannabe coup minutes after voting to let him off. “The most galling statements for me were the ones from the Mitch McConnells and the Rob Portmans and the Marco Rubios after they voted to acquit Donald Trump, basically saying, ‘Well, you know, the whole coup thing was kind of bad and I wish you wouldn't have tried to do it. And I wish a cop wouldn't have died. And you know, he made some bad choices. But you know, I had no choice,’” Bulwark writer-at-large Tim Miller tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. But of course, McConnell and his crew did have a choice. The House impeached Trump on January 13. The Senate decided to take a vacation, rather than take up the case right away. And once the vacations were over and Biden was sworn in, they decided against all reason and precedent that an ex-official like Trump somehow couldn’t be convicted. “For Mitch McConnell to be like, ‘I really wanted to do it, but…’ Bullshit. The only reason that you didn't do it was because of you. It is galling. Give me a hundred [militia-friendly Rep.] Lauren Boberts—who are too stupid to know that it was bad, or Ted Cruzes—who are sociopaths—over Mitch McConnell, trying to try to tell me that he has some feelings about this. Give me a break,” Tim says. Also on the show: Rep. Andy Kim tells Molly what it’s like to be the rare Democrat representing a Trumpy district. Molly gives an update on the Lincoln Project situation. And Tim keeps going in on McConnell. “I know that many listeners will think that Mitch McConnell doesn't have a soul at all, and that's understandable. But he actually does have a flicker of one. He does love the Senate, you know,” Tim adds. “And he wanted to be able to emote about that in his weird Mitch McConnell way. And that's what actually makes it worse… Don't try to memorialize to me. You had an opportunity to do something you didn't. You made the craven move. You sided with the insurrectionists.” Miller says, “Basically what we saw on Saturday was a Republican party that had an opportunity—after five years of being craven cowards that rolled over for Donald Trump at every chance—finally was able to put the stake in his heart and say, ‘We don't need you anymore. We don't tolerate this. And we want to move forward, even it takes a little pain.’ And 43 of them said... ‘nah.’” 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

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert weren’t elected to their positions in the House of Representatives by accident. They ran campaigns like everyone else, and won. Given Greene’s “nutty” aka QAnon-supporting and anti-mask-censorship antics in particular since she arrived in Washington, it may be hard for lots of people to understand why. In this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast sat down with Doctor John Cowan, the Republican surgeon who lost to Greene in her district despite both candidates supporting Donald Trump, to get an idea for what people may have had in mind when casting their ballots for her. “I think this is why she got elected is because people really felt like these guys are absolutely crazy in Washington DC,” he explains. “And they are, many of them are, trying to actively destroy the country through their policies and rhetoric and whatnot. And [voters] looked at someone like Marjorie and said, ‘we've got the answer to that. You know, she's a fighter she'll say or do anything.’” Essentially, says Molly, she won for the same reasons Trump did. Cowan agrees: “I think they just thought, well, we've got somebody who's literally going to kick it to the government and maybe he can crack that or drain the swamp as he was off to say.” Then, Molly talks to Gregg Smith, a former Marine and ex-colleague of Erik Prince, who is running against the GOP’s Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado. He feels that he can and will defeat her. Donald Trump had support out there because “people out here will generally vote against the mainstream,” but that support has dwindled, and Boebert’s response to the insurrection is being questioned, he says. But Democrats aren’t going to win the area by pushing Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders-level ideologies too hard. “You've got to address the issues that are important out here.” That’s basically what both Cower and Smith have in common with one another: hope in the voters. “I do think people eventually will wake up and see that there's a lot of darkness there,” says Cowan. Plus, Smith shares the moment he knew Erik Prince couldn’t be trusted: “I never want to see him again.” 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 Rick & Molly 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

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert weren’t elected to their positions in the House of Representatives by accident. They ran campaigns like everyone else, and won. Given Greene’s “nutty” aka QAnon-supporting and anti-mask-censorship antics in particular since she arrived in Washington, it may be hard for lots of people to understand why. In this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast sat down with Doctor John Cowan, the Republican surgeon who lost to Greene in her district despite both candidates supporting Donald Trump, to get an idea for what people may have had in mind when casting their ballots for her. “I think this is why she got elected is because people really felt like these guys are absolutely crazy in Washington DC,” he explains. “And they are, many of them are, trying to actively destroy the country through their policies and rhetoric and whatnot. And [voters] looked at someone like Marjorie and said, ‘we've got the answer to that. You know, she's a fighter she'll say or do anything.’” Essentially, says Molly, she won for the same reasons Trump did. Cowan agrees: “I think they just thought, well, we've got somebody who's literally going to kick it to the government and maybe he can crack that or drain the swamp as he was off to say.” Then, Molly talks to Gregg Smith, a former Marine and ex-colleague of Erik Prince, who is running against the GOP’s Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado. He feels that he can and will defeat her. Donald Trump had support out there because “people out here will generally vote against the mainstream,” but that support has dwindled, and Boebert’s response to the insurrection is being questioned, he says. But Democrats aren’t going to win the area by pushing Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders-level ideologies too hard. “You've got to address the issues that are important out here.” That’s basically what both Cowan and Smith have in common with one another: hope in the voters. “I do think people eventually will wake up and see that there's a lot of darkness there,” says Cowan. Plus, Smith shares the moment he knew Erik Prince couldn’t be trusted: “I never want to see him again.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Amidst hundreds of thousands of Americans dying from COVID-19, countless pleas from health officials and the CDC to wear maks and social distance, and a recent report from Lancet that put the cherry on top of the “this was basically Trump’s fault” sundae, Fox News has decided to do what Fox News does: Go against all of that. This time, their “poison pill” of choice, as Media Matters’ President and CEO Angelo Cursone calls it in this episode of The New Abnormal, is vaccine skepticism. “What Fox is doing with the vaccines right now is similar to the role that they played at every step of public health measures,” Cursone tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast. “They dismissed social distancing early on. They were sort of skeptical about the masks and Jeanine Pirro was warning her audience. That the only reason people wear masks is to do bad things.” Now, they’re telling their viewers they’re not sure about taking the “George Soros Kool-Aid.” (Rick Wilson is already seeing this play out with “MAGA moms” on Facebook). But Fox has a reason for this, adds Cursone, who shares his theory. It has to do with your cable bill—and it’s also the very way the network could be destroyed. The more outrage they get, the more viewers, the more negotiating power they have against cable companies to get them to charge cable watchers more for their channel. “Fox News, now, for every person that has cable news pays Fox news between $2 and $2 and 50 cents a month, whether or not you ever watched the channel and what they're trying to do, because they've lost so much, advertising [wants to] get that number up from about $2, a person to $3 to $3 and 50 cents over the next year,” and if there’s a way to hit them where it hurts, explains Cursone, it’s here. Of course, it’s not a New Abnormal episode if there isn’t talk of impeachment, especially the hearings going on right now involving the Capitol insurrection. Rick is particularly furious at Rick Scott and Marco Rubio: “They're basically just saying, ah, yeah, our little plot failed. Our little coup failed. So we're just going to hang out here and be the dick kids in the back of the room, throwing at the teacher.” Speaking of dicks, Molly tells the fun little tale of Marjorie Taylor Green and the Tantric Sex Guru and Daily Beast congressional reporter Sam Brodey talks about his experience witnessing the trial in person. 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

For years, Facebook has been a cesspool of conspiracy theorists, political ragemonsters, and quacks pushing cures for decaying Boomers. But as dangerous as these creeps were, they were mostly contained to the social network. Until the pandemic hit. Now, all of us are locked down. And Facebook’s worst actors and brainwormiest thinking is bursting out into the real world—and threatening to take it over. “I see it a lot actually in local community pages,” The Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “To give an example, I was looking at a page, a local news site, about my 5,000-population hometown. The main restaurant, they closed down for a COVID exposure or something. And people were saying, ‘Ah! This is tyranny. We don't have to do this.’ Someone was posting an image macro in the comments with the ‘where we go one, we go all’ Qanon thing. And I'm like, ‘Oh my God, like, this is about the salad bar.’” “You really see the conspiracy theories and the atomization, the disconnection from real people and how you would hopefully behave in a real life setting. That just vanishes on Facebook. And I think with so many people using that now as their main means of communicating, it's spreading,” Weill tells Molly Jong-Fast. Take the icky phenomenon of online multi-level marketing. Those “are those parasitic posts that you see all over your Facebook. It's your friend from home saying, ‘Hey, I just got a great deal on vitamin supplements. And, uh, if you, you know, give me $50, I'll send them to you. Or you can go into business with me and become my associate,’” Weill says. “It's something that you're not legally allowed to call a financial cult, but golly, does it sound like one.” One local politician in Kansas was in so deep, he had “someone come and make a sales pitch for during a political meeting on preventing COVID,” Weill continues. “During a council meeting on COVID, he brought in someone from an essential oil company to make the pitch about how these products can help you and your family and empower you to live the healthy lifestyle.” “I don't think there are official rules against doing that. We've just been, uh, coasting on people not doing that. That's been kind of the unspoken expectation,” Weill says. Speaking of expectations, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) stops by the show to talk about what he wants to see from Trump’s upcoming second impeachment. And Rick Wilson has a message for the Republican senators who want to let the ex-president off the hook: “This is one of those votes, like the Iraq war or Obamacare, that you never escape. You never escape it. And if you think the tide isn't turning, you're not paying attention. Trumpism is still a threat and will be for a long time, so I know that's why those guys are afraid. But the rest of the country is done with this bullshit.” 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

The pandemic shook things up, a lot. It exposed the country’s deepest inequalities, and arguably, made them worse. Now, all eyes are on President Biden to see how he’ll fix it, and Republicans are responding exactly as expected: by crying about the debt. Here’s the thing, though, says Paul Krugman, an American economist and op-ed columnist at The New York Times, there’s really no reason to. It’s a tale as old as time. Both parties spend, but when it’s time for Dems to make the economic plans, and Biden took office, Republicans “suddenly rediscovered that they were worried about debt” he tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. But it actually doesn’t matter, he claims. “The important thing to realize is that governments are not like you and me, governments don't have to pay back their debt,” he explains. “All they have to do is make sure that their obligations don't grow beyond any reasonable estimate of what they can us over time. That means they never actually have to pay off debt. It's a threat that exists only in the imagination of people who want to have some reason to squeeze government spending.” Instead, says Krugman, lawmakers should prioritize giving money to poor families with children, which is cheap and will get them out of poverty. “You can do an enormous amount for children, fairly affordably,” he says, but for the love of Pete, stop calling it tax breaks. “It's actually just giving people money,” he says, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Will the Trump voters go for this? It’s unclear, but Krugman says Biden’s policies actually help them the most. (“There's basically no place in America that is more dependent upon federal aid. That is more lifted out of absolute misery by massive support from the taxpayers than Eastern Kentucky. And it's very, very hard to find someone who didn't vote for Trump and those in those counties.”) Plus! The past alignments of the Democratic and Republican parties are completely changed, he says. (“People used to describe [the GOP] as being a center, right party, but it's not, it's now an extreme authoritarian, anti-liberal, anti-science, anti-almost-everything party that more or less [resembles] fascist parties of Europe.”) And! A prediction of what economic recovery look like post-pandemic. It’s good news for the working class. 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

The pandemic shook things up, a lot. It exposed the country’s deepest inequalities, and arguably, made them worse. Now, all eyes are on President Biden to see how he’ll fix it, and Republicans are responding exactly as expected: by crying about the debt. Here’s the thing, though, says Paul Krugman, an American economist and op-ed columnist at The New York Times, there’s really no reason to. It’s a tale as old as time. Both parties spend, but when it’s time for Dems to make the economic plans, and Biden took office, Republicans “suddenly rediscovered that they were worried about debt” he tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. But it actually doesn’t matter, he claims. “The important thing to realize is that governments are not like you and me, governments don't have to pay back their debt,” he explains. “All they have to do is make sure that their obligations don't grow beyond any reasonable estimate of what they can us over time. That means they never actually have to pay off debt. It's a threat that exists only in the imagination of people who want to have some reason to squeeze government spending.” Instead, says Krugman, lawmakers should prioritize giving money to poor families with children, which is cheap and will get them out of poverty. “You can do an enormous amount for children, fairly affordably,” he says, but for the love of Pete, stop calling it tax breaks. “It's actually just giving people money,” he says, which isn’t a bad thing at all. Will the Trump voters go for this? It’s unclear, but Krugman says Biden’s policies actually help them the most. (“There's basically no place in America that is more dependent upon federal aid. That is more lifted out of absolute misery by massive support from the taxpayers than Eastern Kentucky. And it's very, very hard to find someone who didn't vote for Trump and those in those counties.”) Plus! The past alignments of the Democratic and Republican parties are completely changed, he says. (“People used to describe [the GOP] as being a center, right party, but it's not, it's now an extreme authoritarian, anti-liberal, anti-science, anti-almost-everything party that more or less [resembles] fascist parties of Europe.”) And! A prediction of what economic recovery look like post-pandemic. It’s good news for the working class. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So how are House Republicans dealing with the fallout from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s freshly resurfaced 9/11 trutherism, school shooting denialism, and threats on fellow lawmakers’ lives? They’re giving her a standing ovation. “Marjorie Taylor Greene is House minority leader,” co-host Rick Wilson says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “She runs the House.” The newly elected Georgia Republican, Rick says, is the GOP’s equivalent of the “crazy uncle.” “You know, we know he’s drunk. We know he’s crazy. We know he comes to Thanksgiving dinner every year lit to shit. And we’ll just pretend it’s not happening. And even though Greene was booted from her committees Thursday night in a largely partisan vote, Rick predicts she “will raise a ton of money because they will all say, ‘Oh, we have to teach the lying libtard cucks a lesson. And Marjorie Taylor Greene is a hero and Trump loves her, and therefore we love her’... I guarantee there will be a cottage industry that emerges and says, ‘Well, Marjorie Taylor Greene is rough around the edges. She says some crazy things sometimes. And you know, we don’t believe in those crazy things she says, but, but, but a little echo the distance but she’s just asking questions. She owns the libs. Don’t you want to own the libs?” Later in the episode, co-host Molly Jong-Fast asks Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) whether Republicans will return to the normal world now that former President Donald Trump has been defeated. “Some of the early signals are not good,” the senator says. “Look at Kevin McCarthy yesterday, there were basically no consequences for one of the members who’s just spinning these conspiracy theories. And based on what I heard, there’s a real question about when the dust settles here in the next couple of days, whether she’s going to have more power than she did before.” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) tells Molly that while he has always “tried to form coalitions where I can, when you have someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who’s not just refusing to certify the election results but was actually threatening assassination against Secretary Clinton and President Obama and harassing members of Congress, you have to draw the line.” “Kevin McCarthy last night displayed the greatest moment of weakness in a party leader I have seen since Newt Gingrich tried to resist the all you can eat pizza bar at Sbarro,” Rick concludes of the House GOP’s closed-door vote Wednesday night. “This idea of giving Marjorie Taylor Greene a free pass by rapping her lightly on the wrist and having her say, ‘I no longer believe wink, wink, wink that QAnon wink, wink, wink is a real thing, wink, wink, Hillary Clinton wink Adrenochrome wink the Jews wink.’ By letting her pass through there and letting his people give her a standing ovation with no punishment, no sanction, nothing, he showed his weakness and he showed how weak he was to the country, to Pelosi, and to the rest of his party.” 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

In recent days, top members of the Biden administration have a startling admission: That millions of doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were lost somewhere in the system. So now, the race is on to track down all of the vials. “This is the number one priority within the Biden administration right now is finding doses and making sure they don't go to waste before they start to ramp up supply through other means,” Erin Banco, The Daily Beast’s lead reporter on the COVID beat, tells Molly Jong-Fast on The New Abnormal. “Their rhetoric right now has been, ‘we have only been here for X amount of days, please give us time. This is not easy.’ I think they're only going to be able to use that excuse for so long. Like, look, you're in government. This is your job. Yeah, these things take time—especially coordinating them across all the States and territories when everyone has a different distribution plan. It’s a slog. But from what I hear, the CDC should have a better idea of where things stand this week,” Banco adds. And while the scramble to find the doses continues, the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection still lingers—especially for those who were there in the Capitol as the MAGA mob raged. Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) tells Molly about her harrowing experience. “There's pounding at the doors. Officers are yelling at people and saying ‘make sure those doors are secured,’” Dingell recounts. “My colleagues were taking benches and chairs and helping secure the doors. And we were told to sit in our chairs, pull out our escape hoods, which are the gas masks. And that if we were told to kneel, we needed to do so right away, because there could be some shooting. It still seems surreal.” Finally, Rick Wilson addresses the revelation that John Weaver, one of his fellow co-founders of the Lincoln Project, sent unwanted, sexually explicit messages to people as young as 14. “If we had been aware of this, if I had been aware of this, I would not for a second have hesitated to report John Weaver to law enforcement. I would have done it in a hot minute,” Wilson says. “I am sickened at his behavior and I'm sickened that we fell for a deception of this scope and scale. And I'm sickened by the fact that a predatory person tried to use our organization and our mission to exploit it for personal reasons,” Wilson adds. “It's a group that shares, we share a very firm belief in accountability, Okay. And I think John should be held accountable.” 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

Lots of us have been asking ourselves (and Twitter) many questions over the last year. Questions like: How did about 74 million people vote for Trump, again? Why do people actually believe in QAnon? And, more recently, if Republicans can see Trump for who he really is-—and how he has become a hero among a sect of the party that, at their worst, believe celebrities are part of a global pedophile ring, and at their best, that masks are a form of censorship—than why do the majority of them still support him? Norm Ornstein, an American political scientist and The Atlantic contributor, joined co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this members-only episode of The New Abnormal to share his insight. “There are plenty of Republicans, and I put Rob Portman in that category, who know perfectly well that this stuff is just awful, or plenty of it is, but they'd gone along because they're a part of the cult,” he says. He also adds Mitch McConnell to that list: “He knows what Trump is. He knows that Trump is a doofus and a racist and has no ability to govern, to read anything, all of that, but he could get the tax cuts and get all these judges, knowing that basically the best way they can cling to power is to stack these courts that will let any voter suppression measures pass muster, and that will block Democratic presidents and [hit] the goals they can't accomplish in Congress alone.” If it continues like this, he adds, “you can't have a democracy for long that doesn't have two functioning problem-solving oriented parties.” Then there are the Majorie Greene Taylor types in Congress to think about. How did that happen? Trump certainly fueled it, but he didn’t start that fire, says Ornstein. “The Republican party had an insurgent outlier party that was dismissive of its opposition, that was contemptuous of facts and science that had blown up norms and could care less about the others in terms of governing long before Donald Trump emerged as a potential political figure or presidential candidate,” he says. “[Republicans] just dove in headfirst into the muck.” Then! The two discuss a topic Molly gets crap for and that’s why Diane Feinstein really needs to retire. And the two roast Kevin McCarthy, big time. “McCarthy had this moment to be free of Trump. And he just went back for more,” says Molly. 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

Lots of us have been asking ourselves (and Twitter) many questions over the last year. Questions like: How did about 74 million people vote for Trump, again? Why do people actually believe in QAnon? And, more recently, if Republicans can see Trump for who he really is-—and how he has become a hero among a sect of the party that, at their worst, believe celebrities are part of a global pedophile ring, and at their best, that masks are a form of censorship—than why do the majority of them still support him? Norm Ornstein, an American political scientist and The Atlantic contributor, joined co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this members-only episode of The New Abnormal to share his insight. “There are plenty of Republicans, and I put Rob Portman in that category, who know perfectly well that this stuff is just awful, or plenty of it is, but they'd gone along because they're a part of the cult,” he says. He also adds Mitch McConnell to that list: “He knows what Trump is. He knows that Trump is a doofus and a racist and has no ability to govern, to read anything, all of that, but he could get the tax cuts and get all these judges, knowing that basically the best way they can cling to power is to stack these courts that will let any voter suppression measures pass muster, and that will block Democratic presidents and [hit] the goals they can't accomplish in Congress alone.” If it continues like this, he adds, “you can't have a democracy for long that doesn't have two functioning problem-solving oriented parties.” Then there are the Marjorie Taylor Green types in Congress to think about. How did that happen? Trump certainly fueled it, but he didn’t start that fire, says Ornstein. “The Republican party had an insurgent outlier party that was dismissive of its opposition, that was contemptuous of facts and science that had blown up norms and could care less about the others in terms of governing long before Donald Trump emerged as a potential political figure or presidential candidate,” he says. “[Republicans] just dove in headfirst into the muck.” Then! The two discuss a topic Molly gets crap for and that’s why Diane Feinstein really needs to retire. And the two roast Kevin McCarthy, big time. “McCarthy had this moment to be free of Trump. And he just went back for more,” says Molly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He’s supposed to be a leader—the leader, in fact, of the Republicans in the House of Representatives. But he ain’t doing much leading. As The Daily Beast reported, Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) went in a matter of weeks from angrily criticizing Donald Trump for inciting the MAGA mob that attacked the Capitol—to kissing up to the entire Trump family. “The House of Representatives’ [Republican caucus] is comprised of the Trump party—with the exception of 10 or 11 reps,” says Rick Wilson on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “They're the pro-sedition, pro-insurrection, pro-mob party,” “Right? It does feel like McCarthy is really giving Trump the Republican party. He really is,” adds Molly Jong-Fast. “I mean, there was like a chance where the Republican party was going to escape from Trump's clutches. And then [McCarthy] was like: ‘Too scary. Let's go back.’” McCarthy went down, too—all the way to Mar-a-Lago, to bend the knee on Thursday. “Kevin McCarthy had to flee his office [during the Capitol Riot]. He begged Donald Trump to speak, to stop what was going on as it was going on. And Trump was silent. And now Kevin McCarthy is going to apologize to Donald Trump,” says Jon Allen, co-author of the forthcoming Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency. “I don't know what to do with that… If you come to my house and try to kill me, if you bring your guns to my house, one thing I will not be doing is apologizing to you and begging for your forbearance.” And meanwhile, the Republicans in the Senate are acting only slightly less timid. “I call the alligator fried chicken theory, which is you can keep throwing the alligator fried chicken [while you’re] sitting on the edge of the dock. But when you're out of fried chicken, he bites your foot off, okay?” Rick says. “They keep thinking they're going to be the last one like that. They're the last piece of fried chicken and they're going to be okay. They are not, [Trump] will always be there doing this to them from afar. He will haunt them until he is dead. And once he's dead, they'll upload them to the cloud and he'll haunt them for all the Trinity until the heat death of the universe.” “The only path to cutting off the pernicious infection and the metastasizing cancer that is Trumpism is to vote to convict him. Now, I recognize that that would take people in the Senate on the Republican side with these rare and terrifying characteristics that are unimaginable in modern American politics, things like courage and integrity and patriotism and a love of country and putting country before party,” Rick adds, “All these things would be, would be easy, but they're also in Congress rare as hen's teeth, as my grandma would say.” 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 its just Rick & Molly 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... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Authoritarians like Sen. Josh Hawley don’t have much to defend these days. Their little insurrection failed, their Dear Leader is gone, and his stewardship helped kill more Americans than World War II. But they’ve still got the politics of aggrievement. Of victimhood. Of straight-up whining. Take this past weekend, when Hawley mewled about being silenced—on the cover of a major national newspaper. “It was the absolute pinnacle of the very white, Downy white, snowy top of Mount Snowflake,” Rick Wilson laughs on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “Oh, I can't, I can't say a word—except on the Senate floor, where I was elected by the people of Missouri. I can't say a word—except on Fox, the largest cable network in the country. I can't say a word—except the New York post, which is millions of people every day. I can't say a word except on Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and every other platform in America,’” Rick adds, channeling Hawley. “But what you should be saying, Josh Hawley, you fucking snake is this: ‘I apologize to the family of officer Brian Sicnick for having incited the crowd which murdered him.' So Josh is not muzzled. He just lacks a moral compass to speak the truth about what he is,” Rick says. Speaking of the Senate, Adam Jentleson—author of Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy—joins the show to talk about how the Democrats can free themselves from Mitch McConnell’s grasp. And speaking of problems with the truth, a number of MAGA men could be in a world of trouble for airing a bunch of nonsensical conspiracy theories about Dominion, the election technology firm. The company has sued a bunch of folks in greater Trumplandia for defamation. The latest: Rudy Giuliani, for a cool $1.3 billion. “If you haven't read this filing, it is quite something,” says Molly Jong-Fast. “It includes such things as: ‘also during that defamatory podcast, Rudy claimed supplements would cure his viewers’ achy joints and muscles and implored them to stop wasting money and switch. He instructed them to use his name when ordering and said they could get a second bottle free if they ordered now.’” But what’s really “interesting about this lawsuit is that they use Tucker Carlson's statements that there's no there there to then attack Sean Hannity—and to ask why Fox news gave Giuliani a platform on Sean Hannity's show, even though Tucker Carlson had said it was a scam,” she adds. Rudy and the rest are talking tough. But their lies—that Dominion “really is a Venezuelan company” (it’s Canadian) and helped steal the election (no)—are too big. They are going to have to back down, Rick predicts, or pay up. “The fact of the matter is, Molly, Dominion has them all by the balls.” 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

If you don’t understand the title of this episode, which suggests some Freaky Friday voodoo between President Biden and ex-President Donald Trump, congratulations, you have logic. Unfortunately, there are many people who don’t, like the QAnon believers who are still clinging to their conspiracy theories the same way that Donald Trump attempted to cling to the presidency: with nonsensical BS. But seriously, one of the latest QAnon theories that hasn’t yet been proved false, is that Trump is still somehow president...in Biden’s body. In this episode of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong-Fast and guest George Conway unpack that and a whole lot more. “It's really the only answer that makes sense,” Molly jokes. “It’s just so simple and obvious.” What isn’t obvious, however, is how the non-QAnon Republicans will move forward with Biden as president, especially Mitch McConnell. (“They have the problem of the distortive, gravitational field that Donald Trump casts over some element of the Republican party and they need to stamp it out. And you know that in his heart of hearts Mitch McConnell wants to do that. He just doesn't want to leave any fingerprints,” says Conway.) Then, the three pivot Trump. It’s a new era, but it’s impossible to not talk about him. In fact, Molly says Biden has 99 problems, and, yes, Trump is still very much one of them. To start, he left no federal vaccine roll-out plan, and also, to quote Conway, “he's basically a criminal.” Not even a Nixon-style criminal, either. Worse. (“I mean, [Trump] was like a one man show there and people were trying to get out of the way or avoid doing what he asked them to do," says Conway.) Plus! Daily Beast Washington Bureau Chief Jackie Kucinich tells Molly what to expect from Chuck and Mitch in the next week or so, but also the next two years with a Senate that’s split down the middle: “It's still gonna be really hard to govern. This is razor-thin, as thin as it gets.” 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 its just Rick & Molly 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

It is said that before Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, a group of Republicans got together and vowed to oppose everything that he would do, or rather, try to do. Did the Trump loyalists on the hill and Mitch McConnell’s Republicans huddle together last night and make a similar vow, this time for President-Elect Joe Biden? It’s a possibility, says Michael Tomasky, special guest on today’s members-only episode of The New Abnormal, which happened LIVE on Zoom. Even if they didn’t, Tomasky, and co-hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast, know that Mitch’s sneakiness isn’t ending with the Trump administration. Take the impeachment for example, says Rick: “They’ll pretend they’re doing to convict him,” but they, mainly Mitch, won’t. “If he meant it, they would have done it. I think he’s leaning slightly more toward it, only because the ‘22 [race] map is staring at him a little bit.” They’re all still tied to the race, so Mitch’s games will continue. In fact, he’s already trying to trainwreck Biden. “If Mitch McConnell wants Josh Hawley to wear a Spongebob outfit, he will do that. He is letting Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz play their game,” says Rick. Speaking of the Biden administration, the crew shares what 46 should say in his inauguration address, and the question almost leaves them stumped. “There needs to be an acknowledgment of the precarious place we’re in. He needs to explain to the American people what a perilous place we’re in and what we can do to come back,” says Tomasky. Rick agrees (“You can’t have a car crash like this and not talk about it. There needs to be some sternness to it, too.”) and Molly goes even further. One word: accountability. Plus! Rick, Molly and Tomasky surmise what Trump could have possibly said to Biden in the letter he left for him (a mention of a gorilla channel??), how the Bannon pardon was a “fuck you moment,” the DNC’s next moves and, of course, the Trump administration’s very last Fuck That Guy, to which Rick and Molly bring the heat. 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 Rick & Molly 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

It is said that before Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, a group of Republicans got together and vowed to oppose everything that he would do, or rather, try to do. Did the Trump loyalists on the hill and Mitch McConnell’s Republicans huddle together last night and make a similar vow, this time for President-Elect Joe Biden? It’s a possibility, says Michael Tomasky, special guest on today’s members-only episode of The New Abnormal, which happened LIVE on Zoom. Even if they didn’t, Tomasky, and co-hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast, know that Mitch’s sneakiness isn’t ending with the Trump administration. Take the impeachment for example, says Rick: “They’ll pretend they’re doing to convict him,” but they, mainly Mitch, won’t. “If he meant it, they would have done it. I think he’s leaning slightly more toward it, only because the ‘22 [race] map is staring at him a little bit.” They’re all still tied to the race, so Mitch’s games will continue. In fact, he’s already trying to trainwreck Biden. “If Mitch McConnell wants Josh Hawley to wear a Spongebob outfit, he will do that. He is letting Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz play their game,” says Rick. Speaking of the Biden administration, the crew shares what 46 should say in his inauguration address, and the question almost leaves them stumped. “There needs to be an acknowledgment of the precarious place we’re in. He needs to explain to the American people what a perilous place we’re in and what we can do to come back,” says Tomasky. Rick agrees (“You can’t have a car crash like this and not talk about it. There needs to be some sternness to it, too.”) and Molly goes even further. One word: accountability. Plus! Rick, Molly and Tomasky surmise what Trump could have possibly said to Biden in the letter he left for him (a mention of a gorilla channel??), how the Bannon pardon was a “fuck you moment,” the DNC’s next moves and, of course, the Trump administration’s very last Fuck That Guy, to which Rick and Molly bring the heat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this preview of ‘The Last Laugh’ podcast’s new episode with Sarah Cooper, the comedian shares her parting message for the president she has spent the past year making fun of on TikTok. Subscribe to ‘The Last Laugh’ now to hear our full conversation, including Sarah’s thoughts on what should happen to Trump and his family after they leave the White House and why she thinks the MAGA crowd actually enjoys her Trump lip sync videos. Twitter: @sarahcpr and @mattwilstein | Instagram: @sarahcpr and @lastlaughpod Highlights from this episode and others at The Daily Beast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How will we bring the Trump supporters who live in an alternate reality back to the real world? A recent Pew poll asked who respondents thought was to blame for the Capitol riot—and an “astounding” number said President Donald Trump bears no responsibility, Rick Wilson told his co-host Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers “really want to close their eyes and say, it didn’t happen. Oh, it’s just going to go away. Well, it did happen. You made it happen. It’s not going away. It’s going to be with you for a long, long time,” Wilson said. “They’re forgetting that this particular party now has a base of people who believe in the craziest fucking things you’ve ever heard of,” he added. “And who hate Republicans if they’re not named Donald Trump.” Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum, joined the co-hosts to offer historical examples where societies were able to come together after insurgencies and civil wars. “We need to find some way to reach people who now live in this in an alternate reality,” she said. “In December, something like 35 percent of Americans said they had doubts about who won the election. More recently, something like 21 percent approve of the storming of the Capitol. So somewhere around those numbers, we have a number of people who don’t accept that the election was won by Joe Biden. Therefore, they don’t accept the rules of American democracy. Therefore, they think it’s OK to commit violence against the institutions and people who compose that democracy.” To reach those people, Applebaum said, “All the lessons are about getting people to focus on practical and real issues and getting them away from the culture wars. So you will not win by shouting at people, ‘You are fascists!’ even if they are… and you will not win by arguing your case. You will win by getting people to talk about fixing the roads... getting people to refocus on some real project in the real world that a community can do together. Most important of all, said co-host Molly Jong Fast, is to avoid focusing on Trump. “If you’re building a bridge or doing something else, at least it’s not about Trump,” she said. “And I feel like when you talk about Trump, you just lose no matter what side you’re on.” To ensure the MAGA mob doesn’t rise up again, the co-hosts agreed that the Capitol insurrections and their enablers in Congress and the White House needed to face justice. “If Democrats who now control the Senate, even though it’s by very small margin, can’t do something here to punish people for doing an insurrection, then they’re just going to do it again,” Jong-Fast said. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump is not the only “bad” president this country has had in office, but from one historian's perspective, he’s certainly one of the worst. “This country has had a few [bad presidents]. There are the ones who are simply bad at the job and incompetent, and a lot of bad things happen on their watch. There are those who are corrupt and engaged in criminality, and have scandals that plagued their administration And there are those who actively do the country harm through their action or their inaction,” says historian Kevin Kruse on this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal. “Trump checks all of those boxes.” That even includes President Herbert Hoover who was in office during the Great Depression. (“Hoover was, aside from that glaring failure of the depression, Hoover was someone who actually had a life of real accomplishments. Trump likes to preen as a self-made man, and he's not.) Then, Kruse and co-host Molly Jong-Fast switch gears and discuss the state of voter suppression and the history of how it impacted Black Americans in this country. Essentially, says Kruse, the Voting Rights Act is an effort “to undo all of the voter suppression that had happened since reconstruction,” which was a lot. And once the Shelby County v Holder Supreme Court decision gutted it, a lot of states were very open about their suppressive tactics. It was bad, says Kruse, “the intent of these laws was just as clear as it had been in the late 1800s. But he is optimistic about a Biden administration turning the tide. Plus! He explains what people misunderstand the most about American suburbs—which is why many of them in Georgia turned blue—and why Trump has pandered to Jewish people. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of the most frightening aspects of the assault on the U.S. Capitol was how, well, normal some of the participants seemed—and how openly they spoke of their willingness to murder other Americans if President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory was certified. The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 and described his conversations with the rioters to co-hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “I was really struck by the people I talked to who were not necessarily crazed QAnon people... but kinda just like people you might think of as your neighbors, your grandparents,” Sommer said. “And just almost to, to a person, they were all just like, ‘Well, if Joe Biden gets his votes certified today, there’s going to be violence and we’re going to kill people, and there’s gonna be a civil war. Then, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) joined Wilson and Jong-Fast to talk about what happened after he was told to “take out a gas mask and get ready to duck” inside the Capitol. For a while, Swalwell said, the reality of the danger just was not sinking in. “I still thought, there’s no way they’re coming in here—until the house chaplain went up to the podium where the president usually speaks for the State of the Union,” he said. “And she started offering a prayer and I thought, OK, they’re going to get in here. This is not good.” Sommer said he was struck by the “huge amount of entitlement” among the MAGA rioters. “I do feel like so much of the reaction, both from the rioters and the people who were there at the protest in general, was this shock that laws would apply to them,” he said. “...A weird thing I heard a lot at the Capitol was this idea that if you pay taxes, you could just break into whatever federal building you feel like. And because your taxes in an indirect way pay for the Capitol Police that... you’re their boss.” When the conversation shifted to President Donald Trump’s impeachment in the House, Wilson said more Republicans would have voted to impeach if the vote hadn’t been public. “One of the guys that voted in favor of impeachment told me… if it was a secret ballot, Trump would have been impeached with 50 percent or more of the caucus voting against him.” “They’re fucking petrified,” Wilson said. “Well, guess what? You created this monster and you kept feeding it. You kept it in the basement. You hauled it out to vote every two years, but you kept feeding it and now it’s loose and it hates you more than it hates anything. I say this a lot: There’s nothing a Trump voter hates more than a Republican that doesn’t support Trump.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) just can’t understand why everyone wants him to resign. He put out a brave tweet calling for the “violence” to end after a mob he helped incite laid siege to the Capitol, and his “woke” publisher still gave in to “cancel culture” and axed his beloved book. Now people won’t stop going on about his objecting to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the blood-soaked wake of the riot. To offer the senator a bit of clarity, co-hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast talked to Pennsylvania’s truth-talking lieutenant governor, John Fetterman. Fetterman, who’s faced his own challenges from Republicans who refuse to accept the 2020 election’s outcome at home, had a few choice words for Hawley and his erstwhile political ambitions on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Plus, New York University professor and “Pivot” co-host Scott Galloway on exactly how much credit we should give Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey for kicking Donald Trump off their platforms. “There’s blood on your hands, Josh Hawley,” Wilson says. “...You begged and pleaded to be the favorite of Donald Trump by continuing with this fucking lie, that inflamed, these conspiratorial lunatics, and they came down there.” Wilson also calls BS on appeals for political unity if there aren’t going to be any resignations first—Hawley foremost among them. “All those excuses and this false and shallow horseshit hypocritical appeal to unity and reconciliation,” he says. “Yeah. OK. Quit first, motherfucker. And then we'll talk.” Fetterman had a direct, searing message for Hawley and his fellow GOP “objectors.” “Your supporters drove you from your very chamber. And after all that trauma, people were shot and people died, you still were so hell bent on exploiting this for your own political advantage. After all that, you still got up in front and continued to tell what you know are lies,” Fetterman says. “You know, [Hawley] went to Stanford and Yale law. He knows better than anybody that this is all garbage. And this is the point. And that’s what makes him so reprehensible. You know, I don’t care what your political beliefs are. If you’re willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your, your soul is dipped in dog shit. I don’t know how else to say it.” Then, NYU professor Scott Galloway joins for a discussion about Twitter and Facebook taking away the president’s social media accounts. “There is nothing noble. There is nothing patriotic. There was nothing civic in Zuckerberg or Dorsey kicking these people off of their platforms,” Galloway says. “This is them trying to wallpaper over their delay and obfuscation. People who get DUIs typically have driven drunk 200 times before they kill a family or they’re pulled over. Wow. And these guys have been driving drunk and all of a sudden a family got killed. And now they’re sorry… They deserve zero fucking credit for doing the right thing at the bottom of the ninth inning.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump is in deep shit. So deep, that he finally admitted to leaving the White House at the end of the month. And his supporters? Well, some would say Wedesnday’s riot in D.C., when his supporters-turned-domestic-terrorists defaced the Capitol, inspired an “oh-fuck” moment. As for what is going through the president’s head right now, co-hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast turned to the man who spent a good deal of time with Trump to find out. Michael Cohen, author of Disloyal and host of the Mea Culpa podcast, came on the latest episode of The New Abnormal to chat about the chaos and what Trump’s next moves are. Needless to say, he did not censor himself in the slightest. “I am certain that Donald Trump is psychotic right now,” he says, adding that he fully believes a coup was the president's goal all along. “Donald Trump would rather burn down the White House, then turn over the keys.” At the least, Trump and his enablers on the Hill encouraged the events that went down and Cohen thinks they should “pay.” Yes, he was someone who encouraged him, but it’s different, he says. “I did work for him. And what did I do? I paid $130,000, you know, to keep quiet. The fact that the president got his pecker pulled by a porn star, seriously? And you want to compare that to the seditious acts of these proud boys, of the Wolverine Watchmen and all these other crazy groups? You can’t compare the two.” Then, James Carville joins and gives an ultimatum to the Biden administration: “If they're not going to look at [Trump’s crimes], I'm going to resign from the Democratic party,” he says. “If it's not an impeachable offense to encourage a mob, to interfere with a constitutionally mandated congressional procedure, then there's nothing impeachable.” Plus, Rick breaks down Wednesday's seditious acts, Josh Hawley gets inducted into the Fuck that Guy Hall of Fame, and he and Molly speculate if anyone actually would vote to keep Ted Cruz in the Senate. And! Look out for a Trump News Network! Coming soon for just $4.99 a month! Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After inciting a mob of his drooling followers to sack the Capitol, President Donald Trump proved he’s too dangerous to hold office, even if it’s just for another two weeks. But don’t count on his cabinet to do the right thing, not even after the first attack on the Capitol since 1814. “These people are gutless, spineless, chicken-shit, horrifying, boot-lick traitor scum,” Rick Wilson says on The New Abnormal. “Even if Donald Trump had his finger on the trigger and was saying, I'm going to nuke Peoria,’ … these people would not pursue the 25th amendment. Everyone's just fooling themselves.” This was a day that was stupid and pointless as it was dangerous. A day for a thousand self-owns. Molly Jong-Fast wonders why these people are protesting the electoral college when “the greatest irony here is the electoral college is the only thing that gets Republicans in office. And yet they're coming out against it, right? I mean, we'll go to a popular vote. Let's go, bitches!” The crew muses about what would have happened if Mitt Romney had gotten his hands on Ted “Fat Wolverine” Cruz today after shouting at him across the rotunda. Does the shirtless, horned “Q-Shaman” supply Q-Anon with psychedelics that explain why they believe the wacky things they do? How does one wax Roger Stone’s Richard Nixon back tattoo? Is Mike Pence planning on starting his own gang of “Prude Boys” with his new-found free time? And what exactly were those Trumpist morons really trying to accomplish? All of this on this special bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After inciting a mob of his drooling followers to sack the Capitol, President Donald Trump proved he’s too dangerous to hold office, even if it’s just for another two weeks. But don’t count on his cabinet to do the right thing, not even after the first attack on the Capitol since 1814. “These people are gutless, spineless, chicken-shit, horrifying, boot-lick traitor scum,” Rick Wilson says on The New Abnormal. “Even if Donald Trump had his finger on the trigger and was saying, I'm going to nuke Peoria,’ … these people would not pursue the 25th amendment. Everyone's just fooling themselves.” This was a day that was stupid and pointless as it was dangerous. A day for a thousand self-owns. Molly Jong-Fast wonders why these people are protesting the electoral college when “the greatest irony here is the electoral college is the only thing that gets Republicans in office. And yet they're coming out against it, right? I mean, we'll go to a popular vote. Let's go, bitches!” The crew muses about what would have happened if Mitt Romney had gotten his hands on Ted “Fat Wolverine” Cruz today after shouting at him across the rotunda. Does the shirtless, horned “Q-Shaman” supply Q-Anon with psychedelics that explain why they believe the wacky things they do? How does one wax Roger Stone’s Richard Nixon back tattoo? Is Mike Pence planning on starting his own gang of “Prude Boys” with his new-found free time? And what exactly were those Trumpist morons really trying to accomplish? All of this on this special bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Things were already sub-ideal for the president and his Republican party in the Peach State. The GOP’s incumbent senators, who in any normal year would be locks for re-election, both have a habit of shady stock trades. The early vote has been huge, and breaking Democrats’ way. Then came the instantly-infamous call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger—the one where the president asked to dig 11,000 votes or so out of the trash pile. For Trump, the news may get worse. One end of the call took place in Fulton County, Georgia, where Fani Willis was just elected district attorney. “She prosecutes without fear or favor. And her folks are looking at that call closely,” Daily Beast editor-at-large and Georgia political veteran Goldie Taylor explains on The New Abnormal’s first show of 2021. “Donald Trump—and anybody else in that room, helping him—could very well face charges here in Georgia, in Fulton County. Charges that they cannot make go away.” I didn’t have to be like this, of course. “If Donald Trump had just shut his mouth, he probably would have sailed to reelection. If he just shut up and handled COVID right. Georgia, he would have sailed in. This primary here in Georgia, he wouldn't have a problem,” Taylor tells Molly Jong-Fast. But this president can’t help himself. He attacked the Republican establishment for not bowing to his election fraud conspiracies. And this was a party that for decades was a “juggernaut… they have had control of the state lock stock and barrel because they were just more highly organized,” Taylor says. Now, they’re anything but. “The President of the United States can't stop attempting, consciously or unconsciously, to screw this election up for this party. And he’s just, in new and different ways, tried to throw obstacles in and [Sen. David] Purdue and [Sen. Kelly] Loeffler’s way,” says Sam Brodey, The Beast reporter who broke many of the biggest stories about their pair’s financial shenanigans. Trump keeps railing about how Georgia’s November election was totally rigged—and it sure seems to be having an effect in the January election, where many die-hard Trumpists say they’re not sure they trust the system enough to vote. Loeffler and Perdue may still win, of course; they’ve got history on their side. But “there is this Republican civil war that is playing out in Georgia and the candidates are having to fight against that,” Brpdey continues. “This has an impact. A huge segment of voters in this state hang on every word that the president says. And like after a certain point, he's saying this every day, so it will have an impact and we'll find out what it is.” Because today is election day in Georgia. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump did a lot to roll back women’s healthcare—from enacting a global gag rule, which prevents non-American health organizations from receiving monetary aid from the U.S., to stacking the courts with anti-choice judges all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Add the threat of losing Roe to the mix and Biden will have his work cut out for him after he takes office in January. Should he appoint a “women’s health czar?” Molly Jong-Fast asks Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal? She was half-joking, but also serious. Hogue is all for it. “It would send such a clear message that that terrible era that Trump ushered in is over,” she says. But even so, it won’t be over just yet. Hogue says reproductive rights “absolutely could” be taken away and that the organization is even preparing for the possibility. “A lot of our work over the last few years has been about making sure that we have what we call ‘islands of access,’ [like] Blue States that are caudifying the right to abortion, making sure that we have like practice in place where women can go,” she says. In the meantime, Molly asks her what Biden should do as soon as possible when it comes to the anti-choice legislation in place from the Trump/Pence era (which, by the way, is not driven by morality, says Hogue, but by control). “It has always been about targeting women and women of color. And it's always been about forcing women to adhere to a very narrow period view of where they think our role in society is,” she says. To combat it, Bden can start by rescinding the global and domestic gag rule, and appoint people who believe in science. Even then, the key is to not get complacent, lookin’ at you white women: “We have to rebuild the muscle that any time we are not fighting for something, we are losing it any time.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump getting COVID. Antifa plotting to take down the White House. The truth about Russia disinfo. Bill Clinton impressions. The Lincoln Project scoops. The very first year of The New Abnormal by The Daily Beast has been a wild, trippy ride. It featured scientists, politicians, whistleblowers and the Daily Beast’s best and brightest reporters. In this special episode, we compiled the most fun, most hilarious and most brutally honest clips from co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson’s best episodes. We kick off with the duo talking about Trump getting COVID (and if Biden secretly planned it all), then go into a few clips from bonus episodes that only Beast Inside members had access to including what Rick and Molly got wrong about the election (and what Democrats should have done differently, like running celebrities, says Molly. Also, “are you out of your mind? Voter fucking registration,” said Rick). Next, there’s the episode where comedian Ike Barinholtz recounts the obviously real friendship he and Don Jr. shared while killing innocent animals and boating. We even had Rev. Raphael Warnock on the show before the special election run-off officially kicked off in November (“Kelly Loeffler was appointed appointed by Gov. Kemp to warm up the [Senate] seat before I get there,” he jokes of his incumbent opponent) and Veep showrunner Dave Mandel’s episode dives into why Mitch McConnell basically punched America in the penis. Masha Gessen drops a bomb on her episode, claiming that the country’s problem is not Russian interference, it’s the fact that we let it in. And of course, the greatest moment of TNA’s history: when lightening literally struck Rick’s house during a “Fuck that Guy” segment. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twenty-four-year-old Madelyn Corwin’s social media feeds feature a few selfies, videos of her insulin pump, and almost always a link to a GoFundMe page. The most current fundraiser is to raise money for a woman named Nicole who lost her diabetic son in 2018 because they couldn’t afford insulin. In other words, Corwin’s pages are not just young people fodder. Her activism is literally saving lives. “I just make a statement and I'll have people message me on Twitter or Instagram and be like, ‘thanks so much for posting about this, my dad died like three years ago,’” she tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Corwin works with the organization Mutual Aid to raise awareness for a healthcare crisis most non-Diabetics wouldn’t otherwise know about: the insanely high costs of insulin and the Americans who are dying as a result. “[People] kind of just think like, Oh, like, you know, like Joe wasn't taking care of himself, but in reality, like Joe literally couldn't afford to take care of himself.” Without insurance, insulin (which is mainly distributed in the United States by three major companies) can cost up to $1000. Some states do have cop-pay caps, says Corwin, but she cited research that found they only help up to 27% of people on the drug in each state. “I believe in ‘96 it was like around 20 us dollars,” she says, but that rate has doubled in just the last five years. “But once it started hitting like 2011, 2012, it was like hitting those $200 a vile marks. People were like, okay, well, like something's going on?” Lobbying is a thing, but it hasn’t made much of a dent. Now, they stick to financial crowdsourcing, education and accountability. In the meantime, the #insulinforall community are deciding what the next move is: “I mean, I guess in like a dream world, I want everyone to be able to get insulin for free, but we live in the United States,” says Corwin. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Twenty-four-year-old Madelyn Corwin’s social media feeds feature a few selfies, videos of her insulin pump, and almost always a link to a GoFundMe page. The most current fundraiser is to raise money for a woman named Nicole who lost her diabetic son in 2018 because they couldn’t afford insulin. In other words, Corwin’s pages are not just young people fodder. Her activism is literally saving lives. “I just make a statement and I'll have people message me on Twitter or Instagram and be like, ‘thanks so much for posting about this, my dad died like three years ago,’” she tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Corwin works with the organization Mutual Aid to raise awareness for a healthcare crisis most non-Diabetics wouldn’t otherwise know about: the insanely high costs of insulin and the Americans who are dying as a result. “[People] kind of just think like, Oh, like, you know, like Joe wasn't taking care of himself, but in reality, like Joe literally couldn't afford to take care of himself.” Without insurance, insulin (which is mainly distributed in the United States by three major companies) can cost up to $1000. Some states do have cop-pay caps, says Corwin, but she cited research that found they only help up to 27% of people on the drug in each state. “I believe in ‘96 it was like around 20 us dollars,” she says, but that rate has doubled in just the last five years. “But once it started hitting like 2011, 2012, it was like hitting those $200 a vile marks. People were like, okay, well, like something's going on?” Lobbying is a thing, but it hasn’t made much of a dent. Now, they stick to financial crowdsourcing, education and accountability. In the meantime, the #insulinforall community are deciding what the next move is: “I mean, I guess in like a dream world, I want everyone to be able to get insulin for free, but we live in the United States,” says Corwin. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rudy Giuliani tried really hard this year soil himself: the hair-in-the-can, the Russian agent pal, the presser by the sex shop, the buckets of conspiracy drool. But it wasn’t until he got caught red handed with Borat’s daughter that his reputation was smeared fully, finally, and forever. The hand-down-Rudy’s-pants incident was one of a whole bunch of different ways that political comedians rammed into Trumpworld in 2020. Matt Wilstein, The Daily Beast’s resident comedy guru, breaks down the highs and the lows with Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on a special crossover episode of The Last Laugh and The New Abnormal podcasts. From Jordan Kleppler’s head-first dives into the maskless hordes at MAGA rallies to the viral impressionists who took over your Twitter feeds, Matt, Molly, and Jesse break down the funniest moments, and answer some of the biggest questions as we finally leave this hell year behind: What does Sarah Cooper do if she can’t channel Trump? How did Balire Erskine manage to become Tiffany Trump’s bestie? How does Kleppler prep to make unintentional comedy with MAGAmen? What was up with Jim Carrey’s impression of Joe Biden? Was Saturday Night Live ever really funny? Ever? For more great political comedy, listen to The Daily Beast's The Last Laugh podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

“I begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing,” says Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, author of Melania and Me. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff considered Melania Trump a friend—more than a friend, really. Wolkoff even followed Melania to Washington, helping produce the 2017 inauguration and advise the incoming First Lady. But when the stories started coming out about the insane overspending during the Inauguration, Wolkoff says Melania threw her to the wolves—allowing Wolkoff to take the blame in the press and kicking her out of the White House. “I begged her to just come out and say that I was her friend, I was loyal. Nope, nothing. So the betrayal, the pain of that was like—I gave up my whole life for this woman. No one else would help Melania. I mean, she was alone,” Wolkoff tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “I should've known better. She is just like her husband.” So Wolkoff began taping her calls with Melania—calls which formed some of the bedrock for her book, Melania and Me. Improbably, Wolkoff and the First Lady kept talking, even after Wolkoff was cast out. When Melania wore that instantly-infamous “I Don’t Care” jacket on a trip to a center for migrant kids, Wolkoff called. Their mutual friend, the fashion designer Herve Pierre, was being attacked online for the fiasco because he had made dresses for Melania in the past. But this jacket was a $39 item from Zara. Wolkoff asked the First Lady: Would she clear things up? Say something in public? Melania admits that Pierre “had nothing to do with that jacket.” But she declines to make any kind of statement on his behalf. Instead, Melania laughs, “I'm driving liberals crazy, that's for sure. And you know… they deserve it.” Wolkoff was horrified. “When I sent [Pierre] the photograph [of the jacket], he immediately wrote me back saying, ‘Is this Photoshop? ‘And I wanted so desperately to say yes,” Wolkoff tells Jong-Fast. “He was devastated.” “There's so much callousness,” Wolkoff continues. “Even in just trying to get [Pierre] paid for collaborating with her and making her first dress, it was like pulling teeth. There is no empathy or remorse for the fact that here's someone who was blamed because he's known as her ‘stylist.’” Moments like these—and the casual dismissal over the Inaugural—made Wolkoff feel better about recording conversations with a woman to whom she had once been so closely connected. “Taping a friend is, it's unacceptable. It really is. But Melania was no longer my friend when I pressed record. Because when I pressed record on the conversations I had with her, it was only after she, Donald, and the PIC [Presidential Inauguration Committee] [tried] to make me the scapegoat and to falsely accuse me for the overspending of $107 million of the inaugural funds,” she tells Jong-Fast. “First and foremost, I taped to protect myself because I needed to be protected once I knew I was going to be under investigation.” Jong-Fast answers, “I don't think anyone ever regrets taping a Trump.” This is part two of a two-part talk with Wolkoff. In part one, Wolkoff took us inside the war between Ivanka and Melania Trump. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Political pundit and author Zerlina Maxwell was booed and hissed at during a Politicon a few years ago (which is “a Comic Con for political nerds”) because she said that if Bernie Sanders ran in 2020, which he did, he’d have to improve his messaging toward communities of color. Fast forward to this year and Maxwell has a book out on the subject and stands by her statement. “It seems like I was psychic or something, but really I was just saying a thing that seemed to be an obvious point that somebody needed to say, and I think Republicans understand this,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal. “That's one of the reasons why they try to suppress voters of color and they try to pack power in, in the court system. You know, they understand the demographic shifts in a way that I feel like Democrats needed to.” What does she think of Biden’s cabinet? Molly points out that some have criticized the president-elect for not enlisting more Black women. But Maxwell is OK with his choices, despite the bar being incredibly low thanks to Donald Trump. (“I mean, we're already doing a lot better than we were just a couple of weeks ago.”) Speaking of Trump, Maxwell shares the one thing she can’t quite wrap her head around: “I look around and I can't believe that there's 70 plus million people who are getting duped by somebody who's not intelligent,” she says, both in general and with the coronavirus messaging. “We lie to ourselves when we say that we are exceptional in particular ways in which we are proving to ourselves in this last year, we are not,” she adds. “Like, if you asked Americans to do something mildly inconvenient, uh, to protect their neighbor, they're going to sue them.” Plus! Jong-Fast asks Maxwell what white feminists can do to be more intersectional, and frankly, better to Black women and causes. To start, she says, aboriton isn’t the only cause feminists should focus on: “They need to really lean in to the fact that racism is a problem they need to care about too.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Political pundit and author Zerlina Maxwell was booed and hissed at during a Politicon a few years ago (which is “a Comic Con for political nerds”) because she said that if Bernie Sanders ran in 2020, which he did, he’d have to improve his messaging toward communities of color. Fast forward to this year and Maxwell has a book out on the subject and stands by her statement. “It seems like I was psychic or something, but really I was just saying a thing that seemed to be an obvious point that somebody needed to say, and I think Republicans understand this,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast in this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal. “That's one of the reasons why they try to suppress voters of color and they try to pack power in, in the court system. You know, they understand the demographic shifts in a way that I feel like Democrats needed to.” What does she think of Biden’s cabinet? Molly points out that some have criticized the president-elect for not enlisting more Black women. But Maxwell is OK with his choices, despite the bar being incredibly low thanks to Donald Trump. (“I mean, we're already doing a lot better than we were just a couple of weeks ago.”) Speaking of Trump, Maxwell shares the one thing she can’t quite wrap her head around: “I look around and I can't believe that there's 70 plus million people who are getting duped by somebody who's not intelligent,” she says, both in general and with the coronavirus messaging. “We lie to ourselves when we say that we are exceptional in particular ways in which we are proving to ourselves in this last year, we are not,” she adds. “Like, if you asked Americans to do something mildly inconvenient, uh, to protect their neighbor, they're going to sue them.” Plus! Jong-Fast asks Maxwell what white feminists can do to be more intersectional, and frankly, better to Black women and causes. To start, she says, aboriton isn’t the only cause feminists should focus on: “They need to really lean in to the fact that racism is a problem they need to care about too.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They’re the two most important women in Donald Trump’s life. And they absolutely loathe one another. Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, the former Melania Trump confidant and author of Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady, spills the tea on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, starting with the very first days of the administration. “Melania didn't come to D.C. that week, but Ivanka stayed and Donald stayed there. And all of a sudden, that's the weekend, Donald signs the immigration, what was it called? The ban. Yes. Ivanka shows ‘Finding Dory.’ Now, if you couldn't be more tone-deaf. Children were being separated from their parents. And here you're screening a film where again, this trout fish is being separated from its mother.” “Is that because Ivanka is dumb or is that because Ivanka is evil?” Molly Jong-Fast asks. “Listen, I say it as it is. I think it's a mixture. I really do. I think that Ivanka is Donald in a suit, right? All of the Trumps are taught to be Trumps. They don't show emotion. A Trump is a Trump because they are authentically and unapologetically skin deep, and also self-serving. And their attitudes and disrespect for each other is again, you have to get any inside to see it,” Wolkoff answers. And Wolkoff does indeed go inside, accusing Ivanka of purposefully boxing Melania out at every turn. “So [Ivanka] impinged on Melania's duties while overstepping her rank and boundaries. And I mean that, in a sense like she poached individuals that we were for the East Wing, that we were vetting to have—Kayleigh McEnany, Mercedes Schlapp. I mean, these were people Melania was looking to bring in. We called [Ivanka] the serial poacher. It was deceptive. But you don't go and hire people that the First Lady's looking to bring in,” Wolkoff adds. “The princess wanted to render Melania irrelevant. And you know, Melania refers to them as ‘snakes,’ Jared and Ivanka, and they'll do anything to get what they want. And they do.” Maybe none of this would’ve been that big of a deal—if Ivanka had been the mastermind she played on TV. But, uh, she wasn’t. "What was particularly galling, not only to us, but also to Melania, was that Ivanka and Jared were no more qualified to be engaged in any governing of the country than she was. Not that any of us that had never held those positions,” Wolkoff continues. “So to hear Ivanka put her name in the same sentence, as working with [former White House Chief of Staff] General [John] Kelly, it's like, 'Oh my God, how could you even?' Who would do that? Who would just be so disrespectful to say something like that? And think I she genuinely thinks it and believes it." This is part one of a two-part talk with Wolkoff. Part two airs next week—and includes previously-unheard tapes of Wolkoff and Melania. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The juiciest stories in politics, pop culture and more -- fast. Get Subscribed today on your favorite podcast app: https://pods.link/j6cshnbpj3mm9 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s getting near closing time for the Trumps at the White House—Monday’s electoral college vote made that official. Which means folks like Ivanka Trump have to GTFO and find themselves new careers. It might be a bit tricky, Daily Beast contributor and Hysteria host Erin Gloria Ryan explains. Just about everybody hates Ivanka these days—well, except for a handful of Fox-addled octogenarian creepers. That corporate feminism she used to try to embody? That “Hallmark feminism where there's absolutely no substance behind any of the things that she's saying”? It might’ve worked before. In the dying days of 2020, it just makes everyone gag. And the only thing worse is her “naked desire for her to be seen as an American princess. We literally fought a war so we wouldn't have to live in a monarchy,” Erin tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. So she’s settling into a new little palace in Miami. Meanwhile, daddy will be just down the road, setting up shop in his bizarroworld castle, Mar-a-Lago. Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson think it’s only a matter of time before Trump cultists start treating Dear Leader’s place like the real White House—and Donnie looks for new ways to extract cash from his megafans. “I’m wondering how much it costs to get him to sign your boobs,” Molly says. “Free—if you stop at the churro bar,” Rick answers. “There's going to be an omelet station for sure,” Molly counters. “Or a station and you'll get to say mean things to Eric.” But before the festivities begin, there are still a few remaining questions: How many more cabinet members will Trump fire on his way out? How many more Trumpists will declare war on the GOP? Will Donald try to smuggle any Oval Office tchotchkes in his pants? “I'm still curious to know,” Molly says, “does Trump get dragged out of the White House or does he go to Mar-a-Lago and just forget to come back?” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

COVID whistleblower Rebekah Jones always thought that having a gun pointed in her face would be terrifying. That’s what the movies and TV shows have us all believe anyway. But she says when the Florida state police raided her home and held a gun inches from her face after she told them her two children were present, she felt “nothing.” She even let them enter peacefully, she says. “I was prepared to be arrested,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast on this special members-only episode of The New Abnormal. She was actually prepared to be arrested months ago by the Gov. DeSantis administration, when the virus numbers got bad last spring and she created her infamous COVID tracker contradicting the state’s numbers in addition to filing a whistleblower complaint “against the state for manipulating data and breaking the law.” So why are they going after her now? “I think they're purging everybody who's disloyal,” she says. Also, DeSantis doesn’t like her, or anyone who is making him look bad. Could other states be doing the same? Maybe, she says. (“Nobody wants to look like it's, they've lost control.”) As far as Florida is concerned, though, Jones isn’t shutting up. She restated her assertion that her state is absolutely underreporting hospitalizations and deaths and the DOH has even changed people’s cause of death. (“They've deleted people, [from the tracker], including children. When I drew attention to the fact that a two-year-old died in Escambia County, in Florida, less than two weeks after he was diagnosed and hospitalized for it, they reported him as a death. And as soon as I tweeted about it, and there was a big press reaction, they deleted it. They actually changed his dead status from yes to no.”) She doesn’t know what will happen next, but she wants people to keep paying attention to what’s happening with the virus. (“DeSantis would love to just distract people from what's going on with hospitalizations right now.”) Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

COVID whistleblower Rebekah Jones always thought that having a gun pointed in her face would be terrifying. That’s what the movies and TV shows have us all believe anyway. But she says when the Florida state police raided her home and held a gun inches from her face after she told them her two children were present, she felt “nothing.” She even let them enter peacefully, she says. “I was prepared to be arrested,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast on this special members-only episode of The New Abnormal. She was actually prepared to be arrested months ago by the Gov. DeSantis administration, when the virus numbers got bad last spring and she created her infamous COVID tracker contradicting the state’s numbers in addition to filing a whistleblower complaint “against the state for manipulating data and breaking the law.” So why are they going after her now? “I think they're purging everybody who's disloyal,” she says. Also, DeSantis doesn’t like her, or anyone who is making him look bad. Could other states be doing the same? Maybe, she says. (“Nobody wants to look like it's, they've lost control.”) As far as Florida is concerned, though, Jones isn’t shutting up. She restated her assertion that her state is absolutely underreporting hospitalizations and deaths and the DOH has even changed people’s cause of death. (“They've deleted people, [from the tracker], including children. When I drew attention to the fact that a two-year-old died in Escambia County, in Florida, less than two weeks after he was diagnosed and hospitalized for it, they reported him as a death. And as soon as I tweeted about it, and there was a big press reaction, they deleted it. They actually changed his dead status from yes to no.”) She doesn’t know what will happen next, but she wants people to keep paying attention to what’s happening with the virus. (“DeSantis would love to just distract people from what's going on with hospitalizations right now.”) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ivanka and Jared have big plans...to move to Florida, and maybe start the tropical version of the Met Ball. “If you had $30 million to spend on 1.6 acres of empty space, where would you buy it?” Molly asks Rick. “Miami,” of course, to be somewhat near Trump’s favorite kid and son-in-law and witness when Ivanka primaries against Marco Rubio, he answers. Rick can see Trump turn against Rubio now: “I await the day that little Marco after applying his lip so firmly to Trump's, his entire critique of Donald Trump being in the form of elliptical, passive aggressive Bible verses when he wakes up and goes, wait, she filed for what? And then Trump comes out and tweets about it and says, little Marco was never with me. I put up with him because blah, blah, blah.” But when? In this episode of The New Abnormal, Rick and Molly make predictions. In the meantime, Rick makes another bleak prediction of Trump Republicans (“They are scheming and planning right now to do every possible thing they can to fuck this up and cause enormous damage and cause as much pain as possible in the lives of ordinary people.”) Then, Democracy Docket founder Marc Elias walks us through what it’s been like fighting against Trump’s voter fraud cases across the country, and explains the hilarious reason the president was able to win just one. And Daily Beast reporter Olivia Messer shares horrifying stories from her COVID superspreader coverage and some of the outlandish virus lies people have told her (and they actually believe.) Plus! How Biden can prevent the Hell that is a Trump 2024 campaign and Mike Pompeo is sketchy as fuck—and not just because he’s throwing a 900-person holiday party. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You’d think they’d have learned by now, just a few weeks from the end of the Trump presidency. But people are still falling for the same head fakes and tricks. Take, Molly Jong-Fast says, Trump’s recent trip down to Georgia. “It was one of those many Trump's speeches where you saw on Twitter for the first 15 minutes people were like, ‘sometimes Trump can stick to the teleprompter’; ‘teleprompter Trump, bravo for just, like, reading the words.” And then, of course, things went off the rails. Like they always do. “These people always give him credit for doing things like, ‘Oh, look, he didn't poop himself! Yay! Good job, Donald!’ It is endlessly baffling to me that in the last 40-plus days of this goddamn hellish shitshow of an administration, there are still people in the media and the Republican party trying to normalize Donald Trump, trying to say, ‘Oh yeah, this is okay. This is cool. It's just a little weird. Yeah. He's not, not that far off the beaten path.’ When in fact it is completely cuckoo pants,” replies Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Rick then gets a little worked up about how Trump is spending his last few days in office doing anything but actually, y’know, being president. To which Molly replies: “Trump hasn't worked this entire time. So it wouldn't be odd for him to start now?” Plus! The team wrestle over whether the Democrats can ever sell “socialism.” Molly airs out Rudy Giuliani for getting the experimental COVID treatments the rest of us can only dream of. Rick reveals which Trump body part “smells like honeysuckle and rainbows and victory.” Chris Colbert joins the dynamic duo to talk about the “Say Their Name” podcast. And Kathy Griffin stops by to talk about what it’s like to be blasted by Trumpist cancel culture and accused of cyber terrorism. “I don't know how many terrorist groups are trying to get a 60-year-old, wacky, red-haired, vulgar comedian. So I would not typically think of myself as a terrorist,” she quips. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump has a long list of titles he’s accused of being: a liar, scammer, and sore loser to name a few. But racist is a title he earned long before becoming a soon-to-be one-term MAGA president. Former Trump Organization employee Barbara Res says saw it at play multiple times years ago while working as a vice president for the construction arm of the company. Res has a book coming out detailing her work with Trump before he became president, but shares sobering anecdotes with co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Once, Trump reportedly saw a Black construction contractor working on one of his buildings when he turned to Res and said, “I never want to see that again.” What exactly was that? According to Res, I don't ever want to see the young Black kids sitting in my lobby where million millionaires are coming into my apartment. “I don’t want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by black people.” The remarks didn’t end there, though. Res also claims that Trump didn’t want Black kids to sit in his lobbies either, where he said, “millionaires are coming into my apartment.” Res also talks about Trump’s affinity to the mafia, or at least his wannabe mafia boss ruling style, and just how angry he can get over something as trivial as marble color and armoire doors. I thought, “he might hit me.” Will he get angry enough to barricade down in the White House? Res has an opinion on that, too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump has a long list of titles he’s accused of being: a liar, scammer, and sore loser to name a few. But racist is a title he earned long before becoming a soon-to-be one-term MAGA president. Former Trump Organization employee Barbara Res says saw it at play multiple times years ago while working as a vice president for the construction arm of the company. Res has a book coming out detailing her work with Trump before he became president, but shares sobering anecdotes with co-host Molly Jong-Fast on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal. Once, Trump reportedly saw a Black construction contractor working on one of his buildings when he turned to Res and said, “I never want to see that again.” What exactly was that? According to Res, I don't ever want to see the young Black kids sitting in my lobby where million millionaires are coming into my apartment. “I don’t want people thinking Trump Towers are being built by black people.” The remarks didn’t end there, though. Res also claims that Trump didn’t want Black kids to sit in his lobbies either, where he said, “millionaires are coming into my apartment.” Res also talks about Trump’s affinity to the mafia, or at least his wannabe mafia boss ruling style, and just how angry he can get over something as trivial as marble color and armoire doors. I thought, “he might hit me.” Will he get angry enough to barricade down in the White House? Res has an opinion on that, too. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The gods of comedy have heard your prayers—and just might make them come true. “Veep,” the greatest political comedy of all time, could return, somehow, some way, in some form, if only for a short while. “We've certainly discussed it,” star Julia-Louis Dreyfus tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Everybody's sort of gone off now and everybody's doing other projects and so on. But I don't rule it out entirely, doing some sort of ‘Veep’-related thing. I mean, there's an area that we could jump back into. I think [showrunner] Dave [Mandel] and I have talked about it.” Mandel adds, “We left just enough sort of like there's some time jumps in there that you could definitely—” “Go back into,” Dreyfus offers. “Yeah. You could kind of color in and answer a couple of questions. So I think anything is possible,” Mandel says. Not so long ago, Mandel and Dreyfus were wondering aloud how possible it was to do political satire with Trump in the White House. How do you parody a parody? Now, Dreyfus says, “There's always an opportunity for satire and we're hopeful that with the Biden administration, you know, things will sort of settle down and then we can be the outrageous ones.” “Yeah. It requires a baseline of normalcy. And if we can get back to that, if we can get back to a time where you're not thinking about the president every six minutes, I think maybe we can get back to some good old fashioned political satire,” Mandel adds. “But [the Trumpists] made it difficult. They raise the bar on stupidity on a daily basis. So it was very hard to out-stupid. You know what I mean? In the meantime—this weekend, in fact—the ‘Veep’ cast is getting back together to recreate one of the craziest, most prescient episodes of the show. In it, The Beast’s Kevin Fallon noted, protesters are planted [who] “alternately chant to ‘count every vote’ and ‘stop counting the votes’ as new information trickles in, changing their message based on which strategy would be more advantageous to them.” Sound familiar? But here’s the truly crazy part. That’s "an episode from the fifth season of ‘Veep,’ so many years back," Dreyfus says. 2016, to be exact. "Yes, ‘Veep’ is real. It's a documentary. And it's about real life," she jokes. The re-read of the episode——featuring guest stars Patton Oswalt, Kumail Nanjiani, Mark Hamill, and Stephen Colbert—is a fundraiser for a group looking to boost turnout in the upcoming Georgia special elections. Dreyfus thought it’d be cool to "read the very script that seemed to become reality the last couple of weeks. Let's read that, a sort of an uncut version of it." The cast did a similar thing in advance of the general election. Maybe they’ll get used to being back together. Maybe it’ll become a habit. Maybe, maybe, just maybe… The gang also talk to Matt Tyrnauer, who produced Showtime's limited-series "The Reagans," about the myth of "Saint Reagan" and how he held the press in a "fog of war" to earn him his esteemed reputation which the crew find undeserved. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump is headed to Georgia this week, where there’s about to be a pair of special elections to decide the balance of the senate. But don’t expect the president to really talk up his Republican, MAGA AF buds, George Conway says. “It's better for him and better for his ego if they lose.” Trump has a problem, George explains to Molly-Jong Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Well, two. First, “Republicans did better than he did” in the general election. Not only does “that undercut his claim of fraud… it means that there were significant numbers of Republicans who couldn't stomach him. And that's the reason why he lost and all these other people won.” So now Trump is hate-tweeting Georgia’s Republican governor and Republican secretary of state. And he’s doing his damnedest to tell his followers that their votes don’t count, that they’re sure to be stolen. “It was amazing to see [RNC chair] Ronna McDaniel desperately to explain to Republicans why they need to vote in an election that will decide the balance of the Senate,” Molly remarks. “It was like watching a walrus trying to fuck a beach ball. It's so awkward,” Rick replies. Then Baratunde Thurston—host of the new podcast How to Citizen—joins Molly for a frank discussion about what led to Trumpism, and how we avoid falling for it again. He’s got a number of structural reforms in mind, to take money out of politics and put in back on the street. But there’s more. “I want a lot of tribunals, Molly. I want COVID tribunals because I think there are political leaders who have blood on their hands that they need to be held to account for it. And I want some kind of like media tribunals because a lot of the media establishments created this fiction that is Donald Trump,” Baratunde says. Speaking of media monsters, Rick and Molly has had it with a certain interview formally known as the “Money Honey.” “Maria Bartiromo was once considered a legitimate and serious journalist,” Rick says. “And now she's being fitted for a pink hanbok, much like the North Korean propaganda lady who sits at the screen and stares and screams about the glory of the Kim Jong Un family. She allowed Donald Trump to go on television this weekend on the airwaves of Fox and bleed out the craziest horseshit you've ever heard.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alec Baldwin has given serious thought about running for office. He already knows what it’s like for people to hate his guts (Like for things like playing the president on Saturday Night Live—“They say things like, ‘I don't know who we want to get rid of first Alec Baldwin or Trump.’”) But seriously, he has considered diving head-first into the political world, and there is a chance he still might, but there’s a few things he’d need to take care of first—and someone he’d have to convince. In this episode of The New Abnormal, the 30 Rock actor tells Molly-Jong about his wife’s opinion on the matter, and why he credits his dad for standing “on the right side” of politics these days, according to Molly. After all, out of all the Baldwins in the family, there is only one Trump supporter. “[My dad] was a very progressive guy. He was very, very humanistic, very, and he would always say things to me,” he said. “My father was somebody that kind of understood that if we give people equal rights, it's going to, I don't want to say infiltrate, but pervade through every part of our society. And that's the change.” Baldwin was actually planning on leaving the country if Trump won re-election, but now he’s thinking about still going anyway. (“We still think it's a great time to get the hell out of here.”) In the meantime, he has all eyes on 2022—and a fantasy about being appointed the ambassador to Spain. Baldwin also reveals how much he prepared for impersonating Trump on SNL, and the reason Donald rants for so long at rallies. Plus! Listen closely, there’s a moment when he and Molly are almost the victims of a horror movie that only parents would find scary. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The end of the Trump administration is like the end of a season finale of the most batshit Netflix show. Everyone has questions of how it will finally end, including one big one: Will Trump pardon himself before leaving office? Some theories predict VP Mike Pence could assume the presidency for just enough time to pardon Trump. But, Rick Wilson doesn’t see that happening. In this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, Rick and co-host Molly Jong-Fast do a Q&A with producer Jesse Cannon to answer some of these burning questions about the Trump administration and their performance as political commentators (“I got wrong a lot,” says Molly. Rick also has three major predictions he got wrong during the election cycle.) But one thing they’re sure of, is that the chances of Pence pardoning the president are extremely unlikely. The two think Trump pardoning himself is more likely, but there’s a big caveat to that. “The essential thing of a pardon is it involves the admission of a crime. And so he has to admit that he violated the law,” says Rick. Rick and Molly also discuss why Biden’s ‘“boring” Cabinet picks (unlike Trump’s) will piss off Mitch McConnell: “He's picking people who are not these enormously, you know, controversial or dramatic figures. And that's okay.” Plus! The hosts talk about their favorite crimes of the Trump administration, and speaking of crime, “I think we're going to hear about Jared for a long time.” And will there be a President Dan Bongino in 2024?? Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices