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“The Fear Olympics.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lemmon.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: On today's pod, Democrats make another run at passing a
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: voting rights bill. Lovett and I talk to Dr. Ashish Jha,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: the Dean of Public Health at Brown University, about what
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the latest CDC guidance and scary COVID headlines actually mean
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: for you. And a new analysis about why we're all
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: so angry points to Fox News as the culprit.
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: What?
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's the person you most expect.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But first, some fun news. Crooked Media's very first book
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: is now for sale at crooked.com.store. It's called The Crooked
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Guide to Societal Reentry, and it's a hilarious, beautifully illustrated
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: 75-page book that has everything you need to know about
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: how to make a seamless transition back into public life
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: after being stuck at home for more than a year.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: The guide is written by What A Day newsletter editor
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Sarah Lazarus and illustrated by Crooked's own Dianita Ramesh. Get
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a copy for yourself and all your friends now. Again,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: that's crooked.com slash store.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Fun book, guys.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: It's awesome. Everybody should check it out. It's a good gift.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: It's a good gift. Looking for a good gift.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Looking for a, I guess not a stocking stuffer. Nope, nope,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: not that. I don't know when you goyim celebrate your nonsense.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: You don't know when we celebrate Christmas?
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: I guess not in the summer.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: That's tough. Sorry to make you know that fact. All right,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: let's get to the news.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: I'm performing for Elijah because he's in the studio.
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: I'm doing a lot of jokes directed just to Elijah today.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: Like the old days.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: All right, let's get to the news. After a strategy
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: session at the White House on Friday, Democrats in Congress
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: are expected to unveil new versions of the For the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act this week.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: The idea here is to scale back the original bill
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: so that they're focused mostly on preventing voter suppression, electoral
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: subversion and partisan gerrymandering, which will get Joe Manchin on board.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And at least in Joe Manchin's mind, hopefully get some
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: Republicans on board, not holding our breath there. We also
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: keep getting reminders about why this is also important. Mother
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Jones' Ari Berman just reported on a new analysis from
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: the Democratic data firm TargetSmart that shows Republicans can take
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: back control of the House in 2022 by drawing gerrymandered
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: congressional districts in just four states that they already control, Georgia, Florida,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: North Carolina, and Texas. And on the election subversion front,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: we just learned from notes that the Department of Justice
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: officials released to Congress that that Donald Trump called Acting
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen a few days before the attack
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: on the Capitol and told him, quote, just say the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: the Republican congressman. That's great. That's a cool quote.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Lots to unpack here. Let's start with the twin threats
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of gerrymandering and election subversion and then work our way
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: towards the solutions. Tommy, what does Ari Berman's piece tell
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: us about the size and scope of the Republican advantage
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: when it comes to redistricting?
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: So I thought the best overall quote in the Ari
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Berman piece was from everybody's favorite pill pusher turned member
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: of Congress, Dr. Ronny Jackson, who said that redistricting alone
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: should get us the majority back. So Republicans get to
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: draw 187 congressional districts total. Democrats get to draw 75.
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: The rest get drawn by commissions or states with divided government.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: According to Ari's piece, Republicans could pick up six to
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: 13 seats in the House via redistricting in Georgia, Florida,
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: North Carolina, and Texas alone. So in other words, the
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: majority could be handed from the Democrats to the Republicans
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: just because the maps get redrawn, not because anything else changed.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: So we are staring down the barrel of a gun
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: right now, at least the congressional majority is.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: They need five seats to flip. They might be able
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: to get five seats just out of Florida. Forget about
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the other three states.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean, they've because our majority is so narrow,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: they probably won't do that. They will probably not over
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: gerrymander in some of these places because.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: They're famous for showing restraint.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Well, no, the reason, no, no, not because they care,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: but not out of restraint out of politics, because you know, one,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: they can, you can over gerrymander, you can draw the
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: maps and distribute your Republicans just too delicately. You get
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: too greedy. And then all of a sudden a wave
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: election could overcome the gerrymander. The problem is our majority
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: is so narrow that that they don't have to do that.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: They can actually draw pretty strong Republican seats in a
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: lot of these states, even though they've lost the ability
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: to gerrymander as extensively in places like Wisconsin, because we
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: now have the governorship and a few other states. They
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: can do it in a way that is kind of insurmountable,
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: even with a wave election, even if we have a
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: midterm in which people turn out as much as they
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: did turn out in 2020.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: The White House has been telling voting rights activists that
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: they can out-organize some of these voter suppression laws, which
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: there's a big debate over whether you can. People are
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: upset that the White House is saying that, understandably putting
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: it all on activists and organizers. But how much more
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: difficult is it to out-organize gerrymandering? Tommy?
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: So I get something. I kind of get the messaging
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: goals here, which is we don't want to make it
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: sounds so dire, the voter suppression tactic so dire that
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Democrats get sad and give up, right? Like they want
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: people to stay motivated, but you just can't out-organize a gerrymander.
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: You can't out-organize election subversion laws that take the power
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: away from voters and hand them to state legislatures so
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: that they can overturn an election result. That's just, it's impossible.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: Like the problem with gerrymandering is the further and further
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: we go, the computer software and other programs get more
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: sophisticated and allow you to draw up just perfect maps
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: for either side that are almost unbeatable. You can't organize
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: your way out of that. And so I don't know
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: if they were talking about voter suppression laws or voter
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: ID laws or something associated with gerrymandering and not gerrymandering itself,
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: but the suggestion that you can out-organize gerrymandering is wrong.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: And I can understand why that would land as almost
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: insulting sounding if you were an activist who cares about
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: this deeply.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, It's part of the reason also why I've
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: been sort of annoyed that most of the coverage about
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: voter suppression since the election has been focused on some
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: of the voter suppression laws and not the fact that
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Republicans are about to gerrymander the shit out of the
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: map for a decade, because like it is horrific to,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: for example, you know, ban people from ban volunteers from
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: giving food and water to people waiting in an hour line.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Like that's awful.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: But there are ways to get around that.
• 6:44
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: There are ways to make sure that people voters are
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: educated about the hurdles they have to jump over to
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: register to vote and to make sure they're not purged
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: from roles. Like all this stuff is horrible, but there
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: are ways to get around it. You know, David Shore,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Democratic data analyst, says in this Mother Jones piece, if
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: everyone voted the same way as in 2020, Republicans would
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: win the House through redistricting alone. That's how hard it
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: is to organize a gerrymander. And he said the ban
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: on gerrymandering that's contained in this voting rights legislation is
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: about five times more important than the rest of the
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: bill combined.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you can't organize someone's house from a
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: 90-10 Democratic district to a 55-45 Republican district.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, here's how we're going to beat that. We're going
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: to move you out of the district.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: And I do think, actually, even though it is absolutely true,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: like we've seen this in Pennsylvania to Georgia, you can
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: organize and educate voters to overcome these things. And there
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: are knock-on effects. When you tell people their vote is threatened,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: you can sometimes instill people a kind of real pressure
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: and desire to get out there and overcome these hurdles.
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: That said, it is a frustrating message. I agree, Tommy,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: that it is about just sort of signaling like we
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: think this fight may be really, really hard, if not impossible.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: And if we lose it, we still want to make
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: sure people understand that we can win in the midterms.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: But it does take the pressure off of Congress to
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: say that we can overcome these things with organization when
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: the message needs to be this is dire. This is
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: an emergency. We need to act. We need to act
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: right now.
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, look, we don't want anyone to give up hope.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: We're going to stay involved in fighting all this. But
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: like Dave Wasserman from the Cook Political Report, drew up
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: a hypothetical map of what an extreme gerrymander in Texas
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: could look like. And you could end up with Republicans
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: having 25 seats compared to 13 seats for Democrats, even
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: though Biden lost the state by only five points. So
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: that is how much you can distort what a state
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: actually looks like when it comes to its partisan breakdown
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: compared to its congressional representation. And that's why it could
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: be a disaster.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: And one other thing I just add about this, Democrats,
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: even if we controlled all state legislatures and can draw
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: all maps, because Democrats tend to live in more Democratic
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: districts than Republicans live in Republican districts. It's actually harder
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: for Democrats to gerrymander to the extent that Republicans can
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: do it because Democrats live in these concentrated areas in
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: a way that Republicans don't. Even these rural districts in
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: which Republicans kind of draw these maps to give themselves
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: an advantage, there are more Democrats there than there are
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: in the heart of, say, like Nancy Pelosi's district or
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Adam Schiff's district or AOC's district or any of a
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: number of very concentrated Democratic districts.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: There is one last thing on this. There is a
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: timing issue here, too. The census releases the data that
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: allows states to draw the maps on August 16th. So
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: it's coming fast. But even if Congress passes a law
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: banning gerrymandering sort of after the census data is released
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: and some maps are drawn, it's the ban would still
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: sort of put the legal challenges to this on firmer ground.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: You know, John Roberts wrote himself in an opinion where
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: he said gerrymandering was OK. He said the framers gave
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Congress the power to do something about partisan gerrymandering in
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: the elections clause. John Roberts himself is basically tempting Congress
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: like it's on you. You want to pass something. It'll
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: be fine. But if you don't pass anything, we're not
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: going to uphold any challenges to gerrymandering.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: And he also gave that aren't racially.
• 9:55
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing. He also gave Republicans an instruction
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: manual for. how to get racist gerrymanders through by leaving
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the part in which they are trying to sort by
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: race out of the conversation and making it partisan because that,
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: according to John Roberts, is protected.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Tommy, I want to get your thoughts on this Trump story,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: which once again falls into the category of shocking but
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: not surprising. Yeah. Philip Bump at The Washington Post did
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: point out that what's new about the story is the
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: note suggesting that Trump and congressional Republicans may have been
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: coordinating their efforts to overturn the election. What should we
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and especially Congress do with that information?
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: I am very upset by this story. I found it
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: not surprising, but shocking, as you say. I just want
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: to spend a minute talking about Trump telling the attorney
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: general that he may not be following the Internet the
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: way I do and therefore didn't understand the that the
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: election had been stolen from him. This seems important to
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: harp on because it does speak to where he's getting
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: his information and how, you know, I think it was
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: one week ago or two weeks ago, we talked about
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: the conspiracy theory that somehow the Italians had stolen the
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: election or someone in the US embassy in Rome had
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: stolen the election. That's literally what he's talking about. And
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: he's not just saying these things before, you know, a
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: crowd of Aryan youths led by Charlie Kirk. He's saying
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: this stuff to the Attorney General of the United States
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: that he appointed. And that's Scary?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: I think the bigger question is why wasn't he following
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: the internet as closely as Trump?
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, if you want to be good
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: at your job, you should know what your boss is
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: up to and reading, you know? So you can just
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: make conversation. Got to read the whole internet.
• 11:30
  Speaker 7: Love it.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: What do we do about this?
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: What do we do about it? I would say two things. One,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: I know we know, but it is amazing how close
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: we were to it all coming apart. We are very,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: very lucky. We are very lucky that that even after
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: Barr was gone and Trump tried to find someone who
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: was more loyal to him in this job, there were
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: these places where there was resistance, where there did not
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: have to be. There did not have to be resistance
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: in the Georgia Secretary of State's office. There did not
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: have to be resistance in terms of political decision-making at DOJ.
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: The other piece of this is we need to get
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: to the bottom of what kind of conversations Trump was
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: having with members of Congress, like Mo Brooks, like Jim Jordan,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: like Kevin McCarthy. That needs to be part of the
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: investigation process. that the committee is running right now. They
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: need to treat those members as what they are, which
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: is some combination of witnesses and perpetrators.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: There's a CNN piece over the weekend where there was
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: some question about whether they would be calling members of
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: Congress as witnesses or potentially subpoenaing or how they might
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: get that information from them or that testimony rather. I
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: hope there's no question about whether someone like Jim Jordan
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: will be called to testify. I mean, did you see
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: this fumbling interview he did with some local journalists from
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: Ohio where he was asked if he talked to Trump
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: on January 6th. It's clear that guy is hiding something.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: He definitely talked to him. Yeah, it's been like a
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: couple interviews like this where he's like, I talk to
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: the president all the time.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Jim Jordan, always very careful with his work. You know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: it's like these guys, these guys only sand the edges
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: off in moments like these when they're worried about what
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: could happen if they're under oath.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: But you're absolutely right that this is why it's, The
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: 1-6 Commission can't just be about the attack itself. It's
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: about everything that led up to the attack, including Trump's
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: efforts all along the way from the day after the
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: election through the insurrection to overturn the election itself and
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: the members of Congress who coordinated with them. And I
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: also think I was glad to see that as Democrats
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: make this new push for like a revised voting rights legislation,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: that they're going to include language to prevent election subversion.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: I think that language really needs to be quite strong.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's a question of How much can you
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: do about states trying to subvert the election, Republican officials
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: and states on the federal level? I think they need
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to amend the Electoral Act of 1887 so that you
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: need like two thirds of both houses of Congress to
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: send the electors back to the states. That way, if
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it's two thirds, it's less likely to be partisan in nature.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Like this idea that now whoever controls Congress can reject
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: the president, whichever party controls Congress can just reject the
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: results of a presidential election. is fucking absurd. And it
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: should never have been a law.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: I feel like there's this question, like when Trump said
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: to Rosen, leave it up to me and the congressman,
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: what did he mean? How concrete were the conversations he
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: had with members of Congress? And I think that's really,
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: really important, except that in the end, I want to
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: know how much communication there was. I want to know
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: how much coordination there was. But I think one of
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: the lessons of January 6th is even if there was none,
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: They coordinated on television. They coordinated on Twitter, on the internet,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: on the internet, Trump's internet. And they, and they knew
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: what they had to do. They didn't need the same.
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: The members of Congress needed the same amount of instruction
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: as the people on the national mall. They knew what
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: Trump wanted them to do. And that's all that really mattered.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: And so, uh, like the fact that he was in
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: conversation with them is important, but ultimately what we are
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: watching is that if basically what we know is that
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: if Republicans have both houses of Congress, the ability to
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: actually have a presidential election is completely in doubt.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the path forward on protecting voting rights
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: and democracy. On Sunday, Joe Manchin told Jake Tapper that
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: while he's optimistic about coming up with a compromise on
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: voting rights, he still doesn't support a filibuster carve out
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: to pass it. Here's a clip.
• 15:11
  Speaker 6: Jake, I can't imagine a carve out because I was
• 15:13
  Speaker 6: here in 2013 when it was called a carve out.
• 15:15
  Speaker 6: We're just going to do the cabinet for the president.
• 15:19
  Speaker 6: And then it went into we're going to do the
• 15:21
  Speaker 6: judges who are lifetime appointments for circuit and district. They've
• 15:23
  Speaker 6: even going to do Supreme Court, but they didn't at
• 15:25
  Speaker 6: that time. The Democrats were in control. 2017, Mitch McConnell's
• 15:29
  Speaker 6: in control, comes right back in. And guess what? That
• 15:32
  Speaker 6: carve out worked to really carve us up pretty bad.
• 15:34
  Speaker 6: Then you got the Supreme Court. OK, so there's no
• 15:37
  Speaker 6: stopping it. And if we don't put this place back
• 15:39
  Speaker 6: in order, you get rid of the filibuster, which makes
• 15:42
  Speaker 6: us work together. And I've said this, the whole the
• 15:46
  Speaker 6: brilliancy of our of our founding fathers was this. Why
• 15:49
  Speaker 6: in the world did they give two senators to Rhode
• 15:51
  Speaker 6: Island and Delaware at the time they were forming this
• 15:54
  Speaker 6: great nation of ours when they told New York and
• 15:56
  Speaker 6: Pennsylvania and Ohio, hey, you only get two, too. It
• 15:59
  Speaker 6: was basically to make us work together so that the
• 16:02
  Speaker 6: big states wouldn't overrun the little states. It's a minority participation.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Killing us, Joe. You're killing us.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: One thing I have to say about that clip is like,
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: he actually, that is an accurate history of what happened
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: in the past several years to the filibuster. It does
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: seem as though that is where he started learning history
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: and he has zero knowledge of anything that came before
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: that first vote to change the filibuster rules.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: Love it. What are the options here? Like why, why
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: do you think Democrats are going through all the trouble
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: of introducing new legislation and compromise legislation, et cetera, et cetera.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: If That's Joe Manchin's position still.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: I think that's the only option, right? We have to
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: we have to fake it till we make it. We
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: have to hope that there's some chance that either either
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: by some miracle. And I think this is all but impossible.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Joe Manchin finds nine other senators to join Lisa Murkowski
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: and doing what Republicans, as he as mentioned, correctly points out,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: were willing to do only, you know, 13 or 14
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: years ago, which is uphold the fucking Voting Rights Act.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: He mentioned in that Tapper interview that it was something
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: like 98 to nothing.
• 17:03
  Speaker 8: Yes.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: When they last voted on this.
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Or at some point, Joe Manchin will reckon with the
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: fact that he will answer his own question. Why has
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: this changed? Well, because one of the two parties has
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: turned against democracy. And at every turn in our history,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: when it became time to defend the right to vote,
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: the equal citizenship of every person in this country, it
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: was a partisan decision because one part is one party
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: knew they would lose because of it. And so he
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: will either come to recognize that or say that. Well,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: I don't think I'll say that. I don't think they'll
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: say it.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: You should send him that. You should send him those remarks.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: But he always finds new words. Now Jake's question, which
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: is a totally fair question, can you imagine doing it? No,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: I can't imagine doing it. Even if he can, in
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: his beautiful, fantastic imagination, conjure an image of him passing
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: a voting rights bill with 50 votes, he can't say
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: that right now anyway because he has this theory that
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: he can get these votes. So you have to just
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: hope that that is what he is saying now and
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: he will allow the circumstances of Republicans blocking the bill
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: to lead him to maybe pass it in the future.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Barring that, I don't know what else you're supposed to do.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: So we have to just go through the motions and
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: try to pass it.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: What do you think, Tommy? What's going on in that big,
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: beautiful houseboat-sized brain of his?
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: I wonder who wrote that carved out, carved up quip
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: and if they got a big old pat on the
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: back after they came up with it. I bet somebody did.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: My only hope with Manchin is that he's just not
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: going to change his answer until he does. And in
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: some ways, that's the smartest path for him just to
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: just hold out. When you decide to flip-flop, you flip-flop
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: and you do it until you're ready. You don't do it.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: To Lovett's point earlier, Jamel Bowie had a great piece
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: in the New York Times about how the attack on
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: voting rights is partisan, so no one should be surprised
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: that the response is partisan as well. The 14th Amendment,
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: with the Equal Protection Clause, passed on a party-line vote.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: The 15th Amendment, that prohibits denying the right to vote
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: based on race, passed on a party-line vote. Yes, the
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: civil rights bills in the 60s were bipartisan, but the
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: parties hadn't divided like they are today. So it's sort
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: of an apples and oranges comparison. So it's just a
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: very frustrated kind of half-assed look at history by our friend, Mr.
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: Manchin.
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: As Lovett said, it doesn't start in 2013. It goes
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: back a lot further. Also, I don't know if I've
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: mentioned this person before. There's this reporter at The New
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: Yorker that I love, Jane Mayer. She wrote a book.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Have I ever brought this up on the show?
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: Oh, man.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: Here we go.
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: She had an amazing piece today in The New Yorker.
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: Is it about dark money?
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: It's about dark money, isn't it?
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: About all the big dark money groups.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there it is.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Leading.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: The fight on these voting restrictions. It's the Heritage Foundation.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: It's Alec.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: It's Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society. It's a bunch
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: of weird billionaires you've never heard of. The Lyndon Harry
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Bradley Foundation. There are these like reactionists, you know, weird
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: racist old white people that funded Charles Murray, the author
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: of the bell curves scholarship. So it's all these sort
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: of usual big muddied interest groups. pushing these voter suppression bills.
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: I forgot your question, John. I just got so caught
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: up in the carved up, carved out.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Part of this thing. No, no, no. I was just
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: waiting for you to go from the Jane Mayer reference
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: to a Rick Perlstein book reference. So I don't know
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: if you could work that out as well.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: Oh, Reaganland. I'm still working through that one. I jumped
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: over to the Facebook book, which is very, it's quite good.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's good. That's good.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: God, he's a reader.
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: He is a reader. He is a reader. Our guy
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: is a reader.
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: Guys, I'm just a small town boy from Los Angeles
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: in Brooklyn right now. So it's just me and my
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: book kind of keeping me company.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: While I'm in New York. Tommy's live in Brooklyn right now.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: He's in the Big Apple. Okay. I have nothing to say.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Eat a bagel.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Let's keep going.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Love it.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Love it. Doing the show from here is unbelievably luxurious.
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: You get three extra hours to prep in the morning.
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: I didn't know what to do with myself. I was
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: getting room service on room service.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: The East Coast Crooked Media Life is pretty fucking great.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: It's incredible.
• 20:38
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: I'm saying.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: John, you're cool too. No, no. I've been in Los
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Angeles for over a year, so it's fine. So there's
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: a few other things on this in terms of the
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: path forward. I do think, like you said, fake it
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: till you make it is the strategy here. I was
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: somewhat hopeful reading a quote from Amy Klobuchar that she
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: said at a press conference last week. She said, I
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: think if we were just going to say, nope, we
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: can't do this because of Senate rules, we wouldn't keep going,
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: which seemed to suggest that there is some kind of strategy,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: although I don't want to I don't want to guess
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: about any kind of strategy among the Democrats because I've
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: been disappointed before. But I'm hoping that there is some
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: strategy behind the scenes.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: Angus King said something similar, too, by the way. Angus
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: King said he said something like, I don't if this fails,
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know what happens after that.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: So the other option could be something similar to me, too.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, of course. I call him Gus. Gus. Gus King.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Go off, King. Trying to figure out what's going on
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: with Manchin and the Democrats. So stupid. There is a
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: possibility that some of these provisions could end up in
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: the reconciliation bill.
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, give me a fucking break.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Give me a fucking break. No, no.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I'm just fucking reading the news. Don't think I believe
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: this is going to happen. So, well, I'm just going
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: to tell.
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: It's a tax credit to not deny the right to vote.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to explain to our listeners what's happening here.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: That's what I think of that horse shit. You could
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: say that states get money to administer elections only if
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: they meet the following standards. You must have automatic voter registration.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: You must not purge the rolls and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: So would that fly through reconciliation? We don't know. Would
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: some states that are maybe Republican states opt out and
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: decide to not take the cash like they have done
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: with Medicaid expansion for the last 10 years?
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, probably.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry. These governors tricky seems.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: Republican states decided to let huge portions of their population
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: go without health care. to make a point that they
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: didn't like Barack Obama.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: Still are. Still are. How many years later?
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: You think they're going to do, they're going to be like,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: this is against our interests, but oh well.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: We want that money to administer free and fair elections. Yeah,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: that's their concern.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Very silly.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: Then there's the question like, is there a car, is
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: it not a carve out, but are we going back
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: to some kind of filibuster reform with Manchin say, okay,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: 41 Republican senators have to be on the floor the
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: entire time in order to filibuster this bill. And then
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: hoping that, you know, some of the olds like Chuck
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Grassley finally get tired and have to leave and go
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: to bed. You know, that's that's the other that's the
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: other hope here.
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. You're betting on the prostate. Get off
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: that floor.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Some of these guys have to pee every 30, 40 minutes.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: You know, that's our hope.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: So I do. But I do think that like that
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: Joe Manchin, you know, he's he has expressed in the
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: past openness to those kinds of reformers. A lot of
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: this is semantic. If you could do something that he
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: can say is not a carve out, it can still
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: fit with what he said to Jake Tapper. There are
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: a lot of places, a lot of places this can
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: go that are hopeful. It doesn't mean it's not a
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: long check. We are, we are because these are idiosyncrasies.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: We are because, uh, because, uh, uh, Cal Cunningham, uh, uh,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: loves to fuck and we can't win a seat in Maine.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: We're stuck with the idiosyncratic decision-making of two people that
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: are not acting in the best interest of this country.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: And I don't know what that's, that's the reality.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: Look, Boo on Cal Cunningham, but I think you sort
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: of glossed over the big fuck up in Maine there.
• 23:44
  Speaker 9: No, no.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden won that state by a lot.
• 23:47
  Speaker 8: Yeah.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: Sarah Gideon. Okay. Still got a lot of money.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: Such a Maine homer. Still got a- John goes to
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Maine for a week and he's defending that.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Suddenly I'm fucking running in the second district.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Cal Cunningham screwed a mistress and Sarah Gideon kind of
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: screwed all of us. True pride cut that.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: I agree with you guys that I don't think that
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: this- cuck the voting rights legislation into reconciliation plan makes
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: a ton of sense for all the reasons you just outlined.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: I do think it's fair to say that you could
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: argue that the initial For the People Act was a
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: little too broad. I want public financing of campaigns too,
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: but that wasn't the acute threat that we are all
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: facing right now. I think even Amy Klobuchar was critical
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: of how expansive the For the People Act was. So
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: I'm hoping that she is working with this group of
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: lawmakers that includes Manchin, that they're working on a a
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: narrowed down bill. They'll convince him to do something that
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: gets us past the filibuster and we'll actually get a
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: vote on it. I mean, am I holding my breath? No,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: but it is existential. And I think if you're going
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: to be critical of the Biden White House, this is
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: the one place I do think they have not been
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: fully engaged. And I'm not exactly sure what they should
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: be doing, but everyone that talks to them about this
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: set of issues comes away feeling like this isn't the
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: priority that it should be, especially considering how much of
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: his ability to get reelected lies with the need to
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: hold onto the house by preventing this partisan gerrymandering. So
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: I do hope that there is a renewed push on
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: voting rights. Once the BIF or the bib or whatever
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: the hell John is calling it these days is, is
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: through Congress.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I'm just, I'm very excited about an infrastructure deal. I
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: don't know what your problem is. Look, I think I
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: will say that.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: How'd you get, how'd you get to Brooklyn? Fucking Zeppelin.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: You probably took a road, a tunnel or a fucking train.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Sorry.
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: It was a plane, John.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: I am for any, very creative, outside-the-box solutions here. You know,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: if they can figure out something in reconciliation, great. I'm doubtful,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: but I'm for it. You know, this is a mint-the-trillion-dollar-coin
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: moment here.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: I still think we should have done that.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, remember the debt limit? That was our solution. Yeah,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: let's fucking do whatever to get this done. All right,
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: when we come back, Lovett and I will talk to Dr.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Ashish Jha, the Dean of Public Health at Brown University,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: about all the latest pandemic news. Last week, the CDC
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: issued new guidance recommending that everyone, even vaccinated Americans, wear
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: masks in indoor public settings if you live in a
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: community with substantial or high COVID transmission. What prompted the
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: shift was CDC data that suggests the small percentage of
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: vaccinated people who do get infected with COVID can, in
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: rare instances, transmit the virus to others. But if you're
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: anything like us, you may have found both the CDC's
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: communication on this issue and the subsequent media coverage confusing
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and or terrifying. Here to clear all of this up
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: for us and more is someone who's been one of
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: the most brilliant, sane, calming voices throughout the pandemic, the
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: Dean of Brown University School of Public Health, Dr. Ashish Jha.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Jha, welcome to the pod.
• 26:50
  Speaker 8: Hey, thank you so much for being here.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: So I feel like what was missing from last week's
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: CDC announcement was clear information that could help people, especially
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: vaccinated people, reassess the risk to themselves and their families
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: of getting really sick from the Delta variant. So we
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: are sitting here in a county with high transmission in LA.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: We're wearing masks in indoor public settings. But how should
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: I think about other activities? I have an unvaccinated one-year-old
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: at home. We spent a lot of time with my
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: parents who are over 65. Is outdoor dining still okay?
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Outdoor gatherings? Indoor gatherings where everyone's vaccinated? What do you think?
• 27:27
  Speaker 9: Yeah, it is confusing, you know, and there's a lot
• 27:29
  Speaker 9: happening here. So let's break down kind of what we
• 27:32
  Speaker 9: know and what we don't know. What we have learned recently,
• 27:36
  Speaker 9: which is not surprising because we never thought these vaccines
• 27:39
  Speaker 9: were 100%, is that breakthrough infections happen. Sometimes you can
• 27:42
  Speaker 9: be fully vaccinated.
• 27:43
  Speaker 8: And you'll have a breakthrough infection.
• 27:45
  Speaker 9: And then the other thing we have learned, which actually
• 27:48
  Speaker 9: we knew even from that, remember that Yankees outbreak at
• 27:51
  Speaker 9: the clubhouse where like seven Yankee players got, you know,
• 27:55
  Speaker 9: Vaccinated people can spread it to others.
• 27:58
  Speaker 8: So that's not a huge surprise.
• 28:00
  Speaker 9: I think fundamentally what people need to understand is breakthrough
• 28:04
  Speaker 9: infections are rare and forward transmission, that is, if you
• 28:08
  Speaker 9: have a breakthrough infection, you're going to give it to
• 28:10
  Speaker 9: somebody else, is also pretty uncommon. And the most important
• 28:14
  Speaker 9: piece of all of this is when it happens, people
• 28:17
  Speaker 9: do really well. They have a kind of a miserable, cold,
• 28:20
  Speaker 9: They can be pretty miserable for a few.
• 28:22
  Speaker 8: Days, but they get better.
• 28:23
  Speaker 9: Very, very, very rarely do people end up.
• 28:25
  Speaker 8: Getting hospitalized or dying from any of this.
• 28:29
  Speaker 9: So if you have that as your mental model, it
• 28:32
  Speaker 9: should start helping you make some decisions. And by the way,
• 28:34
  Speaker 9: the other thing about Delta variant is it is a
• 28:37
  Speaker 9: bad version of the virus, but it's still the same virus,
• 28:40
  Speaker 9: still does the same stuff.
• 28:41
  Speaker 8: So outdoors, still really, really safe.
• 28:44
  Speaker 9: Like I would not worry about outdoor dining. I would
• 28:47
  Speaker 9: not worry about getting together outdoors with large numbers of people.
• 28:50
  Speaker 9: Maybe the super packed outdoor concert might get a little uncomfortable.
• 28:55
  Speaker 9: Maybe a political rally where no one's wearing a mask,
• 28:58
  Speaker 9: maybe a little tight. But other than that, outdoor stuff is,
• 29:01
  Speaker 9: I think, pretty safe. And on the indoor stuff, the
• 29:05
  Speaker 9: way I've thought about it is if you're in a
• 29:06
  Speaker 9: room full of all vaccinated people, you have a very,
• 29:11
  Speaker 9: very low.
• 29:11
  Speaker 8: Risk of anybody passing it on.
• 29:14
  Speaker 9: The last part of this is about assessing risk. If
• 29:19
  Speaker 9: you're with a frail elder and you've been out partying
• 29:23
  Speaker 9: and you've been exposed to a lot of unvaccinated people,
• 29:26
  Speaker 9: it might be reasonable to put on a mask because
• 29:29
  Speaker 9: the risk of a breakthrough infection for that frail elder
• 29:32
  Speaker 9: could be really quite substantial. Kids, thankfully, don't get sick
• 29:36
  Speaker 9: very much. And again, I don't want to minimize COVID
• 29:39
  Speaker 9: in kids. There's been a lot of minimizing of that. But,
• 29:42
  Speaker 9: you know, I have a nine-year-old who's not vaccinated. That
• 29:44
  Speaker 9: doesn't fundamentally alter my behavior. I don't do particularly high-risk things,
• 29:50
  Speaker 9: but I also don't worry excessively about him getting COVID.
• 29:52
  Speaker 8: It's unlikely. And if he does, he'll probably do just fine.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. One more question on transmission.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Israel's public health chief was on Face the Nation Sunday,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: and she said that their data shows 80 percent of
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: vaccinated individuals who do become infected do not transmit the
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: virus to anyone else. They said 10 percent transmit it
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to one person and less than 10 percent transmit it
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: to more than one person. It sounds a lot less
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: dire than the coverage around the CDC announcement. Like, does
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: that make sense to you, that data?
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: It does.
• 30:22
  Speaker 8: It does.
• 30:22
  Speaker 9: And if you think about it, it clinically and biologically
• 30:25
  Speaker 9: makes sense, right? Because if you are unlucky enough to
• 30:27
  Speaker 9: have a breakthrough infection, you still have an immune system
• 30:30
  Speaker 9: that very rapidly clears the virus. That means you are
• 30:34
  Speaker 9: contagious for a very short period of time, and you're
• 30:37
  Speaker 9: not that contagious. So it makes sense that some people,
• 30:42
  Speaker 9: you may get unlucky and catch them in the contagious phase,
• 30:45
  Speaker 9: and they may pass it on to one person. But
• 30:48
  Speaker 9: most people who have breakthrough infections are not going to
• 30:50
  Speaker 9: spread it. This is why vaccinated people are not driving
• 30:54
  Speaker 9: the surge. The surge we're seeing in America is all
• 30:57
  Speaker 9: about the unvaccinated and the vaccinated are unfortunate bystanders to this.
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about how that the disconnect between what
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: the CDC has been saying and what the kind of
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: news coverage has looked like in the CDC's presentation that
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: leaked to The Post. One of their concerns was that
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: breakthrough cases would cause people to lose confidence in the vaccine.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: The presentation says they were worried the public would be
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: convinced the vaccine is no longer working or that boosters
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: would be needed. Important to update communications describing breakthrough cases
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: as rare or a small percentage of cases. This was
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: the CNN lead on that presentation. The Delta coronavirus variant
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: surging across the United States appears to cause more severe
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: illness and spread as easily as chickenpox. The document outlined
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: unpublished data that shows fully vaccinated people might spread the
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Delta variant at the same rate as unvaccinated people. You know,
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the CDC has been communicating via the media for the
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: entirety of this pandemic. It still feels as though there
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: is a disconnect between what they wish the coverage look
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: like and what coverage of their of their communications ends
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: up actually being for ordinary people trying to keep up
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: with this. What do you think has gone wrong and
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: how the CDC communicates and what would you like to
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: see them do differently?
• 32:09
  Speaker 8: Yeah, and there are a couple of things.
• 32:11
  Speaker 9: I mean, first of all, I think the CDC has
• 32:13
  Speaker 9: largely been right on the science. And even here, I
• 32:16
  Speaker 9: think they were largely right.
• 32:18
  Speaker 8: I think there was.
• 32:20
  Speaker 9: One error in this instance, and this has come up
• 32:22
  Speaker 9: a bunch, is that they didn't release the data along
• 32:25
  Speaker 9: with their proclamation. So early in the week, they said,
• 32:29
  Speaker 9: we are making this change because we are aware of data.
• 32:32
  Speaker 9: But that data then leaked out two days later. These
• 32:35
  Speaker 9: data shouldn't be leaking. Like once you make the proclamation,
• 32:38
  Speaker 9: put the data out there, right? This is not a
• 32:39
  Speaker 9: national security secret. And then basically explain the data to
• 32:45
  Speaker 9: people so they understand. When data leaks, there's always this
• 32:48
  Speaker 9: sense that, ooh, there's something more serious or sinister or
• 32:52
  Speaker 9: bad going on that it had to leak. That kind
• 32:55
  Speaker 9: of stuff, I think, really does need to stop.
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: One aspect of this that was surprising is that we
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: did learn that one data point that led to the
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: updated mask guidance was the breakthrough cases in Provincetown. I
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: happen to have been there. I was protected because I
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: refused to party and go out because I was still
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: reeling emotionally from the last 14 months. That was my vaccine,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: being a fucking loser. But it seemed to me that like.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: It's been protecting you your whole life.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: I've never gotten a cold, doctor. But it was... It
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: was surprising to me that this incredible stress test of
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: the vaccine led to this update in a broader way,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: when to me, this was a case of the vaccine
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: holding up really well under a true live fire exercise.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Were you surprised that the Provincetown cases were a critical
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: part of this update?
• 33:53
  Speaker 8: I was.
• 33:54
  Speaker 9: I did not think there was anything from the Provincetown
• 33:58
  Speaker 9: update that surprised me in a negative way. And let
• 34:01
  Speaker 9: me explain two parts of this. First of all, The
• 34:03
  Speaker 9: big headline number, oh, these CT values were the same
• 34:06
  Speaker 9: for the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. By the way, we
• 34:09
  Speaker 9: knew that from the Singapore outbreak as well. So there
• 34:13
  Speaker 9: was an outbreak of unvaccinated and unvaccinated people in Singapore
• 34:16
  Speaker 9: at the airport about a month ago. So that wasn't
• 34:19
  Speaker 9: a huge surprise. And the second is I keep trying
• 34:23
  Speaker 9: to remind people of the counterfactual. Imagine the same July
• 34:26
  Speaker 9: 4th partying in P-Town if nobody had been vaccinated. You
• 34:32
  Speaker 9: know what we would have seen? Tens of thousands of
• 34:35
  Speaker 9: people infected, hundreds and hundreds of people in the hospital,
• 34:38
  Speaker 9: probably many people on ventilators and eventually die. And then
• 34:43
  Speaker 9: a local outbreak that would have become a regional outbreak, right?
• 34:47
  Speaker 9: This is now kind of Sturgis Rally. I mean, this
• 34:49
  Speaker 9: wasn't quite as big as the Sturgis Rally, but it's
• 34:52
  Speaker 9: kind of these things trigger these.
• 34:54
  Speaker 8: Massive regional outbreaks.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Did that happen?
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: No.
• 34:58
  Speaker 9: It was not great. A bunch of people got infected.
• 35:00
  Speaker 9: A few people ended up getting hospitalized. Thankfully, no one
• 35:03
  Speaker 9: has died. And then it sort of stopped because that's
• 35:07
  Speaker 9: what vaccines do.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: So you've touched on this a bit about the contagiousness
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: of breakthrough cases in vaccinated people. One thing you said
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: is that it may take place, but it might be
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: shorter because their immune systems are geared up, which is
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: actually not something that has been kind of clearly communicated
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: by the CDC. I thought this line from the Times
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: coverage of what the CDC has been putting out to
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: capture the confusion in some of the coverage. Dr. Walensky,
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: the director of the agency, acknowledged on Tuesday that vaccinated
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant carry
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: just as much virus in the nose and throat as
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: unvaccinated people and may spread it just as readily, if
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: less often. Just as readily, if less often. What does
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: that mean? What does it mean? What are they saying here?
• 35:58
  Speaker 9: First of all, I don't think that's consistent with the science.
• 36:01
  Speaker 9: There are two problems here. One is these CT values
• 36:06
  Speaker 9: that everybody's super excited about. They're called cycle threshold values,
• 36:08
  Speaker 9: by the way. It's just a term for the test. Anyway,
• 36:13
  Speaker 9: the big picture bottom line on these CT values is
• 36:16
  Speaker 9: CT values are not perfectly correlated with contagiousness. Nobody cares
• 36:19
  Speaker 9: about CT values. We care about contagiousness. The second is
• 36:22
  Speaker 9: is it's a snapshot in time. So there is no
• 36:26
  Speaker 9: reason to believe that people who have a breakthrough infection
• 36:29
  Speaker 9: and are vaccinated can spread the virus as easily as
• 36:33
  Speaker 9: unvaccinated people. I just think that's inconsistent with the data.
• 36:36
  Speaker 8: I don't know if Dr. Walensky, she, by the way,
• 36:39
  Speaker 8: is superb. So she knows this.
• 36:41
  Speaker 9: I don't know if she misspoke or if it was mischaracterized,
• 36:44
  Speaker 9: but this has been a consistent theme over the last week.
• 36:47
  Speaker 9: This idea that somehow vaccinated people are out there spreading
• 36:50
  Speaker 9: the virus all around and they're fueling the surge.
• 36:53
  Speaker 8: They really aren't. That's not what's going on.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Are you concerned at all that Israel and the UK
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: and now Germany have all decided to offer booster shots
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: to the elderly and immunocompromised while our health officials are
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: still debating the issue here? When should vaccinated Americans who
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: are over 65 or immunocompromised start to worry about their
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: immunity potentially waning?
• 37:16
  Speaker 9: Yeah, the data from Israel suggests that after about six months,
• 37:20
  Speaker 9: there is a waning of the antibodies, which may lead
• 37:23
  Speaker 9: to more breakthrough infections.
• 37:25
  Speaker 8: And so I've been worried. And you know where I'll
• 37:27
  Speaker 8: tell you I've been worried.
• 37:27
  Speaker 9: I've been worried about nursing homes and congregate care settings.
• 37:30
  Speaker 9: Because if you think about it, those were the folks
• 37:32
  Speaker 9: who got vaccinated in like December and January. So they're
• 37:35
  Speaker 9: hitting that six month mark now. And you also know
• 37:38
  Speaker 9: that 40 some odd percent of nursing home workers aren't
• 37:40
  Speaker 9: even vaccinated at all. So we're going to start seeing
• 37:44
  Speaker 9: outbreaks in nursing homes And the FDA has data on
• 37:48
  Speaker 9: whether a third shot could be helpful. I suspect it
• 37:51
  Speaker 9: is helpful. It'd be really great if this FDA would
• 37:54
  Speaker 9: make a determination on that.
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: Do you think that's going to happen soon? Because I
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: guess we're like you said, we're almost at the six
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: month mark for December and January, folks.
• 38:02
  Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, it should happen soon. I mean, there's been
• 38:04
  Speaker 9: a little bit of like, I think a lot of
• 38:06
  Speaker 9: us have been kind of scratching our heads at why
• 38:09
  Speaker 9: the FDA has moved as slowly as it has on
• 38:11
  Speaker 9: so many of these things. FDA received Pfizer data on
• 38:16
  Speaker 9: a third shot booster a while back, and they should
• 38:20
  Speaker 9: make a determination.
• 38:21
  Speaker 8: A bunch of other countries have done it, and.
• 38:23
  Speaker 9: It'd be really helpful for the FDA to weigh in
• 38:25
  Speaker 9: as well.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: A bunch of people in LA are putting on mustaches
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: and getting third shots illicitly.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: What do you think about that?
• 38:30
  Speaker 9: Well, this is actually part of the problem, right?
• 38:33
  Speaker 8: Is that if the FDA.
• 38:34
  Speaker 9: Says, no, no, we're going to take our time, guess what?
• 38:37
  Speaker 9: A bunch of people are going to go out and
• 38:38
  Speaker 9: do it anyway. And the people who are going to
• 38:40
  Speaker 9: go out and do it are better educated, high information,
• 38:43
  Speaker 9: high sort of social capital. And guess who's not going
• 38:47
  Speaker 9: to do it? The frail elderly in nursing homes, the
• 38:49
  Speaker 9: poorer people. So the best way to create more inequities
• 38:53
  Speaker 9: is to have a government that's not super responsive and
• 38:55
  Speaker 9: an agency that's not super responsive to the data.
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: So speaking of scary headlines, here's a fun one from
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: CNN over the weekend. UK scientists believe it is almost
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: certain a coronavirus variant will emerge that beats current vaccines.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: What is your reaction to that? And do you think
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: we'll be able to update our vaccines quickly enough if
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: that happens, if such a variant emerges.
• 39:17
  Speaker 9: Yeah, first of all, I'm deeply skeptical of that ever happening.
• 39:20
  Speaker 9: These vaccines are really extraordinary in kind of the breadth
• 39:24
  Speaker 9: of response that they give, right? We have, the vaccines
• 39:26
  Speaker 9: have now been tested against a whole set of different
• 39:28
  Speaker 9: variants and they're holding up largely just fine. I guess
• 39:32
  Speaker 9: it's theoretically possible.
• 39:34
  Speaker 8: I don't lose a lot.
• 39:35
  Speaker 9: Of sleep over it, but let's say that like it
• 39:37
  Speaker 9: happens because a lot, we've had a lot of curve
• 39:39
  Speaker 9: balls in this.
• 39:40
  Speaker 8: So let's say it happens.
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:42
  Speaker 9: We've got both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech that are very capable
• 39:47
  Speaker 9: of turning around a new vaccine within weeks. And then
• 39:51
  Speaker 9: the question for the FDA will be, how do they
• 39:54
  Speaker 9: test it? And are they going to require kind of
• 39:57
  Speaker 9: long test times, or are they going to authorize it
• 40:01
  Speaker 9: pretty quickly? The regulatory stuff is going to be much slower,
• 40:04
  Speaker 9: but the science on this can keep up with the
• 40:06
  Speaker 9: virus pretty quickly.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: So sort of last question on this. Over the last week,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: I've seen a bunch of scientists and public health experts
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: quoted as saying that, you know, herd immunity isn't happening,
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: COVID will become endemic, we'll basically have to learn to
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: live with it for years to come. I know that's
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: not actually as scary as it sounds, but what is
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: learning to live with COVID as an endemic disease look
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: like from a policy and public health perspective?
• 40:30
  Speaker 8: Yeah, it's a great question.
• 40:31
  Speaker 9: And there are two ways of learning to live with it, right?
• 40:34
  Speaker 9: Is that do we manage to get pretty high levels
• 40:38
  Speaker 9: of vaccinations, and then learn to live with it where
• 40:42
  Speaker 9: we have a few occasional kind of breakthroughs and some
• 40:46
  Speaker 9: people occasionally get sick, but we develop some good antivirals
• 40:49
  Speaker 9: and nobody, you know, people generally don't die or get
• 40:52
  Speaker 9: particularly sick. And then we kind of go about our
• 40:55
  Speaker 9: lives as like an annoyance, or do we have a
• 40:58
  Speaker 9: learn to live with it where 25, 30% of population
• 41:01
  Speaker 9: remains unvaccinated. We see reasonably large outbreaks still happening among
• 41:07
  Speaker 9: the unvaccinated, spills over, The first version, life basically returns
• 41:13
  Speaker 9: to a new normal. Things are pretty good. The economy
• 41:17
  Speaker 9: is humming along. Restaurants are full. People generally are not worried.
• 41:22
  Speaker 9: In the second version, you have occasionally cities having to
• 41:26
  Speaker 9: put in mask mandates. You have places having to shut down.
• 41:30
  Speaker 9: You have these kind of countermeasures and public health countermeasures
• 41:33
  Speaker 9: that we have to do constantly being deployed. Locally, in
• 41:37
  Speaker 9: small areas, hospitals occasionally fill up. We have to respond
• 41:40
  Speaker 9: to that. That kind of thing could go on for
• 41:42
  Speaker 9: years if we don't get to like 85, 90% of
• 41:45
  Speaker 9: people vaccinated.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: Well, that is a good warning. Dr. Ashish Jha, thank
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: calming us and hopefully everyone else down.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: It was a great conversation.
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry I cursed in your presence. You're a very
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: serious person and I lowered the whole debate.
• 42:04
  Speaker 8: No, I appreciate that. Hey, thank you guys so much
• 42:06
  Speaker 8: for having me on. It was a pleasure.
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: All right. I want to end with the story that
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: caught our eye over the weekend titled The Real Source
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: of America's Rising Rage. Mother Jones's Kevin Drum did a
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: fairly detailed analysis of why we've become so politically polarized
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: since the turn of the century. And he considers a
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: few popular theories. our belief in conspiracy theories, our use
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of social media, and our economic and social conditions. But ultimately,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: he concludes that Americans' belief in conspiracy theories has remained
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: steady almost since our founding, that our current polarization predates
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: our increased use of social media, and that people are
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: about as satisfied with their jobs and their lives as
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: they have been in the past, according to polls. What's
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: changed is Americans' distrust of institutions and anger towards government,
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: and that began just a few years ago. after the
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: launch of the most influential source of propaganda the country
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: has ever known.
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: It turns out that the COVID vaccines, those wonder drugs
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: that were absolutely perfect, that were more impressive than the
• 43:08
  Speaker 5: moon landing, the drugs you were not allowed to question
• 43:11
  Speaker 5: in any way, don't actually work in the way they told.
• 43:15
  Speaker 8: Us they did.
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: And now you want to mask us because you clearly
• 43:20
  Speaker 4: failed in your effort to get us vaccinated because the
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: totalitarian impulse within you is so strong? Nothing makes sense.
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: That didn't take long.
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: COVID hypocrite Nancy Pelosi already breaking her new mask rules.
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: Republicans slamming the speaker for what they call a massive
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: abuse of power in the House.
• 43:42
  Speaker 7: If this were covered, Tucker, the way the riots of
• 43:44
  Speaker 7: last summer were covered, it would be described as mostly peaceful.
• 43:49
  Speaker 7: And I think to a great extent it was peaceful.
• 43:51
  Speaker 7: The picture that you've shown of the people who were
• 43:53
  Speaker 7: in the Capitol building milling around the guy walking around
• 43:55
  Speaker 7: the Senate chamber with the horns on and so on,
• 43:58
  Speaker 7: most of them were peaceful.
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: Surprise, it's Fox News. So Drum acknowledges that this is
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: not exactly a surprising or exciting conclusion, but that while
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: social media and conspiracy theories certainly act as fuel on
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: the fire... It's Fox News that set the country ablaze,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: he writes. Lovett, what do you make of this theory
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: and his reasoning behind it?
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: I think it's very smart. I read the piece and
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: I shared it. And what I actually want is, I
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: think it's making a.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: So you did all that you need to do. You
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: read the piece, you shared it. Mission accomplished.
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: I did my part. But what I.
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: Why don't you hit that tweet button?
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: What it actually does call for, though, is I think
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: people who are more versed in the data that he
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: is using to justify ruling out some of these other
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: causes to kind of push back on it where they can,
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: because it did feel like Kevin drum has a point
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: of view. He's put all of his articles have headlines
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: like Fox news, the brutal of all evil Fox news
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: killed my dog. Like that's sort of, that's his, uh,
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: it's his beat and it's a, and it's a great
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: beat and he's very smart. But I do think that like,
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: it's hard to know what the compound effects of, of,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: of social media plus right-wing misinformation could be. Another point
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: actually is just that sometimes it's about misinformation. Sometimes it's
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: just about tone and the tenor of coverage and how,
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: how people communicate with each other on, on social media.
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: I also Do you think there are trends that maybe
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: preceded the changes in our politics that took place since 2000,
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: but they kind of concluded over these 20 years? One
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: of them being the ideological shifting that led to kind
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: of less heterodox views amongst Democrats and Republicans, some of
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: the geographic sorting that we've been seeing. So I think
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: it's a really smart point. I think the key takeaway, though,
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: is regardless of whether or not he's underemphasizing other causes
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: to make a point, is I think sometimes... We like
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: to talk about what's new when the underlying causes are
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: so boring. Why is Conor Lamb mad at AOC? Well,
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: it could be because she's taken a position on to
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: fund the police, or it could be because Fox News
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: is making everything worse. Like, why are we talking about
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: vaccine misinformation and vaccine hesitant? Well, it could be because
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: of all these other ancillary causes, or it could be
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: because Fox News is making everything worse. And sometimes it's
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: boring to talk about the same thing over and over again,
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: but we should concentrate on it because we actually just
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: need to figure out what the fuck to do about it.
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: Tommy, what do you think?
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: There's a really interesting piece. I think it's hard to
• 46:06
  Speaker 3: point at one thing and say that's the reason we
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: are more polarized. But a lot of the pieces of
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: the story rang true to me. He talks about how
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: Fox News almost single-handedly manufactured the hysteria over critical race theory.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: Anyone who worked in the Obama administration would not be
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: surprised by that. We watched them manufacture controversies about the
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: war on Christmas, death panels, tan suits, Benghazi, the election lie,
• 46:29
  Speaker 3: the vaccine coverage now. What's changed, I think, is The
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: mainstream media at the time used to make the Obama
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: administration treat Fox as real and credible and nonpartisan or
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: like they were fair and balanced or had fair and
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: balanced components. Now, I think that that lie has been
• 46:45
  Speaker 3: put to rest a little bit. Kevin Rudd, who's the
• 46:48
  Speaker 3: former prime minister of Australia from the Labor Party, has
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: made similar observations about how the Murdoch empire has distorted
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: politics in Australia because it is just relentlessly opposed to
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: any sort of progressive economic policy. It pushes climate denial.
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: You've also seen Murdoch outlets fuck up politics in the UK.
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: They fought for Brexit. And then you look at Canada,
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: where Murdoch hasn't gotten into the market and their political
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: process and debates are not nearly as broken. I do
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: think that Kevin's piece probably underestimates what we discussed in
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: this first topic, which is how gerrymandering has changed political
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: incentive structures in this country. And if you had a
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: Fox News driving the Republican Party to the far right,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: but 50-50 districts it would be disastrous for the Republican
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Party because in America we have a unique thing, which
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: is party primaries and then party elections that are also
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: popular elections. Our parties don't choose the person in the primary, right?
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: We vote for them twice. So if we were just
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: getting far right candidates out of Republican primaries, thanks to Fox,
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: they would get trounced in the general election. But we
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: have gerrymandered districts, so you don't. You know, the challenge
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: of like what to do about it is in recent years,
• 47:56
  Speaker 3: Fox has been supplemented by other right-wing outlets that we
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: talk about a lot, The Federalist, Breitbart. There's social media
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: sites like Parler. There's Newsmax. There's also Facebook. He talks
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: about how social media is exacerbating the problem but sort
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: of dismisses it. I do think the problem with Facebook
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: isn't just sharing Tucker Carlson clips on Facebook. The problem
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: is also that like QAnon and anti-vaccine groups were able
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: to organize and reach a critical mass on Facebook and
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: then get covered by Fox. So it's this vicious death
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: spiral happening. So I don't know, like at the end
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: of the day, Fox's core product is like white grievance
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: and fear. I will never forget 2012 and 2008, Fox
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: News found this one random member of the new Black
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: Panther Party just standing outside of a polling location in
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Philadelphia and did roadblock coverage of this guy all day
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: long because they were trying to scare white voters out
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: of voting for Obama. And, you know, that kind of
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: tells you all you need to know about them. Like
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: when the chips are down, that's what they focus on.
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: That's what the side that they're on. And that's what their,
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: their goal is. It's just to scare these old white
• 49:01
  Speaker 3: voters out of progressive politics.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: I totally agree that it's an excellent analysis that does
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: minimize a bit in my view, the role of social media.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: And I always think about the story that Dan tells about,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the IRS scandal in 2013. And when that first happened,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: you know, everyone at the White House was like, OK,
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: it's another Fox driven thing.
• 49:24
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Fox only reaches a couple million people. And so it's
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: probably an inside D.C. Fox thing that's not going to
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: go anywhere. And people in most of the country aren't
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: going to give a shit about this. And then we
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: did a bunch of focus groups in Ohio and everyone
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: was talking about the IRS scandal. And the difference was
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: Facebook and that there hadn't been Facebook or Facebook hadn't
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: really taken off in some of these past scandals. And
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: so I think that, you know, you can't underestimate enough or,
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: you know, you can't minimize the role of social media
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: and especially Facebook in giving Fox just a new weapon.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: to spread all of their lies and bullshit and conspiracy theories.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: And I think Fox News, you know, they sort of
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: set the tone and they sort of drive a lot
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: of this bullshit. But without Facebook, without social media, I
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: don't think you'd have the reach that you have today.
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: And I think that you wouldn't have people as angry
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: as you do today.
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do think it is hard. Some of this,
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: you can look for it in data. But I think
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: it's in this piece or maybe it's another piece where
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: he talks about how everyone just kind of We know
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: the people in our lives are angrier. We know. We
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: see it in our lives. We see it in our families.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: We see it in our communities. We see it on television.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: We see it everywhere. How do you find that in
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: the data? How do you source that point to what
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: caused it? We're not doing a double-blind experiment with an
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: America that doesn't have Fox News but does have social media.
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: So I do think these things are ultimately hard to
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: tease out. But I do think what I took away
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: from the piece is let's not take our eyes off
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: of the challenge. Fox News is, regardless of these other causes,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: one of the greatest threats to this country and its future.
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: It is every single day. And I think sometimes it
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: is discouraging because we don't know what to do. But
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: I do think we need to be more explicit in
• 51:07
  Speaker 2: saying it. And then I do think we need to
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: have conversations about the kind of boycotts that work, targeted boycotts.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: We should look at the moments when Fox News changed
• 51:14
  Speaker 2: course and what caused them to change course. Sometimes it's boycotts.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Sometimes it's other forms of public pressure. I think we
• 51:19
  Speaker 2: need to be more proactive and more deliberate and more
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: concerted in our attention to the.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Threat Fox News.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: And when you say we, I totally agree with this. Like,
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: I think that, like you pointed out, Tommy, reporters have
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: gotten better about this. Mainstream reporters at calling Fox out
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: and being confident enough to say that Fox is a
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: propaganda outlet. They never used to be. Then it sort
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: of started where some of the media reporters would say it.
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: People like Brian Stelter would point out stuff like that.
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: And now it's gone to more mainstream reporters. You see
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: some folks on CNN calling them out regularly. So that's good.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: But I still think like reporters should not treat Fox
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: reporters and people who work at Fox as their colleagues.
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: They should not show them like they, Fox exists to
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: destroy the mainstream media and to undermine trust in the
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: mainstream media. And reporters all should recognize this. And if they,
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: and if they do recognize it, they should say it publicly.
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: I also think progressive donors, right? Like, you know, I
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: talked to Stephanie Valencia recently, about this in terms of
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the Latino vote a couple episodes ago, but she pointed
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: out that story that, you know, progressive donors, liberal donors
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: dropped $ 14 million in South Florida in the last week
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: of the election while Republicans bought a radio station in
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: South Florida for $ 350, 000 that they turned into a right-wing
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: radio station. So, A lot more bang for your buck
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: there than just dumping money on digital ads in the
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: last week.
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: Of an election. And one other distinction I think that
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: we should stop pretending matters is the distinction between their
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: quote news end quote side and their opinion side.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: Huge.
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: And he makes that point.
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: It is obscene.
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: It is obscene. If you had a fire department where
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: six of the firefighters put out fires and three of
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: them set fires, you wouldn't be like, I don't think
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: we're giving enough credit to the ones on the truck
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: that are helping. They'd be like, that's a terrible fucking
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: fire department. Shut them down. Shut them down. Don't call them.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Drum makes the point in the piece that that's actually
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: one of the big reasons Fox is so influential because
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: he says part of the answer probably lies in the
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: fact that Fox News is cloaked in the trappings of news.
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: And that's one reason you get 65% of Republicans and
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: independents saying that they trust Fox News more than any
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: other news outlets, right? It's not just Tucker and Hannity,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: even though they're the worst defenders and say the worst shit.
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: It's that they see other news that's supposed to be nonpartisan,
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: fair and balanced, and people fucking buy it.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: No, no one knows. We are the only ones who
• 53:36
  Speaker 3: know there's a distinction. It's a bunch of white guys
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: in ties at desks reading news. And like, there's no
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: like the chyron that goes up when you go from
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: news to the opinion side.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: If you love it, if you love it, the shows
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: just get better for three hours.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, like in terms of what to do about like, yeah,
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: I give a lot of credit to groups like Sleeping
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: Giants that have gotten advertisers to stop advertising on shows
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: like Tucker Carlson and when he does or says racist things.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: I agree that strategic boycotts are good. There's an effort
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: called Unfox My Cable Box that is trying to get
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: providers to drop Fox News from cable packages, but it's
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: basically just a letter writing campaign. And that's a broader
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: challenge because Fox makes most of its money by charging
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: cable news subscribers like all of us, whether we watch
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: Fox or not. So my hope is that long-term that
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: their revenues will be hurt by cord cutting. But I
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: think that My own self-interested view here is that progressives
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: need to create our own progressive media, fight fire with fire.
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: It doesn't have to be racist, lying, nonsense. It could
• 54:35
  Speaker 3: be a different flavor and tone than Fox. But like
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: we need to make a counter argument because I don't
• 54:41
  Speaker 3: think that these right wing outlets are going anywhere. In fact,
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: I think they are growing and proliferating because right wing
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: donors see them as political weapons to help them get,
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: you know, regulations stripped away and tax cuts. And it's
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: an investment for them and it's paid them handsomely over time.
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we always want more competition here at Crooked Media,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: where we welcome more competition.
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: I guess.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: No, but I do think actually this points to another
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: asymmetry that's part of this and actually a way in which,
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: like the yawning chasm where we have these super rich
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: people with unlimited funds, like influences our politics in other ways.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Republican money supports right-wing media.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: You know who writes really powerfully about that?
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: Never heard of her. If you're going to say Jane Mayer,
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: I've never heard that name before.
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: I was going to say Jane Mayer. Tommy, I don't think,
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: was paying attention.
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: I was, Jane Mayer.
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: But the further you get the, like, liberal money, like,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: the grassroots gets behind someone like Bernie. But the further
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: you up the money ladder you go, the more moderate
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: become the quote-unquote democratic, like, backers. And so, like, you
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: just don't have the same thing. There is no Koch brother.
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: You talk about Soros as, like, an exception that proves
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: the rule. But they look more like Bloomberg, you know?
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: looking for a moderate, a center-left, or even a center option.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: And that asymmetry isn't going anywhere.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're spending billions of dollars on depolarization efforts.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: Let's bring more people together at conferences. I don't know
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: whose voice that is.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know either.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Anyway, so yeah, we have to... So Fox is bad.
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: In conclusion, Fox News is bad. That's why you come here,
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: for hot takes like that. I do think, look, it's.
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: Valuable to see a data-driven... Case made like Kevin did
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: in that piece, because I do think, look, a lot
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: of very serious, very smart, good reporters would beat their
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: chest and yell at the Obama administration when we didn't
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: include Fox News in some round robin set of interviews
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: with the networks. And they made us treat them like
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: they were on the level and they were not. And
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: that made the reporters who did that part of the problem.
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: And like pieces like this, I think, help make the
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: counter argument.
• 56:49
  Speaker 2: And one one last thing I'd say, too, is one
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: way I think you can take you can kind of
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: deal with this in your own life is I do
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: think like a lot of political conversations are a lot
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: of like, what happened? What happened to our country? What
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: led to this? These kind of rhetorical, big, sweeping things
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: just answer like ashes, Fox News.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's that complicated. I think it's just.
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: Made a bunch of people really angry, hate our institutions
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: and our government.
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we should fight it. And now we can move
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: on to appetizers.
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: All right, that's our show for today. Thank you to Dr.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: Ashish Jha for joining us and calming us all down.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Tommy, for joining us from Brooklyn.
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: Hey, you're welcome. I'm making you guys just this much cooler.
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: Tommy is in a VW bus following Jane Mayer around
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: on tour. I....
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: I put on the headphones just in time to hear
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: Lovett telling the doctor about how his lack of social
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: life saved him from the Delta variant. So that was
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: a fun treat for me.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: It was the highlight of the pod today.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: It's reality.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: All right, everyone. We'll talk to you on Thursday.
• 57:48
  Speaker 9: Bye.
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Yale Freed,
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: and Nar Melkonian, who film and share our episodes as
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: videos every week.