Latest / Pod Save America / “Joe vs. the Fall-cano.”

Transcript

“Joe vs. the Fall-cano.” · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Tommy Vitor. Very chipper, Lovett. Yeah. I'm trying. Wow.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: Good for you. Monday. Monday.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: On today's show.
• 0:29
  Speaker 3: I'm.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Wearing jeans that are actually sweatpants.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: What? Wow. It's so weird to see you in these jeans.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: These look like jeans, but they're sweats.
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Who says that we don't innovate in America?
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Continue. On today's show, Joe Biden is having a less
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: than stellar September, thanks to crises abroad and setbacks at home.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: The Wall Street Journal's Jeff Horwitz talks to Tommy about
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: his team's scathing five-part series on Facebook. And early voting
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: begins in the most important and most competitive off-year election
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: of the Virginia gubernatorial between Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: But before we get started, John, tell us one more
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: time about the return of Love It or Leave It Live.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: We just heard Tommy zipping up his fly. Crooked.com slash events.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: I just noticed.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Wild.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: We are returning to live shows. Leave all this in.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Leave all this in. We're doing a run of live
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: shows in LA, outside, masked and vaxxed, all leading up
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: to our Beacon show in New York on November 12th.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Please get the tickets now. Tickets are, there's some tickets
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: left for New York. There'll be tickets for shows, I think,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: after this Thursday. They're starting to sell out. So, Crooked.com.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: It's going to be very fun. We're back.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Nice.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I don't have to tell jokes to one person in
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: a screen, in a screening.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: So exciting. It's hard.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: All right. Let's get to the news. Guys, I just
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: want you to imagine what you'd be dealing with if
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: you went to work at the White House this morning.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: In the span of just one hour on Friday, the
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Pentagon admitted that the terrorists they said they killed in
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: Afghanistan were actually civilians and children. France recalled its ambassador
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: to the United States because they were cut out of
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: a nuclear submarine deal between the U.S., the U.K., and Australia.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: And the FDA's Independent Advisory Committee voted down the administration's
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: plan to give everyone over the age of 16 booster shots.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: For now, they're only recommending a third dose for people
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: over 65, people with underlying health conditions, healthcare workers, and teachers. Meanwhile,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: at least 14,000 migrants, mostly from Haiti, are huddled at
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: the border in Del Rio, Texas, trying to enter the
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: United States. And on Sunday night, the Senate parliamentarian ruled
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: the Democrats can't include their proposal to include a path
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: to legal residency for eight of America's 11 million undocumented
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: immigrants in Joe Biden's economic plan, a plan that Joe
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema reportedly just told the president that
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: they don't currently support because it's too expensive, moving too fast,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: and does too much to lower the cost of prescription drugs.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: How's that for a Monday?
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: I feel like he's trying to, this is a leading
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: question and the answer is it would be bad. Yeah,
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: I think it was bad.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Do you guys think it would be a fun, fun
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: work day?
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: No.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: That's very, that's a lot on your plate. And the
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: UN General Assembly is this week.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: UNGA. UNGA's this week.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: UNGA's this week.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: This is when articles say words like buffeted.
• 3:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Buffeted by a host of competing.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: Host of setbacks. I used it in the interest. Host
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: of setbacks. Setbacks and disappointments. I mean, having all those
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: three things happen in one hour on Friday, especially you're
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: going to work on Friday, you're thinking- Maybe this weekend
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: will be a little quiet. Afghanistan might be in the
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: rearview mirror. Not so much. Tommy, let's talk about the
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: significance of these developments one by one. Can you walk
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: us through how the Pentagon could have made such a gut-wrenching,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: horrific mistake and then also shed some light on why
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: France is so pissed off about a submarine deal?
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, on the drone strike, it was just
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: a horrible mistake. They had been tracking white Toyota Corolla.
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: They thought they had observed patterns of life that had
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: showed a terrorist plotting an attack. Turns out it was
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: an Afghan aid worker filling up water jugs, commuting home,
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: and they ended up killing 10 civilians and seven children.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: And it's just the worst possible outcome. And frankly, it
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: happens far too often. And this is why all the
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: times you read that, you know, Joe Biden should have
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: just kept a couple thousand troops in Afghanistan. There was
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: a low cost. It was no big deal. Those arguments
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: are completely immoral and ridiculous. Like this is what happens
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: when you're at war constantly for 20 years. Children get killed.
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: So it's just horrific. With With respect to the French
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: piece of this, it's a little harder for me to
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: get worked up about. I'm not going to lie to
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: you guys. Last week, the US and the UK and
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: the Australians announced a new defense partnership. The biggest piece
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: of that deal was the US and the UK agreed
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: to help Australia develop nuclear-powered submarines. This is supposed to
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: help them counter the risk from China in their neighborhood.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: Australia had previously agreed to spend $ 66 billion with a
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: B on diesel-powered French submarines. They ended up not wanting
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: those bad boys because they have limited capabilities. They're probably
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: really noisy. Yeah.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: Oh, the submarines? I don't know.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't buy a French car. I'd buy a French submarine.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: It's a Peugeot. I mean, a diesel-powered submarine. Come on.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And they just promised to buy these sweet submarines from
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: us then.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: Yes, now they're going to take our submarines. There's a
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: lot of complicated policy issues that are problematic about nuclear
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: nonproliferation under this. But at the end of the day,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: The French are just mad because it's going to cost
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: them a ton of money. They had a $ 66 billion
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: contract to sell submarines to the Australians. That is now
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: not going to happen. So they're reacting very angrily. They're
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: acting like it's a bigger problem with the alliance. It's
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: a stab in the back. They were called their ambassador
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: from the US and Australia.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: They also canceled a party.
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: They canceled a party.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: What party did they cancel?
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: There was some sort of a celebration that the ambassador
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: was going, or that someone from The French are, they're
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: skipping out on a bunch of different really fun events.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I bet.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Does this mean the correspondence in her party is not
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: going to be at the French embassy?
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: That would be a big win.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Whoa, that's going to talk about things that are going
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: to lead playbook.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: I don't think that's happening anymore. There was a line
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: in the AP story that I thought really captured what
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: happens when like, there are many competing crises that are
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: enveloping the Biden White House. Like, don't consider it fair
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: to add this to that list. The strain with France
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: came just as Biden had hoped to pivot to his
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: ambitious domestic agenda.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to affect reconciliation.
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: I'm not questioning like the Joe versus the volcano narrative, right?
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: There's a lot going on. But I mean, I was
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: listening to an NPR report this morning that was like,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: this will be a big issue at the UN General Assembly. Like,
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: I agree that the US, French, US, European alliances are
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: very important. But like, you tell a bunch of voters
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: that we pissed off the French. because we won out
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: on some arms deal, they're going to be psyched. So
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: let's not pretend there's political consequences.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, this is part, you know, once you're in
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: the barrel, it's like the longer you're in the barrel,
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: the harder it is to get out of the barrel
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: because every new development and every piece of bad news
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: is like now part of that narrative, you know? And
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: so the reporters are all trying to shoehorn the French
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: thing into the rest of the narrative. And it's like, well,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: the French said he's acting just like Trump and they
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: thought it was going to be a change. It's like, yeah,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: of course, the French know that they can say, oh,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: he's acting just like Trump and it's going to get
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: everyone going.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: It's an arms deal. It's what it is. It's a
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: military sale. It's whatever.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: A lot of problems we're covering. This is low on
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: the list. Lovett, the Biden administration's top federal health officials
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: announced in August that they were targeting today, September 20th,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: as the day to start giving everyone who'd received their
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: last shot eight months ago a booster. What's your take
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: on the advisory board's decision and what happens now?
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: So, I Look, as you know, I'm a world-renowned epidemiologist,
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: but I will say like a lot of the doctors
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: in my life are basically like acupuncturists at this point.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: They're like little Johnson and Johnson, little Pfizer, little Moderna.
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: They're all off label.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: That's what's going on. And the closer they are to COVID,
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: the more likely they are to have, um, giving themselves
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: a couple jabs just for fun.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just, you can't be, just in case.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So there were a couple of dissenters when the advisory
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: panel voted against the boosters for everyone. Then they agreed
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: unanimously to recommend boosters to older people and people at
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: high risk. That'll be kind of left to the CDC,
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: I think, to determine exactly what that means after the
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: FDA commissioner, acting commissioner, Janet Woodcock, makes a recommendation based
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: on this advisory committee recommendation. She spoke to- I.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Do think that's really important that a lot of people
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: could miss is that this advisory committee- Their job is
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: to advise the FDA commissioner. Her job is to take
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of different things in consideration, including their advice. Yes.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: And then that goes to the CDC and then that
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: will lead to more specific recommendations. And by the way,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: that then goes to governors who can make recommendations based
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: on they can follow those. They can adjust those, I think,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: probably because of the kind of. lethargic pace by which
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: they have been making these kinds of recommendations. You already
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: see governors like Larry Hogan in Maryland just kind of
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: getting ahead of it and saying, I'm recommending for over
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: 65 starting right now. So Janet Woodcock gave an interview
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: to Andy Slavitt on his podcast, and she said, if
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: people are acquiring the virus and spreading it, you want
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: to stop that as much as possible. She was very
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: kind of opaque and vague, but that is important.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Because She made her decision. She's made her decision, apparently.
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: Well, right.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: We just didn't announce it on. Oh, but that sounds like.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: OK, so it's interesting. We don't know what it means.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: It seems like one hopes that it's going to be
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: a broader recommendation than what the advisory committee said. But
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: what's important about it is some of this debate is
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: what should inform the recommendation, like how to weigh when
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: a vaccine is still effective against severe disease and hospitalization,
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: but less so against asymptomatic and mild to moderate illness.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: So Fauci is was interviewed by The Post about this.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: And he said, some scientists believe it is okay for
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: vaccinated people to get infected as long as they experience
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: only mild or moderate symptoms. But as a clinical person
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: who sees a lot of patients, that isn't okay. Adding
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: that even mild infections can result in missed work, disruptions
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: of family life, and potential cases of long COVID with
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: its debilitating effects.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: And the biggest part of it is if boosters can
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: significantly lower your chances of getting infected in the first place,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: and thus lower the chances that a vaccinated person might
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: transmit the virus to someone else, then boosters will help
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: control the spread. Now, we don't know how long the booster,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: you know, the added immunity from the booster lasts because
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: the data is still out on that and Israel is
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: ahead of us, but they're not that far ahead. of us.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: So we don't know yet. But if we could slow
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: down transmission and reduce transmission by giving people boosters. That's
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: not just like a benefit for an individual. That's a
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: benefit for all of society. So I don't fucking understand
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: what they're doing here.
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Counterpoint, 80% of vaccine doses have gone to rich white countries.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: I think 0.4% of vaccine doses have gone to the
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: poorest countries on the planet. And so we are in
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: a situation where we're going to have like a bunch
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: of people in America with their third and fourth dose.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: The next variant is still going to emerge from someplace
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: else globally.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: But Andy Slavitt was talking about this in his podcast too.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: That's not the issue here. with vaccinating the rest of
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: the world. It's not the number of doses. If we
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: took all the doses we bought for another booster shot
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: and started shipping them around the world, we still wouldn't
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: solve the real problem with getting the rest of the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: world vaccinated, which is the last mile logistics issue. We
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: need more people on the ground.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Sure, but you start with a finite number of doses.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: We have more doses right now. We are not using
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: as many doses as we are producing globally every day
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: right now.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: This is an important debate. It is a political debate
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: about how to distribute vaccines. The reason I am frustrated,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: if the FDA advisory panel wants to say, we think
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: boosters would help all Americans, but we don't want them
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: to have them right now because we want them to
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: go abroad, fine. But they're actually kind of combining the
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: political calculus and the scientific calculus. The thing that has
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: been the most frustrating to me is when public health
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: officials throughout this pandemic have taken off their scientist hat
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: and put on their pundit hat. And so that's what
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: happened with masks early on. We are still paying for
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: that in a lot of ways. So two of the
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: members of the FDA advisory committee wrote this piece in
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: The Lancet preempting the advisory committee meeting saying boosters should
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: not be recommended. And then now inside of that piece,
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: they do a lot of analysis of data, hard data,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: and that is for the scientists and experts to weigh in.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: But what was really frustrating about it is throughout the piece,
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: they say. If unnecessary boosting causes significant adverse reactions, there
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: could be implications for vaccine acceptance that go beyond COVID-19 vaccines.
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: Punditry.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: The message that boosting might be soon needed if not
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: justified by robust data could adversely affect the confidence in
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: vaccines and undermine messaging.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not your role.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Public health authority should also carefully consider the consequences for
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: primary vaccination campaigns of endorsing boosters only for selected vaccines.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: Politics.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: So if they want to be pundits, then we all
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: have a say, right? They have no more expertise on
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: on how things will be received, what the message should be.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: That's stupid. They said nothing to challenge the safety profile
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: of boosters. There is no evidence anywhere that the boosters
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: could cause any kind of significant side effects, certainly not
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: anything different than the first two shots. So that's not
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: based in science at all.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but last week, COVAX announced that they'll have 25%
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: fewer doses to give to the developing world than they
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: thought they were going to have. And then the WHO
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: used that announcement as an occasion to call for a
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: delay of boosters until next year. So there could be
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: a middle ground here That does deal with the problem
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: of scarcity of supply and sort of figure out some
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: way to improve this last mile problem. Because I agree
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: with you that it's a challenge.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: I think it's a huge priority to improve the last
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: mile problem, 100%. I do not accept that there is
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: some kind of false choice between boosting the rest of
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: our country when we know we need it. and also
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: vaccinating the rest of the world. I don't think that's
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: the choice.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: I just like, I mean, need it for whom? Young,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: healthy people? Maybe not.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Well, another thing that proves that the FDA's advisory committee
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: thing is a little loose is they started by saying, okay,
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: let's go for 65 plus. And then they're like, let's
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: do 65 plus and people with comorbidities, right? So that's
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: anyone from high blood pressure to obesity. Then they said,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: Let's also do healthcare workers, even if you're young and healthy.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: Healthcare workers, because they're on the front lines because they're
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: exposed to the virus. And then they added teachers. So
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: now they're saying, if you're a healthcare worker and you're
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: a teacher and you're close to the virus, we actually
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: do think you need a booster. So if they're starting
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: to say that people who are close to the virus
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: and could be exposed to it need a booster, then
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: obviously there is something about younger and healthier people that
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: need the booster.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: And I would say, if it turns out, in a
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: few months, more data comes out and it reveals that
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: boosters are ineffective and actually... don't make a big difference.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they only get boost immunity for like a
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: couple weeks or something. Yeah, you're right.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: Then their caution and their hesitance will have been justified.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But like based on what Fauci is saying, based on
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: what some of these other experts are saying, based on
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: this Israel data and based on like the experience of
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: doctors closest to COVID, it does not seem that that
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: is the case. And the thing that is so frustrating,
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: what makes it so annoying to me is like there's
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: this ponderous concern about making sure the process is exactly
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: methodical when we are in the middle of the fourth wave.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: It is... Well, hospitals are overwhelmed.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Also, we're headed towards the winter, right? If there's a
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: bunch of younger, healthier, vaccinated people who end up in
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the hospital this winter, should they go to the FDA
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: advisory committee to complain because they told them they didn't
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: need a fucking booster?
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: I don't know. Like we could just spout like the long,
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: the number of cases of long COVID that come from
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: breakthrough infections is like 5%. So you're talking like 5%
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: of 5%. So again, like at some point, You know,
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: we are dealing with very unlikely scenarios driving these massive decisions.
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: And I don't look I'm not saying it's easy or
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: that I have the right answer, but I don't.
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: It's also it's also I mean, there's a lot of
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: breakthrough cases that someone then passes it on to their
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: unvaccinated child.
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Like why?
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: It's all bad.
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: And the other piece of this, too, is we vaccine
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: vaccines are available. They're widely available.
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: United States.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: They're getting thrown out.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: They're getting thrown out every day.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Every day.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: We know what it looks like to not boost vaccinated
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: people and keep trying but failing to reach the currently unvaccinated.
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: It looks like this, a kind of, hobbled America limping
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: along with COVID not getting better. Will vaccinating, will boosting
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: change that in a fundamental way? I don't know. I'm
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: not an expert, but something's got to give here because
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: if these guys want to start taking politics into consideration,
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: if they're worried about people being resistant to vaccination campaigns,
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: wait till Speaker McCarthy's in charge. Wait till President DeSantis
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: is in charge. You want to hobble this country for
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: the next two years because you're being extra cautious?
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: That's stupid.
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: Look, look, look, look what happens to scientific research. Look
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: what happens to health care equity. if you allow this
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: to hobble our country going into these elections.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And I will say the important thing here is if
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the FDA commissioner or the CDC, head of the CDC
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: or the administration or some combination of all of them
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: end up making the decision that they want to expand
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: boosters to more people, I don't want to see a
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: bunch of fucking headlines that they didn't follow the science
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: because again, to your point, love it, their job, the
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: FDA commissioner's job, CDC, Biden administration is to weigh a
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: number of different factors here, you know? And, look in
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: terms of how big of a deal this is, how
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: important it is. If like Fauci said at one point
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: in a couple of weeks or a couple of months,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: there's enough data to say, okay, boosters for everyone. We
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: just want it to wait for more data and boost everyone.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: We'll forget about this, right? This will be a, this
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: will be a, have been a blip. And that's ultimately
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: what could happen is that they're just waiting for more
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: data out of Israel because again, they were ahead of us.
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: So we're going to dig into this story about, uh,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: migration at the border later in the week. Um, because
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: it was just developing over the weekend. And of course
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: the Senate parliamentarian ruled late Sunday night. Uh, but I
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: do want to talk about that ruling on immigration reform,
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: especially as it relates to a broader legislative agenda that
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: keeps getting fucked up over arcane Senate rules and, uh,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and the performative centrism of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Um,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: they're going to be calls this week for Schumer to
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: fire the parliamentarian for democratic leaders to get tougher on
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Manchin and Sinema for democratic leaders to give in to
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: Manchin and Sinema. Um, Tommy, what should the White House
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: be doing and saying right now, both privately to Democrats
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: in Congress and publicly, to get the best plan possible passed?
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: Fucked if I know. I mean, here's like what's happening, right?
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: Like Durbin and PDSA, they're going to run this new
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: alternative proposal by the parliamentarian's office in coming days and
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: see if they can get that through. Maybe that'll work.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: There's going to be a ton of pressure on Schumer
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: to ignore the parliamentarian, fire the parliamentarian, do whatever it
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: takes to include immigration reform in the bill anyway, although
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: that's going to create a whole new set of problems
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: with senators who are already on the record. I think
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: several of them are on the record saying they won't
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: vote for something that has been ignored by the parliamentarian.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: There's going to be more coverage of the border situation
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: in Texas. Biden's now deporting Haitian migrants or refugees who
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: are crossing the border into Texas, which is deeply fucked
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: up considering that that country is reeling from the assassination
• 18:08
  Speaker 3: of its president and another earthquake on top of the
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: one in 2010. And so like I Again, the broader
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: question I think we all have to figure out or
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Biden has to figure out is all of this is
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: tied into the bigger fight over the size and scope
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: of the stimulus bill and this hostage negotiation between the
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: moderates and the progressives over whether the bipartisan bill goes
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: first or the secondary reconciliation bill goes first. So like
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: this is there's a lot of pieces to this puzzle.
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I mean, you have.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: There's now like a desperate effort to try to find
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a way to convince the parliamentarian to put an immigration
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: proposal inside this larger package that Joe Manchin is saying
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: he does not want to do and that we cannot
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: do without him.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: This is the problem with the, again, would I love
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: it if the parliamentarian was fired? Absolutely. Of course. Make
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: love at the parliamentarian. It'll be much better.
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: I will fucking crush it. I would be honored and
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: I would do you proud.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: But here's the problem.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Chuck, I'm your guy.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: Chuck.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I'll love it. He's going to be the parliamentarian. Again.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: You'll be amazed by what I think is a budget relevance.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: I will shock you by how much you can do.
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: You know, but everyone's doing all this stuff. They're like, okay, well,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: if Schumer fires the parliamentarian, he doesn't need Manchin and
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: Sinema to agree with him. True. Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: overrules the parliamentarian. It would need 60 votes to stop her.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: And so you need 10 Democrats to stop her. Probably
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: not going to happen to you, right? But all of
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: this is sort of beside the point. Joe Manchin and
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Kyrsten Sinema are not going to vote for an underlying
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: bill that includes in the bill something that the parliamentarian
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: didn't want because they fucking care about the filibuster and
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: they care about these stupid fucking rules and they care
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: about the parliamentarian. All roads lead back to Joe Manchin
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and Kyrsten Sinema. And the danger right now is that
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: they seem like they would be willing to let the
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: bipartisan infrastructure bill die rather than make concessions on The
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: reconciliation bill in order to save the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: And that's what's really dangerous here.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Pramila Jayapal and some of the progressives in the House
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: are also threatening to tank the bipartisan bill.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: As they should.
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: Unless it's paired with this broader reconciliation bill. So it
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: feels like what we need to do is hire a
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: hostage negotiator to work for Ron Klain. to see if
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: he can referee this thing.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: No, but what I worry about is I think Manchin
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: and Sinema will let the hostage die at this point.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: That's what I mean. You don't have a lot of negotiation.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: These are shoot the hostage people.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: If I'm a progressive in the House, I'm absolutely voting
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: to tank the fucking bipartisan infrastructure bill at this point
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: because if you don't follow through on that, then no
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: one cares what you say after this. So you have
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to follow through on that. And basically Manchin and Sinema
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: are daring them to vote it down at this point.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Well, what they, what is, what is crystal clear is
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: if they pass the bipartisan one first, the democratic bill
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: is dead.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, Manchin and Sinema couldn't be more clear unless
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: they just said that out loud. Yeah, of course.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: So like the only thing we have to negotiate with
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: is the fact that they want this bipartisan bill.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Well, we're also trying to learn what Joe Manchin wants
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: based on reports that either leak out from conversations he
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: had with the chamber of commerce or a bunch of
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: Procter and Gamble employees. Like how is this the best
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: way to communicate?
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: But also it's like the most important conversation happened between
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Manchin and Sinema and Biden was, late last week, right?
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: Like that's the only one that really matters. And we,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: and you know, we're getting some leaks out of that.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Like Sinema is saying she doesn't, she's against the prescription
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: drug plan. Sinema is saying that she will kill the
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: reconciliation bill if the bipartisan infrastructure bill dies. These are
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: all reports we're hearing out of that meeting. But like,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: I don't know what you do if you're Biden, right?
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: Because your ultimate goal is to get the package passed,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: of course, to get both bills passed. And the only
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: way to do that is to persuade Sinema and Manchin
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: to change their mind or at least be willing to
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: some concessions. And what's the best way to do that?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Is it private discussions with them like this? Does he
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: go public at some point? Obviously, he's obviously like speaking
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: out publicly against Manchin and Sinema is not necessarily going
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: to change their minds.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, Biden must just feel like he's in like
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: some crazy alternate reality. He's fighting with Democrats to support
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: a proposal to let Medicare negotiate for lower prescription drug
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: prices that polls at 90% approval.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: Literally nothing more popular that we propose.
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Save the country money and they oppose that?
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's why I think at some point you
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: have to decide whether or not you're going to go
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: down showing people that you fought as hard as you
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: could for the priorities, right? There is a majority in
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: this country, Democrats, independents, some Republicans who are supportive of
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: Joe Biden's agenda here. And I think he probably has
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: to start picking a fight and show people that he
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: is willing to fight for that majority and that agenda
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: and fight against, you know, I don't think saying that
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: you're going to fight against Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: is necessarily going to be all that effective, even though
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: it might be satisfying, but fight against drug companies, wealthy
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: tax cheats, oil companies, insurance companies, all the special interests
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that are blocking your agenda. He's got to kind of
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: show that fight, even as I think there are a
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: lot of negotiations going behind the scenes, because right now,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: if he doesn't get out there more and start fighting
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: for this, it looks like he is going to be
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: buffeted by forces beyond his control. And that's not a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: great place to be.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: We started by talking about this narrative that's forming about
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: this sort of rough couple of weeks and months for
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: Joe Biden. And I do think that one of the
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: frustrating aspects of the way politics is discussed is you
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: would like to believe that the role of the political
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: media would be to tease out the places where Joe
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Biden has agency versus the places where he doesn't.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: That was my next question is what's within his control
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and what isn't.
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: Like you would like the idea of being like, hey,
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: a bunch of things that are happening. Some are good.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Some are bad. There's been a lot of bad news.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: Here's how Joe Biden is responsible. Here's how he isn't.
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: Here's what he can do. Here's what he can't. Of course,
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: it doesn't happen when bad things happen. They are bad politics.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: They are bad for Joe Biden. And then when he
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: says things like the reason we have Lovac have a
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: a fourth wave is because of the unvaccinated Republican policies
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: that is cast as laying blame as opposed to simply
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: explaining reality. The place where Joe Biden can make the
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: biggest difference is getting these negotiations done. This is where
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: he can figure this is where his power is figuring
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: out a way to find some some path by which
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: we pass both this bipartisan infrastructure bill and this Democratic
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: only bill. And that that's where his power lies in
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: the long term to kind of Get out of this morass. Yeah.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, the problem is that Washington and a lot
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: of these reporters, they only care about winning and losing.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: And if he wins and that he gets these bills passed,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: then that changes the narrative. And if he loses, then
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: he's going to be a loser for a while.
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: Like that's that's all they care about.
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: He's just not having a lot of good news days.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Not a good news day. I mean. Talking about things
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: within his control, you know, his polling numbers have barely
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: improved since Afghanistan. There was a Fox News poll out
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: over the weekend. Again, we always say this, Fox News
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: is a good pollster. It's different than the news outfit.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: They have him at 50-49, which is better than a
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: lot of other polls. But when you, like, look under
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: their hood there, you know, why people like him. COVID, 25%.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: General positive feeling, 19%. Not Trump, 15%. Empathy and behavior, 9%.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: Why people disapprove. Incompetence, poor leadership is number one at 22%.
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: Then Afghanistan's still at 19%. General dislike is 13%. That's
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: just Republicans. Then economy, COVID, and border right after that.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: The other interesting thing is, like, characteristics about him. His
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: mental soundness for office and his honesty have basically been
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: unchanged since he's elected. So it's not... Even though the
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Republicans like to call him the, you know, rotting bag
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: of oatmeal, it's not about mental soundness. But cares about
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: people like you and strong leader have taken big hits.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: And I think that's part of it.
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: Like, things are.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: you don't want to get to a point where it
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: seems like everything is beyond your control and you're just
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: like sitting there watching it happen. And the cares people
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: like you, like go out there and fight for this. Oh,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: the agenda they pulled, they pulled the bill, the reconciliation bill.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And they did what we don't like to do, which
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: is give the $ 3. 5 trillion price tag. 56, 39% in support,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: even with the $ 3. 5 trillion price tag.
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: Dan told us not to use the price tag.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: Fox News did, and they got a majority. They got
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: more people liking the bill than they like Joe Biden.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: And they like the mandates for vaccines. Someone print out
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: the poll and give it to Joe Manchin. I don't
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: know what else to tell you.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: I'm at a loss.
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: They're bad at politics.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: And on boosters, you know what, Joe? Nothing would make
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: me happier than Joe Biden to go out there. I
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: think these nerds are fucking wrong. Everybody get a booster.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: I would love that.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Or just start attacking the French. Just double down
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: on that fight.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Lean in.
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: Lean into the French.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: This is where Trump really had an advantage because they
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: would just lean into the sort of jingoistic American response
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: to anyone ever criticizing us. We would change the name
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: of some appetizer or maybe an hors d'oeuvre to Freedom Something. Yeah.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: And we'd go from there.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Joe and Boris just going to stuff Macron into
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: a locker.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom having dinner at Freedom Laundry.
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: God.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I do want to just one before we go on.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: I want to bring up Kirsten Sinema because she's sort
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: of been hiding out in the background here. Joe Manchin's
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: been getting all the attention, but she popped her head up,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you know, with some of these leaks to be like, hey,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: I'm fighting the prescription. I'm fighting to make sure prescription
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: drugs are as expensive as they are now. And also,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to kill the whole bill if infrastructure doesn't
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: go through like. Joe Manchin, we've talked a lot about,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: you know, he's from West Virginia. He might be the
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: only Democrat who can win in West Virginia. He's 74.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: He might not run again. I don't know what Kyrsten
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Sinema is doing. And don't tell me that like, oh,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: only a moderate like her can win in Arizona with
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: her positions. Mark Kelly is a moderate like her. Mark
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Kelly is not. fucking things up by yelling about the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: filibuster or threatening to tank bills like.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah and you've seen the earth from space.
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Right you can be a moderate in arizona that doesn't
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: act like kirsten cinema and she's up in 2024 like
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: yes i do think a primary challenge could be dangerous
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: to her especially if it's like someone who's generally moderate
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: but not as fucking annoying as.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: She is at least the threat of one would be
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: probably useful.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah i'm all for that the mansion thing i just
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: feel like it's not going to be effective because it's
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: west virginia but she isn't.
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: I mean the the minute Chuck Schumer sniffed AOC on
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: his left flank. All of a sudden, we were doing
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: all kinds of good stuff.
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's got a Che Guevara t-shirt on.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer's carrying around a red rose. Yeah.
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: Speaking of space, did you see Elon Musk acting all
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: upset that Joe Biden hadn't called him about his, like,
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: astronauts going around the Earth?
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: What?
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: I didn't see that.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: It was a tweet. He was very sad about it.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Crying my face.
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: All right. He insulted him and suggested he was still asleep,
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: so he repeated some sort of right-wing meme. Okay.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: All right. When we come back, Jeff Hurwitz of The
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal talks to Tommy about all the internal
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Facebook memos he got his hands on.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: So The Wall Street Journal in recent days has published
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: a series of incredibly damning reports about Facebook and Instagram
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: and the harm that the platforms can do. Joining me
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: today to discuss those reports is and much more. It's
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: the lead reporter behind the series, Jeff Horowitz. Jeff, thank
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: you so much for joining. Sure.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Happy to be here.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Are you getting a lot of friend requests from Facebook
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: staff these days in earnest? I....
• 29:11
  Speaker 5: I would say a few people are reaching out. Honestly,
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: what I find to be more interesting is a whole
• 29:17
  Speaker 5: bunch of people who won't necessarily talk to me are
• 29:20
  Speaker 5: discussing the work publicly on Twitter, which I just love watching.
• 29:26
  Speaker 5: So like when Facebook comms or Nick Clegg is talking
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: about the work, and in some instances suggesting how we
• 29:39
  Speaker 5: got it wrong, there's what appears to be like kind
• 29:42
  Speaker 5: of a growing body of people who are either there
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: currently or there recently who are talking about, uh, talking about,
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: about maybe where, where they think maybe we didn't get
• 29:54
  Speaker 5: it wrong. And that's, that is a, uh, like a
• 29:57
  Speaker 5: pleasure to watch. And honestly, some of these folks are
• 30:00
  Speaker 5: really understand these issues better than I do, obviously, right?
• 30:03
  Speaker 5: You know, I'm the one who's going through stuff that,
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: you know, has been providing me with a lot of context,
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: but I'm the one going through the work product. These
• 30:12
  Speaker 5: are the people who did the work.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, right. They saw all the data. So let
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: me jump listeners into what we've learned. So thanks for
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: your reporting. We've learned that Facebook has a secret list
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: of VIP users that are in many ways shielded from
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: the consequences of breaking the rules that the rest of
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: us might receive if we, I don't know, did something
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: that was against the terms of service. We learned that
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: Facebook has internal data showing that Instagram harms the mental
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: health of teenage girls in particular. We learned that Facebook
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: was aware that an algorithm change made the site angrier,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: that it is openly used by cartels and human traffickers abroad,
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: and that over 40% of comments on English language vaccine
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: posts risk discouraging vaccinations. Did I leave anything out of
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: the reporting so far? Those are.
• 30:58
  Speaker 5: There were a lot of words. That's a pretty basic
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: summary of where we've been. I mean, I think the
• 31:03
  Speaker 5: last one, just about the number of comments on, or
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: the volume of sort of anti-vaccine comments on COVID conversations
• 31:12
  Speaker 5: and news, I think that one stretches a bit past
• 31:16
  Speaker 5: just the frequency of the comments and just gets into failures,
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: sort of Facebook's failure to predict that the anti-vaccine movement
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: would become the anti-COVID vaccine movement, which is amazing because
• 31:34
  Speaker 5: Facebook has been dealing with this same crowd for years
• 31:37
  Speaker 5: and they have been using Facebook's tools against Facebook's own
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: state of public health.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Goals for years.
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: And just the fact that early this year and into
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: the spring of this year, Facebook seemed to be a
• 31:50
  Speaker 5: little flat-footed and trying to rush to catch up with
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: the The abuse of its own system by this crew
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: is kind of remarkable just because it's like everyone outside
• 32:01
  Speaker 5: the company.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: Could see that.
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: Why was it that Facebook seemed to have as much
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: trouble as they did?
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and clearly you also have some reporting about how
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: Mark Zuckerberg, understandably, seemed personally invested in trying to solve
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: the problem, reaching out to Fauci directly, offering to fund trials.
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of, he's trying to do the right
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: thing in a lot of respects, and then the platform
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: itself has this awful impact.
• 32:24
  Speaker 5: On COVID, there was very much a sense of like
• 32:28
  Speaker 5: love's not wisely, but too well in terms of the tragedy, right?
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: Which is that like they were focused on all the
• 32:34
  Speaker 5: things that Facebook could do that would be great and useful.
• 32:36
  Speaker 5: And they sort of neglected to address the ways in
• 32:41
  Speaker 5: which the platform had been abused and obviously would be
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: abused in ways that might undercut Facebook's own response.
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: Right, right. Well, so let me start with this research
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: about the impact on teenage girls. So Facebook found that
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Instagram can make body image issues worse for one in
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: three teenage girls. One in five, say, makes them feel
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: worse about themselves. 13% of British users traced a desire
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: to kill themselves to Instagram.
• 33:08
  Speaker 5: Hold on, hold on. One minor corruption there, which is
• 33:11
  Speaker 5: the 13% is of users who told Facebook that they
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: had thought about harming themselves in the last month. 13%
• 33:23
  Speaker 5: trace that directly to Instagram. So not 13%. I'm not
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: popping in to do Facebook comms work here for you.
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. That's a very important.
• 33:31
  Speaker 5: It's a very important distinction.
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: That's a lot fewer. But so with that sort of
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: important correction aside, I mean, what else did you learn
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: about the mental health impact of Instagram? And I guess
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: more importantly, what did the company do to address it?
• 33:46
  Speaker 5: So I think, you know, let's start off with the
• 33:49
  Speaker 5: props to Facebook for having decided they wanted to study
• 33:52
  Speaker 5: this thing internally because they didn't have to. People were
• 33:56
  Speaker 5: talking about it publicly and had been talking about it publicly.
• 33:59
  Speaker 5: It's not like Facebook kind of was ahead of the
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: external research on this one, but they caught up with it.
• 34:06
  Speaker 5: And I think the thing that they found that I
• 34:11
  Speaker 5: think is just endlessly fascinating is one, that it's bad.
• 34:15
  Speaker 5: for the mental health of vulnerable users, right? So if
• 34:18
  Speaker 5: you come to social media and you're in a good place,
• 34:20
  Speaker 5: you're pleased with your life, you're very happy about who
• 34:25
  Speaker 5: you are, social media is gonna be just fine. It's
• 34:28
  Speaker 5: not to say you won't feel some level of what
• 34:30
  Speaker 5: they call negative social comparison, but you'll be okay.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: It's gonna be all right.
• 34:36
  Speaker 5: They found that people who were in a rougher emotional
• 34:40
  Speaker 5: place did not do as well. And also they didn't
• 34:44
  Speaker 5: have the capacity to basically stay away. So they found
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: that there were some users that were, knew that being
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: on the platform was bad for them, which just made them,
• 34:56
  Speaker 5: you know, they'd wake up in the morning, they'd check
• 34:58
  Speaker 5: it and they'd feel like crap. And, and they, they, however,
• 35:05
  Speaker 5: those people had the hardest time staying away. And so,
• 35:08
  Speaker 5: I mean, I think the things that were really stood
• 35:10
  Speaker 5: out were one that, you know, this wasn't like some minor,
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: you know, people might, you know, feel bad a little bit,
• 35:18
  Speaker 5: you know, uh, about themselves. This was like, could seriously
• 35:23
  Speaker 5: alter a perception of their own body and of their
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: relationships with their friends. And like, in some instances, like
• 35:29
  Speaker 5: their sense of whether or not their life was worth living.
• 35:32
  Speaker 5: And that is like, I think a level of, um,
• 35:38
  Speaker 5: influence and power that even the company is pretty uncomfortable with.
• 35:42
  Speaker 5: And so they did try to figure out what they
• 35:46
  Speaker 5: could do to address it. And one of the problems
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: is that the issues they found were kind of unique
• 35:52
  Speaker 5: to Instagram.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: Some of them were.
• 35:55
  Speaker 5: I mean, I'm not saying that other forms of social
• 35:58
  Speaker 5: media don't come with other truly terrible things. My colleague,
• 36:01
  Speaker 5: Georgia Wells, just did a great piece on TikTok and
• 36:03
  Speaker 5: their recommendation systems. And it's pretty ugly. But Instagram, because
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: it's focused so much on the body, as opposed to
• 36:11
  Speaker 5: like TikTok, which is performance, Snapchat, which is on the
• 36:15
  Speaker 5: face and silly features. And, you know, there was basically
• 36:20
  Speaker 5: a sense that Instagram was uniquely bad on some of
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: these things. And so they were looking to see if
• 36:26
  Speaker 5: maybe taking away likes was going to be something that
• 36:29
  Speaker 5: would help. They spent a few years on this. It
• 36:30
  Speaker 5: got delayed a little bit because they started doing social
• 36:33
  Speaker 5: justice stuff kind of last year in the middle of
• 36:36
  Speaker 5: the BLM protests. And it was a good idea. You know,
• 36:42
  Speaker 5: maybe if we had likes, it'll stop, make it less
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: of a competition.
• 36:46
  Speaker 3: It didn't really work.
• 36:47
  Speaker 5: And to the company's credit, when they did make that
• 36:51
  Speaker 5: feature available earlier this year, they did acknowledge that it
• 36:55
  Speaker 5: wasn't really statistically significant in terms of affecting, you know,
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: how users felt. Um, the problem is they don't really
• 37:04
  Speaker 5: have another really promising thing to go for, um, at
• 37:08
  Speaker 5: the moment. And, and I think that's a, like, so, okay.
• 37:12
  Speaker 5: You know, the thing that they kind of had pinned
• 37:14
  Speaker 5: their hopes on didn't pan out for them. Um, And
• 37:18
  Speaker 5: so what do you do now? Because like, you know,
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: at least based on their own data, there are some
• 37:24
  Speaker 5: serious questions about whether the product is currently safe for
• 37:28
  Speaker 5: people who are in a not great mental space, particularly
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: young women. Although I should mention young men, it kind
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: of manifests differently. It's more of a social status and
• 37:39
  Speaker 5: wealth type envy issue there.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: And then they.
• 37:44
  Speaker 5: Found that for, you know, for black girls, it was
• 37:46
  Speaker 5: less like, eating disorders than it was over sexualization and, um,
• 37:52
  Speaker 5: things of that nature. So there was kind of a,
• 37:55
  Speaker 5: I mean, it manifests differently in different communities and for
• 37:58
  Speaker 5: different genders, but, um, you know, some pretty far reaching
• 38:02
  Speaker 5: effects and they don't really have anything lined up to
• 38:07
  Speaker 5: deal with it. I mean, other than maybe the thought
• 38:10
  Speaker 5: of completely overhauling the product, but that's obviously a hard
• 38:14
  Speaker 5: sell internally.
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I guess, look, you know, I think Anyone
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: who's used Instagram or any real social media platform, I
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: think intuitively knows that it can create this sort of
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: unrealistic depiction of reality that can make you feel bad.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, Compare and Despair is one of these sort
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: of like oldest tenants of, you know, AA and all
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: these programs that sort of help people feel better about themselves.
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: But I guess like this is the part of the
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: story that makes me really mad, which is you learn
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: about all these harms. And then Mark Zuckerberg announces a
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: plan to create a product for kids under 13. And
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: that to me is where we're going from, I mean,
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: ignoring a problem to maybe shifting it to even younger users.
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: Is that a fair reaction?
• 38:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I will cop to sort of being surprised by
• 39:06
  Speaker 5: the plan for the under 13 users in light of
• 39:08
  Speaker 5: this stuff. And I mean, I think the company's line
• 39:11
  Speaker 5: on this is that social media.
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: Is part of life.
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: And we're not going back and you know something they
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: need to try to get it right for younger users
• 39:23
  Speaker 5: and besides younger users are probably going to be on
• 39:26
  Speaker 5: the platform anyway so might as well and I i
• 39:29
  Speaker 5: you know i think that's i'm not i'm not arguing
• 39:33
  Speaker 5: with those points i am i'm just suggesting that it
• 39:36
  Speaker 5: seems like at the moment it's a bit of an
• 39:38
  Speaker 5: uphill battle on that front for them because i mean
• 39:41
  Speaker 5: they do and here's the thing that i think is
• 39:45
  Speaker 5: Facebook is currently getting beaten up pretty badly among preteen
• 39:49
  Speaker 5: users by TikTok and Snapchat. There is no question that
• 39:55
  Speaker 5: there is an active hunt for the next generation of
• 39:58
  Speaker 5: users and that Facebook is not in the lead. And
• 40:01
  Speaker 5: so I have some sympathy with the idea that like, oh,
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: preteens aren't supposed to be on social media.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: They are.
• 40:08
  Speaker 5: And at the moment, I think there's perhaps a bad
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: a bad set of incentives being provided to all the
• 40:17
  Speaker 5: companies because it is absolutely legal to market your products
• 40:20
  Speaker 5: to 13 year old or to people who are under 13.
• 40:22
  Speaker 5: And it is, you know, absolutely unacceptable to allow them
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: to stay on your platform at the same time. Obviously
• 40:28
  Speaker 5: that's where the competition is. And, and so I think
• 40:32
  Speaker 5: there's a, it is kind of a crazy thing that, that,
• 40:37
  Speaker 5: you know, everyone's sort of simultaneously not marketing to this demographic,
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: but at the same time, we hear we going after them. So,
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: I'm not sure that that's something where Facebook is uniquely
• 40:48
  Speaker 5: bad on that front, in the least. If in fact,
• 40:50
  Speaker 5: if anything, the stats would indicate that their competitors are
• 40:53
  Speaker 5: doing better at it than they are.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: The other sort of hard data we learned from your
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: reporting that I think I sort of intuitively felt was
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: that a change to Facebook's algorithm made the site angrier.
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: And that change led publishers and political parties to reorient
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: their content to make it more sensational or more likely
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: to outrage people. But again, like this is an instance
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: where reading your reporting made me so angry because Mark
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: Zuckerberg is made aware of the impact of these changes,
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: but then resists fixes for, I guess, business reasons. Can
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: you talk about that algorithmic change and what ultimately did
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: or didn't happen?
• 41:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, so there were two parts of it. The first
• 41:32
  Speaker 5: one was boosting content more from friends and family. And
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: that actually totally fine. In fact, the research that Facebook
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: typically did showed that that actually reduces the amount of
• 41:43
  Speaker 5: sort of polarizing, violating, you know, gory, like pornographic, you know,
• 41:51
  Speaker 5: name whatever ill you want to talk about.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Like it helps.
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: It turns out that people tend to get sort of
• 41:57
  Speaker 5: better quality stuff from friends and family. I'm not saying
• 41:59
  Speaker 5: it's going to get the most exciting stuff from friends
• 42:02
  Speaker 5: and family, but like in terms of harm issues, they
• 42:04
  Speaker 5: get better stuff. The other part was increasing engagement-based ranking.
• 42:09
  Speaker 5: And that just basically means that the more a thing
• 42:13
  Speaker 5: gets liked, and honestly, even more than liked, gets commented on, reshared,
• 42:19
  Speaker 5: and direct messaged and emojied on the platform, like those
• 42:25
  Speaker 5: are the things that are more valuable, the more Facebook
• 42:28
  Speaker 5: was going to sort of promote it to everyone else.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: And what Facebook found out after rolling that thing out
• 42:35
  Speaker 5: was that it really did incentivize both bad things to
• 42:40
  Speaker 5: go viral and people to create more bad content and
• 42:44
  Speaker 5: more aggressive content, right? So like, it turns out that
• 42:47
  Speaker 5: there's like, there's nothing more engaging than a flame war, right?
• 42:50
  Speaker 5: People commenting in ways that they might regret five minutes
• 42:54
  Speaker 5: from now, but nonetheless, like they're commenting and Facebook system
• 42:58
  Speaker 5: was built to engineer that. And I mean, they did find,
• 43:02
  Speaker 5: as you noted, some pretty far-reaching effects, right? I think
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: like one of the most interesting things, I don't, I
• 43:07
  Speaker 5: don't think this made it into the story, but we
• 43:09
  Speaker 5: found that a, one of the tactics of a, of
• 43:13
  Speaker 5: a far-right Spanish political party was to actually buy ads
• 43:18
  Speaker 5: targeting their opponent's supporters precisely because the opponent's supporters were
• 43:23
  Speaker 5: going to get super pissed and like, and comment a ton.
• 43:27
  Speaker 5: And it turns out that was the thing that would
• 43:29
  Speaker 5: then make the content go viral because it was super
• 43:33
  Speaker 5: high engagement. And so Facebook's algorithms would basically be like, Oh,
• 43:36
  Speaker 5: like clearly this is great content because like, damn, these
• 43:40
  Speaker 5: people are commenting lots. And so point being, this is
• 43:42
  Speaker 5: like a thing that, I mean, you know, for people
• 43:46
  Speaker 5: in politics, right. You'd never consider targeting your, your ads at,
• 43:50
  Speaker 5: you know, like your TV ads at like the opposition supporters,
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: but it works here because of this, this different system.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: You also noted that in Poland, one party social media
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: team shifted from 50-50 positive negative content to 80% negative.
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: It's just wild that upranking the click of an emoji
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: with a frowny face can materially impact the entire social
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: media strategy of a Polish political party.
• 44:18
  Speaker 5: That is staggering. Yeah. And this is self-reported from the parties.
• 44:24
  Speaker 5: They were basically saying, hey, guys, we noticed that you
• 44:27
  Speaker 5: changed something. here's what we're doing in response. And I
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: think that this gets to something very big picture with
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: Facebook that is really important, which is that like, we've
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: been talking about like, oh God, should President Trump's post
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: come up or stay here? I'd rather go down or
• 44:42
  Speaker 5: stay up. And like, what are the free speech implications
• 44:45
  Speaker 5: of it? This is like literally the least consequential area
• 44:50
  Speaker 5: of Facebook moderating speech is the actual decision on whether
• 44:54
  Speaker 5: a thing should get removed or not. I mean, it's
• 44:56
  Speaker 5: what everyone screams about. But the thing that matters is
• 45:00
  Speaker 5: how Facebook distributes content and what it prioritizes. And there is,
• 45:05
  Speaker 5: as a number of Facebook people have told me, there
• 45:07
  Speaker 5: is no way to do that work without imposing values,
• 45:13
  Speaker 5: value judgments on it. You are literally determining what things
• 45:16
  Speaker 5: are worth being heard and what aren't. And I think
• 45:21
  Speaker 5: Facebook has for a long time sort of tried to
• 45:24
  Speaker 5: adhere to the line that in fact, it's a completely
• 45:26
  Speaker 5: neutral platform and it's not. It makes choices and those
• 45:32
  Speaker 5: choices affect what succeeds. And whether it does that by
• 45:36
  Speaker 5: like Mark Zuckerberg, literally like saying like boost this post
• 45:40
  Speaker 5: or not, which is of course, like obviously that does
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: not happen or whether it does that by just simply
• 45:45
  Speaker 5: setting up incentive structures that result in a different form
• 45:49
  Speaker 5: of discourse is, you know, a real question.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, going beyond just for like political discourse,
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: you know, you looked internationally at ways that Facebook was
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: used to essentially traffic people to the Middle East and
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: force them into, you know, this Facebook is enforcing them
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: into slave labor, but is being used by people who
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: are doing that. Facebook is being used by government related
• 46:13
  Speaker 3: or government connected groups in Ethiopia to incite violence against
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: ethnic minority groups, which it just made me think about
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: You know, the examples we talked about a couple years ago,
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: the way Facebook was used in Burma to incite violence
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: against the Rohingya ethnic minority. And it made me wonder
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: whether we are at a point where this site is
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: just so big and so widely used that it is
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: almost impossible to police. Or if you think that there is,
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: I guess, just a lack of resources being put towards
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: monitoring speech in Burma or Ethiopia or, you know, name
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: a place that isn't in Menlo Park. Yeah.
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: So a couple of things. I mean, the first one
• 46:52
  Speaker 5: is the resources thing is real. Like this is something
• 46:55
  Speaker 5: that candidly in terms of how information got to me,
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: I think played a role, which is just the sense that,
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: that people were literally dying and the company was not
• 47:07
  Speaker 5: investing in it. I mean, there's, there's Facebook put so
• 47:11
  Speaker 5: much more research into making sure that you or I
• 47:14
  Speaker 5: don't see something offensive on a platform. than they do
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: into making sure that there aren't like calls for genocide
• 47:22
  Speaker 5: in places where there is a very real prospect of
• 47:25
  Speaker 5: it by Facebook's own acknowledgement. And so that's just an
• 47:28
  Speaker 5: issue of spending and care. Um, and you know, I
• 47:31
  Speaker 5: think that's, you know, but then, then separating out just
• 47:33
  Speaker 5: sort of the, just like under investment, uh, in this stuff, uh,
• 47:38
  Speaker 5: that I think contributed to some of the worst things
• 47:41
  Speaker 5: that we were discussing or that you were discussing in
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: terms of the human trafficking and, and the, um, and
• 47:47
  Speaker 5: ethnic bloodshed and all that. I think there is an
• 47:55
  Speaker 5: awareness within the company or at least within certain sections
• 47:58
  Speaker 5: of the company that like in particular virality has benefits
• 48:03
  Speaker 5: and it has harms and that where it has more
• 48:07
  Speaker 5: benefits than harms is gonna depend on the society it's
• 48:10
  Speaker 5: operating in. But I think that in places like India,
• 48:16
  Speaker 5: where there are a whole bunch of users that have
• 48:19
  Speaker 5: never been on the internet before and aren't sophisticated in
• 48:23
  Speaker 5: terms of their ability to curate their feeds and sort of,
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: you know, and to recognize things that seem dubious. I mean,
• 48:31
  Speaker 5: by the way, I'm not saying that Americans are great
• 48:33
  Speaker 5: at that either. It turns out we aren't by Facebook's
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: own research, but, but in places where people are sort
• 48:39
  Speaker 5: of new to the internet, I think there is a,
• 48:42
  Speaker 5: bunch of questions as to whether or not the idea
• 48:45
  Speaker 5: of letting anyone go viral at any time, particularly through
• 48:51
  Speaker 5: somewhat abusive tactics, whether it's worth the risk. And, and
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: I mean, there are, there are ways that you could
• 48:56
  Speaker 5: have Facebook be every bit as big in the sense
• 48:59
  Speaker 5: of having as many users, but have it be less viral.
• 49:04
  Speaker 5: And I think that that's where a whole bunch of
• 49:06
  Speaker 5: people internally, I mean, have been kind of, that's the
• 49:09
  Speaker 5: hill they've been dying on repeatedly is is like, why
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: don't we continue to offer the service, which is obviously
• 49:16
  Speaker 5: extremely valuable, but just, dear God, can we dial it
• 49:19
  Speaker 5: back on groups? Can we dial it back on newsfeed?
• 49:22
  Speaker 5: Can we dial it back on the explore page? Like,
• 49:24
  Speaker 5: can we basically stop recommending things if we aren't sure
• 49:29
  Speaker 5: if they're bad, you know, or if, or if we
• 49:32
  Speaker 5: don't have classifiers, which is like an algorithmic system for finding,
• 49:36
  Speaker 5: you know, content that work, like, can we not do that?
• 49:39
  Speaker 5: basically it's just like, do not proceed until you can
• 49:43
  Speaker 5: be sure the product is safe rather than launch the
• 49:45
  Speaker 5: product and then ask integrity, the integrity staff to clean
• 49:49
  Speaker 5: it up after the fact.
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 49:50
  Speaker 5: I mean like the, you know, the, the, you know,
• 49:54
  Speaker 5: like basically spilled, you know, spilled milk on aisle four
• 49:57
  Speaker 5: is like, does feel to kind of be like the
• 49:59
  Speaker 5: strategy that Facebook has taken with integrity stuff.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: I mean, you used to be proudly so right. Like
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: move fast and break things. And now it's global. Um,
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: final question for you. I mean, like, The comparison you're
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: starting to hear with Facebook is to big tobacco. Senator
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: Blumenthal makes that comparison in one of the pieces you
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: reported saying basically both these companies, Facebook and the big
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: tobacco companies, knew they were doing harm based on internal research.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: They said something different publicly. I guess I'm amazed by
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: the escalation of the rhetoric in those comparisons, but also
• 50:32
  Speaker 3: getting used to reading about these horrible first, second, third
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: order impacts of facebook and i guess my final question
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: is based on these conversations you're having with sources and
• 50:42
  Speaker 3: others in the company like what you think might get
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: them to change is it regulation getting broken up is
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: the brand of the company getting so tarnished that they
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: can't attract employees like the step that needs to happen
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: because i know a lot of people that work at
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: facebook they're good people they're not there to do harm
• 50:57
  Speaker 3: right but like this thing has just gotten out of control.
• 51:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah i mean i think i think it's um It's
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: interesting that the breakup proposal, I'm not totally clear relates
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: to the issues at hand that much. I mean, I
• 51:12
  Speaker 5: understand that it's been, it's obviously a pretty heavy threat.
• 51:16
  Speaker 5: And so maybe there's some, some value there, but you know,
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: nothing I'm seeing from, from the work people have been
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: doing on the inside, other than maybe just like a
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: lack of attention at some points would be easier at
• 51:30
  Speaker 5: a smaller company or, you know, at, at one of
• 51:33
  Speaker 5: two to three smaller companies, right? Like, so it's, it
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: doesn't seem like, I think the kind of the antitrust
• 51:40
  Speaker 5: discussion feels like it's kind of not, I'm not saying
• 51:44
  Speaker 5: that there's no point in having that discussion, but it
• 51:46
  Speaker 5: feels like it's happening in a different world. The things
• 51:50
  Speaker 5: that seem more meaningful, first of all, is just getting
• 51:53
  Speaker 5: the information out. Like I think that people who are
• 51:58
  Speaker 5: doing this work inside Facebook, are just absolutely brilliant. Um,
• 52:02
  Speaker 5: they are like, I, I started covering this company two
• 52:06
  Speaker 5: and a half years ago. And, um, honestly, I, like,
• 52:10
  Speaker 5: I have learned nothing nearly as with nothing, uh, you know,
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: nearly as well as I've learned from like, just being
• 52:17
  Speaker 5: able to look at their work product. Um, because these
• 52:20
  Speaker 5: folks are smart, they have access to data. Facebook is
• 52:23
  Speaker 5: an experiment based So they can just basically test things
• 52:27
  Speaker 5: out and figure out what, you know, what ground truth
• 52:30
  Speaker 5: is with remarkable speed. So I think the first thing
• 52:35
  Speaker 5: is just like figuring out how to get data access
• 52:39
  Speaker 5: in a way that doesn't involve a weasel like me,
• 52:41
  Speaker 5: you know, you know, getting getting some folks to want
• 52:44
  Speaker 5: to cooperate because they have concerns that important things are
• 52:49
  Speaker 5: being are being neglected. uh, once that happens, I would
• 52:55
  Speaker 5: suspect that there would be better solutions proposed and perhaps
• 53:00
  Speaker 5: some level of, I mean, cause we've, we've had this before,
• 53:02
  Speaker 5: like in, with other industries, it's not like Facebook is
• 53:04
  Speaker 5: the first company in the history of American business to
• 53:07
  Speaker 5: realize that, um, things that they thought were going to
• 53:10
  Speaker 5: be great for everyone turned out to have some serious downsides. Um,
• 53:14
  Speaker 5: and you know, you can choose which industry and potentially
• 53:16
  Speaker 5: toxic product you want to, you know, compare with. Um,
• 53:20
  Speaker 5: but like, Obviously, it.
• 53:25
  Speaker 3: Takes a while.
• 53:26
  Speaker 5: You've got to get a lot of data. You have
• 53:28
  Speaker 5: to be clear on what's happening. And then at that point,
• 53:31
  Speaker 5: something reasonable gets worked out if we're all functional people,
• 53:34
  Speaker 5: which let's hope. So it doesn't seem to me like
• 53:41
  Speaker 5: the solution needs to be here immediately so much as
• 53:45
  Speaker 5: the information needs to keep on getting out in a
• 53:48
  Speaker 5: way that I don't know. I or anyone else in
• 53:53
  Speaker 5: my profession can reliably guarantee it will. I mean, I'm like,
• 53:58
  Speaker 5: I am deeply lucky that I got a chance to
• 54:01
  Speaker 5: be involved in this. I'd love to say it was
• 54:03
  Speaker 5: due to talent and skill rather than just knowing enough
• 54:07
  Speaker 5: to be able to ask some questions and happening to
• 54:09
  Speaker 5: run into the right people at the right time. But
• 54:13
  Speaker 5: this is not a, this is not a solution.
• 54:15
  Speaker 3: For us all. Yeah. Yeah. I would prefer you not
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: to have to be the Facebook ombudsman either, but you know,
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'll take that job.
• 54:22
  Speaker 5: I think it might pay very well.
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: Good options, yeah.
• 54:24
  Speaker 5: I don't think they'd want me for it either.
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know that they would either. But look,
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: until then, everyone should check out your work at The
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal. And Jeff, thank you so much for
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: joining the show today. Keep up the good work. Hope
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: you're getting some sleep. Facebook WikiLeaks is still leaking because.
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: It's- Oh dear God.
• 54:42
  Speaker 5: I would prefer not to have that be the analogy.
• 54:44
  Speaker 5: If we're talking about comparison, comparing to anything, Facebook WikiLeaks,
• 54:48
  Speaker 5: let's avoid that one. But we got some more stuff coming.
• 54:51
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: So take care.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: The Menlo Park papers?
• 54:54
  Speaker 5: That's better.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: Okay. That's better. Yeah.
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: Okay. All right. Deal.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: OK, let's talk about Virginia. Early voting has begun in
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: the most important, most competitive election of 2021. The race
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: between former Governor Terry McAuliffe and Trump backed private equity
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: executive Glenn Youngkin. Joe Biden won Virginia by 10 points
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: in 2020 and Governor Ralph Northam won by nine points
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: in 2017. But polls currently show McAuliffe with a narrower lead.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: The latest survey from The Washington Post has him ahead
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: by just three points among likely voters, 50 to 47,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: with a wider six point lead among registered voters. The
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: two candidates held their first debate on Thursday, where McAuliffe
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: hammered Youngkin as an extremist because of his support for Trump,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: his record on outsourcing jobs, his plan to ban abortion.
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: And McAuliffe went especially hard at Youngkin's opposition to vaccine requirements.
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: Here's a clip.
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: I have been very strong in this from day one.
• 55:51
  Speaker 4: And Glenn and I differ on this issue. His anti-vax record,
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: what he has said, he's had rhetoric out there. He
• 55:57
  Speaker 4: told college students, if you don't want to take the vaccine,
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: just fill out an exemption. You know, I think that's life-threatening,
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: and I think that's disqualifying as governor. He doesn't believe
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: in forcing people to understand what COVID is going to
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: do to this state and to this country. It's still
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: raging all across the country. Right here in this county,
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: all the ICU beds are full. So I am for
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: requiring mandate vaccinations. He's not. He likes to do PSAs.
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: PSAs aren't going to get you anything.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: PSA will get you whatever you want, Terry.
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: Tough hit on the podcast.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: That's what we call our show.
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: He got a little. It's a good clip, but it's
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: midway through. He said forced and he like he kind
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: of realized he had said he doesn't believe we should force.
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: That's not the word I wanted people to understand why
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: they need vaccines.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: And you're going to take the vaccine gun. You're going
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: to go door to door and grab the Bibles.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: Terry's a good politician. You know.
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: Like, he's a former DNC. He's kind of a hack
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: like us. He knows how to do this stuff at
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: a debate.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: You realize there are some benefits to having a former.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: Hack as candidate.
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Lovett, what's your take on McAuliffe's narrow lead, and what's
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: your overall level of concern about this race?
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, I was concerned about California.
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: As we should have been.
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: As we should have been. But being concerned is how
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: we make sure we win. I mean, it seems like
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: the goal here is to paint Youngkin as... like kind
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: of half Trump, half Romney. They're kind of hitting him
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: for his Carlisle stuff.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: He answers the question, like, what would happen if you
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: combined Mitt Romney's business record with Donald Trump's politics? You
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: get Glenn Youngkin.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: And that could work because this is America in 2021
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: and that can work. But my overall feeling about this
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: is like the lead is like Trump kind of changed
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: the politics of Virginia. And now they're kind of receding
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: back a little bit. He's a little bit out of
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: the spotlight. So some of the kind of advantages that
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: Democratic Democrats had aren't as strong, and it's a little
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: bit looking more like how Virginia looked when it was
• 57:54
  Speaker 2: kind of a purplish-blue state. And that just makes it
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: a harder fight, but he's leading. We just have to
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: make sure he wins.
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: Tell me, you got a take? Could be warm, could
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: be lukewarm, could be hot?
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: That was lukewarm. I just want to be clear that
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: that was barely above her temperature.
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: I'm going more like something borrowed, something blue. So this
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: is NBC pointed out that going back to the 70s,
• 58:12
  Speaker 3: the party that controls the White House has lost this
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: gubernatorial race every time except for one exception, which was 2013.
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: when Terry McAuliffe beat Ken Cuccinelli, who's kind of a lunatic,
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: and the other warning sign being Biden's job ratings at
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: 46% in that Washington Post poll, which is very not great.
• 58:31
  Speaker 3: So I guess the question is, like, will those sort
• 58:33
  Speaker 3: of meta-factors, these meta-narratives drive the race, or will it
• 58:36
  Speaker 3: be issues where McAuliffe, I think, is on much firmer
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: ground on issues like the coronavirus and abortion? I don't know.
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: And clearly that's why Terry leaned into the COVID vaccination
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: stuff at the debate.
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: For sure. The thing that stuck out at me most
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: in that poll, the number was voters who say they're
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: absolutely certain to vote are almost evenly split with 49%
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: for McAuliffe and 47% for Youngkin, pretty close to the
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: top line. But McAuliffe holds an 18 point advantage among
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: voters who say they will probably vote or who are 50-50.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: So much like the California recall, this clearly seems to
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: be a race where Democrats need to wake up and
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Democrats need to wake up their voters and pay attention
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: to this. Early voting has begun. I didn't even know
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: that early voting had begun on Friday until I was
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: looking at the news. Like this is Yeah. Democrats wake
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: up and vote. He's going to be OK if people
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: like sleep through this election. Yeah, absolutely. Glenn Youngkin could
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: win here.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: Youngkin winning would be a five alarm narrative fire.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't I would probably I could read
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: the news for a fucking week.
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: Honestly, at least correctly. You know, California is like sui generis.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Like if if if Gavin Newsom lost, it would be
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: because of the way in which a fringe is able
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: to kind of take control of the state through a
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: stupid process. If we lose this race, the the alarm
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: should go off.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Fuck.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, oh, they absolutely should go off.
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: Allow me to attack the conventional list.
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: No, and Tommy, you know I love that when you
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: do that.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: Thank you, I appreciate it.
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: You know that I really love that.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: The other interesting thing is McAuliffe is doing the same
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: as Northam in the redder southern and western Virginia parts
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: of Virginia, but much worse, at least in this poll,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: in the northern Virginia exurbs and suburbs, which to me says, okay,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: there's at least an opportunity there. That goes back to the,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: maybe there's some Democrats up there, Democratic-leaning independents who are
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: sort of sleeping through this election who aren't paying attention yet,
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: and And you've got to get them going. And I
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: do think that speaks to McAuliffe's strategy of tagging Youngkin
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: as an extremist, especially in COVID.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: And like a Trump guy. I mean, you're trying to
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: get these people riled up in the way that they
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: were riled up in the previous two gubernatorial elections. And,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: you know, you see this. Youngkin was pretty pissed when
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: McAuliffe did this sort of Romney-like attack on him as
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: if he was Romney about what the Carlyle Group has done.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: Carlyle Group, obviously famous. It is run by a collection
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: of sentient lizards from outer space, famously pulling the strings
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: at places like Bilderberg. which I do think is a
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: liability for him.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: We also saw from our own change poll of Virginia
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: that that's the most effective attack, at least, that we saw.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: The lizard one?
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Not the lizard one. I mean, we didn't test the
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: lizard one, but we should go back in.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: We should run it back.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: No more that, like, Youngkin is a new Mitt Romney
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: at Bain, except with Carlisle. Youngkin's response has been to
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: pretend he's more moderate than he really is. He's encouraging
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: people to get vaccinated, even though he's against vaccine requirements.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: He said he's against the Texas abortion ban, even though
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: he was caught on tape saying he wants to ban abortion.
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Why do you think he's going with this strategy over
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: the base first strategy that we saw from our good
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: pal Larry Elder?
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: Like what Love was saying earlier, I mean, just different state,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 3: totally different election in a normal year with a normal
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: electorate and not some weird recall turnout contest in the
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: middle of September.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, Trump and Trumpism has alienated the kind of
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 2: suburban moderate people that helped us win the majority, that
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 2: helped make Virginia a place where we're winning by 7, 8, 9%.
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: 10 points. These are the same kind of voters that
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 2: are in favor of vaccination, that are in favor of
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: vaccine mandates and are put off by the kind of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: radicalism and extremism of Trumpism. So he's clearly trying to
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: have it both ways because early on he decided he
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: needed to be like Trump. He needed to do critical
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: race theory. He needs to do all this shit to
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: keep the base happy. And now he's kind of trying
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: to trying to even it out.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: Forty percent of the people in the poll said that
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: they knew little or nothing about Glenn Youngkin. So to me,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: this is a race to define him.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: And he and If Glenn Youngkin wants to define himself as, oh,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: you pissed at the Democrats and Biden and McAuliffe and
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: all that, then I'm a moderate, sensible alternative to that.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: And Terry wants to say, oh, no, no, no. Glenn
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: Youngkin is just as fucking crazy as Donald Trump.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: And I think they found that two thirds of respondents
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 3: in that Washington Post poll were following the Virginia governor's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: race closely. So there's they have some folks they can educate.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 2: It's also six foot five.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 3: Who? Youngkin.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: Youngkin.
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: That's too tall.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: I just think so.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: Bill Bradley taught us that.
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: Very surprising.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: I just think as a rule, people of that height
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 2: have not been given enough negative feedback and are too
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: confident and cocky. And it's just a dangerous recipe.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: Is this a de Blasio thing?
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: It could be. Speaking of tall losers.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: How tall is that guy?
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: Six, five is tough.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Really tall.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: I've never heard you attack tall people like this before.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: They don't get enough. They don't know what's going on
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: up there. They're out of touch.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: This is a whole rant. Um, Other things people should
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: know about Glenn Youngkin, fun facts. Forbes says he had, quote,
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: he has, quote, several mansions at his disposal. I think
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: it's funny to have a couple of mansions at your disposal.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: In the chamber.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Huh. Wife owns a horse farm.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: So this is sort of a Romney-McCain combo. Remember when
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: he didn't know how many houses he had? In 2008,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: John McCain famously was asked, how many houses do you own?
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: And he was like, I don't know, ask my staffer.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 3: I think he didn't want to say the number out loud.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: But basically ended up saying, I don't know. And that
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: was one of the more devastating hits in the whole election.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Shipped 1,300 jobs overseas while he was at Carlisle Group.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: That's some fun there. That's a very Romney-esque thing. And
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: then this is like the winner of the cartoon villain
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: category here. raised the rent on seniors in mobile home parks.
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: Oh, come on.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: No, he did that. He also ran a nursing home
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: of neglect, malpractice and wrongful death.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: And they extracted like one point three billion dollars of
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: value from that company before it went bankrupt, which is
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: like the classic vulture capitalism.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: Private equity is a scourge on this country. Like so
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: like so often you will go into a business and
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: you will not know that it was taken over in
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 2: some way by private equity but what you will find
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: is suddenly the prices are fundamentally more annoying than they
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: were before like everything's a little bit more you're paying
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: a little bit you're getting you're getting charged like this
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: happens everywhere from gyms to veterinary like uh to this
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: is everywhere from gyms to vets like all of a
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 2: sudden this thing that was local uh that provided a
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: service to you has been kind of absorbed into the
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: like vampire capitalistic private equity system.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah i mean a lot of these ads write themselves
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: for for mccullough right he's like I want to require
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: vaccinations in all nursing homes and from health care workers
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: who are going to deal with our seniors. And Glenn
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: Youngkin just buys them up and then runs them into
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: the ground and puts people at risk.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: Watching Youngkin try to deal with the understanding that half
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: of his base is anti-vaccine while like towing the line
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: of being electable in a state like Virginia is interesting.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, suggesting to a bunch of college kids that
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: they just fill out some sort of waiver to not
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: have to take the vaccine is completely irresponsible. You can
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: watch him thinking this through in real time.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: And you know what? The truth of it is, he
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: wants to say he's a kind of moderate, reasonable Republican
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: with a business background. McAuliffe wants to paint him.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: As a Trumpist.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: And the answer is he is somewhere on the spectrum
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: between full Trumpist and what the Republican Party used to be.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: But what happens now through these Republican primaries, through these elections,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: is no Republican can make it to the end of
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: an election without without embracing some of those heinous and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: vile politics in this country, which makes them completely unacceptable.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: Right. Because at this point, it doesn't matter if you
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: embrace it or have believed it from the start. You're
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: still there.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And you can't criticize Trump or components of the
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: Trump agenda because he will then go out and try
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: to find someone to run against you, as Trump is
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: currently doing to Mitch McConnell, which we support.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that was a fun story.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 3: That's awesome.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: I was a little into it. You sent that story, Tommy,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: and I was like digging through it because I was
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: hoping for something real. And then there was too many
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: Republican senators who were like, even Trumpy Republican senators who
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: were like, what? We would never do that. We would
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: never get rid of Mitch McConnell. We love this guy.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: He stole the Supreme Court. He's Mitch McConnell.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Come on.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: He's the OG.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Go Trump. I'm rooting for you on this one. Anyway.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: Six foot five.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: What an asshole. Bottom line with six foot five Trumpy
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: Carlisle executive Glenn Youngkin is... We need everyone to work
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: even harder on the Virginia race than you all did
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: on the California recall because it's much tighter. And if
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: you're wondering what you can do about the shit show
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: in Congress, Virginia, anything else, the answer is to start
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: organizing now to make sure Republicans don't take power in
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: 2022 and that we mansion proof and cinema proof our
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: Democratic majorities, which seems important. That's why we have launched
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: no off years through Vote Save America, where you can
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: help donate, volunteer and register voters in all the key
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: states in 2021 and 2022. You can go to votesaveamerica.com
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: slash nooffyears to chip in now and find out more
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: about how you can help in all these very important races.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: And I just want to say that there's some dissensus
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: about Glenn Youngkin's height. He may be anywhere from 6'5
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: to 6'7. We cannot have a 6'7 inch governor in
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: this country. It's too dangerous.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: That's a big range.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 2: It's too dangerous.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: 6'7?
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: You can't trust somebody that tall.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: I feel like if this show goes on any longer,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: it's going to be 6'9 before we end.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: Nooffyears.
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: Votesaveamerica.com. Thanks to Jeff Hurwitz for joining us today to
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: talk about Facebook. And hopefully we'll have some better news
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: for you when we talk to you on Thursday.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: And our associate producer is Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin,
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Yale Freed, and Nar Melkonian,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: who film and share our episodes as videos every week.