Isn't it curious that every member of your family has a different voice, that a baby can recognize their mother's voice from inside the womb, that identical twins have the exact same vocal chords but usually don't sound similar, and teenagers can sense the tone of their dad's voice when he says, I'll think about it even over WhatsApp, I'll think about it.

Let your family follow their curiosity with unlimited data when you bring everyone's plans together. On Vodafone's multi mobile, Rad's family plan to get a third plan for only 15 euro per month 12 month contract, 15 euro per month max speed 10 megabits per second applies when you add rather limited Simoni only as a third plan with red family. See Vodafone Carlye for full terms.

Hi, folks, it's Rick Wilson and welcome to The Daily Beast's 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, sharp 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. It's night four of the Democratic National Convention and we're all a little punchy.

Rick Wilson thought, look, I think that there were moments of weird adjustment to this new virtual conditioning thing that were could be said to be a little crunchy here and there. But I think that they managed to get to the ex, as they say, and produce what was a presidential address by Joe Biden. And he came out there and did a real speech that sounded like a president. It blew up the bullshit trope from the Republican Party and from the Trump campaign that Biden is some doddering, senile old man.

You can't take him anywhere. And he came out there. He's tore the goddamn Berkoff, Donald Trump. He expressed more compassion for the American people and what they're going through than Donald Trump has managed, you know, in four years in office. I thought it was I thought I thought his speech tonight, the guy waited a long time to get there, but he got there and he took took his best swing. And I think he did very well.

We have with us Oswin Soupçon, who is the senior White House correspondent for The Daily Beast, also known as Swen Sweat, is also the author, along with Lauchlan Marcé of the book Sinking in the Swamp How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington.

It is a great read, by the way.

My general thoughts of the past four days is that it was the best hebes telefon I've seen since the one I saw when I was a kid, when public broadcasting held an event to say donate here or else will publicly execute Elmo. It was fine. I mean, I, I yes, there were a bunch of cringe moments, but I mean, I don't think next week when Trump holds like a four day Margraf says to have like people come out to say why they brandished their guns incorrectly in front of a mansion, they definitely did.

Listen, nothing's going to nothing's going to be fringier next week. Then Donald Trump and Melania doing a sky dive in fat Elvis costumes down onto the National Mall. That's going to that's going to be cringe, pretty sure.

Just to get back to Biden for one more second, because it was really a good speech and we were all really worried because the Trump has been able to shape this narrative, even though it's not true. And I think that we should be talking about that a little more. It's like Biden wasn't out there enough.

And sure, he's shaped a narrative. But to the degree to which it's actually coming out in national consciousness, it's like, yes, every single person who watches the Fox News or logs on to Facebook to see means about why the Democrat pedophiles are taking away your children, of course. But poll after poll after poll showing that if he had shaped the narrative of the majority of Americans and polled Americans, the majority of them seem to consistently not care, at least at this point.

So there are certain times where the fear ingrained into certain people by the fact that Trump did manage to win in 2016 because Hillary Clinton shit the bed. I think they overestimate some of his persuasive powers. It's not as magical as the president thinks they are.

KeySpan saying Joe Biden's shaky, he's senile, he's got dementia. If Trump goes out there and doesn't deliver or we have another ramp moment or water moment, I think they've kind of set themselves a little bit of a minefield.

And if Donald goes out and does a Donald, but those are the only speeches where the president does deliver when he goes out there and entertains the hell out of the crowd. And he's basically a bad stand up comic from right things whenever he sticks to the teleprompter. I'm sorry. I just don't remember it a day after it happened.

There's one. But and the thing is, when Trump is on when Trump is on the prompter, the only truth is in the asides where he'll occasionally pop out of the speech and say, well, everyone tells me I have a gigantic penis, and that's true. And then he'll go back to the speech. It's like always this random, weird shit. I think he feeds off that crowd energy in a way that Biden shows that he doesn't really need it in the same way Trump does.

Well, Biden's not a sociopath, too. I mean, can we get back to the most important news of the day now?

OK, I will I will say this two, three, three things in the program tonight, I think really stood out for me. The John Lewis piece was as moving and as inspirational. As you could hope for, but he's very I mean, he's, of course, the civil rights hero. I mean, what are the Republicans going to do? They don't have any civil rights here. Diamond and silk, Molly at me, and they were not British.

Oh, Candace. Oh, Candace. Owens's going to it's going to be up there, but it isn't. Isn't that the peak of Martin Luther King's dream? OTIK The Libs? I think the other thing that stuck with me was watching that kid Braiden. Yeah. Donald Trump insults people with disabilities and mocks them on stage. Right. Joe Biden recognizes a kid with a stutter and takes the time to help him based on his own painful experience.

Right. It's true. I just have to say this. I mentioned this on my livestream a minute ago. I await the discovery of whatever mugger's moch that kid online because I am going to stop the everloving fuck out of them. That kid, that kid, that 13 year old kid had more balls going out there tonight than Donald Trump has played his entire chicken shit life.

I love that fucking kid. Yeah, no, he was great.

And finally, I'm going to be really contrarian. Michael Bloomberg went out there and just stuck a goddamn shiv in Donald Trump. It was some sweetness you got to admit. You may you may have I I'm a little shocked because I feel like Bloomberg is not your man, but with the guy, he went out there tonight and he popped a cap in Trump's ass.

It was a thing of beauty to watch because, you know, the one thing about Mike Bloomberg that Donald Trump hates and could never, ever get over is that Mike Bloomberg could lose his wallet and it would be more than Donald Trump's net worth. Mike Bloomberg has more fucking change in his couch than Donald Trump's net worth. You know, that's why Trump was rage tweeting about him.

I mean, I don't love Bloomberg for any number of reasons, but I did think it would get Trump crazy, which is, I think, certainly a valuable part of it.

But I also think Democrats need to listen to that speech that Bloomberg gave tonight. And that was a beautifully constructed indictment of Donald Trump.

Right? It was a very well written speech, which you would hope because he has a gazillion dollars.

Some so much of what has dominated the past four days of the Democratic convention has been warm and fuzzy feelings.

I'm not saying that as a knock. Especially with regards to the kid who, as Rick pointed out, bravely went up there in front of a national audience of millions. But so much of it, and this is true with various Republican and Democrat conventions, is not exclusive to the 20 20 Democratic. One is about surface level arguments and talks about kindness and the soul of America, which fine, whatever, all well and good.

I'm obviously not the target audience for that, but a lot of it seems to be divorced, at least to me from your discussions of actual policy, which and obviously I'm not saying that there was a discussion on policy tonight in Biden's speech and other people's speeches and other segments of Thursday night's segment of the convention. But at the end of the day, my interpretation of the past four days, so much of what we saw and heard is in and of itself an indictment of what a lot of progressive activists have been saying and still say to this day is a problem for them with Team Biden.

And Biden campaigned to get on to one area not to be an asshole here, but I think and I am much more progressive than Biden, but I do think the Democrats are not trying to appeal to the progressive base here.

Well, which is strange. No, it's not.

No sweat to those people with all the polling tells us the progressives will crawl over broken glass to vote against Trump. The the national numbers where the progressives live are not in the target Electoral College swing states. They're trying to get to those those union music, white union, male Democrats in Ohio and Pennsylvania and places like that.

They don't understand that. I'm not making a tactical or strategic argument or why I think it is necessarily incorrect, especially if in a couple of months time Joe Biden is suddenly president elect. I mean, I'm not making an argument as if I was trying to put a strategist at or anything. All I'm saying is that desirable on just one aspect. When you talk about the part of Biden's speech where he mentions strengthening and preserving the Affordable Care Act, OK, but as has been brought up numerous times, especially since the Democratic primary, you do that and you will inevitably still have millions of Americans falling through the cracks right until late in American health care system.

And OK, I know Joe Biden is not a socialist. He's not a Democrat socialist. He's not.

Many people want a public option that has been pulled. There should be a public option. Sure. But when you talk about Biden's candidacy over the past year or so, I don't think it's controversial opinion to say that there has been a deficit showing how. You will account for all of these people who various other campaigns, not just Bernie Sanders, but others have pointed out ad nauseum, will could be left behind by your policy prescriptions. I hope I'm proven wrong.

If it does become president, but there seem to be vaster structural changes that I'm sorry, the Botein, Biden and Joe Biden himself have not been willing to address or tackle. That underscores why, if you are a progressive or even if you are a liberal, it is important to to hold his feet to the fire as much as possible, because that is what gets Democratic presidents to lean further in to what we would call liberal or progressive or whatever Democratic policy.

I mean, look look at Trump during the 2016 campaign when he promised during that went around saying, oh, Planned Parenthood is also great in a lot of ways.

And then a huge chunk of the rabid Republican voting base in the forms of evangelicals and Christian right voters came out and said, we will vote for you in droves if you when you are in power, give us what we want.

And lo and behold, he did he could he could it be anything less of a friend to Planned Parenthood once he got in the Oval Office? And it's because a highly energized part of the Republican base that was going to vote for him anyway, he held his feet to the fire. And I don't understand why people say when liberal activist or leftist activists tried to do that by them, that all of a sudden they get accused of wanting Trump. That's not how politics works in this country and movement politics and never has been.

Sometimes you might forget, but every one of us is still at risk from covid-19. But every time we do the right thing, we're protecting ourselves and the people around us. So next time you meet up, just take a step back. Let's all keep cleaning those hands and wear a face covering. When you're shopping around public transport, if you cough or sneeze covers or have a tissue handy and don't know the cover tracker app to be one in more than a million because covid-19 is still a problem.

And we're all the answer from the Hejazi.

Isn't it curious that every member of your family has a different voice, that a baby can recognize their mother's voice from inside the womb, that identical twins have the exact same vocal chords but usually don't sound similar, and teenagers can sense the tone of their dad's voice when he says, I'll think about it even over WhatsApp, I'll think about it.

Let your family follow their curiosity with unlimited data. When you bring everyone's plans together on Vodafone's multi mobile, Rad's family plan get a third plan for only 15 euro per month, 12 month contract, 15 euro per month max be 10 megabits per second applies when you add rather limited SIM only as a third plan with red families C Vodafone i.e. four full terms.

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Thanks. All right, folks, I know you've been waiting for this all day, if you've been watching the news and I've held it out as long as I can in the show, but I've got one one quick announcement first that I think will make you happy. Obviously, as you all know, we are required by state and federal law in every show to have our famous segment. Fuck that guy next week. It's going to be every day of the week.

Fuck that guy.

Except except, Rick, if they do something that's good, that's fine.

Whatever you whatever you say. And now can I ask you a question? Where were you this morning?

I was I was in front of my television watching a moment that I had at long.

You know, you were in Manhattan and I was in Florida and Steve Bannon was in Long Island Sound, resting covid, resting comfortably in a berth in a in a fabulous state room on one hundred and fifty foot yacht owned by a Chinese exiled billionaire. And soon his slumber was interrupted by the sound of helicopters overhead, of fast boats approaching of of of trained postal service inspector SWAT team members fast roping down to the deck. OK, I made that part up.

They went up. They went up a ramp on the back. But I like what I write the movie. When I write the movie version, they're going to fast rope onto the boat. He was shaken from his slumber, dragged from his from his nest of newspapers that he had licked into a cocoon like shape and wrapped around himself at night. Yeah, yeah. That's what happened in his typical hobo shit. Lord, my favorite fuck that guy of all time is the guy who most deserves the fuck that guy probably walking on the face of the earth.

It's the gristle Icarus. It's the whiskey necromancer. It's Steve Fucking and the human skin tag, a gigantic sack of bile that walks on two legs. So. So today, Steve Bannon was arrested on Swen.

Can you talk to us about exactly what Steve Bannon was arrested for and some of this sort of fascinating you rested in what the feds are alleging is basically a fraudulent scheme to defraud donors who were contributing to an effort allegedly trying to erect as a as a private enterprise, as opposed to one of government with Trump administration, a border wall on the southern border. And what the feds are alleging is that instead of actually raising a whole bunch of money from a large swath of donors, they insist that that money, instead of instead of going to actual construction of a wall between the United States and Mexico, it went straight into the pockets of the people leading this.

We build the wall effort, namely people such as Steve Bannon, and it helped enrich themselves.

I would just like to say before we get into that, both junior and junior girlfriend both endorsed to the bill not just junior engineers girlfriend Donald John Trump endorsed the Build a Wall charity, according to Trump bestie Kris Kobach.

A piece of video, a piece of video came out tonight of Kris Kobach saying, I just got off the phone with the president and he wants the media to know this project has his blessing.

I mean, don't forget your best friend, Louie Gohmert, two.

Oh, wait, Louise involved. And Cheryl and Sheriff Clarke. Hello. Well, Sheriff Clarke, we expect. But Louie, my birthday twin Congressman covid, I did not know that.

And to be fair, if Kris Kobach is telling the truth, which is always, you know, a gigantic, colossal if but if he wasn't a thousand percent bullshitting there, I can't think of an easier thing to do than at the inception of this alleged scam to jump on the phone with your buddy, President Trump, and talk about an effort to build the wall and then to get him to say something to the effect of, yes, good, you go do that game.

Trump to a reporter recently got Trump to basically endorse KUNR.

Yeah, I know. I know. It's madness. It's it's not hard.

No, it's not hard. But this was clearly something that Team Trump was really involved in. I mean, once Junior gets involved, there's it's not just some random assembly of of a couple of nutcases. It's this this felt very much like on brand and semi-official.

I'll quickly read you this statement. Amanda Miller, spokeswoman for Donald Trump Junior US sent over earlier today. Don gave one speech at a single We built the Wall event over a year ago with a group of angel moms.

And besides, as always, you never gave them permission to use them as a testimonial on the website and was unaware they included him as one until today's media reports about his previous. Praises the group was based on what he was led to believe about their supposed intention to build the wall on our southern border, and if he and others were deceived, the group deserves to be held accountable for their actions and will remember you.

So basically, he was just a coffee boy. Yeah, he was. He was a volunteer. They barely knew him. Yeah, yeah. You know that that is so on brand for these skills. It just it's so perfect that they really believe that anyone, any rational person is going to buy that. It's just it's striking.

But you know what's interesting today? I don't know. Did you see that press conference or whatever that was today that he he talked about? I thought it was interesting. He you know, he's so divorced from reality. He said, well, we have the wall, we have three hundred. But, you know, he just I wonder, like, the whole thing now is that he just pretends he's done the thing you never did. And I wonder if that works with five hundred miles of wall have been built.

What.

Yeah, that's what he said, you know, and no one's been better to the to the Kurds than we have. And we also he said today that we seized all the oil in Iran and now we have it and we're not sure what we're going to do with it. You know, look, this post rational world of Trump ism, where where these folks really part of it. If you talk to these people, they'll say in part, yeah, it's bullshit.

But, you know, fuck you, I'm owning the lips. And I think that's really kind of all he's got right now is is the oppositional defiant disorder gang doing his bidding, even though they know he's going to lose or they feel he's going to lose and they're sick of defending it.

But but the only game they have left is to say it's the it's the liberal media, like so much of the conservative movement nowadays, is and has for a long time been devoted to lip on it like. Yeah, which is yes, you have a patina of nobility when you get to say no, it's in the form of policy or actual political action where we want to try to make life better for Americans on a whole host of issues, et cetera, et cetera.

But at the core of it, there is a deep regard for making your enemies suffer both on and sometimes otherwise level. And I'm not saying that's exclusively a Republican or conservative phenomenon, but the overflowing presence of liberal tears is is, of course, a hugely motivating factor. And it's it's a motivating factor for the right that I can remember as long as I've been alive and able to figure out what politics are. I mean, who were the Republican heavy hitters?

Was it Newt Gingrich who hosted barbecues and fundraisers that enfold spotted owl meet a spotted owl?

I remember the spotted owl, Rick, you probably hosted some of those barbecues.

Know I'm one of those Teddy Roosevelt enviro Republicans. Molly, did you know what my other favorite thing after Steve Bannon being in federal custody today was? I think I do. But it's the fact that Donald Trump got his shit slapped in a federal court today in New York when he was trying to prevent the production of his documents that the Supreme Court has already ruled need to be produced for citizens with a legitimate subpoena, which he has. And now so that is going to finally, after whatever agony we've had to go through, get Donald Trump's taxes.

He has seven days to produce the tax. I expect a fire at Mazars any time.

No sweat. One you cover. Have you covered much of that?

Yeah, I had a little bit of a breather today when I got to dip my toes into covering it a little bit. And one thing that was sent our way to The Daily Beast was when I asked various Trump lawyers for their response to today's news. It took, I think, roughly six or seven hours or so. But finally, a Trump attorney, Jay Sekulow, sent along the or the worst send along this this comment, quote, a notice of appeal in a motion for stay or next, end quote.

But that's all I was able to get out of Trump's legal team.

This what about his free legal team?

Do you have anything I want on Fox News or somewhere earlier on Thursday to talk about how bullshit he he sure thought it was. But maybe I'm reading into this too much. But it struck me only a little bit because usually even Jay Sekulow, who is obviously more restrained and less extra than a Trump lawyer like a Rudy or a Jenna Ellis might be. Jay Sekulow is. Is Janet Ellis, I have just a quick aside, is Janet Ellis a real lawyer?

I'm pretty sure she's bored and has a law degree somewhere. Sure, yeah. And we can get more to Jenna in a moment, if you would like. But in.

Oh, God, you know, I knew that was coming. It's like it's just it's less restrained thing.

Rick Wilson says after 12 and whether that's a wise policy.

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 favourite 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 Wilson, and thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you again on the next episode.

Isn't it curious that every member of your family has a different voice, that a baby can recognize their mother's voice from inside the womb, that identical twins have the exact same vocal chords but usually don't sound similar? And teenagers can sense the tone of their dad's voice when he says, I'll think about it even over WhatsApp, I'll think about it.

Let your family follow their curiosity with unlimited data when you bring everyone's plans together. On Vodafone's multi mobile, Rad's family plan to get a third plan for only 15 euro per month 12 month contract, 15 euro per month max be 10 megabits per second applies when you add right unlimited SIM only as a third plan with red family. See Vodafone deliver for full terms.