ACost recommends comedy podcasts we love. Hello, everybody, my name is Tommy Tiernan. My name's Loretta Blues and this is Hector old Hogan. And this is our podcast, the Tommy Hector Show with Larita Blue. It there's the words I can't say penguins like I can say that word penguins. Who did Danny DeVito play?

The Penguin Akehurst is the home of comedy podcasts in Ireland, including the Two Journeys, The Blind Boy podcast, the one you're listening to right now. Hi, folks, it's Rick Wilson and welcome to The Daily Beast, the new abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly John Fast, a left wing pundit and editor at large at The Daily Beast.

I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best selling author and full time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, short conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer.

I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F bombs and try to keep our kids, pets and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers.

So we have a very special VEP postdebate show with the illustrious Rick Wilson High there at his undisclosed location.

And our special guest, Kathy Griffin, is not in an undisclosed location, undisclosed location of California. Out of my hair.

Oh, oh, sticky. And she is in California where you need to manage your forests.

We've got to do a lot of forest raking and then we're all good people.

Yeah, they really love the raking, like they're so stuck on the fucking wrecking. Someone told him about raking. Well, it wasn't Gavin Newsom, by the way, who I believe agrees with Trump once in a while with his money.

But, you know, California, the forests of California, a 60 percent run by the government, the federal government. So they love to say it's up to the states. I think the federal government, I don't think they're doing any raking. And that's not what I hear works anyway. But it's actually that was one of the moments I have to say, as someone who I'm in Chicago but lives in California, that was actually really sad because we are not the only state on fire, but the whole West Coast is on fire.

And it was kind of like blaming the victim. I think that's exactly right.

And it's it's sort of it's sort of the difference between rational people who follow science and people who hear random shit. And Donald Trump.

I mean, I just don't understand how Mike Pence is such a sycophant. And did you see that the suave, swarmy smarmy was searched five hundred times during the debate? Like he's just so obsequious?

The best thing in terms of the post debate or the debate searches, of course, was covered, I think, because the close up shots of Mike Pence is bleeding ible, like watching some sort of like 80s horror movie. I mean, it was I expected some sort of snake to come running out of the loony bin. It was.

But when you spend that much time denying that covid is a bad thing and saying it's a blessing, how can you not look at his eye and start looking up like I was looking up symptoms of covid?

And I know I'm being a conspiracy theorist myself here, but they were saying Pinki is one of the symptoms of covid and also his breathing sounded so labored when he was talking.

It's everywhere.

I mean, the notion and I do like the Susan Page, actually, I believe she actually identified the Amy CONI Barrett, whatever her name is, supressed better than as a super spreader event at the Rose Garden massacre. So I thought that was a little bold, but it's almost like it has it gets inflamed during the debate. And I was doing some triage. The question, I think is, does it work? See, all I saw and maybe I'm biased because I hate Mike Pence with the passion and burning fire of a thousand suns.

But I just saw a guy who doesn't give a shit about women and who doesn't respect women and who talked over Susan Page and talked about Comilla and refused to he was like, I'm a mediocre white guy and I'm here.

Well, that's I think why I'm speaking was trending and why so many women responded to that moment when she just turned to him and said, I'm speaking, I'm speaking, waited. And at one point she said, if you'll let me finish, I'm going to have a conversation. And he finally sort of meekly said, OK, but yeah, as it went on, I'm Susan Page. No disrespect, but I wish you would have just pivoted to Senator Harris instead of just saying thank you, Mr.

President. Thank you, Mr. President. Which doesn't work. But I think a lot of women responded to those moments because it was it perpetuated throughout the whole debate.

I've always heard that eye rolling and interrupting is a really effective relationship strategy.

Yeah, the women love eye rolling. They also like the one from as it as if to say what's with her, I actually want him to go, what's upsetter on the rag, but I'll be here all night.

But you know what's interesting to me, I did think her non visual cues were much better than hers and they both felt the same thing. Right. But for some reason, her sort of smiling and laughing and then her face of abject sort of amusement read in my mind. And again, of course, I'm biased because I hate my pants. I thought it read better.

I think one thing is, as somebody who's done a lot of debate prep when she was delivering her key lines, she was on camera. She was doing the engagement with the audience to the through the camera a lot of time. Mike Pence was flipping back and forth to Susan Page, over to Harris. Looking down a little bit, he wasn't like doing a lot of the straight to camera delivery, that is just convincing to viewers, as I think what she was doing accomplished, because, you know, Mike Pence naturally looks like he's trying to shed a snakeskin and he's not very he doesn't come across as a very straightforward guy to begin with.

He comes across as a guy who's, well, a little lady. What can I do to get you into this beautiful eighty nine Camry today? Just there's a little creepiness about it. And look, I think I think she could have hit a little harder on a couple of questions like the court packing thing and just dismissed it and just said, oh, you're being absurd. You're trying to fuel the Fox conspiracy machine. That's absurd. And it could have diminished him, but I think she did very well overall.

I think she had a strong performance overall. I don't think my clients could overcome the most symbolic moment of the evening that we're just not talking about, though, which is that Mike Pence refusing the peaceful transition of power.

Did that speak to you?

Well, that spoke to me mostly in saying that Mike Pence will be in the Nuremberg trials someday and that I thought it was interesting that a lot of pundits made the case that that was the same as the court packing.

I think there's a there's a degree to which the assertion on the part of the president that he will not necessarily accept a peaceful transition of power. Mike Pence could have done a lot of good for both the candidate and for the campaign and for himself. If he had just come out and said, that's ridiculous, of course, we're going to have a peaceful transition of power and Donald Trump is going to win a glorious victory, blah, blah, blah.

But we had to get weaselly and he had to get his he had to get his dick crooked. And the whole thing got more icky than it should have been.

But I think was afraid to say that. And I think he knows where his bread is buttered.

And I really think he would have caught a bucket full of hate from the Fox fans, the whole Trump crowd. And so I think he is honestly afraid to say that. And by the way, I think he was very clear. I do not think Pence is going to lift a finger when the shit hits the fan, which it will, by the way, regardless of the decision. So I think for just a civilian such as myself, that moment was actually kind of separate from the packing the court moment.

I did think Senator Kerry's handled that moment really well, which he did, once again, like you said, return to the camera and say, did you know out of the 50 lifetime appointments that one of them was black and penciler, definitely uneasy and jarred by that as he was. But I will say the moment I thought was a little more subtly frightening when he was just sort of parroting Trump's answer. And I do wish Susan Page as well as Senator Harris would have sort of highlighted that more sort of the civilian view or how disruptive and frightening that is.

Cathy, I think that's a really smart point, because the idea that Mike Pence can be as duplicitous as Trump but do it with a sort of more calming effect is something people need to be aware of, something people need to be very focused on. And I think that's a really good point, is that he was doing every line of Trump because, look, he does have an audience of one here that if he makes Trump happy and Trump says he's doing great, then Fox will say he's doing great and the media will say he is doing great.

And it's a question of both of you, as I used to be able to watch Fox for my act and now I can't even do that anymore.

Do you think that if anything did happen to Trump, do you think or not think that the Trump cult members will pivot to pants, or do you think they're just with their dear leader and Pence is never going to kind of cut it for them?

What Trump has done to the Republican Party is converted into a personality cult. And so if Donald Trump tomorrow got eaten by wolves, they would not jump to Mike Pence first. They would go right to Kim Jong un of the Trump family thought to be, oh, God, really?

Oh, listen, this is going to be like Jim Jordan.

Like, if they if they couldn't have Trump no longer as the president of voters who say they are most passionately committed to Donald Trump, their number one choice for twenty twenty four is John Jr. right after that, like eight points below. That is Josh Hawley. Oh, my God, Josh Howie.

The same as Junior. I guess they're both dumb. I actually thought it would be first choice seriously, if I could.

Doesn't fluidic. And that's what you have to do. You have the language of FOX. The opposition will define the sort of Trump ism. That's Don Junior like he's like a fluent native speaker of that ship wreck.

Are you going to say that that is smart? I'm going to tell you, do not underestimate Josh Hawley. He's not stupid. I just I'm telling you that not because I like him, but because I think he is going to be one of these people that tries to run Trump ism through the car wash. And that's respectable. But plenty of evil people are not stupid. Molly Trump is evil and stupid.

But the polling they have done some polling of Mike Pence and Joe Biden and Pence actually does better.

Yeah, he actually does a little better because, look, I say say what you will with Mike Pence and I will. He is a much more standard issue Republican in terms of just the optics of him, the Donald Trump and Frank Luntz group saying he's robotic. Yes, exactly.

But there are times when you want a psychopath or a robot. I mean, I want a psychopathic robot. But that.

But I also think you don't want there there's an unhinged quality to Trump that Mike Pence does not have. Right.

Mike Pence is not is not obviously deranged. He's more the quiet guy who makes a skin suit out of you rather than the guy who goes on a bloody school shooting or something. He's he's a different kind of horrifying.

Right. But he's not bringing the heat in the way that Trump brings the he's a businessman and he says we're all thinking he does. He has none of those those, I should say, qualities. No regrets, because I don't really agree with the pundits saying that the debate didn't change anything. Maybe it will move the dial as far as a measurable vote count. But I will say you have to assume most people don't know Senator Harris. So I think this was a real opportunity for folks to actually get to know her a bit.

But. Well, let me jump in with a fact on that, because we just got the CNN poll, so she's at fifty nine percent. He's at thirty eight percent from that CNN poll.

But her favorability also went up greatly. Yes.

Did they pull the fly under the one percent for the scale? I think that's a good point, because, you know, she's very poised. She's very smart. She's very polished. She also has some genuine human emotions that come across her face when she's frustrated or or or insulted. And she doesn't just do the robotic debater intransigent sort of debates. So long story short, I do think it helped her look, as a general rule, vice presidential debates only help the winner.

If you're ahead, a debate helps you. If you're not, it doesn't.

So what's going to happen if Trump, Trump's team does what they do and they declare that Pence won and then people won't believe that. But here's the thing.

Everything Mike Pence was talking about tonight was almost exclusively for the Trump base. I mean, let me tell you something. Yeah, but single real voter in the swing states who's not already a Trump voter is out there tonight worrying about the green New Deal.

But they really are obsessed with the green New Deal.

Well, and fracking, they think they've got these like two points of fracking, green new deal that are going to help them win Pennsylvania and Ohio. You know, those things work with the base, but they are absolute nonstarters everywhere else now.

And just so you know, in the real world, nobody knows what fracking is like. I think if you sat people down and even just like I almost wish Senator Harris would explain what it is for 30 seconds, but most people, they just really don't know what that is. I mean, I think it's a giant issue, but they just have tied it to fracking equals jobs. Right.

And so, you know, and Biden, the people who do care about it in Pennsylvania and Ohio, they really care about it. So they're trying to avoid a political train wreck. They're going to take the path of least resistance. But Trump's sort of apocalyptic, you will be doom. They will destroy everything. The green new deal, pure communism.

It doesn't it's just what happened when he threw in the red meat of mentioning Alsi.

Oh, I think he got it. The first erection it had in my.

ACost recommends comedy podcasts we love.

Hello, everybody, my name is Tommy Tiernan. My name's Loretta Blues and this is Hector Hulk Hogan. And this is our podcast, The Tommy Hector Show with Larita Blue. It the words I can say, penguins like that word, penguins.

Who did Danny DeVito play?

The Penguin Akehurst is the home of comedy podcasts in Ireland, including the Two Journeys, The Blind Boy podcast and the one you're listening to right now. I just don't understand, like they did a little bit of the CPAC thing they have been doing where they were like they want to kill your babies, they want the babies to be born and then to murder them. They want to take away your hamburger's abortions five minutes before they're about to give birth. I mean, they're having a little trouble with the abortion stuff because they killed two hundred and ten thousand Americans.

Yeah, that's a fairly it's a fairly pro-life stance to 200000 people.

Plus such a clump of cells is a living person. But, you know, if we kill one in a thousand people, but grab needs to die for the Dow Jones.

Right. So, I mean, I think that that I think they're having a little trouble with that. But they are very interested in the Democrats want to take away. They didn't say it tonight, but that that whole midterm thing, Democrats want to take away your hamburgers.

You know, that, as I said, they were Pence was playing entirely to the base.

So you don't think this went too far, though, trying to convince Americans that the Obama folks were spying on Trump? I thought that was the most out there.

But that's just like Fox porn. No, that's too crazy.

It is crazy what you think Ed Harris kind have responded to that at all or just not let it sit there?

I think I think she should have rolled her eyes and said, listen, your boss is Vladimir Putin's bitch and they can't curse.

Can they curse in those debates or. No.

Molly, how do you think that should handle the packing the court? Because as a lefty, Liotard, I just kept saying, say it. So you want to pack the court? I was like, yes, we know what to pack and what we're going to.

Like Johnny Weir, his bathhouse back at school. Yeah, I think that's not making it in there. That's getting beeped, Kathy. Congratulations for being the first guest to get.

Oh, I've done plenty of places. You know, the quarterback is an interesting issue because clearly they are they can't answer that question, right. If they say yes, everyone will flip out. If they say no, everyone will flip out. So you can't win with that question. You're better off just not answering it. Now, of course, I just think the fact that Pense wouldn't agree to the peaceful transition of power, which is like what democracy is founded on, and then they're like and see, she wouldn't agree to the court packing what I like about tents and what I liked about Harris.

What they both did was they didn't they didn't answer any questions. And honestly, good for them. I mean, fuck the questions. Like, she couldn't control that. She couldn't cut off Pentz. I mean, good for them. Good for Kamlesh. She Kamalesh. She shouldn't answer the question.

Yeah, I thought I thought she had to get some points across. And I thought, frankly, some of the a couple of the questions were a little inside baseball. So I thought she did a good job of talking to the viewers about the stuff that she knows that they want to hear about. And I will say, just as a female watching, you know, I did feel like Pense was doing a very classic gaslighting, the woman, and it came across that way.

So, by the way, the Gaslight men and women, but in a situation where there are only two other women on the stage, it did point that out more. And it's just I just think you'll find a lot of women have a visceral at some level reaction to like, oh, I've been with that guy. I've been in a meeting with that guy. OK, this is the part where he runs like, OK, now I got to think about how I'm going to respond.

I mean, we all know that feeling.

I think that I think that's right. I think he there is a very small pool of of gettable voters out there and a awful a lot of them are swing voters, the women in the suburbs. And I just keep looking at that guy's performance tonight and thinking, yeah, that's the mansplaining. And the he didn't say it outright, but it was like, OK, little lady, a couple of times. And I think people are not. And look, I think I think tonight they came into a very bad situation.

On the other side, Donald Trump is spent the last forty eight hours tripping balls out of his mind. Crazy. He's tweeted a gazillion times.

He's living a blessing to crash the stock market, the super spreader in chief. His numbers have dropped with seniors like crazy. The campaign is in full mutiny right now because of the infections. The White House is basically a ghost town. The Trump campaign started pulling more of their media down today in places like Iowa and Minnesota. They're basically the airing on Fox News and DC to keep him happy at.

Mike Pence came in there tonight with a really bad thing.

Also, his insipient covid infection because it was bleeding, postictal by.

Yeah. Let's talk about whether or not Mike Pence has covered.

Did you hear him laboring that thing just to see their day of you lose your bottom octave and it's a little harder to breathe. And he was he was huffing a bit today. So what I suspect that he could have gone in there. He could have had live Ebola. He would have still shown up tonight. This was not a good performance from physically. He looked he looked terrible. He had a fly on his head for two and a half minutes.

The headlines on Drudge right now, of course, are the fly at the eye.

So it's a good look. Is it really a headline on Drudge?

Yes. To add to that, I did the torturous thing of I watched the debate today.

This is Jesse are pretty is doing the Lord's work, I might add, the extra gruel for that's all it worked.

So yeah, I'm a dedicated employee of the podcast, but very, very low energy today compared to that one. And I will say that's the Mike Pence of four years ago. But I will say, you know, Tim Kaine, much, much easier to roll over, but like, oh, I really did not bring the game tonight, you know, but those two visuals are there.

You can't really argue with the fact that they are were genuine distractions. I mean, honestly, I kind of couldn't take my eyes off his eye because I was genuinely, of course, making the connection between if he's ill or not. And then you get into this whole thing where you're sublimity figure is you can admit it, who else is around him? And then, of course, I'm thinking I wish that Senator Harris wouldn't have shown up tonight. They should give us virtually their name.

And then when the fly started and you're like, OK, that's too much distraction for me. I'm just going to let pretty eyelashes and listen to him go on and on. I actually think that stuff might affect people. And also, I'm curious to see Trump's reaction to the fact that the fly is now polling at Trump.

But my understanding is the fly is not leading in Wisconsin and the fly is as hero.

All right, Kathy, as our special celebrity guest, we need you to give us your facts, that guy, OK, this is going to be pretty easy. Mike Pence, that guy, that's the guy that he was. The sloppy seconds to Chris Christie. Ouch. I had no actual or, as I call him, the accidental vice president because we have an accidental president. It was a big accident, but it happened. And this is a guy that honestly, I think some of the sort of more whatever you want to say, the classic Republicans really look to him in the beginning thinking he can kind of sort of right this ship.

In a way. There was a time maybe I'm not a fan, but there was a time when he could have right off the ship. And so I think it's very difficult not to tie him directly to Trump. And it's shocking to watch him get indoctrinated like a freaking member of the right wing ISIS go on his degenerate journey to becoming nothing but the crap under Trump's shoe. And it's it's like this heart watching him tonight, his performance so condescending with Senator Harris, so out of his league eye rolling, shaking his head at the wrong time, not making these salient points, 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 the time. Rick Wilson, who was your fuck? That guy. My fuck.

That guy is today. He's my returning champion. It's once again the president of the United States, Donald Trump. I know I have a general rule not to have to have a repeating fuck that guy, but these psychopathic nature of his behavior is leading this country into enormous danger. He is talking about going back out on the road as early as next week to start in-person events again. Now, they've refused to do contact tracing for the plague events that they were doing before he acknowledged she had covered.

There's now speculation he had it as early as Sunday. And we know he's not exactly wedded to the truth. So I suspect that his behavior of wanting to get back out there right away is to show he is strong, but he is going to spread this God damn disease. He's going to cause more problems with this. This is a reckless and unbelievably dangerous position to take. But of course, that's what he's going to do because he is, in fact, an asshole and deserves the appellation that we are that we are proud to dispense in this podcast or fuck that guy.

My fuck that guy is Rudy Giuliani. Rudy Giuliani. And I know this because of Mike Madrid. You got tested for covid. I don't know if he ever got his covid test yesterday back, but last night there were photos of him at a GOP fundraiser not wearing his mask as well. Should have been quarantining. So he is yet another super spreader in the Republican Party. He's my fuck that guy, my honorable fuck.

That guy I mention is John Radclyffe, the current political commissar of the Office of National Intelligence, who is now furiously masturbating over a pile of documents in hopes that they will be blessed by some sort of psychic power and they will release them. And that will cause it will cause a thousand flowers to bloom in the Russia conspiracy. Push back. God bless everyone.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of The New Abnormal for The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond, from media, culture, politics and science to help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode if you'd like to follow us on Twitter. I'm Molly Chan, Fast and Historic Wealth, and thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you again on the next episode. ACost recommends podcast's, We love Hegarty's and Kevin and APJ, and together we host the podcast I will walk for the book where it's about Gabi Gabe, it's our mammies.

We love to talk about our moms. And I want to say current affairs is a lot like the news and stuff. Yeah, we talk about the news. To be fair, we just have a. It's an absolute scream, let me say that.

Yeah. Well, I'm so sorry. I don't have a listen today.

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