Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 8/3/21: Eviction Moratorium Chaos, DC Media Fails, Vaccination Uptick, Congressional Covid Roadblock, Obama's Birthday Bash, Covid Censorship, Financial Free fall, Rep. Ro Khanna, and more!

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

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Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. We have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. We got Congressman Ro Khanna. We're going to talk to him about what the hell is going on with the eviction moratorium, how it was allowed to lapse, the blame game that is going on there. We've got an update for you on some of the ways that the Washington Press Corps is covering for power, which is, you know, what they seem to feel like their job is at this point. Some actually good news on vaccine uptake that is very revealing about the sorts of things that will actually push people who are reluctant to go out and get the vaccine. Also, some updates on Senator Lindsey Graham apparently has coronavirus. He was vaccinated.

So this is one of those breakthrough cases. He says he's feeling pretty good, but we got some interesting details about that. President Obama, contrary to public health guidelines, throwing a big 60th birthday party bash. With Pearl Jam. Did you get your invite, Sagar? No, I didn't get my invite, but Pearl Jam is playing, so I'm glad I didn't go. But we did want to start with that eviction moratorium and more basically buck passing and blame shifting between Pelosi and the White House. The very latest is that the

White House put out a statement saying they're redoubling their efforts to see if they can ultimately get the CDC to do anything. Leave that up there for a second, that statement, because I want to read a bit of that. They say the president will continue to do everything in his power to help renters from eviction. The administration provided states and local governments with the flexibility to get funds out efficiently without burdensome documentation. That's one of the big problems is that money was passed and appropriated through some of these relief programs, but ultimately never made it out by and large to the people who needed it, landlords to keep them whole, tenants to keep them in their housing. They say our team is redoubling efforts to identify all available

legal authorities to provide necessary protections. Now, one would have thought that given that the Supreme Court ruling was more than a month ago saying that this would probably need to go through Congress, you would have thought that they would have redoubled their efforts prior to the eviction moratorium expiring rather than waiting to the very last minute and then kicking it over to Congress. Pelosi also out with a rather unconscionable statement doing her own share of blame shifting here. She says, we can throw this one up on the screen, that it is unfathomable that we would not act

to prevent people from being evicted. Overwhelmingly, our members agreed to extend the moratorium and universally to distribute those rental funds, but the House passing the eviction moratorium without the Senate acting does not extend the moratorium. Instead, the money must flow and the moratorium must be extended by the administration. So you got this little dance going on here. First, the White House did nothing. Then the White House said, like almost minutes before the eviction moratorium is set to expire, hey, Congress, do something about this. Pelosi and Congress put up the most perfunctory of efforts. As we told you yesterday,

they didn't even take a floor vote. Why did they not take a floor vote? Because some of their own members are opposed to this. So even if they brought it to the floor, it wouldn't pass through a Democratic House. So they allowed the Republicans to vote it down on the question of unanimous consent. And then, oh, the bad Republicans are staying in our way. What can we do? Now the White House is saying, oh, maybe we can look at what the CDC could possibly do. I mean, this is all complete insanity.

They just absolutely dropped the ball, didn't seem to care. I think their plan essentially was to just let this thing quietly expire and hope nobody noticed. Yeah, and I mean, again, we're talking about the fate of 15 million people. I do want to say I blame Pelosi and Congress more than anything, because the way that they're conducting themselves shows why Congress has become a joke. It is your job to pass the laws. The Supreme Court said, look, it's extraordinary times. It's COVID. We're going to let you guys go for another month so you can figure it out. Congress should pass. And Congress should pass the law. If you're going to supersede housing law across all 50 states of the United States, you probably shouldn't leave

it up to CDC bureaucrats in order to decide when or not. And I know the end result is what everybody wants to see. But we have a process for a reason. So you have the Speaker of the House begging the administration to circumvent a Supreme Court order and to put into place a policy, which as you pointed out yesterday, somebody, some Texas judge would strike that thing down within two days. It's not fair to the renters and it's not fair to the, it's not fair to anybody. Congress should just get their back, get their blame everyone. Come back and do something. I blame everybody involved because the reality is, so Kavanaugh was the one who, in the initial Supreme Court ruling, he wrote the concurrent opinion saying basically like, look, I'm going to let this go this time, but if we're going to

push it forward anymore, it has to go through Congress. However, that was conditioned upon the idea that that would give the relief funds more time to go out. The relief funds have not, in fact, gone out to people that they need. And as we talked about yesterday, they appropriated roughly $50 billion in rental relief, which should have gone to landlords to make them hold and to keep tenants in these properties. $3 billion of that has gone out. Out of 50, okay? Some states, New York State hasn't given out, to the best of our knowledge, a single dollar to help anyone. So major states, major metropolitan areas where no assistance has gone out whatsoever.

So there is an argument to be made that because that rental relief never did go out, that you could potentially do another, say, month extension to help get these states and localities and get the funds distributed. The design of the program was always foolish to start with. I mean, you just expect every locality in the country to be able to stand up a whole new social safety net program, you know, in the middle of the pandemic while they're dealing with all this other stuff and be able to do it like that. It always should have been run from the federal government level. If they were serious about it, they would have put the process in place and had the technical resources to be able to process applications and get this money distributed. They never took this seriously. So whose fault is that? That's the administration's fault. That's Congress's fault. The fact that

this waited to the very last minute is the administration's fault. It's Congress's fault. There is just plenty of blame to go around. And even the White House press corps, which is as subservient as it could possibly be, as we're going to get to, even they're pressing the White House on exactly what is going on here. Gene Sperling, who is the American Rescue Plan coordinator, I guess is his title. He was in the White House press briefing yesterday trying to spin this and make it seem like the Biden administration is really focused on and has really been doing everything they possibly can. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. This was us responding to a new reality and doing so with this aggressive set of actions that President Biden has asked both at the state and local level of his executive team, of even landlords and those who who run utilities. But I think on the eviction moratorium issue, we have run into we have run into so far what seems to be very difficult obstacle from the from the Supreme Court ruling. And again, the president went out of his way to

push to the CDC today to look even at 30 days, even targeted to high, you know, counties with higher infections. And the CDC independently came back and said that they could not at this time find the legal authority. I don't think this means this president's going to give up. I think he's going to keep looking and pushing and kicking the tires in fifth, sixth looks. But we're going to do everything we can. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, Mr. Ferling. But the Delta variant has been around for weeks. It has been the dominant strain of the United States for several weeks as well. So why did the president wait until Sunday to ask the CDC for a targeted

moratorium focused on those areas with high case rates? I think what you're seeing is a president who's just trying to do everything that he can in his power. And part of that is also going back to places where he has heard initially that we do not have legal authority. And he's saying this is so important. I want to double and triple check. I want to ask the CDC independently if they share that same reading of the Supreme Court's view. And I think he's going to continue to look. So I don't think, I think this just reflects a continuation of a president who is looking at every possible authority we can do. Just an utterly pathetic non-answer there.

That's actually a good question. It was like, look, Delta's been around for a long time. Why did you wait until Sunday? I mean, and this is where I still really do place the blame on Congress. And of course, the president is there because he didn't call it out. But he's like, look, they told me it wasn't legal. All of the reporting comes out that the CDC director himself, the lady bringing back the mask mandates and all this other nonsense is like, I can't find a way to get this done legally. Look, maybe, you know, I don't know. I know a decent amount of lawyers down in Texas who would easily challenge this thing. As we all found out in the Trump administration, all it takes is some Hawaii judge or one ever federal judge in New York to strike something down for the entire country.

That's not fair to renters. It's not fair to anybody else. And I would say this. If there are Democrats or even Republicans who want to vote this thing down, go ahead. That's fine. You're right. You're in the House. If you believe that the eviction moratorium should expire, bring it to a floor vote, and you guys can all vote against

it. But Pelosi's really just playing cover, I think, for the members of her caucus who are going to vote against this thing and trying to turn it into a partisan thing like blaming the Republicans. I have no idea if many Republicans would. I think probably most of them would vote against it. Maybe a couple of them would vote for it. I have no clue how this all would shake out. None of the Republicans would vote for it. I actually don't know about that. I mean, here's the thing, is the reality of what is going on here is neither the White House nor Pelosi and the Democrats in Congress want to continue the eviction moratorium. That's the truth. They've decided that all the pandemic relief, and this is what I'm talking about in my monologue today,

that all the pandemic relief, that it's time for it to expire. They don't want to take any political heat over that, though. And so they're just looking for, as they do, this is what they're great at, looking for excuses why they can't do anything. So the White House has their excuse, which is CDC, Supreme Court,

the lawyer. Sorry, guys, we're triple checking. We're quintuplet checking. That's going to come to nothing. OK, that's their excuse. Pelosi turns around and says, well, my excuse is, you know, we got this battle of Republicans in the House and out of the Senate. We can't get through the filibuster. So the CDC needs to do it. So they're each pointing at each other. It's all, I mean, it's all basically choreographed. All they want is for them to escape the blame, be able to push the blame off on either the conservative courts or the battle Republicans or some typical Democratic boogeyman so that they don't bear any of the responsibility when potentially millions of Americans lose their homes. That's what's really going on here.

And it's pathetic to watch. It's sad to watch. It's pathetic to watch. Their excuses are embarrassing. I honestly think they were just hoping that this sort of quietly expired and no one noticed because, which is so foolish, but it also shows you what a bubble they live in. They don't know anybody who's like behind on their rent or being threatened with eviction or suffered during the pandemic. All their buddies got richer than ever during the pandemic. They made their great, Nancy Pelosi and her husband made their great stock

picks and they're richer than ever too. So they didn't realize like, oh, when there's a real impact on millions of people, there might be a little bit of a backlash over this. There might be a little bit of an uproar over this. We're going to be in a bind. They were just hoping that this could quietly go away. They can put out there their pathetic talking points and they can all move on. That's what they're counting on. If you want to kill it, just say it. And that's what I think drives me crazy. It's like, just

be honest, which is that... Stop with the theater. Yeah, stop with the theater. You know, there's the... Actually, we'll play it. Gene Sperling, you know, the way that they're portraying this, as he was previously, he's like, we'll play it. There was Gene Sperling, you know, the way that they're portraying this as he was previous. He's like, we're doing everything. Double, triple, quadruple. Just listen to him spin all this.

Why does she believe you have the power to extend the moratorium? But the administration is arguing you don't. Well, I would say that on this particular issue, presidents not only kicked the tires, he has double, triple, quadruple checked. He has asked the CDC to look at whether you could even do targeted eviction moratorium that just went to the counties that have higher rates. And they as well have been unable to find the legal authority for even new targeted eviction moratoriums. Kick the tires, double check. It's who talks like that, number one.

Number two, it's just all theater. It's like you didn't triple or quadruple check anything. You waited until the last minute and you're like, oh, yeah, please do something about this. And Congress was like, oh, yeah, no, we're not going to do something about it. Yeah, they're like, no, no, no, you do it. Actually you, you make the laws because apparently that's not what our job is. If they had the votes, then they should vote for it. And if they don't, then they should admit it. And then people who oppose it should come out and explain why they should. I think there's a fair case, you know, in terms of, in terms of

targeted aid and all of this and saying, well, we need to push this rental assistance, I think the most obvious explanation here is extend it for a month, pump out all the money, and then let the chips fall where they may. That sounds pretty reasonable to me. We have all this money that was put out by Congress specifically for this purpose, for the exact reason that we don't want people kicked out on their homes. Obviously, we have the Delta variant going on right now. Most of the people who are even going to get evicted disproportionately working lower middle class, all those people disproportionately most likely not to be vaccinated. So if you're one of those people who wants to wear a mask for the unvaccinated, but you also want to kick them out on their house, I don't know. I mean, let me tell you which is going to protect them more. It's just really foolish. We covered, too, before the research of how much evictions spread.

Oh, a lot. The numbers were astonishing how much evictions spread coronavirus and how bad it was in terms of just curbing the pandemic. So even if that's the only, even if you're heartless and don't care about these people, that alone is a pretty good reason to make sure that people are able to stay in their homes. And look, I'm not a big landlord advocate here, but it's not fair to small landlords to expect them to go indefinitely without ever getting paid and not being able to do anything about it and them not being made whole either. That was the whole idea

behind appropriating this money. But again, they didn't, they wanted the feel-good talking point that we passed the bill, we appropriated the money, but no one actually followed up to make sure that it was getting where it needed to go. The design of the program from the beginning was completely flawed. We've known that for months. This was not a secret either. Heather Long and the Washington Post and others have been tracking the fact that this money is not being spent. It is not getting in the hands of people who knew it. If we knew it here, certainly they knew that was going on as well, but ultimately they just really didn't care. And so you end up in the situation that we're in now where they're trying to make the case they

don't have the legal authority. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Congress, of course, knows that they're going to be stymied by their own caucus, not to mention the Republicans, not to mention the Senate. And so they want to have the appearance of caring, even though they don't really care. And Pelosi kind of gave up the game in her little statement where she said, overwhelmingly, our members agree to extend the moratorium. Overwhelmingly. That doesn't mean everybody in the Democratic, in fact, that means the opposite, that there are plenty of people within the Democratic caucus who also don't want to extend the moratorium. Why? Because they're more interested in, you know, whatever lobbyists and special interests in their district are pushing them on this than they are in making sure that tenants are taken care of and small landlords are taken care of

because they're also really, really hurt by the fact that those funds haven't been distributed. So it's just a completely shameful state of affairs all around. And I'll tell you what's going to happen. Probably nothing. Oh, nothing's going to happen. Probably nothing is going to happen. They're going to put more pressure on states and localities to get the funds out. I will say in the last month, I believe in the month of June is the last month that we have numbers for,

the amount of money going up did start to tick up. So maybe some of these cities and states are starting to get a hold on how to get these funds in the hands of people who need it. But that's all that's going to happen. They're going to wring their hands. Oh, we're so sad about this. We're so sorry about this. But they're not actually going to do anything about it. That's the end of the story.

No, what's going to happen is the states are going to kick it into overdrive, probably the blue states more than the red states. And then a lot of the money will remain unspent. A lot of these people will get evicted, and then it's going to get kicked out. And I've said this yesterday, which is the worst thing that can happen is when you lose your house. Because what happens is the lower down that you get pushed, you're basically, it makes it harder to do anything. I mean, you know, like rental assistance is like one form. But once you're homeless, you know, there's not a lot of resources.

And you go even further down that, once you lose your job, what are you supposed to do? You don't have a fixed address. So a lot of these people don't have bank accounts. I mean, I had no idea how many people in this country didn't have bank accounts. It's kind of stunning, actually, whenever you're trying to design any sort of social welfare program or whatever. It's like millions and millions of people. And so then what do you do? You can't even give them cash.

It's a whole thing. And you really, really want to avoid it as much as possible. Yeah, because you become part of the permanent invisible underclass that doesn't even really get counted in statistics anymore. And you're exactly right. You're almost outside of the reach of help at that point because you don't have a physical address. You don't have a bank account. So even something like, you know, when the direct checks went out, these are the type of people who you can't even find to get the check in their banking account or they can't benefit from the child tax credit because you can't figure out how to get the funds into their hands.

So, yeah, once you slide out of the status of having a fixed residence where, you know, your kids know where to go and schools and all of that. I mean, the instability that is caused by people losing their homes, it's one of the worst traumas and one of the hardest to recover from that people have. And of course, you're completely powerless. You have no political power. No one pays attention to you. You're just sort of like, like I said, it's like you're invisible. It's like you don't even count anymore in society. It's a horrific fate that millions could be faced with now. And all that people in this town want to do is try to shift blame and not be the one that the, you know, finger gets pointed at in the end analysis. Shift blame, make sure that none of it comes back to bite them, and so they continue to do other things.

That's all they care about. That's what it's all about. Indeed. All right, you got a little update for us, Sagar? I love this update. So we brought you yesterday our fair mayor, Mariel Bowser. She was spotted at a wedding hours after her mask mandate had come into place. She officiated the wedding. So according to her and to the ceremony, the wedding itself was held

outdoors. However, the reception was held indoors and the mayor was not wearing a mask during that indoor reception along with hundreds of others, which personally I think is fine given the current guidance. She's vaccinated. Everybody else there was vaccinated, or at least according to the people who are throwing it. So, hey, by that standard, you know, as of a week ago, that seems fine. But according to the mayor herself, it's not fine. Well, I love this. So after a lot of consternation, you know, the mayor was caught lying. She said, actually, I was according, being in accordance, even though the photos show that she's a liar whenever she put out that statement saying that she's complying with her mandate. Now, the Washingtonian, who is a magazine here in D.C. It's kind of like Our City magazine, is attacking. No, no, no, no, not the mayor, the reporter.

So let's put this up there on the screen. I love this. Update. The Washington Examiner writer who has published photos of Mayor Bowser maskless at a wedding over the weekend was not invited to the wedding. Oh, my, Crystal. What a shocking breach of decorum. How could she? I mean, what is she doing? Her job? You know, as a journalist? And here's what I love. Somebody in attendance was a CNN White House correspondent, Kate Bennett,

who posted a photo on her Instagram story with the text, quote, Just so we're all clear, this is outside. So we've got the White House correspondent for CNN running cover for the mayor. And then, I mean, presumably somebody leaked that the writer was, that Tiana Lowe, who wrote the story, was not invited to this wedding, but had it called the magazine and said, did you know she wasn't even invited? So what if she wasn't invited? Who cares? The story is that the mayor is breaking the mask mandate. There's a photo of it. Does it matter how you get the photo? Yeah.

It's called journalism. I mean, I just don't have, I don't even know what to say. And I don't know that, I mean, I just was really perplexed by this. Like, do we even know how she obtained the photo? I don't think that she ever said, like, I was there. She never said, like, I was attending this wedding. She was like, I did my job, and I found this good story, and I went and took a photo, which was newsworthy.

Who cares how the photo was taken? It's just bizarre. And the Washingtonian presented this like this was some big bombshell update to their story. We'd all be like, oh, well, she wasn't invited. Never mind then. Forget I said anything about it. It's just a very strange way of thinking about journalism. I believe we have a couple of responses to this that we enjoyed.

Let's throw the first one up on the screen. My friend Chuck Ross. Update the Washington Post reporters who broke the Watergate story weren't at the break-in. And Glenn also put it. They weren't invited to the break-in? How could they break the story then? This is preposterous. Glenn also put it really well.

How go should journalists reporting on the activities of a political official without having been invited to do so? Where are her manners? Indeed. This country is going to hell in a handbasket. So, look, we put this together because it does actually show the pathologies of a lot of people in this city who report on the most powerful people in the country, which is that, as Glenn put it, they want to be invited to cover, not to actually really, the term is muckraking, going through and really doing some investigative journalism. I mean, the definition of a good story is a powerful person like Muriel Bowser is violating one of her own policies.

And if you found out about it, if I found out about it, you bet your ass I would have been trying to get in there. I'm not sure if I would have been able to. Props to her, you know, sneaking her way into a restaurant. She even went up to the mayor and asked her why she wasn't complying with the mask mandate. I think the cops stepped in and were like, hey, you got to get away from her or something like that. That's a fantastic story. That's exactly what you're supposed to do. Yeah, and actually, I mean, think about it. You're basically crashing somebody's wedding.

Yeah, pretty uncomfortable. And, you know, props. Once again, she caused an incident for the mayor. The mayor then canceled her press conference yesterday for COVID because she didn't want to answer any questions about this. The entire DC, as in like Washington DC press corps, followed up about this story. Our local like Fox affiliate ran like a whole thing on it. This is a legit thing. And here's the thing. To show you where this comes from, take a look at yesterday, the White House press briefing where the Associated Press White House correspondent reminds the press secretary that her staff told her she has another appointment and then suggests the number of questions that she she should continue to take.

Just just take a listen. These reports were made directly to the Office of the Inspector General, and improvements have been made. We're told you have a hard-out soon, maybe like two more. Okay, go ahead. What? What? Why is the... Listen, once upon a time, I was in the room,

and if Sarah Sanders wanted to stay for two hours, great. You know why? Because we all had a lot of questions. I mean, if she had to go, that's on her. She's supposed to be. You know, I've interviewed Trump. I interviewed Trump four times. Every single time, they told me he's only got 15 minutes.

The shortest one was, I think, 34. And the entire time. And you didn't stop the interview to be like, Mr. President, you have a hard time. I was like, Mr. President, your staff tells me Theresa May is on the phone. I'm like, I don't care if Theresa May is on the phone. I'm sitting here. I'm going to ask as many questions as I possibly can until he kicks me out. And his staff would do everything in their power to try and get you out of there. They'd be like, you know, pointing at their phone behind him and be like, wrap this up. I'm like, no, this has nothing to do with you.

Get out of here. It's like between him and me like, they're like, wrap this up. I'm like, no, this has nothing to do with you. Like, get out of here. It's all, you know, it's like between him and me, same thing. They would tap you under, tap your leg, be like, hey, you need to cut this thing off, whatever. Once again, it's his schedule, not yours. And why is the Associated Press White House correspondent being like, we're told you have a hard out. You know, you got to get out of here. What are you, her timekeeper? I mean, what's happening? You're supposed to want her to stay in there as long as possible. You're supposed to throw questions at her as long as you possibly can. Until she wants to get out of there. And even she seems a little bit like, okay.

All right. Yeah. Maybe two more questions. Why don't you let me do my job here and you guys just do your job and I'll manage my time just fine. Yeah. It also shows in the sense of entitlement that you see from Biden. Yeah. Anytime he gets a question that's remotely challenging, he flips.

I mean, he really goes like gets enraged and yells at people and has these like weird outbursts. He called a reporter a pain in the neck. Yeah. He's like, you're a real pain in the neck. Yeah. He's like, what is wrong with you? Exactly. And, I mean, just for asking, like, not anything really that crazy, but just sort of obvious questions about whatever is going on that are slightly challenging or uncomfortable to him.

And, I mean, part of it is he's, like, old and crabby at this point. But we saw this on the campaign trail, too. Remember when a voter challenged him and he was like, you're a lying, dog-faced pony soldier. It was strange. It was strange stuff. It's very strange. But it speaks to the sense of entitlement that they don't think that they have to be challenged.

They don't think they should be challenged. They don't believe in an adversarial relationship. It's all become about access journalism, the way to advance your careers by sucking up to these people and keeping them as your friends and buddies so that they can be your sources, so that you can be at their cocktail parties and all that stuff, so that you can run in the same social circles rather than actually holding them to account. inappropriate for a reporter who wasn't invited to the wedding to, you know, break a fairly significant story about hypocrisy of a public official that fits with a pattern that we've seen of hypocrisy of public officials. Gavin Newsom certainly comes to mind in all of this. And, you know, the idea that there would be anything wrong with doing that when you weren't explicitly invited to do so is just really

something special. It's totally bonkers. And I want people to know this, that AP thing, that is standard practice. That's what it was like before Trump came into office. And one of my opinion, one of the best things that he did is completely break the media cartel, which is that in the past in the White House, AP always gets the first question, then like Reuters or whatever, and the AP guy is the one who is willing to be like, hey, you've answered enough questions. This is standard practice under Obama, under Bush, all of that. Do you really think it should be that way? Who elected this guy?

Actually, nobody. And from my experience, the best times in the briefing room was when the White House desperately didn't want to answer something. And they would come in there and the press would just hammer them. I mean, and no matter what, they would try and go to the front of the reporter and you would get smacked with the question. And then there would be shouting and it was adversarial. That was exactly how, frankly, it should have been. And this is a blatant example of how basically the system is rigged. If you have the Associated Press guy, if he thinks that the White House press corps has answered enough questions, whenever he only takes questions from established media outlets, okay, game over.

I mean, good luck trying to ask a dissonant question in that briefing room today. I don't even know how they do it. I know some of the people in there. It's a tooth and nail fight in order to try and actually press this woman because of exactly a system like this. Well, we know the Trump administration and the Biden administration, neither one cares about a free press because both of them are prosecuting Julian Assange for the crime of revealing secrets that powerful people did not want to reveal. So tells you everything you need to know about that. Hey, so remember how we told you how awesome premium membership was? Well, here we are again

to remind you that becoming a premium member means you don't have to listen to our constant pleas for you to subscribe. So what are you waiting for? Become a premium member today by going to breakingpoints.com, which you can click on in the show notes. We have some, I don't know if this is good news, but I think it's revealing news about interesting news,. So, of course, you know, everybody, that is going through the population, especially ravaging unvaccinated populations. Case numbers quite high. Hospitalization numbers also going up. And death numbers, again, very, very concentrated among the unvaccinated population. So you've seen a surge. Louisiana, Alabama, Missouri, some southern states, Arkansas, where you've seen a huge surge in the Delta variant in cases and hospitalizations and in death.

While we are also seeing in those states and more broadly across the country, but in particular in those states where the presence of coronavirus is very noticeable, where people are having their friends and their family members or they're worried about their friends and their family members, parents and grandparents getting sick, we're also seeing a pretty significant uptick in the number of people who are going out and choosing to get the vaccine. So let's take a look at this Washington Post story about a rush to get shots. So they say on Friday, there were more than 865,000 doses administered. That's the highest daily figure since July 3rd. So since a month ago, according to their vaccine tracker, third week that states

with the highest number of coronavirus cases also had the highest vaccination numbers. Here's some of the specifics. Louisiana experienced a 114% increase in uptake, according to the latest CDC data. Arkansas, another state that's been hard hit, recorded a 96% increase. Alabama, 65% increase. Missouri, 49% increase. So you are seeing, as this is becoming more real to people, and they see the way that the virus is spreading in their community, they're worried about themselves, they're worried about their friends and family members, you do see them going out and increasingly getting shots. I think that that, look, I wish it didn't take that. I wish it didn't take seeing a friend or family member or whoever gets sick for people to go out and take

this seriously and get the vaccine. But it does show you that, you know, there's some population that's never going to do it. And there's a lot of people that eventually they're going to wait and see. They're going to see the way it's starting to spread in their community. And they are going to do what needs to be done. I do think that's encouraging. They also, and I appreciated this about the story, they spoke to some of the people who were going out and getting their first shots. And there were two of them I wanted to bring. They interview about four or five people. One was in North Philadelphia, 49-year-old Shonda Finley. She was getting vaccinated because of her job at a public health organization.

And this is what encouraged her. She said, I never had the time earlier during the pandemic to get the shot twice. I didn't trust getting the one and done from Johnson & Johnson. Thanks, really, to sort of media misinformation about that one. Thanks, guys. Yeah. from Johnson & Johnson. Thanks, really, to sort of media misinformation about that one. Thanks, guys. Finley said she would not have gotten it anywhere else but at the Black Doctors

COVID Consortium, a vaccination clinic in a black church that has seen a major increase in community interest. She said, I felt more comfortable being taken care of

by people of color. Great solution. Great solution. What have we been saying here? Made her feel comfortable, made her feel confident. She found the time to do it. That was the other thing she expressed is like, I just didn't have the time.

It's not that I was like, absolutely no. But I was super busy during the pandemic dealing with she works in public health. So now I have this situation that I feel more comfortable with. I found the time to do it. So I thought that was revealing. And then they also interviewed this 18-year-old Tyler Sprengel in rural Missouri, just graduated from high school in May. He's been working at his family's tire shop. He's studying to be an auctioneer and taking care of his grandparents. And he said it was thinking about them that made him decide, even though he's a

conservative Republican, to go out and get the shot. He says, I would feel really bad if I brought it to them. Even me being so stubborn, I finally did it. So for him, it was seeing the spread in his community, it becoming really real to him that he could be the reason that his parents or grandparents got sick. And that was what changed his mind. So I just thought this story was important because they talked to real people rather than just speculating. And because it does show that there is some hope for getting people who have been reluctant still to take the shot and get the shot and protect themselves and protect their community. There's a lot of hatred in America right now. A lot of vaccinated people say, screw these people who aren't getting vaccinated.

And a lot of, you know, vice versa. Who the hell are these people to tell me what to do? This is a good story. Trust people. People respond to good incentives. This 18-year-old, he sees the news and he's like, hey, you know what? I got good grandparents. I got to take care of them. I'm not going to do it. I read some of the other anecdotes in here. Some people were like, hey, I want to go visit my parents in El Salvador. And El Salvador said, so I got to get the shot. And

I was a little uncomfortable because I didn't want to get sick. I understand that. I can tell you personally, it was like 24 hours. Didn't feel that great. After that, I was good. You can go and you can look and you can see many of the other ones. You know, I'll also highlight that same one you pointed to in North Philadelphia, black community. And a caregiver there said that she didn't think that she would get sick from coronavirus until her friend died last month from the Delta variant. And she was like, okay, it's time. Look, people come to their decisions in very different ways. And trying to force people to do something generally doesn't work. We have to accept all kinds of externalities of living in a free country. It's really bad to be fat. We live actually in a fat country. And there's a

whole other reason for that. It's really bad to engage in all sorts of behaviors that the CDC tells you not to do. I've said this before. The CDC says not to eat runny eggs. I think runny eggs are disgusting, personally, but I know a lot of people who like it. A CDC says— Do you like the runny yolk? If the white part is runny, that grosses me out, but I like it over medium. When I see people—

The runny white part, that's a little too much. When I see people take like bread and dip it in the yolk. Oh yeah, that's delicious. I'm like, oh God, I'm going to throw up. That's delicious. This is a side note. You're not supposed to eat meat which is cooked, I think, below 160, which I think is medium. I mean, who does that?

I know many tasteless gauche people do eat their steaks, but some of us with more refined tastes don't do that. And that's in violation of CDC guidance. More what I'm saying is there is cost, benefit, risk analysis. People make decisions all the time because we live in a free society. And in general, I would say it's better to trust people. And I know it's very frustrating, especially brethren here in D.C. being like, oh, these unvaccinated, what's wrong with them? People come to decisions in their own way. This uptick, and I would point to this, every single one of the people that they interview in this story, it had nothing to do with CDC guidance, with any institution. It was cases are up.

I personally feel scared. I'm going to go and get the shot. That's important. And some of these places, I think Arkansas has put in place a $100 incentive. So some of these places also have put an incentive in place. I don't know if that has impacted. You have to think that that's having some impact on the numbers as well. The other thing I think is just like, given how much government has failed people and how much government has lied to people and how much the media has failed and lied to people,

it takes away your right to say like, just trust and just do what we say. Like, you have to understand the context and the place that we're at in this country where, I mean, you have a healthcare system that could not be more of an unconscionable disaster, like predatory disaster. So you've got a large number of uninsured people who are worried they're going to get charged for the vaccine. Which is not irrational. Which is not crazy. And look, the vaccine is free. I got it for free. You got it for free. Like people are getting the vaccine for free. However, there have been cases of unscrupulous providers who have been trying to charge people for the vaccine.

And if you've had bad experiences with the healthcare system, you know how much they try to gouge you at every turn. Is that crazy? No. We had Michael Brendan Doherty on here, who's a conservative, who was like, yeah, probably why the uptake is higher in the UK is because they got the NHS. Yeah, and because they trust their doctors and everybody's connected to the healthcare system. Exactly. We have so many Americans who don't have a primary care physician who are basically shut out of medical care altogether. So then you want to go and say,

you must interact with someone you don't know and you don't trust with a system that you've had terrible experiences with. You know, we don't really with a system that you've had terrible experiences with, you know, we don't really have a leg to stand on there in terms of that. And that's why in Europe, the rates have now surpassed ours. In Canada, the rates have now surpassed ours. And also the bad behavior of the pharmaceutical company certainly doesn't help. I found this on FT, which is that in Europe, now that they're able to, the moment that they're able to, of course, Pfizer and Moderna jack up the COVID vaccine prices. I think, isn't it Pfizer that's like pushing to require a booster shot now as well? Even though the NIH even is like, yeah, we don't need this. I don't really think that's necessary. But, you know, of course, they care so much about profits. That builds in

a healthy level of skepticism among the public about exactly what's going on here. And you can't ignore these factors ultimately. So, look, there is a little bit of good news here. Because of this uptick, the population has finally hit 70 percent. That has at least some, you know, some the first dose of a vaccine, 90 percent of those in elderly populations. Of course, we know that they are the most vulnerable. This is far later. I think we have those numbers that we can throw up there. This is about a month later than what the administration ultimately wanted. So you can see there 70% of U.S. adults have had at least one dose of the COVID vaccine. We know that one dose,

even though you'd rather have two doses, one dose does provide a significant amount of protection. The next one that we have that we can throw up here shows 90% of all U.S. residents over the age of 65 have been vaccinated, at least one dose. Those are the people overwhelmingly who in the first and second wave were getting sick and hospitalized and dying. So that is also very encouraging news that you have so much of the elderly population vaccinated at this point. So progress is slow. It's not what anybody would want, but progress is at least starting to be made and at an increasing pace. Look, that 65 plus number, that's the only number that really matters that much to me, which is that those people are the ones who are going to get actually sick and die.

And that was why if we locked down, whatever justified, which is that those people are the ones who are going to get actually sick and die. And that was why if lockdown was ever justified, it was that. If social distancing, mask requiring was ever justified population-wide, it was for them. It was they're the ones who were actually vulnerable. And in the early days of the pandemic, I remember being like, listen, if you care about your grandma, if you care about your grandfather, if you care about these people, then you should be trying to abide by some of these pandemic restrictions because they're the ones who are truly vulnerable. Now that 90% of them have protection, very good protection, I would add, against death from COVID and even serious hospitalization. Again, the 99.999% of people who have been vaccinated not dying from COVID, I think 99.96% in terms of the decimal point for hospitalization, that's as good as it gets for so many of the elderly,

the oldest amongst us, who are actually vulnerable. So this is why whenever you hear me talk about mass mandate, why I think they're stupid and all that, all we were ever doing was trying to protect these people from serious illness or death. And we're going to talk about, you know, I guess actually we can move on now. Well, one other thing I want to add here because I did a little bit of research on this because I wanted to make sure that I was good both for myself, but also make sure to provide you guys with good information about kids. Because that's the one area where it's like, gosh, they still can't get vaccinated. Like we got to make sure they're protected. That would be a good reason to have a mask mandate. Now, Delta variant is, we all know, more infectious.

It spreads more easily. There is no indication that it is more likely to get kids seriously ill to the point of hospitalization than the previous, you know, the initial variant that was here. If you look at the population in places where this is like not rocket science, but in places where most people are vaccinated, kids are not really getting sick very often at all. Very uncommon. In places where the adults are largely not vaccinated, it is a different story. Kids are getting the virus more often. So, again, the biggest thing you can do to protect kids isn't really to do with wearing masks. It has everything to do with getting vaccinated. But I just really want people to understand, look, is it good for your kid to go COVID? Of course not. But it still seems to not be nearly as serious in children under the

age of 12 as it is in adults and certainly in the elderly population. So that is what the statistics say right now. Good. I'm glad you put that in there. That is another question that we get a lot. So let's move on to this, which is actually about COVID. It's actually about people who are 65 years old and who have gotten— Our old-ass Congress. Our old-ass congressmen who are getting sick. So let's put this up there on the screen.

Lindsey Graham tested positive for COVID. He says, I was just informed by the House physician I have tested positive for COVID-19. Even after being vaccinated, I started having flu-like symptoms Saturday night. I went to the doctor. Here's what he says, and this is actually very important. I feel like I have a sinus infection. At present time, I have mild symptoms. I'll be quarantining for 10 days. I'm very glad I was vaccinated because without vaccination, I am certain I would not feel as I do now. My symptoms would be far worse. And that gets to exactly what we were just talking about,

which is that if you are over 65 and Lindsey Graham is 66 years old, then COVID used to be 66. I'm not saying it's a good thing to have a sinus infection or to have flu-like symptoms, but he's going to be okay. That's the whole point. That's why we went through all this. So I've been really annoyed by all of the dunking and being like, he won't refuse to wear a mask. Well, are you supposed to wear a mask in order to avoid sinus infection? You're supposed to do that and to avoid all sorts of common illnesses that we have all the time?

I think that's patently ridiculous. We accept a certain level of baseline risk within our society. And look, if you want to, go for it. But in terms of requiring it for everyone, I think that's completely ridiculous. That being said, there's actually a lot of legislative ramifications for what happened with Lindsey Graham. Because it turns out that Lindsey was at a party on Friday. And that party- Saturday night. Oh, sorry, Saturday. And that happened on Joe Manchin's houseboat. So let's put this up there. So CNN reports, Senator Joe Manchin

entertained a small group of senators on Saturday night. Senator Graham was in attendance, according to a source with knowledge. Manchin's office is declining to say who was there. So we have some of the names, though. We know at least Mark Kelly, Chris Coons, John Thune, and Jackie Rosen, in addition to Lindsey Graham, were also on Joe Manchin's House vote party. And Cortez Masto. So these are all actually pretty important votes whenever it comes to what? The bipartisan infrastructure bill, where the votes were all scheduled to happen this weekend, Friday and more. There's been a lot of stuff that's been thrown into the works here. Apparently, Kristen Sinema has told Chuck Schumer, if this goes into my vacation, I will not show up.

Which, there's... She's really something, isn't she? If this goes in my vacation, I will not show up and do my job of which I was elected to represent the, what is it, six million people of Arizona? Okay, you know, that's certainly a position. It's interesting. But I find this hilarious. It seems like Manchin's houseboat itself might be one of huge threat to centrism Washington. So this was called out. Apparently, a while back, John Tester, who's a senator from Montana, was on Manchin's houseboat and it was in the middle of the winter. He was leaving the houseboat down the gangplank and the gangplank was apparently

completely covered in ice. And the two of them went slipping and sliding. And one of them even kicked a piece of metal, per what they say there. It says, Tester was bleeding from his left hand. He asked Manchin if he was all right. He says, I think I broke my thumb. Doctors then put Manchin in a brace,

but he took it off after a few weeks. Tester almost fell in the water. It almost fell in the water in the middle of the night in winter. So this is a dangerous place. More importantly, it's this, which is that the socialization, all of that, and COVID has made it so that the votes for the bipartisan infrastructure bill could be scheduled anywhere from Friday, Saturday, Sunday, depending on what's happening with, depending on what happens with the procedural vote and all that stuff to move forward. It could put it very much into danger. The reason why that matters is, as I was saying, they're scheduled to go on

vacation the week after next. And so if they don't make it to their middle of their August recess as scheduled, some senators like Sinema, others I believe have all sorts of prior commitments that they have in their districts. Some may miss the votes, which could then skew the vote count and could throw everything into whack. So that's why this actually matters in terms of national politics. I think they'll probably be okay, number one, because the vote margin on the initial procedural vote was pretty high. They had some room to work with. What did it end up being, like 67, 68? So they've got some wiggle room. And then also I was looking at the CDC guidance on what to do if you have been vaccinated and you come in contact with someone, you have known contact with someone with coronavirus, and it actually doesn't require a quarantine. You're supposed to wear a mask and monitor and all that stuff. So they should be okay. But yeah, Joe Manchin's houseboat has potential super spreader event. Yeah, super spreader event, Joe Manchin's houseboat.

Anyway, not big Lindsey Graham fans here, but we hope he feels better. Yeah, feel better, Lindsey. Wishing you the best. And then speaking of, I don't know, what, elites crowded together in an unsafe manner. Elite parties. Not actually unsafe. Given my position, I support houseboat parties. Go for it.

I support houseboat parties. I for it. I support houseboat parties. I support it all. Everybody have fun. President Obama is throwing a huge birthday bash. So let's put this up there on the screen. Barack Obama is planning his 60th birthday bash at his family's $12 million, 30-acre oceanfront Martha's Vineyard estate this coming weekend. There are 475 confirmed guests, 200-plus staff planning to work the party, and Pearl Jam is expected to play. And when we were planning the show, I told Crystal, I saw a great tweet, and I forget

who said it, which is, imagine having the money to hire Pearl Jam and then hiring Pearl Jam. I mean, I don't understand. I mean, maybe it's a boomer thing. Not at the top of your list. He is a young boomer, so, you know, like maybe it's a boomer thing. I truly, I'll never understand it. But Obama, while, you know, the Delta variant is happening, while the White House is wearing masks, you know, even though they're all fully vaccinated, is throwing a 700-plus person party that includes the staff on his rich Martha's Vineyard estate. actually going to change something, rebalance society, really was like a light to so many

people and then ended up becoming, you know, exactly the thing that he criticized. I saw somebody who was mad at people for pointing this out was like, yes, Donald Trump famously, you know, didn't throw lavish parties. And somebody else pointed out, isn't that the whole point? Is that why is their behavior so indistinguishable? Obama's whole thing is that he wasn't like them. And Trump, you know, the way he was able to come to office is to say, they're all just like me, which seems true. I mean, Obama has embraced his role as a member of the mega rich and an Instagram influencer.

Part of his pitch was, I'm already rich. Yeah. So I don't need to cash in. I don't need to suck up to these people. I understand how the game works. I'm already rich, so I don't need to parlay my public service into fabulous intergenerational wealth the way that the Clintons did, the way that Obama did. George W. Bush, of course, was already rich as well, and we saw how that went, too. Few things I want to say here. First of all, I have a friend well. And we saw how that went, too. A few things I want to say

here. First of all, I have a friend who's really into Pearl Jam. Apparently, this is a thing. Like, there's a whole still group of, like, relatively sizable group of people who are really into Pearl Jam and go to their shows and follow them around, whatever. Didn't know that. And I also didn't know that the former president might be part of that group. That's one thing. Another thing is, just so you know, I agree with you in terms of like the safety and the whatever. It's fine. They're saying that these people are supposed to get tested for coronavirus. I don't know what the protocols are or whatever, but this is, it's outdoors. So I think this is fine. But we should say that Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, thinks otherwise. On Sunday on State of the Union, they said, look,

if you're talking about a small party like I might have in my house for six or eight people who are all fully vaccinated, I do not believe at this point we need to put masks on to be next to each other. While discussing generic masking protocols, but not the Obama party itself, he added, but if there were 100 people, and of course, how are you really going to be sure about people's vaccination status, then it, you know, is a different deal. They're not saying whether or not guests are going to be required to wear a mask, which means that guests are not going to be required to wear a mask, which again, they shouldn't be. I think it's fine. It's fine. Especially if they're going to be outdoors, they're probably all vaccinated.

Like, it's really probably fine. But, you know, it's different from what some of the public health officials are saying at this point, which is interesting. And then the other point of this is just how gross it is that our public servants use their quote unquote public service as a vehicle to amass gigantic fortunes. And it is especially sad with Obama because he did pledge to be something different. And I almost feel about him and his mistreatment of the people that believed in him the same way I feel about Trump and his mistreatment of the people who believed in him because he also promised to be something different. He also promised to, you know, break up the elite circles and work for the people. And then he just goes in and is like, hey, Paul Ryan, send me your tax plan. Let's do that as my major accomplishment in office. But, you know, right then when Obama came into office and you had this group of young people, I was young at that point, who were very excited about him and thought this was going to be a different direction in politics, really believed that this was a special moment and

a turning point from the Bush years. And, you know, those signs were always there. Like, if you looked at his record previously, he wasn't really, you know, doing anything. He was kind of a centrist, more interested in the, like, bipartisan fetish than anything else. His backing came overwhelmingly from Wall Street. But there was this tremendous optimism and hope and belief that this was a turning point. And in fact, that was the moment when the country really needed that turning point, because you were talking about coming out of the financial crisis. And here you have this once-in-a-lifetime political talent who has all this goodwill and a grassroots base, the first real grassroots fundraiser, all these pieces in place.

And then what does he do? Bails out Wall Street. No one goes to prison. Homeowners left to dry. You know, tries to get TPP through, the surge, drone strikes, you know, expansion of the national security state, all of this stuff that, you know, that he did. And so at the very moment when the country was open to a dramatic shift, needed a dramatic shift, really needed to show that we could deliver for ordinary citizens again,

really needed to make people whole and bolster the middle class coming out of a recession where the majority of the jobs that were lost were middle class, and the majority of the jobs that were gained out of that recession were low-paid, like, service sector-type jobs. So you have this tremendous shift happening in real time in the economy, and he didn't do anything about it. In fact, worse than doing nothing about it, he actually hardened and bolstered the rich and the powerful and those who already were, you know, monopolists and pushing to the forefront of American power. So that's why, you know, I look at this party and his wealth and all of that with such both sadness and contempt because he had an opportunity.

He had the trust of so many people. And ultimately, he's used it to enrich himself and his family. Yeah. I mean, he could have been FDR, and now he's just a rich dude on Martha's Vineyard hanging out with George Clooney and Oprah. And look, it sounds cool, you know, but- Great for him. It's like, that's good for you. How is it for the

rest of us? And so many millions that you let down. A different story. called The Realignment. We talk a lot about the deeper issues that are changing, realigning in American society. You always need more Crystal and Saga in your daily lives. Take care, guys. If you were to ask me what I got wrong over a year and a half ago when COVID first became a thing, it was this. I underestimated how right many of my friends were that the threat of COVID as a disease would become cover for power grabs by politicians, censorship campaigns by the mainstream media, and big tech, that ultimately we might end up doing more damage to the fabric of our society than any virus ever could. Now, one area where things unequivocally have been the worst is the realm of censorship. In a way, you can almost understand it. It's March 2020. We have a deadly pandemic. Some people are lying about it. If you're on

YouTube or Facebook or whomever, you start to freak out. You have to take down the guy who says Bill Gates is planting a microchip in you or that the earth is flat and that COVID is part of that. But once everybody gets, let's say, May of 2020, and you say COVID leaks from a Wuhan lab, well, now you have a censorship infrastructure. We have the mainstream media saying, well, it can't possibly be true. So Google and Twitter and Facebook, they fire up the delete machine.

Except, wait, that one turned out to be at the very least plausible, and if I were to speculate, the most likely explanation for the origin of the virus. That's when things got kind of crazy. And despite the fact that big tech completely failed on lab leak, they have kept their censorship infrastructure afloat with the new hysteria over the Delta variant.

It's now firing in all cylinders. That's the context for the story I want to highlight today. How YouTube has suspended Sky News Australia's account of nearly 1.8 million subscribers for what it calls COVID misinformation. Now, if you're not familiar with Sky News Australia, they have done impressive and important work with regard to the lab leak story, revealing definitively that the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese government lied about having live bats within the lab. Sky News Australia uncovered evidence showing that

not only to be true, but also in early interview with one of the lab's so-called safety directors. That's the context. You can hate Sky News if you want. You can also hate Rupert Murdoch. But according to Sky News, the videos which earned them a YouTube strike and the inability to post on their channel for seven days was, according to their digital editor, Jack Houghton, quote, among the videos deemed unpalatable for societal consumption were debates around whether masks were effective and whether lockdowns were justified when considering their adverse health outcomes. He continues, the stance taken by some commentators at this network was that masks are not effective in containing outbreaks, particularly when

mandated outside in fresh air. Some also took issue with the frequency and mechanisms of locking down Australians. But the most important context is this. In the videos which were taken down, those commentators were also disagreed with by others, and their views were included in the videos. Here's the crazy part. Australia isn't even America. They actually have pretty hardcore media regulators over what you can and cannot say. And even their own local authorities didn't object to any of their broadcasts. So the very Australian authorities charged with policing misinformation didn't do anything. But Google is superseding them both to say that actually those old videos, which are debating masks and lockdown

just not going to fly around here. This is the hellscape that we've landed in. The hubris of our government, of our media, and of the big tech company situation is grounded in the singular belief that they know better than us, that they know better. They can decide what's acceptable to discuss and what is not. Now, maybe in a perfect world, that's true. But what happens when the very people charged with enforcing this are completely wrong? Well, I've already mentioned lab leak, but what about the media themselves? As we pointed out yesterday, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, all spread egregious misinformation this weekend about vaccines. The New York Times

made it seem like the Delta variant was just as infectious to vaccinated Americans as to unvaccinated Americans, which is not true. The Washington Post was even worse, making it seem like you might be more likely to get infected if you're vaccinated. NBC News was just a dunce. They didn't include any statistical context for how 125,000 Americans who've been vaccinated have had breakthrough cases. All of those, by the very standards that YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have put forward, would and should qualify as misinformation. But they skate by.

If you question orthodoxy on COVID, you're going to get banned. Now, if you push orthodoxy, which is free of facts, you live to misinform another day. And I'll end with this. When all else fails, trust the government to tell us what's true or not, right? Yeah, that's completely wrong. Arguably, the government itself has been one of the chief purveyors of misinformation on COVID since the beginning, from lying about masks, to Fauci moving the goalposts, admitting it on herd immunity, to pushing masks on fully vaccinated Americans who are basically zero threat of getting really sick from COVID, when everyone in charge of policing the truth

has been caught themselves either lying or screwing up, then we need to err on what our country was founded on, debate and free expression, because we are nothing without it. And I tried to make it not about Sky News Australia. One more thing, I promise. Just wanted to make sure you knew about my podcast with Kyle Kalinsky. It's called Crystal Kyle and Friends, where we do long form interviews with people like Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, and Glenn Greenwald. You can listen on any podcast platform, or you can subscribe over on Substack to get the video a day early. We're going to stop bugging you now. Enjoy.

All right, Crystal, what are you taking a look at today? Guys, don't fall for the act. Pelosi and Biden want you to sincerely, earnestly believe that they are shocked, shocked that the eviction moratorium is expiring, that they had no idea the rental assistance program was in complete shambles, that led to almost no money actually getting to the hands of tenants and landlords. They actually want you to think that they hadn't even noticed the Supreme Court ruling saying that it would probably take an act of Congress to extend the moratorium. Give me a break. Biden and Pelosi have been trading statements back and forth, each calling on the other to act in a choreographed dance of buck passing. First on Thursday, the Biden administration, mere days before the provision's expiration,

called on Congress to act. In response, Pelosi took a show vote asking for unanimous consent to extend the moratorium. When that show vote request for unanimous consent failed, she blamed the Republicans and promptly skipped town. Now she's out with a new letter explaining that it's not really on the House to do anything. Really, the White House and the CDC should deal with this teeny tiny problem of 15 million

Americans potentially facing eviction. She writes, it is unfathomable that we would not act to prevent people from being evicted. Overwhelmingly, our members agreed to extend the moratorium and universally to distribute the funds. But the House passing the eviction moratorium without the Senate acting does not extend the moratorium. Instead, the money must flow and the moratorium must be extended by the administration. So long story short, these people knew that this financial cliff was coming. They made an affirmative choice to do nothing and just let potentially millions of Americans lose their homes. How do I know that's what's going on here?

Well, because they're doing exactly the same thing with any number of other pandemic-era relief programs, which are also set to expire. The so-called Super Dole, set to end at the beginning of September, Biden bowed to corporate America, whining that they couldn't find enough workers to exploit, came out in favor of ending the $300 plus up. Now, he claims to support the continuation of covering gig workers, freelancers, and the long-term unemployed, but he hasn't lifted a finger to keep those provisions in place. So, functionally, what's the difference? The upshot of all of this is that 20 million Americans are set to lose unemployment payments in just a matter of weeks. And just so you know, the admittedly plausible theory that cutting people off would force them back into shitty jobs actually turned out to be completely

incorrect. States that have already cut off benefits, they have done worse. They actually saw employment decrease, decrease after they did that. But wait, there's more. Student loan debt payments are also about to come due again at the end of September. Since the early days of the pandemic, those payments have been deferred and interest rates debt set at zero. This short pause on debt collection gave overburdened students a much-needed break from the grinding payments that set so many young Americans back right at the time when they're starting a career. Biden, of course, could cancel student debt altogether with the stroke of a pen, but obviously he's not going to do that. And he also will not extend the student debt forbearance. Get ready to pony up those crushing student loan payments, young Americans. And finally, renters are not the only ones

faced with possible homelessness. Millions of Americans benefited from mortgage payment forbearance during the pandemic, allowing them to stay in their homes even if they had lost their jobs or seen their businesses shuttered. Those mortgage payments are also about to come due. According to the Washington Post,

about 2 million Americans are still in pandemic forbearance programs. Another 1.5 million are three months or more late on their payments, but never actually entered into those forbearance programs. These are substantial and potentially catastrophic numbers. So for context here, back in 2008, at the height of the housing crisis, about 860,000 homeowners were ultimately foreclosed on. Remember, however you feel about the economy and how it's doing right now in terms of joblessness, poverty, and hunger, that economy is being propped up by myriad pandemic-era programs,

which are all about to be cut. Critical lifelines that have helped people get by are about to disappear, and it's about to happen basically all at once. Not to mention, they're set to end at a time when the Delta variant is causing new nervousness and a re-imposition of some pandemic restrictions. Our public officials would be quick to tell you the pandemic isn't over. They'll put a new mask mandate or other personal burdens on you, but they're missing in action when it comes to making sure Americans can come out of the pandemic financially whole. And it's not because our leaders forgot the day that these provisions expire or really, really care and are trying so hard to do something as they jet off to their Hamptons fundraisers. It's because they have made a clear, affirmative choice. They decided to cut the

lifelines and let the chips fall where they may. They've decided to institute their own back to normal, which is D.C. doing nothing for people who are struggling. Now look, it was always dangerous to make people aware that the government could actually do something for them, that debt could be deferred or forgiven, housing protected, checks deposited in their accounts. Now that the immediate terror from our ruling class of pitchforks and riots is waning, the employer class is anxious to get back to the normal of

crushing everyone's spirits so that they have no choice to work for one of our foremost monopolists at poverty wages. Biden and Schumer and Pelosi may feign impotence and pretend that they want to take action, but only a fool could miss the real agenda. They will happily maintain the pandemic era elements of authoritarian power, whether that's working with social media companies to censor misinformation or reimposing mask and vaccine requirements. But the days of compensating pandemic relief are officially over. They expect us to comply and they offer nothing in return. Our political elites are pushing Americans off a massive financial cliff. So they will tell you, pandemic's not over. All right, we're joined now by Congressman

Ro Khanna for an update on what is going on with the eviction moratorium. Thanks for joining us, sir. Good to see you, sir. Thanks. Always great to be on. Yeah, of course. Let me just start with that question. What the hell is going on with the eviction moratorium? Why was this pushed to the very last minute? And now the White House and Speaker Pelosi are trading blame back and forth. Pelosi saying, hey, the CDC and the administration has got to do this. White House is saying they can't. The House has got to do this. How do we get to this place? Well, it's an outrage and both are to blame, frankly. On the White House, of course they can do this. And the idea that some opinion by Kavanaugh, which isn't binding, is preventing them is just not correct legally.

First of all, you could argue to Kavanaugh that the money for rent wasn't distributed. And so that changes the facts of the case and that may change his opinion. Second, the Delta variant may change his opinion. Second, the Delta variant may change his opinion. So I've never seen an administration before say, well, we're reading the tea leaves, and this is the way a Supreme Court justice may rule hypothetically, and so we're not going to act. So that just doesn't pass the test of a good faith argument. They have the authority. Second, the Speaker should bring this bill on the floor for a vote. I believe that it will be very difficult publicly for any Democrat to vote no in extending

the moratorium. The reason she hasn't brought the bill for a vote is that they're privately, Democrats, who are pressuring her not to bring it. Now, people say, well, tell us the names. I don't know the names. Many don't know the names. But what we do know is that there is a lot of pressure on the leadership not to bring the bill for a vote. And that's wrong. Let's have a public vote. So that's my question to you, sir. I heard you talk about this yesterday. You said candidly there are Democrats within the caucus who don't want to vote for the moratorium's extension. I mean, within that context, why are they able to pressure the speaker to not hold a vote? And then you and your colleagues don't seem able to pressure her to hold a vote. Like, how does that work? Well, it's a very good question.

We are trying to pressure her to hold the vote. I mean, typically, the leadership works that they don't want to bring a vote unless they are convinced that the vote will win. I don't think that that's the right philosophy in the beginning. So any minority faction of the caucus, if they privately go to the leadership and say the votes aren't there, they typically defer to them. I believe that it would be much better just to have public accountability. But look, you have special interest groups. You have the realtors, California realtors, email me, text me saying, we are absolutely opposed to the extension of the moratorium. And they've seen my statements and they've criticized me. The realtor groups are powerful groups in California and New York and

other areas. So there are clearly special interests at play. Well, I mean, I guess the question, Congressman, is what are you and the squad and other progressives like? What are you going to do? Because, you know, because the House is so narrowly divided, three vote margin, you all certainly have, you know, among the eight or so of you who are relatively aligned on this, you certainly have the power to say, look, we're not voting for your infrastructure deal. We're not voting for any other Biden priority until we get this eviction moratorium passed or at least a voice vote on it. So are you going to take that heart of a lie? Well, look, the pressure, I think, has been working in terms of the speaker's statements

have increasingly become tougher. First, it was we couldn't get unanimous consent. Now it is the President must act, and every few hours the Speaker is putting out another statement. I don't think it makes sense to say we're not going to do anything else until we get a vote on that. That, in my view, is too hard of a line. But I will say that we're going to continue to criticize and speak out with the leadership. And I do think that is going to move them ultimately to have a vote. Why is that too hard of a line when you're talking about 15 million Americans who are at risk of eviction? Because the climate and other things matter. And if we have a bill, for example, that says let's end fossil fuel subsidies, which we've been pushing for, or let's have a clean

energy standard, or let's have Bernie Sanders' reconciliation bill, which would have free community college and child care, I don't think we could say, okay, we're going to vote no on the reconciliation bill. Now, what we can say is we'll vote no on the bipartisan bill if the Sanders reconciliation bill isn't there. So then here's the question, sir, which is that at the end of the day, the White House yesterday says we do not have legal authority. They reiterated it multiple times. If the speaker doesn't come to a vote and the evictions begin, I'm not sure how many have already started,

then at that point it doesn't seem like there's any realistic chance of this happening, is there? Well, I don't agree with the White House. I think the White House is just wrong. We do have the Lincoln Party, and so we need to continue to make that point. And I think as the evictions start, there's going to be more and more pressure on the Speaker to bring a vote. I don't think that this is just going to go away. I mean, you still have Cori Bush doing a heroic job outside the Capitol. Many have supported her. So my view is that this will get to a vote. And the sooner they realize that, the better.

Why not at least hold out the votes on that infrastructure package? Because, frankly, the infrastructure package is not exactly a progressive dream here. Tons of privatization schemes. The pay-fors aren't great. You've got things like asset recycling included there which is just a fancy word for selling off public works Biden though in the administration really a bunch of moderates really want to get this thing done so they can go and oh look we're bipartisan look how great we are etc etc why not at least withhold votes on that

which is a key Biden White House um priority until there is an extension of the eviction moratorium. We have. I mean, no one is going to, or very few people in the Progressive Caucus would vote for the bipartisan infrastructure deal regardless. I mean, they have made it clear that we won't vote for it unless you have the Bernie Sanders reconciliation bill. Now, we got some of the worst privatization provisions out, but you're right, there's still certain privatization provisions. It doesn't do enough to get rid of lead pipes. It doesn't do enough in terms of municipal broadband.

So there are a lot of problems with the bipartisan bill. But the administration knows they're not going to have the progressive votes on that bill. Can you explain to me just the technical mechanics of how this works? Because it seems like a little bit of congressional inside baseball. So when I spoke to Senator Sanders, he said the same thing. There wouldn't be an infrastructure bill package without knowing that the reconciliation bill was also going to pass. How does it work to guarantee that that would be the case and that those two things would be tied together? So first, the Senate would have to pass the bipartisan bill, or second, they'd have to pass the actual reconciliation bill. And Crystal, this is important, not would have to pass the bipartisan bill, or second, they'd have to pass the actual reconciliation bill.

And, Crystal, this is important, not just that they pass the authorization up to $3.5 trillion, and then you have senators say, okay, now we're going to negotiate it down. They need to pass the actual bill that Senator Sanders crafted and compromised on. Both of those bills have to come to the House and then we would vote on them. But we're not going to vote on that bipartisan bill until we have the reconciliation bill in our hands passed by the Senate. And so if there isn't a CDC extension of the eviction moratorium and there isn't a House vote on the eviction moratorium in the near future, because time is ticking, I mean, it's expired now, those eviction orders are going forward, then what? What's the next sort of escalation to up the pressure? Well, first, you could actually put the moratorium in the reconciliation bill. So that could be

another sticking point. I mean, you could say, look, we need the moratorium as part of the reconciliation for the whole package to go through. I hope it doesn't come to that because that's going to be months of people getting evicted. And I hope the administration reverses course and issues the extension. I don't understand why they don't. I think there's some lawyers there who are taking fancy courses in law school that are trying to read the tea leaves of what Kavanaugh may or may not do. And the president just needs to say, no, I'm doing this and put the blame on the court if the court actually overturns them. But I've never seen an administration try to speculate about what Supreme Court justices are going to do. Well, I have a theory and I'll run it by you and you

tell me if I'm off base here. But it's not just the eviction moratorium that they're allowing to expire. They're also letting essentially all the pandemic relief programs expire, the unemployment plus up, which not only gave people an extra $300, but also critically covered freelancers and gig workers and the long-term unemployed. That's set to expire. The student debt loan relief set to expire. The mortgage forbearance and relief, that's set to expire. It seems to me like a decision has essentially been made to sort of let these programs go away, even as the Delta variant continues to surge and even as we have a lot of economic turmoil under the surface, and let the chips fall where they may.

Well, if that's the case, that would be a wrong decision. And you certainly can't lump everything in one. It's very different on having a debate about whether to extend unemployment insurance, given where the economy is, versus saying that people need to be evicted. I mean, let's be realistic. You've had a forbearance on rent. But what has happened is people now have seven, eight, 10 months of rent back due. How are you going to pay $10,000, $ seven, eight, 10 months of rent back due. How

are you going to pay 10, 15, $20,000 that is accumulated if you just got back to work a month ago? So it is so reasonable to say we want to extend it till the end of the year. Even then, you're going to have a huge problem if we don't have more aid to those who couldn't pay back rent. And so I think that this is a very different situation than some of the other programs. We can go through the program one by one, but it would be irresponsible to lump them all together and to have millions of people evicted. Finally, Congressman, one of the problems here is that you all appropriated, you passed close to $50 billion in rental relief. That money, by and large, has not gone out the door. The burden

and the onus was put on states and localities to distribute those funds to landlords and to make tenants whole so that they can stay in their homes, as you're indicating is going to be a major problem for so many. What happened with that program? I mean, it just seems like it's completely failed to distribute the funds that were appropriated. Was it designed the wrong way from the first place? Should it have been handled by the federal government where they could stand up some kind of technical capability to be able to process those applications and get those funds distributed? Where does that program stand? What are the problems? How should it have been designed in the first place? Well, I do think it should have been designed with more federal oversight so that the federal government had a greater say in when that money had to be distributed by

in having basic criteria. But I'm home right now, as you can tell, and I was in Fremont and Newark in my district, and I was meeting with the Newark mayor, and he said, we've distributed it, but bro, it's $5,000 for people who need it. Well, $5,000 in my district, where the median rent is around $1,500, is not going to cover more than a couple months' rent. So he said the problem with the program is that it may cover a couple months' rent, but it still has a lot of backdated rent. So I think even the program, even the money being distributed, is not going to be some panacea to these evictions, and we need to be honest about that. I think what we need to have is a program where if you qualify as a working class family or a middle class family and you can't afford back rent, that needs to be taken

care of or you're going to see evictions at some point. Yeah. Well, we appreciate you joining us, sir. I know you got to put that phone down from holding it. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Usually I'm in my office, but down from holding it. Well, usually I got it. Thank you. Usually I'm in my office, but you're back in the district and wanted to do this. Got it. Thanks, sir. Thanks for taking the time. We appreciate it.

Thank you. I hope you guys enjoyed the week. Congressman, three congressmen on the show in a single week. Look at that. Breaking points is growing up a little bit. So relevant. Right? We're so, so relevant.

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