Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
It’s a new year but the rate of abnormal events, and abnormal people doing abnormal things, has not slowed down. If anything, it's ramping up.
Case in point: Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Twitter ban, as well as the interaction between right-wing media influencer Candace Owens and conservatives’ dear leader, former President Donald Trump, on vaccines.
It’s something that The New Abnormal podcast hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy found particularly interesting, and hypocritical.
Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast. To listen to our weekly members-only bonus episodes, join Beast Inside here. Already a member? You can listen here and sign up for new episode email alerts here.
“Her big defense of him [is] that he’s old and he’s not on the internet enough, as if the less you’re on the internet, the more you probably know,” says Andy. “That’s not how it works, given the amount of false information on the internet. And this is the guy you want to be president again in 2024— on the one hand, you love him, he’s your savior, but now he’s like this senile old man who can’t open a web page.”
He and Molly also talk about how Trump could have helped sway anti-vaxxers by getting the booster publicly, or announcing he got it, but he didn’t, “because fundamentally he’s a coward,” adds Andy.
They also discuss some new nicknames for the former first daughter, including Ivanka “I Tried” Trump as well as the reason Trump won’t ever diss the vaccines, even if it means losing support from his base.
Plus, vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez tries to answer Molly’s COVID-19 questions, including what the CDC was thinking when it made that five-day rule and how Omicron can still take us down.
And then the show gets an international take when The Nation columnist Jeet Heer confirms that Canadians are in fact prepping for America to become a fascist state.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.