BONUS EPISODE

Donald Trump Asked Kid Rock About North Korea and There Is No Bottom

But, really, could that be any worse than getting advice from Donald Trump Junior?

Summing up the Republicans’ appalling conduct at the Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation hearing, and Sen. Mike Braun’s interview where he said interracial marriage should be a question for the states, The New Abnormal co-host Molly Jong-Fast says “they’re never gonna be happy. They’re not gonna be happy when they take away abortion. They wanna go back to antebellum times. This ends with less and less rights.”

That’s anything but a joke, but “it’s funny because I remember thinking before the 2016 election, ‘Well, Trump won’t get elected,’ but even when he did I thought, ‘Wow, it’s so terrible, but they’ll get what they want and they’ll see how much it sucks.’ And they didn’t. They were thrilled. And then when Trump started killing his own people and telling them that the virus wasn’t a big deal, I thought, ‘Well, he’ll kill his own people. And they’ll see this guy’s a monster,’ but it seems like he can pretty much do anything. These Republicans can pretty much do anything and (their supporters) don’t notice that it’s against their interests.”

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If not antebellum times, says co-host Andy Levy, “the most charitable thing you can say about them is that they want to go back to the 1950s. That’s the latest time-frame you can give them. They all think that the 1950s were grand, with the white picket fences and the nuclear families that all loved each other and to them, that’s the garden of Eden that they don’t care that first of all never really existed. And second of all, to the extent that existed, it existed for white Christians only, and it wasn’t even so great for white Christian women. But they don’t care, that’s their end game.”

Meantime, Kid Rock of all damn people is boasting about how Donald Trump would call him up after Sarah Palin introduced him and Ted Nugent to the president, and ask things like “What do you think we could do about North Korea?”

“I’m like, What? I don’t think I’m qualified to answer this.”

Then again, it could always be worse with this set. As Molly asks, “Do you think Kid Rock is stupider than Junior?” And, notes Andy, at least Kid Rock “was self-aware enough to know that he shouldn’t be talking, giving advice about North Korea.”

Plus, Florida Agriculture Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried—who went to high school with Judge Jackson—joins to explain how she won office in a red state and her bid to become its first female governor. She says the party needs to “follow my lead” to win again in the Sunshine State:

“The Democrats need to understand, once again, that it is always about the economy—it always has been and always will be. Of course, we have to stand up and we have to fight and we have to advocate for our people and our principles. But at the end of the day, the people of our state want leaders. They don’t want their elected officials to be falling into these cultural war traps, which Republicans are trying to do. We have an opportunity under my leadership to bring our party together, to unite our party and to fight for fundamental principles that—you know, might have been electing Republican governors for 25 years, but it’s by the smallest of margins by, by less than one percent, Ron DeSantis won by 34,000 votes out of almost 8.3 million votes.”

Fried concludes: “So to say that our state is red is not consistent with how we vote. And for those same 25 years, the people of our state have consistently voted for very progressive constitutional amendments, from a $15 minimum wage to medical marijuana to environmental issues to restoration of civil rights. But we as Democrats have not done a good enough job running campaigns, and making sure we are on the same page as the rest of the people of our state. So we have to take some playbooks by the Republicans on the economy, on home rule, on the free market. But really we’ve got to rise above this chaos and this nonsense and be ready to fight. There’s no one out there who doesn’t know that I am willing and able to throw punches. And most of the times I land them, and make the governor squirm every time that we are in the same room together. And that’s what it’s going to take to stand up against this bully and show the people of our state that there is a better way to lead.”

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