Latest / Pod Save America / “Darkest before the Omicron.”

Transcript

“Darkest before the Omicron.” · Pod Save America

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors,
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Thanks for watching!
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: On today's show, the White House gets ready to fight
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: a new variant and the same old Republican Party.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: Dr.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Ashish Jha is back to discuss what we know and
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: don't yet know about Omicron. And our friend Cal Penn
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: is here in the studio to chat about his new
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: book and join us for a round of Take Appreciator.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: But first, check out the latest episode of Offline. I
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: talked to Crooked's own DeRay McKesson, who makes the case
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: that Twitter can sometimes be a force for good. How
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: about that? and make sure to catch up on the
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: latest episode of Hysteria with Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco.
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: Their recent guests have included Katie Couric, Monica Lewinsky, Amanda Knox,
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Pramila Jayapal, and more. Hysteria drops every Thursday, and Offline
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: drops every Sunday right here on your Pod Save America feed.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: All right, let's get to the news. Here's what the
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: White House needs to do right now. Avoid a government
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: shutdown by Friday. Avoid a catastrophic debt default within a
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: month or so. get Joe Biden's economic agenda through the Senate,
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: and deal with rising prices and falling approval ratings by
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: finally ending the pandemic, which may have just become more
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: difficult with the emergence of a new COVID variant called Omicron,
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: a development that the president addressed this morning.
• 2:00
  Speaker 5: This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause
• 2:04
  Speaker 5: for panic. We have the best vaccine in the world,
• 2:07
  Speaker 5: the best medicines, the best scientists, and we're learning more
• 2:11
  Speaker 5: every single day.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: And speaking on behalf of millions of Americans, the president
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: also mispronounced the name of the new variant multiple times.
• 2:19
  Speaker 5: It's called the Omicron.
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: Omicron.
• 2:21
  Speaker 5: The Omicron variant. The face, the Omicron variant.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: I hear you, man.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Either Omicron turns out to be not as worrying or,
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: and then he won't need to know it, or it
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: turns out to be the thing that may bring down
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: his presidency, in which case he will learn it.
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: So I think this.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Will work itself out.
• 2:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah. This part of it.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: So early state, much like everything else, early stages. Wait
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: and see.
• 2:41
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: All right. We're good.
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: We're going to leave the epidemiology to Dr. Jha in
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: the next segment, but let's start with the politics. There
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: were a few stories over the break about how White
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: House officials are blaming COVID for all the economic and
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: political challenges they now face, including a quote from Jen
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: Psaki saying, quote, we're still in the middle of fighting
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: a pandemic and people are sick and tired of that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: We are too.
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: Amen, Jen.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Tommy, to what extent do you buy that diagnosis of
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: their problems?
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: I buy it completely.
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're buying.
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: I'm a buyer. I'm a buyer, John. You hear economists
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: making this argument, not just political leaders. But also, we
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: all just watched this happen. We watched the government shut
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: down our economy on purpose to try to manage the pandemic.
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: And we watched it in our own lives. I mean,
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: my personal consumption habits are nowhere close to normal. We
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: all used to travel, what, once a month? That was fun.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: That was fun.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: Not doing that anymore.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Airplanes. I don't even like airplanes and I've still missed that.
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: I do too. I used to do more shopping in person,
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: go to more restaurants, go to more bars, order less
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: stuff online. Our office here at Crooked Media is not
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: fully back to normal. Sex parties. My personal anxiety, that
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: isn't back to normal. So yeah, like I'm no supply
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: chain or employment expert, but it does seem like us
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: as a country bumping along with 70,000 cases a day
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: is creating some real economic challenges, you know?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And then people fighting the Biden sex party mandate.
• 4:04
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: The county by county mask mandates, the worker shortage. I mean,
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: you know, you got to fix all that before you
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: can fix the economy. Love it.
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: You buying it?
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, I am buying it. I think it's necessary. Finally
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: getting out of the pandemic is necessary, but not sufficient
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: for restoring Biden's popularity, right? That's like, you know, there's
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: a reason his popularity was at its most when we
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: were At the beginning of the rollout of the vaccines,
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: Delta was just an airline.
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: It started getting good in May. June, it was really cooking.
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: We were really cooking in June.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Remember June?
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: Remember June.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: And that Biden statement, right? There's another piece of it
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: where he said that we're going to do it with
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: science and speed, not chaos and confusion.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: Classic speech writer right there.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Classic.
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: Loved it.
• 4:51
  Speaker 6: Loved it.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: Gumption and gusto.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: It is like, look, like the pandemic- is a continuation
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of the four years of crisis. And there is an
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: implicit promise that he will end that crisis, even though
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: he is doing everything in his power to end the
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: pandemic and there's a lot of sabotage going on. That
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: is the implicit promise of his presidency.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: I went to Las Vegas in July. July 4th.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: July 4th is when they started.
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: July 4th is when there started being news stories about
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: breakthrough cases in Israel. I can remember. I was like,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: oh no, what's happening over there? But I looked back
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: at the 538 average of Biden's approval ratings. Biden's 52%
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: approval in July started sliding basically that last week in July,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: which is exactly when the Delta wave really started hitting
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: the United States. That was the last time it was,
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: it was a 52 and then it's literally been going
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: down ever since then. I think some of it was,
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: some of this was obscured by the drop in approval
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: rating around Afghanistan, but When Afghanistan happened, he had already
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: been sliding for a month at that point. And I
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: think a lot of it was Delta.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, people point to gas prices. And of course, that's
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: another cause. And it may be the proximate cause. But
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: undergirding a ton of sentiment in the country is just
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: the feeling we've all had of this pandemic, even if
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: there's a dozen other explanations that are very fair and
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: very valid and are part of the explanation.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Do you guys think the administration has done everything it
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: could be doing to focus on ending the pandemic? Like
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: how much of this is within their control?
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I've got another question for Dr. Job, but I do
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: think you have to distinguish between the White House and
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: the administration. And I do think that there's been a
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: lot of reported frustration, I think, fairly on the booster
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: issue because we're now heading into a holiday season where now,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: just today, we were talking about this earlier, that just
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: today they've changed the language on who should get boosters
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: to everybody. And just too late for a lot of
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: people traveling on Thanksgiving, just too late for everybody to
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: get boosted going into the holidays when now because of
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: this new variant, they're saying it might be helpful if
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: more people were boosted. And I think that that was
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: a real blunder that's going to lead to actually, ironically,
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of illness among the unvaccinated.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I was trying to think about this hard. I mean,
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: I think they've done a lot of things very well,
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: starting with just like basic competence on the vaccine rollout.
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: The mandates were slightly controversial, at least they were newsworthy.
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: I saw a report that 92% of federal civil servants
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: and active duty military personnel have been vaccinated. So pretty effective.
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: The business mandate is stuck in the sixth circuit right now.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: And I'm very anxious about that. But one survey found
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: that 60% of companies are going ahead with the mandate
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: for companies over 100 people to get either their employees
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: vaccinated or do testing. That's a huge pain in the
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: ass anyway. So that's good. And then United Airlines, Tyson Foods,
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: they put in place really effective mandates. And very few
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: people quit. Less than 5% of people quit. So I
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: do think they're doing the right things. I mean, to
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: your point, Lovett, I do think There's a question of
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: whether Biden and his political team can or should be,
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: you know, muscling the CDC or the FDA to move
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: a little bit faster. I think we all approach those
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: agencies with deference during the Obama administration and during the
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: Trump administration saw them as an important check. And now
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: I think we all wonder if these processes are just
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: kind of broken.
• 8:05
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: It's too slow.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: I was going to say, follow the science gets tricky.
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: That's what's on John's t-shirt.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's also in my, I have, of course, have
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: the yard sign. Um, It gets tricky when the scientists disagree, right?
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And it wasn't, I mean, the media made it out
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: to be Biden and his political team versus the agencies
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: and the science. That's not true. It was Biden, his
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: political team, Dr. Fauci, not a political person, at least
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: most of us would say that, not the Republicans, not
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: Ted Cruz.
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: A little political on masks.
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Walensky, the CDC director, also was for boosters for everyone,
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: as was Fauci, as was a lot of the members
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: of the CDC and FDA advisory boards, just not all
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: of them. I know, but the tough part, I know
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: we've talked about this before, but I do think the
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: point is government decisions should be guided by science, not
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: necessarily dictated by them. There's a role for the political
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: leaders and public health officials to make we talked about
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: this before, value judgments based on the best available science. Yeah.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, science isn't something you believe. Science is something
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: you do. And the idea that we believe the science
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: has became a kind of token of like, like of
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: identity for Democrats, I think is counterproductive and silly. And
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: also in these moments, you kind of expose as not
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: being always the like, not really making a lot of sense.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Like a bunch of scientists are having a debate. Science
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: produces this information from which we have to make a decision.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: Some of it is based on the evidence. Some of
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: it is based on politics, right? Like, what do we
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: want our society to look like? What is the balance
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: between opening the economy and public health? Those are not
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: scientific questions. Those are political, cultural questions.
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: There's also just not much Biden can do about, you know,
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: self-defeating things that happen at the local or state level,
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: like municipalities that pass bans on forcing people to wear masks,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: bans on mask mandates, or, you know, I don't think
• 9:57
  Speaker 4: Biden could really account for or change the fact that
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: the Republican Party decided to become in large part anti-vaccine.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Well, yeah, no, that, I mean, basically the huge challenge
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: that he faced ever since Delta really hit, you know,
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: like I do think that the vaccine requirements were success, right?
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: They were like controversial when he first announced them. They
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: are you know, a majority of Americans support them and
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: they have worked, right? I think the booster thing we've
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: talked about before. There is another aspect to, you know,
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: did he do enough to focus on COVID, which is
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: he has spent the last several months and Democrats and
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Congress has spent the last several months trying to muscle
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: through this infrastructure bill and now the Build Back Better agenda.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Derek Thompson at The Atlantic tweeted something today that I
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: want to see what you guys think about. He said,
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: for too many voters, Biden's ambitious swing big presidency feels
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: like a handyman who comes to fix your running toilet,
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: tells you he has big plans to rewire the home's
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: electrical system, and 10 hours later, the toilet's still broken.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: What do you guys think of that? Is there any
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: truth to that?
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: I think it's a fun way to say we got
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: to get out of this fucking pandemic.
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: Well, but the point is that you focus on.
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: I like working electricity and a running toilet. Yeah.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, like, they're both things we have to do.
• 11:08
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: It's a vivid metaphor. I mean, I think I get
• 11:12
  Speaker 4: what he's saying, which is that a lot of the
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: coverage in particular is like Biden's liberal wish list chopped
• 11:18
  Speaker 4: down from $ 6 trillion to $ 3. 5 trillion by Bernie on
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: its way to whatever Joe Manchin will allow it to be. Like,
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: I think that is an unfortunate side effect of this
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: debate going on for way too long.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I just think that there were, look, governing
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: is about choices. We faced this in 2010. And when
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: Obama wanted to pass the Affordable Care Act, there's some advisors,
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: Rahm Emanuel and others among them who are like, you
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: focus on the Affordable Care Act and getting that passed
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: while we're still in the middle of this economic crisis.
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: Voters are going to say, why are you focused on
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: that other thing when we're focused on this economic crisis?
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: And basically Obama's response was like, I only have one
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: year to pass everything that I promised I would pass
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: before the midterms when we might get smoked because the
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: economy is still bad. So I'm going to do it
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: maybe not even because it's politically popular, but because it's
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: the right thing to do. Similarly, like, You know, Joe
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: Biden had basically one year and one bill because of
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: the filibuster and because of the one the one seat
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: majority in the Senate to pass his entire campaign economic
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: agenda in one reconciliation bill was a death. Not really.
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: But it was like what we had to do to
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: get stuff done.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's also I mean, some of this is about optics.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: There's it's not like Joe Biden said, I'm not going
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: to worry about the pandemic right now. I got to
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: pass these bills. First of all, we started with a
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: massive relief bill that was designed to help people dealing
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: with the economic fallout from the pandemic, but also. Those
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: also put in place policies to help end the pandemic faster,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: including helping people who can't go back to work, et cetera.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: So I think some of this is just like he's
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: not talking about it as much. He was focused on
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: these other things. But in the end, that won't really
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: matter next year if the pandemic is raging or if
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the pandemic is not raging. This is the reality on
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: the ground. And look, we may be talking about a
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: dozen other problems next year, but they will that will
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: feel like a warm bath if we were on the
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: other side of the worst parts of this pandemic with
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: 80 to 90,000 people having cases a day. And if 80,000, 90,000
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: people are still having cases next year, it doesn't matter
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: what the fuck anybody says. We're losing the Congress, and
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: then we're losing the White House.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what your bumper sticker is, your slogan,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: your message.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: The situation also materially changed when the Delta variant became
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: the dominant one. I mean, there's no... fix the pandemic
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: button in the situation room that Biden's not pressing because
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: he's too busy worrying about roads and bridges.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: Press that button.
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: And there's a version of this conversation that I think
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: happens to every president at all times, like particularly on
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: foreign policy. Every time you want to do something big
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: or maybe politically taxing on foreign policy, someone like, you know,
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: rhymes with Jan Reifer will be like, voters don't give
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: a shit about whatever thing you want to do on,
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: you know, democracy reform or Afghanistan. They care about gas
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: prices and the economy. And Of course, Mr. Pfeiffer is right.
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: Was it greed written into our founding documents?
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, we did.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Yes, we did. It's going to be a real test
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: to see if Dan listens to the Monday Power.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: We'll find out. We'll find out the hard way.
• 14:01
  Speaker 8: All right.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: But, you know, look, I think presidents, as Barack Obama
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: memorably said to John McCain, need to walk and chew
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: gum at the same time.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: So one thing that is entirely within the administration's control
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: is their message. One of the few things. There's a
• 14:14
  Speaker 3: Politico story yesterday about how White House officials are ready
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: to start hitting Republicans harder. We have Deputy Communications Director
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: Kate Berner saying, quote, we're moving into a new phase
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: and we'll make it very clear who's on the side
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: of cutting costs, combating price increases, and fighting inflation.
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: Those are all the same thing.
• 14:30
  Speaker 3: And who is not?
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: Those are all the same thing.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: Are you going to edit Kate's quote?
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: No, I appreciate it because it's clearly what they're worried about, right?
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: She's hitting the same point three times. I was not
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: against it.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: I'm just noting it.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Some Biden allies disagree with this approach, like John Podesta,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: who told Politico, quote, it's not Biden's style and it's
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: not where he's comfortable. What do you guys think? Anyone
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: want to make the case that Podesta is right?
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: I I found like the strangest piece of the, it's like,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: what is this ridiculous binary between Joe Biden not going
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: on the offensive and to define Republicans?
• 15:01
  Speaker 4: That's one option.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: And the other option is like a fucking flaming Joe Biden, like.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: These fascist motherfuckers.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Like, no, like I don't think Joe Biden has to
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: become a different person to deliver an effective message to
• 15:12
  Speaker 2: brand Republicans.
• 15:14
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: I think it was sort of wrong on every level,
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: the whole story. I mean, Biden kicked the shit out
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and the McCain-Palin ticket.
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: That's kind of your job as the vice president. He
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: was also, before he was vice president or the vice
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: presidential nominee, he would hammer the Bush administration and probably
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: other administrations before we were born. So your point is
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: it is his style. I'm saying he has that tool
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: in his toolkit. I think the right question is, is
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: that the right approach for the president versus when he
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: was vice president? And the old rules of politics were
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: basically you keep the president presidential and You stay on
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: the high road. You're right. Like you say, optimistic. And
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: then the vice president is your attack dog. I don't
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: know if that's the right call in the post-Trump Facebook
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Internet era. You know, I think generally speaking, every election
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: is a choice. It's one party versus the other. And
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: you have to lay that out. And there's a contrast
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: to that. But, you know, I think Biden on the
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: attack or not is a bit of a I don't know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: it was a silly construct.
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: I think he should kick the ever living shit out
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: of them. with a presidential tone. Sure.
• 16:16
  Speaker 4: Look at you having it both ways. You're taking it too, Josh.
• 16:18
  Speaker 6: That's what I think.
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: I like that.
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: But it's kind of what you were getting at. For sure.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: It's not even just the presidential tone. I think we
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: were pretty critical of Joe Biden in the primaries because
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: he kept.
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: Talking about- Not me.
• 16:30
  Speaker 6: You were.
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: Tommy was riding with Biden from the get-go.
• 16:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah, riding with Biden. This guy.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: But about saying Republicans can have an epiphany, whatever. But
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: whatever the core message we land on to try to-
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: First of all, one lesson of 2020- which then we
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: got a remedial lesson of in Virginia is we can't just,
• 16:46
  Speaker 2: the Republican party can't just be like the white label
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: Trump brand. It just doesn't work. We need a, we
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: need to define the Republican party irrespective of Trump. And like,
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: I think Joe Biden is going to be the leader
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: of our party that does that. When the kind of
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: Trump version of this is like, he says the most
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: vile and dishonest version of an attack. It makes a
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: bunch of news. When every rung up the circles of
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: conservative hell, they get more and more serious and defensible
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: to your, till you reach like the surface, the Sunday
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: show surface. Um, But we do the opposite, right? Joe
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: Biden's going to say the most serious and defensible version,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and then you'll have more bombastic and more kind of
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: partisan and firebrand versions of it down the chain, which.
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: Is what we need.
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: Crazy people on Pod Save America.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, please.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: If we're the fucking... If we're the worst, we're in
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: real trouble. We need some fucking heinous shit to come
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: from below.
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: And I don't know who it is.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you're out there. We need some
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: fucking heinous shit.
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: When we were... Facing Mitt Romney in 2012 in an
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: environment where the economy was still not back, Joe Biden
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: would walk around the White House saying, don't compare me,
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: That was his saying that he would always say.
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: And it's why now he's president.
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: Now he's president.
• 17:57
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: No, but people at home, Google Biden and attack dog,
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: and then remove all the ones about his dog, major
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: biting people. And you'll find out all.
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: This sort of those stories. But anyway, so he would
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: always tell us to do that. We, of course, even
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: though the economy wasn't, wasn't back and Republicans wouldn't pass
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: anything as opposed to, you know, we tried to reframe
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: the debate. So it wasn't, what is Barack Obama doing
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: to fix the economy? But Would you rather have Barack
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: Obama's approach to the economy or Mitt Romney's approach to
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: the economy? In the 2012 exit poll, only 23% of
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: voters thought the economy was in good or excellent shape.
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: I didn't even recognize how bad that was until I
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: just went back and looked at the numbers. It's not good.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: 77% thought it was not so good or poor. But
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: Obama won that election because... Are you saying we stole that? Yeah,
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: we stole it. He got 40% of the voters who
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: thought that the economy sucked. And partly it was because
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: they thought, yeah, maybe the economy is not great now,
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: but Mitt Romney is going to be fucking worse. Yeah.
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: And I do think there needs to be a message
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: from the White House in Joe Biden's style and Joe
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: Biden's language doesn't it doesn't have to be that bombastic
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: that like here is the choice. Here's what Republicans would
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: do on the virus. Here's what Republicans are doing.
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: It's a good lesson.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is like, you know, whatever it is, like
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden has a kind of avuncular.
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: I'm not mad.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: I'm disappointed tone. He's like takes with Republicans. That works
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: great for him and can deliver literally any version of
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: the message. It's like there's two separate issues. There's what
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: is the core shared message? agreed upon democratic line of
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: attack to brand Republicans going into the midterm.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: What do you think? You got anything?
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: I think it's a research question. I think it's like
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: an evidence question. What I, what I, if you want
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: to start from, well, what's the core real argument, the
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: absolute real argument. And I was trying to think about like,
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: what are the, what are we trying to tie together?
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: And it's about the economy. It's about COVID and it's
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: about democracy. And to a lesser extent, I think it's
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: about like the kind of cultural rot and the kind
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: of cultural viciousness that they bring everywhere they go. And
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I do think like, At core, what we're dealing with
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: are like saboteurs, right? They are trying to sabotage the recovery.
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: They are trying to sabotage our ability to defeat the pandemic.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: They're trying to sabotage our democracy and they're trying to
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: sabotage our society with kind of violent and vicious and
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: dishonest rhetoric all the time.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: And what's the motivation behind that? For themselves, for power.
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: For power. I think you got to get the motivation
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: in there. Dan and I disagree about this a little
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: bit on a couple of pods ago, because He was
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: saying we should, you know, they're in it for their
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: rich friends, which we know, of course, polls well. And
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: people think that the Republican Party is for the rich
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: and it's worked for a couple of decades. And I
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: do think that's an important point to get across. But
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: with some of this stuff being against vaccine requirements, being
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: against masks, trying to sabotage Joe Biden, all of like
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: you said, all the cultural stuff, the insurrection, the anti-democracy stuff.
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: You can't really fit in the rich friends in that frame.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: It has to be about something different. And I think
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: it's about they want power at all costs.
• 20:41
  Speaker 4: I mean, the cast of Fox's Friends is telling people
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: that the Omicron variant is made up by Democrats because
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: they want to win.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: Right. Ronnie Jackson said it, too.
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: The midterm variant. The midterm variant.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Ronnie Jackson called it the midterm variant.
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: I struggled with this one, too.
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: I do think you need someone out there telling the truth,
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: which is that there's a big swath of the GOP
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: that is trying to convince people not to get vaccinated
• 21:05
  Speaker 4: because they want to prolong the pandemic and damage. I
• 21:09
  Speaker 4: believe that to be true based on public statements like
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: the ones we just mentioned. Whether or not Biden should
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: be saying that, I think that's hard. I think that
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: most of all, I think some of the lessons from
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: the focus groups that we all were reading after Virginia
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: is that people are just And they don't want to
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: hear excuses no matter how accurate or realistic they are.
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: I think what they want to hear from Biden is
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: what he's doing to make it better, all the ways
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: they're trying to get it under control, all the ways
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: they're trying to help people. That's tough, but I do
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: think he needs to probably carry that and he needs
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: someone else. Really, like, saying these guys want to prolong
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: the pandemic to hurt me is a tough one for him.
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: There's a possibility to do both those things, Tommy, that
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: he had, that he did for a moment when Delta hit.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: Because remember when the vaccine... mandates were announced and basically
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: was like, here's what I'm doing to end the pandemic.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: And the white house during that time telegraphed to everyone, Oh,
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: we're going to start hitting Republicans as they're the reasons
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: that so many people aren't vaccinated because they're lying about
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: the vaccines and they're, they're stopping mask mandates. And so
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: he both had a message that was, here's what I'm
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: doing to fix the pandemic and fight the pandemic. And
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: here's what, and they're trying to stop me. The people
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: are trying to stop us from beating the pandemic are
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: the Republicans. And I do think like that kind of
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: message is probably if, you know, If it turns out
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: that we have to deal with Omicron for a while,
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: like I bet he would go back to that message
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: or at least I think he should.
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: And I do think like there's a line that kind
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: of pops up now and again, but I do think
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: it applies. And I do think, you know, one thing
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: you saw in those Virginia focus groups, too, is this
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: kind of like frustration with just partisanship, generally politics generally
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: being so nasty. And I do think there's which is
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: I think one. true statement is that they hate Democrats
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: more than they love the country and they'd rather hurt
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: the country than let Democrats have a win. That goes
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: back to what Rick Scott said that was in the
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Politico piece talking about how this is the inflation is
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: a goldmine.
• 22:55
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: Be all over that statement.
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: Run that in Florida everywhere. I mean, it used to
• 22:59
  Speaker 4: be the case that negative campaigning often damaged the person
• 23:02
  Speaker 4: who was delivering the negative attack as much as the recipient.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: Trump kind of upended that calculus because thanks to the
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: Electoral College, you just had to get his 43% out
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: you know, and get them motivated and turn out. But,
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: you know, it's tough.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: But the best attacks are true and people can get
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: that they're true, right? Which is like when, if Joe
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Biden said they hate Democrats more than they love the country,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: there's plenty of evidence for that because they say it
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: all the time.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the piece, the kicker of this Politico piece
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: is how, you know, Biden went to Virginia and used
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: the Terry McAuliffe attack line calling Glenn Youngkin an extremist,
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: you know, in one way or another. And they're saying, oh,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: look how negative you went, and it didn't really work.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: But the problem there isn't that Joe Biden went negative.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: The problem is, based again on some of the research
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: that we now have, he went negative in a way
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: that people didn't buy.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: That's the issue.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: That's right. All right.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: When we come back, Love It, we'll talk more about
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: the Omicron variant with Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: And we're back.
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: World health experts are scrambling to contain the new Omicron variant,
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: even as they try to gather evidence about just what
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: kind of danger it may or may not pose. So far,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: at least 44 countries have imposed travel restrictions. That number
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: is expected to rise. Here to help us understand what
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: we know and what we don't, he is the Dean
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: of Brown University School of Public Health, Dr. Ashish Jha.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Welcome back to Pod Save America.
• 24:24
  Speaker 6: Hey, thanks for having me back. Excited to be back. Dr.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: Jha, do you feel a tiny bit of extra weight
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: on your shoulders because that's you carrying me? Because you're
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: my guru through this.
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: I want you to know that.
• 24:34
  Speaker 6: I am happy to try to be helpful.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: So there's been a lot of confusing reports out there.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: I want to start with this. Why does the Omicron
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: variant have public health experts so concerned?
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: Yeah, that's a great question. And look, every month, six weeks,
• 24:50
  Speaker 6: we hear about a new variant, Lambda, Mu, and Most
• 24:53
  Speaker 6: of those we look at and we sort of shrug
• 24:55
  Speaker 6: our shoulders and think, that's probably not going to be
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: a big deal. And they have not turned out to
• 24:58
  Speaker 6: be a big deal. This has two things that have
• 25:02
  Speaker 6: gotten a lot of us concerned. First is that it
• 25:05
  Speaker 6: took off in a really kind of impressive way in
• 25:09
  Speaker 6: South Africa from the days that it was first detected
• 25:12
  Speaker 6: in the region of South Africa was detected. It just
• 25:16
  Speaker 6: became dominant very, very quickly. That doesn't usually happen to variants.
• 25:20
  Speaker 6: And when it does, it makes us think and worry
• 25:23
  Speaker 6: that this is going to be a very, very contagious variant.
• 25:26
  Speaker 6: And that's in the backdrop of having Delta around. So
• 25:30
  Speaker 6: the idea that you'd have something even more contagious than
• 25:32
  Speaker 6: Delta is concerning. That's sort of number one. Number two
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: is when we sequenced this variant, this virus, and looked,
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: there were a bunch of mutations on the spike protein.
• 25:43
  Speaker 6: Now that's the really important part of the protein that
• 25:47
  Speaker 6: part of the virus that our antibodies target We saw
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: a lot of mutations that, again, have people concerned about,
• 25:54
  Speaker 6: will our vaccines work as effectively? Will the monoclonal antibodies
• 25:58
  Speaker 6: that we have work as effectively? So is it more
• 26:01
  Speaker 6: contagious and will it really push our vaccines? Those are
• 26:05
  Speaker 6: the two things that look different about this variant compared
• 26:08
  Speaker 6: to a lot of other variants out there.
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: So I've seen some debate about about just how rapidly
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: it might be spreading, at least some debate as to
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: whether or not that concern should be at least mitigated
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: a bit. You've talked about this, that there's some evidence
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: that maybe this has been around a little bit longer
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: and the cases we're seeing that look like a rapid
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: rise in South Africa might be something like looking for
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: your keys where the lights are shining. Can you talk
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: a little bit about that? What have you seen even
• 26:37
  Speaker 2: updated today about that?
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.
• 26:39
  Speaker 6: Absolutely. Yeah, no, there is a little bit of like,
• 26:42
  Speaker 6: we've got to temper this because we don't know. South Africa,
• 26:46
  Speaker 6: the reason they identified it is because none of us
• 26:48
  Speaker 6: actually think this variant started in South Africa. But South
• 26:51
  Speaker 6: Africa is phenomenal as a country that does great surveillance,
• 26:54
  Speaker 6: does great sequencing. And so they've identified it. Now, it
• 26:58
  Speaker 6: does beg the question, has it been around for a
• 27:00
  Speaker 6: little bit longer? I think most evolutionary biologists that I'm
• 27:04
  Speaker 6: speaking to think that maybe it began circulating more like mid-October.
• 27:09
  Speaker 6: So maybe it isn't quite as bad as it looks.
• 27:13
  Speaker 6: That'd be fabulous, right? Because that would mean it's maybe
• 27:15
  Speaker 6: not quite as contagious as it looks. And that would
• 27:18
  Speaker 6: be a good thing. So we've kind of sort this
• 27:20
  Speaker 6: out a bit. And one of the ways we're going
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: to do it is we're going to see as it
• 27:23
  Speaker 6: lands in other places, what it does in those places.
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: It will arrive in the United States if it's not
• 27:29
  Speaker 6: already here. We'll watch how it takes off here. And
• 27:32
  Speaker 6: we will have much better data on this.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: So Scott Gottlieb, who's the former FDA commissioner and he's
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: a Pfizer board member, so he's making that money. He's
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: saying they believe the vaccine will still offer some protection.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: You've actually said similar, that you just don't know how
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: much protection. Can you talk a little bit about that?
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: Why is there this optimism that the vaccine will work
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: at least to some degree on this variant?
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. So look, the variant has a lot of
• 27:59
  Speaker 6: changes to that spike protein that, as I said, we
• 28:01
  Speaker 6: worry about because that's the main place that our vaccines target.
• 28:05
  Speaker 6: But it's not the only place our vaccines target. Our
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: vaccines actually are quite impressive in what kind of a
• 28:11
  Speaker 6: breadth of antibody response it generates. And we have antibodies
• 28:15
  Speaker 6: to other parts of the virus, and those should largely
• 28:18
  Speaker 6: stay intact. Now, they may not be as important. They
• 28:21
  Speaker 6: may not work as well. Maybe the spike protein antibodies
• 28:24
  Speaker 6: are the most important. So the way I look at
• 28:26
  Speaker 6: it is you may see, right now, if you're boosted,
• 28:30
  Speaker 6: you probably had 95% efficacy against getting infected. We might
• 28:34
  Speaker 6: see a hit on that down to 60 or 50%.
• 28:36
  Speaker 6: And again, I'm making up those numbers. I have no
• 28:39
  Speaker 6: idea what it will actually be. But the idea that
• 28:42
  Speaker 6: it will render our vaccines useless, just don't buy it.
• 28:46
  Speaker 6: The vaccines are too good. They have too many helpful properties.
• 28:50
  Speaker 6: I think it's extremely unlikely that the vaccines will be
• 28:53
  Speaker 6: rendered useless. The question is, is it going to be
• 28:55
  Speaker 6: a small hit to the vaccine or is it going
• 28:57
  Speaker 6: to be a large hit to the vaccine efficacy? That's
• 29:00
  Speaker 6: what we don't know right now.
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: And one thing I would just add, you're pulling these
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: numbers out of thin air, but even that sort of
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: big hit to the vaccine efficacy would have been a
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: percentage that we would have considered a victory in the
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: original approval process for these vaccines, right?
• 29:15
  Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely. The problem is, Imagine it does take it
• 29:18
  Speaker 6: down from 95 to 50%. That's still pretty good. And
• 29:21
  Speaker 6: it will probably do a good job of preventing severe illness.
• 29:23
  Speaker 6: And that's great. But one of the things that we
• 29:26
  Speaker 6: want to do is we want to bring this pandemic
• 29:28
  Speaker 6: to an end. And that means we need highly effective
• 29:32
  Speaker 6: vaccines and lots and lots of people vaccinated. And if
• 29:36
  Speaker 6: there is a hit to the vaccine, that's going to
• 29:37
  Speaker 6: make it harder to drag things out longer. So lots
• 29:42
  Speaker 6: of reasons to hope that the hit to the vaccine,
• 29:44
  Speaker 6: if there is one, is small at best.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: So on that note about getting the pandemic under control
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: and getting to make sure the vaccines are effective, have
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: you are there any lessons in the booster approval process
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: that you've taken from just this recent news about Omicron?
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: Because even though there was some dissensus about whether boosters
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: should be approved for everyone, now there's all of a sudden,
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: as we head into this holidays, this push to get
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: more people boosted, even people who were skeptical because of Omicron.
• 30:13
  Speaker 6: Yes.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: Do you think that there was a bit too much
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: hesitancy on the part of some public health experts on
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: approving the booster sooner?
• 30:20
  Speaker 6: Absolutely. I think there has been poor messaging at times
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: coming out of the CDC. And I think there have
• 30:28
  Speaker 6: been a lot of public health experts who I think
• 30:30
  Speaker 6: have muddled this message, and really, unfortunately so. And I'll
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: tell you why. I think it comes from a good place.
• 30:36
  Speaker 6: I think a lot of people worry that if we
• 30:38
  Speaker 6: give boosters to Americans, we're not going to have enough
• 30:41
  Speaker 6: vaccines for people around the world. Look, global vaccinations are
• 30:45
  Speaker 6: super important. But the US government, and you can decide
• 30:48
  Speaker 6: whether you like this or not, the US government bought
• 30:50
  Speaker 6: a bunch of booster doses for Americans, and they can't
• 30:54
  Speaker 6: be repackaged and shipped elsewhere. So they're either going to
• 30:57
  Speaker 6: get used in the US or they're going to get
• 30:59
  Speaker 6: tossed out. And personally, I think there's a no-brainer. People
• 31:03
  Speaker 6: should be getting boosters. Everybody over 18 should be getting
• 31:05
  Speaker 6: a booster. I've been feeling that way because the data
• 31:08
  Speaker 6: has been clear on this for a good six, eight weeks, really,
• 31:11
  Speaker 6: probably since late September, it's been very clear to me
• 31:13
  Speaker 6: that that's the right answer. But a lot of people have,
• 31:16
  Speaker 6: I think, tied themselves into knots trying to explain why
• 31:19
  Speaker 6: maybe boosters are not so important with the hope that
• 31:22
  Speaker 6: somehow we'll take these extra doses of vaccines and we're
• 31:25
  Speaker 6: going to send them globally. That's not a realistic option.
• 31:29
  Speaker 6: And so we should just do the right thing and
• 31:30
  Speaker 6: not worry about, you know, kind of these, I mean,
• 31:35
  Speaker 6: we have to worry about downstream effects, obviously, but we
• 31:37
  Speaker 6: should focus on global vaccinations and boosters and keep those
• 31:41
  Speaker 6: two issues separately.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, look, this has been a kind of frustration
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: to me, not as a public health expert, but as
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: somebody who saw politics kind of fall coming into the
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: way the decision was being made. And it seemed to
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: me when the, uh, the Biden administration was pushing for
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: boosters for everybody, but there was a decision not to
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: do that at the FDA. Uh, you know, several members
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: of that panel wrote a piece, uh, a piece in
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: a medical journal saying we shouldn't do boosters. And part
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: of the logic there was about global vaccination and about
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: optics and messaging. Um, but they couldn't really say, uh,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: that boosters will help people, but we still don't think
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: they should have them. That was the core of the problem.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: There was a dishonesty there.
• 32:20
  Speaker 6: Yeah. Look, I think throughout the whole pandemic, there has
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: been this effort to try to figure out what's the
• 32:26
  Speaker 6: right messaging, what's going to get people to do what.
• 32:29
  Speaker 6: And my personal strategy is just be straight with people.
• 32:33
  Speaker 6: If boosters are going to help, we should tell people
• 32:36
  Speaker 6: boosters are going to help. And if there are negative
• 32:39
  Speaker 6: downstream effects, let's manage those. Let's be open and honest
• 32:42
  Speaker 6: about those too. And let's talk about But don't say
• 32:45
  Speaker 6: boosters aren't going to help when they are because you're
• 32:47
  Speaker 6: worried about not getting vaccines to other places. I just
• 32:50
  Speaker 6: don't think that ends up working out well in the
• 32:52
  Speaker 6: long run.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: This is why you're my guru.
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: All right. This is why.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Well, so on that sort of as we look forward,
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: because I don't want to just live in my.
• 33:01
  Speaker 4: 2021 booster frustration.
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: Is there more you'd like to see the Biden administration
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: doing right now as we head into the holidays?
• 33:10
  Speaker 6: Yeah, there are a couple of things that I think
• 33:11
  Speaker 6: need to be done, right? One, again, obviously we agree
• 33:13
  Speaker 6: on boosters. The Biden administration has actually been doing a
• 33:15
  Speaker 6: very good job on this, and I'm happy to see that.
• 33:19
  Speaker 6: The second part where I think the Biden administration is
• 33:21
  Speaker 6: starting to get better, but I think they've wasted a
• 33:24
  Speaker 6: lot of months and did not do a good enough job,
• 33:27
  Speaker 6: was around having testing available. It's still stunning to me
• 33:30
  Speaker 6: that you can be in Europe and you can get
• 33:33
  Speaker 6: these rapid antigen tests for a buck a piece. You
• 33:36
  Speaker 6: can buy a pack of 20 at a grocery store.
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: And in the US, if you try to go buy
• 33:40
  Speaker 6: these rapid antigen tests at Walgreens or CVS, they basically
• 33:44
  Speaker 6: cost $ 12 to $ 15 and they're not easy to get.
• 33:48
  Speaker 6: The reason why that's important, first of all, I think
• 33:50
  Speaker 6: these antigen tests will work for the new variant as well.
• 33:53
  Speaker 6: Having them cheap and widely available means people will use them.
• 33:56
  Speaker 6: It's actually a very effective way of keeping the infection
• 33:59
  Speaker 6: numbers lower. And I feel like the administration didn't do
• 34:02
  Speaker 6: enough on getting kind of enough supplies ready. They've gotten
• 34:06
  Speaker 6: religion now, they're making progress. but they've got to do better.
• 34:10
  Speaker 6: So that's another area that I think is important. And
• 34:13
  Speaker 6: then just clear messaging to people. I mean, people are
• 34:15
  Speaker 6: right now a little freaked out about this. They don't
• 34:17
  Speaker 6: know what it means for the holidays. As far as
• 34:20
  Speaker 6: I'm concerned, I think people need to understand that whatever,
• 34:23
  Speaker 6: you know, the Delta still is the big risk that
• 34:25
  Speaker 6: we have. And if you're vaccinated and boosted, you're in
• 34:28
  Speaker 6: good shape. But I think clear, consistent messaging from the
• 34:30
  Speaker 6: White House would be very, very helpful at this moment.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: On that note, actually, that was where I was going
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: to kind of leave things. First on Omicron in the US,
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: is it possible that it is more prevalent here, but
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: we're just not seeing it yet? Or do you think
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: it really is? I mean, it may be here already,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: but do you think it's, what are you thinking about
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: that right now?
• 34:52
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'd be surprised if it's not here already. The
• 34:55
  Speaker 6: question is, you know, kind of what is our level
• 34:57
  Speaker 6: of detection? How quickly can we identify it? My expectation
• 35:01
  Speaker 6: is that we're going to see the first cases identified
• 35:04
  Speaker 6: in the next few days. It's probably dozens of cases
• 35:07
  Speaker 6: right now, probably not hundreds. Once you get into hundreds
• 35:09
  Speaker 6: or thousands of cases, our detection scheme will absolutely pick
• 35:13
  Speaker 6: it up. So it's just that we're having 80, 100,000
• 35:16
  Speaker 6: cases a day. Maybe if only a small number are Omicron,
• 35:19
  Speaker 6: we may miss that for a few days. But I
• 35:21
  Speaker 6: do think that's going to get better. Our surveillance system
• 35:25
  Speaker 6: was really mediocre last year. A year ago, we weren't sequencing.
• 35:27
  Speaker 6: We just didn't do a good job of identifying variants.
• 35:30
  Speaker 6: That's actually gotten way, way better. We are now in
• 35:32
  Speaker 6: much better shape than we were And there, the CDC
• 35:35
  Speaker 6: really deserves great praise. Again, they've done a lot to
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: really ramp up sequencing of genomes. And I feel like
• 35:42
  Speaker 6: the administration's done a really good job on that.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: So that's a reason for hope, right? Because I think
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: there's been some question about like, okay, they found this
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: sequence in South Africa, then they look at these people
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: arriving to Europe and all of a sudden there's 13
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: cases on two planes. That was shocking, right? Is this possibly,
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: if there was prevalence in Europe already, say, would it
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: be picked up by the processes they have?
• 36:05
  Speaker 6: Yeah, so the answer is not necessarily. I mean, that's
• 36:08
  Speaker 6: the thing is that they do do, I mean, UK
• 36:10
  Speaker 6: does a better job of surveillance, but the rest of
• 36:13
  Speaker 6: Europe does not necessarily do such a great job on
• 36:15
  Speaker 6: sequencing particularly. And so they absolutely can miss it. And right,
• 36:20
  Speaker 6: it's not a coincidence that they just find it. They
• 36:23
  Speaker 6: were looking for it. And that means that when they're
• 36:25
  Speaker 6: not looking for it, the two flights from South Africa
• 36:27
  Speaker 6: the day before probably had some people with this variant
• 36:31
  Speaker 6: as well, but they just missed it. UK is sort
• 36:34
  Speaker 6: of the gold standard, but I think America has come
• 36:36
  Speaker 6: into its own as well on sequencing, doing a much
• 36:38
  Speaker 6: better job than it was before.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: You have a nuanced view on travel restrictions, border closures.
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: Sometimes they might be useful. Sometimes they may have more
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: harm than good. What about right now? Do you think
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: that it was the right decision right now to make
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: these kinds of travel restrictions?
• 36:55
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I wish they had done it a little bit differently.
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: So let me explain why. I mean, people raise rightly
• 37:00
  Speaker 6: so that the ferry probably didn't even start in South Africa.
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: South Africa is the place that identified. But there were
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: a lot of cases in South Africa, a lot of
• 37:07
  Speaker 6: cases in Southern Africa. I think it was reasonable to
• 37:10
  Speaker 6: do something on Friday when the administration acted. That part
• 37:15
  Speaker 6: was fine. The question is, did they do it right?
• 37:19
  Speaker 6: Blocking travel from those countries, but allowing American citizens to
• 37:22
  Speaker 6: come back, that makes less sense to me. To me,
• 37:25
  Speaker 6: a much more reasonable approach would have been to say, hey, look,
• 37:28
  Speaker 6: this is where we think a lot of the cases are.
• 37:29
  Speaker 6: Right now, we're going to do sort of border checks.
• 37:32
  Speaker 6: We're going to make sure everybody is tested and they're
• 37:34
  Speaker 6: testing negative. We're going to make sure everybody is vaccinated
• 37:37
  Speaker 6: coming from these countries. And by the way, they could
• 37:39
  Speaker 6: also impose a quarantine. So we want everybody, when they
• 37:41
  Speaker 6: come back from these countries, whether you're an American citizen
• 37:44
  Speaker 6: or you're a South African citizen, you need to quarantine
• 37:47
  Speaker 6: for 14 days. That would have been a reasonable approach.
• 37:50
  Speaker 6: It would not have blocked travel in the way that
• 37:52
  Speaker 6: they did. I get that they needed to do something.
• 37:54
  Speaker 6: I don't think what they did was all that elegant.
• 37:57
  Speaker 6: More importantly, I don't think it's going to do much good,
• 38:00
  Speaker 6: but there is a problem, right? Which is what they
• 38:02
  Speaker 6: did was they sent a signal to South Africa, which
• 38:04
  Speaker 6: has done a fabulous job on sequencing, but more importantly,
• 38:07
  Speaker 6: has been totally transparent about the way they've done it.
• 38:10
  Speaker 6: And the signal to them was, you're going to get punished.
• 38:13
  Speaker 6: And I, you know, look, I get what, again, where
• 38:16
  Speaker 6: the administration was. I think they could have done this better.
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: Last question.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: You sort of touched on this a bit earlier. I
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: think people are worried about this and how it should
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: affect their holiday plans. Are you letting this affect your
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: holiday plans? And what do you think The behavior of
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: what do you think is the kind of safe behavior
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: for vaccinated people, boosted people heading into the holidays?
• 38:38
  Speaker 6: Yeah, I'm not right now letting it change the way
• 38:41
  Speaker 6: I think about the holidays. My mother in law is
• 38:44
  Speaker 6: coming up from Florida for Christmas. Our family is going
• 38:46
  Speaker 6: to do a sort of a mini vacation for about
• 38:49
  Speaker 6: five days right after Christmas. The plan right now is
• 38:53
  Speaker 6: to do all of those things.
• 38:55
  Speaker 8: Why?
• 38:55
  Speaker 6: Because all the adults are vaccinated and boosted and all
• 38:58
  Speaker 6: of our kids are now vaccinated. Our youngest one is
• 39:01
  Speaker 6: going to get his second shot soon, and then he'll
• 39:02
  Speaker 6: be vaccinated by Christmas, fully vaccinated. So I think we're
• 39:06
  Speaker 6: pretty safe. Now, if Omicron turns out to be way
• 39:10
  Speaker 6: more contagious, if it turns out over the next couple
• 39:12
  Speaker 6: of weeks that it looks like our vaccines really are
• 39:14
  Speaker 6: not working as well, obviously we're going to want to
• 39:16
  Speaker 6: reconsider that. But my guess is that most plans probably
• 39:21
  Speaker 6: can go forward as is. There are things you can
• 39:24
  Speaker 6: do to make it safer. If you're going to be
• 39:27
  Speaker 6: in large indoor spaces, make sure you wear a mask.
• 39:29
  Speaker 6: You can bring in testing as a way to make
• 39:31
  Speaker 6: sure that no one is infected when you get together
• 39:34
  Speaker 6: with family and friends. There are ways of making it safer.
• 39:37
  Speaker 6: I don't think it resets our clock back to March 2020.
• 39:41
  Speaker 6: I don't think we have to give up fundamentally. Look,
• 39:43
  Speaker 6: if the data come in in the next couple of
• 39:45
  Speaker 6: weeks that this is way worse than what I'm expecting, Obviously,
• 39:48
  Speaker 6: we all have to kind of reserve the right to
• 39:50
  Speaker 6: kind of relook at this. But based on everything I
• 39:52
  Speaker 6: know right now, I think people should feel comfortable that
• 39:56
  Speaker 6: if they were going to do things and they're fully
• 39:58
  Speaker 6: vaccinated and boosted, they probably can do them still after
• 40:01
  Speaker 6: this variant arrives.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you to Dr. Ashish Jha for joining us. When
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: we come back, John, Tommy, and I had such a
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: fun conversation with Cal Penn about his new book. And
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: then he joined us for Take Appreciators.
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: Joining us here in studio today is our good friend
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: and former Obama White House colleague, who's now the author
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: of the new book, You Can't Be Serious, Cal Penn.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: What's up, man?
• 40:30
  Speaker 7: How are you? Thanks for having me.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: Hi, Cal.
• 40:32
  Speaker 7: Hello, John.
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: Good to see you again. Good to see you. I'd
• 40:35
  Speaker 4: like to go in love with you.
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: That was fun.
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: That was a lot of fun. It was good to
• 40:38
  Speaker 7: see you in New York, too.
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: It was great to see you in New York.
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:40
  Speaker 4: Any feedback from the interview?
• 40:42
  Speaker 7: You know, I think maybe I could have said things
• 40:44
  Speaker 7: a little differently or chosen different topics or... Maybe been
• 40:48
  Speaker 7: a little better.
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: I think your rant about hating rainy days was really good.
• 40:51
  Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, rainy days are a real bummer, man.
• 40:54
  Speaker 7: You know, you got to bring your umbrella. Sometimes it's
• 40:57
  Speaker 7: on and off with the rain. I was like, wow,
• 40:58
  Speaker 7: that is edgy.
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: You went there.
• 41:00
  Speaker 7: I thought, yeah, that and my thing on e-bikes.
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, your thing on e-bikes.
• 41:03
  Speaker 7: I thought it was good.
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: I got to listen to that one.
• 41:05
  Speaker 4: It was good. Oh, please.
• 41:08
  Speaker 6: Please.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: If we want to put our, we can put secrets.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: You can put secrets in Pod Save the World. You
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: can put some secrets in Offline. I can put secrets
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: in fucking Love It or Leave It from each other.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: It's fine.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: Anyway, we have a guest here. We do have a guest.
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: He's trying to move some books. No, don't mind me.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: He's trying to move some books. So we met 15
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: years ago now?
• 41:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah, isn't that nuts?
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: We're old.
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah. During the early days of the Iowa caucuses, you
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: were the hardest working celebrity surrogate in politics, in my view.
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: You write about this in the book, but can you
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: talk about your journey from being an actor to leaving...
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: Acting to be a White House staffer? Yeah. And why
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: you did it?
• 41:49
  Speaker 7: It was not expected. I didn't, you know, I was
• 41:52
  Speaker 7: on House at the time, playing a doctor. And Olivia Wilde,
• 41:57
  Speaker 7: also a wonderful surrogate, first in Iowa.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: Watch your feet, boys.
• 41:59
  Speaker 7: Names are dropping. Oh, there's going to be, this is
• 42:02
  Speaker 7: all just name dropping.
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: You know what I just learned? What? He's called Dr.
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: House because it's a play on Sherlock Holmes.
• 42:10
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: Continue.
• 42:12
  Speaker 7: Yeah. No, that's... That's good that you've added one more
• 42:16
  Speaker 7: name to drop.
• 42:17
  Speaker 4: Why on earth would he? His name is House. Yeah.
• 42:19
  Speaker 6: Dr.
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: House.
• 42:20
  Speaker 4: Go on.
• 42:22
  Speaker 7: So Olivia Wilde, whose name is now on this table.
• 42:25
  Speaker 4: Friend of yours.
• 42:25
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 42:26
  Speaker 7: Friend of mine. She she invited me to an Obama event.
• 42:29
  Speaker 7: I guess he was coming into town to do what
• 42:31
  Speaker 7: was supposed to be like a 50 person recruiting event
• 42:34
  Speaker 7: for surrogates with a bunch of artists. And I said no.
• 42:38
  Speaker 7: Didn't really feel like, you know, I'd read his book,
• 42:40
  Speaker 7: but didn't really care to go. And then I think
• 42:43
  Speaker 7: she got me with, like, it's an open bar, so
• 42:45
  Speaker 7: please come. And so I'm like, oh, yeah, free drinks
• 42:47
  Speaker 7: with my friend. But I had looked up.
• 42:51
  Speaker 4: The drink cost like $ 8.
• 42:53
  Speaker 7: It was free because he wanted our help.
• 42:55
  Speaker 4: It saves you $ 8.
• 42:55
  Speaker 7: Saves me $ 8 for the open bar? No, I would
• 42:59
  Speaker 7: drink my worthiness. So ended up looking at... Two things happened.
• 43:05
  Speaker 7: I went... I went to an event that he was
• 43:07
  Speaker 7: doing earlier in the day where I basically thought if
• 43:08
  Speaker 7: I'm going to some recruiting event for artists, I want
• 43:11
  Speaker 7: to see what he's like, uh, at a big event
• 43:13
  Speaker 7: and went to, um, this house in Malibu. I can't,
• 43:16
  Speaker 7: I think the guy who ran universal pictures was hosting
• 43:19
  Speaker 7: him at this massive house, beautiful palatial right on the water. Um,
• 43:23
  Speaker 7: and Obama pulls up with, you know, big, big motorcade
• 43:25
  Speaker 7: and he's going through his stump speech. I'm standing in
• 43:28
  Speaker 7: the back, by the way, for the record, this was
• 43:29
  Speaker 7: like a $ 2, 500 a plate breakfast. And I found out,
• 43:32
  Speaker 7: to your point, Lovett, if you donate $ 25, you can
• 43:34
  Speaker 7: stand in the back, but you can't eat any of
• 43:35
  Speaker 7: the food. So I'm standing in the back looking at, like,
• 43:38
  Speaker 7: Eddie Murphy and just very famous people who are there.
• 43:41
  Speaker 7: Obama comes in. He starts talking. He starts talking about
• 43:43
  Speaker 7: the environment. It's clearly a stump speech. And then he says, hey,
• 43:46
  Speaker 7: who drove a Hummer to a Barack Obama breakfast? I'm like, oh,
• 43:50
  Speaker 7: what do you mean? What's happening right now? And everyone
• 43:52
  Speaker 7: kind of laughs in a way that rich people kind
• 43:54
  Speaker 7: of like, ha, ha, ha, like they laugh to each other. Ha, ha, ha.
• 43:59
  Speaker 7: And he's not, he's not abused by this. Yeah, exactly.
• 44:02
  Speaker 6: It's, we don't care.
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: Succession laugh.
• 44:04
  Speaker 7: Any, any laugh from the crown, you know, or succession,
• 44:06
  Speaker 7: it's that laugh. Uh, and, and he goes, no, seriously guys,
• 44:09
  Speaker 7: who drove, who drove a Hummer to a Barack Obama breakfast?
• 44:11
  Speaker 7: And then the laughs get like really awkward and people
• 44:13
  Speaker 7: look at each other and He goes, you know, if
• 44:16
  Speaker 7: you can afford $ 2, 500 a plate for breakfast, you can
• 44:18
  Speaker 7: afford to buy an American-made hybrid car and incentivize the
• 44:21
  Speaker 7: technology and blah, blah, blah. I love that.
• 44:24
  Speaker 3: You're inspired by the sanctimony. For those only listening, Lovett
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: just rolled his eyes.
• 44:29
  Speaker 7: He rolled his eyes remembering his days on the Clinton campaign.
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah. A lot of moralizing in Malibu.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: Hillary drove a Hummer herself to the event.
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: Give me a break.
• 44:40
  Speaker 7: I know that look from you, and I miss it.
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: Oh, man.
• 44:43
  Speaker 7: So, yes, I was fucking impressed that every poli-sci class
• 44:47
  Speaker 7: is like, nobody who's down 30 points in the polls
• 44:49
  Speaker 7: is going to shit on the $ 2, 500 plates of their donors. Yeah,
• 44:52
  Speaker 7: that's true. And so I left that event and had
• 44:56
  Speaker 7: the rest of the day to basically, I was like, okay,
• 44:59
  Speaker 7: I need to come up with a really smart question
• 45:00
  Speaker 7: for this artist event, because I know everyone's going to
• 45:03
  Speaker 7: ask about arts funding. So I look at the campaign's website,
• 45:07
  Speaker 7: and it talks about investing in corn for ethanol. And
• 45:10
  Speaker 7: I remembered this article I read in Foreign Affairs a
• 45:13
  Speaker 7: couple months prior. I was so– I didn't get to
• 45:16
  Speaker 7: look at you when I said that. Now you're covering
• 45:18
  Speaker 7: your eyes.
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: Foreign Affairs.
• 45:19
  Speaker 7: Foreign Affairs, you know, that big blue nerdy magazine. So
• 45:24
  Speaker 7: that article I remember said that if you invest in
• 45:28
  Speaker 7: corn to turn ethanol, it will drive the price of
• 45:30
  Speaker 7: corn up and a lot of people will go hungry.
• 45:32
  Speaker 7: So there's my question because Obama wants to invest in
• 45:34
  Speaker 7: corn for ethanol. So we go to this event with Olivia.
• 45:37
  Speaker 7: She's standing next to me. Obama makes the rounds and
• 45:39
  Speaker 7: comes over. And he, Wilde, Olivia Wilde, I don't know
• 45:41
  Speaker 7: if you know her. She's a very famous actor and director.
• 45:44
  Speaker 7: And he goes, hey, how's it going? And I was like, hey, good, sir.
• 45:46
  Speaker 7: I have a question for you actually about climate change.
• 45:49
  Speaker 7: And he looks at me like, oh, well, that's a
• 45:50
  Speaker 7: weird question for a room full of actors. And I said,
• 45:52
  Speaker 7: you know, I know you're investing a lot in corn
• 45:55
  Speaker 7: to turn into ethanol, but won't that just raise the
• 45:57
  Speaker 7: price of corn for people in developing countries to go hungry?
• 46:01
  Speaker 7: And he goes, oh, yeah, I read that article in
• 46:03
  Speaker 7: Foreign Affairs, too. And they're perfect.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: For each other. They're perfect for each other.
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Driving me back into the arms of Hillary Clinton.
• 46:13
  Speaker 7: Lovett's now vomiting in a bag.
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, I'm just doing it to win Iowa.
• 46:19
  Speaker 7: Well, so he said, he goes, if you read my
• 46:23
  Speaker 7: plan carefully, you would have seen that I'm investing in
• 46:28
  Speaker 7: corn-based ethanol as a bridge to cellulosic ethanol.
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: As a bridge to winning Iowa.
• 46:32
  Speaker 7: Well, clearly. So that we can invest in, you know,
• 46:36
  Speaker 7: you can make fuel from things like your grass clippings
• 46:38
  Speaker 7: and leaves. And I was floored by this.
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: Oh, wow.
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: I haven't thought about that in a while.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: The grass clippings. What was it? There was a word
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: we'd always say. Cellulosic.
• 46:46
  Speaker 6: Cellulosic.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: The one he just said a sentence for. Don't cut that.
• 46:50
  Speaker 3: I want people to know.
• 46:51
  Speaker 4: I missed the word cellulosic.
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: I want people to know.
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: The one he said when you were thinking about what
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: you were going to say about what he said.
• 46:57
  Speaker 6: Good listener.
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: Good listener.
• 46:59
  Speaker 4: Listen, I'm tracking it.
• 47:02
  Speaker 7: Anyway, Olivia's school, you know, he walks off. Olivia Wilde. Yes,
• 47:06
  Speaker 7: very famous actor and director. I don't know.
• 47:09
  Speaker 4: If you know her.
• 47:09
  Speaker 6: Booksmart.
• 47:10
  Speaker 7: Yes, Booksmart House, MD, which is loosely based on, anyway.
• 47:15
  Speaker 7: So I signed up to volunteer and went to Iowa
• 47:18
  Speaker 7: and then met you. I don't think we met the
• 47:21
  Speaker 7: first trip.
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: No.
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: No, because you were like the only volunteer in history
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: who made one trip out to Iowa, spent a weekend.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: I can't believe, by the way, that you landed in
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: Ice Storm. The weather was so bad that you guys
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: were worried about driving. So someone told you that your
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: driver was an 18-wheeler, a professional truck driver. That was
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: just a fucking lie.
• 47:40
  Speaker 7: Total lie.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: Teal Baker.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: Just some dude named Colby?
• 47:43
  Speaker 7: I changed his name. The Simon & Schuster lawyers asked
• 47:46
  Speaker 7: me to change his name since it was all based
• 47:48
  Speaker 7: on a lie.
• 47:49
  Speaker 4: So we lied to you. We put you in danger.
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: We sent you on this grueling three-day trip to various
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: college campuses. Then you were like, sign me up for more?
• 47:57
  Speaker 7: Yeah, I stayed because it was, I want to see
• 48:00
  Speaker 7: how you react to this. I was so inspired love
• 48:02
  Speaker 7: it by all the people who I had met, uh,
• 48:05
  Speaker 7: who were sleeping on couches, you know, and at the time.
• 48:07
  Speaker 7: It really was only Barack Obama.
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: A lot of them were bussed in from Chicago.
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: So, of course, they're on couches.
• 48:14
  Speaker 4: They're not from the state.
• 48:15
  Speaker 3: Lovett was busy trying to explain to the people of
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Iowa why the war to authorize, the vote to authorize
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: war in Iraq was actually a good thing.
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a hard thing to discuss.
• 48:24
  Speaker 7: Lovett, did you discuss that when you guys were riding
• 48:29
  Speaker 7: around on the helicopter to.
• 48:30
  Speaker 6: The 99 counties?
• 48:31
  Speaker 4: You can't handle the heat. Get out of the kitchen.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: Turn America around. I believe is how it goes.
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: Continue.
• 48:38
  Speaker 7: I wish I, what was the, um, I want to play,
• 48:40
  Speaker 7: can you please play the Hillary for you and me video?
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: We'll cut that in. We'll cut that in. Thank you.
• 48:45
  Speaker 7: Um, yeah, well, uh, just meeting people who like the,
• 48:50
  Speaker 7: it was Obama and Ron Paul who, who weren't taking
• 48:52
  Speaker 7: federal lobbyist money. I mean, there was just, there was
• 48:54
  Speaker 7: a lot of, it was a lot of stuff that
• 48:56
  Speaker 7: felt very real and felt very much like outside of politics.
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: You see the gravy train goes the other way though.
• 49:01
  Speaker 4: You know, there's a lot of DC people like desperately
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: trying to get into LA and you're like, no, no, no,
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: let me, let me escape from LA and get to
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: Des Moines.
• 49:07
  Speaker 7: I think in fairness, you know, that was the first...
• 49:10
  Speaker 7: I don't remember the exact trajectory, but I think the
• 49:12
  Speaker 7: screenwriters had just gone on strike or were about to
• 49:14
  Speaker 7: go on strike. So we could only shoot the remaining
• 49:16
  Speaker 7: episodes of House that had already been written.
• 49:19
  Speaker 4: And then.
• 49:20
  Speaker 7: I had nothing to do, so I stayed in Iowa longer,
• 49:23
  Speaker 7: and I don't think any of us thought he was
• 49:24
  Speaker 7: going to win Iowa, but wins, and then there's an
• 49:27
  Speaker 7: opportunity to kind of do a little more youth organizing
• 49:31
  Speaker 7: and arts policy committee work, and it was very, very unexpected,
• 49:35
  Speaker 7: but do that for a year and then have the
• 49:38
  Speaker 7: opportunity to To serve? Is that the right?
• 49:41
  Speaker 2: What do you think went worse during that writer's strike?
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: The Hillary Clinton primary campaign or the onset rewrites of
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Quantum of Solace?
• 49:49
  Speaker 7: What the hell is Quantum of Solace?
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: Bond? It's a Bond movie. The actors had to punch
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: up because the writers weren't allowed to work on it.
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: Did they do it?
• 49:56
  Speaker 7: That was a big no-no. You weren't supposed to do that.
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: Well, there was some way they got around it by
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: having like kind of figuring it out as they went.
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: The movie didn't work well. You don't remember it.
• 50:03
  Speaker 7: I don't remember it. I also remember there were all
• 50:05
  Speaker 7: these conversations about like you're not allowed to improvise. I'm like,
• 50:08
  Speaker 7: in what reality is a medical drama going to improvise? Like,
• 50:11
  Speaker 7: if I was doing a comedy, it would be exciting.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: Scalpel, forceps, fuck it. Yeah.
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: Both. Whatever you got.
• 50:17
  Speaker 7: Cut open the body.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: Whatever you got.
• 50:18
  Speaker 7: Yeah.
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: Cal, I've been reading the book. It's a wonderful story
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: about your youth, your time on the campaign, your time
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: in the White House, your activism. how the fuck did
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: you get Rob Gronkowski to blurb this book?
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: That was my first question. Okay, sorry.
• 50:31
  Speaker 7: No, no, no, not from here.
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: When I saw him a couple weeks ago.
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: For those who don't know, Rob Gronkowski is a drunk,
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: fratty tight end for the New England Patriots, who I
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: love dearly, but I'm curious.
• 50:43
  Speaker 7: Wonderful guy. I met Gronk like six years ago, five
• 50:48
  Speaker 7: or six years ago. Josh and I were at like
• 50:51
  Speaker 7: a GQ, not a GQ party. It was the Players' Tribune.
• 50:55
  Speaker 7: When the Players' Tribune was being launched. And it's like, yeah,
• 50:58
  Speaker 7: this sounds like a fun party. He's a big sports fan.
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 51:01
  Speaker 7: And we're standing at the bar and we see Gronk
• 51:04
  Speaker 7: across the room, like waving with his friends. And, uh,
• 51:07
  Speaker 7: Josh was like, Hey, I think Rob Gronkowski is waving.
• 51:09
  Speaker 7: He was like, well, clearly that's not what's happening. There's
• 51:11
  Speaker 7: somebody next to us who he's waving at. And he
• 51:13
  Speaker 7: was waving at us. So we go over, talk to him.
• 51:15
  Speaker 7: He's a big Harold and Kumar fan. His, his, uh,
• 51:17
  Speaker 7: his best friend Goon, who is wonderful, Rob Goon, his
• 51:23
  Speaker 7: other best friend, a guy named Mojo Rawley, he's a
• 51:26
  Speaker 7: WWE wrestler, real name is Dean. We end up hanging
• 51:30
  Speaker 7: out with him for the rest of the night and
• 51:31
  Speaker 7: then became friends.
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: And then discussed the book over breakfast.
• 51:38
  Speaker 7: His book that he released through the same... What's it called, like?
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: Can't stop, won't stop levels.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: It's just a grunting sound.
• 51:48
  Speaker 7: I can't remember what it's called, but I got to say,
• 51:49
  Speaker 7: he is a wonderful guy. Do you think he wrote
• 51:51
  Speaker 7: it in Word or in pages? I reached out to
• 51:54
  Speaker 7: him and said, I'm looking for blurbs.
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: For my book. Grunk a Google Doc guy? He said yes.
• 52:00
  Speaker 7: He said yes.
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: Awesome.
• 52:02
  Speaker 7: And I was very thankful.
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: Speak to your range is what that does. And I
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: know he's on the fucking bucks, Elijah, but he's always
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: going to be a patriot to me.
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: Anyway, any other questions or should we go to our game?
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: I did have one. I know it's been a tough
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: week for politics, for celebrities everywhere. After the death of
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: Matthew McConaughey's gubernatorial campaign, I just wondered how you're doing. Yeah,
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: he ended it formally, I think, today or maybe it
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: was last night. But is that a setback for West Hollywood?
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: Celebrities in politics.
• 52:34
  Speaker 7: You know, I think ever since the great Ronald Reagan,
• 52:38
  Speaker 7: many of us who identify only as celebrities....
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: The celebrity identifying community.
• 52:44
  Speaker 7: LGBTQC. We've had a great many leaders like Arnold Schwarzenegger
• 52:52
  Speaker 7: and Ben Stein. All three Republicans, incidentally.
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: Sonny Bono.
• 52:56
  Speaker 7: Sonny Bono, sure. Who else? Shirley Temple. She was a spy.
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: Oh, wow.
• 53:01
  Speaker 7: I think she was a spy.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:02
  Speaker 4: Not an elected.
• 53:02
  Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 53:04
  Speaker 7: She and the, who's the chef?
• 53:06
  Speaker 4: The lady with the voice.
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 53:08
  Speaker 4: Julia Child. Thank you. She was a spy?
• 53:10
  Speaker 3: She was a spy.
• 53:11
  Speaker 4: I was just yes-ending you. I don't know.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: No, no, no.
• 53:13
  Speaker 7: She was a spy. I believe they were both spies, yeah. Anyway, yeah,
• 53:18
  Speaker 7: bummer about McConaughey.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it was a bummer. I had one real one,
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: which was, you write in the book about how the
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: showrunner from House was actually very cool about you leaving,
• 53:27
  Speaker 4: because he left his legal job to chase his dream,
• 53:30
  Speaker 4: you know, writing for TV.
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: Were most people nice to you in the entertainment industry,
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: or did they think you were crazy, or what was
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: your reaction?
• 53:37
  Speaker 7: I think it was probably equal part. I'm actually, you
• 53:39
  Speaker 7: know what, I give you a shitty answer before. I'm
• 53:40
  Speaker 7: actually very curious about whether this tracks, because my recollection
• 53:44
  Speaker 7: of this, so when I got the White House job,
• 53:47
  Speaker 7: I asked my agent to call Fox, that was our network,
• 53:52
  Speaker 7: and say, can you get me out of this contract?
• 53:54
  Speaker 7: I love this show, but it's a rare opportunity to
• 53:56
  Speaker 7: work at the White House and serve our country. I
• 53:57
  Speaker 7: really want to do it. And she came back to
• 53:59
  Speaker 7: me very quickly and said, they said they won't let
• 54:01
  Speaker 7: you off the show. So I made an appointment with
• 54:04
  Speaker 7: David Shore, who created House, and in my head, I
• 54:06
  Speaker 7: was like, all right, do it like they did in
• 54:07
  Speaker 7: the 50s, where you meet with your boss and you
• 54:10
  Speaker 7: tune out all of the yes men.
• 54:13
  Speaker 4: Trying to get Shore leave.
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: Wow. Okay. Okay.
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: I'm in a state today. I apologize.
• 54:19
  Speaker 6: Wow.
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: He's pitching.
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 54:23
  Speaker 7: And I sat down with him and said, look, I
• 54:26
  Speaker 7: know that my reps have reached out to you and
• 54:28
  Speaker 7: I have this opportunity to work at the Obama White House.
• 54:30
  Speaker 7: And I know you said no, but I would just
• 54:31
  Speaker 7: love for you to reconsider because I genuinely feel like
• 54:33
  Speaker 7: it's a rare moment. And he goes, oh, this is
• 54:37
  Speaker 7: the first I'm hearing of this.
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: Amazing.
• 54:39
  Speaker 7: You got a job at the White House. I was like, well,
• 54:41
  Speaker 7: fuck me. This is crazy. So then we have this
• 54:44
  Speaker 7: conversation about, you know, agents make 10% of what you make. So,
• 54:46
  Speaker 7: of course, it tracked that either the agent didn't actually
• 54:49
  Speaker 7: ask or there were too many people in between before
• 54:52
  Speaker 7: it got to David Sherman. It was just nixed.
• 54:54
  Speaker 4: Did they get 10% of your OPE salary?
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: They may have enjoyed- Cal worked at the Office of
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Public Engagement at the White House.
• 55:02
  Speaker 7: Which was the, I won't cite the number because I
• 55:04
  Speaker 7: feel like that's a douchey thing to do, but I
• 55:07
  Speaker 7: remember when Politico published the salaries, I was tied for
• 55:12
  Speaker 7: the second lowest White House salary.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 55:14
  Speaker 4: You need a new agent.
• 55:15
  Speaker 7: Which, well, or that was just, and I remember there's
• 55:20
  Speaker 7: a person who is now a member of Congress who
• 55:21
  Speaker 7: reached out And wanted to have lunch very badly after
• 55:24
  Speaker 7: that number came out.
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Madison Cawthorne.
• 55:31
  Speaker 7: And I remember going, I remember waving the person in
• 55:35
  Speaker 7: and we sat down at Ike's.
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: Ike's is the... The worst. This awful.
• 55:40
  Speaker 7: cafeteria that was under construction.
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: Don't really know what that was.
• 55:42
  Speaker 7: In the Eisenhower building. Yeah, because you two had fucking
• 55:45
  Speaker 7: mess privileges.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: That was the hottest shit I've ever heard in my life.
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: Look at you.
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: Imperious monster over there.
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: Sorry, I was busy with the mess. Kendall Roy over here.
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: Come to my party.
• 56:01
  Speaker 7: I sit down with him in this hallway at the time.
• 56:03
  Speaker 7: I don't think they still have formal seating.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: No, it's literally a hallway, yeah.
• 56:07
  Speaker 7: And I sat him down and he's staring at me.
• 56:08
  Speaker 7: At the time, he was not in elected office but
• 56:11
  Speaker 7: worked elsewhere in D.C. And he goes, I thought when,
• 56:14
  Speaker 7: you know, I said we'd have lunch at the White
• 56:16
  Speaker 7: House that you'd at least invite me into the mess.
• 56:18
  Speaker 7: And I was like, oh, you think I have mess privileges?
• 56:21
  Speaker 7: I was like, no, dude, my office is upstairs. I
• 56:24
  Speaker 7: share it with five other people. And then we sat
• 56:26
  Speaker 7: in silence and he goes, well, look, the reason I
• 56:28
  Speaker 7: wanted to talk to you, you know, salaries got published
• 56:30
  Speaker 7: and everything. I just want to know why are you
• 56:32
  Speaker 7: doing this?
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: I was like, what?
• 56:34
  Speaker 7: Because it's a rare moment in our nations. He's like, no, no,
• 56:36
  Speaker 7: come on. Why are you, why are you actually doing this?
• 56:38
  Speaker 7: I was like, well, I mean, you know, wars and
• 56:41
  Speaker 7: I figured you would wars, wars and you know, people
• 56:45
  Speaker 7: losing their jobs. They need to have healthcare, student loans,
• 56:47
  Speaker 7: all that. And he, he goes, uh, well, look, I'll,
• 56:49
  Speaker 7: I'll cut to the chase. I'm going to run. And, uh,
• 56:52
  Speaker 7: I just, you know, I just want to know what
• 56:54
  Speaker 7: cycle you're running in because, you know, for donors and stuff,
• 56:57
  Speaker 7: I just want to make sure that you're not going
• 56:59
  Speaker 7: to run when I'm going to run. And I was
• 57:01
  Speaker 7: so turned off.
• 57:02
  Speaker 4: By Josh Gottheimer. Josh Gottheimer. Because that's from New Jersey.
• 57:06
  Speaker 7: I will not tell you who this was.
• 57:09
  Speaker 5: It is indiscreet.
• 57:10
  Speaker 6: It is indiscreet.
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: It's somebody who's worried about Jersey.
• 57:12
  Speaker 7: It's indiscreet.
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: 100%.
• 57:13
  Speaker 7: It may or may not be.
• 57:14
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 57:15
  Speaker 7: And I was very off-put by this.
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: Or Tom Malinowski.
• 57:19
  Speaker 7: I was really off-put by this. And it was, it
• 57:22
  Speaker 7: was after, how does this track? It must've been after Haiti.
• 57:25
  Speaker 7: It was after like, like real shit that we had
• 57:27
  Speaker 7: worked on, right?
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 57:28
  Speaker 7: After things that had actually happened and taken place that,
• 57:31
  Speaker 7: that proved the sort of, wow, this wouldn't have happened
• 57:34
  Speaker 7: if somebody else had been in office and this would
• 57:36
  Speaker 7: have been poorly managed or, or, you know, whatever the
• 57:39
  Speaker 7: case was. I remember being so off by this anyway.
• 57:41
  Speaker 7: So the David, I don't know how I jumped from
• 57:42
  Speaker 7: that to.
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: That from, we interrupted you 75 seconds.
• 57:45
  Speaker 6: What happened?
• 57:46
  Speaker 7: But short, uh, sure. Then said to me, um, you know,
• 57:50
  Speaker 7: I don't know if, I just want to know, are
• 57:54
  Speaker 7: you unhappy on the show? And I said, no, I
• 57:55
  Speaker 7: love being an actor. I just, I genuinely want to
• 57:57
  Speaker 7: take a sabbatical. And he goes, well, is everybody telling
• 58:00
  Speaker 7: you you're crazy? I said, well, kind of. I mean,
• 58:02
  Speaker 7: I think it's dependent on your answer. He said, I
• 58:04
  Speaker 7: would love for you to do it. I think you
• 58:05
  Speaker 7: should do it. What a lot of people don't know
• 58:07
  Speaker 7: is that I was a lawyer in Toronto and I
• 58:10
  Speaker 7: really wanted to be a screenwriter. And everybody said, you're crazy.
• 58:12
  Speaker 7: You're throwing your life away. You shouldn't do it. And
• 58:15
  Speaker 7: I packed up my car and drove to LA and
• 58:17
  Speaker 7: you know, now obviously a successful show creator. So who
• 58:20
  Speaker 7: am I to tell you that it's crazy? You just
• 58:21
  Speaker 7: need to give me, you know, a couple of weeks
• 58:23
  Speaker 7: to figure out what to do with your character.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: Fair.
• 58:25
  Speaker 7: So I thought that was fair. And then he called
• 58:27
  Speaker 7: me in the next day and said, oh, your character
• 58:28
  Speaker 7: is going to shoot himself in the head. I was like, oh, okay.
• 58:30
  Speaker 7: So there's really no going back on this.
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: No hard feelings.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: You have syphilis and fall down an elevator shaft.
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: One hobby we all had in the White House was
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: complaining about the media, which is a tradition that we've
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: carried forward here on Pod Save America. Still a hobby for.
• 58:48
  Speaker 5: Me.
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: Us too, really. It's not a job if you love
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: your work. We do it here with a segment that
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: we call Take Appreciator, where we rate some of the
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: worst takes around on a scale of one to four politicos.
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: And our own digital guru, Elijah Cohn, I think is
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: with us to help us play this game. Cal, would
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: you like to play?
• 59:08
  Speaker 7: I would love to play.
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: Oh, fantastic.
• 59:09
  Speaker 7: There he is.
• 59:10
  Speaker 4: Hey, guys.
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: He's on Zoom, but he's here in the office. Okay,
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: here we go.
• 59:13
  Speaker 8: That was such a fun interview, and some of these
• 59:16
  Speaker 8: takes are so not fun.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, wait!
• 59:20
  Speaker 7: I know what I wanted to ask you. Shit, we
• 59:22
  Speaker 7: actually haven't had the chance to... I don't think I...
• 59:25
  Speaker 7: It's the one thing that I did not ask you.
• 59:26
  Speaker 7: I should have probably done this before we started.
• 59:28
  Speaker 4: Let's go. Keep going.
• 59:29
  Speaker 6: I like it.
• 59:31
  Speaker 7: There's a story in there about the Moro Islamic Liberation
• 59:34
  Speaker 7: Front email, which you were on. Please cut this out
• 59:37
  Speaker 7: if this is wildly inappropriate.
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, I remember this story.
• 59:41
  Speaker 7: This was my second day at the White House, I think.
• 59:44
  Speaker 7: I get looped into an NSC email because one of
• 59:47
  Speaker 7: my jobs was the Asian American outreach person for the president.
• 59:50
  Speaker 7: And he was meeting with somebody from the Philippines. And
• 59:52
  Speaker 7: there's this big, massive NSC chain that said, hey, Cal,
• 59:55
  Speaker 7: here are some things you should probably know. You're going
• 59:56
  Speaker 7: to get questions. And one of the items was you
• 59:59
  Speaker 7: need to know about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 7: then since it's government, everything's in acronyms. It said Moro
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 7: Islamic Liberation Front and then in parentheses just said MILF.
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 7: And the rest of the email was like, oh, MILF
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 7: is a dangerous– MILF is very dangerous. MILF recruits young men.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 7: Young men grow to regret their affiliation with MILF. And
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 7: I'm sitting at my desk fucking laughing my ass off
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 7: and I hit reply all and said their main terror
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 7: group are the MILFs.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: Amazing.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 7: Amazing. And then nobody says anything. And like an hour later,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 7: one person replies all and says, looks like Cal Penn
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 7: is in the building. And I was mortified, obviously. But
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 7: in the hallway, I remember like you and Rhodes and
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 7: a few other people were like, yo, that was so funny.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 7: We were all thinking it. But of course, nobody wanted
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 7: to be put on PRA.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: The Obama bros liked it.
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. Right, right, right, right.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: But I put it in the.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 7: Book without mentioning anybody's name because I just, I had
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 7: to tell the story, but didn't want to. Throw anybody
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 7: under the bus.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, how are you going to not laugh at that? Right.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 6: Exactly.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: Right. Yeah, they're all thinking it.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 7: People often ask what were the greatest sacrifices in going
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 7: from Hollywood to Washington, and I think it was losing
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 7: my sense of humor.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: We're sliding that anecdote right in.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: It's good. It's perfect.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: It's perfect. Okay.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 4: Sorry, Ben.
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 7: All right, bum us out, Elijah.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 8: No, no, that was great. Definitely leave that in. I
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 8: was laughing the whole time.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 4: All right.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 8: Let's play Take Appreciators.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 6: Okay.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 8: Here's how the game works. I'm going to share some
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 8: notably bad punditry with you. The producers have seen these takes. John, John, Tommy,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 8: and Cal have not. They will react and then rate
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 8: them on a scale of one to four politicos. Four
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 8: politicos being the most egregious, you know, like Beltway brain takes,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 8: one being the least. John, John, Tommy, and Cal, are
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 8: you ready?
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 8: First off, from NBC, here's the headline. Laser focused on 2020...
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 8: Trump seeks a Michigan legislature that could help him in 2024.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 8: All right, here's the context for it. Trump's been endorsing
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 8: big lie candidates in Michigan state races. Here's a quote
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 8: from the piece. Trump's focus on the state illuminates just
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 8: how driven he is to exact revenge on those who
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 8: haven't supported his baseless claim that the last election was
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 8: stolen from him. It's also a play to install allies
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 8: that could be helpful should he run for president again
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 8: and find himself locked in a close race.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 7: Diabolical.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: You're the guest gal. You start with that one.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: Who?
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 7: Like some intern probably who wrote the copy and then
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 7: it got sent up the chain?
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: But I assume everyone's been blaming it on Chuck Todd, right?
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: This has been getting so hard because I saw all
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 4: the fallout from the headline and the article and But
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 4: it made me not read the article, even though in
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 4: the back of my head, I was like, Elijah's going
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 4: to ask me about this. I got to do some research.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: I think this is an example of a headline deserving
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: four politicos and an article deserving maybe one to two.
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: Oh, it's so funny.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: I so disagree because I was waiting on a debate.
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: Much like Tommy, I did not read past the headline
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 3: because I just saw everyone yelling at the headline. But
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: when Elijah just said that, even when they described it,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: they were like, it could be helpful to him. Nowhere
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: did they say so he could steal the fucking election.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 7: They say baseless.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 4: They say baseless. Fundamentally, my biggest problem with the headlines...
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: In case he's caught in a close race? Yeah, that's
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: very bad. All right, that takes it up to three.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: But the key thing is, Uh, my biggest problem with
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: it is that Trump is never laser focused on anything.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: He doesn't have, he's not a laser. We were joking
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: about this yesterday. It'd be funny if it said, uh, Trump,
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: a flickering flashlight. You have to hit on the side,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: like focus on 2021 or whatever.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 4: Anyway, I'm done.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 7: Gone are the days of concerns about normalizing such behavior.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: Uh, I'm giving that, I'm giving that three and a half,
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: three Pinocchios.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 4: Headline four, article two, stick with my guns.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: Cal?
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 7: I'll agree with you on three.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: Three, okay.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: All right, Elijah.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 8: You guys want to take any guesses at the authors
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 8: for this one?
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: Oh, I didn't even, it's NBC, huh?
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 7: Rachel Maddow.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: I knew Chris Hayes did this one. I don't know.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: Is it Jonathan Allen?
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 7: No, it's not.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 8: It's Alan Smith and Henry Gomez.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: Well, shame on them. Well, sorry, fellas. The world will
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: know their names now. Real punitive piece of this game.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: Name them, Elijah.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: Name them.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 7: I love this game especially because don't producers write headlines?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 7: Don't the actual writers not even.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: They got fucked by the headlines. Elijah, give us their
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: parents' home address again.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 8: I've got the last four digits of their social too.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: We'll tweet that out.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: You tie their politico number on a brick and throw
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: it through their window.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 8: Let's move to another fascist wing of the party. First,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 8: I'm going to explain the context of this story because
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 8: I feel like the quote and headline should go together.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 8: So we're going to dive into the Lauren Boebert discourse
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 8: real quick. So over Thanksgiving.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 7: Always a good time.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 8: Yeah, always a great time. Over Thanksgiving, a video came
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 8: out of Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert saying some truly bigoted
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 8: Islamophobic things about Ilhan Omar. Specifically, she made a crack
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 8: where she said Omar wasn't a threat because she... quote,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 8: wasn't wearing a backpack and called her, quote, jihad squad.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 8: Lauren then said she was going to reach out to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 8: Omar's office to apologize. Let's pause there because that's the
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 8: point where this article was written. From Playbook, the article
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 8: is titled Dem's Dicey Decision. Punish Boebert or not? The
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 8: quote is, where do Democrats draw the line? If Democrats
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 8: don't lower the boom on Boebert, what message would it
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 8: send to the Muslim community? If they do lower the boom,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 8: what message does it send to those who apologize?
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: Well, someone think about the apologizers.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 4: The apology community is really neat. hurt by this.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 7: I'm going to tell you the thing I'm most offended
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 7: by is not acknowledging that the best fucking phrase you
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 7: could come up with is jihad squad. That's your fucking creative,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 7: brilliant little alliteration.
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of creative.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 7: I'm offended by that more than anything else.
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: Creative bigotry.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: Oh, I think you should be offended by the content
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: of what she's saying.
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 7: I obviously am, John. I'm just.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: Much worse than the rhyme.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 7: I obviously am.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 3: Cal Penn defends bigotry.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, fuck.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 7: Yeah, here we go.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 4: A real.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 7: Yeah. All right, I take that back.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: Please cut that out. Olivia Wilde's friend canceled. Do you
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 4: know her?
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 7: She's a very famous actor and director.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: Who's got some ratings?
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 7: I mean, that's a fucking four. I have no.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 4: Patience for this kind of shit.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: I think it's a full playbook.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: I think it's a full playbook.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: I think it's a full playbook in part because it's
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: a classic, if Dems fight back, they lose.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: If Dems don't fight back, they lose. The only thing
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 4: a Dem can do is lose. It's a double-edged sword.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: And then it sort of, you know, functionally downgrades Islamophobia
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 4: in the sort of tier of bad things you can do.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 4: It's sort of only partially bad, even though what Boebert
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: said was absolutely, clearly racist in Islamophobia.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: And, of course, the epilogue of this whole thing is
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: she turned out not to have apologized. No, she called
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: Omar and insulted her.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 7: The whole setup is also designed to do exactly what
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 7: the right wants, which is, oh, she spoke the truth.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 7: And then she was forced to apologize by the politically
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 7: correct left, which apparently she didn't even do.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: Looks like Dems lost again on this one.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: All right. Let's give us give us the last take.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 8: All right. Last take. We checked in on Donald Trump.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 8: We checked in on the far right in the House.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 8: Let's check in on some Democrats. So from Newsweek, Internet
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 8: divided over a cookware Kamala Harris bought in Paris. So
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 8: Kamala Harris bought some pots and pans that total around
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 8: $ 500 in Paris.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 4: Here's the quote.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 8: Harris was blasted by Republican and conservative Twitter users with
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 8: many complaining about the cost of the cookware, implying the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 8: vice president was out of touch with the struggles of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 8: many Americans. Here's the kicker. The tweet that this article
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 8: cited was from the at GOP Twitter account.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: Newsweek is a defunct publication. Something to keep in mind.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: It really is.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: It's a dead zombie brand being attached to whatever filth
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 2: can come out of some content.
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: Den somewhere.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 7: I'm going to back you up on this and say
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 7: I saw this trending on Twitter and briefly scrolled through
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 7: and thought it was so fucking stupid that I thought
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 7: it was one of those things that, like, if you're
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 7: going to waste your time reading this article, then you
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 7: deserve your time wasted reading this article. And that's all.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 7: So I actually didn't know the full context until you
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 7: just said that.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 3: Here's why I'm only going to give it a two.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 3: Because I do think, again, the best or the worst takes,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 3: takes that get four, are takes that really are designed
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 3: to troll us. This, I feel like, came from sheer
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: laziness that you just used the fucking repository. Party's tweet
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 3: as opposed to anything else. There's probably a bot writing
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 3: that Newsweek article because, as you said, it's a defunct publication,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: so I'm sure they just churned it out.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't... I think it was laziness.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: French pots, that bitch!
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: That's the headline. That's what they're going for.
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 8: Yeah, sorry, Anders Anglesley, who wrote the article.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: I just, you know, this is so... When Trump and
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: Melania went to Paris, they had... They took.
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 7: Shits in their beds because Obama slept.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 4: They had dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: probably served to them by some Michelin-starred chef. And Kamala
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 4: Harris buys some fucking pots and pans. You know, she's
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: not out somewhere fancy. She's just buying cookware. If you
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: ever bought cookware, it's really expensive. I got my mom. Mom,
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 4: mute the podcast. Mom, mute the podcast. I got my
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 4: mom one of those for Christmas.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: You got your mom a It's expensive.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: Keep your terrible fart brain away from my story. What
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: are you talking about? He's talking about a pot for
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: making casserole. I don't know what you're talking about.
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: It's so weird of you.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: No, we don't think you're going to fart under the
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: blanket and make your mom breathe it.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: You gross weirdo. Cookware is expensive at GOP account, but
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 4: then you use it for the rest of your life.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 4: I'm on a tear today.
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you use it for the rest of
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: your life. Yeah, amortized over the use of those pots.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: The enjoyment Doug and Kamala will have from the pot. And,
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: you know, it is Hanukkah. Maybe he's going to make
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: latkes in the pot.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 7: Right.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: Luis, you can unmute it now.
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 6: How's she going to hear that?
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 4: That's how an unmute works.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 3: Anyway, I think that's take appreciator.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: When are we going to start recording the segment with Cal?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 3: The book is You Can't Be Serious. The author is
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: Cal Penn. Cal, thanks for joining us. It's very fun.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 3: Ashish Jha, thank you for joining us as well. That's
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 3: all the time we have for today.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: It's going to be weather between the Omicron segment and
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: the Cal segment.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's going to be a bumper with a couple
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 3: ads that we don't take seriously. So that'll be the bumper.
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 8: Wait, I have one joke. Can I get it in?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 4: I have one joke.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 7: Oh, sure.
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 3: Sorry, Elisha. We're trying to create stars here.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 8: It's not the first time Kamala has disappointed us on pot.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 4: Oh, wow.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 6: Whoa.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: Cut it.
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 3: Anyway, K-Hive, he is on Twitter.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 6: Elijah, yeah.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: Also, by the way, Kamala's a cop. We need like
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 4: an evening show. One Fallon. Great job, Elijah.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 3: Bye, everyone.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 6: Bye, everybody.
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 3: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 3: Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard,
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support.
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 3: slash crookedmedia.