In the latest episode of The Daily Beast’s Fever Dreams podcast, host Will Sommer and guest host Asawin Suebsaeng—returning to the podcast he helped start—talk about the MAGA hunt to prepare someone to accept Trump’s fall. “The more you talk to people who are advising Donald Trump every day on what they hope will be his every political or legal maneuver, the more you hear from the horse’s mouth that they’re thinking, ‘OK, a guy’s going to fall.’ here,” said Suebsaeng, now a senior political reporter for Rolling Stone. One possible candidate is former Trump lawyer John Eastman, now known for his “Eastman strategy” intended to persuade then-Vice President Mike Pence to effectively steal the election for Trump on Jan. 6. Former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in the wake of the recent upheaval revealed by former aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony could be another attractive scapegoat for Republicans. “I think Mark Meadows has really opened himself up to a lot of criminal exposure here,” Suebsaeng said. “I’m not going to mince words while talking about John Eastman and the author of the ‘coup memo.’ “Look around Mar-a-Lago,” Sommer said. “If you don’t see the fall guy, you’re the fall guy.” Also on the podcast, Sommer explains how a new movement on the right, led by inventor and would-be voter fraud hunter Jovan Pulitzer, hopes to change the name of the quixotic effort to “nullify” the 2020 election and, they hope, reinstate the Trump in the White House by overturning the results and repeating the 2-year-old election. Pulitzer has decided that “deauthentication” is too hard for the brand, and is now urging MAGA supporters to support a new acronym: “LAVA,” or “Let America Vote Again.” Elsewhere in this week’s episode, Sommer talks about a resurgence of the “NESARA” conspiracy theory, which has gone from being a hoax in the 1980s to a mainstay of the QAnon movement, promising its deluded followers that their debts will be canceled. In the “Fresh Hell” segment of the podcast, the hosts discuss the recent bombing of the Georgia Guidestones, a now-demolished granite stack once known as “America’s Stonehenge.” After the bombing, the perpetrators of which have not yet been arrested, the fate of the mysterious monument is up in the air. “The serious news is that there is a domestic terrorist group on the loose in Georgia or elsewhere that has not been captured and has essentially had a victory because it is unclear whether the Guidestones will be rebuilt,” Sommer said. Listen to and subscribe to Fever Dreams on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
