The Daily Beast Podcast

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Aug. 2 Member Bonus: Why Cory Booker Won't Punch Trump in the Face Oct 14, 2020

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This members-only episode was originally published on August 2, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access.

Turns out, Sen. Cory Booker is a bigger pacifist than we suspected. He joined Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this members-only episode of The New Abnormal and told them about the time “a big guy” asked the New Jersey native to punch Trump in the face–and his response to that person. Booker also shared his thoughts on what may happen in the Senate thanks to Trump (“I think that what people are realizing is this could be the end for Republican party dominance”), how the president compared to Nixon, and the time one of his campaign staffers projectile vomited all over him and his partner Rosario Dawson. Plus! The trio imagine Putin staying in a Motel 6 and get Booker’s advice on how the Democratic Party can get out the vote: “If you’re not doing something about an issue that you care about, then you are complicit.”

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Cheat Sheet Podcast from The Daily Beast 10/14/20 Oct 14, 2020

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The juiciest stories in politics, pop culture and more -- fast.

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Trump Is Polluting the Planet With a Thousand Mini-Dons Oct 13, 2020

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It’s bad enough that we have to deal with one Donald Trump here in the U.S. of A. What’s worse, Mehdi Hasan explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, is that Trump has become a template for a whole planet full of bad-faith actors and wannabe strongmen. Before he became the host of his own TV show in America, Hasan interviewed all sorts of international politicians. “What I noticed over the last few years is that they all now start talking like Trump. They all use the same verbal tics, the same ‘fake news,’ the same completely brazen lies,” Hasan tells Molly Jong-Fast. “This is not a coincidence. People around the world have said, ‘well, it worked for Donald Trump. Why can't it work for me?’ Of course, all politicians are bullshit artists. But what’s different today, Hasan adds, “is the way in which Trump and co. have turned lying into not just an art form, but an instrument of power. They don't lie just to get their way. They lie because they want to destroy our shared reality. They want to demonstrate their power. They want people to back them and say, yes, ‘I don't believe my lying eyes.’” Speaking of belief, you’ll be gobsmacked by the lengths Alex Gibney had to go to in order to make “Totally Under Control,” his documentary about the government’s response to COVID. For some interview subjects, he’d drop off a high-tech camera rig so they could basically film themselves. For others, “the camera person would go in alone to an Airbnb, kind of scrub it down, and then set up this shield—a series of shower curtains and tarps—between the subject and the camera person. And then there would be a lens sticking through,” he tells Molly. “That was a way… to do a proper lighting setup, but also be safe.” Then! Rick Wilson asks the questions on everyone’s mind, like: How much cash would it take to turn Texas blue? Why does Mike Lee hate democracy? Is mail order herpes a thing? And will Ted Cruz even remember Trump’s name on November 4th?

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.

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TEASER: Val Demings Says She Has a Plan to Stop Trump’s SCOTUS Pick Oct 12, 2020

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Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) helped get Trump impeached, but now there's a new battle: his SCOTUS pick. She worked within the government’s Internal Affairs department and became one of the impeachment managers in Trump’s case after 27 years as an Orlando police officer. And impeached he was. So on this members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast asks for her thoughts on Trump's SCOTUS appointment and how exactly Democrats and citizens alike can stop it. (Mitch McConnell is “pushing it down the throats of the American people,” she says.) Her plan? Lots of pressure. (“This is not a moment for partisan politics. And we expect our leaders, Mitch McConnell, to lead the way there. His number one responsibility is the health, safety and wellbeing of the American people. And so I am hoping that he will feel the heat, if you will, from the American people.”) The former cop also shared what the future of police departments should be, and for her, abolishment is not the way to go (“When you talk to people who live in some of the highest crime areas, they say they don't want to see less police. They want to see more police, you know, because they know what it means. We should not talk about the police and the community as if there are two separate entities. If the police are the community and the community is the police one cannot exist without the other.”) Plus! Demings subtly takes a dig at her state’s Gov. Ron DeSantis. Then she explains the best way to get Disney World, and the economy at large, back up-and-running safely. (Spoiler alert: we’ve got to get the virus under control first.)

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Why Pence Is So Good at Being Evil Oct 09, 2020

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

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Kathy Griffin: Pence Is ‘Nothing But the Crap Under Trump’s Shoe’ Oct 08, 2020

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Kathy Griffin joins Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson for a special episode of The New Abnormal recorded right after the vice presidential debate. The gang thought Kamala Harris was the clear winner but they couldn’t stop looking at the vice president’s eye. “The closeup shots of Mike Pence’s bleeding eyeball were like watching an eighties horror movie. I expected some sort of snake to come running out of it at any minute,” said Rick. And that was before the fly stuck to his head. “It's almost like it gets inflamed during the debate. And the fly was doing some triage,” said Griffin.

Pence came into the debate needing to try and help Trump win back the women voters who have deserted him since 2016, but that was a total fail.“Maybe I'm biased because I hate Mike Pence with passion and burning fire of a thousand suns,” said Molly. “But I just saw a guy who doesn’t give a shit about women and who doesn’t respect women and who talked over [the moderator] Susan Page and talked over Kamala.”

Rick agreed: “He comes across as a guy, who’s saying, ‘Well, hey little lady, what can I do to get you into this beautiful ‘89 Camry today?’ Just there’s a little creepiness about him.”

“I will say, as a female watching, I did feel like Pence was doing a very classic gaslighting, the woman,” said Griffin. Pence also failed to commit to President Trump accepting the result of the election and agreeing to a peaceful transfer of power. “Mike Pence will be in a Nuremberg trial someday,” said Rick.

Griffin said it was tragic as Pence had once been seen as a mainstream Republican. “It’s shocking to watch him get indoctrinated like a freaking member of right-wing ISIS, go on his degenerate journey to becoming nothing but the crap under Trump’s shoe,” she said. “And it’s disheartening watching him tonight… just parroting, conspiracy theories that seem to get crazier. As the night went on, I just looked at him and I went, fuck that fly—that guy.”

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Should We Replace the Trump Administration With Chimpanzees? Oct 06, 2020

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No, seriously. After turning the Rose Garden into a superspreader party, after lying 143 ways to Sunday about the virus and 17 more about the president’s health, maybe it’s time to let some other mammals have a shot. “I could release 50 chimpanzees in the White House and they would behave with more care,” says Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Molly Jong-Fast replies, “My favorite moment was when they”—the White House staff, not the monkeys—”said, ‘you know, he's totally fine, but we've given him this experimental drug that has only a compassionate-use approval... Being lied to about the president's health is a time-honored tradition. But this group has really done it with a kind of zeal and flare and incompetence that we have never seen before.” Speaking of those experimental drugs, Yale’s Dr. Howard Foreman breaks down all the different therapeutics the president is taking—and lays out why he thinks Trump has been sicker for longer than anyone realizes. Maybe as long as two weeks. Then! The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and The New York Times’ Peter Baker compare covering Trump’s D.C. to covering Putin’s Moscow. Plus! Matthew McConaughey’s Camaro! Hugh Hewitt’s dumbest moment yet! White House moles emerge! Bill Barr gets even sneakier! And Rick shares his thoughts about Biden’s decision to take down his negative ads while Trump was in the hospital. “Joe Biden is falling victim to this asymmetric bullshit, civility, fuck that noise. Get on it. Get back on the negatives, do it. Now he's attacking you. He's attacked your family. He's attacked your campaign over and over again. Do not hesitate.”

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TEASER: Busy Phillips on Her Abortion and Embarrassing Louis Gohmert in Public Oct 05, 2020

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Busy Phillips had an abortion when she was a teenager. It’s been known for a while, but given the uncertainty of Roe v. Wade after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, she’s determined to not let people forget. (Kind of how she and many women like her will never forget the night Trump won the election—“I was really knocked back by Trump's win to the ground. I mean, I like to the floor, like in hysterics.”) In this new members-only bonus episode of The New Abnormal, the “Freaks and Geeks” actor tells Molly Jong-Fast how and why she transitioned from acting to activism, and why she is so passionate about standing up for reproductive rights. “I just wanted to say very simply, you know me, I had an abortion when I was 15 and the situation surrounding it is unimportant, but I deserve bodily autonomy. I deserve equality and I'm not going to be shamed for decisions that I've made about my own body and my own life based on my own beliefs,” she said. Of course, the two had to discuss that time last year that she testified in front of Congress about her abortion. If you missed it, it was definitely a moment worth seeing, especially if you despise Louie Gohmert (R-TX). Phillips explains the wonderful moment when she shut him DOWN from her point of view. (“I have to say that was my favorite thing that I've ever done in my life was saying that to him.”) She also poses to Molly an interesting question: What ifvasectomies were as stigmatized as abortions? (“They're like, well, don't be insane. It's like, well, how is that insane?”) Plus, Phillips shares her favorite RGB quote and her feelings on Trump’s “mismanaging” of the pandemic. (“The lack of empathy in this country that's been learned is incredibly overwhelming to me.)

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Why Trump Can't Quit His Most Awful, Most Racist Fanboys Oct 02, 2020

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Donald Trump is now claiming he’s not a Proud Boys stan. But let’s get real. When he was on that debate stage the other night, shouting out that racist crew? That was the true Trump. Like Rick Wilson tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, if someone told Trump, “‘Hey, a robot Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot came back from the grave along with robot zombie Saddam, and they all formed the Undead Dictators for Trump Club, would you issue a statement?’ He would say, ‘Well, they like me. So, you know, whatever they did before in the afterlife now in their necromantic incarnation,’” that’s okay. “If they like him, he likes them. This is the simplest rule of the crazy, narcissistic, authoritarian horseshit that defines Donald Trump... He knows the Proud Boys are part of his team. They're part of his base. He likes them.” Speaking of true colors, what does it say when a president surrounds himself with men accused of abusing women? From Parscale to Rob Porter to Corey Lewandowski, “it's a pattern that is really pretty shocking. And one of those people wouldn't be able to survive in a real administration,” Molly says. Plus! Princeton’s Sam Wang talks about the Democrats’ juiciest Senate targets. (Alaska? South Carolina? Kansas?) The New York Times’ Mara Gay talks about her bout with COVID—and her rage at Bob Woodward for keeping quiet for so long about what Trump really knew. (“I thought of [him] at dinner parties in Washington telling his friends, ‘Oh, make sure you get a mask,’ while the rest of us are running blind.”) Molly goes over her voting plan. (You have a voting plan, right? If not, make one right now.) And Rick discusses “the president's continued flirtation—and by flirtation I mean, they've been at a cheap hotel room fucking for three days—with white supremacists.”

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Trump Came Across As ‘A Total Assh*le’ In The First Debate Sep 30, 2020

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Former Republican operative Stuart Stevens joins Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson for a special episode of The New Abnormal on the night of the utterly chaotic first presidential debate. Trump’s amped up ranting reminded everyone that he’s “a guy that you just would not want in your face for another four years,” Stevens concluded. “Trump just came across as a total asshole.” It was a night when the moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, was unable to keep control. Stevens suggested giving the moderators the right to cut off the microphones of unruly candidates. “I think the moderators ought to have the rights to shock collars,” said Rick.

They all agreed that this kind of Trump performance was unlikely to make inroads with the college-educated voters or the white moms he needs for a second term. “Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani did not kill it with the debate prep,” said Molly. “It was not a great debate for women tonight, but I don't think Trump really gives a shit about women quite frankly.” Molly wishes they would just cancel the rest of the debates. “Trump is insane and he is just so destructive. And when you give him a mainstream media venue, it ends up undermining elections and civil society as a whole,” she said. Stevens, who was part of George W. Bush’s debate team, was more upbeat. He said this had been a terrible night for the president. “I think that there's going to be a big movement for Biden after this,” he said.

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