The Daily Beast Podcast

It’s the first night of the Republican National Convention and Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast are joined by Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, who shares eye-watering tales of what Trump is really like when the cameras are switched off. You thought what happened on screen on night one of the convention was crazy? It’s nothing compared to Trump behind the scenes, where national security officials couldn’t get through a meeting “without him doing 20 tangents, becoming irascible, turning red in the face, demanding a diet Coke, spewing spit,” Taylor explained. “Literally out of goddamn nowhere, he'd be like, ‘You know, who’s just my favorite guy? The MyPillow guy. Do any of you have those pillows?’ When it came to the issue of the border wall, Trump would be dreaming up “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants, rip all the families apart, “maim,” and gas them. “This was a man with no humanity whatsoever,” Taylor says. “He says, we got to do this, this, this, and this, all of which are probably impossible, illegal unethical,” Taylor recalls, but he was writing them down as the president spoke. “And he looks over me and he goes, you fucking taken notes?”All that, and there was still time for the “Fuck that guy” segment, and Jerry Falwell Jr. won a hotly contested race after it was claimed that the anti-LGBT preacher had encouraged the pool boy to have sex with his wife while he watched from the corner of the room. “I would like to salute you for providing the most meta and self-referential ‘Fuck that guy’ ever,” Rick says to Molly. “Because Jerry Falwell said to his wife, ‘Fuck that guy.’”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.

25 Aug 202032min

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. Actor, comedian and activist Billy Eichner totally gets why Taylor Swift took so long to get publicly political. In this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, the “Billy on the Street” star explains why celebrities may take a long time to speak up—and how Trump is changing that. “It's easy to sit back from a distance and say like, ‘why doesn't so-and-so get more political.’ And I definitely feel that way sometimes, but the few times I've had like internet backlash for something or, you know, people being angry at something, I can hold my own. And it doesn't, like, ruin my life at all,” he explained. “I think Trump pushed us to a place” where celebs who were previously silent on major issues now feel compelled to speak up. That said, he is just “sick of getting angry on Twitter.” Eichner also spoke about the ways he’s trying to make one of his biggest dreams come true: “It would make me so pleased to flip the Senate.” Plus, he shares his thoughts on the South Carolina race between Lindsey Graham and Jaime Harrison. “Lindsey Graham, to me, is the epitome of someone who makes me physically ill,” he added. And of course, he answers our burning question: When is Billy on the Street going to come back? (“Coronavirus killed my career.”). Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

24 Aug 20205min

On the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson team up with The Daily Beast’s senior White House correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng, who thinks this week’s online convention felt like the best PBS telethon since they threatened to publicly execute Elmo. Joe Biden gives his big headline speech and sounds suspiciously like a U.S. president. “It blew up the bullshit trope from the Republican party and from the Trump campaign, that Biden is some doddering senile old man… he came out and he tore the goddamn bark off Donald Trump,” says Rick, who also had praise for an old adversary. “Michael Bloomberg went out there and just stuck a goddamn shiv in, Donald Trump. It was some sweetness.” The team debated whether progressives in the Democratic party should fight harder to drag Biden to the Left, but they were united in their glee over the arrest of Steve Bannon.Molly describes it as “a moment I have long dreamed of.” Rick says this was his “favorite ‘Fuck that Guy’ of all time.” “It’s the gristle Icarus; it’s the whiskey necromancer; it’s Steve Fucking Bannon, the human skin tag, a gigantic sack of bile that walks on two legs.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

21 Aug 202023min

It’s night three of the Democratic National Convention and The New Abnormal team are getting a little punchy. Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson are joined by Hillary Clinton’s former senior advisor Phillipe Reines and it’s a barnburner.There were always going to be two gigantic rockstar performances from Barack Obama and Kamala Harris tonight that were going to trigger President Trump—"and sure as hell, they did!” said Rick. “You could disagree with Barack Obama about every policy thing under the sun, but you could always remember that the guy was a spectacular speaker and communicator, and he brought that shit tonight. I mean, he peeled the paint off the damn walls without raising his voice.”Reines nailed Trump’s fury at Obama. “He brings something to the table that really no one else in the world does, which is he can't be called a loser... He was elected president twice. He got more votes twice. I think there's an intimidation there.”Molly has warm words for Hillary Clinton’s focus on winning the election itself, and Reines praises his old boss: “She refrained from mentioning Jim Comey, which is always a positive.”The team agree that Trump is “the platonic ideal of an asshole” but debate whether it would be worth trading a few more years of Trump in office if it meant Don Jr. and Jared Kushner wound up in jail.“Donald Trump can be president for life,” said Rick. “If I can watch Jared torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.” 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.

20 Aug 202024min

Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson were up late to fight crime after a “seamless” night two of the Democratic National Convention. Former Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell joined a special edition of The New Abnormal which asked—after the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russian electoral interference—what the Hell happened with Robert Mueller? Molly’s interpretation of the 1,000 page report was pretty clear: “It seemed like a lot of shoes dropped in that the Trump campaign was giving clues to Roger Stone, which got passed to Julian Assange to influence the 2016 election. But it seems like Mueller dropped the ball on this… I’m no expert, but it, it sort of looks like collusion.” “Is Mueller incompetent? is Mueller corrupt? What is happening with him?” she asked. Rick, a former Republican insider, suggested that the failure of the Mueller report to nail the Trump campaign came down to Mueller’s temperament. “I think Mueller was too much of an institutionalist and too much of an incrementalist. And I think when you’re that kind of person, you have trouble understanding sometimes just how fucking wily and corrupt people like this are.” Rep. Swalwell had another answer. “He did not pursue the finances. And also he did not put the President's ass in a witness chair. And those, I think, were the two shortcomings.” Trump’s failure to stand up to Russia on behalf of the U.S. has left a huge opening for former Vice President Joe Biden and Rick was impressed by his move to lock down the kind of voters who backed Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. “The Democratic Party for the first time, in a lot of ways, since John F. Kennedy seized control of the national security narrative again, and position themselves as the party of strength because they came right out and made it a centerpiece of tonight,” he said. Molly suggested the DNC also did well to contrast the potential First Ladies. “It seems almost unfair, you know, to watch Jill Biden in the school she is teaching at versus Melania building a tennis pavilion.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

19 Aug 202024min

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. We have a very special guest with Gary Peters Sr. who is the junior United States Senator from Michigan and hes going to talk to us about the fuckery with the postal service as well as why Mitch McConnel is holding up the COVID aid. And the other voice you will be hearing in this interview is our producer Jesse Cannon Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

17 Aug 20205min

It’s the “secret sauce” of Fox News: “tell people who feel socially inferior that you're really the smart one. You're really informed, you know the real secrets about what's really going on,” explains Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. For 20 years, Fox has been force-feeding this sauce to its listeners, saying “that your life would be perfect if it wasn't for that George Soros, your life would be perfect if it wasn't for ANTIFA. They prep these people's minds to reject empirical truth all the time.” And finally, you have them believing in lizard people. In satanic pedophile rings. In QAnon. But maybe, Molly Jong-Fast offers, the QAnon takeover of the Republican party isn’t so bad. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiratorial congressional nominee? Maybe “she and Devin Nunes could someday be on a reality show where they've run away from their spouses. And they're living in a bunker in South Dakota. It's called ‘My Dumb Congressmen.’” Then! Rep. Lauren Underwood, a public health nurse and the youngest Black woman in Congress, talks about her experience doing pandemic preparation in the Obama administration—and whether we can do anything now to reverse Team Trump’s missteps. And! Hank Gilbert, who’s running against Congressman COVID Louie Gohmert, talks about staring down pistol-toting Trump minions for daring to question Dear Leader. Plus! Molly breaks down Kamala Harris’ generational strengths. America’s worst governor compares reopening schools to killing bin Laden. And the ghouls running the late Herman Cain’s twitter account attackWant 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.

14 Aug 202047min

Kurt Andersen has been tooling on Donald Trump for decades—the Spy magazine co-founder once even tricked the Donald into cashing a check for 17 cents. But, Andersen tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson, Trump did us all a favor. He showed America just how rigged our system is in favor of the ultra-rich. “His final ad [of the 2016 campaign] was all ‘Wall Street has taken all of your wealth and ruined the working class. And we must defeat these people of whom my opponent is a puppet,’” Anderson recounts on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Well, yeah, you had a point. But you didn't actually govern at all on that basis. So maybe, maybe he's sort of put that critique of the system on the table”—especially for Republicans who couldn’t take in that kind of message from someone left-of-center. Rick, the GOP consultant, says it’s time for Republicans to realize that “the party of free markets is full of shit because it [isn’t] about free markets. It’s about gaining enough power to use the regulatory state and legislative process to advantage your individual companies or markets. That's not capitalism, that's crony capitalism on a good day and something much worse on a bad one.” Then! Molly and Rick answer listener questions, revealing how they met (not on a chain gang, they swear) and what their surprising super powers are (“I can hit my head on almost anything,” says Molly). Plus! Will our dynamic duo actually open a dogfighting pit, or will they go straight to selling meth? And what does Rick enjoy more than “getting rip shit on cheap gin and watching the Teletubbies?”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.

11 Aug 202036min