No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Schools fight back against Republican governors

Episode Date: August 15, 2021

School boards begin to fight back against Republican governors and their lax approach to COVID. The Senate passes the infrastructure bill, in part thanks to Mitch McConnell's ulterior motives. Brian interviews Mary Trump about the possibility that Donald runs again in 2024 and whether we’ll see support for him drop off now that he’s been out of office for some time. And FOX LA host Elex Michaelson joins to discuss the California recall and what a Republican win could mean for the state.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the danger posed by the reopening of schools coupled with Republican governor's lax approach to COVID and the Senate passing the infrastructure bill and why McConnell gave Joe Biden that win. I interview Mary Trump about the possibility that Donald runs again in 2024 and whether we'll see support for him drop off now that he's been out of office for some time. And Fox L.A. host Alex Michelson joins to discuss the California recall and what a Republican win could mean for the state. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen and you're listening to No Lie. Somehow, even with a year and a half's worth of knowledge about this pandemic, even with a life-saving vaccine, we are now mired in the fourth wave of this virus, arguably the worst wave to date. But what's leagues worse is that we're now seeing this fusion of every element of the GOP's

mishandling of this pandemic finally come to bear. And that is when you have dismal vaccination rates concentrated primarily in red areas, coupled with this new, more severe, more transmissible delta variant, coupled with school-starting across the country, coupled with the Republican leadership that would rather pander to Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump than bother following the science? What you're left with is a horribly dire situation. And there are a lot of ways to describe how bad COVID is, and I feel like we're numb to just about all of them at this point, you know, the number of cases, all those figures and statistics. But here's one that I feel like is pretty easy to wrap our heads around.

There is no room left in the hospitals. There are no more ICU beds in Mississippi. There are no more pediatric ICU beds in North Texas. There are no more ICU beds left in Arkansas. There are no more ICU beds in Nashville. In states that do have ICU beds, you could be looking at 12-hour weights to get one. One person in Louisiana who suffered a heart attack was bounced from six hospitals before an emergency room in New Orleans could take him in. In a number of states, other medical procedures are being postponed, meaning that if you have cancer, if you have a heart attack, you may not be treated because those who opted to not take a free, readily available, life-saving vaccine because they didn't trust the science

will then need to take a hospital bed away from you. Like, I feel like this goes without saying, but if you don't trust medical experts enough to follow their advice and take the vaccine when you're not sick, don't take their time away from someone else at a hospital when you get the virus. And all of this is being exacerbated by the fact that schools are also reopening in these states.

And a number of them are doing so without mask mandates, all because Republican governors are more concerned with winning culture wars than the war against a deadly virus that's already killed 630,000 Americans. DeSantis issued an executive order banning school districts from imposing mask mandates, claiming that the decision of whether a kid uses a mask in school or not

is an issue of choice and freedom, which is so completely baseless. Deciding whether to eat brownies or salad for lunch is an issue of choice and freedom. But acting as a human vector for a deadly virus isn't freedom, it is a public health threat. And my right not to die supersedes your right to go out into society and do whatever you want, just like it always has.

You can't walk into a pizza hut and pee on a table. You can't go 190 miles per hour on the highway. You can't go to the movies naked. We have rules that we all have to follow. That's the social contract that we signed. That's what it means to be a functioning member of society. And because rational human beings understand that, DeSantis' executive order was immediately followed by Broward County Schools

and Alachua County Public Schools defying the order in implementing mask mandates anyway. And we're seeing something similar play out in Texas. After Abbott's executive order banning mask mandates in schools, five of the top 10 largest school districts in Texas defied the order. And that includes Dallas, Austin, Fort Worth, Northeast, and Houston. In terms of why this is so important in a place like Texas, here's Texas judge Clay Jenkins explaining the situation pretty plainly.

But in Dallas, we have zero ICU beds left for children. That means if your child's in a car wreck, if your child has a genital heart defect or something, needs an ICU bed, or more likely if they have COVID need an ICU bed, we don't have one. Your child will wait for another child to die. Your child will just not get on the ventilator. Your child will be care flighted to Temple or Oklahoma City or wherever we can find them a bed, but they won't be getting one here unless one clears. And that's been true for about 24 hours.

It's not much better for adults. And you say, well, what about Fort Worth? Why can't they go to Collin County or Denton County? Well, let's talk about ICU beds in those counties. In our 19 county areas, we can include those counties and many others. As far as 100 miles away, we have zero ICU beds left for our children. I don't know how much clearer than that you can get. Like, we're talking about kids, school children, impose the mask mandates, and do it everywhere

because I can promise you that wearing a piece of cloth over your face is not more difficult than going to the funeral of an eight-year-old. And beyond that, there is a way to ensure that no one even has to wear a mask, and that's getting vaccinated. And yes, you can still get breakthrough cases, just like you can still get pregnant, even if you take birth control, just like you can still hurt yourself in a car crash, even if you were a seatbelt. But the point is right there in the numbers.

Of the people who are contracting COVID, only 0.004% of them are vaccinated. And of the people dying of COVID, only 0.001% of them are vaccinated. So if you want to never talk about masks again, if you want to never talk about cases and hospitalizations and deaths again, the answer is in front of us. And that's putting politics aside and following the science and the medical advice, which is to get the vaccine. Next up, I want to talk about the infrastructure package. Now, in a major win, the Senate passed a massive $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by a vote of 69 to 30. It includes funding for roads, bridges, transit and rail, broadband, airports, ports and waterways, electric vehicles, including electric school buses and ferries and a nationwide network of plug-in EV chargers, money to rebuild the electric grid and upgrade water infrastructure like replacing lead pipes. And finally, environmental fixes like capping gas wells.

And of course, for the rest of Biden's agenda, there is the... 3.5 trillion-dollar reconciliation package, which includes funding for climate initiatives, paid leave, child care, education, and health care. And the plan is for that to pass in tandem with this hard infrastructure bill, and that's all in progress right now. Now, while this $1 trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill passing is objectively good, it still begs the question. Why would Mitch McConnell vote for it? Why would 19 Republicans defect? Remember, this is the guy who only a few weeks ago said this. 100% of my focus is on stopping this new administration.

So why hand Biden a win? Okay, so it's one of two things, which both are obviously beneficial for Republicans. It's either, A, Republicans learn their lesson from their failures with the American Rescue Plan, and, you know, they watched Democrats run around the country and take credit rightfully for $1,400 checks and vaccines and the child tax credit.

It was the most impactful, anti-poverty legislation in half a century, Republicans opposed it, and everyone knew Republicans opposed it. And so clearly, they want to be able to go back to their districts and be able to take credit for something, as opposed to telling their constituents to, you know, enjoy the new roads and bridges that their own elected representatives tried to kill. And of course, they'll tout this in their districts, because a number of Republicans even touted the American Rescue Plan, which they didn't even vote for. But the second reason is more insidious, and that is Republicans voted for the infrastructure package because it gives them the ability to say, see, the Senate is still

functional. There's no reason to nuke the filibuster when it comes to voting rights legislation. And so they relented on infrastructure because, you know, fine, whatever, roads are great. But it'll only harden their resistance to the more important issue of voting rights. In other words, if it means Republicans get to buy themselves an excuse to protect the filibuster and to continue to protect their voter suppression bills and partisan gerrymanders, then sure, great, pass the infrastructure bill that would have passed anyway through reconciliation. All of that's to say that this infrastructure package is not proof that the Senate is some functional body.

It's only proof that they knew the math wasn't in their favor, and so they got the most out of the situation that they could. But we still need filibuster reform. We still need to pass the Voting Rights Act. We still need to pass the For the People Act. If anything, Republicans doing the seemingly impossible here and conceding some bipartisanship just to undermine Democrats' argument for filibuster reform should show you just how urgent it is. Republicans are banking on this being the Democrats' last.

legislative achievement before they're legislated out of government. If you don't want that to be the case, then we need to keep the pressure up for Senate Democrats to get voting rights legislation passed in September when the Senate's back in session. Schumer promised that this is what the Senate would be taking up next. And with redistricting happening now, this is our only shot. So infrastructure passing doesn't take the place of voting rights passing. It's not either or, it's infrastructure and voting rights. So we can and should celebrate this monumental win and keep our eye on the ball for what's next.

Next step is my interview with Mary Trump. Today we've got the author of the new book The Reckoning and the niece of the former president, Mary Trump. Mary, thanks so much for coming back on. It's great to hear her. So something I found especially interesting in the book was the suggestion that Donald's continue presence in the political scene isn't so much about him running again as it is a means to raise money through his supporters. Would you say that they're mutually exclusive and do you think that he will?

will run again in 2024? Yeah, my opinion on that has evolved since I wrote that. I was pretty adamant after the election that he wouldn't run because he lost so badly that I thought he would never put himself in that position again. But because the Republican Party seems to be increasingly determined to cling to power at any cost, he may. change his mind if they can manage to rig the system even more in their favor through all of these hundreds of voter suppression bills that are going through, I think, every state legislature.

So Donald is a coward, as we all know, and he's also never won anything legitimately, but he doesn't care about that. He just cares about the win. And he knows the only way for him to stay out of trouble to the extent he can is to get back into the Oval Office. And if things are rigged so that Democrats can't win in Georgia, Democrats can't win in Arizona or Pennsylvania, why wouldn't he run? Because it would be a slam duck. Yeah. Well, you know, a lot of his ability to continue functioning without fear of consequences owed largely to the fact that the Republican Party is able to move with impunity right now, you know, to rig the next election. Yeah. As you mentioned, you know, they're doing it with the voter suppression laws, drop boxes in largely Democratic counties, legislating Democrats out of government

with their partisan gerrymanders. And all the while, we've got Democrats who could do something about it and yet aren't. So what would your message be to those Democratic holdouts who are making it impossible right now, not only to help us moving forward, but nurturing an environment where so much corruption is possible by not fixing what's already broken? It's pretty simple because the only people who can save us, save the country, are Democrats. Republicans have no interest in democracy or, you know, saving the American experiment. They want to turn this country into some kind of theocratic apartheid state or something. So what I would say to the Democrats is start taking this problem seriously, start taking the

threat seriously. Stop pretending that there are rules. The Republicans have burned the playbook to a crisp. Stop pretending that there is such a thing as bipartisanship. You cannot work with a party that wants to destroy what you stand for, right? So I don't know who's in charge of these things, but if I were in charge, I would make Joe Manchin president of West Virginia, if that's what he wants in order to get his vote, to get rid of the filibuster. And I'm not entirely sure what I would do with Carson Cinema, but it would be something to get their votes. I don't care if they get bribed at this point because if they cannot be convinced, which

is frustrating because any sane, relatively intelligent human being will understand what the significance of the filibuster is. So whatever it takes. Building off that, you do speak about fascism in this book. And there's kind of a fraught relationship with that word because I feel like all the government systems have kind of lost their meanings. Like you turn on Fox News at any given moment in the day and you'll hear them screeching about the socialist, communist, Marxist Democrats. Would you say that the Republican Party is becoming or has become an actual fascist party? Oh, yeah. There's no question about it. This is the problem. Republicans always win the language war, the messaging

war, because they have no scruples about lying about things. And the media don't ever ask them to define their terms. They did this with Donald all the time. So if a Republican calls something the Democrats do, communist, socialist, Marxist, which is utter nonsense, they need to be asked what they mean specifically. We, those of us who do believe that the Republican Party is a fascist party can define what that means. And we need to be asked to do that repeatedly because the media is, whether they recognize it or not, is citing with the enemy here by not allowing themselves to use accurate language in a straightforward way. They did the same thing. It took them three years to call Donald's lies, lies. And I'm not entirely sure they

ever started calling his racism, racism. You know, so they need to get with the program. We do see that in numerous ways. Like, we see the media give so much of a pass to the Republican party in anything they do, especially like you look at in terms of voting rights right now. It's never, the onus is always on the Democrats to figure it out instead of recognizing that we have a political party that is blocking voting rights, or most fundamental rights as Americans, in this country, and it's just kind of expected. And so they get to just kind of sit back and, you know, block the passage of the Voting Rights Act or block the For the People Act, again, all protecting our most fundamental right. And it's always, okay, well, how are Democrats

going to fix it? How is Joe Manchin going to fix it? How is Kirsten Sinema going to fix it? As opposed to recognizing the fact that we have a full political party, half of our government, that doesn't think you should be able to vote. Yeah. And also, why aren't the Democrats being more bipartisan. I've never heard a Republican ask that question ever. And the most recent egregious example of this is the New York Times calling for Andrew Cuomo's resignation. Are you kidding me? Of course, Andrew Cuomo should have resigned immediately. He shouldn't have resigned a long time ago. But did they ever call for Donald's resignation at any point? No, they never did. And what you're talking about is the most important issue right now in terms of the voting rights.

which, you know, the Supreme Court and its infinite wisdom gutted the Voting Rights Act to make it almost meaningless. And the Republicans are trying to make it even harder for more people to vote. So the media, though, never frame it that way, as you pointed out. In addition to that, though, they never clarify who's doing what. Because the truth of the matter is the only party right now that is working for the American people is the Democratic Party. It needs to be pointed out time and time again that the act that gives families $300 a month per child, every single Republican voted against that,

and the demographic that act helps the most is rural Americans, which last I checked, trends largely Republican. So it's just muddying the waters to pretend that both sides deserve credit or, and it seems like it's only when Democrats accomplish things that both sides deserve credit. Otherwise, it's all their fault all the time and Republicans are perfect. It's maddening. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's owed largely in part two to the fact that there is a messaging apparatus, like you said, that has no scruples in Fox News that's not there to report the news. It's there as a propaganda arm of the right. When you're in a bad relationship,

you sometimes can't see it until you're out of it. I mean, you, you, you, you, you, you, you, You literally write in your book, we often fail to recognize that we're being traumatized while we're being traumatized. So for a lot of people who might have supported Donald only to see the events of January 6 unfold or hear him perpetuate the big lie or put in a clearer focus his botched handling of the pandemic, do you think that this break is allowing people to kind of, you know, see him for who he really is? Or do you think that political polarization is just insurmountable right now and everyone

is set and immovable? It feels pretty insurmountable. I think part of that is because people hate admitting they're wrong, ever. They will double down on their wrongness and search for information to support their opinion, no matter how egregious it might be, because it's painful to say I was wrong. I don't know why that seems to have gotten worse. I always thought that that was a trait of a mature human being. But, you know, look at Donald.

He's never admitted a mistake in his entire life. The other problem is that they would, in order to come to their senses, so to speak, and recognize the reality of the situation, Roland, they would have to admit the breathtaking extent to which they've been betrayed by people they've supported and put their trust in. That's hard to do. Think about how much people have invested in Donald, just emotionally, psychologically, how much they've literally put themselves at risk for this person and people they love at risk. How do you admit how wrong you were to believe in them and how betrayed you are by them

when they're your leaders and, you know, you've been following their example. That cannot be easy. It's not easy in one-on-one relationships. I don't think in some ways it's any easier. in these more distant relationships either. Okay, so in this book, you spoke about our urge to move on as a country coupled with an inability to actually confront what's happening. So do you believe that we're going to see accountability for so much of what's happened

lately, you know, from most notably inciting an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and what's been revealed as a coordinated effort to undermine a free and fair election? Unfortunately, I can say with confidence, yes, there will be accountability. because, again, historically, there never is. And, you know, if we can't hold somebody like Robert Lee accountable, I don't know that there is the wherewithal among the powers that be, you know, among the people who can do this. Merrick Garland doesn't seem to be that interested for some reason.

I'm hoping there's stuff going on behind the scenes. So whether or not justice is done, what I will say is it has to be. If we're going to survive, there has to be a. accountability. If there's not, we're not going to survive. Like, that's how we got to this place. That's how we got to somebody as despicable, cruel, and incompetent as Donald. Right. I want to finish up with this. You open up in the book about your mental health, how you suffered from PTSD and how it was exacerbated by Donald's election. What impact did Biden winning have on you? And do you have a chance to enjoy it, given the looming threat of a 2024 run?

I was happy for about a minute on, was it November 7th when the election was called? Yeah, yeah, I think so. It was this beautiful sunny day. I was on the Cape. I went to the beach. It was, I was just relieved probably more than anything else like everybody was. And then, you know, the big lie started. And it wasn't that Donald was spouting the big lie.

No kidding. Of course, he would never admit that he lost. I knew he wasn't going to concede. I knew he wasn't going to go to the inauguration, but who cared? It didn't matter. What mattered is that the Republicans, the Republican leadership allowed the big lie to be perpetuated and some of them also spouted the big lie. And people like Mitch McConnell just kept their mouth shut and said, hey, he has every right

to do whatever he wants to do. And that's when I realized that we cannot let our guard down. And it's exhausting. it's demoralizing, but then I think of other people who have suffered more and survived more. And I think, you know, we just, we just need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and, and keep going because because of the big lie about the election and the new big lie about the insurrection, 2022 is going to be the most important election of our lifetime. And if Democrats managed to win in 2022, then 2024 will be the most important election

because we're not going to be safe until either the Republican Party burns everything down and rebuilds itself or the Democrats have a secure majority for the foreseeable future. Yeah. And I think until they, A, accept the fact that they lose and B, lose so convincingly that they are forced to finally recognize that they need a different path to. move forward, it's going to be more of the same. Yeah, and that was the worst thing about 2020. It's wonderful that Donald lost so badly. But the entire party needed to be repudiated, and it wasn't.

So we need to figure out how to do that. Yeah, we have work to do. Well, Mary, again, congratulations on the book, The Reckoning, and it's always so great talking to you. So thanks for coming on. Thanks, Brian. It was great to be here. Thanks again to Mary Trump. Now we've got my good friend and Fox LA host, Alex, Thanks so much for coming back on.

Thank you, Brian. Good to see you. You too. Okay, so with regard to polling, what's the state of the California recall race right now? So recent polls all show the same thing, which is a trend of the recall race getting closer. Some polls even show it almost within the margin of error in terms of a 50-50 heat. Now, I have some of my doubts about the polls because I don't know. know how you poll a race like this. We've never done a race like this. What's different about this time,

even the one recall race that we had in California back in 2003 is every single registered voter gets a ballot mailed to them. So a lot of the question has been about voter intensity, how excited are people to get to the polls. You don't have to go to the polls. You're literally getting a ballot. There's like two questions on the ballot, unlike some of these really complicated things. So we really have no idea what the electorate is going to look like in California and how many people actually are going to vote. If a lot of people vote, the governor wins. There's twice as many Democrats in California. Originally in 2018, he won by 24 points.

In 2020, Joe Biden won this state by 30 points. The Democrats should win easily in a route, but we haven't seen the excitement on the Democratic side. and we've seen a lot of excitement on the Republican side. Well, clearly, with that said, the biggest danger for Democrats is apathy. So what's the Newsom campaign doing to counter that to encourage California Democrats to, you know, I would say get out and vote, but just to open your mailbox and vote? They're bringing in the Calvary. The big dogs are coming in.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are both apparently planning campaign trips to come to California. Of course, for Kamala Harris, it'll be a homecoming. She and Gavin Newsom have had parallel careers for 20 years, have known each other well, have the same political consultants, a lot of the same friends. They kind of came in this from the same circle in San Francisco. So she'll be back. Joe Biden, who hasn't worked as closely with Gavin Newsom,

will be here in California. And so, you know, they're going to try to get this entire Democratic Party apparatus behind him. In California, you know, almost every major elected official is a Democrat. The Assembly and the Senate both have more than two-thirds of Democrats in them, such big majorities that they can override any veto from a governor, Republican or Democrat. You know, every single statewide elected official is a Democrat. There has not been a Republican elected statewide in California since Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 2006, and he was married to a Democrat, and his chief of staff was a Democrat.

So that's why it's so crazy to Democrats that this recall is so close, that this, you know, that the bluest of blue states could be run potentially by somebody so far right, like Larry Elder, who, you know, the Democrats are trying to argue is outside the mainstream, even of where some Republicans are at. Well, that's a good segue into what's happening. the right and what we're seeing on the right isn't inspiring a ton of confidence this week an email that larri elder wrote to stephen miller surfaced where you know he floated the idea of a miller presidency which is uh vomit inducing here's a clip from an interview that you had with

kately jenner should kids in schools be wearing masks um that's really up to the science of it uh i'm the cdc says they should yes and if the cdc i think we should go with that what the CDC says, but to be honest with you, I'm, I don't know if that is the answer. You know, you texted this to me right when it aired and my reaction to this was like, she is basically a low information voter. Caitlin Jenner came into this with literally zero clue what's happening in politics today as her qualification to run the fifth largest economy in the world. So all of that's to say, you know, not exactly a home run on the right.

Well, and look, Caitlin Jenner was very, very nice to us. I will say this, though. I was surprised that she seemed surprised by that question. The question of mass in schools is literally... Really came out of left field there. It is the biggest issue that has been debated right now. It is the biggest national conversation. And it seemed like she had not really thought of that before I brought that to her attention.

She also did not seem to be aware of the. CDC. She also talked about Ronda Santis, the governor of Florida, being a potential model. And then I brought up the issue that Florida's COVID cases are surging and that their deaths right now per 100,000 are way higher than California. And she also seemed to be a bit surprised by that information. And in fairness to Caitlin, she's been in Australia filming a reality show for several weeks. And, you know, it is interesting. Things have changed in the last few weeks in terms of of our COVID situation here. So, yeah, I mean, look, that's the question.

I mean, the Newsom team is trying to tell Democrats on question, remember, there are two questions. Question one, should Newsom be recalled? Question two, who should replace them? The Newsom team is trying to tell Democrats, don't vote for anybody for question two, leave it blank. And I don't know if that's the right strategy, because I think there is a difference between the folks on question number two, between the 46 of them.

Depending on your perspective, I know people listen to this probably aren't the hard right unless they're, you know, masochus. But there's a difference between somebody like Larry Elder and a guy named Kevin Faulkner, who is a former mayor of San Diego, pretty moderate guy, kind of old school, George H.W. Bush Republican type, right? Like, that's a different personality. He's a different experience level. He ran the second law. largest city in all of California. He was on the city council for 12 years. He had a democratic city council when he was mayor. That's a different skill set. Now, a lot of Republicans love Larry Elder because he's more Trumpy. He's, he's, you know, speaks their language. He's clear. He's, he's concise. He's a great communicator. He's like you in the, you know, communication business. But there is a difference. And so if you, if all Democrats leave that second question blank,

and Newsom somehow loses, you're going to have a very small, very small minority of this state picking potentially the most extreme version, and then that person is going to become the governor of California. Well, building on that, what would it mean if a Republican did win in the state? Like, I know you alluded earlier to the fact that Democrats have supermajorities in the legislature, but what does a Republican victory look like? What are the practical implications of this? Right.

So there's some things that a governor can do and some things that. they can't. In California, as I mentioned, there's such large majorities in the Senate and the assembly that they can override any veto from a Republican governor. So passing legislation would be almost impossible. This person would have a term that's basically a year long because Newsom is up for reelection next November. So they're not going to have a lot of time. That being said, there are things that they governor can do. One, they can declare or undeclare states of emergency. The governor declaring this state of emergency allowing him to do a lot of public health measures. Some of these guys want to get rid of them. They want to get rid of the vaccine

mandates. They want to get rid of the mask mandates. They want to take out masks in schools. They can do all of that. Like, boom, it's done. They could, Larry Elders talked about declaring a state of emergency on health, on homelessness and try to change building laws and try to get around the legislature in different ways. There have appointments to commissions, thousands of potential appointments that could be in all different jobs around the state, including boards that deal with things like environmental policy and sway things one way or another. They appoint judges, including potentially the chief justice. So you get a judge on there, that person could be in there for decades. So there are a lot of different things that can be done. And as we saw in the last year, the

power of governors. I think that's what the coronavirus told us. And I know there are people that have different takes on which one is better, but there is a huge, huge difference between the way that Ron DeSantis is running Florida and the way Gavin Newsom is running California. And that is because they have very different governors with very different agendas. And all of the folks on the Republican side have all talked about Ron DeSantis as a potential model for what they would want to do with California, and that is a different looking state. You just interviewed Governor Newsom. Messaging strategy aside, you know, what seems to be the feeling as far as his campaign is concerned?

I think that they are nervous. They're more nervous than they were. I mean, a few months ago, I remember interviewing him on June 16th, which was the day after the state reopened. And at that point, things looked amazing if you're Gavin Newsom. The state had finally reopened after the pandemic. the COVID case numbers were really low. He had a $76 billion surplus so he could hand out money to everybody.

The recall was polling terribly. I mean, it looked like happy days are here again. He literally invited me onto a roller coaster with him because he was in such a good mood. I'd never seen him so happy. And then things have gotten worse. Like all incumbents around the country, the Delta variant came. The COVID numbers went back up. People had to put masks back on their faces.

It reminded them of everything that they were unhappy with in terms of COVID. The crime numbers in California have gone up. Homelessness has remained a problem. And things are going in the wrong direction. A lot of those things are things that he frankly cannot control easily or quickly. And so the campaign has really gone pretty negative. Instead of really talking about all the reasons why Gavin Newsom has been a great governor, it's really focused on trying to create a contrast and what they say are,

extreme comments by Larry Elder and make this about, even if you don't love Gavin Newsom, you don't want that. You are a Democrat. You may not love him, but you're not one of them. You're not a Trump person. And they're trying to make this about Trump. And if they can make it about Trump, by the way, they probably win because Trump was more unpopular in California than just about anywhere in the state. Biden is incredibly popular in California. And that's why they feel like they need to bring them in. Well, the irony of that being that the popularity of this recall is being driven by the resurgence of this virus, which itself is being driven by Republicans who are continually

pushing this anti-vax sentiment. So for them to capitalize on a problem that they themselves are creating is just crazy. Yeah. I mean, I saw a statistic that 18 of the 20 states with the lowest vaccination rates are red states and all of the states with the highest vaccination rates are blue states. and the vaccine is increasingly a partisan issue, and you are seeing a real discernible difference between places that have high vaccination numbers and those that don't. And it is statistically true that this pandemic is being, you know, extended because of people

that did not vote for Joe Biden, and now Joe Biden's political future and ability to get things done is being hurt by those people. Well, look, the M.O. of the Republican Party has always been to break government in order to show that it doesn't work. And in a way, this follows that same pattern where it's the same people who are breaking it and then pointing to that thing that they broke and then trying to capitalize on it. But the irony of that, of course, is that President Trump is the one who expedited the vaccine and deserved some credit for doing so, got rid of a lot of red tape in the process and did speed up the process. I'm surprised that he hasn't had more ownership in literally

calling it the Trump vaccine. He did have a big part in making it happen. And there's no doubt that if he was still in the White House, he would, I think, have a sense of real pride over that. Instead, I think he's seen this as an opportunity to try to bring down the competition and missed an opportunity. I mean, yes, the president, former president did get vaccinated, but he did not do so on camera. He says people should take the vaccine, but does it in a way that is not overt. He's not doing PSAs. I mean, he would have a real chance to save the lives of his supporters. And so far, he's chosen not to do that. Yeah. Well, it just goes to show that, you know, per usual, the politics here is more important than the people who Trump and Republicans are

relying on to actually deliver them their wins. So with that said, Alex, thank you so much for joining. And everyone listening should follow him on Twitter and YouTube, Alex Michelson. That's Alex with an E. And check him out hosting Fox LA or his political show every Friday called The Issue Is. Thank you so much. Yeah. California's only statewide show. And we're going to be digging real deep into the recall over the next few weeks. We talk to every single one of these candidates and we'll continue to do so if you're interested in that. Thanks again to Alex. And if you live in California, as you start to receive your ballots, I cannot stress enough the importance of, first of all, remembering to fill them out. And second of all, voting no for the recall. We have worked

way too hard just to watch a Republican take over the epicenter of progressive politics. Okay, that's it for this episode. Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen, produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out bryantailorcoen.com for links to all of my other channels.