The Marine and The Doctor Taking On Marjorie Greene and Lauren Boebert

The New Abnormal

The Daily Beast

News & Politics

4.6 • 7.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert weren’t elected to their positions in the House of Representatives by accident. They ran campaigns like everyone else, and won. Given Greene’s “nutty” aka QAnon-supporting and anti-mask-censorship antics in particular since she arrived in Washington, it may be hard for lots of people to understand why. In this bonus members-only episode of The New Abnormal, co-host Molly Jong-Fast sat down with Doctor John Cowan, the Republican surgeon who lost to Greene in her district despite both candidates supporting Donald Trump, to get an idea for what people may have had in mind when casting their ballots for her. “I think this is why she got elected is because people really felt like these guys are absolutely crazy in Washington DC,” he explains. “And they are, many of them are, trying to actively destroy the country through their policies and rhetoric and whatnot. And [voters] looked at someone like Marjorie and said, ‘we've got the answer to that. You know, she's a fighter she'll say or do anything.’” Essentially, says Molly, she won for the same reasons Trump did. Cowan agrees: “I think they just thought, well, we've got somebody who's literally going to kick it to the government and maybe he can crack that or drain the swamp as he was off to say.” Then, Molly talks to Gregg Smith, a former Marine and ex-colleague of Erik Prince, who is running against the GOP’s Rep. Lauren Boebert in Colorado. He feels that he can and will defeat her. Donald Trump had support out there because “people out here will generally vote against the mainstream,” but that support has dwindled, and Boebert’s response to the insurrection is being questioned, he says. But Democrats aren’t going to win the area by pushing Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders-level ideologies too hard. “You've got to address the issues that are important out here.” That’s basically what both Cowan and Smith have in common with one another: hope in the voters. “I do think people eventually will wake up and see that there's a lot of darkness there,” says Cowan. Plus, Smith shares the moment he knew Erik Prince couldn’t be trusted: “I never want to see him again.”

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to another members only beast inside episode of the Daily Beast the new abnormal we thank you so much for being here
0:07.9	Today we have an extra special bonus episode where we're gonna talk to two of the upcoming opponents to two of
0:15.1	Well, let's call our listeners least favorite congress people
0:18.9	Warren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Green or first to talk to Greg Smith who's running against Warren Bobert in Colorado's third district
0:26.3	And he's gonna tell us about why he feels he'd be a worthwhile opponent to her and after this
0:32.0	We will talk to John Cowan who's actually a Republican who ran against Marjorie Taylor Green in the primary in 2020 and lost to her
0:40.1	And he's talking about how he would run against her in the upcoming election next time
0:44.9	Hi Greg. Hello Molly. Welcome to the new abnormal
0:49.2	So I have many questions for you. Let's talk about why you decided to
0:55.0	Run for Congress and what your district looks like and then we'll talk about
0:59.6	Sure, and it's all related. I made a decision based on January 6th, you know
1:05.0	I've been involved. I've been on site for numerous terrorist attacks in my life
1:09.5	I know what a terrorist attack looks like and what I saw in January 6th was probably the most egregious
1:14.3	Act in my lifetime on America's democracy and you know, I'm sitting out here by ranch and Westcliffe
1:20.1	And I had to decide whether I was going to continue to sit up my ranch in Westcliffe or whether I was going to do something
1:26.5	So I decided I could run against Warren Bulbert who's my congresswoman
1:31.6	Who seemingly was live tweeting the location of the speaker of the house
1:36.6	For terrorists who are looking to attack and killer. Wow talk to me about so you were a Marine
1:41.9	I was and where were you stationed and talked to me a little bit about that
1:46.0	I was what is known in the Marine Corps as a grunt. I was an infantryman station primarily camp, LeJune
1:53.8	Probably the most notable deployments I had were into they route Lebanon in 1983
2:00.0	Yeah, I was there for most of the spring and early summer of 83 my cousins grew up there
	...

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