0:00

Black voices are making an impact

0:03

this month and beyond. Keep listening

0:05

to discover one of our favorite

0:06

shows, courtesy of Acast recommends.

0:09

What's going on everybody? This is Tristan McWiles.

0:12

One third of guys next door. And

0:14

if you are hearing my voice, maybe

0:17

you should be listening to guys next door.

0:19

If you ever wanted to get into the mindset

0:21

of the young black millennial man,

0:24

all of the things that we go through love

0:26

sex, relationships, financials,

0:31

technology, mental

0:34

health and everything that lies in between

0:37

this show is for you.

0:39

Now, I don't know what you guys are doing. I know you

0:41

guys are probably listening to a really really nice

0:43

podcast, but make sure you guys go subscribe

0:46

right now to guys next door, and

0:48

we'll see you guys in the neighborhood.

0:50

Peace. Acast

0:52

helps creators launch grow

0:54

and monetize their podcast everywhere,

0:57

acast dot com.

1:02

Hi. I'm Will Summer, and welcome to The Daily

1:04

Beast Fever Dreams. I'm a politics reporter

1:06

at Daily Beast. My book on QAnon,

1:08

trust the plan, the rise of QAnon and the conspiracy

1:11

that unhinged America will be available in February

1:13

and is available for a preorder

1:14

now. And I'm Kelly Weil. I am also

1:17

a reporter at The Daily Beast, and I'm the author

1:19

of the book off the

1:20

edge. Flat Earthers, conspiracy culture,

1:22

and why people will believe anything. On

1:25

this podcast, we're gonna take you on plunges into

1:27

the sometimes hilarious, sometimes scary fanatics,

1:29

infecting the way that millions of Americans view the

1:31

world. And how they vote. Even in the

1:33

aftermath of the Trump administration, the

1:35

energy of these conspiracy theorists, gifters,

1:38

and influencers is still pushing our

1:40

mainstream political landscape closer

1:42

and closer to a breaking point.

1:44

Alright. Welcome back to Fever Dreams.

1:46

I'm Will Summer joined as always by Kelly.

1:49

Kelly, today we have a very special milestone

1:52

to mark.

1:53

Yeah. It is our hundredth birthday,

1:55

so to speak, our hundredth podcast birthday.

1:58

We made it. Woo. Yeah.

2:02

Honestly, this is really wild. I think it's

2:04

rare for podcast to hit this, shout

2:06

out to Heohui, sell the

2:08

names, when getting us this

2:10

far and it's been a wild

2:12

ride. Yeah. It's been quite a journey.

2:14

Willard Scott is gonna be putting our name up on the

2:16

Today Show, podcast fan. Obviously,

2:19

swim, producer Jesse, Long gone,

2:21

Phoebe's editor, no Attachman for

2:23

bullying me into doing this. And most importantly,

2:25

of all the listeners, it's very cool hear from

2:27

people who enjoy the podcast and who tweet

2:29

topics for us to discuss and drive pretty

2:31

good ideas. They are pretty. So just briefly

2:33

up top, we wanted to say thanks everyone because

2:35

Applebee suggests INFORMS US THAT ONLY one

2:37

percent OF PODCAST MAKE IT THIS

2:39

FAR, SO WE DID IT.

2:40

WE'RE NOT THE ninety nine percent ANYMORE. WE ARE

2:42

NOW YEAR NO LONGER POPULIST OVERLORDS.

2:44

We did it. We did a podcast rich

2:46

boys here. Okay.

2:49

Well, hundreds podcast, not the only thing we're

2:51

celebrating. We are one week out from

2:53

the launch of your

2:54

book. How are you feeling? Yes. I'm feeling

2:56

good. Trust the plan. Coming February

2:58

twenty first, it's available for preorder now.

3:00

What better to celebrate the hundredth episode of Fever

3:02

dreams, then by buying my book.

3:04

Buy a hundred copies. A hundredth episode,

3:06

hundred copies. Nice round

3:09

number. Look. If you're sitting here, you're like,

3:11

I like Fever Dreams, but am I gonna like Will's

3:13

book? Trust the plan. Q1 on the conspiracy

3:15

theory arranged America or unhinged America? Well,

3:17

look, book list gave it a starred review. I think we should

3:19

have some more positive reviews coming soon. Some

3:21

excerpts are gonna start coming out ideally and relatively

3:24

soon after you listen to this Pod. So check them out,

3:26

and I'll be posting about it on Twitter. I

3:28

would also like to plug. I'll be March third,

3:30

that weekend. I'll be at the Tucson literary

3:32

festival, paling around if you're in the

3:34

southwest, come through. Maybe we'll look at some Jack

3:36

Die together. I've never been out there, so I'm looking forward

3:39

to it. Phoenix plays a large role in the book, but

3:41

I've not been a Tucson before. Overall, I think

3:43

I'm very excited. And Kelly, of course, you have a

3:45

book dropping as well.

3:46

Yeah. The paper back of my book off the edge

3:48

coming out actually, same day as yours. I'm excited

3:50

it. If you haven't picked up hardcover above the

3:51

edge, now is your chance to get it little bit cheaper.

3:54

I love it. I love it. We gotta get a package deal going,

3:56

a BOGO. So overall, lots of book news. So

3:58

the news news,

4:00

Kelly, what's going on in Congress? Okay.

4:02

So George Santos media

4:04

darling has had all our attention with his very

4:06

colorful and arguably completely false

4:08

resume. But while we were paying attention

4:11

to him, another, maybe up and coming

4:13

fabulous seems to have slipped under the radar.

4:15

I'm talking about Anna Polly and Aluna. She's

4:17

a newly elected representative from Florida

4:19

and some elements of her

4:21

backstory aren't making sense. There was

4:23

a really good Washington Post story the other day.

4:26

It dove into her kind of evolving

4:28

claims about her backstory, including claims

4:31

where she's described herself as Jewish,

4:33

sort of like George Santos, but then had to clarify

4:35

that it's more Jewish She

4:38

says that she was raised by a

4:40

Christian father who was part of the

4:42

messianic Jewish movement. Now

4:44

for folks who don't know this this is not

4:47

a Jewish movement at all. These folks

4:49

are Christians who are really bent on converting

4:51

Jews. And some of her family say even

4:53

that's dubious, her dad's a Catholic. Is

4:56

it just a girl down here? I mean, you're messy attitude

4:58

to your thing. But it is a little

5:00

odd. Sort of like with Eliza Blue who we discussed

5:03

last week, I think. This is someone who is seems to

5:05

be sort of deliberately vague about their background

5:07

and enough that, like, it's kinda hard to catch them

5:09

particularly, like, saying, like, well, you said

5:11

this and this whatever, but there's a lot of, like, going

5:14

on here. And so, I think the implication is

5:16

that her father was Catholic but

5:19

then became a messy anecdote, which is, like,

5:21

truly the craziest stuff to me. Typically,

5:23

I think these are Jewish people who should probably

5:25

just convert to Christianity and they sort

5:27

of split the difference. But the idea of, like, specifically

5:30

becoming a messianic Jew, I think, recalls lot

5:32

of this, like, appropriation of, like, the so

5:34

far and all this stuff these various Christian

5:36

sects get into. Because I think you were leading up to

5:38

kind of the big bombshell about the old Jewish

5:41

backed

5:41

story. Yeah. The hammer drop here is

5:43

that her grandfather appears to have

5:45

fought in the army for Nazi

5:47

Germany. Now listen, I

5:49

think they had a draft but I

5:51

tweeted this out. You know it's a rough way. You're kind

5:53

of skimming a profile. You're kind of a critical profile,

5:55

and it's like,

5:56

alright. Time to drag out the picture of her grandpa

5:58

in the nights beautiful.

6:00

Yeah. When you see that CPA tone picture

6:02

of an ancestor, you know something bad is about

6:04

to come. Yeah. There's that. I mean, there's

6:06

also the thing with her is. Right? So she has

6:08

this background, and there are kinda these questions

6:11

about her. Her ethnic background, obviously, you mentioned

6:13

the Jewish thing. Her name for a while was

6:15

Meyer Hoffer, and then she adopted

6:17

Luna as her name. Obviously, she's in

6:19

Florida. And you know who's weirdly

6:21

like the what did they say? The eight or nine

6:23

most hated words of the English language. Roger

6:25

Stone was right. You know what I mean? Corporate.

6:28

But, like because Roger Stone has been on this

6:30

Annapolis backstory case

6:32

for years and years because he had another

6:34

favorite candidate in this congressional district.

6:37

And so people like Roger Stone and sort

6:39

of his minions have been trying to convince people

6:41

like me at the Daily Beast. To run these

6:43

these, like, oh, Anna Pulena. She claims to have been

6:45

a waitress at a strip club, but, like, they would darkly

6:47

imply What else was going on there? Or they

6:49

she had changed her name. So this has been

6:51

kind of a topic on the right for a while. I think posed does

6:54

a good job of nailing down a lot of this stuff and really,

6:56

really reaching back and going beyond this conjecture.

6:58

There's also this origin story that

7:00

I think a lot of conservatives

7:03

have sort of an origin

7:04

story. These politicians are like, I used

7:06

to be a liberal, but x happened to me. Tell me

7:08

about this, Kelly. Yeah. So there's a saying, like,

7:10

oh, liberal is just a conservative who hasn't been

7:12

mugged yet. Well, she claims that her

7:15

conservative turn came during

7:17

this really frightening nighttime home

7:19

invasion. Her life was at risk. And

7:21

the post talked to her roommates at the time said,

7:24

Nah, that never happened. Someone did break into

7:26

their house during the day, but no one was home, no

7:28

one was at risk. I'm glad you brought up

7:30

the Elijah Blue story from last week because

7:32

this is another case where there's

7:34

a nugget of something there, something bad

7:37

did happen. But there's just been all

7:39

this evolution of the story for what

7:41

sounds like years and

7:42

years. And it's at this point just not really

7:44

lining up with the police wreck card. Right.

7:46

So she claims this is sort of the moment that she got

7:48

into the second amendment, which is then sort

7:50

of how she became a a right wing pundit

7:52

because she was tweeting about second amendment that

7:55

she got picked up by Charlie Kirk, who kinda

7:57

made her a star. So basically, you kinda have to read the

7:59

poster. gets into the nitty gritty here, but essentially

8:01

this idea that there was this home invasion her

8:03

roommate at the time claims that in

8:05

fact that this was a burglary, no one

8:07

was home. There's these various accounts. I mean,

8:09

the police report backs up the roommate's claim

8:11

Anna Pulena has done, I

8:13

would say, a pretty effective job in

8:16

the aftermath of this story coming out, putting

8:18

up enough sort of dirt on

8:20

the post story that I think certainly people on the

8:22

right are not going to treat her like George Santos.

8:24

Post had to make a couple minor corrections. For

8:26

example, there was an issue with her voter registration

8:28

where they claimed she'd registered, I believe, is a Democrat.

8:31

But in fact, this state has nonpartisan voter

8:33

registration. It's a whole thing. I mean, at the core, I think

8:35

there's a lot of interesting stuff in the post story.

8:37

But think Aplina has done a really kind

8:39

of done a full court press here pushing back on it.

8:41

Yeah.

8:42

Absolutely. I mean, on the right, you just need to throw up

8:44

enough dirt to kind of skerer, Target,

8:46

and she's done enough of

8:47

that. George Santos just is not savvy enough.

8:50

So that's the difference between the two of them.

8:52

There's too much. I mean, it's he's like, oh, no.

8:54

Here's a tech from a dog that I

8:56

did get surgery

8:57

for. He can't do that. Alright.

9:00

Will speaking of other in prepping journalism,

9:03

you have done some digging on problems

9:06

at the Vaunted Project Vera to

9:08

us. Alright. This is the big enchilada of

9:10

this week's episode. Excited about this. Okay.

9:13

So last week, as we sat down to record

9:15

the podcast, I was getting hearing rumbles

9:17

that James O'Keefe pranks or prints of right

9:19

wing media was in trouble. Now folks may remember

9:21

him from his decade plus of antics,

9:24

and people would say, dirty tricks, as

9:26

critics would say. Dressing like a pimp,

9:28

taking down acorn, all these undercover stings.

9:30

So but I would say over the past,

9:33

I don't know, two years or so, there have been a lot of

9:35

signs of cracking at Project Veritas

9:37

is nonprofit. I see nonprofit. I mean, they're

9:39

not running a soup kitchen. Right? I mean, these are the people

9:42

who are this is how he runs his undercover

9:44

Yeah.

9:44

This

9:44

is A501C3 for parking outside. Someone's

9:47

house with a long distance camera. Exactly.

9:49

Exactly. Right. I mean, this is the group that a few

9:51

weeks ago, ambushed New York Times reporter, and

9:53

I think pretty solidly got got owned by

9:55

the reporter. I mean, this is not what we would think of typically

9:58

his charity work. There have been some issues. And so the

10:00

lead up to what was go what sort

10:02

of the this all culminated last week.

10:04

But they did layoffs in December, roughly,

10:07

I think, ten percent of the staff. There's this

10:09

FBI investigation. I mean, I'm I'm saying, like, issues.

10:11

It's kinda like maybe the biggest issues you can have. The

10:13

FBI rated James O'Kire's department as

10:15

well as the departments of some of his other associates

10:18

over this alleged theft of Ashley Biden's

10:20

diary, which was sold to Project

10:22

Veritas and then leaked to

10:24

another conservative outlet after they

10:26

apparently refused to do anything with it. And so

10:29

two people who were involved in the sale have

10:31

pleaded guilty, so there's this ongoing FBI investigation.

10:33

The I sort of think they haven't

10:35

been getting a lot of big scores.

10:38

I mean, I think in January, they

10:40

released this video, this Pfizer executive. Who's

10:43

construed in the video as saying that Pfizer was making

10:45

viruses more deadly. That was a huge

10:47

hit on the right. Before that, they were kind of thin on

10:49

stuff. And other thing that's gonna become a recurrent

10:51

theme here in this segment is James O'Keefe's

10:53

obsession with musical

10:54

theater. Now, this is he was a musical theater guy in

10:56

high school. And I think this is sort of the Rosetta Stone

10:58

to under

10:59

You can always tell. Well, once you learn that,

11:01

you go, OKeefe. Because think

11:03

of his passion for costumes and characters.

11:05

I

11:05

mean, someone was saying to me, oh, Will, you're punching

11:07

down a theater kid.

11:08

Listen. If if theater kid start to make six

11:10

figures or more, then I think I can punch up

11:12

at them. This idea that all these high

11:15

school theater kids are like Will said, what?

11:17

Well, it shows off guys. So

11:20

think about the characters, he loves flare. But I mean,

11:22

really over the past few years, he's gotten really specifically

11:24

into doing musical theater through Project

11:26

Veritas. So they did this show

11:28

called the Project Veritas experience where

11:30

you would go and James O'Keefe would do all

11:33

these musical numbers. So they did, like,

11:35

to Prince's song controversy, they did

11:37

Olegard Kiki. And so you'll be like, ah,

11:39

you, Dem or GOP. And

11:42

James O'Keefe is working like a bulletproof vest that

11:44

says press and he's doing kinda like spins and stuff

11:47

and he's got all these backup dancers. And I guess

11:49

I had just been so like a nerd to this that I had

11:51

just seen this so many times that I was like, oh yeah,

11:53

sure. It's the nonprofit that does musical numbers.

11:55

This came out this week. I remember goes, what? This looks

11:57

weird. And I guess it does. But wrapping up the musical

11:59

theater thing, he did the performance of Oklahoma that

12:01

was served with a canceled director

12:03

famous for his sort of outlandish sets,

12:06

but project Veritas spent twenty thousand

12:08

dollars basically relocating staff so

12:10

that he could do this they had to admit that it was

12:12

improper improper use their

12:13

money. So there's all this stuff going on project Veritas.

12:16

So Kelly, what happened last week? Okay. So this like

12:18

a dinner theater running out of a charity

12:21

news site basically. And those think

12:23

would be normally workplace issues enough.

12:25

I don't think I'd want to work someplace that can accepted

12:27

me into a performance of Oklahoma, but it sounds

12:29

like something hit a breaking

12:31

point. Last week, what happened there?

12:33

Yeah. So two weeks ago, something's going down

12:35

at Project Veritas. And I think as we relate

12:38

this story and what think the causes of this might

12:40

be, I think it's worth considering that I think there's still

12:42

something we aren't seeing. But basically, James O'Keefe

12:44

fired two executives. Who it

12:47

seems were sort of either somehow

12:49

got cross wise with him. And so he fired them. This

12:51

was seen as by the board

12:53

as like James was really running a

12:55

mock. And so last week, the board met

12:57

and as they met roughly a third of Project

12:59

Veritas's employees delivered a

13:01

memo to them complaining about James

13:03

O'Keefe's managerial style. Now,

13:06

we've seen some evidence of this in the past. There's

13:08

a lawsuit from a former employee claiming

13:10

that James O'Keefe pulled up porn on his computer

13:12

at work that this was like a really sexually charged

13:14

and racist workplace. Someone had drug overdose

13:17

that the apartment. It alleges, I gotta say here

13:19

Project Veradoc denies all this. But so this stuff kinda

13:21

leaked out in the past, but this memo, which we have

13:23

started out on the Daily Beast, I think really

13:25

gets into this. And these are people who I think

13:28

are true believers, I think it's fair to say. Who

13:30

are saying, like, look. James is really alienating

13:32

all our donors they claim that he's saying everyone

13:34

when you meet him, he's like, look, we need a five or six

13:36

figure check from you. He's really bad during

13:38

these donors, that he left one donor's wife

13:41

near tears because I guess he was rude to her. But I

13:43

guess more importantly, that he's probably treats

13:45

staff really poorly. I mean, I would say first

13:47

of all, the various stories I hear about right

13:49

wing media bosses do not suggest

13:51

that it is always a great place to work. But

13:53

I think the idea that these people who probably

13:56

often are like, oh, I hate snowflakes. That

13:58

they're resorting to some sort of collected

14:00

action, suggests to me that this is really

14:02

extreme situation. They say James subjects

14:04

people to, quote, public crucifixions. If

14:07

he doesn't like what they say. I

14:09

mean, he really is in this memo.

14:11

He's portrayed as this really horrible boss.

14:14

At one point, they had this civil trial

14:16

last year. And he allegedly was he was really angry

14:18

about something because he was hungry. And he was so hungry.

14:21

I will say, this anecdote doesn't really get into details.

14:24

They claim he took a sandwich from

14:26

an eight month pregnant woman. I

14:28

mean, you know, I will say

14:30

James bookkeeping's defenders have since dressed

14:32

this up as like, oh, yeah. So

14:34

what? So we took a sandwich.

14:36

Listen, we don't do handouts here if

14:38

that pregnant woman wants to say on what she needs

14:40

to fight for it. Exactly. Exactly.

14:43

OKeefe. So this memo is delivered.

14:45

The board reinstates these executives.

14:47

James is put on paid leave. I'm kind

14:49

of being specific here, but it's a little unclear.

14:52

This memo goes out where it says, okay, everyone.

14:54

This guy's back and this guy's back. And James

14:56

is on some well deserved vacation. So

14:59

it's a little unclear how how much arm twisting

15:02

was involved to get him to go on vacation. But then

15:04

New York Magazine first reports this, then we report

15:06

more on the memo on Tuesday, I believe.

15:09

And so this sets off a firestorm

15:11

on the right. Keep in mind James O'Keefe himself is

15:13

being, like, totally quiet during all this. But all of

15:15

the kind of people you would

15:17

expect, Benny Johnson and Jack

15:19

so big. I think Orca may be weighed in. I mean,

15:21

really basically every right wing punted

15:23

out there, gets out Lara Logan, and

15:26

they say, Project Veritas is James

15:28

O'Keefe. They can't try to get rid of this guy.

15:30

And I would tend to agree with

15:32

them that Project Veritas doesn't really exist

15:34

without James O'Keefe. But and that makes me think that there's

15:36

something else going on here because this board these

15:39

are not George Soros appointees. Right? I mean,

15:41

these are right wingers themselves. This

15:43

board includes a guy named Matt Teerman. Who

15:45

is a sort of longtime OKeefe

15:48

acolyte slash Bolsonaro fan. These

15:51

are pretty dyed in the world right wingers. And so that

15:53

they had to step in here suggest me that, something

15:55

pretty serious was going on, probably above

15:57

the sandwich issue. And so it's all

15:59

these people like, oh, we hate Project Veritas

16:01

now, whatever. Then on Friday, there was a board

16:03

meeting that sort of doesn't seem to have resolved anything.

16:06

As far as I can tell from my sources, it keeps so

16:08

kind of up in the air, preferred viruses and chaos,

16:11

it's a very confusing

16:12

situation. Kelly, what do you make of all this? I mean,

16:14

there's a lot of parallels here to Infowars.

16:16

Right? We know there's a ton of descent inside

16:18

Infowars. People are leaking videos of Alex

16:21

Jones walking around and drinking, but it's

16:23

really hard to separate that brand name

16:25

from its leader. It's hard to separate

16:27

in force from Alex Jones, the project barrettettes

16:30

from James O'Keefe. And I think

16:32

they are probably right to degree that remove

16:34

James O'Keefe from this media outlet,

16:37

kind of it takes away its figure head.

16:39

Right? But I think that also speaks to

16:41

the lack of substantive journalism

16:44

going on there. If it can't survive without

16:46

its mascot, well, I'm not really sure

16:48

what exactly they were doing right. So

16:51

I think for them to even mull, something

16:53

like putting this guy on paid leave. They know

16:55

it looks bad. That does speak

16:57

to some pretty significant issues

16:59

under the surface there. And I'm I'm really curious to

17:01

see comes out because these folks do

17:03

have a tendency to leak on each

17:05

other. Yeah. So this is what we're entering

17:07

what I call the cool zone. Right? Because

17:11

We should be approaching a point where the board,

17:13

if I'm them, because this board now is being painted

17:15

as all these liberal shells. If I'm the board,

17:18

I start leaking on O'Keefe to

17:21

say, hey, guys. No. Actually, here's

17:23

why we did this. It's not that we're all liberals.

17:25

It's that, like, we had no choice. So far that

17:27

hasn't really happened, at least in

17:29

terms of there hasn't been, like, any secretly

17:31

recorded audio. The other thing to keep in mind here,

17:33

right, is that all these people live with our

17:35

experts at secretly recording audio and video.

17:37

And so think that's kind of the wildcard here.

17:39

A couple more things on this. So a lot

17:42

of the pro O'Keefe side

17:44

is being laundered through the founder

17:47

of the website Old Row, which

17:49

people may be familiar with. It's sort of like a

17:51

college themed martial sports. It's like,

17:53

here's the hottest girls of Tuscaloosa. And

17:55

so for some reason, this guy's linked up with O'Keefe.

17:57

And he has been putting out this narrative

18:00

that the board all this kind of supposed inside stuff

18:02

on the board. But he's now been championing

18:04

some of Project Veritas's donors sent a cease

18:06

and desist to the board. And they said, If you

18:08

don't let James OKeefe do whatever you want, you

18:10

are in violation of nonprofit law. Now, I'm

18:12

not a lawyer, but I don't think the point of boards,

18:14

it's like you are required to let

18:16

him do musicals. And whatever he wants.

18:18

You don't interfere at all. This letter has become

18:21

like a big oh, we're so excited about this thing

18:23

on the right. The final thing I would say is that there's

18:25

an interesting run to Santa's angle, which

18:27

is we're starting to see separate

18:29

from this. We're starting to see some

18:31

more mega figures, particularly this was around

18:34

the RNC chairman. Right? Starting to see more of

18:36

them really sort of specifically say, like, I am with

18:38

DeSantis. I am done with Trump. And a lot of

18:40

these people are based in Florida, and a lot of them

18:42

are people who coincidentally or not

18:44

have been hosted at the governor's mansion.

18:47

Our colleague Jake Lahut at the Daily Beast had story

18:49

about Ron DeSantis recruiting some of these influencers. But

18:51

basically, there are people like John Cardillo who is

18:53

currently under phasing lawsuit over an arms

18:55

deal that went south in Ukraine, these various

18:58

guys. And so and and they're sort of varying degrees

19:00

of DeSantis devote. But what we're seeing

19:02

is the the other side, the real MAGA Trump

19:04

people, are trying to put DeSantis in the jackpot

19:07

here. And so they're seeing a cause that is very

19:09

unpopular on the right, which is to say getting

19:11

rid of James O'Keefe. And they're saying, well,

19:13

Rhonda Santis' people are behind this. And

19:15

it's kinda some tortured logic, but they have,

19:17

like, some pictures of someone like Matt Tirman,

19:19

this board member, or John Cardillo,

19:22

another board member or whatever, and they're saying, the DeSantis

19:24

people are just trying to get around to James O'Keefe

19:26

and loot the treasury. I mean, it these

19:28

stories don't make any sense, but they are

19:30

getting some traction And and I think they're,

19:32

like, weirdly I don't know if they could really matter

19:34

anyway, but, like, we're sort of seeing this as a first flash

19:36

point in an attempt to really slime DeSantis.

19:39

Absolutely. I think the only solution is they get

19:41

together and solve this for the power of dance.

19:44

I'd have to hand it over to Jay and thinking about

19:46

the advance. Foliage there. So this is certainly

19:48

something we'll be watching. Like I said, I think

19:50

there's a lot more to come and it's very

19:52

bizarre to see really one of the rights most important.

19:54

It's weird to call not really per se media outlet,

19:56

but it's sort of really one of the right one media's biggest,

19:58

like institutions, really just sort of tearing

20:00

itself apart over

20:01

those. Right. I mean, I think fundamentally, a lot of these

20:03

people are just bad bosses. Right? They rise to the top,

20:06

not because they're good managers or savvy

20:08

media operatives. But because they're

20:10

a little bit weird, a little bit willing to do

20:12

kind of mean things that most folks won't.

20:14

And after a certain point, there's diminishing returns.

20:17

And, yeah, you start alienating people when you

20:19

steal a pregnant pregnant woman sandwich allegedly.

20:21

And so it's not really a surprise that

20:23

this does seem to continually happen

20:26

to the James OKeefe and the Alex

20:28

Joneses of the world.

20:29

OKeefe. So Kelly, we have obviously,

20:31

we're talking about Donald Trump and DeSantis, but we

20:33

have a couple more people who might be competing for the Republican

20:36

nomination who's thrown their hat in the ring.

20:38

Alright. So we have the next slate of

20:40

also rands are starting to come out.

20:42

We have Nikki Haley. She's a former

20:45

UN ambassador under Trump. She announced

20:47

today, Tuesday, that she is officially running

20:50

for president. We're also seeing rumblings

20:52

from some other folks, Tim Scott, Republican

20:54

senator from South Carolina. We're

20:56

seeing talk from Vivek Ramaswamy.

20:59

He, if anyone knows him, is the author of a

21:01

book about taking down the Wolk

21:03

Inc. So we're getting a lot of

21:05

kinda see tier conservative

21:08

figures. And I don't think anyone

21:10

is really, really getting hyped for Nikki

21:12

Haley run. And I don't think Trump

21:15

is too worried about this either. You look at

21:17

some early reporting out of the Nicki Haley

21:19

campaign, and Trump is sort of like nagging

21:21

her by saying, yes, totally fine if she runs. He

21:23

even said, I talked to her for little while and

21:25

said, look, you go by your heart if you want her on.

21:27

I said, you should do it. So that's

21:29

not really the voice of a Trump who's

21:32

too concerned about a Nikki

21:34

Haley candidacy.

21:35

He was harsher towards Rihanna's halftime

21:37

show performance than he was to Nikki

21:39

Haley running for president.

21:41

Absolutely. You do have to wonder how many of these

21:43

candidates are actually just running for a spot

21:45

in the prospective Trump twenty twenty

21:47

four cabinet or something. Tim

21:49

Scott, I love him because he accidentally

21:52

appears to have, like, leaked his presidential ambitions

21:54

last August when he launched his book. There

21:56

was a blurb about it saying that it was

21:59

political memoir about his core messages

22:01

as he prepares to make presidential bid

22:03

in twenty twenty two. His publisher

22:05

had to go back and say, We didn't mean that. That

22:07

was an error. We didn't mean to have anything about

22:09

a presidential bid on there.

22:11

So listen, are they sending their best

22:14

not necessarily. Of

22:16

course, we know that a lot of the speculation

22:19

revolves around Rhonda Santos or

22:21

as Trump is calling him meatball

22:23

run. I like this.

22:25

This is good. I

22:26

like this meatball run. It's pretty like explicitly

22:29

anti Italian, but

22:31

Yeah. It kind of is, but I like

22:33

that we're witnessing the real time evolution

22:35

of a Trump insult. Right? So he was starting

22:37

with something like ronde sanctimonious, which

22:40

gotta say two out of ten, no

22:42

good, too long, doesn't stick. Meatball

22:44

run for all its anti Italian

22:46

implications, I think it's a really promising

22:49

contender. It's just got that sauce, so

22:51

to speak. And, well, meatball

22:53

slurs aside. Trump has really

22:55

been going in at Rhonda Santos. He

22:57

recently had a truth social tear

23:00

where he suggested that Ron DeSantis

23:02

is maybe a

23:03

groomer. Can you tell me what those posts

23:06

for? Yeah. So this pulled from a sort

23:08

of long forgotten article on

23:10

hill reporter dot com, which is website founded

23:12

by the Crafts scene brothers, the famously

23:14

liberal crime scene. We love the FBI.

23:17

This article is basically this idea that Rhonda

23:19

Santos as a high school teacher

23:21

partied with high school students.

23:24

Now, it's a little unclear what

23:26

what exactly party means. And

23:28

I don't think the allegations really go beyond

23:30

further than that. That said, there's

23:32

this picture of him and these young women who are

23:34

implied to be in high school. And so Trump

23:37

retweeted some of his fans who are talking about this.

23:39

And he does this thing that's very popular, sort

23:41

of among right wing influencers. When something is

23:43

so honestly untrue or at least

23:46

as far as we can tell. You don't say like, wow, Ron's

23:48

stance is a groomer, but Trump goes like,

23:50

wow, could this be true?

23:52

Or he says, Is this real? Or

23:54

I think he says, like, Ron, do

23:56

you think really? And so basically, yeah,

23:58

as you said, he's implying that DeSantis is a

24:00

Peeto. To cut straight to it. Yeah. And

24:03

he's really throwing it out there. I think,

24:05

fever dreams, I think, has been bearish

24:07

on DeSantis' primary chances. The fact

24:10

that DeSantis' he's avoiding this. I mean, the

24:12

great challenge here is anyone facing Trump is that

24:14

Trump gets a lot more latitude to be

24:16

really rude to people and and throw these smears

24:18

in a way that if DeSantis was like, Oh, yeah.

24:20

Well, I hear your repeat, oh, hear this evidence.

24:22

I think it wouldn't look so great for him. So we've

24:25

got that. And then we have this guy who

24:27

I find to be maybe the most interesting

24:29

guy. In terms of flavors of the

24:31

week, those guys that are asking Vivek

24:33

Ramaswamy, tell me about this guy, Kelly. So

24:35

this is someone he's not a politician. I'm

24:38

sure he'd be very happy to tell you that he's an

24:40

author. He comes out of the sort of think

24:42

tank world where he's railing

24:44

against wokeness in corporations, and

24:47

he's posed himself as this populous,

24:50

but within the corporate world. He says he

24:52

had this he worked in business and his

24:54

elite educated peers would

24:56

say something unwelcome in private, but would

24:59

be very equitable and public.

25:01

And he feels like that's hypocritical. This

25:03

is a very common right wing talking

25:05

point, but Ramaswami's positioning

25:07

himself as one of these these truth speakers.

25:09

Right? I think he has a lot of maybe

25:11

Andrew Yang vibes to this

25:13

effect. Right? Yeah. He's kinda like an alternate

25:16

universe Andrew Yang. Because, I mean, he's this

25:18

guy. He's kinda like, I'm an entrepreneur. And

25:20

I've just

25:20

got, oh, politicians. We gotta forget these guys.

25:22

I got big ideas. Yeah. Absolutely.

25:25

Right? He's sort of the industry

25:27

guy who's gonna import his

25:29

ideas into politics. He's been hitting

25:31

the ground in Iowa where he's

25:33

been using he likes to have all these

25:35

corporate matter four is he had a great tortured

25:38

metaphor that he told that he crowd recently said

25:40

we were taught that if you satisfy a moral

25:42

hunger by going to Ben and Jerry's and order

25:44

a cup of ice cream with some social justice sprinkles.

25:46

Now, of course, this is the right, not like, Ben and

25:49

Jerry's because they're like a nominally liberal

25:51

ice cream company. And he's saying, we

25:53

are not gonna satisfy our moral hunger

25:55

with fast food. So he's a thinking

25:57

man's candidate. Right? He's mad at

25:59

work company and he's going

26:01

to bring some truth telling

26:03

into the arena. I I don't think he's any

26:06

kind of real contender, but he's someone who's

26:08

getting his name out there will probably have

26:11

moderately successful podcast in four years

26:13

time and this is a good launching pad

26:15

for

26:15

him. I think that's right. I mean, he's the backstory

26:17

here is, I mean, this is a super rich guy and

26:19

he's emerge. He's kind of the voice against

26:22

Woke Capital. And so he has this book called

26:24

Woke Inc. And he's the big critic

26:26

of environmental and social in

26:28

corporate governance, which is ESG,

26:30

which is this idea that these investment funds

26:33

are not just caring about returns, but

26:35

but things things like global warming. And this has

26:37

become a a big issue on the right. You have

26:39

these red states divesting from pension

26:41

funds and stuff like this because they, for example,

26:43

are trying to invest in fossil fuels. So this is a

26:45

guy who who's had a lot of appearances on cable

26:47

news as sort of businessman who blowing the

26:49

whistle on ESG. But, you know, for

26:51

a guy who talks so much about ideas, So the

26:53

fascinating thing with Andrew Yang was that

26:56

he actually had a lot of ideas, a bit too many.

26:58

Perhaps he was a guy who

27:00

obviously, I think a lot of these outsiders well, I

27:02

have a lot ideas and then you say it's like, oh, my

27:04

idea is government work good. But Inner Yang

27:06

would say things like we're gonna have tax to support

27:08

newspapers and briefly his

27:10

anti circumcision policy, which which I had

27:12

pleasure of interviewing him about. But

27:14

this guy okay. So here's how this political story

27:16

from Daniel Litman, which which sort of broke the news

27:18

of Ramaswami's presidential ambitions. So here's

27:21

what it He's already fashioned a policy platform,

27:23

defeating China economically. Pretty vague there.

27:25

Firing the managerial class of

27:27

the federal government. Now, this is a very, like, thesis

27:30

slash new right idea, which is

27:33

read gut the bureaucracy

27:35

and install our guys. Yeah. They don't

27:37

like the professional managerial which

27:39

is it's a little on the nose because many of them

27:41

are actually

27:42

managers, but they're talking about the other

27:44

kind of manager. Jurassic

27:46

changing or shutting down large numbers of federal

27:48

agencies. I gotta say, I mean, this is all just

27:50

this is normal Republican stuff. Right. Reforming

27:52

Nationals Curiaparas, alright, whatever, and shutting

27:54

affirmative action. I mean, this guy is This guy

27:57

might as well be in the freedom caucus. Like, I mean,

27:59

this is the the usual stuff. So, nevertheless,

28:01

I do think this is an interesting character

28:03

to watch he will receive point five

28:05

percent of the vote in Iowa that go away.

28:07

But I think you're right. I mean, this is when you wanna this

28:09

guy also maybe sort of has like some Pete Buttigieg

28:12

vibes to me kind of like a tech the crap

28:14

and very

28:14

much, I think, like, Nikki Haley, scheming

28:16

for a position, I think, in a cabinet,

28:18

more than actually being president. Maybe he can form

28:21

the other side of the Andreeang forward party

28:23

after that but someone who's got his eye

28:25

in the

28:25

future, but not necessarily a future in

28:27

the White House. I think that's right. Overall,

28:29

I have to say As we close this segment. Getting a

28:31

little more than I thought we would. The drama Swamy

28:34

guy is an interesting character. I think Nicky Haley

28:36

certainly doomed to run should be interesting to watch.

28:38

So I'm glad shape enough to be a little more than

28:40

just versus Trump, just as an observer of

28:42

these things. I think we're already starting to griping

28:44

from the donors who recognize that

28:46

Donald Trump is probably not as competitive a candidate

28:49

as Rhonda Santos and the general. Saying like,

28:51

no. If everyone runs, you're gonna split the

28:53

vote. Trump's gonna wait again, but sometimes

28:55

that's out of cookie crumbles folks.

28:57

Absolutely. Look forward to the back stabbing in

28:59

the end fighting. And yeah, keep it coming for

29:01

the next year and half. Okay.

29:03

Kelly, who do we have on the podcast this week? Our guest this

29:05

week is Kim Kelly. She's the author of

29:08

like hell, the untold history of

29:10

American labor. She's been following the far

29:12

right for years while covering a really interesting

29:14

range of topics. Ranging from the heavy metal

29:16

scene to the labor

29:17

movement. So we're excited to talk to her and

29:19

see what she's up to.

29:23

Feverrid dreams like all daily beast journalism

29:25

exist because of the generous support of our

29:27

subscribers. The people who pay for access

29:29

to daily beast reporting and who are quite

29:31

frankly, our favorite people on the face of the

29:34

planet. Wanna get in on all the action?

29:36

Join now and get unlimited access to these

29:38

reporting, exclusive ad free

29:40

newsletters, and are undying appreciation.

29:43

Head to fever dreams dot the daily

29:45

beast dot com to sign up.

29:53

Alright. We are joined by Kim Kelly,

29:56

author of the book, Fight Like Hell. Kim,

29:58

how's it going? Well, before we started

30:00

reporting, we're talking about the Eagles on Island,

30:02

Philadelphia. So it could be

30:04

better, but it could probably be worse.

30:06

It could have been cowboy Well, I'm

30:08

very sorry for your loss, but I'm

30:10

really stoked to talk to you today about just

30:12

kind of a range of cool stuff you

30:15

cover from labor to heavy metal.

30:17

And I did wanna start off talking about your

30:19

background as a metal journalist.

30:22

And your writing on the metal

30:24

scene has kind of worked in parallel

30:26

to your coverage of the far right. And I was

30:28

wondering if These two topics

30:31

are linked in your mind. Did one

30:33

lead to the other as you were covering

30:35

out your path as a

30:36

journalist? Yeah, absolutely. The thing

30:38

that the world needs to understand about heavy

30:41

metals is that a, it is the best.

30:43

And b, we have lot of nopsies.

30:46

And those two things do not sound like they

30:48

should exist within the same subculture and

30:50

musical genre. And yet, here

30:52

we are because metal is complicated. Yeah.

30:55

I'm stoked to talk about this kind of thing. I suppose

30:57

I am better known now in,

30:59

like, the wider realm of media or what have

31:01

you as a labor reporter is. Somebody else

31:03

got used all the time. But I've been

31:05

a heavy metal journalist critic,

31:07

whatever, for, like, basically, my entire

31:10

life, since I was fifteen. So

31:12

that's what I feel like that's who I am. I just

31:14

happen to have taken a hard pivot in the past.

31:17

Five or six years. And it's

31:19

funny that people don't necessarily even know about that

31:21

part of my work or my life until they see me, you're

31:23

like, oh, you have like a lot of satanic goatetus.

31:28

Yeah. In terms of covering metal and kinda

31:30

covering the far right. It sort of

31:32

became I'm trying to think like,

31:34

a way to word it. Like, metal came first.

31:36

Like, just metal. Just had empty. No

31:39

thoughts. No politics. Just rips forever.

31:41

And then as I grew up,

31:43

got older, learned more about politics, met

31:46

more people left my super rural area

31:48

where I grew up. And I kind of became

31:50

pretty cognizant of, like, we have some

31:52

issues. Right? At first, I realized, OKeefe, there's

31:55

the issue with women and girls because

31:57

as a teenage girl at the Metal Show, this

31:59

has been going great. And

32:01

I realized, Obviously, there's

32:03

issues here with racism, anti Semitism, homophobia.

32:06

This thing that I love, this culture that

32:08

means so much to me that I've grown up in

32:10

has a lot of problems And by the

32:12

time I figured out their analysis running around,

32:14

I was like, someone should do something about this. Right?

32:16

As a writer, I found myself kind

32:19

of pivoting an earlier pivot,

32:21

pivoting towards writing specifically about

32:23

women and people of color and queer folks

32:25

in metal, and about why it sucks

32:27

but there are some bands and some labels

32:29

and some parts of this theme that allow that.

32:31

And I suppose I sort of became known

32:34

as this loud mouth, feminist, SJW

32:38

as like pre antifa panic in the metal

32:40

world. And that was just kind of the focus my

32:42

work started taking. And it's hard to write

32:44

about metal in any real debt especially

32:46

in some of the subgeners like Black Medal, which is

32:48

one of his most complex politically and otherwise,

32:51

without running into these hard questions

32:53

of, like, OKeefe. this band was on

32:55

label with this band and they're Nazis. But

32:57

this band isn't actively part

33:00

of the far right. But, like, maybe they are but

33:02

their label or like this one guy or the drummer

33:04

put out split. Like, there's a lot of research you

33:06

have to do in order to really understand

33:09

who and what you're supporting and listening to.

33:11

And having that, I suppose, comfort

33:14

level with digging into people's side

33:16

projects and posts and paths to figure out what

33:18

was going on. That translated really

33:21

well into figuring out what

33:23

Nazis and other fascists were up to,

33:25

especially because there is such a deep

33:27

unsettling connection between those two

33:29

worlds when you look at things like operation

33:31

werewolf or just some of

33:33

the leaders of various far right

33:35

movement instead of ended up at metal shows.

33:37

Like, it's our problem too. And

33:40

I suppose there once I figured that out,

33:42

once that lightning bolts struck me, there's really no

33:44

way to separate the art from the artist.

33:46

Right? Like, to separate the fact

33:48

that I love metal and I'm writing about

33:50

metal and I know a little bit about metal by

33:53

now. And the fact that we have this cancerous

33:55

aspect of our community. Yeah. It's

33:57

complicated, man. So a little

33:59

anecdote here. Who was back a

34:02

few years ago, and you were holding

34:04

a metal festival in Brooklyn. And

34:06

I'm like, I'll show up, I'll support, and

34:08

me not being a metal head at all. I show up in,

34:10

like, light washed jeans. One

34:12

of the most embarrassing situations

34:14

I've ever been in, being the person not wearing

34:17

all black at a metal festival won't ever do

34:19

that again. But I thought

34:21

that place was that festival was really interesting

34:23

because it was about pushing back on

34:25

the far right in the middle scene. And

34:27

I was hoping you could tell me just a little bit more

34:30

about how a community,

34:32

a fairly small community, can

34:34

resist against far right elements That

34:37

was twenty nineteen. It was black flags

34:39

over

34:40

Brooklyn, an antifascist metal festival,

34:42

a couple of bodies that I put together. And

34:44

then, yeah, was explicitly advertised

34:47

and organized and held

34:49

as an anti fascist, anti racist,

34:52

deeply inclusive event, like most of bands

34:55

playing were either people of color,

34:57

they're clear, they're trans, they're women, like, it it

34:59

did not look like a typical extreme

35:01

metal show, but it was awesome. And it just

35:03

kinda showed, like, you don't have to give it

35:05

in the platforming garbage bans just

35:07

because, like, there are plenty of other

35:09

good bans out there that deserve our support.

35:12

And I was really, really happy that

35:14

I got to do that. Really happy it went well.

35:16

And I think it just showed that we

35:18

can take these spaces back. We don't

35:20

have to see ground under the far right. We don't

35:22

have to let the Nazis into our shows. I

35:24

mean, hunks and skin heads in the eighties

35:26

really figured it out way before metal did,

35:29

like, oh, there's nazis coming to our shows.

35:31

Let's beat them up. And then they'll stop.

35:33

And I'm sure there's other

35:35

ways to approach that issue. You

35:37

can do that, and I think that's fine. Or

35:40

can just create very intentional

35:43

spaces and be very obvious about

35:45

who you wanna support, who you don't wanna support. I

35:47

mean, there's been, over the past few years,

35:49

really in the past five years, especially, I

35:52

would say there's been a big movement in

35:54

in the extreme end of world of more

35:56

like more explicitly anti fatless, lefty,

35:59

queer and trans bands who are getting

36:02

support, who are getting out of there, who getting

36:04

signed to labels. And on that flip

36:06

side, like, there have been a lot of fans

36:08

who have garbage politics, who

36:11

aren't getting the support they use. To get or getting

36:13

their shows or their tours canceled or getting dropped

36:15

from their labels. Like, there has been a real

36:17

groundswell of effort in

36:19

the medical community to clean

36:21

up our own backyard little bit. And it

36:23

just shows that it's possible. It's

36:26

worthwhile. It's doable. It's just

36:28

hard that it can be awkward. Sometimes you have

36:30

to throw out some of your records and sometimes you have

36:32

stop talking to some of your homies. But ultimately,

36:35

it's worth it because if metal is

36:37

gonna be something that is a

36:39

successful to everyone. Not unlike

36:41

anybody could pick up a record and be like, oh, great.

36:44

This is just as easy to listen to is Rihanna

36:46

or whatever. But just in terms of no one

36:48

accept a Nazi can show up at a medal show

36:50

and feel like I don't belong. That's the

36:52

goal. Like, it's the best thing in the world.

36:55

Everybody who doesn't suck should

36:57

be able to walk into a metal show and

36:59

oh cool. I belong here too.

37:01

So Kim, moving on to your labor reporting.

37:04

You're the author of fight like hell the untold

37:06

history of American labor. What is the

37:08

state of the labor movement in the United States? I realize

37:10

that's a pretty broad question, but just sort of for someone

37:12

who's on the ground covering

37:13

it, what sort of actions and developments are

37:15

you keeping an eye on? There's so much happening.

37:17

You can kind of pick your struggle at this point. Pick

37:19

your industry. If you're interested in

37:21

what academic workers grad students are up

37:23

to. Student there are grad student workers

37:25

at Temple in North Philly on strike right

37:27

now. She's interested in the tech world and

37:29

in fighting back against that whole realm.

37:32

Tesla workers, I can't remember exactly

37:34

where, but they just filed to unionize today.

37:37

There's a coal minor strike in Alabama. There

37:39

are Teamsters everywhere doing what Teamsters

37:41

do. The United Auto Workers

37:44

were the stored industrial union. They're

37:46

in the middle of this bitter reform

37:48

fight to try and elect someone who isn't

37:51

stuck into that decades old hierarchy

37:53

and trying to bring in some new life into their part

37:55

of the movement. There's really so much happening.

37:57

We see the numbers of public support, seventy

38:00

one percent highest since the sixties.

38:02

We see that we have at least on paper.

38:04

And in some ways, in actuality, this

38:07

very pro labor administration that

38:09

is at the very least making things lot

38:11

easier than they were back when we had that other

38:13

guy in here. There's a lot of room to

38:15

grow, lot of opportunity, still a lot

38:17

of red tape, a lot of bullshit, a lot of

38:19

rickety, jack, dev labor laws that

38:21

don't help the people they need to be helping. There's

38:24

still so many problems. We still

38:26

have so much to push through,

38:28

to get even a tiny bit closer

38:30

to the kind of working class collaboration we deserve.

38:33

But it's a really exciting moment and

38:36

I am just stoked that I get to be part of

38:38

helping to tell that story and amplifying worker's

38:41

voices and putting out the idea

38:43

that unions really are for

38:44

everyone. Except cops because fuck the cops.

38:47

So you kicked at that previous president

38:49

we had, and what's interesting is

38:51

the right likes to kind of position itself as

38:53

this friend of Blue or workers. Right?

38:56

But my read is that the relationship

38:58

with unions is a bit more complicated

39:00

than

39:00

that. So what's the rights deal

39:03

with labor unions? They

39:05

like to prop up certain

39:07

kinds of union workers and use

39:09

them as political pawns or as backdrop

39:12

to photo opportunities. Think about all

39:14

the times Trump put out a heart hat and stood around

39:16

extra some people who've actually worn car hard

39:18

and pretended to be a big man's man,

39:20

working man. But the proof is in

39:22

the pudding. As an example, I can point to

39:24

at a store I've been coming for almost two

39:26

years now, there are hundreds

39:29

of coal miners have unstripe right now in rural

39:31

Alabama. It's a multiracial,

39:33

multilagenda workplace, but it is

39:36

a predominantly Christian or

39:38

conservative, rural blue

39:40

collar, red state, whatever kind of vibe.

39:42

Like a lot of those folks voted for Trump allowed

39:44

those folks vote for Republicans, though that

39:46

might change after the strike. But there's been

39:49

no support whatsoever from Republican petitions

39:51

from Republican conservative media,

39:54

from their own state officials who

39:56

are all Republicans. So and these are

39:58

coal miners. Like, these are the kind of archetypal

40:00

blue collar worker that Republicans

40:03

and conservatives like to prop up as real

40:05

Americans, real work and they've completely

40:07

amended them because those workers are

40:09

on strike from their labor union.

40:11

They don't wanna give up their union. They know that

40:13

history means something to them. And that just

40:15

says so much about the way

40:18

that Republicans and Conservatives trying

40:20

cosplay as blue collar

40:23

understanders or working class knowers

40:26

but are really just a bunch of soft

40:28

handed suits that will never

40:30

actually show up when workers need

40:32

them. They just wanna use us as pawns.

40:35

And I hope that more people sort

40:37

of start to understand that

40:39

because the democrats aren't very

40:41

good at looking tough or cool.

40:44

And and they have

40:46

this sort of out of touch, elite, whatever,

40:49

stake on them. But someone has to

40:51

show for the workers. And if it's neither of those

40:53

guys, that and we're in well, we're still

40:55

in hot water. We've been in hot water for Mad Long,

40:57

but whatever. I could go on about that for a long

40:59

time. But all that to say is, Republicans

41:01

are full of shit when I pretend to care about

41:03

blue collar workers. I am always here

41:05

to call them out when I have the opportunity to do

41:07

so.

41:08

So you talk about this idea that coal

41:10

miners are the real working man's workers.

41:12

One thing that I've noticed in a parallel

41:15

labor issue going on right now, which

41:17

is the efforts by Starbucks workers

41:20

to unionize. The right loves

41:22

to denigrate those workers. And I see these tweets

41:24

all the time. They'll have a picture of a barista

41:27

that's almost always a woman, often woman

41:29

of color. They're being like, is this someone who

41:31

really need a union? And I was wondering

41:33

if you could speak to this effort to sort of

41:35

divide union work in between this

41:37

stereotypical

41:39

men and hard hats camp and stuff

41:41

that women do. This has been

41:43

a be it my bottle and many other bottles

41:45

for a really long time because it's such a transparent

41:48

and cynical ploy that

41:50

people and power users trying to buy the workers.

41:53

This is something that I get in this is my book

41:55

a lot, but this is in general going back throughout

41:57

the centuries. Before it was well,

41:59

black and white workers. Black workers don't

42:01

deserve a union because there's that the other

42:03

reason that we have decided upon that

42:06

it was different types of immigrants, that

42:08

it was ground workers, specifically

42:10

workers from Latin America and Mexico to

42:12

South America, and it's always

42:15

been women. There's always

42:17

been this effort to try to act as

42:19

though occupations that are

42:21

predominantly held by women and female

42:23

people are just not as hard.

42:25

They don't count. You don't need a union. You should

42:27

have a husband. Whatever NOx's

42:30

nineteen fifties era bullshit that they're still

42:32

trying to convince people is actually

42:35

viable. I mean, we when

42:37

you talk about the Starbucks workers, it's the same kind

42:39

of ire that I see directed at grad

42:41

students at striking academic workers

42:44

or nonprofit workers. Journalists,

42:46

media workers, anybody who

42:49

whose occupation doesn't fall into

42:51

that very narrow, okay, factory

42:53

worker, coal miner, person in

42:55

a hard hat who has bad political opinions.

42:57

If you don't fall into that very, very

43:00

small slice of existence, it's

43:02

as though your labor doesn't count. And

43:04

obviously, that's nonsense. Every

43:07

worker needs a union. If you have a boss,

43:09

you need a union because you're probably getting

43:11

screwed and the only way you can fix this by

43:13

organizing collect I think there's

43:15

a very real reason that

43:17

that kind of anti worker line

43:20

is being pushed because if more workers

43:22

realize that they do have access to

43:24

you news and do have the ability to organize, they'll

43:27

do it, and that will cause problems for

43:29

the powerful people that are interested

43:31

in keeping them down and profiting off their labor.

43:34

It's like, honestly, it's the scam. And

43:37

right wing idiots like, to claim the enemy

43:39

vague culture worth thing they can think of so being,

43:41

like, oh, pink haired, librarian

43:44

or Starbucks barista. They don't deserve rights.

43:47

Like, that's what they're saying. When they say these

43:49

workers don't deserve a union, you don't

43:51

deserve rights. They just found

43:53

a way, a slightly more clever way to say

43:55

it. They won't give them yellow that quite as much,

43:57

but that's what they're saying, and that's what the issue

43:59

is. So can we talk to earlier on the episode

44:01

about the East Palestine train derailment?

44:03

I'm seeing a lot of chatter sort of relating

44:06

this, maybe not this incident particular, but

44:08

to the threatened train worker strike and

44:10

their safety concerns. Can you I mean, I feel

44:12

like there were a lot of different things out there

44:14

about, like, what this threatened strike was about.

44:16

As a labor

44:17

reporter, can you sort of drill down on that and the

44:19

current status of that and whether this might have played

44:21

a role in this derailment? I mean, I've seen

44:23

real workers saying we warned you,

44:26

we told you somebody this could happen

44:28

because when they were trying

44:30

to market those contracts and they

44:32

were threatening to strike. It wasn't just

44:34

over money. It wasn't just

44:36

over sick pay, though that was a huge part.

44:39

And a very important part that kinda

44:41

got left by the wayside because the government was

44:43

too scared of workers actually enacting

44:45

any kind of economic impact

44:48

that they need captain. But one of the big

44:50

issues that the workers were concerned about that

44:52

they're screaming about is safety. Is

44:54

it under staffing? Is on the fact that

44:56

the folks who are working on these trains who

44:58

are pulling these long shifts, they

45:00

don't have what they need to do that safely.

45:03

Because these massive corporations

45:06

masquerading as modern day railbarons,

45:08

they cut the workforce down. They rely

45:11

on these sort of It's hard to explain

45:13

that I forgot the actual name. We use this kind

45:15

of algorithmic almost systems

45:17

to try and make things more efficient. More

45:19

efficient doesn't mean safer or

45:22

better or smarter. It just means someone

45:24

somewhere save in a buck. And

45:26

play the fact that we're seeing so many

45:28

railroad workers or railroad workers union speak

45:30

up after this horrific tragedy say.

45:32

We told you we told you something that

45:34

this could happen if safety isn't

45:37

a paramount aspect of what

45:39

you're doing. I think it just goes

45:41

to show that maybe folks would have

45:43

listened A little bit more if

45:45

the workers hadn't had the federal government

45:48

shove a contract down their throats and

45:50

forced them back to work. It's almost as

45:52

if the people who do the jobs and

45:54

spend time in that environment know

45:56

better than the people that sit in offices in

45:59

Washington and pick their

46:00

noses. But what do I know about all

46:02

that? So, Kim, you've been really

46:04

close to the activist community for

46:06

a while. And One thing I recall

46:08

is back in twenty seventeen, you're at the

46:10

right in Charlotte. So you were actually there in that

46:12

crowd that I knew not secret of a car

46:14

until And I'm

46:16

wondering, surviving an event like

46:18

that, does that shape your

46:20

coverage as a journalist looking at

46:22

the far right? Yeah, I mean, that kind of changed

46:25

everything. Definitely broken my brain.

46:27

Gotta laugh. Right? But, yeah, I was not only in

46:29

the crowd. I was just, like, three feet away

46:31

from the car, and I got a

46:33

front row view of Heather Hires death

46:35

when I had friends who were pulled under the cars,

46:37

friends who were previously injured during

46:40

that moment. I just happened to jump

46:42

at the right moment. And so going into

46:44

that and coming out of that and being lucky enough

46:47

to come out of that physically unscathed, it

46:49

just sort of it washed away any

46:51

remaining fear or trepidation had

46:54

about being loud and

46:56

public about saying guests, I'm an antifascist.

46:59

I'm an anarchist. This is who I am. This is what

47:01

I believe. This is what we're fighting

47:03

before. Because when you work within

47:05

the media ecosystem, especially in the time

47:07

I was working at vice, which is, like, not exactly

47:10

the Wall Street Journal. Right? But it was still

47:12

a moment where I thought I was thinking to myself, I'm

47:14

not sure how public, I wanna be about my involvement

47:16

in this world, about my actual political views.

47:19

But after that, it's like, well, Nazi

47:21

just tried to murder create a bunch of my friends.

47:23

There's not really what am I afraid

47:25

of now? Being part of the anti fascist

47:27

world has been such an important aspect

47:29

of my life for so long, like all my best

47:31

friends are anti fascists. I met my boyfriend.

47:34

And occupy ice. It's an it's

47:36

an important part of who I am and I bring that into

47:38

my reporting and in a way that especially given

47:41

the fact that I write predominantly about labor issues

47:43

now, There are ways that you can bring that

47:45

energy into that world. I would say

47:47

specifically about the way I'd talk about the presence

47:50

of police within the labor movement.

47:52

It's funny to be this like tattoo

47:54

heavy metal anarchist who somehow

47:57

is semirceptible now. And

47:59

I encountered people that don't necessarily know

48:01

my deal. don't know what

48:03

my gay teen tattoo means or know where

48:05

was in August twenty seventeen. Because

48:07

sometimes I tell them, sometimes I don't, but

48:09

I always have that in the back

48:11

of my mind when I'm deciding what to cover,

48:14

who to talk to, how to approach things because

48:16

it's not something you can forget and

48:19

you can't let yourself forget that and

48:21

you can't forget who the enemy

48:23

is and who we're fighting for. No

48:25

matter how you are using

48:27

your energy, whether you're writing about energous

48:30

black metal or writing about how

48:32

cops have no place in labor movement. Or

48:35

writing about whatever other nonsense you can

48:37

trick an editor and to let you write about that

48:39

freelance and you know how that hustle goes.

48:41

It's entwined in my DNA now.

48:44

And I think it's part of why I probably will

48:46

never really get a job at, like,

48:48

the Wall Street Journal, political, whatever. Because

48:50

that's not something I've ever going to

48:52

silence, and I'm never gonna pretend to

48:55

be objective because I know which

48:57

side I'm

48:57

on. Great. Well, Kim, before we let

48:59

you go, I've never really had banked my

49:01

So What's a good intro to the metal

49:03

scene? Oh, good lord. Well, it depends

49:06

on the kind of music you like. I am a firm

49:08

believer that there is a metal band for

49:10

everyone.

49:11

I like the hold steady, the mountain goats.

49:14

Okay. Well, you know what? I'm

49:16

just gonna throw it out there because

49:18

it seems like I appreciate Melody and

49:20

intricate lyrical themes. Maybe the heavier

49:23

stuff will come with it. There's a bank called Fall

49:25

of Afra. I'll send it to you. Follow

49:27

the frothy. They're like kind of a

49:29

neo crust band. And that doesn't

49:31

make sense when I just say it like that, but

49:33

it trust me, it's real. Or

49:36

since I've been talking a lot about Erica's stuff

49:38

about Black Mountain, one of my favorite bands

49:40

is Dawn Raid from the K. They're

49:43

an antifascist enterprise, black male band,

49:45

and their new record has a lot of really pretty

49:47

folk influenced parts. Like, there's a violin.

49:50

Like, it's If you wanted to get

49:52

into black metal or a fascist

49:54

metal in general, that would be a great gateway

49:57

because you can figure out what speaks to you

49:59

and kind of follow follow your

50:01

nose from there. And then there's always, like,

50:03

black sabbathies you just wanna turn your brain

50:05

off, which in this economy, why

50:07

wouldn't you?

50:09

Great. Well, thank you, listening to you talk here. I realize

50:11

that this is kind of a blind spot for me. Well,

50:14

again, we've been joined by Kim Kelly. She's

50:16

a labor reporter and she's the author of fight

50:18

like hell, the untold history of American

50:20

labor. Kim, thank you so much for joining us.

50:23

Thank you for having me. The paper bag

50:25

comes out on August twenty ninth

50:27

And I'm extremely online always

50:29

around. Just keep an eye on him. Alright. Graham

50:31

Kim on Twitter as well. Okay, Kim.

50:34

Thank you.

50:43

Alright. And now it is time for Fresh Hell,

50:45

will we tell you the thing that no one

50:47

is actually talking about? Will, can

50:49

you tell me how no one is talking about

50:51

the train derailment in East

50:53

Palestine, Ohio. Okay.

50:55

So February third, there was this train derailment

50:58

in East Palestine, Ohio. People may have seen the

51:00

news about this. It has resulted in

51:02

this toxic cloud that really

51:04

looks awful. And so this seems like a horrible

51:06

environmental situation. What I think is

51:08

interesting here got couple listener requests to

51:10

talk about this because people were wondering,

51:12

I mean, why so many right wingers

51:14

seem to really be focusing on this? And suggesting

51:17

that there's something tad more nefarious

51:19

at play because I think if you look at the

51:22

the sort of the conservative playbook of

51:24

twenty years, this idea of giant

51:26

corporation spills chemicals everywhere

51:29

would not become a Republican called

51:31

Salab. Right? But in fact,

51:33

this one has. And so I think there's a couple things

51:36

to play here. I think the most obvious is this

51:38

is being used as sort of a cudgel on

51:40

Pete Buttigieg, which, I mean, obviously, I

51:42

don't know how fair that is, but I mean, he is

51:44

the inventory of transportation. So kind of a pretty

51:46

typical political move there. I think there's some more

51:48

interesting aspects. One is this

51:50

idea that the balloons. Everyone loves the balloons.

51:52

We're hearing so much about them and the UFO's, that

51:55

you might think the UFO's would be

51:57

plenty of material for conspiracy

51:59

theorists if you were so inclined to think

52:01

about. But it sort of seems like they're not that end

52:03

of the balloon. Is this the sense you're getting as well, Kelly?

52:05

Yeah. This is so interesting. Right? Because you and

52:07

I both have books about conspiracy theories and when

52:09

people think about a typical conspiracy theory

52:11

to think about moon landing, UFO's, aliens

52:14

and everything. That doesn't really seem to

52:16

what the hell anymore. Now the

52:19

UFO's or unidentified balloons

52:21

are actually being posed as a front

52:23

for a real conspiracy. People are

52:25

saying that everyone is focused on these balloons,

52:27

which in many cases seem honestly to

52:29

be weather balloons that's still developing. There

52:32

are actually to cover up for something maybe

52:34

the derailment in Ohio. And

52:36

this isn't just like a couple wing nuts suggesting

52:39

this. Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted this

52:41

weekend, she's saying, She tweeted, East Palestine,

52:43

Ohio is undergoing an ecological disaster

52:45

because authorities blew up the train derailment

52:47

cars. She says, oh, but UFOs.

52:50

What is going on? Edward Snowden

52:52

advanced different theory that the balloons

52:54

were a distraction for another cause of

52:56

his. And it is interesting

52:59

that we have something that's kind of an event.

53:02

Interesting balloons, it could be enough

53:04

to get conspiracy theorists of old

53:06

talking about aliens. But in this case, it's actually

53:09

a front for something

53:10

else. Yeah. I mean, I think the reason

53:12

the balloons have failed to catch on, beyond,

53:14

shoot them down. Shoot the first one down, and then it

53:16

gets shot down. I think, oh, okay. Is there not really a

53:18

political violence at least one that can be exploited

53:21

really because Biden shooting down the balloons.

53:23

So they can't do much with that. But

53:25

what you can do is something that I think we're

53:28

seeing more and more of over the past few years, which is,

53:30

oh, you think that thing in the news is important?

53:32

That's just a distraction you simple tune.

53:34

And we see this summed up in a meme that's popular

53:36

with the en masse, which is what they call the current

53:38

thing. Right? And so what normal people

53:40

and people who haven't taken the red pill might

53:42

call news or the progression

53:45

of time or current events, this idea

53:47

that things change and certain things are in

53:49

the news, that instead is all an elaborate distraction.

53:52

And so that, for example, oh, you thought

53:54

COVID mattered? You thought a worldwide pandemic

53:56

that killed millions of people? No. No. No. That's

53:58

an MPC way of thinking. That was a distraction

54:00

for something else. Or then it became, of course, George

54:03

Wood's death, or it became a couple it's

54:05

January six would be another example. And so they're

54:07

saying, oh, this big thing of the news are Ukraine for

54:09

example. Oh, that's a ruse. And so now the

54:11

balloon is gonna be treated the same way. And

54:13

people are saying, as you said, Market Taylor Green

54:15

is implying it's a distraction. So

54:18

a distraction from one. Right? Why?

54:20

What is the implication? Why do they need to people

54:22

from the train derailment going back to that. Well,

54:24

this ties into the longstanding

54:27

conspiracy theory on the right for at least the past year. That

54:29

something's up with the food supply chain, not

54:31

just that it's COVID or what have you or the avian

54:34

flu, but that there's something nefarious

54:36

So for example, one popular tweet I saw

54:38

said, do you guys realize how much farmland is

54:40

in Ohio? There's seventy five thousand farms. Ninety percent

54:43

of them are family farms. This says untold direct

54:45

food supply chain impact. So the implication

54:47

here is that the derailment was somehow

54:49

meant to sabotage the food, which

54:52

is if you kind of pull back the lens a little

54:54

bit, the further implication is that, like, the

54:56

cabal is trying to cause chaos. The

54:59

other thing I I'd wanna hit on here is if

55:01

you search trained derailment Amish.

55:03

Interesting thing here because the other conspiracy

55:05

theory is that the derailment was an attempt

55:08

to somehow undermine the

55:10

Amish community. Now there

55:13

is sort of a a thing over the past few years

55:15

on the right. Amish really been treated like these

55:17

beloved mask and sort of the American

55:19

enclave that will save America. I wrote

55:21

a story about how this farmer is Amish guy

55:24

who had repeatedly flouted federal

55:26

food inspection laws and allegedly caused

55:28

a food illness outbreak that he became this kind

55:30

of caught the lab on the right and was featured on

55:33

Tucker Carlson because these food regulators

55:35

dared to ask him to not spread.

55:37

Castro rise his story.

55:38

Yeah. Exactly. And so this idea

55:40

that, like, oh, the infamous derailment was meant to

55:42

stop the Amish because they're anti woke and they

55:44

won't get vaccinated is also really really

55:46

prevalent out there.

55:47

Yeah. And I think it's interesting. Right? This is

55:49

part of a broader trend

55:51

of the right will occasionally pick

55:53

up some populist messaging. It's also

55:56

popular with the left. Right? The

55:58

left blikes environmental issues certainly

56:00

calling attention to some of

56:02

the labor issues that may have resulted in this train

56:05

derailment. The right wants

56:07

to hint in that direct and writes, say that

56:09

there's a really big issue that's being under covered. I

56:11

would actually argue that you can look up information

56:13

about the Storama on every single news site

56:15

that there's It's not entirely true

56:17

that nobody is talking about this. A lot of people are

56:19

talking about this. But they will take that sort

56:22

of populous, I think, very legitimate

56:24

anger and redirected away

56:26

from the labor issues, away from the environmental issues

56:29

into the idea that middle America

56:31

that these hard scrabble blue collar tones

56:34

are being put in the eye

56:36

of a globalist plot. And

56:39

III think that's probably pretty savvy

56:41

messaging. They understand that there is

56:43

pretty across the political spectrum,

56:45

a lot of legitimate anger at

56:47

this derailment. And instead, they're

56:49

saying that this is part of a larger plot

56:51

that we've been warning you about. And so I think when

56:54

they hinted the weather balloons being a distraction,

56:56

well, you forget that what two we've ago Marjorie

56:58

Taylor Green was all about the weather balloon. She

57:00

was bringing a weather balloon into the state of the

57:02

union where think she may have been dressed as a weather

57:04

balloon with that big white coat. I'm not really sure with

57:07

the underlying motive there was.

57:09

But they are looking for,

57:12

I hate to say, current thing, the

57:14

tie in to take what is

57:16

a very in the news actually issue

57:18

and make it relevant to their own

57:21

long running conspiracy theories.

57:31

On that note, let's wrap up this episode

57:34

of Fever Dreams from The Daily Beast. In

57:36

future installments, we'll also be speaking to some

57:38

amazing guests at The Daily Beast and

57:40

Beyond. From politics to popular

57:42

culture. We hope you'll subscribe to us on

57:44

your preferred podcast app and share the show

57:46

on social media and at your family dinner table.

57:48

If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm at

57:50

Will Sommer, and Kelly is at

57:53

Kelly Weil. That's WEILL.

57:56

Come say hi. This podcast is produced

57:58

by Jesse Cannon with music by Brian Demaglia.

58:01

Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

58:20

Black voices are making an impact this

58:23

month and beyond. Keep listening

58:25

to Discover one of our favorite

58:26

shows, courtesy of Acast recommends.

58:29

When going on everybody. This is Tristan McWile.

58:31

It's one third of guys next door. And

58:34

if you are hearing my voice, maybe

58:37

you should be listening to guys next door. If

58:39

you ever wanted to get into the mindset of

58:41

the young black millennial man, all

58:43

of the things that we go through love,

58:46

sex, relationships, financials,

58:51

technology, mental

58:54

health, and everything that lies in between

58:57

this show is for you.

58:59

Now, I don't know what you guys are doing. I know you

59:01

guys are probably listening to a really really nice

59:03

podcast, but make sure you guys go

59:05

subscribe right now to guys next

59:07

door, and we'll see you guys in the neighborhood.

59:10

Peace. Acast

59:12

helps creators launch grow

59:14

and monetize their podcast everywhere,

59:17

acast dot com.