Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY)’s tearful rebuke against Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) during a House hearing on violence and discrimination against Asian Americans was semi-unplanned. She had a speech ready to go, but when Roy went on an anti-China and lynchings rant instead, she just lost it. “I had to cut out excerpts of my prepared speech, which I'm sure my staff got upset about, but I just had to say it. I had to respond to what he was saying and the disturbing way in which he said it,” she tells Molly Jong-...
Apr 12, 2021•6 min
Rep. Grace Meng (D-NY)’s tearful rebuke against Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) during a House hearing on violence and discrimination against Asian Americans was semi-unplanned. She had a speech ready to go, but when Roy went on an anti-China and lynchings rant instead, she just lost it. “I had to cut out excerpts of my prepared speech, which I'm sure my staff got upset about, but I just had to say it. I had to respond to what he was saying and the disturbing way in which he said it,” she tells Molly Jong-...
Apr 11, 2021•21 min
Every day, sometimes multiple times a day, come eye-popping new details in the Matt Gaetz scandal. But perhaps the worst thing of all for the Florida Republican, who is accused of underage sex trafficking, may be that Donald Trump thinks he’s useless. Yes, the congressman spent years sucking up to the former president—and even said he’d give up his job to defend him. But Trump has only managed to offer a tepid 24 words of support since the scandal broke, and George Conway has a theory about why....
Apr 09, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 106
That new documentary on QAnon ended with something of a bang, with one likely suspect seeming to half-confess that he was ‘Q,’ the oracle of the violent conspiracy movement. But there may not be even a single ‘Q,’ explains Will Sommer , one of the people featured throughout the documentary and the co-host of The Daily Beast’s new hit podcast, FEVER DREAMS . “There was kind of like this group surrounding the original Q,” Sommer, who’s writing a book on QAnon, tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest e...
Apr 06, 2021•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 105
Democrats are in control of the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives for the first time in a decade. But to the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, it’s clear that the party’s brand is broken in a large swath of America. “I think what we have to do as a party is battle the damage to the Democratic brand,” Harrison, the former senate candidate, tells Molly Jong-Fast in the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “I experienced it on my own race, Lindsey [Graham] and h...
Apr 05, 2021•29 min
The New Abnormal ’s least favorite Florida congressman, Matt Gaetz, is in hot water over mounting allegations that he’s been involved with underage women and taking them across state lines. To discuss the burgeoning scandal, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon brought on The Nation ’s national affairs correspondent, Jeet Heer, who says he isn’t the least bit surprised. “It’s the ones you always suspect the most,” he says. Noting Gaetz’s strange appearance on the Tucker Carlson show, where ...
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 104
Did you know that everyone’s favorite Suez-Canal-blocking ship is now the subject of a QAnon conspiracy? The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Will Sommer lay out why the adrenochrome set is convinced that the stuck ship’s cargo is full of trafficked children on the latest episode of our Fever Dreams podcast (Hint: it has to do with Hillary Clinton’s secret service code name—you guessed it, EVERGREEN.) Speaking of Hillary conspiracies, Suebsaeng and Sommer discuss why the right just can’t seem ...
Mar 31, 2021•44 min
Goldie Taylor has been working in and around Georgia politics for decades. So she knows first-hand the kind of stunt Republicans are trying to pull with this new voter-suppression law . “What [Gov.] Brian Kemp will tell you, what other state GOP office holders will tell you, is that they've done this to restore confidence in the ballot. Poppycock. They have done it to keep people who don't look like them, church like them, live like them, away from the voting booth,” Taylor tells Molly Jong-Fast...
Mar 30, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 103
Take one self-proclaimed satanism expert. Add in a pinch of dumpster-diving. Throw in a chicken-coop fire, and (of course) pillow magnate and Donald Trump pal Mike Lindell. And you’ve got the recipe that Trump 2020 deadenders are currently leading in the great state of Arizona to try to, somehow, overturn the election there. “It could be like a Coen brothers movie. It has that atmosphere,” Daily Beast political reporter Will Sommer tells his colleague and co-host Asawin Suebsaeng on the premiere...
Mar 29, 2021•55 min
GOP Senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn led a tour for themselves and others in their party at the border on Friday, but according to Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, who took over Beto O’Rourke’s former 16th district in Texas, it’s all “political theater.” They want to “use the border as a prop, do a whole lot of complaining and finger pointing. But these are the same people who've been in the Senate for a number of years when their party had control of the White House, the Senate and the House of...
Mar 28, 2021•6 min
What’s our wildly divisive political climate doing to today’s 20-year-olds, who will be our political leaders of the future? That’s what Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) asks co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon on the latest episode of The New Abnormal . In the past, Kinzinger says, Americans could look to Ronald Reagan and Democratic leader Tip O’Neill having a beer together, despite their differences. Today, Kinzinger says, we’re not seeing similar examples: “All we do is go on Twitter and TV ...
Mar 26, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 102
When we think of presidential pets, we think of their cute moments and endless photo-ops on the White House lawn—but the reality is you sometimes need to acquire a pet to distract from a scandal. So it was in the 1990s, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal , when the Clintons adopted Buddy the dog. “The Clintons had Socks,” Rocca tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast. “And then in the depths of the Lewinsky affair, when Clinton was in real turmoil,...
Mar 23, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 101
Since the spread of COVID-19 launched a global pandemic in 2020, over half a million Americans have been killed by the virus. And experts agree that the death and infection rates have been much worse in the West—mainly the United States and Europe—than many other places in the East. In other words, while other countries like China, Cambodia and New Zealand were able to tempur the spread, the U.S. had its ass handed back to it. There are a lot of reasons for this, says David Wallace-Wells, New Yo...
Mar 22, 2021•6 min
Since the spread of COVID-19 launched a global pandemic in 2020, over half a million Americans have been killed by the virus. And experts agree that the death and infection rates have been much worse in the West—mainly the United States and Europe—than many other places in the East. In other words, while other countries like China, Cambodia and New Zealand were able to temper the spread, the U.S. had its ass handed back to it. There are a lot of reasons for this, says David Wallace-Wells, New Yo...
Mar 21, 2021•30 min
It didn’t have to be this way. The coronavirus pandemic didn’t have to become politicized—or racialized. But last March, President Donald Trump “decided to call coronavirus, which has no ethnicity or zip code or nationality, the China virus,” says Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali on the 100th episode of The New Abnormal . “There was no reason to make coronavirus a racist thing,” co-host Molly Jong-Fast adds. Now, not only are people of Chinese descent coming under attack across the U.S., but ot...
Mar 19, 2021•56 min•Season 1Ep. 100
It’s bad enough Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat, turned down the minimum wage hike with that oh-so-cute thumbs down. Now she’s threatening to derail the whole Democratic agenda, insisting on archaic Senate rules that give Mitch McConnell and the Republicans outsized power. “I think is a lot of people feel that this groovy, bisexual Senator should be voting in a groovy way and not like a terrifying conservative,” Molly Jong-Fast says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Do you se...
Mar 16, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 99
It’s not hard to see that the Republican party was the Party of Trump during the four years he was president. But what kind of party are they now? Honestly, it’s hard to tell. “When you looked at the platform for the 2020 election, they didn't create one,” says New Yorker writer and professor Jelani Cobb. There is one thing about today’s GOP, however, that is very clear: “They've doubled and tripled down on a type of politics that is very appealing to disgruntled white people or white identity p...
Mar 15, 2021•6 min
It’s not hard to see that the Republican party was the Party of Trump during the four years he was president. But what kind of party are they now? Honestly, it’s hard to tell. “When you looked at the platform for the 2020 election, they didn't create one,” says New Yorker writer and professor Jelani Cobb. There is one thing about today’s GOP, however, that is very clear: “They've doubled and tripled down on a type of politics that is very appealing to disgruntled white people or white identity p...
Mar 14, 2021•25 min
Republicans are terrified—with good reason. Utah Sen. Mike Lee went viral this week when he sputtered earlier that one of the new voting rights bills making its way through the House was “ written in hell by the devil himself .” And Lee’s GOP colleagues didn’t exactly knock the notion down. “They should be scared of it,” Rep. Eric Swawell, the California Democrat, tells Molly Jong-Fast on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “What we saw this past election in Georgia and Arizona —states that ...
Mar 12, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 98
While Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may have been the runner-up to former President Donald Trump in the recent CPAC straw poll, his chances of ever becoming president himself are not good, according to Florida’s top Democrat. “You know, he went MIA for three weeks in November claiming that he was working on some statewide plan. My take is that he probably had COVID and didn’t want to tell people when the vaccines first came to our state,” Commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services Nikki Fried...
Mar 09, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 97
It’s safe to say that the people of New York City are ready for a new mayor, and certainly one who isn’t Bill deBlasio. Sure, he gave the city universal pre-K but had some faux paus over the years, most recently in 2020, when he was accused of antisemitism for a tweet addressed to the Hasidic Jewish community over social distancing rules during COVID and also (this one was big) for not standing up to the NYPD for harassing citizens during the George Floyd riots this summer. One of the many candi...
Mar 08, 2021•6 min
It’s safe to say that the people of New York City are ready for a new mayor, and certainly one who isn’t Bill deBlasio. Sure, he gave the city universal pre-K but had some faux paus over the years, most recently in 2020, when he was accused of antisemitism for a tweet addressed to the Hasidic Jewish community over social distancing rules during COVID and also (this one was big) for not standing up to the NYPD for harassing citizens during the George Floyd riots this summer. One of the many candi...
Mar 07, 2021•36 min
This is just how dire things got for the Biden campaign in early 2020. Plus, just how much damage Trump did by hiding his COVID vaccine, and Colorado’s voting model. How did Joe Biden manage to eke out a presidential win after washing up in fourth place in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire? Co-host Molly Jong-Fast still wants to know. “I’ve spent much of the week talking about being wrong about Cuomo , but I would like to take a minute to talk about being wrong about Biden,” she tells NBC News’ Jo...
Mar 05, 2021•57 min•Season 1Ep. 96
For years, a central goal of the conservative movement was to install right-wing judges. A Republican president delivered, big time. And these Trumpists are still pissed. Which tells you one thing. For the authoritarian wing of the Republican party, this was never about interpreting the American legal code. It was always about raw political power. “It's not about the rule of law. It's not about getting good qualified judges. It's about results- oriented litigation,” former U.S. Attorney for Alab...
Mar 02, 2021•1 hr 4 min•Season 1Ep. 95
The theme this year, stupidly enough, is ‘America Uncanceled.’ But the only real way to get any kinda cred at the 2021 Conversative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to make a stink about how you’ve totally been canceled. One easy way? Refuse to wear a mask, even though the host city and the hotel both require it. “We’ve seen these conservative influencers who, it seems, are deliberately getting kicked out of CPAC by not wearing a mask,” The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer tells Molly Jong-Fast on...
Feb 28, 2021•7 min
The theme this year, stupidly enough, is ‘America Uncanceled.’ But the only real way to get any kinda cred at the 2021 Conversative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, to make a stink about how you’ve totally been canceled. One easy way? Refuse to wear a mask, even though the host city and the hotel both require it. “We’ve seen these conservative influencers who, it seems, are deliberately getting kicked out of CPAC by not wearing a mask,” The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer tells Molly Jong-Fast on...
Feb 28, 2021•36 min
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office finally got its hands on Donald Trump’s taxes and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes clear why he spent so much time trying to keep them hidden away. In this episode of The New Abnormal, Mary Trump joins as Molly Jong-Fast’s co-host to talk about the development, a topic that she knows a lot about. (Quick recap: She helped with the New York TImes’ investigation into Trump taxes. ) But these taxes are different than the taxes Mary had been involv...
Feb 26, 2021•1 hr 3 min•Season 1Ep. 94
Atlanta-based comedian Blaire Erskine has blown up on Twitter over the past year with videos that not only roast Trump-loving conservatives but have also managed to fool a large number of prominent liberals. With characters like Tiffany Trump’s best friend, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s daughter and Ted Cruz’s spokesperson, Blaire rides a fine line between parody and reality and nails it every time. In this episode, we talk about how she honed this new craft during the pandemic, why 90% of the hate s...
Feb 24, 2021•52 min
For years, he’s gotten away with it. He lied. He cheated. He treated the government like a get-rich-quick-scheme and his most ardent followers like marks. But now, Donald Trump could be facing serious criminal charges. The kind of charges that might lead to the former president going to jail. The Supreme Court turned down Trump’s final appeal, and that means his accounting firm has to turn over his tax records and business documents to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance ASAP. “Trump's lawyers ...
Feb 23, 2021•1 hr 5 min•Season 1Ep. 93
We know how the story went: Trump was impeached for a second time. There is a trial. He is found not guilty because there not enough votes needed to make it happen, despite the majority of the Senate voting against the former president. Lots of people have questions in regards to this process. Namely, what the hell? But also, why didn’t the Democrats forgo their right to call witnesses? Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CA) told co-host Molly Jong-Fast his perspective on things in this member-only bonus episod...
Feb 22, 2021•7 min
