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That's plaud.ai slash Daily Beast and use code beast for 10% off. Hi, I'm Molly John Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong Un. I'm a left-wing pundit and a writer at the Atlantic Invode. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN Guy and current cable news conscientious object.
And I'm producer Jesse Cannon and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest people in science and media and politics and help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down and on the new abnormal we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello and welcome to another Sunday edition of the new abnormal.
We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Ali Vitale who's of course the Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News and she's here to talk to us about her new book, Electable, Why America Hasn't Put A Woman In The White House Yet. But first let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips?
Yes. Yes. Yes you are. Yes.
Yes. You guys maybe for real your thing. Texas representative named Dan Crenshaw kind of a contrarian bad take machine. Love him.
Are we ready for some crutch awe? I mean okay. Okay. And look again, why not just ask him.
Why not just ask him. I thought they'd been negotiating on trying to get the information from him and he cooperated. He didn't turn over boxes and boxes of material as far as the Justice Department says. But he's been cooperating and I think he's on the record saying whatever you need from us just ask it's great to see you guys.
I mean it was a very friendly environment. Because lawyers said they didn't have any more classified information than the Justice Department said. Yes you do. And they went and got it.
Got it. And the only reason we know about the raid was because Donald Trump announced it. Well I think we would have figured it out even if you hadn't. But look yes, lawyers did sign the document that they have nothing left.
Now that's either a huge mistake on part of the lawyers. But even if it wasn't nefarious, again why not say hey we don't believe you. Now let us come back and let's go through these boxes again. There's tons of boxes here.
I mean do we do any of us really believe that Donald Trump is like reading his nuclear secret son is bedside. And I know there's an intense question here. No there isn't. I don't know why there's no intense question at all.
It doesn't matter. You classify documents. It doesn't matter what you intend to do with them. You can't do that.
What the hell man? Like he so clearly knows that this is fucked and is just trying his best to spin it like it's not that big a deal. But he knows. I mean he's a former military guy.
He knows you don't just take classified documents to your hotel. But I'm telling you my favorite part though is like the defenses go from like they overreacted to like Trump is so stupid. I want to point out the idea that Trump is too dumb to crime is like a trope in this whole administration. And remember fucking Don Jr.
was too dumb to crime because of the you know the Trump term meaning well did he really know it was treason. I mean you guys give these this guy so much fucking benefit of the doubt. Like people are giving this family a whole lot of fucking benefit of the doubt. For a family that's too dumb to crime they've been crying for like 40 fucking years.
It's true. Just instantly. I have an ulcer theory of usual. Yeah let's go.
So you know everybody keeps being like he's not reading top secret documents at bedside and I'm like you know what I think it is. They could keep John dude pictures because that's what he really does. Come on. As someone who is a big kim jong-oon person.
It's just like that about Molly's cousin. That's true. Okay so as we know Craig Shaw couldn't turn his back on Mr. Trump because then you pay the price of losing your place.
We have follow-up this week where Mr. Alex Jones would turn his back on Trump. Well he's reconsidering. So this is my emergency message to you Mr.
President. To go and actually watch the first 30 minutes of Thursday show. We'll put a link to it below here so you can see what I said in context. The corporate media edited down a 30 second clip to make it sound like that I'm only for the sannas and then I've abandoned you.
That's not true. It's the contrary. I understand your attack. I understand you are surrounded and I'm trying to get you to re-assess the situation.
I know people like Don are telling you that you need to re-assess the situation. The idea that he thinks Donald Trump is going to go back and listen to 30 minutes of his show. That's just hilarious. Listen man it's nice that someone's still like a love Trump.
I mean I guess. But also can we talk about like what world is it where it matters to a Republican candidate that Alex Jones likes them as opposed to the other way around. Like they should not want Alex Jones to like them. That should be a bad thing.
Have you seen the base of the GOP? No I know. It's just it's just amazing that that that's where we are now where it's like they want his they want his support as opposed to not wanting his support. You know like it used to be like David Duke would say something in the candidate would be like well I don't want his support which was a lie.
But at least they would have to say it. Now it's just you know it's just a fight to get Alex Jones's support which just got to help us all. Not good. Not good.
I've before also so follow up posed my hypothesis that Tucker Carlson is Alex Jones in a fat suit. I think I have more proof here on this next clip. Amos has completely eliminated any risk coming from the international or domestic politics of the Biden administration and you know they're coming after him for it. Maybe he promises put more chemicals in the milk that turn kids trans though.
Lay off. Did any of the federal marshals decline to raid an Amish organic farm on Prince Lorde? They'd all just go along with this. You know all I know is that many federal agents did not decline to go and did go along with it and raided the farm and took inventory of Amos's farm to make sure that he doesn't sell or produce any more meat.
You know I work for law enforcement broadly speaking but there's such a thing as conscience. Like at the end where it's like we're we're for law enforcement. I mean except when they go after our for milk. What?
Look is the first time hearing about the government putting chemicals in the milk to turn kids trans. So I'm gonna have to do my own research on this. Yeah you get on Google right now you get on that Facebook and when you're there find out about the genocide in Myanmar. This is phase two after since they already turned all the frogs gay of course.
Right exactly right the frogs were just the beginning. We tried to tell you. Exactly. Oh my god.
There's no bottom no bottom the most watched show on cable news. Yeah well more bad news for that party. The guy that everybody has their hopes for for Mr. Trump's arteries are have a coup stage against them by the Colonel KFC is Rhonda Santas and he has some terrible takes to give us that we're gonna close out the show with.
You have people like Fauci saying that his lockdowns didn't cause any permanent damage to any young kids. I got news for you it did and we are gonna reap those rewards across the whole country for years and years and years because they treated kids so poorly and I'm just sick of seeing him. I know he says he's gonna retire. Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the recovery.
It's a lot of applause. Yeah man whatever he's like he's like the poor man's Donald Trump. He's like the bizarro Donald Trump. He's Donald Trump without whatever it is that makes Donald Trump appealing and I mean appealing in quotes.
No I think that's exactly right and I have to take back something I said on the part of a week or so ago where I said I thought the danger of the Santas is that he's a little smarter than Trump and wouldn't make you know wouldn't go there the way Trump does and clearly I was completely wrong about that and he has decided to go full Trump and you're absolutely right Molly the problem is that you know Trump is again not to me and not to you anymore Molly I think you've finally turned my back on him I finally rejected him after all those years of yeah just being so respectful towards his crime. Trump has that sort of weird charisma that right that some people like yeah. The Santas has none of that and it's just the Santas just sounds like an asshole he just sounds like a mean asshole whereas Trump sort of you know he says that he isn't mean asshole and he but but he somehow when he says these things there's something kind of a little funny in the way he phrases it or the way he whatever it just it takes a little bit of the edge off it just rhetorically even though the content is the same but DeSantis just doesn't have that and I don't know that this is going to work for him like this whole idea of going full Trump I don't think that's going to work for him but who knows yeah I mean it's worth a shot as long as it ruins it as long as it ruins him I'd be happy to see it yeah sure to your point between the top gun thing this week oh yeah that was amazing I wish we could play about it's a visual gag oh it's just DeSantis dressed up like a like the world's least successful democratic candidate. Yes Kitty to caucus assessment.
Yes. Yeah. Olympic caucus is cussing. No that's right.
It's a truly bad political instincts going on here. I do love Olympia to caucus. Okay I do have bad news though his streak of doing bad things this week that are pathetic they didn't end there there's another clip to hear. At the end of the day we are not going to let this state be overrun by woke ideology.
We will fight the woke in the businesses we will fight the woke in government agencies we will fight the woke in our schools we will never ever surrender to the woke agenda. Florida is the state where woke goes to die. We've accomplished an awful lot in Florida more than anybody's thought was possible. I mean you're a state filled with elderly people and woke the person's gonna die.
I mean I was like it's a state where most people's grandparents go to die. Is he trying like is he consciously trying to do the Winston Churchill thing there? I couldn't tell. No I think you are right.
Some of his phrasing is that he thinks that like the culture worrying with statesmanship is his ticket to the top but like the idea of comparing Churchill's speech about the Nazis coming into Britain with people who want black people to be treated like human beings. It's like oh my god are you out you fucking mind? I mean my god he sucks. Wow.
Yeah now he's a piece of shit but I'm delightfully orange. You know I forgot to mention what we were doing with the Fauci thing though. He's only two inches taller than Fauci so he's only whatever stages above the lights. Right.
You want to know what that clip sounded like to me it sounded like the most annoying song on earth baby shark but just with the word woke instead. Yeah I mean it's just that's their mantra they just repeat woke over and over again and call everything woke that they decided they don't like and it's just it's so dumb. It's just so dumb. Yeah I mean it's amazing.
Ali Vitale is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News as well as the author of Electable. Why America hasn't put a woman in the White House yet. Welcome to New Web Normal Ali Vitale. Why did you write this fuck?
Tell us everything. I'm so excited to be here with you guys. I wrote it in part because we came out of the 2020 election cycle with more women running than ever before. It felt like if you looked at the polls and you looked at the data that maybe the US was ready to do what they did in 2016 again and elevate a woman to the Democratic Party and then go a step further and elect her president but ultimately we all saw what happened and this book was sort of born out of the coverage of Senator Warren dropping out of the race and that feeling that creeping feeling from after 2016 coming back again of why is this so elusive why is this so hard.
Yeah why is it so hard? I mean the short answer and it would have been a much shorter book is misogyny but the longer answer is that just structurally running for president is an executive role that we still associate so many male and masculine characteristics with and so women in real time are not just running presidential campaigns which are really hard to run in the first place but on top of that they are asking voters not just to envision them in the White House but to envision something that they have literally never seen before and in 2020 you remember this only the only thing that Democratic voters really really all agreed on was they desperately needed to beat Donald Trump and they didn't want any risk associated with that and they just didn't want to take a risk with someone who they hadn't seen in that role before and certainly Joe Biden was not a risk. Yeah I'm like obsessed with this idea why are people so hard on the beat? Well you and you and I have talked with this like you you're either just wrote or writing a few minutes and yeah and I think that you're allowed right like I'm a reporter first and I will always believe that our public officials need to be scrutinized and held to account and you can do that whether they are male or female black white otherwise it doesn't matter but the ways that we scrutinize them are different if they are non-white and non-male and in the case of Conala Harris I think part of the reason why people are so frustrated with her is because they seemingly expected her to recreate the role of vice president that has been around for hundreds of years simply because she doesn't look like everyone else who has held that role and that is just a fundamentally unfair expectation.
Yeah I think that's a really good point the kind of hostility towards her from the pundit class I have been really shocked by. Well because it's palpable everything she does is the sign of like the worst gap ever and I think the thing that I heard time and again when I was talking to people for this book yes she has gotten media training since being in the White House is that rare or a little bit odd yes but at the same time just because she's getting media training doesn't take away from the fact and many people have pointed this out to me that she is the vice president to a man who was literally known for his gach during the 2020 campaign that is something that everyone in his orbit would talk about they were nervous about him talking to the press because they just weren't sure what he was going to say. So for Conala Harris to be criticized I think in some cases rightly for not having a ready to go answer for example in an interview with Lester Holt about why she hadn't been to the border yet there was an answer that I wasn't sure why she wasn't giving the answer of I was a California lawmaker for a decade plus I've been in these issues at the center of these issues I wasn't sure why that wasn't the answer she was giving but at the same time like other vice presidents have had snappoos and interviews and it wasn't a sign of oh well they they can't govern and I think with Conala Harris that's the thing is like we're looking at a media strategy which I do think is important if you want to be president you got to run through the media but it's not a sign that like she would be a bad president it's not like a review of her governance abilities and somehow people are acting like it is. Well one of the things I was most surprised by was like the president Mexico loves her and has been like her great champion her job was to go down and try to fix something the southern border border which is completely unfixable because Republicans love to use it for one thing and immigration is such a problem because no one wants to fix ultimately.
Well it's an intractable issue how many years have we been talking about comprehensive immigration reform and how many times has it gotten tough. Right and so it's so interesting to me that here she is being you know actually doing what she's supposed to do here which is work stuff out with Mexico as best she can and nobody's even talking about it. Well and especially because the rollout of her and the border kind of missed what her actual assignment was which is like her assignment wasn't like fixed immigration her assignment was the root causes of immigration during diplomacy on the foreign stage with these countries in South America it wasn't like let me fix every crisis on the border that's a whole nine security issue actually along with the White House so I think fundamentally her role kind of got messed up but there are many in the Biden orbit who would say hey Biden did this job as vice president who was a part of his portfolio under Obama and B he didn't complain when he got it so there is a little bit of that going on here too. Right for sure that's definitely something that's also going on but the interesting thing to me is like vice president has been a job that it's the world's most important job that nobody knows what it's supposed to be.
Well because nobody means how to grade it and I write about this in the book like we know how you judge a president right you judge it in on the foreign stage you judge it in terms of domestic policy agenda items that have been notched and certainly Bimes have several over the course of the last year despite the fact that there have been also moments of Democrats sort of in disarray on how to get them done but broadly like we know how to grade a president it's a lot harder to grade a vice president because if they're doing their job correctly you're probably not seeing or hearing from them too much and in the case of Kamala Harris I was struck by the fact that when you look at her unfavorable ratings and they really did start dipping and eclipsing her favorability ratings during the whole border crisis moment in the summer of 2021 that was a real inflection point for her the numbers haven't recovered but if you compare where she was the June of 2021 when I last checked before I could put this book to the printer her numbers are lower than almost all of her counterparts so Chaney Biden Pence I saw the numbers were actually not that much lower than other counterparts the aggregate though okay no she's definitely being judged on a completely different scale that is for sure true but yes I think that's right you know it's also funny like everyone knew Mike Pence wanted to run for president but no one was foot tapping him during the four years that he was number two to Trump saying well why is it he making it more apparent that he wants to be president it seems like right now with Kamala Harris despite the fact that we all know that she will likely run for president again everyone seems very impatient about the fact that she's like not being overt about that which like yeah hard to be overt about that when the guy who is the president right now says he wants to still be the president she gets criticism for everything she gets criticism for having people who defend her online like that's somehow her fault I actually think it's good good for her like that's something democrat should be doing like I mean I just feel like she gets criticism for everything in a way that male politicians just don't and it reminds me a lot of other female politicians talk to me about female politicians who are I mean who do you see who where you're like this person is buffing the track I think there's people on both sides who are doing that I'm pretty fascinated by Liz Chaney right now I think a lot of us are in Washington just because she is I think embodying of a larger thing that's happening in republican politics right now which is the people leading the accountability movement against Trump are by and large women and predominantly women I mean it's Chaney of course because she's front and center with the January 6th committee but it's also the women from the Trump administration who have testified in front of that committee who have faced great amount of threats to because of the fact that they did that and then also when you look at the actual legal accountability game got Tish James in New York in Fulton County you also have the female DA there I mean there are women at every run of this elected or not or trying to hold Trump accountable and keep accountable small D democracy and I think that's pretty fascinating especially the way that conservative politics tends to put gender and identity in the back seat and then also the Democratic party I think you have women I mean the fact that Kamala Harris exists in the vice presidency is a clear sign of progress she's closer to the Oval Office than any woman has been before and most people that I talked to in this book Republican and Democratic like say that is good for every woman who aspires to this office because it helps that imagination game that they're asking the public to play you now see a woman closer than ever to the Oval yeah I mean no I agree and that is like it's funny because it's like we're really seeing the march of progress you know the backwards and the forwards except and this is a concept that I toy with but at the end of the day Kamala Harris was elevated to that role not elected in her own right and that is still the hurdle that has yet to be jumped over yeah no I know but Nancy Pelosi was elected in well she was sort of elected in her own right Nancy Pelosi is emblematic of the way that many women in other countries have risen to executive roles I mean if we the United States were a parliamentary system then we would have president Nancy Pelosi if everything was a court of lint so it doesn't matter the system of government and that is one of the things that I think is a barrier to the US not yet hitting this milestone is the fact that the way we elect our elected officials and president is a system that is not necessarily favorable to female candidates not arguing that we change the system to be favorable to one type of candidate over another but it's a system that is tilted against non-white and non-man candidates and I think that when you look at each run of it both from fundraising and candidate recruitment and just how parties have taken a while to fill the pipeline with viable candidates it all sort of amounts in okay this is why we have a kind of people president yeah is there a way for women to sort of game the system I don't know if it's gaming the system but I think it's to continue running which I know sounds like a quaint answer but the earlier that these women are starting their careers and we're seeing this over the course of the last few decades part of why you had so many presidential primaries where there were just weren't any female candidates is because women weren't running in starting their political careers at an early enough point that by the time they got to the age to run for president they had a sufficient resume to do so at least now I actually think we're done with the days of seeing no women be able to viable run in presidential primaries and the reason I focus so much on primaries in the book is because that's when the gender biases are the most at play when you get to a general election you know this of course is once you're in a general if you're done about your vote for the Democratic if you're Republican or Republican like no one is sitting there saying well I'm just I'm only voting on by and large the trend line show you that it's party ideology that guides you in a general election so it's where the primaries are that if you invest in and support female candidates and then they get to a general when they run they win at the same rate as white male candidates do we've seen that born out time and again so the primary system is really like the swirling pot of all of these intangible biases and that's why I focus on it in the 2020 primary so much that's super interesting do you think open primaries solves any of that I mean I just spent some time in Alaska where they're doing the ranked choice voting system for the first time and I hear the oh god but experts have said it's no I like it I mean except I come from New York and we have the world's worst mayor again so I don't know how that worked out for us the thinking on the part of experts that I talked about bank choice voting is that it's a system that women can do well in in part because when you think about the qualities that voters by and large assign to female candidates it's building community but like when you think about the words that voters assign to female candidates they're words like collegial and communal just inherently sexist well they are but they also work in a ranked choice voting system where oh yeah you're a firebrand who is lashing out at every single one of your opponents the voters who like your opponents are probably not going to want to put you second strategy to ranked choice voting actually benefits female candidates now the answer is there of course is that if you're looking in the case of Alaska like Sarah Palin is not a collegial person in terms of the way that she follows necessarily so that might fly in the face of that system but like it might work for someone like Lisa Murkowski so that's kind of an interesting way to do it can you explain to me what's happening now with that when does it happen okay so Murkowski is like pretty much done the primary we know she made it to the top four now we just have to wait for November and that's a little while because a tons of vote by mail in Alaska huge state they were joking about the quaint cute size of Texas when I was there and I love that and then the other piece of this is that ranked choice voting obviously just takes a little bit of time like as a New York voter you know the thing we're waiting for is the Palin race for house which I mean we're a week out and it tracks that we're still waiting but it's no less frustrating I love results instantly so she's gonna win though right she could yeah oh wow I don't know I also have I also have a theory we're like if things shake out in a certain way then maybe the Democrat Maryville there wins and then we just race all over again in two months anyway so Jesus Christ that is just haunting I'm not going back to Alaska November though yeah wait how did you even get what I don't even want to know I mean you flew there right but of course yeah yeah so it was a really long walk yeah exactly what other pieces of wisdom do you have from writing this book I think the biggest takeaway that I had from 2020 was although there was heartbreak from a lot of voters that I talked to about not getting a female nominee and then not getting a female president I think that I prefer to look at the one step forward instead of the two steps back which is that when Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris as his vice presidential nominee it was not new in that we had seen both parties pick female vice presidential contenders in the past obviously 2008 was there a pale in 1984 that sample size is way too small but nevertheless Donald Harris was not first in that respect but she was interesting and fascinating in the sign of progress because when Biden picked her he did it because her gender and her diversity was an asset and a power move right it's something that was so obvious within Democratic politics that he needed to politically do something like this to win to be victorious unlike with Mondale and Palin and Ferraro and unlike with McCain and his own day when they made their picks which is they were just kind of thrown spaghetti at the wall trying to energize their bases in whatever way they could and they were like oh well a woman would be novel and new in Biden's case it was like okay a woman would be historic and also she is an asset for this moment that's a huge sign of progress thank you so much Ali Vitaly this is great absolutely you're so happy to do it on that note we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from the daily beast in future episodes 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