In another jam-packed week of GOP fuckery, The New Abnormal co-hosts Molly Jong Fast and Andy Levy looks at look at the party’s profiles in cowardice, starting with the new revelations about House Minority “Leader” Kevin McCarthy cozying back up to Donald Trump and then shifting to Ron DeSantis’ anti-Disney jihad and what Molly calls the party’s new brand of “unpopular populism.”
No one is crying for Disney or its special tax status, says Andy, but it’s still nuts that “the government of Florida is now basically telling businesses, ‘just shut up and don’t take any, you know, even the most milquetoast of stands” or we’re going to punish you even if you’re a company that brings the state billions in revenue a year.
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Then the Daily Beast’s Roger Sollenberger comes in to break down his recent reporting on the Maga Goon Squad’s new money woes, as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, and Matt Gaetz collectively spent $275,000 more than they took in in the first quarter of 2022.
Talking about Greene, Sollenberger explains that it’s “largely due to spending to try to raise money. And this has been a pattern of her fundraising for a long time. Her numbers are kind of a sleight of hand in that way. People really see how much money she’s bringing in, but they don’t see that she spends a whole lot to get there. And this quarter gave the lie to that. She switched over to this like direct mail campaign and stopped doing so much digital stuff. And then just kind of ate it pretty hard.”
Each member of the foursome has their own explanation for why their fundraising stopped adding up, says Sollenberger, “but the overall analysis is that there’s just not another Jan. 6. They raised so much money off of the controversy that they could stir on the heels of that tumultuous and explosive event that generated so much resentment from the far right and they tapped right into that and were able to stir up millions of dollars last year on the heels of the riot.”
And now, he says, “That’s just not there. And so in the past few months they've been kind of grasping at straws, right? Greene hasn’t really been able to attract much controversial lightning. Gaetz is—you know, his own investigation, we haven’t heard much out of it recently, it’s ongoing clearly, but it’s just not in the news. The only person who’s been in the news is Cawthorn for his orgy and cocaine remarks, and he just got blasted for that stuff. So they haven’t really been able to turn the magic on. The sauce hasn’t been there for the past few months and it really shows in the money.”
Plus, Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the second lady of Pennsylvania whose husband, John, is now running for the Senate, and the founder of the Free Store in Braddock, “actually the first Free Store in the country,” tells Molly how that came from “this idea that some of us have so much and some have so little and there's so much excess, and how can we bring all those worlds together to do good. I really believe in mutual aid and having people connect who maybe would otherwise think they don't have anything in common and the free store was a place where all of that could happen.”
That sounds fabulous but Molly wants to know: “What about people who say like, you’re not supposed to give people stuff because then they won’t work? AKA the Republican Party”
“When I was ready to start the Free Store, there were people that would say ‘Well, how do you know people aren’t gonna just come and take everything?’” Fetterman recalls. “Well, nine years in we’ve never had that problem. And it actually inspires giving. I always say if we expect the most out of people, they will rise and meet those expectations. And my challenge would just be, Why is your bar so low? Like, how do we challenge ourselves to look at people differently and to believe them and to support them and to be a part of their journey. And that’s what we get to experience every day at the Free Store. It’s often those who have the least who want to give the most. And I always tell folks, if you have lost your faith in humanity come hang out with me for an hour at the Free Store.”
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