Pod Save America - “Darkest before the Omicron.”

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

The White House gets ready to fight a new variant and the same old Republican Party, Brown University Dean of Public Health Dr. Ashish Jha discusses what we know and don’t yet know about Omicron, and actor Kal Penn stops by to chat about his new book, You Can’t Be Serious, and play another round of Take Appreciator.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe v. Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau.

I'm Jon Levitt. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's show, the White House gets ready to fight a new variant in the same old Republican Party. Dr. Ashish Jha is back to discuss what we know and don't yet know about Omicron. And our friend Cal Penn is here in the studio to chat about his new book and join us for a round of Take Appreciator. But first, check out the latest episode of Offline. I talked to Crooked's own DeRay McKesson,

who makes the case that Twitter can sometimes be a force for good. How about that? And make sure to catch up on the latest episode of Hysteria with Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco. Their recent guests have included Katie Couric, Monica Lewinsky, Amanda Knox, Pramila Jayapal, and more. Hysteria drops every Thursday and Offline drops every Sunday right here on your Pod Save America feed.

All right, let's get to the news. Here's what the White House needs to do right now. Avoid a government shutdown by Friday. Avoid a catastrophic debt default within a month or so. Get Joe Biden's economic agenda through the Senate and deal with rising prices and falling approval ratings by finally ending the pandemic, which may have just become more difficult with the emergence of a new COVID variant called Omicron, a development that the president addressed this morning. This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic.

morning. This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic. We have the best vaccine in the world, the best medicines, the best scientists, and we're learning more every single day. And speaking on behalf of millions of Americans, the president also mispronounced the name of the new variant multiple times. It's called the Omicron. Omicron. The Omicron variant. The face the Omicron variant. I hear you, man. Either Omicron turns out to be not as worrying or and then he won't need to know it. Or it turns out to be the thing that may bring down his presidency, in which case he will learn it. I think this will work itself out. Yeah, this part of it. So early state, much like everything else, early stages. Wait and see.

All right. We're going to the uh epidemiology to dr jaw uh in the next segment but let's start with the politics uh there were a few stories over the break about how white house officials are blaming covid for all the economic and political challenges they now face uh including a quote from jensaki saying quote we're still in the middle of fighting a pandemic and people are sick and tired of that. We are too. Amen, Jen. Tommy, to what extent do you buy that diagnosis of their problems? I buy it completely. I'm buying it. You're buying it. I'm a buyer. I'm a buyer, John. You hear economists making this argument,

not just political leaders. But also, we all just watched this happen. We watched the government shut down our economy on purpose to try to manage the pandemic, and then we watched it in our own lives. I mean, my personal consumption habits are nowhere close to normal. We all used to travel, what, once a month? That was fun. That was fun. Not doing that anymore. Airplanes.

I don't even like airplanes. And I've still missed that. I do too. I used to do more shopping in person, go to more restaurants, go to more bars, order less stuff online. Our office here at Crooked Media is not fully back to normal. Sex parties. My personal anxiety, that isn't back to normal. So yeah, like I'm no supply chain or employment

expert, but it does seem like us as a country bumping along with 70,000 cases a day is creating some real economic challenges, you know. And then people fighting the Biden sex party mandate. Yeah, the county by county mask mandates, the worker shortage. I mean, you know. And then people fighting the Biden sex party mandate. Yeah, the county by county mask mandates, the worker shortage. I mean, you know, you got to fix all that before you can fix the economy. Love it. You buying it? Yes, I am buying it. I think I think it's necessary dealing finally getting out of the side of the pandemic is the is necessary but not sufficient for restoring Biden's popularity. Right. That's that's like you know there's a reason his popularity was at its most when we were uh at the beginning of the rollout of the vaccines

delta was just an airline it was started getting good in may june it was really cooking we were really cooking in june and like in that in that by remember june and that biden statement right there's another piece of it where he said that we're going to do it with science and speed, not chaos and confusion. And that classic, classic speechwriter, classic, loved it, loved it. Gumption and gusto. It is like, look, like the pandemic is a continuation of the four years of crisis. And there is an implicit promise that he will end that that crisis, even though he is doing everything in his power to end the pandemic and there's a lot of sabotage going on. That is the implicit promise of his presidency.

I went to Las Vegas in July. July 4th. July 4th is when they started. Yeah, July 4th is when there started being news stories about breakthrough cases in Israel. I can remember. I was like, oh no, what's happening over there? But I looked back at the 538 average of Biden's approval ratings. Biden's 52% approval in July started sliding basically that last week in July, which is exactly when the Delta wave really started hitting the United States. That was the last time it was. It was a 52. And then it's literally been going down ever since then. I think some of it was some of this was obscured by

the drop in approval rating around Afghanistan. But when Afghanistan happened, he had already been sliding for a month at that point. And I think a lot of it was Delta. Yeah, people point to gas prices. And of course, that's another cause. And it may be the proximate cause. But undergirding a ton of sentiment in the country is just the feeling we've all had of this pandemic, even if there's a dozen other explanations that are very fair and very valid and are part of the explanation. Do you guys think the administration has done everything it could be doing to focus on ending the pandemic? Like how much of this is within their control? Another question for Dr. Job. But I do think you have to distinguish between the White House and the administration.

And I do think that there's been a lot of reported frustration, I think, fairly on the booster issue because we're now heading into a holiday season where now, just today, we were talking about this earlier, that just today they've changed the language on who should get boosters to everybody. And just too late for a lot of people traveling on Thanksgiving, just too late for everybody to get boosted going into the holidays when now because of this new variant, they're saying it might be helpful if more people were boosted.

And I think that that was a real blunder that's going to lead to actually, ironically, a lot of illness among the unvaccinated. Yeah, I was trying to think about this hard. I mean, I think they've done a lot of things very well, starting with just like basic competence on the vaccine rollout. The mandates were slightly controversial, at least they were newsworthy. I saw a report that 92% of federal civil servants and active duty military personnel have been vaccinated. So pretty effective. The business mandate is stuck in the sixth circuit

right now. And I'm very anxious about that. But, you know, one survey found that 60% of companies are going ahead with the mandate for companies over 100 people to get either their employees vaccinated or do testing. That's a huge pain in the ass anyway. So that's good. And then United Airlines, Tyson Foods, they put in place really effective mandates. And very few people quit. Less than 5% of people quit. So I do think they're doing the right things. I mean, to your point, Lovett, I do think there's a question of whether Biden and his political team can or should be, you know, muscling the CDC or the FDA to move a little bit faster. I think we all approached those agencies with deference during the Obama administration and during the Trump administration, saw them as an important check. And now I think we all wonder if these processes are just kind of broken. We're just too i was gonna say follow the science gets tricky that's

what's on john's t-shirt when yeah it's also in my i have of course have the yard sign um it uh it gets tricky when the scientists disagree right and it wasn't i mean the the media made it out to be biden and his political team versus the agencies and the science. That's not true. It was Biden, his political team, Dr. Fauci, not a political person. At least most of us would say that. Not the Republicans. Not Ted Cruz.

A little political en masse. Walensky, the CDC director, also was four boosters for everyone, as was Fauci, as was a lot of the members of the CDC and FDA advisory boards, just not all of them. Let me start. I know, but the tough part, I know we've talked about this before, but I do think the point is government decisions should be guided by science, not necessarily dictated by them. There's a role for the political leaders and public health officials to make, we talked about this before, value judgments based on the best available science. Yeah, I mean, science isn't something you believe, science is something you do. And the idea that we believe the science has became a kind of token of like, like of identity for Democrats, I think is counterproductive and silly. And also, in these moments, you kind of expose as not being always the like,

not really making a lot of sense. Like a bunch of scientists are having a debate. Science produces this information from which we have to make a decision. Some of it is based on the evidence. Some of it is based on politics, right? Like, what do we want our society to look like? What is the balance between opening the economy and public health? Those are not scientific questions. Those are political, cultural questions. There's also just not much Biden can do about, you know, self-defeating things that happen at the local or state level, like, you know, municipalities that pass bans on forcing people to wear masks, bans on mask mandates, or, you know, I don't think Biden could really

account for or change the fact that the Republican Party decided to become, in large part, anti-vaccine. Well, yeah, no, that that that i mean basically the huge challenge that he faced ever since delta really hit you know like i i do think that the the uh vaccine requirements were success right they were like controversial when he first announced them they are you know a majority of americans americans support them and they have worked right um i think the booster thing we've talked about before. There is another aspect to, you know, did he do enough to focus on COVID, which is he has spent the last several months and Democrats and Congress has spent the last several months trying to muscle through this infrastructure bill and now the Build Back Better agenda. Derek Thompson at The Atlantic tweeted

something today that I want to see what you guys think about. He said, for too many voters, Biden's ambitious swing big presidency feels like a handyman who comes to fix your running toilet tells you he has big plans to rewire the home's electrical system and 10 hours later the toilet's still broken what do you guys think of that is there any any truth to that i think it's a a fun way to say we got to get out of this fucking pandemic yeah like what was the point the point is that i'd like i'd like working electricity and a running toilet yeah i mean like they're they're both things we have to do yeah it's a vivid metaphor i mean i i think i get what he's saying which is that a lot of the coverage in particular is like biden's liberal wish lists yeah chopped down from 6 trillion to 3.5 trillion by

bernie on its way to whatever jo Joe Manchin will allow it to be. I think that is an unfortunate side effect of this debate going on for way too long. Yeah, and I just think that there were, look, governing is about choices. We faced this in 2010. And when Obama wanted to pass the Affordable Care Act, there were some advisors, Rahm Emanuel and others among them, who were like, you focus on the Affordable Care Act and getting that passed while we're still in the middle of this economic crisis. Voters are going to say, why are you focused on that other thing when we're focused on

this economic crisis? And basically, Obama's response was like, I only have one year to pass everything that I promised I would pass before the midterms when we might get smoked because the economy is still bad. So I'm going to do it maybe not even because it's politically popular, but because it's the right thing to do. Similarly, like, you know, Joe Biden had basically one year and one bill because of the filibuster and because of the one the one seat majority in the Senate

to pass his entire campaign economic agenda in one reconciliation bill. Was it def? Not really. But it was like what we had to do to get stuff done. Yeah, it's also I mean, some of this is about optics. There's it's not like Joe Biden said, I'm not going to worry about the pandemic right now. I got to pass these bills. First of all, we started with a massive relief bill that was designed to help people dealing with the economic fallout from the pandemic, but also those also put in place policies to help end the pandemic faster, including helping people who can't go back to work, etc. So I think some of this is just like he's not talking about it as much. He was focused on these other things.

But in the end, that won't really matter next year if the pandemic is raging or if the pandemic is not raging. This is the reality on the ground. And look, we may be talking about a dozen other problems next year, but that will feel like a warm bath if we were on the other side of the worst parts of this pandemic with 80 to 90,000 people having cases a day. And if 80 to 90,000 people are still having cases next year, it doesn't matter what the fuck anybody says. We're losing the Congress, and then we're losing the White House. It doesn't matter what your bumper sticker is, your slogan, your message. The situation also materially changed when the Delta variant became the dominant one. I mean, there's no fix the pandemic button in the Situation Room that

Biden's not pressing because he's too busy worrying about roads and bridges. And there's a version of this conversation that I think happens to every president at all times, like particularly on foreign policy. Every time you want to do something big or maybe politically taxing on foreign policy, someone like, you know, rhymes with Jan Reifer will be be like voters don't give a shit about whatever thing you want to do on you know democracy reform or afghanistan they care about gas prices and of course mr pfeiffer is right but like read written into our founding documents yeah yes we did yes we did it's gonna be real test to see if dan listens to the monday we'll find out we'll find out the hard way all right but um but you know look I think presidents, as Barack Obama memorably said to John McCain, need to walk and chew gum at the same time.

So one thing that is is entirely within the administration's control is their message. One of the few things. There's a Politico story yesterday about how White House officials are ready to start hitting Republicans harder. we have deputy communications director kate burner saying quote we're moving into a new phase and we'll make it very clear who's on the side of cutting costs combating price increases and fighting inflation those are all the same thing and who is not okay we're gonna edit kate's quote no i appreciate it because it's clearly what they're worried about right there she's hitting the same point three times i was not against it just noting it some biden allies disagree with this approach like john podesta uh who told politico quote it's not biden's style and it's not where he's comfortable uh what do you guys think anyone want to anyone want to make the case that podesta is right i i found like the strangest piece of the it's like what is this

ridiculous binary between um joe biden not going on the offensive and to define republicans that's one option and the other option is like a fucking flaming Joe Biden like these fascist motherfuckers. Like, no, like, I don't think Joe Biden has to become a different person to deliver an effective message to brand Republicans. Yeah, I think it was sort of wrong on every level, the whole story. I mean, Biden kicked the shit out of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and the McCain Palin ticket. That's kind of your job as the vice president. He was also, before he was vice president or the vice presidential nominee, he would hammer the Bush administration and probably other administrations before we were born. So your point is it is his style. I'm saying he has that tool in his toolkit. I think the right question is, is that the right approach for the president versus when he was vice president?

And the old rules of politics were basically you keep the president presidential, you stay on the high road, you write like you stay optimistic, and then the vice president is your attack dog. I don't know if that's the right call in the post-Trump Facebook internet era. You know, I think generally speaking, every election is a choice. It's one party versus the other, and you have to lay that out. And there's's a contrast to that but you know i think biden on the attack or not is a bit of a i don't know it's a silly construct i think he should kick the ever-living shit out of them with a presidential tone sure look at you having it both ways that's what i think i like that i i look but it's kind of what you were getting yeah that's that's for sure it's not even just the presidential

tone like i think we were pretty critical of jo of Joe Biden in the primaries because he kept talking about me. You were Tommy was everybody. But this guy, but about saying Republicans have an epiphany, whatever. But like, whatever the core message we land on to try to like we need, first of all, one lesson of 2020, which then we got a remedial lesson of in Virginia is we can't just the Republican Party can't just be like the white label Trump brand. It just doesn't work. We need a we need to define the Republican Party irrespective of Trump. And like I think Joe Biden is going to be the leader of our party that does that when the kind of Trump version of this is like he says the most vile and dishonest version of an attack. It makes a bunch of news when every rung up the circles of conservative hell, they get more and more serious and defensible till you reach like the surface, the Sunday show surface.

But we do it the opposite, right? Joe Biden's going to say the most serious and defensible version and then you'll have more bombastic and more kind of partisan and firebrand versions of it down the chain, which is what we need. Crazy people on Pod Save America. Yeah, please. If we're the fucking, if we're the fucking if we're the worst we're in real trouble we need some fucking heinous

shit to come from below and i don't know who it is i don't know if you're out there we need some fucking heinous shit when we were when we were facing mitt romney in 2012 in a in an environment where the economy was still not back, Joe Biden would walk around the White House saying, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. That was his saying that he would always say.

And it's why now he's president. Now he's president. People at home, Google Biden in attack dog and then remove all the ones about his dog Major biting people and you'll find out all this sort of those stories but anyway so he would always tell us to do that we of course even

though the economy wasn't wasn't back and republicans wouldn't pass anything as opposed to you know we tried to reframe the debate so it wasn't what is barack obama doing to fix the economy but would you rather have barack obama's approach to the economy or mitt romney's approach to the economy in the 2012 exit poll only 23% of voters thought the economy was in good or excellent shape. I didn't even recognize how bad that was until I just went back and looked at the numbers. It's not good. 77% thought it was not so good or poor, but Obama won that election because- Are you saying we stole that?

He got, yeah, we stole it. He got 40% of the voters who thought that the economy sucked. And partly it was because they thought, yeah thought that the economy sucked and partly was because they thought yeah maybe the economy is not great now but mitt romney is going to be fucking worse and i do think there needs to be a message from the white house in joe biden's style and joe biden's language doesn't it doesn't have to be that bombastic that like here is the choice here's what republicans would do on the virus here's what republicans would do on the good lesson yeah it is like you know whatever it is like joe b Biden has a kind of avuncular, I'm not mad, I'm disappointed tone. He's like takes with Republicans that works great for him and can deliver literally any version of the message. It's like there's two

separate issues. There's what is the core shared agreed upon Democratic line of attack to brand Republicans going into the midterm? What do you think? You got anything? I think it's a research question. I think it's like an evidence question. What you want to start from, well, what's the core real argument, the absolute real argument? And I was trying to think about what are we trying to tie together? And it's about the economy. It's about COVID. And it's about democracy. And to a lesser extent, I think it's about the kind of cultural rot and the kind of cultural viciousness that they bring everywhere they go. And I do think at core, what we're dealing with are like saboteurs, right? They are trying to sabotage the recovery. They're trying to sabotage our ability to defeat the pandemic. They're trying to sabotage our

democracy and they're trying to sabotage our society with kind of violent and vicious and dishonest rhetoric all the time. And what's the motivation behind that for themselves, for power, for power? I think, I think you got to get the motivation in there well dan and i disagree about this a little bit on on a couple pods ago because he was saying we should you know they're in it for their rich friends which is we know of course polls well and people think that the republican party is for the rich and it's worked for a couple decades and i do think that's an important point to get across but with some of this stuff, being against vaccine requirements, being against masks, trying to sabotage Joe Biden, all of like you said, all the cultural stuff, the insurrection, the anti-democracy stuff that you can't really fit in the rich friends in that frame. I mean, it has to be about something different. And I think it's about they want power at all costs.

I mean, the cast of Fox's Friends is telling people that the omicron variant is made up by democrats because they want to win right ronnie jackson said it too the midterm variants they're midterm ronnie jackson called it the midterm variant i i struggled with this one too i mean i do i do think you need someone out there telling the truth which is that there's a big swath of the gop that is trying to convince people not to get vaccinated because they want to prolong the pandemic and damage. I believe that to be true based on public statements like the ones we just mentioned. Whether or not Biden should be saying that, I think that's hard. I think that most of all, I think some of the lessons from the focus groups that we all were reading after Virginia is that people are just pissed and they don't want to hear excuses no matter how accurate or realistic

they are. I think what they want to hear from Biden is what he's doing to make it better. All the ways they're trying to get it under control, all the ways they're trying to help people. That's tough, but I do think he needs to probably carry that and he needs someone else really like saying these guys want to prolong the pandemic to hurt me is a tough one for him. There's a possibility to do both those things, Tommy, that he had that he did for a moment when Delta hit. Because remember when the vaccine mandates were announced and basically was like, here's what I'm doing to end the pandemic. And the White House during that time telegraphed to everyone. Oh, we're going to start hitting Republicans as they're the reasons that so many people aren't vaccinated because they're lying about the vaccines and they're they're

stopping mask mandates and so he both had a message that was here's what i'm doing to fix the pandemic and fight the pandemic and here's what and they're trying to stop me the people trying to stop us from beating the pandemic are the republicans and i do think like that kind of message is probably if you know if it turns out that we have to deal with Omicron for a while, like I bet he would go back to that message or at least I think he should. Yeah. And I do think like there's a line that kind of pops up now and again, but I do think it applies. And I do think, you know, one thing you saw in those Virginia focus groups, too, is this kind of like frustration with just partisanship, generally politics generally being so nasty. And I do think there's which is I think one true statement is that they hate Democrats more than they love the country and they'd rather hurt the country than let Democrats have a win. And that goes back to what Rick Scott said that was in the Politico

piece talking about how this is the inflation is a goldmine. Yeah, exactly. Be all over that statement. Run that in Florida everywhere. I mean, it used to be the case that negative campaigning often damaged the person who was delivering the negative attack as much as recipient trump kind of upended that calculus because thanks to the electoral college all it you know you just had to get his 43 out you know and get him motivated and turn out but um yeah it's tough but the best attacks are true and people can get that they're true right which is like when if joe biden said they hate democrats more than they love the country there's plenty of evidence for that because they say it all the time. Yeah.

And the piece, the kicker of this Politico piece is how, you know, Biden went to Virginia and used the Terry McAuliffe attack line calling Glenn Youngkin an extremist, you know, in one way or another. And they're like, oh, look how negative you went. And it didn't really work. But the problem there isn't that Joe Biden went negative. The problem is, based again on some of the research that we now have, he went negative in a way that people didn't buy.

Yes, that's the issue. That's right. All right. When we come back, Love It, we'll talk more about the Omicron variant with Dr. Ashish Jha of Brown University. And we're back. World health experts are scrambling to contain the new Omicron variant, even as they try to gather evidence about just what kind of danger it may or may not pose. So far, at least 44 countries have imposed travel restrictions. That number is expected to rise. Here to help us understand what we know and what we don't, he is the Dean of Brown University's School of Public Health, Dr. Ashish Jha. Welcome back to Pod Save America.

Hey, thanks for having me back. Excited to be back. Dr. Jha, do you feel a tiny bit of extra weight on your shoulders because that's you carrying me, because you're my guru through this? I want you to know that. I am happy to try to be helpful. So there's been a lot of confusing reports out there. I want to start with this. Why does the Omicron variant have public health experts so concerned? Yeah, that's a great question. And look, every month, six weeks, we hear about a new variant, Lambda, Mu. Most of those we look at and we sort of shrug our shoulders and think,

that's probably not going to be a big deal. And they have not turned out to be a big deal. This has two things that have gotten a lot of us concerned. First is that it took off in a really kind of impressive way in South Africa. From the days that it was first detected in the region of South Africa, it just became dominant very, very quickly. That doesn't usually happen to variants. And when it does, it makes us think and worry that this is going to be a very, very contagious variant. And that's in the backdrop of having Delta around. So the idea that you'd have something even more contagious than Delta is concerning. That's sort of number one. Number two is when we sequenced this variant, this virus, and looked, there were a bunch of mutations on

the spike protein. Now that's the really important part of the protein that part of the virus that our antibodies target. We saw a lot of mutations that again, have people concerned about, will our vaccines work as effectively? Will the monoclonal antibodies that we have work as effectively? So is it more contagious and will it really push our vaccines? Those are the two things that look different about this variant compared to a lot of other variants out there. So I've seen some debate about just how rapidly it might be spreading, at least some debate as to whether or not that concern should be at least mitigated a bit. And you've talked about this, that there's some evidence that maybe this has been around a little bit longer. And the cases we're seeing that look like a rapid rise in South Africa might

be something like looking for your keys where the lights are shining. Can you talk a little bit about that? What have you seen even updated today about that? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no, there is a little bit of like, we've got to temper this because we don't know. South Africa, the reason they identified it is because none of us actually think this variant started in South Africa. But South Africa is phenomenal as a country that does great surveillance, does great sequencing. And so they've identified it. Now, it does beg the question, has it been around for a little bit longer? I think most evolutionary biologists that I'm speaking to

think that maybe it began circulating more like mid-October. So maybe it isn't quite as bad as it looks. That'd be fabulous, right? Because that would mean it's maybe not quite as contagious as it looks. And that would be a good thing. So we've kind of sort this out a bit. And one of the ways we're going to do it is we're going to see as it lands in other places, what it does in those places. It will arrive in the United States if it's not already here. We'll watch how it takes off here and we will have much better data on this. So Scott Gottlieb, who's the former FDA commissioner and he's a Pfizer board member, so he's making that money. He's saying they believe the vaccine will still offer some protection. You've actually said similar, though you just don't know how much protection.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Why is there this optimism that the vaccine will work at least to some degree on this variant? Yeah, absolutely. So look, the variant has a lot of changes to that spike protein that, as I said, we worry about because that's the main place that our vaccines target. But it's not the only place our vaccines target. Our vaccines actually are quite impressive in what kind of a breadth of antibody response it generates. And we have antibodies to other

parts of the virus, and those should largely stay intact. Now, they may not be as important. They may not work as well. Maybe the spike protein antibodies are the most important. So the way I look at it is you may see, you know, right now, if you're boosted, you probably had 95% efficacy against getting infected. We might see a hit on that down to 60 or 50%. And again, I'm making up those numbers. I have no idea what it will actually be, but the idea that it will render our vaccines useless, just don't buy it. The vaccines are too good. They have too many helpful properties. I think it's extremely unlikely that the vaccines will be rendered useless. The question is, is it going to be a small hit to the vaccine or is it going to be a large hit to the vaccine efficacy? That's what we don't know right

now. And one thing I would just add, you know, you're pulling these numbers out of thin air, but even those sort of that sort of big hit to the vaccine efficacy would have been a percentage That's what we don't know right now. And one thing I would just add, you know, you're pulling these numbers out of thin air, but even those sort of that sort of big hit to the vaccine efficacy would have been a percentage that we would have considered a victory in the original approval process for these vaccines, right? Yeah, absolutely. The problem is, imagine it does take it down from 95 to 50 percent. That's still pretty good. And it will probably do a good job of preventing severe illness.

And that's great. But one of the things that we want to do is we want to bring this pandemic to an end. And that means we need highly effective vaccines and lots and lots of people vaccinated. And if there is a hit to the vaccine, that's going to make it harder to drag things out longer. So lots of reasons to hope that the hit to the vaccine, if there is one, is small at best. So on that note about getting the pandemic under control and getting to make sure the vaccines are effective, are there any lessons in the booster approval process that you've

taken from just this recent news about Omicron? Because even though there was some dissensus about whether boosters should be approved for everyone, now there's all of a sudden, as we head into this holidays, this push to get more people boosted, even people who were skeptical because of Omicron. Yes. Do you think that there was a bit too much hesitancy on the part of some public health experts on approving the booster sooner? Absolutely. I think there has been poor messaging at times coming out of the CDC. And I

think there have been a lot of public health experts who've, I think, have muddled this message and really, unfortunately, so. And I'll tell you why. I think it comes from a good place. I think a lot of people worry that if we give boosters to Americans, we're not going to have enough vaccines for people around the world. Look, global vaccinations are super important. But the US government, and you can decide whether you like this or not, the US government bought a bunch of booster doses for Americans, and they can't be repackaged and shipped elsewhere. So they're either going to get used in the US or they're going to get tossed out. And personally, I think it's a no brainer, people should be getting boosters, everybody over 18 should be getting a booster. I've been feeling that way because the data has been clear on this

for a good six, eight weeks, really probably since late September, it's been very clear to me that that's the right answer. But a lot of people have, I think, tied themselves into knots trying to explain why maybe boosters are not so important with the hope that somehow we'll take these extra doses of vaccines and we're going to send them globally. That's not a realistic option. And so we should just do the right thing and not worry about, you know, kind of these, I mean, we have to worry about downstream effects, obviously, but we should focus on global vaccinations and boosters and keep those two issues separately. Yeah. I mean, look, this has been a kind of frustration to me, not as a public health expert, but as somebody who saw politics kind of fall

coming into the way the decision was being made. And it seemed to me when the the Biden administration was pushing for boosters for everybody, but there was a decision not to do that at the FDA. You know, several members of that panel wrote a piece, a piece in a medical journal saying we shouldn't do boosters. And part of the logic there was about global vaccination and about optics and messaging. But they couldn't really say that boosters will help people, but we still don't think they should have them. Right. Like that was like the core of the problem. There was a dishonesty there. Yeah. Look, I think throughout the whole pandemic, there has been this effort to try to figure out what's the right messaging, what's going to get people to do what. And my personal

strategy is just be straight with people. If boosters are going to help, we should tell people boosters are going to help. And if there are negative downstream effects, let's manage those. Let's be open and honest about those too. And let's talk about, but don't say boosters aren't going to help when they are because you're worried about not getting vaccines to other places. I just don't think that ends up working out well in the long run. This is why you're my guru. All right. This is why. Well, so on that sort of, as we look forward, because I don't want to just live in my 2021 booster frustration, is there more you'd like to see the Biden administration doing right now as we head into the holidays? Yeah, there are a couple of things that I think

need to be done, right? One, again, obviously, we agree on boosters. The Biden administration has actually been doing a very good job on this, and I'm happy to see that. The second part where I think the Biden administration is starting to get better, but I think they've wasted a lot of months and did not do a good enough job, was around having testing available. It's still stunning to me that you can be in Europe and you can get these rapid antigen tests for a buck a piece. You can buy a pack of 20 at a grocery store. And in the US, if you try to go buy these rapid antigen tests at Walgreens or CVS. They basically cost $12 to $15 and they're not easy to get. The reason why that's important, first of all, I think these antigen tests will

work for the new variant as well. Having them cheap and widely available means people will use them. It's actually a very effective way of keeping the infection numbers lower. And I feel like the administration didn't do enough on getting kind of enough supplies ready. They get, they've gotten religion now, they're making progress, but they've got to, they've got to do better. So that's, that's another area that I think is important. And then just clear messaging to people. I mean, people are right now a little freaked out about this. They don't know what it means for the holidays. As far as I'm concerned, I think people need to understand that whatever, you know, the Delta still is the

big risk that we have. And if you're vaccinated and boosted, you're in good shape. But I think clear, consistent messaging from the White House would be very, very helpful at this moment. On that note, actually, that was where I was going to kind of leave things first on Omicron in the U.S. Is it possible that it is more prevalent here, but we're just not seeing it yet? Or do you think it really is? I mean, it may be here already, but do you think it's, what are you thinking about that right now? Yeah, I'd be surprised if it's not here already. The question is, you know, kind of what is our level of detection? How quickly can we identify it? My expectation is that we're going to see the first cases identified in the next few days.

It's probably dozens of cases right now, probably not hundreds. Once you get into hundreds or thousands of cases, our detection scheme will absolutely pick it up. So it's just that we're having 80, 100,000 cases a day. Maybe if only a small number are Omicron, we may miss that for a few days. But I do think that's going to get better. Our surveillance system was really mediocre last year. A year ago, we weren't sequencing. We just didn't do a good job of identifying variants. That's actually gotten way, way better. We are now in much better shape than we were. And there, the CDC really deserves great praise. Again, they've done a lot to really ramp up sequencing of genomes. And I feel like the administration's done a really good job on that.

So that's a reason for hope, right? Because I think there's been some question about like, okay, they found this sequence in South Africa, then they look at these people arriving to Europe, and all of a sudden, there's 13 cases on two planes. That was shocking. Yeah. Right? Is this possibly, if there was prevalence in Europe already, say, would it be picked up by the processes they have? Yeah. So the answer is not necessarily. I mean, that's the thing is that they do do, I mean, UK does a better job of surveillance, but the rest of Europe does not necessarily do

such a great job on sequencing particularly. And so they absolutely can miss it. And right, it's not a coincidence that they actually just find it. They were looking for it. And that means that when they're not looking for it, the two flights from South Africa the day before probably had some people with this variant as well, but they just missed it. UK is sort of the gold standard, but I think America has come into its own as well on sequencing, doing a much better job than it was before. You have a nuanced view on travel restrictions, border closures.

Sometimes they might be useful. Sometimes they may have more harm than good. What about right now? Do you think that it was the right decision right now to make these kinds of travel restrictions? Yeah, I wish they had done it a little bit differently. So let me explain why. I mean, people raise rightly so that the ferry probably didn't even start in South Africa. South Africa is the place that I identified.

But there were a lot of cases in South Africa, a lot of cases in Southern Africa. I think it was reasonable to do something on Friday when the administration acted. That part was fine. The question is, did they do it right? Blocking travel from those countries, but allowing American citizens to come back, that makes less sense to me. To me, a much more reasonable approach would have been to say, hey, look, this is where we think a lot of the cases are. Right now, we're going to do sort of border checks. We're going to make sure everybody is tested and they're testing negative. We're going to make sure everybody is

vaccinated coming from these countries. And by the way, they could also impose a quarantine. So we want everybody, when they come back from these countries, whether you're an American citizen or you're a South African citizen, you need to quarantine for 14 days. That would have been a reasonable approach. It would not have blocked travel in the way that they did. I get that they needed to do something. I don't think what they did was all that elegant. More importantly, I don't think it's going to do much good, but there is a problem, right? Which is what they did was they sent a signal to South Africa, which has done a fabulous job on sequencing, but more importantly, has been totally transparent about the way they've done it. And the signal to them was, you're going to get punished. And I, you know, look, I get where the administration was. I think they could have done this better. question. You sort of touched on this a bit earlier. I think people are worried about this and how it should affect their holiday plans. Are you letting this affect your holiday plans? And

what do you think the behavior of what do you think is the kind of safe behavior for vaccinated people, boosted people heading into the holidays? Yeah, I'm not right now letting it change the way I think about the holidays. My mother-in-law is coming up from Florida for Christmas. Our family is going to do a sort of a mini vacation for about five days right after Christmas. The plan right now is to do all of those things. Why? Because all the adults are vaccinated and boosted and all of our kids are now vaccinated. Our youngest one is going to get his second shot soon and then he'll be vaccinated by Christmas, fully vaccinated. So I think we're pretty safe. Now, if Omicron turns out to be way more contagious, if it turns out over the next couple of weeks that looks like our vaccines really are not working as well, obviously we're going to want to reconsider that. But my guess is that most plans

probably can go forward as is. There are things you can do to make it safer. If you're going to be in large indoor spaces, make sure you wear a mask. You can bring in testing as a way to make sure that no one is infected when you get together with family and friends. There are ways of making it safer. I don't think it resets our clock back to March 2020. I don't think we have to give up fundamentally. Look, if the data come in in the next couple of weeks that like this is way worse than what I'm expecting, obviously, we all have to kind of reserve the right to kind of relook at this. But based on everything I know right now, I think people should feel comfortable that if they were going to do things and they're fully vaccinated and boosted, they probably can do them still after this variant arrives.

Thank you to Dr. Ashish Jha for joining us. When we come back, John, Tommy, and I had such a fun conversation with Cal Penn about his new book, and then he joined us for Take Appreciators. Joining us here in studio today is our good friend and former Obama White House colleague, who's now the author of the new book, You Can't Be Serious, Cal Penn. What's up, man? How are you? Thanks for having me. Hi, Cal.

Hello, John. Good to see you again. Good to see you. I liked you on Love It or Leave It. That was fun. That was a lot of fun. It was good to see you in New York, too. It was great to see you in New York. Yeah.

Any feedback from the interview? You know, I think maybe I could have said things a little differently or chosen different topics or maybe been a little better. I think your rant about hating rainy days was really good. Yeah, you know, rainy days are a real bummer, man. You know, you gotta bring your umbrella. Sometimes it's on and off with the

rain. That is edgy. You went there. I thought, yeah, that and my thing on e-bikes was good. I gotta listen to that one. It was good. It was funny. Oh, please. Please.

All right. If we want to put our, we can put secrets. You can put secrets in Pod Save the World. You can put some secrets in Offline. I can put secrets in fucking Love It or Leave It from each other. It's fine. Anyway, we have a guest here. We do have a guest.

He's trying to move some books. No, don't mind me. He's trying to move some books. So we met 15 years ago now? Yeah, isn't that nuts? We're old. Yeah. During the early days of the Iowa caucuses,

you were the hardest working celebrity surrogate in politics, in my view. You write about this in the book, but can you talk about your journey from being an actor to leaving acting to being a a white house staffer yeah about my white house and why you did it uh it was not expected i didn't uh you know i was on house at the time playing a doctor and uh olivia wilde um also a wonderful surrogate for us in iowa watch your feet boys uh names are dropping oh there's be, this is all just name dropping. You know what I just learned?

What? He's called Dr. House because it's a play on Sherlock Holmes. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. Continue. Yeah. No, that's good that you've added one more name to drop.

Why on earth would he, his name is House. Yeah. Dr. House. Go on. So Olivia Wilde, whose name is now on this table. Friend of yeah friend of mine uh she uh she invited me to an obama event i guess he was coming into town to do what was supposed to be like a 50 person uh recruiting event for surrogates with a bunch of artists and i said no didn't really feel like you know i'd read his book but didn't didn't really care to go um and then i think she got me with like it's an open bar so please come and so i'm like oh yeah free drinks with my friend but i had um i had looked up uh

i thought it's like eight dollars it was free because he wanted our help saves you eight dollars saves me eight dollars for the open bar no i would drink my i would drink my worthiness yeah uh so ended up uh looking at two things happened happened. I went to an event that he was doing earlier in the day where I basically thought if I'm going to some recruiting event for artists, I want to see what he's like at a big event and went to this house in Malibu. I think the guy who ran Universal Pictures was hosting him at this massive house, beautiful palatial right on the water. And Obama pulls up with, you know, big, big motorcade and he's going through his stump speech. I'm standing in the back, by the way, for the record,

this was like a $2,500 a plate breakfast. And I found out to your point, love it. If you donate $25, you can stand in the back, but you can't eat any of the food. So I'm standing in the back, looking at like Eddie Murphy and just very famous people who are there. Obama comes in, he starts talking, starts talking about the environment. It's clearly a stump speech. very famous people who are there obama comes in he starts talking he starts talking about the environment it's clearly a stump speech and then he says uh hey who drove a hummer to a barack obama breakfast like oh what do you mean what was happening right now and everyone kind of laughs in a way that rich people kind of like ha ha ha like they laugh to each other uh and he's not he's not we don't care by this yeah exactly's a we don't care. Succession laugh. Any laugh from the crown or succession, it's that laugh.

And he goes, no, seriously, guys, who drove a Hummer to a Barack Obama breakfast? And then the laughs get really awkward and people look at each other. And he goes, you know, if you can afford $2,500 a plate for breakfast, you can afford to buy an American-made hybrid car and incentivize the technology and blah, blah, blah. I love that you're inspired by the sanctimony. For those only listening, love it. Just roll his eyes. He rolled his eyes remembering his days on the Clinton campaign. Oh, yeah.

A lot of moralizing in Malibu. Hillary drove a Hummer herself to the event. Give me a break. I know that look from you and I miss it. Oh, man. So, yes, I was fucking impressed that every poli-sci class is like, nobody who's down 30 points in the polls is going to shit on the $2,500 plates of their donors. Yeah, that's true. And so I left that event and had the rest of the day to basically, I was like, okay, I need to come up with a really smart question for this artist event because I know everyone's going to ask about arts funding.

a really smart question for this artist event because I know everyone's going to ask about arts funding. So I look at the campaign's website and it talks about investing in corn for ethanol. And I remembered this article I read in Foreign Affairs a couple of months prior. I was so – I didn't get to look at you, but I said, now you're covering your eyes. Foreign Affairs.

Foreign Affairs, you know, that big blue nerdy magazine. So that article I remember said that if you invest in corn to turn ethanol, it'll drive the price of corn up and a lot of people will go hungry. So I'm like, there's my question because Obama wants to invest in corn for ethanol. So we go to this event with Olivia. She's standing next to me. Obama makes the rounds. Wild. And he comes over.

And he, wild. Olivia Wild. I don't know if you know her. She's a very famous actor and director. And he goes, hey, how's it going? And I was like, hey, good, sir. I have a question for you actually about climate change. And he looks at me like, oh, well, that's a weird question for a room full of actors.

And I said, you know, I know you're investing a lot in corn to turn into ethanol, but won't that just raise the price of corn for people in developing countries to go hungry? And he goes, oh, yeah, I read that article in Foreign Affairs too. And they're perfect for each other uh they're perfect for each other they're perfect for driving me back into the arms of hillary clinton love it's now vomiting in a bag and uh oh i'm just doing it to win iowa so he said he said he goes uh if you read my plan carefully you would have seen oh my god that seen that I'm investing in corn-based ethanol as a bridge to cellulosic ethanol. As a bridge to winning Iowa. Well, clearly. So that we can invest in, you know, you can make fuel from things like your grass clippings and leaves.

And I was floored by this. Oh, wow. I haven't thought about that in a while. The grass clippings. Yeah. What was it? Grass clippings. There was a word we'd always say. Cellulosic. Cellulosic. Cellulosic. I haven't thought about that in a while. The grass clippings. What was it? There's a word we'd always

say. Cellulosic. The one he just said a sentence before. Don't cut that. I want people to know. I miss the word cellulosic.

I want people to know. The one he said when you were thinking about what you were going to say about what he said. Good listener. Good listener.

Listen, I'm tracking it. Anyway, Olivia's school, you know, he walks off. Olivia Wilde. And Olivia Wilde, yes, very famous actor and director. I don't know if you know he walks off and olivia why yes very famous actor and director i don't know if you know uh basically because yes book smart house mb which is loosely based on uh anyway uh so i signed up to volunteer uh and went to iowa and and uh and then met met you i don't think we met the first trip no no because you. No, because you were like the only volunteer in history who made one trip out to Iowa, spent a weekend.

I can't believe, by the way, that you landed in an ice storm. The weather was so bad that you guys were worried about driving. So someone told you that your driver was an 18-wheeler, a professional truck driver. That was just a fucking lie. Total lie. Teal Baker. Just some dude named Colby. I changed his name.

The Simon & Schuster lawyers't, I changed his name. The, the, the Simon and Schuster lawyers asked me to change his name since it was all based on a lie. So, so we lied to you. We put you in danger.

We sent you on this grueling three day trip to various college campuses. Then you were like, sign me up for more. Yeah. I stayed cause it was, it was, uh, I want to,

I want to see how you react to this. I was so inspired. Love it by all the people who I had met, uh, who were sleeping on couches. You know, and at the time, it really was only Barack Obama. A lot of them were bussed in from Chicago. So, of course, they're on couches. They're not from the state. Lovett was

busy trying to explain to the people of Iowa why the war to authorize the vote to authorize war in Iraq was actually a good thing. Yeah, it was a hard thing to discuss. It was a big liability. Did you discuss that when you guys were riding around on the helicopter to the 99th County? Listen, if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen. Turn America around.

I believe is how it goes. Continue. Oh, I wish I... What was the... I want to play... Can you please play the Hillary for you and me video? We'll cut that in. We'll cut that in. We'll cut that in.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, just meeting people who like the it was Obama and Ron Paul who weren't taking federal lobbyist money. I mean, there was just there was a lot of it was a lot of stuff that felt very real and felt very much like outside of politics. You see, the gravy train goes the other way, though. You know, there's a lot of D.C. people like desperately trying to get into L.A. And you're like, no, no, no. Let me let me escape from L. from LA and get to Des Moines.

I think in fairness, you know, that was the first. I don't remember the exact trajectory, but I think the screenwriters had just gone on strike or about to go on strike. So we could only shoot the remaining episodes of House that had already been written. And then I had nothing to do. So I stayed in Iowa longer. And I don't think any of us thought he was going to win Iowa, but wins, and then there's an opportunity to kind of do a little more youth organizing and arts policy committee work, and it was very, very unexpected.

But do that for a year and then have the opportunity to serve? Is that the right? What do you think went worse during that writer's strike, the Hillary Clinton primary campaign or the on-set rewrites of Quantum of Solace? What the hell is Quantum of Solace? Bond? It's a Bond movie. That the actors had to

punch up because the writers weren't allowed to work on it. Did they do it? That was a big no-no. You weren't supposed to do that. Well, there was some way they got around it by having, like, kind of figuring it out as they went. The movie didn't work well. You don't remember it. I don't remember it. I also remember there were all these conversations about like you're not allowed to improvise i'm like in what reality is a medical drama gonna improvise like if i was doing a comedy it would be exciting scalpel forceps fuck it yeah both whatever you

got open the body whatever you got yeah uh cal i've been reading the book it's a it's a wonderful story about your your youth your time on the campaign, your time in the White House, your activism. How the fuck did you get Rob Gronkowski to blurb this book? That was my first question. Okay, sorry. No, no, no, not from here. When I saw him a couple weeks ago. For those who don't know, Rob Gronkowski is a drunk, fratty tight end for the New England Patriots, who I love dearly, but I'm curious. Wonderful guy. I met Gronk like six years ago, five or six years ago. Josh and I were at like a GQ, not a GQ party.

It was the Players Tribune when the Players Tribune was being launched. And I was like, yeah, this sounds like a fun party. He's a big sports fan. Let's go. And we're standing at the bar and we see Gronk across the room like waving with his friends and uh Josh was like hey I think Rob Gronkowski is waving you I was like well clearly that's not what's happening there's somebody next to us who he's waving at and he was waving at us so we go over talk to him he's a big Harold and Kumar fan his his uh his best friend Goon uh and it was wonderful his other friend, a guy named Mojo Rawley,

he's a WWE wrestler. Real name is Dean. We end up hanging out with him for the rest of the night and then became friends and when- And then discussed

the book over breakfast. Discussed. When I, he also, his book that he released through the same- What's it called? Like,

Can't Stop, Won't Stop levels? It's just a grunting sound. I can't remember what it's called, but I gotta say, he is a wonderful guy. Do you think he wrote it in Word or in pages? I reached out to him and said, I'm looking for blurbs for my book. Grunk a Google Doc guy?

He said yes? He said yes. Awesome. And I was very thankful. It speaks to your range, is what that does and i know he's on the fucking bucks elijah but he's always going to be a patriot to me anyway any other questions or should we go to our game i i did have one um i know it's been a tough week for for you know politics for celebrities everywhere uh after the death of matthew mcconaughey

his gubernatorial campaign. I just wondered how you're doing. Yeah, he ended it formally, I think, today or maybe it was last night. But, you know, is that a setback for West Hollywood? Celebrities in politics. You know, I think ever since the great Ronald Reagan, many of us who identify only as celebrities. Ronald Reagan, the celebrity identifying community.

Yeah, you know that we... LGBTQC. Of course, the great Ronald Reagan. The celebrity identifying community. LGBTQC. We've had a great many leaders like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ben Stein. All three Republicans, incidentally. Sonny Bono. Sonny Bono, sure. Who else? Shirley Temple.

She was a spy. I think she was a spy. Really? Yeah. Not an elected. Yeah, yeah. Cool. She and the, who's the the chef the lady with the voice

oh yeah yeah Julia Child thank you thank you she was a spy she was a spy I was just yes anding you I don't know

no no no she was a spy I believe they were both spies yeah anyway yeah bummer about about McConaughey yeah it was a bummer

I had one real one which was you write in the book about how the showrunner from House was actually very cool about you leaving because he's like left his legal job to chase his dream you know writing for tv yeah were most people nice to you in the entertainment industry or did they think you were crazy or what was your action i think it was probably equal part i'm actually you know what i give you a shitty answer before i'm actually very curious about

whether this tracks because my recollection of this. So when I when I got the White House job, I asked my agent to call Fox. That was our network and say, can you get me out of this contract? I love the show, but it's a rare opportunity to work at the White House and serve our country. I really want to do it. And she came back to me very quickly and said they said they won't let you off the show. So I made an appointment with David Shore, who created House and i'm in my head i was like all right do it like they did in the 50s where like you meet with your boss and you tune out all of the like yes men trying to get shore leave wow okay okay i'm in a state today i apologize wow he's pitching yeah and i said i i sat him i sat down with him and said look I know that my reps have reached out to you and I have this opportunity to work at the Obama White House. And I know you said no, but I would just love for you to reconsider because I genuinely feel like it's a rare moment. And he goes, oh, this is the first I'm hearing of this. Amazing. You got a job at the White House. I was like fuck me this is crazy so so then we have this conversation about you know agents make 10 of what you make so of course it tracked that either the agent didn't

actually ask or there were too many people in between before it got to david sherman it was just nixed did they get 10 of your ope salary uh they may have enjoyed cal worked at the office of public engagement at the white house which was the i won't cite the number because i feel like that's that's that's a douchey thing to do. But I remember when Politico published the salaries, I was tied for the second lowest White House salary. Nice. You need a new agent. Which, well, or that was just, and I remember there's a person who is now a member of Congress who reached out and wanted to have lunch very badly after that number came out.

Madison Cawthorn. And I remember going, I remember waving the person in and we sat down at Ike's. Ike's is this awful cafeteria that was under construction. Don't really know what that was. In the Eisenhower building. Because you two had fucking mess privileges. That was the hottest shit I've ever heard in my life. You fat bro. Look at you. Imperious monster. Sorry, I was busy at the mess.

Kendall Roy over here. Come to my party. I sit down with him in this hallway at the time. I don't think they still have like formal seating no it's literally the hallway yeah and i sat him down he's staring at me at the time he was he was not an elect in elected office but worked elsewhere in dc and he goes uh i thought when you know i said we'd have lunch at the white house uh that you'd at least invite me into the mess and i was like oh you think i have mess privileges i was like no dude my office is upstairs i share it with five other people.

And then we sat in silence and he goes, well, look, the reason I wanted to talk to you, you know, salaries got published and everything. I just want to know why are you doing this? I was like, because it's a rare moment in our nations. He's like, no, no, come on. Why are you actually doing this? I was like, well, I mean, you know. I like this guy. Wars.

And I figured you would. Wars. Wars. And, you know, people losing their jobs. They need to have health care, student loans, all that. And he goes, well, look, I'll cut to the chase. I'm going to run. And I just, you know, I just want to know what cycle you're running in because, you know, for donors and stuff.

I just want to make sure that you're not going to run when I'm going to run. And I was so turned off by Josh Gottheimer. I know where it is. Josh Gottheimer. Because that's from New Jersey. You that's from new jersey i will not tell you who this was it is indiscreet it is indiscreet it's somebody who's worried about jersey it's indiscreet 100 it may or may not be wow uh and i i was very off put by this or tom milanowski and it was it was after how does this track it must have been after haiti it was after, how does this track? It must have been after Haiti.

It was after like real shit that we had worked on, right? After 2010, 2011. Yeah, after things that had actually happened and taken place that proved the sort of, wow, this wouldn't have happened if somebody else had been in office and this would have been poorly managed or whatever the case was. I remember being so off by this. Anyway, so the David Shor, I don't know how I jumped from that to that. Because we interrupted you 75 times. Oh, uh sure then said to me um you know i don't i don't know if uh i just want to argue are you unhappy on the show and i said no i love being

an actor i just i genuinely want to take a sabbatical um and he goes well is everybody telling you you're crazy i said well kind of i mean i think it's dependent on your answer he said i i would love for you to do it. I think you should do it. What a lot of people don't know is that I was a lawyer in Toronto, um, and I really wanted to be a screenwriter and everybody said, you're crazy. You'll you're, you're throwing your life away. You shouldn't do it. And I packed up my car and drove to LA and, you know, now obviously a successful show creator. Uh, so who am I to tell you that it's crazy? You just need to give me, you know, a couple of weeks to figure out what to do with your character.

So I thought that was fair. And then he called me in the next day and said, Oh, who am I to tell you that it's crazy? You just need to give me, you know, a couple of weeks to figure out what to do with your character. Fair. So I thought that was fair. And then he called me in the next day and said, oh, your character is going to shoot himself in the head. I was like, oh, okay. So there's really no going back on this. No hard feelings. You have syphilis and fall down an elevator shaft.

One hobby we all had in the White House was complaining about the media. Yeah. Which is a tradition that we've carried forward here on Pod Save America. Still a hobby for me. With us two, really. It's not a job

if you love your work. Yeah. We do it here with a segment that we call Take Appreciator where we rate some of the worst takes around

on a scale of one to four politicos and our own digital guru Elijah Cohn I think is with us to help us play this game. Cal, would you like to play? I would love to play.

Oh, fantastic. There he is. Hey, guys. He's on Zoom, but he's here in the office. Okay, here we go. That was such a fun interview, and some of these takes are so not fun. Oh, wait.

I know what I wanted to ask you. Shit, we actually haven't had the chance to. I don't think I... It's the one thing that I did not ask you. I should have probably haven't had the chance to... I don't think I... It's the one thing that I did not ask you. I should have probably done this before we started. Let's go. Keep going. I like it. There's a story in there about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front email, which you were on.

Please cut this out if this is wildly inappropriate. Oh, I remember this story. This was my second day at the White House, I think. I get looped into an NSC email because I was, one of my jobs was the Asian American outreach person for the president. And he was meeting with somebody from the Philippines. And there's this big, massive NSC chain that said, hey, Cal, here are some things you should probably know. You're going to get questions. And one of the items was, you need to know about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

And then since it's government, everything's in acronyms. It said Moro Islamic Liberation Front. And then since it's government, everything's in acronyms. It said Moro Islamic Liberation Front, and then in parentheses it just said MILF. And the rest of the email was like, oh, MILF is a dangerous, MILF is very dangerous. MILF recruits young men. Young men grow to regret their affiliation with MILF. And I'm sitting at my desk fucking laughing my ass off,

and I hit reply all and said, their main terror group are the MILFs. Amazing. And then nobody says anything. And like an hour later one person replies all and says looks like cal pen is in the building and i was mortified obviously but in the hallway i remember like you and roads and a few other people were like yo that was so funny we were all thinking it but of course nobody wanted to be put on pra to the obama bros liked it yeah

exactly right right right right but i have a good audience and Tommy. I put it in the book without mentioning anybody's name because I just, I had to tell the story but didn't want to throw anybody under the bus. Yeah. How are you going to not laugh at that? Right. Exactly. Right.

Yeah. They're all thinking it. People often ask what were the greatest sacrifices in going from Hollywood to Washington and I think it was losing my sense of humor. We're sliding that anecdote right in. It's perfect. Sorry, Ben. All right, bum us out, Elijah.

No, no, that was great. Definitely leave that in. I was laughing the whole time. All right, let's play Take Appreciators. So here's how the game works. I'm going to share some notably bad punditry with you. The producers have seen these takes. John, John, Tommy, and Cal have not.

They will react and then rate them on a scale of one to four politicos, four politicos being the most egregious, you know, like Beltway brain takes one being the least. John, John, Tommy and Cal, are you ready? Yes. Yes. All right. First up from NBC. here's the headline. Laser focused on 2020. Trump seeks a Michigan legislature that could help him in 2024. All right. Here's the context for it. Trump's been endorsing big lie candidates in Michigan state races. Here's a quote from the piece. Trump's focus on the state illuminates just how driven he is to exact revenge on those who haven't supported his baseless claim that the last election was stolen from him. It's also a play to install allies that could be helpful should he run for president again and find himself locked in a close race.

Diabolical. You're the guest gal. You start with that one. Who? You're the guest gal. You start with that one. Who? Like some intern probably who wrote the copy and then it got sent up the chain? But I assume everyone's been blaming it on Chuck Todd, right? This has been getting so hard because I saw all the fallout from the headline and the article, but it made me not read the article.

Same. Even though in the back of my head I was like, Elijah's going to ask me about this. I got to do some research. I'm in the same position. I think this is an example of a headline deserving four politicos and an article deserving maybe one to two. Oh, it's so funny. Oh, interesting thing.

I so disagree because I was waiting. You got a debate. Much like Tommy, I did not read past the headline because I just saw everyone yelling about the headline. But when Elijah just said that,

like even when they described it, they were like like it could be helpful to him nowhere did they say so he could steal the fucking election they say baseless they say baseless i fundamentally my biggest problem with the headline close in case he's caught in a close election yeah that's very bad all right that takes it up to three but the the the key thing is uh my biggest problem with it is that trump is never laser focused on anything yeah he doesn't have he's not a laser we were joking about this yesterday it'd be funny if it said uh trump a flickering flashlight you have to hit on the side like focus on 2021 or whatever anyway i'm done gone are the days of concerns about normalizing

such behavior i know yeah i don't know I know, yeah. I'm giving that three and a half. Three Pinocchios. Headline four, article two. Three political guns. Cal? I'll agree with you on three. Three, okay. You guys want to take any guesses at the authors for this one? Oh, I didn't even...

It's NBC, huh? Rachel Maddow. I knew Chris Hayes did this one. I don't know. Is it Jonathan Allen? No, it's not. It's Alan Smith and Henry Gomez. Well, shame on them.

Well, sorry, fellas. The world will know their names now. Real punitive piece of this game. Name them, Elijah. Name them. punitive piece of this game name them name them Elijah name them I love this game especially because don't producers write headlines like don't the actual writers not even

they got fucked by the headlines give us their parents home address again okay I've got the last four digits of their social too you tie their politico number on a brick and throw it through their window okay well let's move to another fascist wing of the party first i'm going to explain the context of this story because i feel like the quote and headline should go together so we're going to dive into the lauren bobert discourse real quick so

over thanksgiving always a good time yeah always a great time over Thanksgiving a video came out of Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert saying some truly bigoted Islamophobic things about Ilhan Omar specifically she made a crack where she said Omar wasn't a threat because she quote wasn't wearing a backpack and called her quote jihad squad

Lauren then said she was going to reach out to Omar's office to apologize let's pause there because that's the point where this article was written. From Playbook, the article is titled, Dems' Dicey Decision, Punish Boebert or Not? The quote is, where do Democrats draw the line? If Democrats don't lower the boom on Boebert, what message would it send to the Muslim community?

If they do lower the boom, what message would it send to the Muslim community? If they do lower the boom, what message does it send to those who apologize? Will someone think about the apologizers? The apology community is really hurt by this. I'm going to tell you the thing I'm most offended by is not acknowledging that the best fucking phrase you could come up with is Jihad Squad. Jihad Squad. That's your fucking

creative, brilliant little alliteration. There's not a lot of creative. I'm offended by that more than anything else. Creative bigotry. Oh, I think you should be offended by the content of what she's saying. I obviously am, John. I'm just... Sick is much worse than the rhyme. I obviously am. Cal Penn defends bigotry.

Oh, fuck. Yeah, here we go. A real, yeah. All right, I take that back. Please cut that out. Olivia Wilde's friend canceled. Do you know her? She's a very famous actor and director.

Who's got some ratings? I mean, that's a fucking four. I can't. I have no patience for this kind of shit. Yeah. I think it's a full playbook. I think it's a full playbook. I think it's a full playbook in part because it's a classic, if Dems fight back, they lose.

If Dems don't fight back, they lose. The only thing a Dem can do is lose. It's a double-edged sword. Yeah. And then it sort of, you know, functionally downgrades Islamophobia in the sort of tier of bad things you can do. It's sort of only partially bad, even what bobert said was absolutely clearly racist in islam and of course the epilogue of this whole thing is uh she turned out not to have apologized

she called omar enough and insulted her yeah the whole setup dignity and character you know the whole setup is also designed to do exactly what the right wants which is oh she said she spoke the truth and then she was forced to apologize by the politically correct left which apparently she didn't even do it looks like dems lost again on this one yep all right let's give us give us the last take all right last take we checked in on donald trump we checked in on the far right in the house let's check in on some democrats so from newsweek internet divided over cookware Harris bought some pots and pans that total around $500 in Paris. Here's the quote.

Here's the kicker. The tweet that this article cited was from the at gop twitter account um newsweek is a defunct publication something to keep in mind it really is it's a it's a dead zombie brand being attached to whatever filth can come out of some content den somewhere. I'm going to back you up on this and say, I saw this trending on Twitter and briefly scrolled through and thought it was so fucking stupid that I thought it was one of those things that, like,

if you're going to waste your time reading this article, then you deserve your time wasted reading this article. And that's all. So I actually didn't know the full context until you just said that. Here's why I'm only going to give it a two. Because I do think, again, the worst takes, takes that get four, are takes that really are designed to troll us. This, I feel like, came from sheer laziness that you just used the fucking Republican Party's tweet as opposed to anything else. And it was just sheer.

There's probably a bot writing that Newsweek article because, you said it's a defunct publication so i'm sure they just churn it out and yeah i don't i think it's laziness french pots that bitch that's the headline that's what they're going for i yeah sorry uh anders anglesley who wrote the article i just you know this is so when Trump and Melania went to Paris, they had they had shits in their beds. They had dinner at the top of the Eiffel Tower, probably served to them by some Michelin star chef. Kamala Harris, buy some fucking pots and pans. You know, she's not out somewhere fancy. She's just buying cookware.

If you ever bought cookware, it's really expensive. I got my mom. Mom, mute the podcast. Mom, mute the podcast. I got my mom one of those. For Christmas? You got your mom a. It's expensive.

Keep your terrible fart brain away from my story. What are you talking about? He's talking about a pot for making casserole. I don't know what you're talking about. That's so weird of you. No, we don't think you're going to fart under the blanket and make your mom breathe it. You gross weirdo. Cookware is expensive at GOP account, but then you use it for the rest of your life.

I'm on a tear today. Yeah, then you use it for the rest of your life. Yeah, amortized over the use of those pots. The enjoyment Doug and Kamala will have from the pot. And, you know, it is Hanukkah. Maybe he's going to make latkes in the pot. Right. Luis, you can unmute it now.

How's she going to hear that? How's that unmute works? Anyway, I think that's take appreciator. When are we going to start recording the segment with Cal? The book is You Can't Be Serious. The author is Cal Penn. Cal, thanks for joining us. It's very fun. Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you for joining us as well.

That's all the time we have for today. It's going to be weather between the Omicron segment and the Cal segment. Yeah, there's going to be a bumper with a couple ads that we don't take seriously. So that'll be the bumper. Wait, I have one joke. Can I get it in? I have one joke. Sorry, Elijah. We're trying to create stars here. It's not the first time Kamala's disappointed

us on pot. Oh. Wow. What do we do with that one? Cut it. Anyway, K-Hive, he is on Twitter. Elijah, yeah. Also, by the way, Kamala's a cop. We need like an evening show.

One Fallon. Great job. Bye, everyone. Bye, everybody. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our senior producer is Andy Gardner-Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montuth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.