So Donald Trump copped to it. He told Bob Woodward that he knew how deadly the virus was—and downplayed it anyway, encouraging MAGA nation to act as if COVID-19 was a cheap Chinese knockoff of the flu. 

“It’s remarkable that in these interviews, the president of the United States confessed to fucking manslaughter,” Molly Jong-Fast says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. 

The lawyers might debate whether Trump has any criminal culpability. But to Rick Wilson, there’s no question about Trump’s moral responsibility.

“No American has killed more of their fellow Americans in this country than Donald Trump, except for Robert E. Lee and Jefferson fucking Davis,” he says. “No one has a body count to rival Trump’s. He knew it. He knew it was there. He did it. He let it happen. It is the most unbelievable and horrifying outcome that we can imagine.” 

Molly adds, “Mike Pence was at a pro-life event the other day. And I was thinking about the irony, right? This administration has killed 100,000 plus plus plus people. And they’re talking about embryos. Like, it’s almost beyond parody.” 

Mike Schmidt, the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter, joins Rick and Molly to talk about his new book, Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, which examines some of Trump’s closest confidants—to stop the president from using his power. 

“What is that human experience to be one of those guardrails and those containers? What is that like? What is the human experience of standing between the president and the abyss?”

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.