Former GOP Rep: My Party Didn’t Just Leave Me, ‘They Were Beamed Up by Aliens’
TNA guest Denver Riggleman has written a book about Bigfoot and studied terrorist groups. But his party’s fascination with QAnon? That perplexes him the most.
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
Ronald Reagan used to say that he didn’t leave the Democratic party to become a Republican, the Democratic party left him. Former Republican congressman and NSA official Denver Riggleman was never a Democrat, but as more of a social libertarian than a conservative one—he got skewered by his fellow conservatives for officiating a same-sex marriage—he feels the same way about his party.
In this episode of The New Abnormal, Denver tells host Molly Jong-Fast that his party didn’t just abandon him, but they were abducted by aliens, too. This guy wrote a whole book about Bigfoot (Fun fact: he went on a Bigfoot expedition instead of going to dinner with his wife) and he says the far-right conspiracy theorists perplex him to no end—and pose a huge threat of violence.
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“The issue is these guys have such a bash sort of ability to reach people on different social network media channels. And it's almost like they’re mainlining these conspiracy theories straight to people’s frontal lobes,” he says.
He even went so far as introducing the first anti-QAnon bill, which he says felt like he stepped on a “landmine of crazy.”
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Jacobin writer Luke Savage also joins the show to discuss Mitch McConnell’s fart-like legislating style and Molly’s burning question: Do Democrats care more about trains than democracy?
Plus! Zachary Karabell, author of Inside Money, explains why breaking up Big Tech companies may be more trouble than it’s worth—and why he disagrees with Elizabeth Warren on the topic.
Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, and Stitcher.
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