Hi, folks, this is Rick Wilson and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly John Fast, a left wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast.

I'm also an editor at large 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 and science to help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. We take the issues seriously ourselves, not so much.

Our world has been turned upside down on the new abnormal. We'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we get ourselves out of it. I'm Rick Wilson. Hello, Molly. Drunk fast. How are you today? I'm good.

So you know who's in your state of Florida right now, is it noted lap dancer, an erotic gymnast, Kevin McCarthy? Yes, that's how he's usually described. So that makes a lot of sense as most people do glitter. Right. And Ryan McCarthy. Yeah, he's nice in the wig.

You know, I have to say, I've always been told that his work in the champagne room is excellent.

I've never experienced myself really, really heading folks. This is going to be one of them show like this is going to be one of those shows that goes way off the fucking rails.

Yeah, it already seems problematic. Talk to me about what the fuck is happening.

Well, why is Kevin McCarthy in Mar a Lago? You're asking? I'm asking your take on it. I will give you the answer. Kevin McCarthy is a Mar Lago because he's Donald Trump's bitch, for one thing. And the House of Representatives is comprised of the Trump Party with the exception of ten or eleven reps who were not in the Trump Party. And they are on the what we call the Endangered Species Party. Those people are experiencing a form of pain and suffering.

They're not expected, which is they're not going to be getting corporate donations right this cycle. They are they are associated now with the racist's plan to disenfranchise tens of millions of African American voters by executing with the Trump lawsuits failed to do by executing that in Congress. They were unsuccessful, but they still embraced it completely. They wanted to overturn the election there, the pro sedition, pro insurrection, pro, pro Mobb Party.

And as we've talked about on this show and elsewhere, that's bad for your brand, just not good for your being the racist pro small party.

I don't know what could go wrong. Why won't Nike advertise a fund? So he's down there trying to shore up and get access to Trump's email list and get the RNC email list, which Trump still controls because he still controls the RNC from afar and get access to those to that money. He needs that money so he can fundraise. He also is worried because Matt Gates is actively planning to try to take the title of minority leader from him. He's out there hustling.

Is Matt Gates going to campaign against Liz Cheney because he's trying to get the Mogg a predicate of running the the Maga caucus in the House and thus the Republican caucus in the House? I think I think McCarthy's got gates in the rearview mirror. Now, you know, he's not worried about Jim Jordan any more. Jim Jordan's going to run for Senate if matters is an immediate threat. If Matt decides to go at him and it looks like he is because he's doing these things very publicly to go out to campaign against Liz Cheney, the apostate and all that other stuff.

So, look, it's just it's just also a sign, by the way, if you needed an additional sign that Kevin McCarthy has no bottom, as the Brits say, he has no no integrity. He has no no guts, no soul, no, no, no, no moment of recognition that the time for for Donald Trump just passed us by.

Right. It does feel like McCarthy is really giving Trump the Republican Party. He really is.

I mean, there was like a chance where the Republican Party was going to escape from Trump's clutches. And then he McCarthy was like, too scary. Let's go back.

Yeah. And, you know, but he is he's now recognized that the Trump Party controls the Congressional Republican Caucus. And unless he keeps Donald Trump happy, he'll be out. You know, he could say to Donald Trump, I love you more than two decades. I do. I do. And just want one more bottle of champagne and I'll make my quota for the night. Sir.

Jesus Christ, there's no sex in the champagne room.

Sorry, movie quote. Oh, God.

Did I happen to see that a certain podcast host made a little Fox News appearance?

Oh, I wouldn't say I made an appearance. I would say that Sean Sean Hannity, it has special Rick Wilson Room that he keeps in the back of the studio behind Sean, behind Sean's makeup room. There's a special secret room and it's pictures of me all over the wall. And and whenever Sean goes in there, he looks at me because I didn't want to go to the prom with him anyway. I hate it. I love him. I love him.

So Sean puts me on the other night with the greatest Kiran ever. And it was just me, like doing whatever I do on MSNBC the other day. They're like Trump hater goes on unhinged rant, I'm like so close to so close and I don't even know what it was, I was like laying it out, like doing my usual indictment of their fucker. But this has become like a part of their thing. So then he brings Gates. All right.

And MAGNET's does probably. And it was so funny because one of Gates's most prominent funders and and supporters in Panama City sends me a message right after he goes, oh, God, he sounds like a teenage girl that gets on TV. And he just laughed. And he did have an unhinged rant about me. And he's like, well, Rick Wilson says, I suck on Twitter, but over four years I'm like, what the fuck? Pro golfer?

The candidate thinks I have a big penis bottle. That was not a great lock. It was so desperate. They were so thirsty. A good God, get the fuck out of here. What do you think? That that man just has no embarrassment. I mean, wouldn't you be embarrassed to go on television and be like, I have more followers than this person? So obviously I'm good at Internet.

Like, wouldn't I'm not embarrassed. I better. But saying it was embarrassing. It was it was so embarrassing. It was just like it was like what you want. Right.

I mean, and the irony is, of course, this all comes back to this like feed the feed the oppression machine of the fox audience. Feed the feed the oh, the elites look down on you. You are the smart ones. They're the idiots. I have more Twitter followers. Oh, I think it's really kind of insane. There's some part OK in the minds of Matt Gates and Sean Hannity where they think we owned him. We own Rick Wilson.

We own the live. Our lives are complete for the day. It's just what world you live in.

What do you think happens now? Well, look, we are going to enter into this impeachment. And if the Democrats do not understand the political utility of impeachment. Hello, Tim Kaine, they are missing the boat.

It's good for democracy. It's good for the Democrats. It's good to get this stuff. No, it's good for the country public record. Yeah. Yeah, it's good for the country. And it clearly it clearly isn't just a little bit justified. It's utterly justified. Every day tells us more every day, tells us more about what was going on, about the fact that there was a conspiracy at the highest degree inside the Trump circle the night before this thing, you know, when you've got Ashley Alexander talking with the senior Bush about.

Right, right. Yes. And Tommy Tuberville and the senior most members of the Trump advisory circle.

Yeah. Who happen to be as dumb as Ali Alexander. Are you kidding me? That there's no tie here, that there's no link here, that there's no I mean, this is the kind of like conspiracy case that a twenty two year old brand new minted prosecutor could make. This is not rocket science at this point. And I saw somebody earlier this morning who said, you know, my theory of the case is that is that they're waiting, that they've already they're figuring out which one is going to break and squeal, doesn't want to do jail time.

And I think it's probably a pretty good theory of the case. But, you know, the Justice Department is suddenly like taking this kind of shit seriously. And I can't imagine what there must have been something that happened in the last 10 days that changed the Justice Department. I can't I can't put my finger on it, but it seems to be pretty important. Yeah. What else was Bill Barr sitting on know?

That is a question.

I think Saturday Nancy Pelosi chastised Marjorie Taylor Greene pretty bad after Jimmy Goa's introduced a move to expel her from Congress.

For all the whack a doodle things she's been saying over the years, I think it says a lot about Kevin McCarthy that Marjorie Taylor Green is a white hot, kuhnen lunatic who was abusive to people in profound ways and who is a shittier human being of the worst possible character. She is somebody you wouldn't let in your house. She is somebody you wouldn't seat in a restaurant if her behavior was iterated out in the public space without without her having the name member of Congress in her title, she would not have a role or a place in any society.

The only way she holds any position right now is twofold. One, Kevin McCarthy supported her politically and financially to win that seat. And now Kevin McCarthy has named her to committee assignments. And this woman is bat shit, bug fucker do crazy. Not only was she yelling at the at the Parkland kids, but she was also on Facebook liking things like we need to put a bullet between people's eyes. And they weren't like joking. It wasn't metaphorical.

It wasn't like we got to take that guy out. It was her showing us who she is. It was her telling us what she is, what she believes, what is really inside that ugly fucking void of her soul. McCarthy knows who she is. She knows what she does. And he put her on the fucking education committee. Are you fucking kidding me? Get the fuck out of here.

The problem is, when you go for her and I'm not saying you shouldn't because you absolutely should, because she's a complete lunatic. You also have like Lauren Bowerbird, who was clearly in some way involved in this, capturing it just in her encouragement of it. And then you have Mel Brooks, who spoke at the Stop the Steel rally.

So if I could quote Lauren Bobert and Mergenthaler Taylor Green and Mo Brooks and Josh Holly and Ted Cruz and barbecue sauce and release the. Those people don't belong in Congress, they don't belong in the Senate, they belong in a lunatic asylum, they belong on the edges and fringes of society. But I'm fucking on the chat rooms at 4chan, not here.

Do we think that there's any world in which any of these people get centered?

No, we're going to try. We're going to push it. Josh Hawley is now an embarrassment in the Senate and he is hated. Josh, always having trouble. Nobody wants to sit next to Josh Holloway in the lunchroom now, let's put it that way.

But Josh only got about seven hundred thousand dollars from a backpack. You saw that, right?

Yeah, from from the Conservative Leadership Fund, which, you know what they're making up for? The fact that it's corporate money has been blown out. And look, he got about two hundred fifty thousand dollars in corporate money that we could identify last go round. And he is now the poster boy for this post, conservative conservatism. They are not conservatives anymore. Bears, bears mentioning they are now authoritarians with a bent towards towards a post constitutional America. They think the Constitution is not a point of weakness, not a point of strength.

And so they're going to try to support and lift him up. I'm going to try to to I'm going to try to raise the same amount of money or more just to blast him away, just just to counter counter to countervail that that donation. Because I'd like to just be on TV for a week reminding people that Josh Hawley, a few hours before the mob swarmed the Capitol to murder cops, was out there giving him the big high fist yet and come on.

And that he was on the floor of the goddamn Senate that day, feeding the beast of their lunatic conspiracy theory, saying, oh, this election was stolen. It was hacked. It was rigged. Come at us. I am no fan of Mike Pence, but they were chanting Hang Mike Pence. And there was a noose hanging from yes, yes, yes, there was. I get it is the exhibit is the technical term big? Yes.

So they just don't give a shit about Mike Pence.

They don't. Mike Pence is gone now, but they give all the shits about Donald Trump.

Still to the theory, here's the theory that we hear is floating around inside the Senate right now.

Well, if we don't convict him, he'll just go away. If we don't convict him, he'll he'll disappear. He'll sink into obscurity. He'll never bother us again. And the, of course, answer to that question is, are you kidding me? If you if you feed the monster, does the monster go away or does the monster say, feed me more?

Well, I also think fundamentally, you don't avoid autocracy by ignoring autocracy.

Yes, that's correct. And while that while the individual members of the Senate or what I do and what I call the alligator fried chicken theory, which is you can keep throwing the alligator fried chicken sitting on the edge of the dock, but when you're at a fried chicken, it bites your foot off. They keep thinking they're going to be the last one like that. They're the last piece of fried chicken and they're going to be OK. They are not.

He will always be there doing this to them from afar. He will haunt them until he is dead. And once he's dead, they'll upload them to the cloud and you'll haunt them for all eternity until the heat death of the universe. This is the only path to cutting off the pernicious infection and the metastasizing cancer that is Trump ism is to vote to convict him. Now, I recognize that that would take people in the Senate on the Republican side with these rare and terrifying characteristics that are unimaginable in modern American politics, things like courage and integrity and patriotism and a love of country and putting country before party and putting yourself before your before your political putting your political system, before your your your political prospects.

All these things would be would be easy. But they're also in Congress, rare as hen's teeth, as my grandma would say.

Yeah. So basically the DHS had a warning that their white supremacist may have been emboldened by Trump's insurgents and may actually take more violence against elected officials. Where'd you think I am? Who could have seen this? But you know, what's interesting is like this continually happens where we see that Trump ism begets white supremacy, begets more violence, beget like this is clearly a cycle. And then Republicans are like, we really need to move on. We are.

Well, of course. Well, of course. We just need to move on. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry. I drove drunk, ran my car to the front of your house, killed your dog. But can we just move on? Because unity, right.

Because the greatest fucking the world's supply of irony sucked down into a black hole with Ted Cruz on TV. Now it's time for us to all come together. Now it's hard to be unified. The only thing we're going to be unified in this country is that everyone hates Ted Cruz. The gumption of it, the hutzpah of it, the crazy fucking balls on these people talk about go now it's time to unify. We can't have more division and hate in this country because after the peaceful years of Donald Trump, don't we deserve even better and more beautiful, glorious, cooperative republic?

Get out of here.

What about when they're like, how dare Joe Biden fire Trump's weird political appointees that he installed to try to mess up Joe Biden? All right. That's my favorite there. How dare they fire the woman that Trump installed to run, you know, whatever whatever agency into the ground. Doesn't he want unity?

Jonathan Allen is the co-author of the upcoming book Lucky as Well. He's the senior political analyst at NBC News.

John Allen Molly. John, thanks. I'm very excited to have John Allen here today because he is also my friend Tru, and his wife is my friend and his children are my children's friends. So it's very exciting for him.

And your mom is like the unofficial sex ed teacher.

For my children, that is the worst thing I've ever heard. So you have a book coming out. First, just tell us what the title of the book is. You wrote a book like this about the Hillary Clinton campaign, too?

Well, with the different ending this time, it's sort of the key.

The key difference is that there's a different ending. But, yeah, it's a similar book in that it's sort of the behind the scenes of the twenty twenty election. And the things that you didn't know about, the things that you knew about that is you saw it a bit on stage. You didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. You thought that the polls were going to say one thing. Here's what the campaign thought behind the scenes. Here's what they were doing.

Lots of juicy nuggets in inside the room detailing that just like shattered. But again, the outcome here obviously is different. This book is called Bloche and my co-author and I. And we will be talking about more about what's in it as it comes closer to coming out, which is March 2nd, but it is available at your online retailer now for preorder. I feel like I have to say that and also want to I have a question for you.

Let me say it again, Lucky Mertesacker. Twenty forty one. And for the in cells who might be listening. My guess is there many you can get lucky.

And I have a question for you about the book. Is this your first campaign book out?

I believe that will be the first major campaign book out. I haven't seen other campaign books and I'm not aware of any that are expected to come out before this one. I'm aware of several that are coming out later.

So basically your life has been a misery for the last three months.

I mean, that's probably more of a misery to the people around me. But yes, it's the final stage of writing a book are as you know, I've read your books, which are awesome. And people should go by your books about social climbing.

I intend to have read them. No, I've actually read them. No, I know.

But that's unusual because people should read your books. They're they're phenomenal. You're as they can tell from The Daily Beast, you're a great writer, but. Oh, thank you, friend.

Right. So you've been working in Congress for a gazillion years. And one of the things that I like to do is call you up when something doesn't make sense to me. So I think there's a lot of confusion. We talked about this with Adam Jentleson. So we're not going to get too much into this. But because everything is so close and the Democrats have majorities that are so tight in both the House and the Senate, it means that we have to spend a lot more time thinking about the minutia of Congress and its rules because Democrats can't break them the way that Republicans could for any number of reasons, mostly because they're Democrats.

So I'm curious to know what you think is going to happen with the Comic Relief?

It's a great question. I think ultimately you're going to get a much slimmed down version of what Biden offered in the first place. It won't be the one point nine trillion dollars if there's money for state or local governments to be smaller than he's proposing. That should not be surprising because in a normal process, forget the last four years where there was no process and that was just the president making whimsical decisions on things. One side offers one thing, the other side offers another.

And they spent some time negotiating the difference. Right. And that's what Biden is accustomed to. And that's the way things have worked in the Washington that he wants us to see and that he believes can work again. You know, I think there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who forgive me for using the term both sides, but a lot of people on both sides of the aisle who think that those times are dead and will never come back and that one party should jam them through.

But I think the thought process on Biden's part is very clearly, you set out your marker for what you want, the other side counters and then you find some area in between.

So you don't predict they'll use reconciliation, which is basically not using the filibuster and just having one party gets it could end up going to that.

I mean, the urgency of getting relief now should there should be urgency. I live right near the Capitol and between me and the cap on like seven, eight blocks away, there is a tent city in a little park. Right. Like the people in this country are suffering. And so many of us are lucky, fortunate. We have jobs. You know, our bank accounts have been ripped apart by covid. But so many people in this country are suffering.

And these members of Congress walk into that building every day and they pass people in tents. And I just it's mind boggling to me that they can't figure out how to at least do little bursts. So it may be that it ends up going to reconciliation. But I would also, you know, for those who look at reconciliation as like some. Sort of like, you know, I don't even know the right word, I'm looking for something like a golden dagger or the silver bullet reconciliation, the process of that is very difficult in and of itself and often requires the majority party to essentially break the parliamentarian right to outvote the parliamentarian to get things done.

And even then, it can be difficult. It's a very arcane and complex process.

One of the problems with the covid vaccine is that the states just don't have money to set up the infrastructure to give the vaccine. Do you think that money is going to come through? I mean, that seems more bipartisan.

It may come through, but the Republicans are very much debt hawks situationally right now. Right. And so after Donald Trump got done spending trillions and trillions of dollars without paying for them on various things that the Republicans liked, military tax cuts, whatever, now they're like in super deficit hawk mode. I don't think Biden is going to get what he wants for the states and some of them are perfectly happy to sink their own states. I mean, look, Mitch McConnell comes from a state, Kentucky, where the budget was like ripped apart by covid last year.

And he wasn't he didn't want to put in money for the state. And, you know, I mean, one one reason we can assume is that it has a Democratic governor like he doesn't want the Democratic governor to get a boost from the federal government to make it easier to bring help to the people of his own state. It's just hard to fathom some sometimes like the degree to which these people are partisan versus, you know, in the interest of bettering the lives of their constituents.

I mean, it definitely feels like the continual threat of the Republican Party is trying to make government not work to prove that it's bad.

I mean, Grover Norquist once said about the idea is to reduce the government to the size that you could drag it into the bath bathtub and drown it. Yeah, nobody said it more precisely than what one vein of thinking is. That is not to say all Republicans believe government is bad. You know, Rob Portman, who's just announced that he's going to retire, is somebody who believes in government. He may believe in limited government, but he believes in government, served as OMB director, et cetera.

And he's found there's no place for him in the Republican Party now.

And what's amazing about that is that he's very conservative. He's just very conservative and believes that there should be a government and a republic that reflects the one that the founders put in place, that this should not be difficult things for any member of Congress to accept that there should be a government that should reflect the republic that the founders wanted.

It feels like a.. Democracy is like a big thread in this Republican Party.

That's Trump to a T. I mean, there are obviously people who like the idea of a powerful authoritarian dictator type moron. And there are people who believe in a republic with disperse power between the branches of government and that that it is against the interests of the country to sack one of its branches of government.

So let's talk about the other thing, which seems to actually be a real issue, which is the safety of our leaders. Yeah, it's a real issue. Yeah. There's this warning yesterday that there that a lot of these elected officials may be targets and then they are clearly concerned. And then there are the groups of people who are chanting Mike Pence and had a news. So talk to me. What do you think is going to happen here? Can it can these leaders protect themselves?

Is there money for that? And I mean, have you ever seen this in your years of covering Congress?

I mean, if everything's working, that shouldn't need protection, but everything is not working and they do need protection and we've seen it get worse. I spent a lot of time with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords before she got shot in the head in 2010. Steve Scalise, the Republican whip, as everybody knows, was nearly paralyzed by a shooter. This keeps going on and there are no consequences. And by that, I don't mean that there's like no individual consequence somebody might go to prison for for having taken such an act.

But there's no consequence for the targeting of lawmakers and that which is much broader than just these very tragic and dramatic scenes of members of Congress being shot or being chased out of their offices in the Capitol. There is a fundamental problem when some segment of the public believes that it can get away with physically attacking members of Congress, physically threatening members of Congress. You should be able to yell whatever the heck you want at them about their policy positions, about, you know, the personal life or whatever you want.

You should not be able to threaten. There's no there's no freedom of speech that protects that. You should not be able to, like, conspire with others to endanger them, that there's nothing that protects that in our Constitution. And it's just so dangerous for our democracy, so dangerous for a republic. And when you talk about physical protection, like it would be nice if we were in a place where people were afraid of attacking members of Congress to the point that they didn't do it.

So you didn't need every single one of these people to have security. I mean, I've always thought that they were, you know, in the past, I thought that there was too much security in that a bunch of people who weren't like in the chain of command had, you know, security details and SUVs and stuff.

And it's like the president, the president's kids. And it's like the perk that they want. Right. They weren't really in danger back then. Now they're in danger. Now, every single one of them is in danger and they're in danger not only from the outside, they're in danger from the inside, because some of their colleagues are trying to get them targeted, trying to have them part. And that's it's just unfathomable. Imagine being part of a union or social club or something where, you know, some of the other members felt like they could tell folks that, hey, look, go over, get that guy, go beat him up, go find him.

Yeah. Go hurt him or her.

And a lot of them won't go right. The gun toting Congress people won't go through the metal detector, which was put up to prevent them from going through the metal detector. Right.

A lot of them were unwilling to do that. And for years, members of Congress have been able to walk into the Capitol without going through metal detectors, magnetometers. What's amazing to me is all these people who talk about conceal and carry, all these members of Congress, I can see, you know, I'm always ready like they ran to right. Because their gun was not going to protect them against the mob. Right. Which is why the Capitol Police didn't shoot into the Mall.

Right. The whole thing is just kind of amazing. So you really know the ins and outs of Congress. And I'm curious to know, what can Nancy Pelosi do about a congressperson or a bunch of congresspeople who won't go through the metal detector, who won't wear masks? I mean, really, the floor of Congress has become a kind of little a kind of microcosm of America's weird anti public health, anti gun safety world and anti authority.

Right. Like I mean, it's these folks are walking around. It's like a like a privilege problem. It's like if you're, you know, nine year olds all had tons of money and weapons and stuff and got to walk around to school and teachers try to tell them, hey, like you need to, like, be safe. And they're like, what's going to happen to me?

So what can Nancy Pelosi do? Can she do anything? She can find them. She really can. I think she can find them. I think she can also take away office parks and whatever. But I mean, at the end of the day, like, these are people who were elected by their constituents. And, you know, unless they get expelled from the House of Representatives, there's not much she can do. They will either respond to the negative feedback about the way they're behaving or they won't.

And then, you know, maybe at some point they try to go down the road of expelling people. But you you've got you know, if you're the Democrats, you have pick up what it is about a quarter to a third or so of the Republican conference to agree with you to expel somebody. And by the way, that's a really harsh measure that should not be taken lightly because the constituents of that person elected them. And, of course, they would elect somebody who was more extreme to replace the person who got expelled.

Steve King is the closest thing we've seen to a kind of censure. And he was taken off all his committees and sort of allowed to stay in Congress. But can you explain exactly what happened there? And is that applicable to Marjorie Taylor Green or Lawn Bopara?

Well, I what happened is the Republican Party decided that Steve King was more harmful to the rest of the party with what he was saying and doing than he was helpful in holding his House seat. And so they stripped him of his committee assignments and they they all distanced themselves from him and they said what a terrible person he was. And, you know, they went through all that, all that. And it was out of self-interest. And I mean, that's kind of how the House has generally policed itself, not just in a partisan fashion, but more broadly.

They police themselves in their own self-interest, which is why they have an ethics committee that has, you know, no real legal bearing. But they want to be able to say we distance ourselves from this behavior that this person has exhibited with King. Not everybody in the Republican Party hated him, but like a lot of them did, make them look bad.

But they must feel the same. I mean, is Marjorie Taylor Green so different than King? Except that Marjorie Taylor Green is Brach right? On that conference call yesterday, she supposedly said she was going to donate one hundred and seventy five thousand dollars to the state party and the leaders were thrilled. So, I mean, I do think money definitely plays a role there, right?

Money plays a role and the times have changed. I mean, you know, there was the the Republican Party is a Trump Republican Party, but Steve King was like two years ago.

I know. It doesn't matter. It's changed. So that's the Republican establishment was trying to stop Steve King from being the face of the party in the House. It's not that they necessarily disagreed with him. Right? It's not it's not just Republicans saying what he's saying is so crazy. It's that they were like what he's saying is. That's because other people think it's crazy. That is really depressing. I have to say, that is really fucking depressing.

Kevin McCarthy is meeting with Donald Trump today. Kevin McCarthy had to flee his office. He begged Donald Trump to speak to stop what was going on as it was going on. And Trump was silent. And now Kevin McCarthy is going to apologize to Donald Trump. So, I mean, I don't I don't know what to do with that.

It's pretty deranged. If you come at my house and try to kill you or you send your goons to my house, one thing I will not be doing is apologizing to you and begging for you for your forbearance.

That's pretty fucking grim. I have a question, which is what broke Devin Nunez's brain?

I mean, there are some ways to answer that question. It's a Warshak.

Look, Nunez was always somebody who was a little bit allured by conspiracy theories. He's got that kind of like just like a little bit. And then he became like the intelligence chairman and he actually got evidence of some of the things he suspected. You know, here's what happens in the secret world. And I think those two things interacted in an unusual way. And Congressman Nunez and have sort of changed the way that he deals with the world would give a different answer from the Twitter handle, Devin Nunez's, which would probably tell you that it was mad cow disease.

They're trying to take their careers to rehab, but we're saying no. Well, folks, now that the Trump administration and Trump allies and supporters have scattered to the winds like a bunch of cockroaches, when the light comes on in a tenement kitchen in the middle of the night, they are all running out there trying to whitewash their careers, trying to pretend they never served in the Trump administration, trying to say I'm just a normal, everyday person and I would like a new job, please, preferably in the five hundred thousand dollar a year range.

So we're not going to let them we're going to keep our eye out for these folks. We're going to keep an eye out for who they are, what they're doing and how they're lying about what they what role they played in the Trump era. So we've got our eyes on them.

And with this week, we have a brand new segment called Career Rehab, right where we find the people from Trump World who are trying to remake themselves and escape Trump ism. Our first person who is trying to recreate himself, I think he's actually going to really thinks he's going to be the candidate in twenty twenty four, don't you?

Absolutely. Mike Pence is looking for a brief landing spot before Mike Pence. Excuse me. Excuse me. I'm thinking of another oleaginous, tepid vanilla paste, another boring white guy. When I think about which is the most boring white guy, I mean, Mike Pence would like clearly top Pompilio.

I have to say, Pompeo is just there's something about him that is so incredibly anxious. It's just hard to take.

It's so true. Molière That's exactly what that's exactly the word for it. He is just I mean, just such a such a that is so repulsive.

Don Junior without the charm and Don Junior is like Don Senior without the charm. Is that fair? Yeah, it's fair.

Look, Mike Pompeo was not this guy five years ago, but like a lot of people, he decided the way of Trump is the way of truth. I should become the MCG and it's like snatch the freedom from my hands or grasshopper, I am I am Mike Pompeo and I will transform myself into the biggest dick I could possibly be mean. Mike Pompeo, a secretary of state, spent the last several days of his of his tenure essentially trolling people on Twitter through the official State Department account.

He he is a guy who was the ultimate Trump suck up, the ultimate Trump ass kisser in the White House and in the administration. He was a content. Oh, no, Mr. President, your farts smell like rainbows and elderberries. It's delicious. You know, this guy was just it was just over the top. And now the Hudson Institute has apparently decided that Mike Pompeo is a is a valued asset to their lineup. I am curious to the Hudson Institute is funded by.

But I suppose we'll find out soon enough because Mike Pompeo is only going to be there for a hot minute until his first visits to Iowa, which should happen sometime around June of this year.

I don't see a world where Mike Pompeo I mean, you've makes Josh Holly look charismatic.

Well, I mean, Mike Pompeo looks like a guy who's like who's lost control of the Elks Lodge meeting and he's banging the gavel as hard as he can against the against the table in the banquet hall. He's not a guy who comes across as modern day presidential.

He doesn't. Now you'll know, Mike. You'll know Mike Pompeo is serious about running for president. If he goes Kaito in the next six weeks, then you'll know. Oh, Jesus, Wragge.

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Travis View is the host of the podcast Kuhnen Anonymous, and he's going to talk to us about how everyone's favorite loony conspiracy theory is going.

Can you just tell us a little bit about when you started following Q and on?

Sure. I really first started getting interested in Q and on in July of twenty eighteen, I was kind of vaguely aware of Kunlun before that, but I kind of dismissed it as sort of like a weird HCN thing. And there are a lot of those they're usually not worth paying attention to. But what really caught my attention was the fact that I know this, that Charlie Kirk started boosting some bogus Q and statistics and that that worries me a whole lot because, you know, Charlie Kirk is not is not a fringe figure.

And if you like, Kuhnen was was reaching someone with basically as much clout as Charlie Kirk. That signaled to me that was worth paying attention to more closely a majority of senior citizens.

That's not great. No, it's not. When do you think. Q and on started in earnest?

Well, I mean, Cuidad started I mean in earnest. I can I can identify the exact date it was October twenty eight, twenty seventeen. This was the day the very first Q drop which which implied that, which implied that basically that Hillary Clinton's arrest was imminent, didn't get a whole lot of traction at first. This might have been one of the sort of the handful of like, you know, insider Anon's on the Chans on 4chan who claimed that they have that they have some sort of secret government information.

But this particular one, because it was a little bit more game of hide, a little bit more exciting, and plus the fact that was sort of pushed on other platforms like YouTube and Twitter, it caught on in a really surprising way.

The thing that I'm so struck by with Kuhnen, we've seen all these in the last two days, all of this news about these Marjorie Taylor Green Facebook posts, CNN Kafeel dug up. My question is, it feels to me like Marjorie Taylor Greene is not an outlier, that there is a large group of these middle age women who believe this.

Yeah, I mean, it is is surprisingly popular. I mean, not just with middle aged women, but with a surprisingly diverse age groups. Yeah. I mean, with a case of like Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, I feel like I was I was sounding the alarm about her like six months ago because, like, it was it was clear that she had some really, really deranged views. You know, she bought into the idea, for example, that JFK Junior's death in nineteen ninety nine wasn't due to a tragic plane crash.

That due to a a pilot error, but rather he was murdered by Hillary Clinton. He she claimed this once during a conference speech.

And so yesterday it emerged that Marjorie Taylor Green or what I like to call her as the alpha of the Major Karens, that she was using this frazzle drip conspiracy.

Yes. What is that? Oh, my gosh. So, yes, there is a there is a belief among Khlong followers in a basically a Hillary Clinton snuff film. They believe that there is there's this there's this secret recording that somewhere on the dark web of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin basically mutilating a child now and Hillary wearing the child's face, right?

Yes and yes.

They're both wearing the child's face. Now, this is just bizarre stuff from a 70s horror film. Like there's nothing there's no substance to it whatsoever. It's just bizarre fantasy. But some people convinced themselves that it is real. So those people will even say falsely that they've seen it or something like that. But, yeah, this is like one of the more even even within Kuhnen, which is full of really bizarre out their beliefs. This is one of the sort of the fringe of the fringe.

So it's surprising that, you know, that she believes it was managed to become a congresswoman afterwards, the JFK thing, just to get back to it for a second, there is a guy who goes to Kuhnen rallies. And also I've seen him at CPAC who claims to be JFK Jr..

Yes. You know, the funny thing about. Yes, Vincent futur, I think I believe his name is, ah, Fusca. Yeah. He seems like a great guy.

I mean, he is is a funny guy. I mean, he's this is this Italian American guy from Pennsylvania. So he's not, you know, even, you know, Irish Catholic. The Kennedys were. But the funny thing is that love luck you on the followers. They kind of latched on to the idea that he was secretly JFK Jr. in disguise and he had faked his death in nineteen ninety nine. And I don't think he really ever actually positively claimed that.

Yes, I am JFK Jr. here, but rather he simply did not chose not to deny it. He kind of rolled with it. You kind of allowed people to believe it at once once he realized. So he's he's kind of a funny case. The great reporter, of course, at The Daily Beast, Will Summer has tried to talk to him on a few occasions to try and get his story. But visit futur. Demurred. And the interesting thing about Vincent Fisher is he doesn't look like JFK Jr.

at all.

You know, as the lesser one, it's like they always they always bring up like they're weird, like, you know, they're look at JFK Jr. and they'd look at the future and they have the side by side photos and they imply they look similar. But, man, I do not see it is bizarre that people think so.

Here's a question for you now. Q has stopped posting.

That's right. There has not been a single Q drop since December 8th of last year.

So if you had stopped posting and then the son of the four, the guy who is Q said everybody should get over it, right? Yes.

That's that's what you're talking about. Yeah. Ron Watkins'. Yeah. Ron Watkins is the administrator of AQ and the site where Q has posted and he is.

Q And on. Right.

He has almost certainly authored some Q drops. He was instrumental in sort of hosting. Q So yeah.

I mean we say like who is. Q is probably him and, and Jim and perhaps a couple other people who worked with them. But yeah, he is certainly one of the people who was definitely behind the whole Q operation.

So with that on your most recent episode, you talked a lot about what I think the most instructive books about this era When Prophecy Fails from William Festinger. It seems like we're now in the prophecy has failed stage of Q What was the reaction that you're seeing from people with us?

So yeah, the reaction. I mean, it was essentially textbook. If you've read, you know, when prophecy fails by FESTINGER, I agree. This is a you got if you understand what's going on with the Cuban community, you need a familiar hiza yourself with that book and cognitive dissonance theory. So, yeah, what happens? At first there was a lot of shock and disappointment and rage that the feeling like they have been misled. Cuban followers, some of them, you know, acted very stressed and acted like they had been deceived and even despairing at times because they felt like you wasn't coming to the rescue.

But then afterwards they started you know, they started in with their rationalizations. They started doing things like explaining why certain things weren't what they seemed to as predicted. Basically, they are doing everything that we thought they would do. They're going to continue to believe it, regardless of what is true. Fine.

So bad. It's the sort of mass hallucination, right? Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's very sad. I mean, these people, they're they're they're very detached from reality. It really comes down to this really super intense hatred and of everything that they consider to be part of the establishment. And there is this kind of like this really hyper populist movement in that sense. And, you know, if there's a way to be skeptical about institutions or skeptical about the mainstream, I think in a healthy, productive way.

But these people, they they instead they sort of reject all of the mainstream media and all of medical science and all, you know, the regular government functions just out of hand. And they they decide to replace it with their own kind of version of reality and declare that good enough. And this is what leads them into these delusions.

It really is an anti-government conspiracy theory. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, there are obviously we have a lot of long tradition of, like, you know, anti-government movements here, here in the US and but yeah, I mean, it is is the belief that it's not merely that the problem is that the government needs to be reformed or we need to get better people. The office or anything like that is the belief that the entire institution is irredeemably corrupt. It needs to be profoundly cleansed to the extent that there is a mass arrest event and there are all sort of seized by the military and those sent to Guantanamo Bay or something, they want a big dramatic thing to happen in order to institute basically this this revolution, this kind of military junta that fixes everything.

What do you think will happen to these people? Do you think they'll ever be like, oh, Democrats aren't killing children and running sex rings out of pizza shops? Probably not.

I mean, a lot of these people have devoted years of their life to this kind of thing. They have you know, they've made sacrifices. They spent hours at the computer. Sometimes they've hurt family. They're hurt the relationships with family members. Sometimes they've actually hurt their career. And when you have, like, you know, sacrifice that much, it's incredibly painful to realize that you have been duped and you are not actually on the right path. So it's just if what probably is going to happen is that, you know, a lot of them will continue just doubling down and continue believing it and continue believing it, probably just for the feeling of community with other culotte followers.

Or they'll they'll the bigger risk is that. All get radicalized into an even more dangerous, even more militant kind of extremism process, you study there's so much more than average people. I'm curious, you know, January six was like kind of the like moment where anybody who was like, oh, this is harmless. Started to be like, oh, maybe it's not. Can you talk about any of the other ways you're seeing this affect a society that you think are under discussed?

Yeah, I mean, here's the thing, is that the biggest way this harms society is actually kind of subtle and quiet. It's not as ostentatious and loud as the, you know, the capital insurrection. It what it does that it hurts people's relationships. It hurts people's ability to connect with other people in their life and hurts their ability to connect with other things that they might otherwise enjoy. It becomes an obsession that becomes their their primary way of interacting with the world is this fantasy world.

And it's it's like it's almost like, you know, it's like an addiction, you know? And people, they you know, they they choose this this bizarre alternate world that serves nothing, does not help them, does not even help their own goals in any way in lieu of things that they might actually give them joy. It might actually help them understand the world might actually lead to productive relationships. And but those kinds of things don't lead the headlines.

But that is the that's I think is the most most of the most widespread destruction that comes from two and on.

He went on to have like cruiser's or conferences or anything.

Well, they I bet they do, as a matter of fact.

I mean, they I personally have been to six different Kuhnen events, and this includes Cuidad like marches and rallies. And what I have been to one Kulen conference. It was in Scottsdale, Arizona. And there there was yeah, there was a there was a group of Kulen followers and a lot of like Kulen sort of leaders who discussed it was just you and I and Q Drop's. So yeah, there it does exist. I don't know how much it's happening nowadays because, you know, covid is still having a lot of problems.

So love, love, conference rooms aren't willing to book them, I imagine. But but yeah, I imagine once we once the pandemic gets under control, the Qianlong conferences will probably start roaring back.

How are they with you? Are they mad at you or are they like, cover me?

You know, the funny thing is, is that is that is that some of them are mad at me, but some of them are simply believe that I'm I'm simply a lost soul. I mean, I'm kind of unique because because I'm not someone in terms of unique in terms of the types, the types of people who cover this. Because I don't come from a government background. I don't come from a mainstream media background. And so as a reason for that reason, they're a little bit easier on me than they are sort of more traditional reporters.

They think I'm a sort of a lost soul. I think that one day I'll realize that I'm mistaken and that I'll come come to them and say, I'm so sorry for dissuading people from this movement.

Jesus, that is really terrifying. Thank you, Jabbered. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I'll let you go first today.

My old drunk father. Who is your fuck? That guy.

My fuck. That guy today is Marjorie Taylor Green, who has even more of these insane videos, insane conspiracy theories and just insane. I mean, she's basically been on Facebook being an insane boomer for the last few years. And and I would say other car also. I am not a boomer, so I don't want to get in trouble.

Do you guys have a favorite of MTD crazy conspiracy theories? Because mine is definitely that a space laser started the California wildfires Spaceways are bad.

9/11 didn't happen. Right? Space laser. I mean, there's just so much fakery. And but the other thing I would say is, like you, you can't have a Taylor Greene conversation without having a Kevin McCarthy conversation because, like, she would not be there, of course.

And that is because it is now the party of Q It is the party of crazies is the party of assholes. It's the party of dark, shitty people. And and they've normalized the darkness and the shittiness of Margaret Taylor Green. And she's a shitty person. She's a bad person.

And also she wanted to put a gun and put a bullet if she liked a tweet that said, I mean, just the there's no the depths to her her, you know, disgustingness.

No, no bounds. So she is my fuck that guy.

Rick, who is your my fuck that guy today is Mr. Douglas. McCain is Douglas McCain. You have to explain. He's going to give you the whole story. Douglas Mackey is has been arrested. I'm not going to describe it. I'm not going to describe in detail what he did to my kids. On the show, but I am going to I'm going to address it, but is he. Is he a quote unquote journalist? What is he?

No, he's not a journalist of any kind, and he's a fucking troll. OK, but was he a Breitbart? No, he's just a troll. He was at a hedge fund for a while. OK, so the FBI yesterday, folks arrested a guy named Douglas Mackey. Now, you've never heard of Douglas Mackey unless you are particularly submerged in the Twitter subculture of claymores of the twenty sixteen era and beyond. Douglas Mackey went by the name on Twitter of Ricky Vaughn.

He was a flaming, raging Blayton white supremacist asshole of the highest possible order. He had a lot of friends and followers who who later whitewashed their little love of him, like Mike, sort of the tragic Sobek and all these other idiots and the whole Breitbart crew, the whole all these guys. They loved Ricky Vaughn. He's the troll of trolls. So Douglas Mackey was arrested by the FBI yesterday. Ricky Vaughn in cuffs. I'm waiting for the mug shot because although he played the character on Twitter of the badass, he used the picture of Charlie Sheen for the movie Major League.

You know, it's his thing. Douglas Mackie is a soft skinned, soft handed, poncy Middlebury College guy from Vermont who was a raging white supremacist on Twitter. Now, in the 2016 race, Douglas Massey in his rookie Vaughn character, went after my kids at the point. At that point, my son was in high school. My daughter was in college when I whenever my kids repeatedly and Douglas Mackie has been arrested for conspiracy against the constitutional rights of others, which is a rarity in the complaint.

But he went out and bought text messaging services and those text messaging services were targeted African-Americans. And they said, you can vote by text. You don't have to vote. It was the voter fraud, the election fraud that Republicans are screeching about like stuck pigs all the time now. And the hit on this at the minimum number, they believe that forty eight hundred and fifty voters sent in their, quote unquote, vote by text and therefore did not vote.

She sent them a message saying, did you know you can vote for Hillary by voting for text? Just text five five five whatever. With your vote now on the Tucker Carlson White Power FishTank. Our last night he of course came out to vote. Who's been arrested for making Meems?

No, no. He was arrested because he engaged in electoral fraud. He engaged in a fraud which sought to to abrogate the constitutional right to vote African-Americans. But anyway, I just to sent out a big shout out to Douglas Mackie, who will never, ever, ever again not be a guy who was arrested for election fraud and never, ever again be a guy who can have a job anywhere other than being able to say hello, welcome to Olive Garden.

Would you like our unlimited breadsticks basket? I'll be your server. It was Mac accretive on. Fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of The New Abnormal from The Daily Beast.

In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks in The Daily Beast and beyond for 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.

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