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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, 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, because then I'm always on fast. How are you? I'm good. There was Fakhoury.

There's been so much fakery over this weekend and I have to get this out right now. Everybody, right this minute. I have to get this out. Let's go. Any motherfucker who says we now need peace and calm, harmony and unity and comity and everything needs to be sweetness and light, and we all have to get along. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you sideways, you lying snake belly motherfuckers. These guys are playing the refs. They are doing everything they can to now pretend that they're so innocent.

There's blood on your hands, Ted Cruz. There's blood on your hands. Josh Holloway. There's blood on your hands. Ron Johnson. There's blood on your hands, you stupid twit. Marsha Blackburn, you fucking idiot. Lured them down there. You begged and pleaded to be the favorite of Donald Trump by continuing this fucking lie that inflame these conspiratorial lunatics. And they came down there. And now, folks, since our last show, we know a lot more about what was about to happen.

Yeah, they were about to murder people. They were about to kill people. They beat a cop to death with flagpoles and a fire extinguisher. So fuck you. You don't get immunity. You don't get a sense of of moving forward past this unfortunate moment. Fuck you. I'm telling you, man, I, I am lit the fuck up about this.

Let's talk about this for a second in the Senate that the worst offenders are really Ted Cruz, Josh Holloway and then Ron Johnson, who sort of spread disinformation. And then they're sort of the Marsha Blackburn. The Tommy Tuberville. Right. The Alabama state from Alabama, from Mississippi, from the U.S. for anything that has an R next to it. I mean, certainly Cruz and Holly have to go.

Here's the situation right now. Both Cruz and Holly come from a state where if they were eaten by wolves tomorrow, their governors could easily find a Republican replacement of equal conservative stripe, hopefully not one that's a god damn fucking filthy insurgent traitor seditionists seeking to overthrow the United States government.

But that's just me. Tell us what you really think. I know. I know. This is going to be that episode, the rage episode. I truly believe that if Ted Cruz and I know laugh laugh along with me, if Ted Cruz had one iota of honor, dignity or character, he would recognize what he's done wrong and quit because he wouldn't be Ted Cruz.

Then Josh had one iota of character or honor or dignity. He would recognize what he's done and quit. But these men, if I may call the men, these creatures are so low, they are so pathetic. They are so purely political in every way that they, with blood on their hands, have gone out and tweeted and made statements. Oh, our thoughts and prayers are with the lives of the poor police officer who was beaten to death by the fucking people that you motherfuckers stoked up that you fucking people dead.

These people understood what they were doing. And let me tell you what would have happened. I mean, I'm sorry, my trip today. Let me tell you what would have happened if they'd been successful, OK? If that group, that Officer Goodman led away from the Senate, if that mob that was stopped by the officer who shot the crazy kuhnen lady who was jumping through the window to get into the private speakers area, if they had found those people they wanted to find mobs, do what mobs do.

Mobs are an animal. They're out of control. Watch the video of them beating a police officer to death with flagpoles and a fire extinguisher. Watch that video. Those aren't people anymore. They're animals. If that mob had gotten what it wanted, if that mob had gotten into the building and gotten into the places where the members were hiding for their lives, if that mob had reached them and killed them. You know what Josh Hollywood have said, he would think, oh, this is terrible.

This is horrible. And then there would have been a but but the media's so much worse off the line. Lib Tard stole the election. But my economic and security of my of my and my followers, it's terrible. And all these people have been so mean to Donald Trump, that's what would have happened. And you can just you could you could hear the dripping cynicism, the unbelievable, boundless degree of cynicism in their tweets and their statements this week.

And they would have excused anything that happened. I mean, they feel like they're a little bit of trouble right now because a failed coup is a bad thing for the coup plotters and for the supporters of the coup and their. Worried now that eventually it's going to come back to haunt them, that their campaign people or their staffers or their friends or their social media friends, there's going to be a tie back to them somehow. They're worried about that.

They're scared about that, and they're scared that America's not, oh, I don't know, pro mob murder. But but that mob wanted something it almost got. And no excuses now for saying, oh, well, that wasn't us. That wasn't our president didn't call. You can't say Trump cause I don't know all those excuses and this false and shallow horseshit, hypocritical appeal to unity and reconciliation. Yeah, OK. Quit first motherfucker, and then we'll talk.

This is going to mesenteric Wilson's raging spleen so tight, as will the Lincoln Project get involved in like take your ads and shaming these people and reminding everyone of their part.

We're already taking taking the fight to them on a number of fronts. Josh, tune in, tune in back home in the next couple of days. You'll enjoy it. You too, Ted.

I'm Ron Johnson. I hope to be.

Well, Ron Johnson is about to face a recall in the state of Wisconsin. And I can tell you how much. Well, it's one of the few states that has a legal recall provision where you basically do a ballot initiative and you can vote to recall somebody.

Can they do that a special? What are they going to do? Well, stay tuned. But but right now, lawyer, the smart lawyers are giving us the roadmap on that. But Ron Johnson is a particularly egregious member of the Trump coterie of fuckwit and is a particularly egregious member of the rush to cover up and of the Hunter Biden worktop bullshit.

Oh, my God. It's going to blow wide open.

OK, whatever. And frankly, every single one of these people that was that was a member of that last clack of the dead enders who were going to still object on the floor even when they knew there was a raging, angry mob descending on the Senate at that moment. And I look, this is not the West Wing, OK? This is the name of the House of Cards. But at some point, even people you dislike, you hope they have a moment of moral clarity.

If they have a moment where they say, man, I am beat fucker, I got to stop this, I thought, OK, but, you know, they want. Right, which is why you guys have to and which is why we will be here to try to poke the bear.

And I will say this. There is a growing campaign in this country and we've done some of it. Other people are participating now, too. It is a growing campaign in this country by corporate America on two fronts. The first front is very simple. It is that the people that are leading this insurgency and the super PACs that support them and the institutions like the NRDC in the NRC that support them, there is now a growing sense in corporate America that that's not a question you want to have to answer at a shareholder meeting.

Are you? Hey, did you back that guy who wanted to overthrow the government by letting a violent mob come in and murder members of Congress? And the second tier of that, which is cause a gigantic shit show on the right, is that the people that have empowered Donald Trump ordinarily would leave a White House job and go out and become, I don't know, head of communications for, you know, Uber or legislative affairs director for Ford Motor Company or or they go into a nice couple of board positions.

So they'd be given speaking contracts to go out and speak to 20 corporate audiences a year for one hundred grand a pop. All these things. Right. All these all these beautiful payoffs for working for shit wages for four years, 20 hours a day with no days off work. Right. There's an increasing sense now in corporate America that these people are poison, that they are deadly, deadly poison, that they are equity killers, that they are brand killers.

And I assure you, that is something that the especially the tier one people I don't care about some GS nine who worked in the Labor Department. OK, right. You're about the John Keli's and the Kaili Macanese and will go on well, made a bad lie down.

And I think Oberon's actually is dead. So I think that maybe, you know, but Steve Mnuchin, as an example, Steve Manoogian is very much alive. His sample. Yeah, exactly.

I've heard, by the way, I heard a rumor. It's a very good rumor. It's not really rumor. It's actually intelligent that Steve Manoogian has not been in Washington for over a month, I'm sure.

Why would he be? It was backed away for a couple of weeks and then he was over in Israel for a couple of weeks. And I heard he was in New York recently. So Steve Manoogian, is he he may be still trying to spin people. On the whole, I'm going to stay because, you know, I can help keep things under control. It gets really crazy.

What say your efforts are? Working and we really see a mass boycott of the ability for polling crews to fundraise for the party since the Senate, so much about fundraising, does that become a thing where expulsion dash them being pressured to resign? Like, what do you think? Do you think there is a play there or is that fair to say?

The majority of their fundraising individually comes from online donors. These are the things that we're talking about, are the major donor checks, the big PAC checks, you know, for a half a million dollars, the RCC or two thousand dollars to the MRC or the group that make a little news here, the Republican Attorneys General Association has a dark money package. You've probably seen the stories about it. They were involved in organizing the insurgency in Washington. They were they were basically like the hawala bankers who funded al-Qaida.

What about Ginni Thomas?

You know or not, as I look open, secret Ginni Thomas is fucking crazy as a shit house rat, but everybody in D.C. knows it. OK, so I'm not excusing her. I'm just saying I don't have the organizational strength to do things like that, like the Republican Agee's do.

Right. I'm not comparing her directly to to the two types of mass killers, like a spree killer does stuff on all sorts of natures. A serial killer like plots and planned stuff out for ritualistic.

Some serial killer was behind this thing. Somebody somebody with a a bent of mind that allowed them to start organizing this. And remember, I want to go back to those people knew where the parliamentarian's office was, which is not an easy thing to find.

It's not something that's evident or obvious. But I'm telling you, I think I've said this to you before. I've been in the Senate hundreds of times in my life, in my career, hundreds of times. I couldn't find the parliamentarian's office. You put a gun to my head, OK? This was an organized event. There was something underneath this that is I think, will be made more explicable as the arrests start to roll up. And by the way, if you're an oath keeper, I would either I can't make sure the dogs get put in the kennel before the feds arrive.

Do we know what Turning Point USA is involvement wise? Because they definitely weren't.

I mean, we saw Charlie was tweeting about it and promoting about it, but and mysteriously, he deleted those tweets to sharply curb the uber uber Dushan fear of the Trump.

And so, Wathen, it had those tweets out there and suddenly pulled them down. I don't know what what what did you get? Kux, Charlie, what happened?

What do you think? Now, Democrats have sort of made a deal that in twenty four hours, if Mike Pence doesn't do the twenty fifth, then they're going to impeach again.

Well, I think that I think I think, frankly, I would have brought Congress back into an emergency session Thursday night. I think they're back now. They're back. And I would have thought that Thursday I would have held this thing. Twenty four seven. I would have ground it down. I would have made every Republican vote on the record. And I would have I would have raised the political pain level so that everybody knows who they are. And so now, because they're dumb, the Republicans had one guy object to a unanimous consent request.

So tomorrow they'll be back or to that. When you hear this, it'll be today. There will be a unanimous consent request. It will fail again. They will have to take a voice vote. It will succeed. They will then proceed with the impeachment thing. That's going to take about a day of debate. It will go to the Senate.

Mitch McConnell will kill it, right? Maybe. Maybe. But no, actually, not. Maybe not. Do you think? No, I think positively.

Mitch McConnell will kill in a way why Mitch McConnell does not want to be murdered.

But most murder is the thing now with these people, as you know. No, I so you know, and I will tell you this, you know, obviously because of our our prominent position as Trump antagonists, you know, the death threat ticktock on the Lincoln Project, folks, has been up through the stratosphere this weekend. And the congressman from Michigan who admitted I'm sorry, his name is gapping on his name right now, who admitted these Republicans are sticking with Trump in part because they fear for their lives.

Yes, if you fear for your life and you can't vote against the Dear Leader, you're not in the Republican Party. You're in the Baath Party. Yeah.

I mean, never be the first guy to stop clapping when Saddam is speaking in a bad way to live.

You got it. You got it. You got to think about whether or not the predicates of your political life started out with. I would just love to be in a party in elected office where I fear that if I say something wrong against the Dear Leader, one of his fanatic knuckle dragging. Mouth breathing Moakes will come up to me and pop two in the back of my head one day. That's not a good party to be. Yeah, it's a good party to be in at all.

Scott Callaway is the host of the podcast Pivot and the Professor Show, as well as being a professor at NYU Stern University and the author of many great books on the intersection of business and tech.

OK, well, thank you so much for joining us. Very excited. Thanks, Mike.

So first question is really about Trump being banned from Twitter and Facebook and Uber ites and Spotify, Bebo or Penguin, Zynga, MySpace or open the door.

We open the door to Rick Wilson factory and it always happens there. What is your take on this? Well, OK, let's be clear.

Let's give credit where credit is due. And that is Jack Dorsey kicked Donald Trump and his hateful, vindictive insurrectionist content off of the platform. Fourteen hundred and forty nine days into his fourteen hundred and sixty day tenure. So if I were to come home and find my 17 year old son and I have a 10 year old son, but I'm pretty sure if I came home in seven years and he was vacuuming the living room after I'd been gone for a week, the first inclination would be to applaud him and recognize his efforts.

And then I'd immediately recognize that this likely meant he had a seven thousand person rave at the house where he was selling Molly and crystal meth. And that's what's going on here.

There is nothing noble. There is nothing patriotic. There is nothing civic in Zukerberg or Dorcy kicking these people off of their platforms. This is them trying to wallpaper over their delay and obfuscation. People who get DUIs typically have driven drunk two hundred 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. So I think they should be held accountable.

I think it's a sad state when we're looking to 30 something part time CEOs or people who can't be removed from office to mete out justice for an insurrection. It says a lot of bad things about our society. But be clear. Be clear, Zuckerberg didn't kick Trump off of Facebook and Dorsey didn't kick Trump off of Twitter. Stacey Abrams kicked Trump off of Facebook. They deserve zero fucking credit for doing the right thing at the bottom of the ninth inning.

How fucking hallelujah, brother.

What how did Stacey Abrams do it?

Because these people woke up about three days ago and recognized that the people chairing the committees that oversee their sectors are now Democrat. Right. And that the unholy alliance of the last decade between Zuckerberg and Trump, which went something like this, let me continue to spew venom and misinformation and I won't break your ass up. Let's shake on it. I mean, that was the most obvious and unholy alliance that's taking place. And now Representative Cicilline is going to chair.

He is chairing the House subcommittee. The most productive subcommittee hearing we had was chaired by a Democrat who asked real questions and rightfully pointed out and showed up with evidence and received saying you've committed anti trust. The other thing that's very exciting here, and I think it's part of healing, you can't heal without accountability. And there's going to be a lot of discussion talking about how no sooner had these folks could they take the furniture away from barricading the doors to the Capitol, Representative Gates gets up on the floor and starts spreading more information, misinformation.

And it's not even that he's stupid. He knows he's spreading misinformation. And so, OK, what's the accountability there?

What is the accountability for these organizations? If you look at Twitter, I apologize.

I'm hopping around a lot, but I'm below that right now.

We'd love it if you look at Twitter. All right. Their stock was at fifty five, seven years ago at bottom to twenty four. Trump got elected and immediately over the course of the last four years have slowly began to march back to fifty five. He's booted off of Twitter and the stock declines. Ten percent. Which means. Which means. And Jack Dorsey on the board know this. They created a platform in a for profit engine based on hate, based on misogyny, based on bigotry.

And any business that has an economic model based on that sort of incivility deserves to be shut the fuck down. And these people deserve no credit. They should absolutely be held accountable. All the legacy board members and the CEO of those companies should not only resign, but they didn't put Capone in jail for murdering. They put him in jail for tax evasion. Facebook has been has been colluding cartel pricing. There needs to be a perp walk in social media.

Scott, you could I think you could not be more right about their motivations. They they immediately saw, oh, God, what are we going to do now? We have to throw something.

We have to throw somebody over the back of the sled so the wolves don't catch us. And this idea that it was some sudden revelation of civic virtue didn't happen during any of the other incitements or Charlottesville or anything else, you know, or loot you loot, we shoot or any other provocation became when that when they realized that Mitrovic. Was now Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. That's right, that's right. And and the notion and all these Republican senators seeking to meet the press, Senator Toomey, who I like and I think is a reasonable guy and is kind of a I would like to think a moderate that I aspire to support is saying, well, he crossed a line.

We didn't see this coming.

Didn't see this coming. Get the fuck out of here. It was there were there were people on Twitter and Facebook organizing to kidnap the governor of Michigan. Right. There was a woman run over by a car at UVA. I mean, what do you mean you didn't see this coming? Everyone saw this coming. So you're at a trial. You've killed a family in a minivan for drunk driving. Yeah. You didn't mean to kill that family. But, boss, you are in trouble.

You are criminally liable. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's really a good point. Can you explain to us what Section 230 is? So this was legislation passed in 1997 actually by Democrat Senator Ron Wyden and from Oregon, one of them that said that no interactive or nascent interactive platform should be liable for the content posted to those platforms. And it was meant to provide cloud cover to nascent smaller firms to promote innovation. And I think the intention was the right one. These were budding platforms that didn't want Rupert Murdoch putting them out of business.

Right. So they gave them protection. They are now the most powerful entities in the world and they constantly use this as cloud cover to let ridiculously harmful things that pervert our elections, anti-trust behaviour, job destruction and and on and on. And they use this is as blanket coverage. It is outdated. It's like giving your eight year old, who's now twenty four, the same code. The legislation is totally outdated. And then the people people misunderstand what it is they say.

Trump says, let's do away with it. Well, if you did away with it, it would probably hurt. Really extreme left voices is more or excuse me, extreme right voices more than it would hurt extreme left voices and it would create chaos. The comment section on the New York Times dot com would probably have to shut down if they removed two thirty. But there are carve outs, there's carve outs for sex trafficking and there likely should be carve outs for things around health, things that might incite violence.

So it needs to be modified, but it has been so perverted and people don't understand it. And it's been to become a political football. But loosely speaking, it's been cloud cover that's outdated. And given these quote unquote, nascent platforms get out of jail free card when they should be liable for some of the real damage they're doing on their platforms.

The irony of Trump calling for the end of to thirty makes no sense. It's rich. But Scott's point, though, is exactly right. This has become the greatest get out of jail free card of all time, right? If the Chamber of Commerce are going to carve out a a business liability exception somewhere and they got one one thousandth of what 230 does, they would think that they had had the greatest triumph of all time.

Well, look, Rick and Molly, if we said we need to organize against John Travolta, he's a threat to society and battlefield earth.

Part two. We've got to. That's right. That's right. It's coming. Griese three is coming. So look. And all of a sudden people start showing up at his house and and damaging property. We we would be liable. We if we said incorrect things that inflamed and that incented or motivated violence, they would reverse engineer this media property and we would potentially be held liable. There is no reason these firms should have a greater level of protection than any other media company.

And they say, well, wait, it would be impossible to monitor this bullshit. We're talking about the realm of the profitable, not the possible. There was an analysis done, I think, by the Atlantic or The New York Times. It showed that just thirty seven accounts on Twitter were responsible for about 70 to 80 percent of the truly ugly misinformation that could lead to violence.

It's a long tail. It just wouldn't have been that hard. It isn't this this is not about the impossible. And everybody says, well, they let it turn into an argument. If they're trying to they're trying to squelch left or far right. It's not that I know these guys. They don't lean. They don't lean red. They don't lean blue, they lean green. And the problem is they pitted everybody against each other such that they can slow roll it out and continue to do damage to the Commonwealth.

Because the bottom line is, in a capitalist society, when you're a billionaire, your kids have access to better schools, better health care, you have access to a broader set of selection mates than you deserve. And you get to go do really fucking cool things. And when you get to do those things, that blurs your vision. And we're used to the government stepping in and saying, sorry, boss, what you're doing here, whether you're killing it or whether you're making a lot of money, you can't continue to pour mercury into the river.

You can't continue to put out faulty medication. In this instance, we've decided, no, there are new Jesus Christ. They should not be subject to the same scrutiny as every other fucking company has been subject to over the last hundred years.

So Trump is against two thirty. But smart people should also should be forced to thirty, but sort of making it more modern.

I just think it needs to be updated. Doing away with it would probably create a level of litigation, right? Yeah, litigation, a lot of platforms as usual. It would hurt the small and medium sized guys that just don't have the resources to deal with this. It needs to be modified and updated. And the government is supposed to be smart. We have a lot of regulation that is nuanced and smart and and a lot that isn't. But we we need it needs to be updated.

And people above my pay grade should be thinking about what are the carve outs, how do we apply it? Is there an exemption for companies that do, say, less than a billion dollars in revenue, recognizing they don't have the resources to place the platform is there? I think there needs to be some what I'll call variable standards. I mean, this is something I'm trying to do, and that is I have a lot of shitty takes on stuff and I recognize it as my followership and influence has grown.

I tried to be more thoughtful about having fewer shitty takes, recognizing they can do more damage as your influence grows. So if you have 10 million followers on Twitter, there should be a greater level of scrutiny and standards. Yes. And it just wouldn't be that hard for these guys to implement that. And some regulation that says, you know what, when you have people on the platform that have tens of millions of followers, you know who they are.

And we can directly correlate those 10 million followers to organizing to kidnap the governor. You're in deep shit. And until we get the outdrive disincentives down, it's going to continue.

And look at some of this with the major with with the Facebook scale people and Twitter, Facebook, asking people this bullshit of we could never monitor. We've got everything so, so, so new. Once they can find a fucking DMCA copyright violation in a nanosecond, 100 percent, it's what they're incentivized to find. And that's because there's a regulatory penalty to them. If they keep hosting copyrighted material that is posted illegally, it doesn't take a super sophisticated A.I. to track words like let's go kill the governor.

If I play four seconds of Stayin Alive and one of my opening videos and YouTube, I get a notice and they take it down. I can target on Facebook households in Short Hills, New Jersey, that have a teenager who recently got his driver's license. But they can't figure out when people are organizing to kidnap the governor and these people are even hiding it. So, yeah, we're talking about, again, the realm of the profitable, not the realm of the possible.

These companies, when it's raining money, your vision and your citizenship gets blurred. And to a certain extent, we're the ones that have failed to elect the leaders and impose the same standards as if General Motors was allowed to pour Mercury into the river. They would continue to do it because even if they didn't want to do it, they would be putting themselves at a disadvantage versus Ford or Chrysler who continue to do it and could charge less for their car or whatever.

So it is up to us to elect people who will actually implement. And this is what government is supposed to do. They're supposed to foot externalities to taxation and regulation. And we have let these guys go on. We have let this fire rage for way too long.

Scott, what are you looking to see a Biden administration do in terms of regulating tech and is reversing net neutrality back to where it was in the Obama era?

One of the things I don't understand net neutrality is what I will say. I was a fan of net neutrality. When you turned it back. I thought the sky was going to fall and it doesn't appear it has. So I don't know if net neutrality is the issue, we all thought. But in terms of what should be done, the first is the most accretive. The greatest tax cut that could be given to Americans right now would be to quintuple the budget of the DOJ and the FTC and go through big tech, big pharma, big ag, big food and break companies up and oxygenate the marketplace.

There's too much concentration of power, which leads to bad. Look where we are now. We are now turning after an insurrection, the first eighteen, eleven or whatever it was. And we turn to Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and beg them to to to mete out punishment against our president. That's where we are. Right. Please, please shut his account down. So clearly tech has too much power. Antitrust, right.

Oh, it's OK. It's OK. It's cross over. It's insurance. The clustering of all these firms in the aggregation of all this power, all these firms and I say this as a as a market conservative, they have used regulatory chicanery and tax advantages to accumulate market share. That is now, you know, it doesn't matter that that ConAgra has eighty seven brands. It's a fucking ConAgra at the end of the day.

That's right. And Intel. So the first is antitrust. The second is I do think we have to align incentives with outcomes. And that is if you look at what's happened over the last since the pandemic, there's a reason why America has handled this so poorly or a variety of reasons. But I think one of the reasons America has let Trump get as far as he's gotten and let the pandemic rages is as quickly as it's raged. Is that the one percent that speak to the top one percent billionaire speak to the senator, an average of every three months, that one percent someone worth 100 million dollars has more than 100 times the influence of someone worth a million dollars.

And those people the last nine months has been cocaine and champagne. If you're in the top one percent, a pandemic and Trump have met more time with your family, more time on Netflix and your wealth has exploded. So there's no real incentive, there's no sense of urgency to do something about a tyrannical fascist or a pandemic. When you know what I just seem to the more infections and the more outrageous tweets, the richer I get. And this is the dirty secret that we don't want to talk about.

And that is the shareholder class that has an outsized level of influence is living their best lives. So we're going to have to figure out a way where, OK, if Elon Musk adds the GDP, adds the GDP of Hungary in the last eight months since the first infection, then maybe we should do away with capital gains tax exemption.

Maybe if if the rich are getting so fabulously rich, not off the pandemic, but despite it, then maybe we should do what Reagan did and do away with a lower tax rate for the for the wealthiest who are benefiting here. I'm not saying I'm not saying that you should punish them or Robinhood them, but you're going to create you're not going to have a full throated capitalist response to the pandemic or to a tyrant unless the incentives are there. And right now, there's been a disincentive, I would argue, and it's a different talk show that the pandemic has been used as cloud cover to borrow three trillion dollars from future generations, such that we can juice the markets and take the Nasdaq up.

And I think it's damaging for our society, no question.

So can you explain what's happened with a little bit about what's happened with Gabb and Parler? Well, yeah.

So my co-host on Pivot did an interview with a guy who runs parlor and it horrified everybody. And again, there is a certain level there's there's a lot to unpack here. The fact that one company can basically shut a company down overnight. Amazon basically shut down Parlo overnight. And you might think that's bad because at some point Amazon makes bad calls about media and liberal or conservative views. So that's bad right there. But this notion that it's a violation of First Amendment, my understanding of First Amendment and Rick and you and Molly probably can forget more about this nightmare every now.

But basically it says Congress can't prohibit anyone from saying what they want in the town square. But it doesn't mean private companies have to give platform. It doesn't mean that freedom of speech equals freedom of speech. And they've used that as this kind of false flag or false narrative that these companies that, oh, you're violating the First Amendment. Twitter doesn't have any responsibility. First Amendment, Amazon Web Services doesn't have any responsibility to ensure parler. Now, if Amazon can start shutting down companies and putting them out of business with 24 hours notice because they are too dominant, I think that's a separate talk show.

But back to Mali where you said what needs to be done? We need to do away with what is infected. I would call the far left with this bullshit fucked up version of brokenness called both sidedness, where we've decided we need to understand these people who are left behind by America, these people who show up at the Capitol and are angry, these people who loot and destroy property.

We need to understand that at some point conservatives used to talk all the time like, oh, we need to restore shame.

It's a natural it's a necessary social function. Well, no, we also need to restore accountability and punishment. We won't until we realize that it's the only thing that's going to that's going to know. Pain is the only teacher in politics.

It works really well. So I'll just give you an example. The next time someone calls you and says, hey, Rick or Molly, I can get your kid into UCLA. If you give me fifty thousand dollars to give to the tennis coach, you're hanging up that phone because guess what? Ambac He did a perp walk.

So the algebra, the algebra, a disincentive has been implemented and it is very effective until now until a senator or congressman has matching funds or something taken away because they got on the floor and they spread misinformation no sooner than they were able to take furniture away to barricade the doors. And they knowingly spread information until we start putting people in jail, until the board of social media firms are kicked off those boards unceremoniously because I knew what was going on. Nothing's going to change.

Nothing's going to change.

Brian, this was really great. Thank you so much, Scott. The sky sale is now on who doesn't need a pick me up at this time of year? So get award winning Sky TV and our best ever Wi-Fi with ultra fast broadband together from just 50 euros a month for 12 months. Well, that's nice. That's a feel good saving from us. So save big on the sky sale search sky 50 today, new Sky customers only availability subject to location, minimum term and further terms.

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Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside Members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only beast inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal DOT, The Daily Beast dot com to become a beast inside.

No, now that's new abnormal dot the Daily Beast dot com. John Fetterman is the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and who has an impending United States Senate run coming and Jazelle Fetterman is both his wife and the owner of the Freestore. Today, they're going to talk to us about what's going on in Pennsylvania.

Have you announced running for Senate yet? I haven't just just that flooring it, but in 72 hours, just mentioning that I'm looking at it, we raised over half a million dollars from fifteen thousand donors from every every state in the country and sixty three out of 67 Pennsylvania counties. It was just, you know, insane. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, I'm if nothing else, I'm just like, thank you, everybody.

So tell me about the Fakhoury, because it sounds like Pennsylvania's got a lot of stuff going on. Can you explain to our listeners what exactly is happening in the Pennsylvania State House?

Absolutely. What happened was we had what we always have every four years is half the Senate is up for re-election. And the day in question last Tuesday was really what I call picture day, quote unquote, where it's perfunctory and ceremonial, where families come in. And the swearing in was never in question. And it was always like like a rare bipartisan day, if anything, because both parties have members being sworn in. So the Republican majority announced that they were not going to swear in.

One of the Democratic senators who was a was admittedly a close race, but was certified no different in terms of credentialing than all of the other senators from either party. And then also the Supreme Court of our state affirmed that ruling and they said we're not cheating them. And I was like, what do you mean you're not going to them? Like, how can you not see the democratically elected official? And I preside over the Senate. So they were going to proceed with that motion.

And I refused to entertain that motion and I kept pushing back. I won't do it. I won't do it. They did the one procedural move that they could and they created a motion where they voted me off or out, basically, and that's what they did. Can they do that? They can in the sense that they can do the motion. I could have remained in there physically and I could have turned it into I could have turned it into a very chaotic scene, more so than it already was.

But my purpose of doing what I did was, is to draw attention to the fact that what they're doing and to give Senator Brewster the opportunity to be seated, which he was given the opportunity, but they ultimately rejected it again. And my quote is, is that they said, were you broke? The rules are like, well, you broke the law. You know, I'll break rules any day before I would ever break the law, which you did.

And that was a foreshadowing to the kind of chaos that you saw in Washington, because that morning I had a group of two hundred angry Trump voters and protesters underneath my office balcony protesting. And I still don't know why that could have easily gone the same way that it did in D.C. Like we didn't have any extra security or anything.

You're in a really split state. Yeah, down the middle. Yeah. And you have a really sort of weaponized Republican Party, not unlike the rest of America. What is your secret?

Well, I don't know if I'd call this here, but I'm just not afraid to tell and stand on the truth. And, you know, if if you think that someone should work for seven twenty five an hour, you know, vote for the other person, if you think that, you know, someone from the LGBTQ community should be treated like a second class citizen or third class, then vote for somebody else. If you think that we should, I mean, just you name it.

I just believe in being very forthright. And that seems to resonate. And the point of is, is that it's not a political issue. It's the fact it's true. And we shouldn't be arguing about this. I mean, there's there's plenty of politics we can argue about, but these are, I think, fundamental truths.

Yeah, I was reading something today where a lot of these Republican congressmen in the House were saying that they were worried about voting for the election results, even though they knew what Trump was pitching was wrong. They were scared for their families. What's your take on that?

I understand the kind of thing being owned by your cock, your caucus. I get that. And you know what's professional wrestling, quote unquote, like serious sedition. And to be fair, you know, there are members of the House leadership and the Senate leadership in Pennsylvania that never crossed that line. But there were members that did. In fact, one of the state senators, Doug Mastrianni, was actually involved in the Capitol situation. Yeah. And, you know, this idea that you didn't have to take it as far as you did, I mean, you can, you know, do the the folding chair over the head and the right to the eyes.

But at the end of the day, you can always win. INCR pull back, but eight out of our nine Republican congressional members voted, and they know more than anybody that they're lying, right? That's what's so disingenuous. It's one thing to be sincerely committed to a belief structure. And then it's an entirely other one to say, I know why. I know this is disingenuous. I'm either pandering or, you know, it's just it's disingenuous and and dangerous.

And you saw what happens when enough of that accumulates.

What happened on when do you get scared for your safety? No, never.

I don't care what happens to me. It's just my family. That's all I care about is my family. If the end comes for me, that's whatever. It's just my family. And that's that's all I care about.

So explain to our listeners what the Freestore is and how it operates. Sure.

So the Freestore was born because when I came to this country as a young immigrant, we were dumpster divers and we know all our furniture came from the curb on garbage day. And those experiences allowed me to see how much excess there was in both retail and how much waste and how disposable things were. And I wanted to create a space where those items could be distributed to families in need at no cost, like a really kind of beautiful, organic, dignified experience.

Now, I know with my history that if you go to many food banks and other organizations, you have to prove that you're hungry. You have to provide your taxes. You know, it's a really dehumanizing experience. You're already going through something. And now this place is asking you to prove that you need it. And we don't believe in that. So our work is really it's a trust system. You come in and if we have what you need, you're welcome to take.

We always have things like formula and diapers, which are really important to families, but also clothing, shoes, accessories, toys where one hundred percent volunteer run and we're really efficient or solar powered. It costs very little to do what we do. We keep tons out of a landfill. Did you mention this, that you've actually never been part of your you're 100 percent volunteer with the volunteer?

Never. Nine years. Wow.

We just have it's this place where not only are we giving things out, but we're connecting with families were able to support them because they trust us. So it's a really unique and special experience at the store.

Do you think you can scale that up to be in other places in Pennsylvania? Definitely.

We have we've opened we've helped other groups open in other locations I'm speaking to in New Jersey now. I'm trying to do one in several other states. There are good people everywhere in excess of goods, everywhere. You know, when we're open, we serve about a hundred people. So we've been able to essentially eradicate food and clothing and security for all the families that we serve. And I know this can be done in other places as well. So I'm always I love the calls where they're like, help me open a restaurant.

So cool. I love those calls.

So how have you seen this transform the community? I think a lot of people may hear this and they go, well, OK, that's sounds nice, but how does it actually affect the world around you guys? You know what?

You know how it's transformed the community because not one single child in the Braddick area has ever had to go without formula, diapers, clothing, a car seat, you name it, because of her efforts. And that means everything. She serves hundreds of people, you know, every day that the stores open. And, you know, I was mayor for 14 years and I never did anything on the magnitude of consistency and benefit that she accomplished just by that simple idea that that, you know, things that are perfectly good but just would otherwise get thrown away or not repurposed can enrich the lives of those that need it most.

And it would cost anybody a dime and it saves landfill space.

Yeah, that's amazing. I said he loves me.

Well, that's a good thing. We just got to get this off my chest. I'm going to shut up. No, go for it. That's why you're here.

I was skeptical of her idea when she came to me years ago. I was like really a prisoner. And the fact that it would go on to be such a fundamental, transformative part of the very fabric around here. And that I know without a doubt, children have clothes, babies have formula and diapers and things. I didn't believe it. She did it. And now I just evangelize about it.

That's amazing. They will ultimately see that Democratic Senator. Right. I honestly don't know. You know, perhaps they're more inclined to after the calamity in Washington, DC, that that it's just like, you know, what's ironic is. They literally passed a law that would prohibit me from hanging weed and LGBTQ flags on my office balcony. They literally voted me out to eject me from it because I insisted that they see the democratically elected senator, but they are not they haven't censured the senator on their side.

That was a participant in the Capitol Hill uprising. You know, like what world you compartmentalize at that level. I mean, do you get the sense when I read this this weekend that this idea that Republicans are all of a sudden I'm not all of a sudden goes, I think this is the accumulation of a lot of stuff, but that they have sort of taken this anti democracy stance?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's only anti democracy when it involves a Democrat winning. You know, when they win, it's like democracy, baby. We love it, you know. You know, this idea that, you know, it was rigged for Biden, it's like, well, you are on the same ballot, but. Well, the voters love me. So I know my race. I mean, it's it's just disingenuous at every every molecule of it is steeped in just insincerity and cynicism.

And it is anti-democratic obstinance where they know more than anybody. You know, Donald Trump knew more than anyone that the election was free, full and secure. And that's what makes all of this so vile, because they knew and they are the ones that gave rise to this, since you are like really on the ground on the state level and you're in a state that's really a state that's really, you know, everything.

Right. The very far right. The very far left. What do you see as a way out of this?

If we don't, then we're going to come apart. We have to I think it's our it's the doctrine of assured mutual destruction at this point. If we continue down this path. I mean, what you saw on Wednesday was like a miniature civil war. I mean, it's like the idea that people would storm the capital and try to overturn an election result or exclusively on a lie is extraordinary. And I said weeks and weeks ago that they need to do platform Trump.

He is not this is not a free speech First Amendment issue. If I'm screaming fire in a theater that I know is there's no fire, I am risking a catastrophe in a calamity. You have eight weeks of that. And that just accrued, accrued, accrued, and then the match was thrown and boom, there you go. So I think it's great that they did platformed him, but you're about too much too late. This idea of saying, you know, the election was rigged and then they put a this is disputed.

You know what that is? That's a that's a label on a pack of cigarettes. Everyone knows that. You know, like it's like that doesn't stop anyone from smoking, you know, like they should have deleted those texts, every tweet that came out, you know, instead of that ridiculous blue label. And that's more than anything allowed this to spiral and into. And it's just I mean, it was inevitable. Inevitable.

Do you think now that, you know, Trump doesn't have a microphone right now except briefings. So how worried are you about the next ten days?

I'm not I'm not worried. I think the vice president knows because he was thrown under the bus. You know, that was one of the last did before the the the riot was he threw his own vice president under the bus. So I think I think it was made abundantly clear to him you so much as dot the wrong T and cross the wrong guy, you know, say hello to Twenty Fifth Amendment, you know. Yeah. And and I think he understands that.

And I think the only reason why nothing will happen is because his own vanity is in tatters and he doesn't want to be the first president in history to be removed by the Twenty Fifth Amendment.

Do you think that can happen if Trump keeps going? Yes, right. I do.

I think he fully I think he fully understands that. And if if you're Mike Pence, your political career is already gone anyway, what do you have to lose on it? And all of those awful people like Josh, Holly and Ted Cruz, that that simple for him so hard. And I thought we're going to get out in front in twenty twenty. They incinerated themselves politically because I mean, my goodness, like that picture of Holly shoving up his fist in the air.

I mean, that ball game.

Do you think there's a world in which Holly and Chris and also I mean, Ron Johnson is another one are held accountable for this or censured in some way?

I don't think that. I don't think they will be. Can you just imagine the fact that your supporters drove you from your very chamber and after all that trauma, people were shot and people died. You still were so held. 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, our lives, you know, like he went to Stanford and Yale Law. He knows better than anybody that it's 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 soul stepped in dog shit.

I don't know how else to say in our one segment. Fuck that guy. Rick Wilson. Who is your fuck? That guy.

My fuck. That guy is a fuck. Those guys fuck every single person from Donald Trump all the way down to the lowest bootblack in his campaign to the goddamn interns. In all those cases, they all built this every every Republican who has who has quietly whispered, oh, you know, I don't like him, but I have to do blah, blah, blah, intolerable. It's insufferable. Their behavior is what led to this, to five people being dead, to five people being dead.

And what was truly repulsive and overwhelming about this is also that not one of them feels a real sense of guilt to the point where they're willing to go out in public and stand up and make the cut and make the case and say, you know what, I was wrong. I should never have endorsed him. I should never voted for him. He's insane. He's going to launch nuclear weapons on Peoria this week and it'll be brighter than a thousand sounds.

And I'll have to come out here because I'm afraid of him. Right. You know, and I just want to say one last thing. Once again, I want to remind all the Republicans who have quietly whispered in my ear and Stewart and Stephen and Reid and everybody else, I just can't I just can't do it. He tweet about me. He's off Twitter, you chickenshit. Get the fucking job done. Fuck those guys.

Mine is sort of like in your umbrella of fact. That guy's mind is House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy, you went from twenty fifteen saying, I think Trump Putin pays Trump and Rohrabacher to being Trump's biggest toady and sycophant. And still you're sleazy, you're voted against democracy and you have to be out of your mind. Fuck that guy.

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 John Fast and he is the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you again on the next episode.

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