Tom Sykes, The Daily Beast’s unmissable Royals columnist, joins Executive Editor Hugh Dougherty to examine how the fallout from Jeffrey Epstein has reignited a crisis around Prince Andrew that now threatens to engulf the wider monarchy. As new scrutiny revisits Andrew’s relationship with Virginia Giuffre and raises questions about what the Palace knew, Sykes argues that King Charles III is confronting a scandal no longer containable by tradition or silence—one already straining relations with heir Prince William and forcing a reckoning over accountability, reputation, and whether the royal family can still rely on deference in an era demanding transparency. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tina Brown tells all about her shocking experience being named in the newly unsealed Jeffrey Epstein case files, revealing how Jeffrey Epstein and his allies frantically tried to “neutralize” her and shut down The Daily Beast after her explosive reporting with Conchita Sarnoff blew open his web of abuse. In a gripping conversation with Daily Beast executive editor Hugh Dougherty, Brown recounts the panic inside Epstein’s circle, the chilling legal threats from powerhouse firms, the duplicity of social fixer Peggy Siegal, and the moral rot of an elite “club” that protected its own even after the truth was in plain sight. She reflects on the pre-#MeToo culture that dismissed victims, the powerful names orbiting Epstein—from Bill Clinton to Ehud Barak—and the industrial scale of exploitation enabled by Ghislaine Maxwell and recruiter Jean-Luc Brunel. It’s a bracing defense of investigative journalism, a warning about the corrosive power of extreme wealth, and a behind-the-scenes look at how close this story came to being buried—so what else is still hidden in the millions of unreleased files? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joanna Coles speaks with Jason Zengerle, author of "Hated By All the Right People," about how Tucker Carlson went from dodging Donald Trump’s phone calls to becoming one of the most powerful forces shaping Trumpworld. Drawing from Zengerle’s new book, they unpack Tucker’s unusual method of influencing Trump through television, his spectacular fallout with Fox News, and why being fired may have supercharged his relevance. The conversation traces Tucker’s early skepticism of Trump, his carefully managed realignment to Trump, his role in boosting JD Vance, and how he helped mainstream Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian playbook while flirting with Putin apologism. Coles and Zengerle also explore the deeply personal roots of Tucker’s worldview, including his fraught relationship with his mother, who left when he was a child and later cut him out of her fortune—an abandonment that may help explain his hunger for control, audience, and power. Is Tucker a cynical opportunist, a true believer, or something more unsettling—a movement leader with ambitions that stretch well beyond media? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to tackle his startling new announcement: a billion-dollar countersuit against Melania Trump. The two dissect Jeffrey Epstein’s well-documented friendship with Donald Trump and connect the dots to Trump’s East Wing demolition, showcasing the president’s strategy for destruction. Wolff and Coles also unpack Stephen Miller’s hardline crusades, exposing the strange psychology that drives one of Trump’s most maniacal members of his inner circle. As the legal walls close in, one question lingers: how much of Trump’s chaos is calculation, and how much is pure compulsion? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dems say that the Russians hacked into our political system to help Trump win. Trump and associates blame former President Barack Obama for the interference. But the truth is, both sides have it wrong. Filmmaker Alex Gibney (known for documentary films like “Enron and “Taxi to the Dark Side”) has been immersed in the world of foreign hacking, troll farms, and most importantly, what happened in 2016 for his upcoming docuseries “Agents of Chaos.” And he knows the real reason that the Kremlin came after our democracy. “It wasn't a ‘flip votes in order to give Trump the election’” kind of thing, he tells Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal. It actually was all about Hillary. (“It's that kind of ruthless de-legitimizing of the rule of law and democracy that I think is ultimately the larger agenda here, both for Putin and for Trump.) Speaking of Trump and the 2020 election, Gibney says there’s definitely a lot more “scary” disinfo campaigns to come—and they’re “more sophisticated.” Is there anything we can do to fight it? Good news: Yes. Bad news: It’s on the Trump administration to take certain actions, and well, yeah. Then, actor Adam Scott joins the party (er, podcast) to talk about the just-announced Parks & Rec reunion in Wisconsin to support Democrats. (Leslie Knope, 2024) and why he is not gonna “stick to acting” despite ticking off the “shut-up-and-be-an-actor” Twitter trolls: “I think I'm just looking for ways to help out without being too gross and annoying. It's tough, because I'm frightened. I think a lot of people are.” Plus! Rick and Molly give Adam the special honor of his very own Fuck That Guy pick. And! The two discuss Roger Stone’s Civil War, QAnon’s own Jason Gelanis (who works for CITIGROUP!!) and whether Trump has secretly gotten the COVID vaccine. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. We have a very special guest with Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse who is going to be talking to us about a wide variety of subjects including how dark money is affecting this country and how the GOP has become a toxic force. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse thinks the biggest problem with climate change deniers is the people that line their pockets. The Rhode Island Democrat joined The New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast and producer Jesse Cannon to talk about the environment, the GOP dropping the ball, and how putting an end to secretive political cash could be the key to solving it all. “The key thing to do on the environment is to focus on the dark money problem,” says Whitehouse. “I don't care whether you're talking to Tea Partiers or Bernie Bros, the notion that big, powerful, special interests can spend unlimited money anonymously through front groups and deploy huge political power out of sight is equally offensive across the board.” He explained how certain groups are in the pockets of political donors (cough cough, Republicans) and how the party's disdain for science has similarities to their COVID-19 response. “The power of the science denial industry is manifest in both examples, Coronavirus and climate, and the willingness of Republicans to bear pain and scorn and deny truth.” But does the GOP stand a chance of ever going back to being that Grand Ole Party? For the sake of the climate, at least? In Whitehouse’s opinion, there are two options for that to happen, one of them involves a complete overhaul. (“You wait until the Republican party is so discredited and its climate denial that a surge of new Republicans come in and sweep out.”) Then, the three discuss Trump’s eerie Supreme Court scouting and the funding of the Federalist Society: “The whole thing is being basically run like our intelligence community would run a covert operation against a hostile nation.” Plus! Molly really wants to know how Whitehouse can work with Rand Paul and if Rhode Island calamari is really as amazing as the DNC made it seem. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So Donald Trump copped to it. He told Bob Woodward that he knew how deadly the virus was—and downplayed it anyway, encouraging MAGA nation to act as if COVID-19 was a cheap Chinese knock-off of the flu. “It's remarkable that in these interviews, the President of the United States confessed to fucking manslaughter,” Molly Jong-Fast says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. The lawyers might debate whether Trump has any criminal culpability. But to Rick Wilson, there’s no question about Trump’s moral responsibility. “No American has killed more of their fellow Americans in this country than Donald Trump, except for Robert E. Lee and Jefferson fucking Davis. No one has a body count to rival Trump's. He knew it. He knew it was there. He did it. He let it happen. It is the most unbelievable and horrifying outcome that we can imagine.” Molly adds, “Mike Pence was at a pro-life event the other day. And I was thinking about the irony, right? This administration has killed 100,000 plus plus plus people. And they're talking about embryos. Like, it's almost beyond parody.” Mike Schmidt, the Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter, joins Rick and Molly to talk about his new book, which examines some of Trump’s closest confidants—to stop the president from using his power. “What is that human experience to be one of those guardrails and those containers? What is that like? What is the human experience of standing between the president and the abyss?” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As you’ve probably heard, we also run bonus episodes every Sunday that are only for Beast Inside members. As a small token of our gratitude, we’re sharing one of those bonus episodes in full with you here. If you want more bonus episodes like this, with more of the spicy interviews and blunt banter you know and love, consider joining Beast Inside. Doing so supports us, The New Abnormal, and the rest of fearless journalism from The Daily Beast. Head over to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to become a member now – or after you listen to this amazing interview with Elizabeth Neumann.  Even a former member of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security thinks he is bat-shit, and surrounded by actual racists. It would be funny if some of the stories that former DHS official Elizabeth Neumann told Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode on The New Abnormal weren’t so terrifying. She admits that she did “hold her nose” and vote for him in 2016 and really believed he would rise to the occasion. But that dream died super quick—by the end of summer 2017 to be exact: “It was clear he didn’t have a strong enough character to put aside some of his bad habits,” she said. There was one moment, though, that changed it all. Or, as Molly put it, “made you realize we’re not in Kansas anymore.” “He was having some sort of school yard bully fight with a man who is trying to launch a nuclear weapon,” she explained. “It was a huge wake up call for the department.” Neumann also spoke to the influence Trump senior adviser Stephen Miller had on immigration and when she, a pro-lifer, realized the president “wasn’t a true Christian.” And then she makes two scary admissions, which says a lot because they are all pretty scary, tbh. The first is that Nuemann can say with certainty that many of those in Trump’s orbit are racist. In fact, she had a moment while working in the department in which she thought, “Oh my God, some of these people are racist.” The second, and related to the first, is the role that Trump has had on domestic terrorism and white supremacy in the United States: “The president not speaking out against white supremacy and against QAnon is extremely dangerous. He is creating that fear that creates vulnerability in people to be recruited and radicalized by groups that have an intention of violence.” Plus! Will more former administration officials come out? Neumann shares her thoughts. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who helped launch the Trump-Russia investigation, says the current occupant of the Oval Office “poses the greatest counterintelligence threat of any president in modern history.” It’s not just that Trump and all of his top people have lied about their connections to Moscow, Strzok tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson in the latest episode of The New Abnormal. (Although that is super weird.) It’s that he takes all of these inexplicably pro-Kremlin positions on issues he clearly doesn’t care about. (Montenegro? Really?) Which leads Molly to wonder: If Trump is really acting like a Russian asset, who would be Trump’s handler in Moscow? “I don't think he needs one,” Strzok responds. This isn’t some old-school spy case, with dead drops and covert communications. “The best intelligence relationship… if you want them to do something is: ‘I've got you on the hook. I know you're going to do, you know what I want. And I don't ever have to tell you because of the leverage I have over you.’ And that's what I think Russia has over Trump. How else do you explain all these fucking inexplicably things that he's doing with regard to NATO, with refusing to say word one about [Putin critic Alexei] Navalny being poisoned, about the bounties” Russia offered the Taliban for killing U.S. troops. Plus! Strzok addresses the charges that the White House dialed up his  investigation into Trump’s Russian connections. (No way, Strzok says.) Rick teases some material from Michael Cohen’s newly released book. Molly sheds tears over the sunken Trump flotilla—and reports from the raging hellscape that is Manhattan. And! Strzok reconsiders his earlier position. “I was maybe a little too flippant about saying [Trump] doesn't have a handler,” Strzok says. There are so many things Trump “says and does that are very much in Russia's interests [and] that he doesn't have an independent knowledge of.” It makes this counterintelligence veteran wonder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. We have a very special guest with Lev Parnas a person from inside Trump and Guilliani’s inner circle. In this interview we talk through all the fuckery around Giuliani's attempts to get dirt to smear Joe Biden as well as the horrors of being inside Trump world. Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. That's  newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Everybody has got to die sometime, even the Great and Powerful Fox News giant Rupert Murdoch. But what will happen to the empire when papa ‘Doch finally does kick the bucket? CNN’s Brian Stelter shared his theory with Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on this episode of The New Abnormal and it’s hard not to see it as a possibility. But spoiler alert: It’s super complicated. (“There will be a battle over the future of the company because there's this trust right now. There's eight votes in the trust,” he says. “Rupert has four votes and the kids have four votes. So he wins. If, and when he dies, there will be four votes from four children,” and dun dun, dun” one of them leans more liberal.) Stelter did the work none of us wants to and wrote a whole book about Fox. He brought up a personal Molly Jong-Fast nightmare (Tucker Carlson 2024?) and the trio discussed the very obvious occurrence of the network literally controlling what the president says or does. (“Tucker will tweet or say something on the air. And two days later, it's Donald Trump's policy.”) Then! Dr. Al Gross, who is running for Senate in Alaska as an Independent, spoke with Molly and producer Jesse Cannon about why the state isn’t as red as everyone thinks and how he’s able to balance his time as a commercial fisherman, an orthopedic surgeon, and Master of Public Health. Oh, and that stimulus check the state’s citizens get called UBI. Plus! Find out which hill Bill Barr is dying on to protect Trump this time. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ike Barinholtz—of Eastbound and Down, Suicide Squad, and Mindy Project fame—loves, and I mean LOVES, Donald Trump Jr. It was a passion that grew white hot on safari. “I went with DJ TJ, we went to beautiful Tanzania back in 2014 and it was amazing,” Ike tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest edition of The New Abnormal. “We talked to the locals and they were really great. And then this really nice man, he was a guide. And he took us to just the most majestic group of sleeping rhinoceroses and we just blew their fucking heads off. It was beautiful.” But Ike admires one of the president’s top four smartest children for more than his guns. Ike also appreciates Don’s nuanced political views, especially when it comes to boats. “Look, everyone is born with a boat. We know that, but only people who really commit—to not just the boating lifestyle, but also the MAGA lifestyle—have earned the privilege to fuck up all of the wakes in a lake. And so once again, DJ TJ is right and that's why I'm supporting him in 2024.” Plus! Trump Senior turns the White House lawn into a NASCAR parking lot. Melania goes dictator chic. And Molly—this part is serious, I swear—recites a Tiffany Trump tweet over an electropop beat.  Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. We have a very special guest with Elizabeth Nuemann is a former member of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and will be talking to us about the racism and horrors she saw inside the administration. Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. That's  newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s the last night of the Republican National Convention and former GOP operative Tim Miller joins Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast to break down what Rick calls “four hours of sweaty Castro-esque speechmaking.” The most surreal speechmaker of all may have been Ivanka Trump. “There were a lot of lies,” says Miller. “But I thought the lie that really stood out to me was when she talked about how much he loves his grandchildren.”Molly was impressed, sort of. “I did think tonight, Ivanka is an idiot, and she is absolutely unequivocally the smartest of all of the kids.” Aside from Trump, himself, the gang agrees that Rudy Giuliani gave the most despicable speech of the night. Former Giuliani staffer, Rick, says the former Mayor of New York was kickstarting a Republican race war that will run until the election. “There's never been a more perfect exemplar of ‘everything Trump touches dies,’ because that speech tonight; it was, at one point, everything but the n-word… They're coming for you, they're coming for you to your suburbs. These black lives matter…” And when it came to Trump himself, Molly says he was totally off-form: “He finds reading very boring. So, I mean, every speech where he's not saying crazy shit is him being totally bored by whatever they're making him read."Rick agrees “it was very low energy speech,” but predicts the calm—maybe even electable—Trump will not last long. “We all know something about Donald Trump. After he’s been disciplined and held down by his staff for a couple of days, he has an equal and opposite reaction and goes fucking nuts.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dr. John Gartner joins the Beast's Joanna Coles to assess the unraveling of Donald Trump’s mind. The clinical psychologist and former Johns Hopkins professor, who warned early about Trump’s “malignant narcissism,” now says the president shows clear signs of cognitive decline, comparing his confusion and grandiosity to dictators in their final stages. Coles presses Gartner on whether Trump’s dementia makes him more dangerous or simply more delusional, and what that means for the remainder of Trump's second term and beyond. Is America being led by a man losing touch with reality, or is Trump still cunning enough to conceal his growing symptoms? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary Trump, The New Abnormal’s favorite guest, is back for the third night of the Republican National Convention. Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast want to know if it’s too late for Trump to drop Mike Pence as his running mate and bring in fresh blood. “Pence is a total drip and his only value to Donald is that he sucks up to him,” says Mary. “Do we seriously think that Mike Pence could not be convinced to step down?” Rick admits it would be incredibly tough to bring in a new vice presidential candidate at this late stage, but can see why Trump would do it. “It's a difficult enterprise. Although, I think Donald would be tempted don't you, Mary? Because it’s like a reality TV play. It’ll be dramatic. The ratings will be yuge.” Molly was taken back by the sheer scale of dishonesty at the convention tonight. “Those were C-PAC-level lies, not RNC-level lies,” she says. Rick suggested Richard Grenell, who was briefly Acting Director of National Intelligence, was making a strong entry into “the Trumpian liars Olympics” with his convention speech. Mary says he was the undisputed champion. “It was the worst, most damaging performance of the evening, if not of the entire convention, because of the things he was lying about with a straight face. Everything he said was a lie.” Rick selects Trump as today’s ‘Fuck that guy’ for his defunding of FEMA as a hurricane makes landfall in Louisiana and Texas, but Mary says: “You know, that money stolen from FEMA that may not have been needed if Bannon hadn't stolen it from the GoFundMe…” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum joined Molly-Jong Fast and Rick Wilson on a special edition of The New Abnormal for the second night of the Republican National Convention and he just couldn’t work out what the Hell the GOP thought they were doing? Stephen Harper, the former prime minister of Canada, used to have a sign up on all four walls of his campaign war room, Frum explains: “And the sign said, ‘Why are you saying this?’” While the Democrats realized they needed to create lots of short video segments that would be shared online, Frum compares the RNC disaster as a low-rent version of the Tucker Carlson show on Fox News. “He's a professionally competent white supremacist with a volume controls on the input device that matches the volume output,” he says.   Molly was also unimpressed by Melania’s “dictator chic” and her very long speech. “In the end she was just like this weird alien trying to mimic a human,” she says. Amid the cavalcade of nepotism, Molly also thought Tiffany Trump’s performance was instructive. “There's always been a liberal fantasy that Tiffany is not as evil as the rest of the adult children. I think tonight, that fantasy has been put to bed,” she says. The sight of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi prompted Rick to issue a warning that Bondi has been working with Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon on concocting “Hillary's emails 2.0”—some kind of opposition research attack on the Bidens. “Tonight was a preview of the October surprise,” he says. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s the first night of the Republican National Convention and Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast are joined by Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, who shares eye-watering tales of what Trump is really like when the cameras are switched off. You thought what happened on screen on night one of the convention was crazy? It’s nothing compared to Trump behind the scenes, where national security officials couldn’t get through a meeting “without him doing 20 tangents, becoming irascible, turning red in the face, demanding a diet Coke, spewing spit,” Taylor explained. “Literally out of goddamn nowhere, he'd be like, ‘You know, who’s just my favorite guy? The MyPillow guy. Do any of you have those pillows?’ When it came to the issue of the border wall, Trump would be dreaming up “sickening” medieval plots “to pierce the flesh” of migrants, rip all the families apart, “maim,” and gas them. “This was a man with no humanity whatsoever,” Taylor says. “He says, we got to do this, this, this, and this, all of which are probably impossible, illegal unethical,” Taylor recalls, but he was writing them down as the president spoke. “And he looks over me and he goes, you fucking taken notes?” All that, and there was still time for the “Fuck that guy” segment, and Jerry Falwell Jr. won a hotly contested race after it was claimed that the anti-LGBT preacher had encouraged the pool boy to have sex with his wife while he watched from the corner of the room. “I would like to salute you for providing the most meta and self-referential ‘Fuck that guy’ ever,” Rick says to Molly. “Because Jerry Falwell said to his wife, ‘Fuck that guy.’” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. Actor, comedian and activist Billy Eichner totally gets why Taylor Swift took so long to get publicly political. In this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, the “Billy on the Street” star explains why celebrities may take a long time to speak up—and how Trump is changing that. “It's easy to sit back from a distance and say like, ‘why doesn't so-and-so get more political.’ And I definitely feel that way sometimes, but the few times I've had like internet backlash for something or, you know, people being angry at something, I can hold my own. And it doesn't, like, ruin my life at all,” he explained. “I think Trump pushed us to a place” where celebs who were previously silent on major issues now feel compelled to speak up. That said, he is just “sick of getting angry on Twitter.” Eichner also spoke about the ways he’s trying to make one of his biggest dreams come true: “It would make me so pleased to flip the Senate.” Plus, he shares his thoughts on the South Carolina race between Lindsey Graham and Jaime Harrison. “Lindsey Graham, to me, is the epitome of someone who makes me physically ill,” he added. And of course, he answers our burning question: When is Billy on the Street going to come back? (“Coronavirus killed my career.”). Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the final night of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson team up with The Daily Beast’s senior White House correspondent Asawin Suebsaeng, who thinks this week’s online convention felt like the best PBS telethon since they threatened to publicly execute Elmo. Joe Biden gives his big headline speech and sounds suspiciously like a U.S. president. “It blew up the bullshit trope from the Republican party and from the Trump campaign, that Biden is some doddering senile old man… he came out and he tore the goddamn bark off Donald Trump,” says Rick, who also had praise for an old adversary. “Michael Bloomberg went out there and just stuck a goddamn shiv in, Donald Trump. It was some sweetness.”   The team debated whether progressives in the Democratic party should fight harder to drag Biden to the Left, but they were united in their glee over the arrest of Steve Bannon.Molly describes it as “a moment I have long dreamed of.” Rick says this was his “favorite ‘Fuck that Guy’ of all time.” “It’s the gristle Icarus; it’s the whiskey necromancer; it’s Steve Fucking Bannon, the human skin tag, a gigantic sack of bile that walks on two legs.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s night three of the Democratic National Convention and The New Abnormal team are getting a little punchy. Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson are joined by Hillary Clinton’s former senior advisor Phillipe Reines and it’s a barnburner.There were always going to be two gigantic rockstar performances from Barack Obama and Kamala Harris tonight that were going to trigger President Trump—"and sure as hell, they did!” said Rick. “You could disagree with Barack Obama about every policy thing under the sun, but you could always remember that the guy was a spectacular speaker and communicator, and he brought that shit tonight. I mean, he peeled the paint off the damn walls without raising his voice.”Reines nailed Trump’s fury at Obama. “He brings something to the table that really no one else in the world does, which is he can't be called a loser... He was elected president twice. He got more votes twice. I think there's an intimidation there.”Molly has warm words for Hillary Clinton’s focus on winning the election itself, and Reines praises his old boss: “She refrained from mentioning Jim Comey, which is always a positive.”The team agree that Trump is “the platonic ideal of an asshole” but debate whether it would be worth trading a few more years of Trump in office if it meant Don Jr. and Jared Kushner wound up in jail.“Donald Trump can be president for life,” said Rick. “If I can watch Jared torn apart by a pack of wild dogs.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson were up late to fight crime after a “seamless” night two of the Democratic National Convention. Former Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Eric Swalwell joined a special edition of The New Abnormal which asked—after the publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report on Russian electoral interference—what the Hell happened with Robert Mueller?   Molly’s interpretation of the 1,000 page report was pretty clear: “It seemed like a lot of shoes dropped in that the Trump campaign was giving clues to Roger Stone, which got passed to Julian Assange to influence the 2016 election. But it seems like Mueller dropped the ball on this… I’m no expert, but it, it sort of looks like collusion.”   “Is Mueller incompetent? is Mueller corrupt? What is happening with him?” she asked.   Rick, a former Republican insider, suggested that the failure of the Mueller report to nail the Trump campaign came down to Mueller’s temperament. “I think Mueller was too much of an institutionalist and too much of an incrementalist. And I think when you’re that kind of person, you have trouble understanding sometimes just how fucking wily and corrupt people like this are.”   Rep. Swalwell had another answer. “He did not pursue the finances. And also he did not put the President's ass in a witness chair. And those, I think, were the two shortcomings.”   Trump’s failure to stand up to Russia on behalf of the U.S. has left a huge opening for former Vice President Joe Biden and Rick was impressed by his move to lock down the kind of voters who backed Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.   “The Democratic Party for the first time, in a lot of ways, since John F. Kennedy seized control of the national security narrative again, and position themselves as the party of strength because they came right out and made it a centerpiece of tonight,” he said.   Molly suggested the DNC also did well to contrast the potential First Ladies. “It seems almost unfair, you know, to watch Jill Biden in the school she is teaching at versus Melania building a tennis pavilion.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. We have a very special guest with Gary Peters Sr. who is the junior United States Senator from Michigan and hes going to talk to us about the fuckery with the postal service as well as why Mitch McConnel is holding up the COVID aid. And the other voice you will be hearing in this interview is our producer Jesse Cannon Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s the “secret sauce” of Fox News: “tell people who feel socially inferior that you're really the smart one. You're really informed, you know the real secrets about what's really going on,” explains Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. For 20 years, Fox has been force-feeding this sauce to its listeners, saying “that your life would be perfect if it wasn't for that George Soros, your life would be perfect if it wasn't for ANTIFA. They prep these people's minds to reject empirical truth all the time.” And finally, you have them believing in lizard people. In satanic pedophile rings. In QAnon. But maybe, Molly Jong-Fast offers, the QAnon takeover of the Republican party isn’t so bad. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the conspiratorial congressional nominee? Maybe “she and Devin Nunes could someday be on a reality show where they've run away from their spouses. And they're living in a bunker in South Dakota. It's called ‘My Dumb Congressmen.’” Then! Rep. Lauren Underwood, a public health nurse and the youngest Black woman in Congress, talks about her experience doing pandemic preparation in the Obama administration—and whether we can do anything now to reverse Team Trump’s missteps. And! Hank Gilbert, who’s running against Congressman COVID Louie Gohmert, talks about staring down pistol-toting Trump minions for daring to question Dear Leader. Plus! Molly breaks down Kamala Harris’ generational strengths. America’s worst governor compares reopening schools to killing bin Laden. And the ghouls running the late Herman Cain’s twitter account attack Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kurt Andersen has been tooling on Donald Trump for decades—the Spy magazine co-founder once even tricked the Donald into cashing a check for 17 cents. But, Andersen tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson, Trump did us all a favor. He showed America just how rigged our system is in favor of the ultra-rich. “His final ad [of the 2016 campaign] was all ‘Wall Street has taken all of your wealth and ruined the working class. And we must defeat these people of whom my opponent is a puppet,’” Anderson recounts on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Well, yeah, you had a point. But you didn't actually govern at all on that basis. So maybe, maybe he's sort of put that critique of the system on the table”—especially for Republicans who couldn’t take in that kind of message from someone left-of-center. Rick, the GOP consultant, says it’s time for Republicans to realize that “the party of free markets is full of shit because it [isn’t] about free markets. It’s about gaining enough power to use the regulatory state and legislative process to advantage your individual companies or markets. That's not capitalism, that's crony capitalism on a good day and something much worse on a bad one.” Then! Molly and Rick answer listener questions, revealing how they met (not on a chain gang, they swear) and what their surprising super powers are (“I can hit my head on almost anything,” says Molly). Plus! Will our dynamic duo actually open a dogfighting pit, or will they go straight to selling meth? And what does Rick enjoy more than “getting rip shit on cheap gin and watching the Teletubbies?” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Michael Wolff joins Joanna Coles to dig into the one fear that continues to dog Donald Trump, the lingering specter of Jeffrey Epstein. As new oversight leaks reveal redacted names and unreleased evidence, Wolff explains why the Epstein files continue to rattle Trump and shape his thinking. They explore how this aversion affects his decisions, fuels his late-night rants, and exposes cracks in Trumpworld’s loyalty. Why do Epstein’s secrets haunt Trump, and what do his international allies and enemies know? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. We have a very special guest with CNN Chief WH Correspondent Jim Acosta who tells us about Trump’s inner circle—and the dangers of calling out this president. Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

National Rifle Association boss Wayne LaPierre rails against the elites trying to take real Americans’ guns Meanwhile, the NRA is taking gun-owners donations—to fund LaPierre’s ultra-lux lifestyle. That’s the crux of New York Attorney General Tish James’ landmark lawsuit against the NRA. “And it looks like they're in a ton of trouble,” The Beast’s Harry Siegel tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Tish has the receipts”—from the 107-foot yachts to the complimentary safaris to the private charters to the gazillion-dollar wardrobe. Then! Rebekah Jones, the former Florida state government data geek and whistleblower, talks about how she was pushed to juke the COVID stats by Ron DeSantis’ cronies. “We changed how we count cases. We changed the criteria itself. So pneumonia was originally one of the surveillance criteria—we had ER, data for pneumonia, influenza, and COVID-like illness. And one of the first things they did was cut out pneumonia. It was too high,” she says. Jones is convinced a similar game is going on throughout the country. “We really don't know how many COVID cases we have in America; we’ll probably never really know.” Plus! Molly rolls out a new campaign slogan: “Vote for Trump, even if we kill you.” Rick opines on drool buckets. And Alexa orders a rat stick for Molly. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What you're about to hear is a teaser for our new bonus episodes we are doing for subscribers to Beast Inside, the Daily Beast's membership program. To start things off we have a very special guest with the one and only Sen. Corey Booker, who talks about everything from his relationship to Rosario Dawson to whether he'd punch Donald Trump in the face. Again, this is for Beast Inside members only. To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s two things that Rick Wilson loves the most in this world and that’s food and politics. On this episode of The New Abnormal, Taste the Nation host Padma Lakshmi joins Rick and co-host Molly Jong-Fast to chat about her experiences foraging onions in the desert, hanging out with Thai women in Las Vegas and gaining 20 pounds, on purpose. Oh, and how immigrants and Native Americans have way more MAGA clout than Trump ever will. “It should be mandatory that [politicians] go and embed themselves for a week,” she says. Then, MSNBC’s Joy Reid joined to discuss her history-making career move, the impending “social civil war” and Trump’s ability to praise a drug that could kill people. (“It's like a cult leader in a way,” she says.) She and Rick also walk Molly through a typical day in Florida (most notably the bath salt, face-eating zombie incident—not to be confused with the also-mentioned “Zombie bin Laden.”) Plus! The duo opine about Trump’s failing ad strategy and the morons pushing our country into an economic crisis tailspin. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sen. Tammy Duckworth may be on Biden’s VP shortlist. But when it comes to childcare during the pandemic, she’s just as confused as the rest of us. “So my choice is five hours of homeschooling every day for my daughter and failing her, because I'm not a trained educator, or sending her to a school where she could very likely get this virus or bring it home and get her two year old sister sick or my 79 year old mom, who lives with us,” Duckworth tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “That's the problem: impossible choices.” Duckworth also opens up about just how hostile the Senate was to working moms until a hot second ago. One particularly ridiculous question stands out. “They want to know if you're gonna breastfeed on the floor. [And I said,] ‘I’m not exactly planning on whipping one out in front of them. But if the baby is hungry, I'll feed her.’” Then! Princeton’s Sam Wang talks about the out-of-the-way campaigns that could make a huge difference for decades to come. Plus! A Trump ambassador goes to a Nazi cemetary—and gets all wistful. A Republican candidate swears “celebrities and Democrats catch COVID and magically heal.” The Stephen Hawking of the U.S. House of Representatives displays his genius—at infecting everyone around him. Finally! Rick asks the big questions: Who’s more popular, Zombie Bin Laden or Ron DeSantis? Was Tulsa Trump’s Jonestown? And does Chuck Schumer realize that “he's got Mitch McConnell's balls in a bag for once?”  Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Julie K. Brown, the Miami Herald reporter who helped expose Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes, joins The New Abnormal to talk about what’s next now that Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s right hand, is behind bars. “There's a lot of women right now that are coming forward a lot and they're talking to prosecutors,” she tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson. “There's pretty close to a hundred, from what I hear.” Meanwhile, a judge is close to unsealing a giant pile of documents related to Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking ring. “I hope somebody is standing in Maxwell’s cell when this happens,” Brown says. A year ago, she notes, when just some of those documents were unsealed, and a few big names were found to be in those papers, “Epstein was dead the next day.” Plus! Why Biden needs to be up 15 points in Florida before you can rest easy; how “Jared is slipperier than an eel in a barrel of KY”; why we’re now in the “most dangerous hundred days in American history”; what is “douchebag entropy”; and how, in Molly’s words, “hell hath no fury like a mediocre man trying to get his hands on my uterus.”  Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feeling comfy? Secure? Relatively unbothered by the state of the world? Then consider this: The President of the United States, who holds at his fingertips a devastating nuclear arsenal, also is bragging on television about acing a dementia test that involves remembering five whole words and counting backwards by seven. It’s one of a number of pleasant scenarios contemplated by Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “What I am so impressed with in this administration is how dumb everyone is,” Molly quips. She and Rick muse about which rich scumbags will get shout-outs in those sealed Ghislaine Maxwell court documents. Prof. Eddie Glaude, the Chairman of Princeton’s African American Studies Department, ponders whether Trump is the worst president in 150 years—or the worst one ever. The Beast’s Michael Tomasky wonders which foreign government will attack our election this time. And Molly has a few words for all the media geniuses who think Donald Trump has totally changed his M.O. because he’s finally starting to acknowledge the pandemic: “The guy only has one tone, which is deranged.” Plus! Will Mike Flynn do donuts in a tank on the White House Lawn? Will Bill Barr literally wipe his ass with the Constitution, or settle for a metaphorical move? And what does this phrase mean? “Person. Woman. Man. Television camera. Sean Hannity. Bat shit cuckoo pants.” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary Trump joins The New Abnormal with a giant barrel of tea to spill about her family. Her uncle Donald? “He was protected at every turn from his incompetence, from his total inability to handle money. The media, the banks kept propping him up and protecting him and letting him fail up consistently and constantly—until the Republican party started doing the same thing.” Her grandfather Fred, the family patriarch who got arrested by a Ku Klux Klan rally? “Honestly, that story surprised me. Not because my grandfather wasn’t antisemitic, he was, but because he would spend time doing something other than making money. I'm totally serious. Like he went to a Klan rally with what free time? He's perfectly happy being racist and anti-semitic in his own house and his place of work.” And on the pathologies that drove them all, Mary dives deep. “Just like being kind was weak, or being wrong was weak, so is needing to sleep like a normal human being. I think that's why Donald doesn't sleep, because daddy wouldn't approve. So that's maybe why he drinks 12 diet Cokes a day and is up until three in the morning tweeting,” the Too Much and Never Enough author tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson. Then! The Nation’s Elie Mystal joins Rick and Molly to discuss the passing of John Lewis—and the rise of a new generation of activists. Plus! Can Allen West turn Texas blue? Is Rick part of Antifa? And is there anything—anything—Bill Barr hates more than graffiti? Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Legendary filmmaker Judd Apatow really liked Donald Trump—when he was on TV. “I watched [the Apprentice] all the time because I found it so hilarious that all of his opinions were so wrong and everyone he would fire was always for the wrong reason. It was so terrible and crazy that it was fun to watch,” Apatow tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. These days, Apatow isn’t laughing. “When you're in show business, you meet people like Trump, you meet people who literally don't exist in the same dimension as you; they're just gone. And that's what he's like. He's like Cosby in a way, these people who are completely deluded and they've been famous and all of their wishes are attended to — they lose complete touch with reality,” Apatow adds, calling Trump the “abusive parent to the country.” Then! Washington Post media editor Margaret Sullivan weighs in on the Bari Weiss controversy. “If Bari was truly bullied at work, then that's very regrettable and I'm sorry to hear that, but she was not forced to resign. I guess you could say cancelled herself,” says Sullivan, author of the new book Ghosting the News. Plus! How many minutes will Trump’s new campaign manager last? WTF is up with the Trumps and Goya beans? And how did Molly possibly survive an entire day without Twitter?!  Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joe Biden is so far ahead of Trump, James Carville jokes on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, that the former Vice President could win, even with Gov. Youbetcha by his side. The strategy is simple, Carville tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson: “Attack, attack, attack. Attack from the right, attack from the left, attack from the center, attack everywhere. People say, ‘Well, you know, you got 89% of Republicans will be for [Trump] no matter what.’ Yeah. Maybe so. But watch the number of people that identify as Republicans go down. 89% of 34 is a lot different than 89% of 30.” Then! The Beast’s Erin Banco describes the Trump administration’s “parallel conversations” on the escalating COVID-19 threat. There’s the one the professionals are leading, Banco explains, and “those tend to be pretty serious and Dr. Birx is not shy about issuing warnings to the nation's governors.” Meanwhile, “you have president Trump seemingly either unaware of the conversations that are happening within the taskforce or deliberately twisting the truth.” Plus! Rick begs to go to Gitmo! Molly ponders how the hell you can close Starbucks and open schools. And our wonder twins ask themselves: Are Trump Steaks actually made of … Trump himself?! Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harry Sisson joins the Beast's Joanna Coles to discuss being the target in an AI viral video by President Trump, complete with a crown, a jet, and a very messy payload. He shares his disbelief, how he sees the attack as proof of Trump’s obsession with online feuds, and why he welcomes the attention. Sisson also explains how Democrats can use social media effectively without stooping to the same tactics, highlighting creators like Zohran Mamdani and Gavin Newsom. This episode explores the power of social media, the challenges of political engagement, and the fight to push back against MAGA. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Recode co-founder Kara Swisher has this thing she likes to call the “prick to productivity ratio”—how big of a jerk a particular executive is, verus how much he gets done. And these days, both in Silicon Valley and in Washington, that ratio has gone all wrong. “Taking advantage, just not caring about the consequences—that's being played out in Silicon Valley over and over again. So don't be surprised at what Trump is doing. Silicon Valley sets the tone,” Swisher tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson in the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “Their lack of self reflection is so vast that I always say they can't see themselves in mirrors, like they're vampires.” Then! Separated author Jacob Soboroff talks about exposing the Trump administration’s child detention facilities. “But when you had the opportunity to see what these 5,400 families go through,” he tells Rick and Molly, “it's impossible to understand this for anything other than a government-sanctioned torture program.” Plus! Rick and Molly discover that the Donald used to kick his own children back in the day. And our dynamic duo wonder if anyone can stop the man in the White House from making this pandemic worse. “We need a federal government to control our president,” Molly says. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mary Trump legal battles against her uncle might seem like a fun little political soap opera. It’s way more than that, Mary’s lawyer Ted Boutrous explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. The attempt to stop her tell-all book before publication—“I think it's really an effort to intimidate people from speaking, to intimidate the press. But also it's a political tool. It's a fundraising tool. It seems to excite people who support president Trump,” he tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson. Then! The Beast’s Kate Briquelet—who has broken some of the biggest stories about Jeffrey Epstein’s cabal—joins the dynamic duo to talk about the arrest of Epstein ‘madam’ Ghislaine Maxwell. “There are power players in New York,” she explains “who are very nervous that Ghislaine is going to spill the secrets.” Plus! Does Trump know how to listen to a podcast? Could Kanye’s ‘run for president’ could really, really backfire? How is Ye like Vermin Supreme? And what the hell is “the McKinsey of grift?” Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ben Stiller had no idea he was casting a future president when he grabbed Donald Trump and Melania for a quick cameo in Zoolander. But Trump apparently never forgot about it, Stiller tells Molly Jong-Fast, Rick Wilson, and Matt Wilstein in the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Stiller recalls how Trump even derailed an interview during the last campaign to talk about Zoolander 2. Trump “started going into detail about, you know… in the culture, people don't care about male models anymore,” Stiller recalls. Not that Stiller is particularly gratified by the attention. “Everybody has their own theories about whether or not [Trump] still wants to be president, but I think it's gone so far now. People's lives are being affected. And really, to me, it's not funny anymore. It's kinda just like, it's a little bit insane,” Stiller says. The actor/writer/director/comedian also discusses his work as an advocate for refugees, what it’s like to play Michael Cohen on SNL, what he wants to see from Joe Biden if he wins, and what are the boundaries of comedy in 2020. (“Tropic Thunder probably would not have been made... It would be tone deaf right now to make it,” he says.) Plus! Rick, Molly, and George Conway talk about whether Tucker Carlson will run for president (yes, with Eric Trump as a running mate); whether a war criminal is about to become a new Trumpworld star (unfortunately, that’s a yes, too); and whether our commander-in-chief actually gives a shit about the troops he’s supposed to be leading (hard no). As George says, Trump “expressed more concern about how he was perceived walking down that ramp at West point than he did about the fact that the soldiers that he spoke to that day could go to Afghanistan and get killed, because some Russians are paying money to the Taliban.” Subscribe to The Last Laugh: https://link.chtbl.com/thelastlaugh Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast have some thoughts on the matter in the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “It's not just treason. It's historic treason,” Rick says about the revelation that the Russians offered bounties on U.S. soldiers—and Trump kissed up to the Kremlin anyway. “This is a guy who was already going down into the dustbin of history. And now there's going to be a line at his grave where they're going to have to throw cat litter down. Because people are gonna piss on it for all time.” Plus! Democratic Rep. Connor Lamb talks up his favorite Republican. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison gets real about police unions. (“I'm reluctant to even call it a police union because a union is an honorable, wonderful institution,” he says. “These institutions are not like that at all. The teacher's union does not deliberately harm the kids. Nurses don't hurt the patients. UAW doesn't break the cars.”) And Molly dishes on White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “At least with Sean Spicer, you did feel he possessed a human soul. Whereas with Kaylee, it's just this sort of terrifying, blonde sea of obfuscation.”  Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Digital soldiers. Agenta Margaritaville. Laura Ingraham. What do all these things have in common? They’re all part of the world of QAnon, where up is down, down is right and the end goal is seeing anyone who Tweets negatively about Trump get shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. In Episode 20 of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast talk to Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer about the craziest Q conspiracies (“The first level of Q Anon is sort of a step beyond Sean Hannity.”) Then the two chat with #Resistance superstar Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) about Trump’s racist “Kung Flu” comment, Devin Nunes’ reading level and why Congress won’t just impeach Bill Barr. (“What he's done ranges from the unethical to the potentially criminal.”) Plus! Rick and Molly discuss the MySpace for fascists, Louie Gohmert and how Florida is “killing it,” literally. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Henry Winkler Antifa rumors can finally be put to rest. In episode 19 of The New Abnormal, the Barry actor—who went viral this weekend for proving that he, too, can drink a glass of water with one hand—addresses whether or not he is a card-carrying Antifa member. He also tells hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast his thoughts on the president’s rally (“We are so not in control of the country we think we live free in.”) and what aliens and government have in common. The duo also chat with Andy Slavitt, President Obama’s former head of healthcare, who explains why other countries are running circles around the U.S.’s COVID numbers and what will happen with the virus this fall. Plus, Molly has a younger guest explain the K-pop fandom and Rick shares a special message for Brad Parscale, the website guy. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Molly Jong-Fast, like the rest of us, is rather confused. On the latest episode of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson and Molly try to puzzle through the mystery of Donald Trump’s mustachioed menace. Plus! The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Cartwright tells the juicy backstory behind his big scoop that Mary Trump has written a tell-all book about her fucked-up family. The Beast’s Nicole Phillip talks about how the United States tried to disappear the Tulsa Race Massacre. (“American history, the sins of America? When it comes to race, when it comes to slavery, when it comes to native Americans, it's sanitized. It's whitewashed. It's covered up,” she says.) And be sure to listen to the end, or you’ll miss a very MAGA guest appearance by the Dragon of Budapest himself. No, really. Rick & Molly’s Cameo greeting from Dr. Sebastian Gorka https://www.cameo.com/v/pWetTAiUS Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There’s so much packed into the latest edition of The New Abnormal, it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s see… Molly Jong-Fast heralds the return of Matt “Hot Tub Crime Machine” Whittaker, the one-time Attorney General. (He mixes “a toxic cocktail of macho mega swagger, the angry cant of the Christian [ultra-conservative], and the whining of a petulant child.”) Rick Wilson wonders whether Trumpists could “solve a complex puzzle, like stacking blocks in order,” and ponders the contents of Ted Cruz’s erotic fan fiction. Plus! Former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu goes deep on his long fight to take down confederate monuments. And Sleeping Giants’ Matt Rivitz talks about what it’s like to take on Brietbart, Bill O’Reilly, and Tucker Carlson — and win. He’s been pushing advertisers to drop the race-baiters, and they’ve responded. “This is like the Super Bowl... It's like, okay, brands finally get it. What they choose to support with their media dollars really drives the conversation.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Surprise! As a bonus for our listeners, we have released an interview with Congresswoman Katie Porter who represents California’s 45th District. She tells us about how single mothers are changing congress, why her workplace is often dysfunctional and the resolution she’s supporting to demilitarize the police. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Attorney General Bill Barr was in on Trump’s scheme to bribe and lean on Ukraine’s president. He let his boss’ criminal cronies off the hook. But the worst part, former DOJ prosecutor Glenn Kirschner says, was Barr’s crackdown in Lafayette Square on people just expressing their First Amendment rights. And if Barr isn’t under criminal investigation in 2021 for that, he tells Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast, then “shame on us.” It’s part of a jam-packed episode of The New Abnormal. Rachel Bitecofer of the Niskansen Center for Public Policy, joined Molly and Rick to present her forecast for this November. Of course, the dynamic duo tackle the ultimate fuckery that is the Donald Trump White House, including the president “playing footsie” with Confederate flag truthers, his Twitter-gasm over his Tulsa rally and how the “Bitch Boy” and his minions did the seeming impossible: became even more racist. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sam Mangel, a former Federal prison inmate and current prison consultant, takes the Beast’s Joanna Coles inside Ghislaine Maxwell’s unusual life in a Texas prison camp. Sentenced to 20 years for sex trafficking, Maxwell is receiving unprecedented privileges and security. Mangel explains how other inmates react, the strict lockdowns during secret visits, and why her celebrity inmate treatment is frustrating staff and fellow prisoners. He also explores speculation about her potential early release via a possible deal with the Trump administration. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Trump sent in goons from the Bureau of Prisons, and National Guardsmen from as far away from Utah to take over her town. On the 15th episode of The New Abnormal, Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson what it was like to be under siege from the President of the United States — and how she tried to resist. “We have spent the last week trying to defend our borders, defend our autonomy, and make sure protesters could be in the city peacefully,” Bowser says. Plus! Bowser schools Trump, kindergarten-style; Molly talks about the GOP’s ability to “seize defeat out of the jaws of defeat”; Trump’s “just the tip” excuse; deep state ninjas; and Rick Wilson’s secret past as a NASCAR driver. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lindsey Graham’s new, Trumpy bouffant. Bill Barr’s little authoritarians’ playbook. Tom Cotton’s statist masturbation.They’re all featured on a very not-safe-for-Democracy edition of The New Abnormal. Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson talk to The Daily Beast’s Pilar Melendez how rough the NYPD is being on New York’s streets, and to Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, about peaceful protesters getting teargassed there. Plus! Our dynamic duo ask the important questions, like: Will Cotton’s pseudo-strongman schtick make him a new GOP king? And who is Meghan McCain’s father, anyway? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices