Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 9/9/21: Krystal's Return, Biden's Terrible Month, VA Gov, Liberal Healthcare Deniers, ACLU Flip-Flop, Holmes Trial, Manchin Corruption, Lab Leak, Populism, and More!

Episode Date: September 9, 2021

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So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member today, which is available in the show notes. Enjoy the show, everybody. Happy Thursday. We have an amazing show for everybody today because Crystal is back. So, it's extra amazing.

How are you, Crystal? It's good to see you. I am good. It is nice to be back, I have to say. I start to get a little itchy after I don't do the show for a few days. I know what you mean. But Marshall held it down really well.

Did a great job. Fortunate to have a great fill-in. Lots of cool stuff to talk. I start to get a little itchy after I don't do the show for a few days. I know what you mean. But Marshall held it down really well. Did a great job. Fortunate to have a great fill-in. Lots of cool stuff to talk. I don't know about cool. Interesting stuff to talk about today. The Virginia governor's race, always kind of a bellwether of the national mood and one of the only races in the country that happens in these weird off years. So we're going to give you an update on what's going on there. Some really weird, terrible takes on COVID, both from Jimmy Kimmel, also from the ACLU. Glenn Greenwald, of course, all over calling them out for their flip-flops on that. We're also going to give you an update on Elizabeth Holmes. She's, of course, the former CEO of Theranos on her trial opening arguments

are being opening statements are being made this week. I've got an update for you on the Manchin crime family. You've got a little media take for us. Thomas Frank, one of my favorite political authors on the planet, is going to be here in the studio. But we wanted to start with what looks to be a very difficult, very bad month for Joe Biden. This is there's no getting around it. Joe Biden is having probably the worst month of a modern president, actually, month for Joe Biden. There's no getting around it. Joe Biden is having probably the worst month of a modern president, actually almost since Barack Obama back in August

of 2009. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is from YouGov and Economist. It's actually quite a good poll. And it shows there that Biden's approval rating is under 40% for the first time that we've seen in a national. So overall, you're seeing 39% approval, 50% disapproval. But the numbers that I would focus on are the registered voter number, where he's still at 43% and 53%, respectively. Amongst Democrats, even, it's 77 and 15. Amongst the GOP, it's 9 and 89. But the independent number there is the one that matters perhaps most above all. 35% approval, 56% disapproval. Don't worry.

Kamala still has worse favorable and unfavorability ratings, despite the fact that she literally hasn't even done anything. People still have residual memories of her. But, Crystal, there's no getting around it, which is that Delta, Afghanistan, a general lack or a feeling of malaise throughout the country. It's destroying him. I mean, it really is. And I was trying to think about it. I was like, was it Afghanistan specifically?

I think what it is is that Biden was elected in order to try and stem the feeling of chaos and to get a handle on COVID. And so people, and again, you can fairly blame him or not, but people look at the media coverage in particular of Afghanistan. They see the rising number of Delta cases. They still see that the partisan tension is at an all-time high within the country. And they're like, well, why aren't you doing your job? And I mean, I sympathize in one way, which is actually quite hard and actually to do anything about that. But there are many things that he could have done in the preceding months in order to try and get a better handle on that, have a different orientation around COVID and more. So that's just kind of my read on why he's, I think, really screwed heading into the

midterms. He's really floundering. And of course, it's always important to remember that Democrats needed to have a historically good performance, like the best in recent history, just in order to hang on to the House and hang on to the Senate. So the landscape was always going to be very difficult. Biden has been unwilling to do things like buck the parliamentarian or get rid of the filibuster in order to make the playing field a little more level, especially through redistricting reform. So Democrats walk onto the playing field, so to speak, with a multi-point disadvantage going in. Then you're the party in power. And we know historically what happens. You've got the people whose team just lost. I don't know why I'm using all these sports metaphors today, but the Republicans are going to be a lot more fired up

because they're pissed off because they're out of power and they want to get their people back in. So they feel like they have a say in government again. That's very motivating. Whereas, you know, on the Democrats on the other side, they got rid of Trump. They got their guy and they went back to brunch. So there's just a lot less energy on that side. With regards to Afghanistan versus other issues, it is interesting. I dug into this poll, which by the way, total side note, they asked a question about like 9-11 truthers. And there was a third of Americans who were like, the government was probably in on it. Not a surprise. Total side note there. Anyway, also in this poll, they asked people what their top issues are. Afghanistan

foreign policy is dead last. Number one is healthcare. Makes sense. Number two is jobs. Number three is climate change. So you have these things coming together of a media that was overwhelmingly awful on Afghanistan that just trashed him routinely. That definitely, he definitely took a hit from that. But you also have this sense that, you know, he's not really getting much done at this point. I think that's it. And if you think, you know, we've covered some of these,

the approach of different countries around the world to COVID. And whether you like those approaches or not, you can kind of articulate what their strategy is. You can articulate what Israel is doing. You can articulate what Australia is doing. You can articulate what New Zealand is doing, what Sweden is doing. You can't really articulate. Biden hasn't laid out, like, here's our plan and our strategy.

Here's what we're calling it. Here's how we're approaching it. Here are the milestones. And some of that stuff is just theater. But the other thing that we learned during COVID is when people are in these times of uncertainty and they're trying to figure out, are schools going to be open? Are my kids at risk? Am I at risk? What's going on in my community? Just having that, like, we've got this and here's the plan energy, it actually

really matters. So you saw that some at the beginning of his administration when the vaccine rollout was going well, when they immediately came in right away past a fairly sizable relief package that hit people's pocketbooks right away. And now over time, as months and months and months have ticked by without further action and without any seeming direction of, okay, this is what we're doing and these are our priorities and these are the benchmarks for what we consider success, I think all of those things really weigh on the public in terms of their perception of this presidency. I think you're right.

And I keep pointing to the public health as being the number one issue where he's already receding. He started his presidency with over 75% approval rating on COVID. That's down to 50. And it's like you said, it's all about the floundering nature of the message. And also Biden just really isn't out there that much. He doesn't speak that much before the camera. He isn't doing a lot of the soothing work that really Trump failed to do whenever he would weaponize and make it a culture war every

time there was mass and stuff on lockdowns. Biden promised to do the opposite, but really isn't doing a lot of that. I mostly think that's the reason. And within a vacuum, what rises is opposition. So Amy Walter from the Cook Political Report, let's put this up there on the screen, and it basically just solidifies what you were saying, which is that the biggest worry for Biden and Democrats is that the intensity of opposition to the president is also on the rise while his strong approval has dropped. So an intensity mismatch like this is a big turnout advantage for Republicans, especially in a tight race. And so in those tight Senate races, in the battleground states, even in terms of turnout, in terms of where you want to run up the score for, you know, the bigger

ones, it's going to be a problem. And I really do think you're looking at some sort of like 2010 like phenomenon. That being said, look, there is a long time to go. But what is the one thing that could change his trajectory? It's some piece of large legislation. That's not going anywhere. Like Joe Manchin, this came out from Axios, let's put this up there on the screen, has already come out and said privately actually to Biden. So let's put the Axios tweet there from Jonathan Swan. And what does he talk about? Which is that Manchin is privately warning that he won't support more than $1.5 trillion of Biden's $3.5 trillion plan. So a flagship piece of legislation from the Biden

administration, what he literally had said and considered his legacy is, if that is true, and Joe Manchin is going to stick to that, then you're talking about only one third. In terms of the stuff that could be touted, some of the most transformational legislation, which Biden wants to see himself on par with LBJ, the Great Society and all that, that's not going to happen at $1.5 trillion, even paired with the bipartisan infrastructure plan. So pair all this together and Obamacare, which looks very much like what the reconciliation plan will end up looking at, some sort of like hobnob together thing. Nobody can really tell you what's in it, but there's 2,000 pages.

All of that together, it's going to create the same phenomenon where people are like, yeah, I guess it's all right. And so they're not really going to come out and vote. And then the opposition is just so fierce, so intense around COVID, lockdowns and more. It's a total disaster. Yeah. I mean, midterms are all about who's going to turn out. So that's why what Amy Walter is pointing out there of Democrats are kind of disengaged. They're like, yeah, the Biden presidency is fine. But are they super motivated to go out to the polls? There's no signs of that. And Republicans on the other side are very motivated. And remember in the early days of the Biden presidency, we kept talking about how he's really not a good villain.

They're not doing a good job of like making this guy into some sort of like a villainous caricature. And now those numbers of strong disapproval are starting to really harden when you have, look, the individual congressional candidates, what they run on, whether they're good candidates or not. That stuff is almost irrelevant these days. Every race is completely nationalized. So what's happening at the top, what's happening with the Biden administration, how people feel about that, that's basically the whole ballgame. And as you rightly point out, the fact that Manchin is digging his heels in, I mean, he wrote that op-ed as well. He's now privately warning. I mean, anytime you see these private warnings leaked, it's because they want this to be written up in the press. Now, look, what Democrats are hoping

and what Joe Biden is hoping is that Manchin is posturing for his home state constituency. It's a conservative state. Now, look, you guys know I think this is all kind of BS because West Virginia is a populous state. West Virginia is a state that could benefit more than anyone from new job creation, from universal pre-K, from universal community college, from the child tax credit. But he likes to posture that he's willing to go against his own party and be his own man and be independent-minded, etc., etc. So the question is, is this just posturing and pandering to what he thinks people want to hear? Or is he actually going to draw a hard line that limits this package to one and a half or even one trillion dollars was the other number that he floated? Some of the things that he is opposing, he's always been, of course, skeptical of the climate change provisions. I've pointed out before, he heads the committee in the Senate that would be writing a lot of those climate change-related

provisions. He's also apparently trying to means test, further means test the child tax credit, potentially means test even things like universal pre-K, universal community college, trying to pare every single thing back. So meanwhile, you know, the clock is ticking and people feel like they haven't seen a direction from this administration in quite a while. So that's definitely a big problem. The obvious other factor here is that you have a Delta variant that continues to be a major issue, especially in parts of the country that have lower vaccination rates, but also in Florida that has a dec have lower vaccination rates, but also in Florida that has a decently high vaccination rate

but has still been hit really, really hard by coronavirus cases. A lot of speculation about why that is the case. But the sense of optimism that people had, I mean, I know you and I felt this way too. There was the sense of like, okay, we're beyond this and things are going to be kind of normal

and the masks are going to go away and we're not going to have to worry about schools closing down and all that stuff. People are now feeling really nervous, really scared, really uncertain, really unhappy. And all of that uncertainty, look, some of it's not Biden's fault, but that's the reality of the climate right now. And then you add to that, that creates economic uncertainty, that creates, you know, increasing, you can have businesses closing or people just even without official government shutdowns. What we learned last time around is what the government tells you in terms of shutdowns, it's almost irrelevant. Because if people feel nervous, they're not going to go out,

they're not going to shop, they're not going to spend money. So that creates problems for people, even if you don't have official shutdowns. And layer on top of that, let's put this last tear sheet up on the screen again from, well, this is the case count, which you can see is not good. And by the way, that, you know, last little dip is, I wouldn't take too much heart from that because people oftentimes don't report over Labor Day. But we've certainly seen worse, but the situation is not good. The number of deaths and hospitalizations, all those things continuing to rise. So that's a bad situation. But then throw that last hair sheet up on the screen.

This is regards to the economic situation. You have increasing economic uncertainty, a recovery that is stalling out. And at the same time, the pandemic era benefits and social safety net that were constructed to help people cope with this crisis are piece by piece going away. The most recent one being that 7 million people lost unemployment benefits, ironically and horrifyingly, on Labor Day. Why? Because you had in the pandemic era programs, unemployment was expanded so that it would cover gig workers and freelancers and contract workers, which is a massive part of the economy. That unemployment should include those people, period, whether it's a pandemic or not. It's insane that it doesn't. But Biden didn't push

to keep that provision in place. And so you just had millions of Americans lose unemployment benefits at a time where you have increasing economic uncertainty. It's not a good situation. Yeah. And we covered, you know, he had the disastrous jobs report. They only added 252,000 jobs over the Labor Day or sorry, over the course of August. They were expected 900,000 jobs over the labor day, or sorry, over the course of August. There were expected 900,000 jobs. Which is the second gigantic misses that we've had. The second gigantic miss of the Biden administration and the first really of the Delta variant. So you couple all that together, it's a bad situation.

And you've got no big legislation that's already, whatever this is, going to be the most titanic fight in Washington since Obamacare or Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. And, you know, who knows? It's September 9th. They're coming back next week. We'll see. I doubt anything's really going to pass until like December, maybe. There's a debt ceiling fight, which I'm sure is going to be a nice fun one.

Great fun, too. Yeah, truly reliving the hits of the Obama years. Yeah. Afghanistan debt ceiling and some, you know, cobbled together large piece of legislation like this. Couple that together with COVID. Yeah. Not good. I mean, really, just to sum it up, you've got a media pile on.

You have policy failures. And you have a national climate that some of which is out of his hands that's also really dire. Yes. So add those things together. And it's not a good situation that Biden and the Democrats find themselves in right now. And speaking of that, I mentioned before, one of the only races that's happening this year, political races, is the governor election, a gubernatorial election in my home state of Virginia. And it pits Terry McAuliffe, who, of course, long-time Bill Clinton friend,

DNC fundraiser dude, very well-known, and also happens to have been the former governor of Virginia, where his approval ratings were pretty high when he was governor of Virginia. I mean, obviously, he's not really my cup of tea, but Virginia is a very suburban state. That's why it's increasingly trended blue. You've got the northern Virginia suburbs that really dominate voting in the state at this point.

When you couple that with the Richmond suburbs and Virginia Beach and the Hampton Roads area, that's essentially what you're talking about in terms of the political makeup of the state at this point. Democrats have found a very strong base in those northern Virginia suburbs. Virginia has really become a blue state. I mean, it's dominated by Democrats at this point. You have a Democratic governor, House, Senate, two senators. Everything is Democratic. Obviously, went for Biden and went for Hillary before that and went for Barack Obama. So this state has increasingly become a reliable one for Democrats. However, this race does not yet seem to be in the bag for Terry McAuliffe. His opponent is this finance guy named Glenn Youngkin, who I have to say is

kind of a good fit. Again, none of these people really want to come up with a T, but this is kind of a good fit for a very suburban electorate. Even if he has more radical positions, he's pretty good at posturing as like a sort of mainstream suburban type Republican. He just released an internal poll. And again, internal polls you should really take with a lot of grains of salt that showed, we could put this up on the screen, that showed Youngkin with a narrow lead over Terry McAuliffe, 48-46 with activists. She's a leftist activist, Princess Blanding receiving 3%, which, you know, if those numbers get a little higher, they could be significant here in changing the course of the race. Most of the public polling I've seen has had, in fact, all of the public polling I've seen has had McAuliffe with an edge here. I still think

it is very much Terry McAuliffe's race to lose. But the fact that this is even so much in question at this point is, again, a bad sign for Democrats. I mentioned earlier Youngkin, who wealthy guys poured a ton of money into this race. He also dramatically outspent Terry McAuliffe in the early days of this race, and he could be seeing some benefit from that. Now we're post-Labor Day, and both campaigns are going to be pouring lots of cash, and that might change the game. But he's trying to lean into this just very suburban type message. He's trying to distance himself from Trump, who endorsed him, who we really, I think, wish didn't endorse him ultimately because the former president not popular at all in the state.

Here's the type of messaging that Youngkin is running on. It's not your imagination. Consumer prices are going up. And to make matters worse, Virginia is only one of 13 states to tax groceries. As governor, I will eliminate Virginia's grocery tax. Career politicians will call it radical, but to me, it's just common sense. Because saving a little extra on milk and bread and all of this, it adds up.

It's time to make it a little easier to live, work, and raise a family here in Virginia. People are pointing out, it's a little weird that the corn price, for those of you guys who are listening and not watching, it only drops two cents, which is not that impressive of a gain. But you can see what he's trying to do here, soccer. It's not a bad ad. That's exactly the type of campaign he needs to run. Like you said, at the end of the day, is he really going to win? It would be hard to see. But Biden's approval rating, the national mood of the country and more, by trying to tap into those more bipartisan, where the independents might join, like on rising prices at the grocery store, or talking about gas tax, or talking about the general issues, and then lockdown. That's another thing that he's been

really big on. He's like, I'm a business owner. I've been trying to talk about small business. I could see that possibly resonating. The problem is, is that every time he opens his mouth, what does Terry McAuliffe say? Radical Glenn Youngkin endorsed by Donald Trump. So can you get over that? I don't know. It's going to be a good test because, yeah, Glenn Youngkin does not want Trump's endorsement. He may say whatever he wants in order for the base to come out. But Trump being in the race is the worst possible thing that could happen to him. That's how Ed Gillespie got clobbered back in 2017 because Nova is just overwhelmingly, despite the fact they have voted Republican,

some in the past are just absolutely the constituency that would hate any sort of Trump-type candidate. He is uniquely tailored kind of for that environment. So it's interesting. I mean, he released a new list of policy priorities, and it's really a lot of the same stuff. It's tax cuts, but also new spending, so it's not like nothing, pointing towards the groceries tax, trying to lean very, very hard into the dynamic and the demographic would be the most hard hit by lockdowns, by any sort of stringent public health maneuvers. Also talking about vaccine mandates, being skeptical of that, mask mandates. That is where I do see the most energy on the right that I've seen in such a long time. I mean, I'm recalling that kind of pre-Tea Party era where there were those town halls where the senators went home and it was like a total disaster and it was like the screaming and

all that. When you go and you look at some of these school board meetings of parents who are against mask mandates, very much the same type of energy. It could be cover ship bias. It could be more. I'm not quite sure because some polls come out and say that parents do support masks in school. But again, is it like a soft support? Is it like a sure? And then the people who are the most adamantly opposed against it would be the ones who are really going to come out and vote. Trying to read the mood of the country right now is hard. If he were to win, it would be one of the biggest political upsets. It would be up there with Gavin Newsom actually getting recalled in the next couple of days. I don't know if it's going to happen, but looking at his messaging, looking at that poll, that's important to say, wow, this is where things could be trending. Yeah. I can kind of make a case either way. On the one hand, you do see, unlike at the congressional level, at the Senate level, and certainly at the presidential level, unlike at the federal level, you do see people making sort of less partisan decisions for governor. So that in Kentucky. Kentucky elected a Democratic governor,

Andy Beshear. See that in Maryland. They elected a Republican, Larry Hogan, who was able to successfully sort of separate himself from the National Republican Party. Now, I will say that Hogan was a lot more outspoken in his criticism of Trump. He didn't try to play this little have it both ways game, which I think voters really kind of hate when they can see that like, they can see what you're doing, right? It reminds me of another Kentucky candidate, Alison Lundergan Grimes, who obviously Obama was dramatically unpopular in the state. She was running against Mitch McConnell. And they asked her, did you vote for Barack Obama? And she just, she couldn't answer. She basically melted down. That was the end of her campaign

because people can see when you're trying to have it both ways. He wants to play to the Trump base, but he also wants to appeal to people who find Trump to be awful and abhorrent in the northern Virginia suburbs. And I do think that that kind of comes through. separate yourself from the national leader of a party if you're not willing to just like very aggressively and, you know, full-throated make, do those condemnations and do that distancing. He's not willing to go that far. On the other hand, like I was saying, you do see voters thinking in a little bit less of a sort of partisan way at the gubernatorial level. You know, you see Massachusetts, you see Vermont with Republican governors. So it's certainly possible. Kyle Kondik, who is with Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball down at UVA, he noted a while back that to win, Youngkin would need to

do 10 plus points better than Trump did in Virginia last year, which is a tall order. However, that sort of improvement is actually common in Virginia for non-presidential party gubernatorial candidates. So it's certainly not without historical precedent. Again, why are we watching this so closely other than I live in Virginia, so it kind of matters to me personally who the governor is. But Virginia has been kind of a bellwether. Cree Deeds went up against Bob. He was a Democrat, went up against Bob McDonald back in 2009. Deeds got destroyed, like wasn't even close.

Bob McDonald wins in 2009. And that was really a sort of canary in the coal mine for the Tea Party era. And that's what Eric Cantor lost, too. That was another big one. Yeah, that's true. That's a great point. That's another big one. Then you had Terry McAuliffe, and you had Ralph Northam kind of presaging, again, this suburban move among the country towards Democrats. So this is one to watch. If Youngkin pulls off an upset here, which would, again, he's definitely the underdog. I still think this is Terry McAuliffe's race to lose, overwhelmingly.

But if he was able to pull off an upset, that would be a disastrous sign for Democrats. So this is definitely one to watch. And also the House and the Senate are at stake right now, too. So those races will be interesting to keep an eye on as well. Yeah, that's right. 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. All right, we have some extremely cringe, I would say, sociopathic takes on vaccines coming from a variety of corners. We like to keep you updated on the worst takes all around with regards to coronavirus, vaccines, masks, and all the rest. Latest edition involves our friend Jimmy Kimmel. Let's take a listen to what he had to say. The number of new cases is up more than 300% from a year ago. Dr. Fauci said that if hospitals get any more overcrowded, they're going to have to make some very tough choices about who gets an ICU bed. That choice doesn't seem so tough to me. Vaccinated person having

a heart attack? Yes, come right on in. We'll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo, rest in peace, Wheezy. Hilarious. That's sick. Cheering for people's deaths. So funny. Great humor. I mean, this is just part of a trend

that we've seen of people believing that if you don't get the vaccine, you actually deserve to die and that we should cheer for that. And deny healthcare. And deny people healthcare. I mean, that was, I'm still floored by this doctor that went on MSNBC, received zero pushback when they were like, yeah, if you don't have the vaccine, then you shouldn't get healthcare. I mean, again, from people who supposedly support universal healthcare, and healthcare is a human right.

This is just horrifying. Jimmy Kimmel was famous, and I went back and I checked the dates. May of 2017, remember, and look, God bless him. His baby had heart surgery, and it was a heart-wrenching experience for him. He had to go through this nightmare. I thought his son, little baby, was going to die. But he parlayed that by working with Chuck Schumer's office and more in order to push for not repealing and replacing Obamacare. Right?

Let's all remember that. So Kimmel himself made all of these emotional pleas and talks about wanting and needing affordable health care, the need to have a better health care system. He says, I cannot believe that some people have to go through this without health care. He is actually talking about what none of these – all these people are saying. They want to repeal the core tenet of Obamacare, which made it so that you can't deny people healthcare based on pre-existing conditions. So which is it? Are you for actually providing people real healthcare regardless of some circumstance? And once you open this door, it's so funny to me watching this because it's a libertarian dream.

They've always wanted to have healthcare be able to deny to people with diabetes, to people who are fat, people with BMI over like 25, or charge them more, or make it so that if you eat at McDonald's, you know, like once a week or whatever, that means you have to charge more for your health care. I think that's immoral. You know why? Because people get raised in all sorts of different conditions and it makes it so that when they get sick, they need to make sure, or we need to make sure that somebody is actually going to go ahead and take care of them. What he's talking about is some sort of deeply libertarian fantasy of being able to deny people health care based upon their past previous choices. If we treat alcoholics, which I think we should, if we treat people who are addicted to drugs, which I think they should, which we should. Should we not also do the same

if you're going to make the choice not to get the vaccine? Of course. I mean, I cannot think of anything more abhorrent than pushing this type of stuff. And yet, the weaponization of all of this by elite media spaces is terrible. I mean, Brian Stelter, the great CNN media janitor, he tweeted this out. It was incredibly revealing. Let's put this up on the screen. He says, quote, an unvaccinated minority that doesn't watch the news or trust the news is putting the vaccinated majority at undue risk. There's no way around that reality. Now, number one, of course he has to make it about the news. But number two, how do you think it got there, Brian? How did we get to this point? Why do so many people not trust the news? Why do so many people not trust what you have to say? Why do so many people not trust maybe MSNBC, who has a

doctor on, who says, screw those people. I, as a doctor, am I going to go ahead and deny them healthcare? You put all that together, I have a pretty easy answer for you. But they don't want to hear that real answer. That's the great tragedy of this all. Yeah, it is funny because in that tweet, it's like he almost gets it. It's like, yeah, they don't trust the news. Think about that, Brian. Why do you think that could be?

What do you think? I mean, even in the past few weeks, we have perfect examples from like, let's bring on John Bolton to talk about why we should stay in Afghanistan for forever. Well, let's publish a Condi Rice op-ed or make the same case. I mean, like they just embarrass and lie and propagandize at every single turn. And then we can tune into, you know, Chris Cuomo not covering his brother's scandals. And then you're like, they don't trust us. It's their fault, right? It's all on them. It's actually something we're going to talk to Thomas Frank about because he comes from a left perspective, but is really good on this, which is that the media and the political class,

rather than focusing on, like, why is it that there's such a large proportion of Americans that don't trust the government and don't trust the media, and so are very skeptical of the vaccines, all of the blame gets put on the individual people. It's this very individualistic sort of, like, bootstraps-y personal responsibility narrative applied to a global pandemic and all used to, again, convince people. It's weaponized to convince people that your average American is stupid. They can't be trusted. They should be held in contempt. And we, the elites, we're the smart ones. We understand the signs. Just trust us and we'll handle this for you. So that's why this type of thinking is so dangerous. And, you know, it also speaks to Liz Bruning had a great piece about this, again, from a left perspective saying sort of culture of tolerance or forgiveness or humility or care and concern. All of the sort of clout and status is gained by picking someone out and

shaming them and deriding them and cheerleading their literal death. And that's just a disgusting, immoral direction to go in. And it's also completely counter to what any sort of liberal or progressive or left ideology actually looks like and stands for. And look, that's what screwed us in the beginning. And I'm not, you know, we're not putting anybody off the hook. Trump is the one responsible for a lot of this, which is that by polarizing the entire electorate along coronavirus restrictions, we are the only developed country on earth which actually got more disunited during a pandemic. The only one. Every single other country.

You saw mass coalescing around the leader. Yes, there is some dissatisfaction. France, Britain, you know, across the Western world, not even close to the madness that we have here. But when you live within that dynamic and you're Biden or you're the media and you claim that Trump was the one who was doing this, well, they have just as much of a role and they're not relinquishing that role. And that's why I want to point to this to say that it is probably the single worst thing that you could do to confirm the fears of a lot of these people who don't trust the system and who don't want to get a vaccine. A lot of them look at it as the road to even more so onerous restrictions and say by the government what you should and should not do. The booster shot is a good example, which is that look at the booster rollout.

Total disaster. They came out and they said everybody needs a booster after six months. Then the New York Times reports that the Biden administration got out ahead of its skis and that they may have to revise the booster recommendation. So which is it? And then they say that actually there were two career FDA officials who resigned from the administration over this entire thing around boosters. If that had happened under Trump, I think we all know how the reporting exactly would have gone. So you look at that all together and you say, well, what is happening here? Or what about for somebody like me? I got vaccinated and now I'm COVID. Do I need a booster shot? I don't know. I mean, is the government going to tell me that? Should it only be for people who are over 65?

Should it be for people who are immunocompromised? The way they have set and rolled out each of these recommendations has had absolute disaster. Same thing, Crystal, I was looking at Johnson & Johnson. Do you remember that Johnson & Johnson pause in which we were talking about how it was going to be a disaster? There had been an exponential increase in the number of vaccine appointments for every single day until which date? Which date? You can go and you can track it. The exact date that they put the pause on Johnson & Johnson. That was, as we predicted at the time, one of the biggest gifts to the anti-vaxxers that you could have ever had. So we need to have a lot more talk and discussion around the way that they themselves have failed to communicate all of this.

If I can't understand the booster, how is somebody who is going about their day-to-day life, and this is the only podcast or show that they listen to, what are they supposed to do? You know, it's my job to sort through all that information for them. That's the problem that we have right now. Yeah, and because this has been politically polarized from the very beginning, and I do think you're right to place a lot of the blame for that initial, like, making it terrible from the jump. A lot of that lies at the feet of Donald Trump.

Because we've had this polarized reaction, I'm actually convinced that the sort is probably not that big of a deal at this point. They work. Sure, if you're in an indoor setting, that's really close. Good to wear them outdoors. You definitely, you know, are going to be fine without them. A sort of reasoned middle approach is what's called for. And because you've had this political polarization over coronavirus, nobody is basically falling. Everybody's at the extremes. You've got the extreme, like, I'm never, I hate, I'm never going to wear a mask. And like, any sort of restriction is an infringement on my liberty. And I'm never going to get a vaccine. You've got this like extreme reaction over here. And then you have an extreme reaction over here

that's like, there was one case, three counties over, we got to shut down the school. We got to go back into lockdown. We got a double mask. And so both of these are, you know, one is vastly overestimating the risk to themselves, especially since those people in that camp are all vaccinated. This one is dramatically underestimating the risk to themselves and to their communities. And because it's become so polarized, there's very, very few, certainly public officials, but very few people in general who are taking just sort of like a reasoned, moderate risk assessment type approach because what's been rewarded in our political system is like all in or all out.

And it's made it so it's very hard to respond to this thing effectively. Yeah. And speaking of, you know, me going all in or all out, the culture warification of all of this is a story that we like to stick to, the ACLU. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen from Glenn Greenwald. He did a very good report here, which is that the ACLU, prior to COVID, denounced mandates and coercive measures to fight pandemics. Now, in a New York Times op-ed, they have completely reversed their view. So let's go back and look exactly at what the ACLU had previously talked about. Now, what they had said is that pandemic preparedness, the need for public health, not a law enforcement national security approach. Now, to go back and read this, not that long ago, in 2008, the group explained its purpose this way,

quote, the report examines the relationship between civil liberties and public health in contemporary U.S. pandemic planning. Its key warning, quote, not all public health interventions have been nine or beneficial. However, too often fears aroused by disease and epidemics have encouraged abuses of state power. Atrocities large and small have been committed in the name of protecting public health. And what they specifically point to is that coercion and brute force are rarely necessary. In fact, they are generally counterproductive. So back in 2008, they were specifically against law enforcement mandates, especially for vaccines and other coercive measures. Then in 2015, they reiterated the exact same thing. What happened in 2015? Well, what ended up happening

is that right after that, they came out and Donald Trump won the presidency and they raised over a billion dollars from a bunch of liberals around the travel ban or whatever. And they had to turn into Democratic Party aporachics. They also, I think, had, and this is, again, Glenn's been great on reporting this transition, there was a real kind of crisis and meltdown within the organization after Charlottesville. Yeah, oh, that's right. Because they defended the right of those white supremacist protesters to be there. And so that triggered a real sort of rethink within the organization.

But that defense of their free speech rights, as abhorrent as their views may be, has a long history within the ACLU. I mean, this is where they really made their name. Skokie, right? Skokie, Illinois, the white nationalist rally that they defended and went to bat for. I think it was even a Jewish lawyer who made it so that they could march in a town full of Holocaust survivors. That is correct. Yeah, that is correct. That's important. And so, I mean, here's the thing. Glenn really got him dead to rights here.

Yeah, he did. Like, there's just a total flip-flop. Now they're writing the op-ed saying that vaccine mandates are not an infringement of civil liberties. We have that tweet. Let's put it up there. Yeah. Here's what they're saying now. Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties. They protect the most vulnerable people with disabilities and fragile immune systems, children too young to be vaccinated, and communities of color hit hard by the disease. Now, you all know I'm in favor of vaccine mandates in some instances.

I think if you're a teacher, you should be vaccinated. I think if you're a nurse, I think especially if you work in a nursing home, you should be vaccinated. I think our servicemen and women who are serving here and over the seas, it's a readiness issue. They've already signed up with, you know, given their bodies to the U.S. federal government in a lot of senses. I think they should also be vaccinated. But I expect the ACLU to be taking positions on these issues in favor of civil liberties that make me uncomfortable. That's their historic positioning. That's their whole job is to be kind of radicals on the issues of civil liberties. So now they're saying, yes, vaccine mandates basically in any instance. And just, you know, not so long ago, total opposite take on, I mean, on the very same issue on pandemics and state control and vaccine mandates.

And they're right to be fearful. They were right originally to be fearful of the way that once a state gets a certain amount of control or a certain power, that they never relinquish it. That's something we talked about from the beginning of the pandemic. We talked to Glenn about it from the beginning of the pandemic that, look, certain things are necessary in an emergency. Certain things are justified in an emergency that don't happen in normal times. But just look at 9-11 and the way that, you know,

everybody was freaked out and there was all this like fear porn on the news. And it convinced people that we should give up all of these civil rights and liberties. We should allow government to have mass surveillance. We should allow these drone strikes to go on without any real due process. We should allow people to be held indefinitely forever. And Guantanamo Bay, we should go to war with no justification or even a pretense of a justification. So the fear of all of this is that once you hand those powers to the state, they don't relinquish it. That is a very good thing to fear and has a lot of historic

justification. The ACLU used to understand that. They wrote in that original piece, if that fear justifies the suspension of liberties and the institution of an emergency state, then freedom and the rule of law will be permanently suspended. Those were their fears then. Now, singing a totally different tune with no real explanation of why things are different now than they were then. They're not different. And actually, Glenn even found another example from May of 2020, so barely a year ago, where they were against immunity passports in terms of vaccines. Why? Because they said the division would likely worsen existing racial disability and economic

disparities in America and lead people struggling to afford basic necessities to deliberately risk their health. Hmm. I completely agree with the past ACLU. The beclowning, really, of this organization is very sad to see. It's sad. Because they were, you know, righteous fighters on sometimes unpopular causes, which, standing the test of time, as uncomfortable as it may be, we should go back and say that it was probably a good thing that people have a right to assemble and to march, even if there are some of the most despicable people on earth. They are the United

States citizens. That really is kind of what the country is all about. And if you go and you look, as you're saying, with the mandates, which are now being really pushed and embraced by the Biden administration, the Biden administration sees it as their last resort. They're like, look, we did everything we possibly could, which I actually disagree with, given the fact that you did that great monologue on all of these public health contractors who gobbled up all of this government money and who were very ineffectual at actually pushing for vaccination campaigns. I don't think they have done nearly what they should in terms of getting people to really do it. And if they really were for it, they should call Trump right now and ask him to cut a PSA. If he denies it, that's a story and they can blame him. I don't think he could deny it. I think he would have to film one, some sort of national PSA that would run everywhere asking, yes, he's an egomaniac and he would need Biden to ask him. Biden should ask him in the interest

of public health. These are exactly the type of things where I think that they absolutely have not done everything they can and are now moving towards the stick approach, encouraging more people in the private sector after the full authorization of the Pfizer vaccine to go ahead and institute more mandates. And look, maybe it'll work, but here's the thing. Where's the line? Dr. Fauci, January 21st, 2021, said 70, 85% of Americans, adults should be vaccinated for there to be herd immunity. We're almost past 70% in terms of the one dose figure. So what is it? I mean, nobody really seems to know. And that of the one dose figure. So what is it? I mean, nobody really seems to know. And that's the bigger problem. There's just muddy messaging on this all around.

The issue with herd immunity is that while you have overall 75% of adults now have received a single dose, you have pockets obviously where it's much, much lower. And so while you have a national number that's been reached in individual areas. You're nowhere close to herd immunity, which is why you're having these horrendous outbreaks. But just to show you how ugly things can get when you justify anything in the name of pandemic protections, it's a really crazy story out of South Korea. The president, let's throw this tear sheet up on the screen, president of a million member Korean Federation of Trade Unions, kind of a more militant trade union group, was arrested in a pre-dawn raid of his Seoul office where he had taken flight from

threats of an arrest on September 2nd. Hundreds of police encircled the building for this union leader. As officers pried open the door, a local court had issued an arrest warrant for Yang after prosecutors alleged he had violated COVID social distancing laws by organizing a rally in downtown Seoul. His group had organized that rally on July 3rd, calling on the government to address inequality deepened by the pandemic. Government did not permit the rally, citing super spreader concerns. Even with the government not sanctioning the rally,

about 8,000 union members gathered, carefully following government guidelines for social distancing. After the rally, three people tested positive for COVID and there is zero evidence that they got it at that event, meaning they probably had it beforehand. They showed up at the event. There's no indication that there was any COVID spread at this event. What we've learned at this point is that, look, it's not that there's zero risk outside, but there's pretty low risk

outside if you're doing a rally outside. They arrested this guy and threw him in jail. They're still calling for a general strike, by the way, on October 20th. Good for them. And upon arrest, Yang began a hunger strike calling for his release. So listen, different country, different, wildly different approach. But this is the type of slippery slope that you get on when you start to think that any state intervention is justified to stem the tide to stop the spread of COVID whatsoever. And so this is extraordinarily dystopian. And frankly, it's what some people in this country would like to see. No, that's why we're highlighting this, because they would like to see this.

And it's a good example of how once you have it, they're not going to take it away and they will use it to justify the policies that they then want. And that is exactly what we all want to avoid, which is union busting in the guise of COVID. Yeah. You can imagine it right here at home. Oh. Right? How easy. Right.

Absolutely. Remember, what was his name? The Amazon worker, Christian Smalls. They did the same thing. They were like, oh, you violated some fake COVID guidelines, so you're fired. And he was organizing for a union. It was like, there you go. It's already happened to your people and they're going to try and do it at the private level and eventually it'll get there to the public. Yeah, no, that's absolutely true. So let's go ahead and get to this next one, a story we've been following with great interest, and I see that many of you are interested as well. So the Elizabeth Holmes trial started yesterday. Opening arguments were made by both

the prosecution and the defense. So this is interesting. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. We went ahead and told you already that Mrs. Holmes is going to claim basically a fake MeToo defense about how her relationship with a person who was actually a subordinate, Sunny Balwani, also worked at that company, bullied her into defrauding investors and, of course, screwing over a lot of people who use her home tests. But the defense is pairing that by trying to seem as if she was a normal business investor. So what they say is this quote, failure is not a crime. The defense says, Elizabeth Holmes did not go to work every day intending to lie, cheat, and steal. The government would have you believe that her entire company,

her entire life is a fraud. Well, I think there's a decent case to be made there. There's evidence for that, Ms. Holmes. They say, quote, that she worked herself to the bone for 15 years trying to make lab testing cheaper and more accessible. She poured her heart and soul into that effort. In the end, Theranos failed, and Mrs. Holmes walked away with nothing. But failure is not a crime. Trying your hardest and coming up short is not a crime. So they're trying two different things.

Number one, she was just a misguided investor. And, you know, she just did her damnedest and absolutely did her best every single day. Woke up, wanted to create these cheaper blood tests. It didn't work out. And that was what the whole debacle. But the government actually has a pretty good case, as anybody has reviewed the evidence there, Crystal, that actually she did wake up beginning around like year three when they realized this technology wasn't going to work

and was like, oh, I really like being on all these magazine covers and called the female Steve Jobs, so I'm going to lower my voice and I'm going to wear these black sweaters. And also, she was a billionaire. That seems like a pretty good incentive in order to try and create financial chicanery. So you couple all that together and the government and the prosecution, they put together all of these lists of witnesses and evidence. But you went deep on the text messages of this little Me Too couple. Yes. Yeah. So as part of Discovery,

a lot of her text messages with Sunny Balwani, who again, as you said, she's basically trying to pin this all on him and use what they're describing as a Svengali defense. Yes. So basically like, I was this helpless young woman and he led me into this fraud. And really, I was in this abusive relationship. And so it was all very coercive and it was all on him, not on me. So that's why these text messages are relevant. And it wasn't, I can't take credit, John Kerry Root, who is the one, the reporter from the Wall Street Journal who initially broke this story and was like a dog with a bone on this thing and really exposed the horrendous levels of fraud and lies within that company, starting with Elizabeth Holmes. He dug into these text messages, and the picture you get is not convenient for Elizabeth Holmes' defense that she was just this poor, helpless thing,

and it was Sonny Balwani who was really driving the ship and encouraging them to go in this fraudulent direction. Because he, a lot of times, raises concerns saying, you know, we got to get this figured out. We got to get more of the tests done. Because one of the problems was they're supposed to be able to do these finger pricks because the whole thing was like, oh, people hate needles. This will be so much less intrusive. So you just do this finger prick and you can get all this range of test results. Well, the problem was that the finger prick didn't work for most of the tests that people could get. So they were having to still do the old fashioned, the same thing that any other lab testing company does, draw the blood from the vein and, you know,

get a real needle in there at the Walgreens, which was their big company. So Balwani kept expressing to her, like, we got to get these tests figured out. We got to get more of them through the finger prick. And she was a lot more interested in the praise over being on Fortune or being Glamour's Woman of the Year and going, you know, being on CNBC and being hailed as the female Steve Jobs, she was a lot more interested in that part of the conversation than she was in the part of the conversation that was like, yeah, we got to make sure that the substance of what's going on here matches anything close to what we were portraying it as, both to the press and to the

American people, to our own customers and to the investors who have been led to believe that all these tests are being done through finger pricks. There's another element of this, which is that, you know, would be relevant to the case. How many of the tests were inaccurate? Because it's not just that they were not being done through the finger prick. It's also that their whole lab was such a disaster that there were a lot of just incorrect tests. People were getting results that were wrong who relied on this for, you know, health, important health decisions. And there's some question about what happened here,

but the database that stored all of those results. They destroyed those servers. Okay, first they had sent the government, the prosecutors in the case, they sent them a copy of the database, but it was encrypted in a format that basically made it useless. And they didn't give them the encryption key so that they could unlock it at all to look at it. Now, that all sounds very nefarious. On the other hand, the government didn't really try to look at the data until a couple years later because this case is dragged on for years and years and been pushed off for years and years. But of course, they give the government this sort of like useless data and then immediately destroy the servers. So as part of this case, they don't actually have

all the data of those test results and whether or not they're accurate. So obviously that presents a major challenge for the prosecutors here. But again, if you're looking at these text messages, it's not really convenient for the narrative. And also, it's pretty hard and pretty unprecedented to effectively use this Svengali defense. Because just because you're in a difficult or abusive relationship, that doesn't mean that you're not culpable for crimes that you commit. And raising money and defrauding people. Right. That's really what it is. crimes that you commit. And raising money and defrauding people. Right. So it's a pretty, you know, it's going to be a pretty tough case for her to make. But you can start to see the

way that they're trying to engender sympathy for her among the jury in the opening arguments. Her team made sure to mention she's a new mom. And you can sort of see the way that they're portraying this. By the way, at the same time, don't worry. She hasn't lost all her money. She's apparently doing well enough to live while this whole trial is going on. Let's throw this up on the screen. I think that's from CNBC. She's doing well enough to live on the grounds of a $135 million Silicon Valley estate during this trial. So she's still living large,

even as her whole empire collapsed around her. Yeah. There's just kind of a little bit of a beauty to that. I think her husband is independently wealthy and they married after the entire Theranos debacle. So there you go. It's kind of a fitting place for her to ride all of this out. And as you said, with the prosecution, there is going to be some difficulty. But really what they have, all they have to show is that she defrauded people when she took their money if she had some knowledge that the tests themselves were not as efficacious as she was presenting. Right. That's really what they have to show. And John Carreyrou himself has basically exposed a decent threshold in order to show that level of information.

But regardless, the trial itself tells us a lot about our economic system, about her, about the media. And so we're going to continue to follow it. Very much so. I mean, she was the ultimate girl boss. I actually went to— The lean-in CEO. When I lived in New York, I got invited to this like Glamour Woman of the Year thing. So cringe.

She was there being celebrated as, you know, I mean, she was so hyped. Like she was the next huge thing. The list of investors. I mean, just like a who's who of elites, wealthy elites in America. They all love the story of this young woman, first billionaire, and they bought into that story. And it also says something about that whole girl boss ethos. It also says a lot about the culture of Silicon Valley, because there is a culture there of like, fake it till you make it. And so part of what she has argued in the past, I don't think that's gonna factor really

into her defense here, because it's not a great defense, legally speaking, but what she's argued in the past is basically, look, I didn't do anything different from what the guys were doing. They were lying and stretching the truth as well, and so, yeah. But you know, and it's also like, that I'm sure she's right about that.

But also, it's really different when people's lives and health are at stake. That's the difference. Your product isn't. Really. It's not like, oh, the search engine doesn't quite work as well as we claim that it is. It's like, no, you're giving people wrong health information. You know there's a text message where Balwani tells her that their most critical labs where they're doing the pinprick testing, that they're a disaster.

And she says, I know. So, I mean, they're very aware that this is all a mess, that it's not nearly what they're portraying it to the public, and people's, like, important health decisions are at risk here. So that's why this matters. That's exactly right. Wow. You guys must really like listening to our voices. While I know this is annoying, instead of making you listen to a Viagra commercial, when you're done, check out the other podcast I do with Marshall Kosloff 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. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, Joe Manchin is now telling insiders that he will not support a Biden reconciliation package higher than $1.5 trillion. That price tag would be a major blow to poor and working-class Americans who would overwhelmingly benefit from the child tax credit, from expanded Medicare, from free pre-K, from free community college, and so much more. It would be a particular blow we should

mention in poor states like Manchin's own home state of West Virginia. But limiting the price tag would be a boon to the wealthy and to corporate America, as it would mean that their taxes would stay in the low to non-existent range where they are currently. It would mean that oil and gas companies can continue their plunder of the planet unabated, it would mean that not a penny of profit would be stripped from pharmaceutical giants who can currently gouge the federal government without recourse. By keeping the gravy train rolling, Manchin himself gets to remain a favored son of corporate America with all the attendant contributions and job prospects that that all entails. But corruption and grift are not just the business model of

Daddy Mansion. According to a bombshell report from The Intercept's Ryan Grimm, we are learning that in the Mansion clan, corporate greed and malfeasance, well, it's a family affair. Allow me to explain. Mansion's daughter, her name is Heather Bresch, she's the former head of West Virginia drug maker Mylan Pharmaceuticals. Now, Mylan has been in the news recently because its West Virginia plant is being shut down and thousands of jobs there are being moved overseas. As we covered on this show, a move that Manchin would likely oppose if it weren't for the fact that his daughter got a sweetheart multimillion-dollar golden parachute

as part of the business deal that ultimately led to the closure of that plant. By the way, Brush was never qualified to hold this position to start with. She was given a fake MBA by West Virginia University after her daddy was elected governor of the state with grades, quote, pulled out of thin air, a scandal that led to multiple resignations at WVU. But it gets so much worse than that. We are now learning that while she ran Mylan, Brush colluded directly in a price-fixing scheme that jacked up the cost of life-saving EpiPens. Now, while also collaborating with Pfizer

to create a monopoly for the product. These maneuvers made Mylan and Brush millions, while leaving those who literally need that product as a matter of survival struggling to afford the cost. There are a couple of pieces here, so let's start with the Pfizer collusion. To understand it, you got to have just a little bit of market background. Mylan bought the rights to sell EpiPens from Merck back in 2007. As part of that deal, Mylan agreed to produce and market the EpiPen delivery device, but another drug maker called King Pharmaceuticals, they actually produced the medicine that went in the delivery device. So this was all going beautifully. Mylan began routinely

jacking up the price of EpiPens, amassing larger and larger profits, but there was some trouble on the horizon. A less costly EpiPen alternative called Adrenaclick was beginning to eat into their market share. What to do? Well, collude directly with Pfizer to rig the market, of course. In newly released emails, brushes caught collaborating with Pfizer to kill the Adrenaclick product, leaving EpiPens as the sole option. Pfizer acquired King Pharmaceuticals, again, they're the ones that make the actual medicine, which cut them in on half the profits for the EpiPens, meaning that now Pfizer stood to financially benefit from killing their own low-cost competitor

in order to reap the margins from the higher-priced EpiPen product. Brush's emails reveal communications to lock in that product monopoly to the benefit of herself, Mylan, and Pfizer, and to the detriment of those who actually needed that medicine. But that wasn't enough. Under Brush, Mylan also hatched a scheme that they labeled Project X2 to eliminate the sale of single EpiPens and require that they be purchased in a two-pack. A PowerPoint slide recently revealed in federal courts nakedly states the goal of this whole project. The goal, they say, of the double pack was to double revenue, of course. After deciding this was a great way to increase profits,

the team at Mylan under Bresch went into overdrive to manufacture a medical justification with one email among My Milan employees explicitly stating, quote, senior management is having a meeting with Heather April 1 and wanted to provide her with an update on Project X2. I know that you were working on creating a medical rationale for Project X2. I'm pulling a slide deck together that will be used. And just so you know that corporate thievery is truly a family affair in the Manchin family.

Manchin's wife gave her daughter an assist from her position as head of the National Association of State Boards of Education by lobbying states to require schools to stock EpiPens. So to summarize, under Joe Manchin's daughter, Mylan jacked up the price, locked in a product monopoly, jacked up the price some more, and then worked to eliminate single-pack sales with zero medical justification, simply so they could double their revenue.

All with the explicit understanding that for their customers, their lives depend on the product, so they have no choice but to suck it up and pay whatever Mylan decided to charge. There are no words to describe this type of exploitative, morally bankrupt, and sociopathic behavior. It fills me with pure disgust that is only amplified by the knowledge that this type of criminality underpins our entire health care system. Bought politicians, price fixing, price gouging, monopolies, every single person involved on the take with the cost in dollars, sickness, and death passed on to the most vulnerable among us. It's disgusting. So next time the media tries to tell you Joe Manchin opposes the reconciliation package

because he's just trying to represent his conservative state, do not fall for their nonsense. His motives are just the same as his daughter's, to protect corporate profits and his own personal interests above everything else. And it's so disgusting here, Sagar, because you see it all. You see the way that the politician gets his daughter the job. You see the- 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, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, perhaps one of the most frustrating things about DC is watching people just lie and not just lie, but lie that everybody knows is a lie. The person who's telling it knows it's a lie. The audience knows it's a lie. Ostensibly, there are consequences for lying, at least in your official capacity. But as long as the right party controls the levers of power in Congress, most people just get away with it.

They lie straight to your face and there's nothing really that you can do about it. And if you haven't picked up on my drift, who I'm talking about, it's Dr. Anthony Fauci. Recent exchange with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, in which he denied that the National Institute of Health ever funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This fact, of course, is being relevant because there is a high degree of probability that the gain-of-function research being conducted at the Wuhan lab is responsible for the outbreak of coronavirus. Now, let's review Fauci and Paul's exchange on July 20th, 2021, to see exactly the lie that he told before that body. Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement

of May 11th where you claimed that the NIH never funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan? Senator Paul, I have never lied before the Congress, and I do not retract that statement. This paper that you are referring to was judged by qualified staff up and down the chain as not being gain of function. Let me finish. You take an animal virus and you increase its transmissibility to humans. You're saying that's not gain of function? Yeah, that is correct. And Senator Paul, you do not know what you are talking about, quite frankly.

And I want to say that officially. You do not know what you are talking about. Okay, you get one person. Let's read from the NIH definition of gain of function. This is your definition that you guys wrote. It says that scientific research that increases the transmissibility among animals is gain of function. They took animal viruses that only occur in animals and they increased their transmissibility to humans. How you can say that is not gain of function? It is not. It's a dance

and you're dancing around this because you're trying to obscure responsibility for 4 million people dying around the world from a pandemic. There you have it. Rand Paul gave Fauci every opportunity to retract his lie that the National Institute of Health and the NIAID ever funded gain of function research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci, as you see, plays word games. He tries to distract. He says, yeah, yeah, we funded research at the Wuhan lab that enhanced back coronaviruses, but you see, technically, we just don't call it gain-of-function.

At the time, it was transparent and it was a word game. It was a lie to mislead the American public. But now we have something even better. It's smoking gun proof that Fauci did in fact lie to Congress, and it is not some quack who is saying this. This time, it is cold, hard documents from the EcoHealth Alliance themselves, that group which served as the conduit as the funding for gain-of-function research to the Wuhan lab from our own government. The documents were released by the Freedom of Information Act request to The Intercept. They show details of the exact grants provided by the National

Institute of Health under the direction of Fauci and Francis Collins for gain-of-function research. Critically, this is the particular part from Dr. Richard Ebright of a professor of chemistry and biology at Rutgers who reviewed these documents. Quote, the materials show that the 2014-2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to the Wuhan Institute of Virology funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policy in effect from 2014 to 2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policy in effect from 2017 to present. In other words, the documents prove that Fauci's own guidelines, which he wrote himself, that he was lying to Congress. The National Institute of Health

funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, while we knew the broad contours of that. At an official level, that is no longer in dispute, which means that this is a lie that Fauci told. And yet, whenever this information comes to light on Tuesday, did it even break national news? Of course not. CNN even had Fauci on their network after the release of the documents.

They didn't ask him about it. White House won't address it either. To date, not a single major outlet, save Fox News, has even covered the documents, and no Democratic legislature has said a word. Whenever it got picked up and it was trending on Twitter, Twitter actually covered up the reason it was trending, saying that he was trending because he was talking about hospital ICU beds, when it was really about how he got caught straight up lying to Congress. But Fauci's lies are not even the only things revealed in this

document dump. Even more disturbing are the description by EcoHealth Alliance of the conditions within the lab, just how dangerous this type of research is to conduct. Their own grant proposal says, quote, fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or COVS while working in caves with high bat density overhead and potential for fecal dust to be inhaled. More so, Alina Chan, a molecular biologist who reviewed the documents, told The Intercept, quote, in this proposal, they point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about how people potentially getting bitten, and they keep records

of everyone who has gotten bitten. So here's the question. Where do those records exist today? Does EcoHealth Alliance maintain a database of all of those who were bitten by bats and monkeys inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology? I'd love an answer to that question. And if we had a real government that wasn't obsessed with January 6th and we had a Wuhan commission, instead, those are the types of things they might be able to get their hands on. But that's not the problem, is it? It's a lie. Is it a lie if nobody acknowledges the lie and nobody investigates the lie and nobody has any consequences for telling the lie? That's the more philosophical question that I am prepared to answer. But the more information that comes out regarding this situation,

the more clear it is that the very people in charge of running the pandemic may have caused this thing in the first place. That's kind of the amazing part here, Crystal. Not only in terms of the document on Fauci, but also they're like, this is... All right, we are very lucky to be joined now by one of my absolute favorite authors, which is actually true. His book, The People Know, is now out on paperback. He's also author of What's the Matter with Kansas,

Listen Liberal. What other ones you got out there? The Wrecking Crew. Is it about this town? Yeah. There we go. My Study of Washington, D.C. You should literally read all of his books.

I cannot recommend them highly enough. Great to see you, Thomas Frank. It's so great to be here. And you guys, congratulations on everything, all the success that you've had with your show. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, I mean, you're an inspiration in a lot of ways of some of the core themes of the show. One of the things that you were extraordinarily prescient on, which is relevant to the release of your book in paperback, is the way that the pandemic has been used to once again vilify populism and meaning vilifying regular people and weaponizing this all to say, look, these people are idiots. Trust us. We're the scientists. Yes. We got this covered. I know. I'm so sick of it that I, you know, it's almost, it's,

and it's also to me so obvious and it's hard to talk about, but the whole, you know, last four years, it feels like it's been a kind of a struggle of what you would call authorized authorities to suppress various challenges to themselves. And one of the things that you, you know, you, you see all these things that they were saying, you know, there's something, something has gone wrong with the American people. They don't respect, they don't respect credentialed authority anymore. They were saying this four years ago. And then the pandemic seemed to make that even more urgent. You know, we had to respect science. We had to listen to the science, et cetera, et cetera, which of course I do. I'm

vaccinated. I wear a mask. I do all those things. But it's been a fascinating time. Especially the way, to get back to the original subject, the way the sort of American commentary class has turned against what they call populism. This is fascinating to me. You know, way back when, in the 1980s, I went to graduate school in history, and I thought, well, I'm going to study populism. I was fascinated by this movement from the 1890s. And historians, generally speaking,

really were fond of populism. They wrote nice things about it. There's this great book that came out in the 70s. You know, all these people were writing about it. fond of populism. They wrote nice things about it. There's this great book that came out in the 70s. All these people were writing about it. Everybody loved populism. And there were a lot of people in Washington that liked populism too. I remember there was a faction of sort of left-wing Democrats that called their annual meeting like the New Populist Conference. I forget what they called it. Barack Obama even called himself a populist at one point. Wow. And then all of a sudden it changed, you know.

And instead they decided, no, populists are these terrible, these sort of monstrous creatures. Populists are people that don't know their rightful place in the hierarchy, by which I mean their lowly place in the hierarchy. Of course. Yeah, populists are people that don't listen their rightful place in the hierarchy, by which I mean their lowly place in the hierarchy. Of course. Yeah, populists are people that don't listen to authorized authority. And it's just been the strangest damn thing.

Anyhow, so I wrote a whole book about it. You know, it's interesting, Tom. Let's go ahead and put your most recent article here up on the screen. It's the healthcare system stupid in Le Monde Diplomatique. And so what are you trying to get at there in terms of populists is now an insult in the screen. It's the healthcare system stupid and Le Monde Diplomatique. And so what are you trying to get at there in terms of populist is now an insult in the U.S., especially when applied to the anti-expertise reactions to the current pandemic. But the true history of U.S. populism is a long fight to replace medical experts at the service of the well-being of ordinary people. What do you mean by that in the context of this pandemic? So I'm fascinated by this idea that populism, that what it means is a rebuke of learning,

because it's not. Historically, if you look at the original populist movement, it was uprising against the elites of the time, of the 1890s, but the populists did not dislike learning itself. They respected it. They honored it. This was a mass movement of farmers and workers, by the way. They were not highly educated people. But they did admire learning. And they tried to, you know, they would have experts on economics and political science and whatnot come out and lecture to their local farmers alliance and this kind of thing. So I was puzzled by that. And every time I heard someone

say that populism was this rejection of science, I said to myself, what would a populist healthcare system actually look like? You know, let's reframe the question slightly. And once you put it that way and you start digging in the history of populist movements in America, you know, what and, you know, what would they what would they do about the health care situation? We're in the answer. It becomes apparent immediately what populists were about was not rejecting medical expertise. It was about making medicine available to everyone, making medical expertise available to everyone. And there are many examples of this, probably the most famous being Harry Truman's universal health care plan in the 1940s, which didn't go anywhere.

But the idea was not to reject medical science. It was to make it accessible to everyone. And the really fascinating side of this, once you start looking into this, is not populism's war on science. Populism respected science. It's science's war on populism. By which I mean the medical profession. Who stopped Truman's health care plan? Right, the doctors.

The AMA, yeah. And what were the grounds on which they stopped it. They said this was this was unethical to have Politicians being you know being able to order doctors around it's a reversal of the traditional hierarchy You know, how can that be permitted it can't and this is still the argument today You know, you have to know your place in the social hierarchy one of the things that we've tracked with interest and oftentimes discussed is the way that, you know, the media has loved these stories of like, oh, look at these people having a pool party or look at this moron who didn't get vaccinated and now he's dead and effectively cheerleading that and turning it all into this individual responsibility narrative, there's been a lot less interest in asking the question of, oh, hey, why is it that so many other developed nations have a better health care system that, lo and behold, has led to more people getting vaccinated because they have a relationship with the health care system? Where you have millions of Americans who have no relationship with the health care system. And not only no relationship, they hate and fear the medical system.

Right. They know that's where you go to get bankrupt. That's right. You know, we actually covered a survey where some proportion of people who were uninsured, who, by the way, the uninsured are less likely to get vaccinated. One of their fears was that I know they say it's free, but I think I'm going to get charged. Of course. Not without justification. And there'll be something down the road and who knows how they'll add on to it.

And yeah, there is tons of suspicion of that kind of thing. But also ask yourself, how did this become a culture war? I mean, this is one of the most lamentable aspects of this whole thing. That's right. And a big part of it is exactly what you're describing, this determination of the sort of well-educated in our society to rub the faces of their inferiors in their failure and their sickness and this kind of thing. It's like, that's not how you persuade people. I don't know, maybe this is going to be, I think this is like a really novel idea to a lot of Americans, but

scolding people doesn't generally bring them around. Yeah. Scolding people in this manner. And I often think, you know, in the big picture historical, you know, like how would you handle, we've had other pandemics in American life and we've handled them much better. And why is that? Well, one of the reasons is because the people who are causing, you know, who are not getting vaccinated now, back then had organizations that you could go to, for example, labor unions, for example, neighborhood clubs, you know, whatever, churches, whatever. And those organizations are by and large gone today. And so they experience this whole conversation about health care and vaccinations as a one-way street, as people like us yelling at people like them. And that's just not a good way to sell this stuff.

No, you're exactly right. And part of the thing, we tracked this in our show today. There is a new call. Jimmy Kimmel just did a big call yesterday on his show, and he was like, you know, and he was making a joke, but he was saying, well, if you're vaccinated and you have a heart attack, we'll treat you. And if you're not vaccinated, you know, RIP. Essentially just, I mean, really celebrating the death of people who won't want to get vaccinated. And as I pointed out, this flies entirely in the face of the original idea behind Obamacare, which he fought to protect,

which is you should not be able to deny people health care based upon a preexisting condition. So I'm curious, you know, how, because look, I've tracked culture war, how it rots the brains of people on the right, but it's very clear that it's also very much on the left as well. No, I used to write about this as well. You know, remember What's the Matter with Kansas? I was astonished by this once I started digging into it. It's everywhere now. It's both sides. And there's also this, you know, what you're describing is this kind of punitive impulse on the left, this impulse to scold and correct and punish, discipline and punish on the left.

And that is, I don't wanna say it's new because somebody will immediately call in and be like, no, no, no, we can trace this all the way back to whatever, you know. But it's something that feels new to me and feels recent and feels shocking and feels really uncomfortable. And you see it also in the demands for censorship, which you guys know all about. And, you know, this is all over the place in the sort of new

liberalism. And I know we don't have a whole lot of time to go into every argument that I've made in the last couple of years, but I just want to say, I want to emphasize this. This is not how you build a left movement. Right. By scolding people and shushing people and telling people to go off and die. That's not how you do it. Do you think that that's their goal, though? Because to me, it's so clear that that scolding and censorship and constant purification of, you know, everybody must have always believed the correct things from birth. It's so obvious that that's not the way to build a left movement. Yeah, it's obvious to you and me.

But it seems to me that that's not even their goal. It seems to me that oftentimes the goal is, I'm going to show how virtuous I am. I'm going to build my own personal club. This is good for my brand. This is good for my personal profile on Twitter or whatever. The goal is not to persuade people to get vaccinated or to build a movement that could end in universal healthcare. The goal is their own sort of personal prestige. Yeah. Righteousness, personal self-righteousness, or alternately therapy. Christopher Lash wrote about this back in the 70s. This is, but you're exactly right

that the goal is not to build a movement. And, you know, it's to feel good about yourself, to feel like you're more right. It's the old impulse. You know, this has been a problem in left land since forever that, you know, there's two basic impulses at war. One is we've got to build,

if we want to reform this society in a democratic way, if we want to make healthcare universal, if we want to make the economy not so predatory, if we want to do any of these things, the only way to do it is with a mass movement of ordinary working class people. That's how it's done. We know that from history.

That's pretty clear. The other impulse on the left is, I'm better than you. And the people who are on the left for that reason are not generally interested in building a mass movement. They're interested in purging. They're interested in kicking people out. They're interested in subtraction, not addition. Yeah. it's it's interesting Especially in the context when we have this tear sheet Let's go ahead and put the Guardian one up there on the screen because I do think this is very important I'll look at a title there. That's a good photo For those who are just listening it's liberals want to blame right-wing misinformation for our problems get real

you talk a little bit a story there of listening to a speech by Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates, which I can't imagine how you got through that one. I remember that like it was yesterday. Tell us about what you're talking about. It's weird in your mind. This is important. It was in 2015. I was writing Listen Liberal, and I went to a Clinton Foundation event in New York,

and they were, a big part of it was celebrating social media as a kind of millennium. Social media had destroyed all the barriers to, anybody can participate in any conversation now. Social media was like, it was like, I mean, it's like a religious thing. It was the dawning of the golden age or something like that. And they all agreed on this. And we were supposed to sort of worship Silicon Valley and worship the entrepreneurs who had built social media. And I thought that was very, very amusing. It was all about like complete freedom of expression, you know, Facebook, Twitter. It's so, so, so wonderful. And now these, I don't know if it's the same liberals, but generally speaking, liberals from that faction of the Democratic Party are so keen to censor social media.

Yeah, they are. And, you know, to suppress misinformation. By the way, I was thinking about this on the way over here. Because, you know, I've been on the left a long time. I'm considerably older than you guys. And censorship was always something that we identified with the other side. This is something that right-wingers did. We on the left knew better than that, you know, for all sorts of reasons. But it is fascinating to me that liberals now are

absolutely sold on the idea that we have to suppress misinformation or else they will never be able to win another election in this country. And it's so wrongheaded in so many ways. But it also, just think of what you could do with that, right? If we really are, okay, and I'm counterfactual here. I'm going to play around because I'm not the language police. I let people say whatever the hell they want. But I just wrote a whole book about how academics, foundation people, liberals, all these people are using the word populist wrong.

Yes. When do I get to suppress them? Hey, guys, thanks so much for watching. If you want to see that full interview, it goes to all of our premium subscribers. We do two of those long form ones per month. This is just one of those awesome conversations. You can become a subscriber right there

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