Welcome to America, the land of reality TV trash.
The news that former President Donald Trump was indicted on Thursday in the Stormy Daniels hush-money case proves that the country has earned its reputation as a bastion for low-rent hucksters, according to co-host of The New Abnormal podcast, Danielle Moodie.
“Welcome to the Banana republic–and not the clothing store, friends,” Moodie laments.
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The pair discuss the notable event, which marks the first time a former president has faced serious criminal charges in the history of the United States.
The case, which looked into Trump’s role in the scheme to pay off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep quiet over their alleged affair, is not the one a lot of people were rooting for to go first, Moodie says, with co-host Andy Levy agreeing that the case against Trump in Georgia, where the former reality TV star is accused of election meddling in the aftermath of the 2020 election, “is far more serious.”
According to Levy, the New York indictment could “break the seal” for the rest. “Maybe this makes it easier for there to be an indictment in Georgia because there’s no pressure now for the Georgia prosecutors or a Georgia grand jury to be the first to indict a former sitting president,” Levy says. “Yeah, it’s been done already. So, the precedent has been set.”
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Then, The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer, author of the book The Cruelty Is the Point, discusses his latest essay, entitled “Woke is just another word for Liberal,” and explains what he means in the wake of conservative writer Bethany Mandel’s failure to articulate how she defines the term.
“It’s a flexible word… sometimes the target of woke is a political apathy, that’s actually not a Black person, but is a white liberal who thinks that they are being very socially aware, socially progressive in a way that maybe is silly or counterproductive. It’s very slippery and if you say it’s just one thing—and sometimes it is one thing or the other—if you don’t acknowledge how nebulous it is, it can actually be confusing as to what the person who means it intends. I deliberately did not impose my definition on it. I used her [Mandel’s] definition that she offered after the fact precisely to say that this is basically an argument that traditional hierarchies are good and just, and should not be altered by the state.”
Plus! MSNBC analyst and lecturer and director of the public policy program at the Roosevelt House at Hunter College, Basil Smikle, discusses what Americans who believe in gun reform are getting wrong.
“It’s clear that for so many gun control advocates that trying to go after the Second Amendment in itself is not going to solve the problem because there will just be consistent pushback.”
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
