Pod Save America - “Democracy in Disarray.”

Episode Date: January 13, 2022

Joe Biden and just about every elected Democrat in America make one final run at Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on voting rights, Dr. Fauci says we’re all getting Omicron and calls one Republican Senator a moron, and Alyssa Mastromonaco joins to break down the worst punditry of the week in another round of Take Appreciator. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, Joe Biden and just about every elected Democrat in America make one final run at Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema on voting rights. Dr. Fauci says we're all getting Omicron and calls one Republican senator a moron. And the one and only Alyssa Mastromonaco joins us to break down the worst punditry of the week in another round of Take Appreciator. But first, this week, Keep It is celebrating its four-year anniversary.

Four years without a single solitary episode featuring me. Me either. You either, but it's not like an active vendetta against you. You're just forgotten. Yeah, it's fine. Is it better to be forgotten than hated? I'm not so sure. Yeah, no, you might have it better. But anyway, congrats to Ira, Louis, Aida, and the entire cricket team who works on Keep It for reaching this incredible milestone. New episodes of Keep It drop every Wednesday. Please check it

out. All right, let's get to the news uh the end game on the democrats crusade to change the filibuster and pass voting rights has finally arrived over the next few days the house is expected to pass the freedom to vote act and the john lewis voting rights act which have now been combined into one bill called wait for it the freedom to vote Vote Act, colon, John R. Lewis Act. This is a small thing in everything we're about to talk about, but do they realize that the John Lewis Freedom to Vote Act was just right there for the taking as a combined name? Do they have to do the Democratic messaging thing

where you put a fucking colon in between two titles and call it a message and call it a title? You're right. It's small potatoes. Very small, very small. But I mean, just even from the beginning when everyone ran on the John Lewis Voting Rights Act as the larger democracy reform bill, and they decided not to call it that and call this other bill the John Lewis bill for reasons that make no sense. The freedom to vote act to colon too free to vote, too free to vote.

All right. So house is going to pass. There's a complicated procedure where the house is going to pass both these bills combined into one Senate Republicans will then try to filibuster both bills. Senate Democrats will then debate changes to the filibuster. And from there, no one has any idea what will happen, but we have some idea maybe at this point. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are still opposed to eliminating the filibuster.

The votes for a special voting rights exception to the filibuster aren't there either. Manchin has said he's open to the return of a talking filibuster where senators would have to stay on the floor for as long as they want to block the bill. But it's unclear if he'll vote for that change without Republican support. And Sinema just reiterated her support for the filibuster in a no labels Mad Libs speech Thursday morning. Unity, division, partisanship. That's what her speech was. That's what I heard. partisanship. That's what her speech was. That's what I heard. In any event, Joe Biden is having what I can only imagine to be a deeply enjoyable lunch with all 50 Senate Democrats today to get

all this squared away. Fresh off his big speech in Georgia, where he delivered his most passionate call yet for filibuster reform and voting rights. Let's take a listen. I've been having these quiet conversations with members of Congress for the last two months. I'm tired of being quiet. Sadly, the United States Senate, designed to be the world's greatest deliberative body, has been rendered a shell of its former self. It gives me no satisfaction in saying that as an institutionalist, as a man who was honored to serve in the Senate. But as an institutionalist, I believe that the threat to our democracy is so grave that we must find a way to pass these voting rights bills. Debate them. Vote. Let the majority prevail.

And if that bare minimum is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this. When it comes to protecting majority rule in America, the majority should rule in the United States Senate. So I kind of feel like the dog who caught the car here, Dan. We we have wanted a Democratic president to come out against the filibuster for years now. Joe Biden, one of the Senate's biggest institutionalists when he was a senator, finally does it. And now where are we? Just waiting for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to have a last minute epiphany that has eluded them for the last year? Man, I don't know.

I mean, no matter what happens in the next 72 hours, even though we know what's going to happen in the next 72 hours, the filibuster is... We're from the future. Yes. You're listening to this podcast probably in the future. We know what's happening. The ghost of, I don't know, future obstruction.

Fuck knows. But look, the filibuster just put aside how it's being used to stop voting rights bills. The filibuster itself is a stupid, misused rule that is bad. And there are times in which that's going to come back on us very poorly as the party out of power who has a where the Senate is greatly disadvantaged against us. All right. Where we have a great disadvantage in the Senate. greatly disadvantaged against us, right? Where we have a great disadvantage in the Senate. But it's still wrong. It's just, it's just a stupid, it's a terrible way to run a government, particularly at a time of great polarization to depend that the solution to anything must be compromised means you'll do almost nothing. Like the only things that have happened in recent years of consequence have happened

on a majority vote using the budget reconciliation process. So I think Joe Biden turning on the Senate, I am for that. But it does, the way this has played out this week, and with Sinema going to the floor of the Senate to announce her opposition to the filibuster prior to Joe Biden showing up to make his last case, it just sort of embodies how terrible this week has gone for everyone involved. And I sort of feel, you know, we have said for years, you got to get caught trying, right? There are sometimes it's better to fight and lose and not fight at all. This week, maybe the counterpoint to that.

I mean, and it's like, it's not, I don't know that. I mean, what else was he? I guess the question is, what else was he supposed to do? I don't, it's not, I don't even, I don't blame that anyone's – I mean, what else was he – I guess the question is what else was he supposed to do? I don't – I don't even – I don't blame Joe Biden. He – Yeah, no, I mean it's – I mean it is just – there are times when nothing will go right, and this is for presidents, and this is one of those weeks. And I – he made a powerful case last week on January 6th.

He made a powerful case today. powerful case last week on January 6th. He made a powerful case today. I want him to be making that case to the country more often as this year progresses. And we can talk about later in this podcast why that is. But this sort of idea that we're going to hold these big votes, we're going to set a deadline, and no one, and the no one is primarily Senate Democrats here, had any chance of success from the beginning. That is the problem here. And we are today where we were yesterday, where we were six months ago, where we were a year ago. And nothing has changed. And I'm not sure anything anyone would have done in the interim would have changed that. Well, Mrs. Lincoln, what'd you think of Biden's speech?

The speech was great. The filibuster parts are, you know, we care about that. And I'm glad he made the case against it because we need to get rid of it. And it may not, it's obviously not going to be this week that we do it, but at some point, and to do that, you need powerful, important Democrats, particularly someone with the credibility like Joe Biden, to make that case. The part that's more important, I think, is his case about the dangers to democracy, about the importance of the right to vote. And I think that is very important. That's what you want to hear more of,

regardless of what happened, because all the headlines are going to be Democrats failed to pass filibuster reform or Democrats failed to end the filibuster. But the real story here, and the one that really matters to people as we head into November is Republicans block voting rights. Republicans block attempts to stop election subversion. And that's the part of the story we're going to have to get to. Yeah. Did the speech move Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema? No.

Seems like no. Seems like a no on that. But I agree with everything you said about the speech itself. From a speech-giving perspective, I would say he you said about the speech itself from a speech giving perspective I would say he's good with the crowd behind him like he he ad-libbed a few times some of the ad-libs are funny some of them I'm sure you know people at the White House were covering their eyes right but like it was still better than just like you know sitting in the White House reading off a script in front of you out in the East Room

and then walking back by yourself. You know, like it's good for him to have energy. He's more energetic. He's more forceful. He should do it more often. I thought the speech was great. I thought it was great, particularly for the reason you said, which is it was about voting rights,

but it wasn't just about voting rights. It was about the larger threat to democracy, which I think is really important. It's central to his message, has been since he ran for office. You know, in the speech, there's a bit of a John Meacham issue in these speeches sometimes where the audience is history books when it should be regular Americans, something that Joe Biden has always understood more than most politicians. But that's a minor thing, you know, that I'm sure Biden's speech writer Vinay Reddy and Mike Donilon can take care of while Meacham's busy telling reporters that he wrote the speech.

A lot of attention to the speechwriter community coming out here on the pod. It's just a little – it's a weird thing to go out to have help on a speech and then go run around the day after being like, yep, that was my line. That was my line because I said it on Morning Joe earlier, and now I put it in the speech. It's a weird thing to do. Weird thing to do. Just one thing that I thought from this speech and from the speech last week is, one thing we all need is more Joe Biden

out there making his case. And look, we're in a pandemic. He's got a lot of shit on his plate. It is hard to do this. Like the logistics behind doing the sorts of events he did yesterday or Tuesday, I guess, are harder in this world. Traveling is harder. The staffing take-aways are all of that. But as we ramp up, Joe Biden making his case for his issues and his presidency is by far the best weapon we have to try to shift some of the political dynamics heading into November.

Right. Because he's going to like, I mean, other Democrats can and should do that as well, but he's the president of the United States and that's going to get coverage. And then the Biden message and the White House story is going to be part of the cycle, right? Part of the constant news cycle. And I think a lot of times in the past year, it's been missing at times. And you're right. Part of it's because it's hard anyway to set up a White House event when you're president. You have all the logistics and security and all that kind of stuff.

In the middle of a pandemic, I can't imagine how much harder it is. But he is better when he has people around him and he's on the road. And they've been playing the inside game, trying to get these bills passed, which is also the right thing to do. But it is worse.

There's a shift happening here, I think, which is very good. Well, I think the key line was the one that we started the clip with, which is, you know, he's been having these quiet conversations for two months and he's tired of being quiet, which I thought was a good line and also one that felt very true. Sometimes you say lines and you're like, oh, yeah, this one is this one's real. Here's a sample media reaction from CNN's Casey Hunt. President Joe Biden, freshly elected, changing his position on the filibuster might have moved the needle in the Senate. Might have. It's a much steeper climb now as his approval rating downward trend clearly shows.

What do you think? Would Manchin and Sinema have supported getting rid of the filibuster if Joe Biden had only asked them 12 months ago? Was he just late? Was that part of Sinema's speech today? You were too late. You were 12 months too late, Joe. Just to give people a little behind the scenes peek at how things go. So I texted you this tweet Tuesday afternoon.

And what happened? I can't remember. Did you spill your Diet Coke in anger? If I remember correctly. Oh, I was walking through the office. I had my phone and I had a Diet Coke. I was walking back to my desk and i saw and i saw your text and i got so mad i dropped both the diet coke and the phone on the floor fortunately no one was in the office to see it it's just just me yelling just

well yeah no i think that was ridiculous. I mean, is there possibly a chance some way that Joe Biden could have gotten or any word of Chuck Schumer or everyone listening could have gotten Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema changed their mind? Maybe. But it seems unlikely. But I certainly think that Joe Biden really turning the screws on Joe Manchin just weeks after losing Joe Manchin's estate by 39 points is not really good. That is not the issue here. It's not Joe Biden's political capital that is stopping this. It is the political incentives of the people involved, and those have not changed. Part of this is the coverage of politics is always a narrative, and you need twists and turns and stuff like that. But I think we have all, us included,

and you need twists and turns and stuff like that. But I think we have all, us included, fallen victim to this idea that there's going to be some epiphany. They're going to change their mind. When you listen to Mansion and Cinema, whatever you want to say about them, their views on the filibuster have been very consistent the whole year.

And again, we've talked about this before, like there is leverage with cinema. We should primary her in 2024. Great. Looking for candidates. Joe Manchin is probably going to be the last Democratic senator in West Virginia. There's no political pressure that can move him. So we're fucking stuck and we've got to go win more elections and elect more Democrats in order to enact these changes. And that's a frustrating reality. And it is, as you are all very much aware of, extremely boring to keep saying over and over and over again. But that doesn't mean that it's not the truth. What did you make of the rest of the media coverage?

I feel like the White House didn't get the clean headlines they wanted. Here's one from Business Insider that really sums it up. Biden voting speech boycotted by activists, overshadowed by football win. Tough. It's just like you can't catch a break. Like on paper, doing this, they were trying to get Build Back Better done before Christmas. That obviously didn't work. Then you have the anniversary of January 6th and Chuck Schumer sets his deadline. So this is the time when it makes sense, and going to Atlanta, of all places, makes sense. It is the cradle of civil rights, as he said in his speech. Yes, and it's also the epicenter of Republican voter suppression, all happening in one place, election subversion.

There is a Republican governor being primaried for not overturning the will of the voters. It is where it's all happening. So going there makes sense. And then on the week you want to go there, you have just at the general backdrop of a huge surge in the pandemic happening. You get inflation numbers. We put inflation at a 40-year high. And then you get a Quinnipiac poll, which shows your approval rating at 33%.

I don't think that's right necessarily, but it drives narratives. And then you get a Quinnipiac poll, which shows your approval rating at 33%. Like, I don't think that's right necessarily, but it drives narratives. And then the day you scheduled your speech, this is the only one they sort of control, but it's also sort of hard to figure out how to plan around is you have your speech in Atlanta, Georgia, the morning after the University of Georgia wins the national championship also for the first time in 40 years. 40 years ago, inflation was super high and Georgia was national champions. And now we're back again. So it's just it's like, what do you let me just. It's not great. It's not great.

You can plan everything right. In the White House and get screwed by events. And that made this harder. Does it? I mean, the speech is still good. People will still consume it. The coverage in the headlines that like people like you and I mainstream, this is a business business insider behind a paywall no one will ever cross. So it's not

naturally affecting the electorate. And I've seen some of the local Georgia coverage, which has been excellent. It's not the top story, mind you, because Georgia won the national championship. But people in Georgia are getting the coverage. But it is suboptimal and you're, they've been in, Biden's been in this bad news spiral for, since August, and it's hard to get out of. And it's really, and, you know, he, there needs to be a circuit breaker and haven't been able to find it yet. So if this goes down as it is expected to do over this weekend, um have another option which is working with republicans to reform the electoral count act we've talked about this uh last couple weeks

um but greg sargent at the washington post was told that democrats are expected to introduce their own bill on the electoral count act i think angus king amy klobuchar is working on this that would do the following one require a superity in each chamber in order to reject a state's electoral votes, something like three-fifths. Two, create a judicial review for if a state legislature tries to appoint its own electors. And three, clarify that the vice president can't overturn the election, which is something that apparently needs clarifying. So this will be much stronger than the previous proposals, which didn't really do anything about state legislatures overturning an election. That was the problem that I think I pointed out last pod. What do you think about it?

I think the three-fifths bar to overturning an election is the exact right thing to do. I mean, it's a sad statement on the politics in this country that we have to have a supermajority to stop people from overturning an election is the exact right thing to do. I mean, it's a sad statement on the politics in this country that we have to have a super majority to stop people from overturning the will of voters, but that is clearly where we are and that would make it very, very hard to steal elections. Yeah. And I think the state, the state legislature provision too, is actually quite good. It depends on like how you set up the judicial review, of course, but I think it's, it's pretty good. Mark Elias pointed out that in the new freedom to vote, colon, John Lewis Act bill, that there's some more election subversion provisions there. Specifically, they included a federal right to vote and to have that vote counted, which means that if your vote is not reflected in the official tallies, you have the ability to sue in the

D.C. Circuit Court. So that's a good provision, too. I don't know if Democrats will include that in their Electoral Count Act. I don't know if Republicans will go for it. But I do think if this goes down and somehow Democrats could find, I think they only have like four Republicans in the Senate right now who are interested. But if they could somehow find 10 Republicans to just do basic election subversion stuff, you don't get all of the provisions that we had in Freedom to Vote, which are very important provisions and very good.

But if you could do something to prevent election subversion, I would fucking do it. I would work on that. Do you think we're making a mistake by tying our hands behind our back and preventing Kamala Harris from overturning the election in 2025 if we need it. That's – you're using your inside voice on the pot again. Yes. I think it's so funny how many people think that's like the biggest deal. And then it's like that's not going to stop the election from being sold in 2024 because we have the vice president.

It would be the most – it would be the most democratic party thing to do. Yes. To, to, to, to pass this and then have a bunch of, well, this is,

this is what was my problem with doing the electoral count act without doing anything about the states because the states, the Republican state legislatures are the real threat. And if you don't do anything about the Republican state legislatures, but you do tie the hands of the vice president and Democrats in Congress, then you could be looking at that kind of a bad outcome. But if you do something to stop the states and then do something to stop Congress from overturning the election, basically no one should be able to overturn the election because the people who vote should get to decide who wins. Wild. Wild. That's what I'm for. That's what I'm for.

So then let's say like if all legislative solutions fail, or even if the Electoral Count Act passes, but we still don't have voting rights legislation, what should Democrats do and say about the threat to voting rights and democracy? Is talking about these issues on the campaign trail the best way to win the power we need to actually pass these bills? Should we make democracy a central issue in the midterm? There's been a lot of discussion this week with people throwing polls in people's faces that shows that the people, the issues people care about most are the pandemic and the economy. And then there was a set of focus groups that Alex Rorty of McClatchy, I believe, tweeted out, which showed that January 6th and the threats to democracy were not top of mind. And that's sort of one of those like

no shit Sherlock poll findings, which is in the middle of a once in a century pandemic and the highest inflation in 40 years, people are probably going to, those are going to be top of mind for everyone. A pollster calls you and says, what are you most worried about? It's probably trying to keep your family healthy and pay groceries before you get to a threat to democracy, which won't even manifest itself necessarily for until the end of this year, next year, whatever else. But I think that, so some people look at that and say, see, Democrats are making a mistake by doing this, that you shouldn't talk about democracy. People don't care. And there's just this fundamental difference between how Republicans and Democrats

think about messaging. Republicans, for the most part, decide what they want to be top of mind of voters on election day, and then they talk about that, regardless of how it pulls down. And Democrats tend to say, this is what voters care about now, this is what we're going to talk about. And maybe it's the best thing for us, maybe it's not the best thing for us, but we're going to try to win what's top of mind. And obviously, Republicans have this advantage and they have this giant megaphone, mega media, Fox, Facebook that helps them shift the conversation in ways we don't. But I think if you were to sit here and say, what do we want voters to care about? And it's not a zero-sum game.

You can talk about threats to democracy and you can talk about the economy and all those things. We don't have to just pick one thing. But if you think about how we built the coalition that gave us the House, the Senate, and the White House, it was a bunch of people who had never been involved in politics before, people who had not previously supported Democrats, coming together with the Democratic base because of the unique threat that Trump and Trump is in face of this country. And therefore, I think to keep that coalition together and engaged,

we have to make the case that the crisis that brought us together in the first place, that got us engaged, is not over and, in fact, may be growing. And that's harder to do with Joe Biden in the White House, but I think that is an argument for making the threat of democracy and the threat of Trumpism writ large a big part of our message. It doesn't have to be the only part, but it has to be – we need people to care about that and think about that if we want them to get involved and vote for us in 2022, if that makes sense. It does make sense. I think the big challenge, we've talked about this before, is figuring out a way to fuse people's economic concerns with their concerns about democracy. And so look, the focus groups that you talked about, that Alex Rorty was tweeting about, there were two groups of moderate voters, either Trump-Biden voters or Trump voters who regret their vote. They did not bring up January 6th as a big deal.

Some of them thought that Biden and Democrats embellished what happened when they talked about it. They might have politicized a tragedy. There was a little bit of that. But then there was a lot of people who, towards the second half of the focus group, said the attack was terrible. Democracy is in danger. It was right for Biden to speak. In that Quinnipiac poll that you cited, where Biden has a 33% approval rating, 58% of Americans said the country's democracy is in danger of collapse. 53's a pretty big number. And I wonder if the challenge is it's not just like, yeah, do you keep hammering January 6th and talking about January 6th? Or is there something bigger and deeper that people are worried about when they say that they're worried that democracy is about to collapse? And I think that so far, partly because we were trying to pass this legislation, we have talked about the threat to democracy narrowly in terms of voting, the right to vote.

But I think we need to broaden that as a message for the midterms and include what it looks like. You know, it's democracy in terms of voting. It's economic democracy. It's, you know, like, there's just a country that is open to everyone where everyone has a chance, right? Like there's got to be a way to understand people's concerns that they're having in their everyday lives while still talking about this larger threat to the system, which is going to prevent us from improving their lives. You know, like it's, they got to work it out, but I don't think, people say, oh, you got to do both,

which is sort of like a lazy answer. But like, it's about, it's about one message that incorporates all of the different concerns and threats that people face. And I don't think that Democrats are close to it right now. I mean, I've spent a lot of time

to think about it. It's very hard. I don't have an answer that I feel good about. Just one small point here. I think we have to be careful about the democracy is in danger polling because that's like a Rorschach test, right? In a lot of these polls, it's Republicans, the ones whose party are doing voter suppression, they support putting in voter ID laws that they support, who think that January 6th was a protest and that the election was, they think democracy

is in danger because Democrats are stealing elections. Democrats. Yeah, this one, party breakdown on this had Democrats, independents, and Republicans almost at the same levels. Yeah, which is, sort of belies what's happening in the real world. And so, like, there needs to be a little more specificity into some of these questions, which campaign polling will have and media polling will not because they serve different purposes. Oh, I was going to say, I think this is why you need both polling

and focus groups, right? Focus groups are only a small number of people, so they can't tell you everything, but polling is just numbers, so you don't really know what's behind the numbers. You need to do both together. You'd love to see some focus groups where you sat voters down and who are concerned about democracy, concerned about democracy

collapsing and say, why do you feel that way? What are the things that make you worried about the country? What would you like to see happen? That kind of stuff. Because I do, I think it's an area for much more research as we get closer to the midterms of like, what's really, look, the right track track wrong track is it like historic highs for right for a wrong track right now um would love to find out from people why they think that right um not just random people in diners but like you know democrats uh swing voters people who sat out the last election people who might want to sit out this election people have never voted before independents right like who might want to sit out this election, people who've never voted before, independents, right? Like you'd want to go

through different groups and find out what exactly, what people are feeling right now as you put together a message. We will end this segment with some good news as we're talking about elections and how we need to win them. Here's a note from Ben Wickler to Tommy since their interview on Tuesday's episode. Quote, we've raised over $110,000 online since the day that Ron Johnson announced with a big bump after my interview on Pod Save. This is 28% of what we expected to raise over the entire month in just a few days.

The Pod Save community has definitely been showing up in this fight to defeat Ron Johnson, and I'm so grateful. Fantastic. Thank you, everyone. Good job, Pod Save community has definitely been showing up in this fight to defeat Ron Johnson, and I'm so grateful. Fantastic. Thank you, everyone. Good job, Pod Save America listeners. I think we should help Ben get to 50% of their goal by Monday.

By next pod. Well, next pod, sorry. We record Monday. Next pod, Tuesday. Let's do it by Tuesday. Chuck Schumer's not the only one who can have a deadline around here. Let's do it. Except this deadline will come with good news. We'll accomplish something with this

deadline. WisDems.org is where you're going to want to go to help donate to the Wisconsin Democratic Party so that they have the resources they need to beat Ron Johnson. Again, we hold, if the Democratic Senators who are up win, and we beat Ron Johnson, that's one less Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema

that we have to care about. Sounds good to me. You flip a nut, you flip Pennsylvania. That's, now you don't have to care about Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema. What a world. What a world. What a world. What a world.

Let's talk about Omicron. Another cheery subject. There's been quite a bit of Omicron news over the last week. We've had plenty of experts on to talk about the health implications. Today, the two of us are going to talk about the political challenges, which are many. But let's start with some good news. So the data suggests that the latest wave may be peaking in cities that were hit early, like New York and Washington. The hope there is that the rapid surging cases here in the US will be followed by a rapid decline, like we've seen in South Africa and like we're starting to see in the UK, which means that the Omicron wave would last four to six weeks.

Here's the tougher news. The wave has yet to hit some of the most unvaccinated parts of America at a time when health care workers and hospitals have been stretched to their breaking point. And even after the surge is over, here's what Dr. Fauci had to say this week about the latest variant. Omicron, with its extraordinary, unprecedented degree of efficiency of transmissibility, will ultimately find just about everybody. Those who have been vaccinated and vaccinated and boosted would get exposed. Some, maybe a lot of them, will get infected, but will very likely, with some exceptions, do reasonably well in the sense of not

having hospitalization and death. Cool, cool, cool, cool. So I think a lot of the debates we're seeing right now over school closures and staff shortages and hospital hospital capacity will change quite a bit um when the omicron wave is over sometime in february after a very rough january but i want to talk about what happens then in a situation where covid a has likely infected most americans like fci said. B, is still extremely transmissible. And C, is a real threat to the unvaccinated, but is somewhere between a bad cold and a bad flu for something like 90 plus percent of fully vaccinated people who get it. What do you do and say about that

if you're the Biden administration? What Fauci is really saying without saying it is COVID is a problem to be managed, not solved. And I think it's going to be incumbent on the Biden administration, I suspect. We're probably about a week away from this happening. This is not based on anything anyone's told me, just my guess of a shift from the message that Joe Biden had said from the beginning, which is we're going to crush the virus to we are going to, I don't know what the right words are,

but we are going to- Gently stomp on it. It's we are going to, we're going to protect Americans from the virus. Push it out of the way. And I think, so like, what does that look like from the Biden metric? I think there are a couple of things. One is changing the metric of success.

When you have told people that we are going to return to normal and we're going to crush the virus, which I think was a very legitimate expectation over a year ago when – before we knew that the Republican Party was going to shift from being boosters of the vaccine to refusing to getting vaccines or boosters. So you have to, so you have to shift from, we're going to crush the virus. Everything's gonna be back to normal too. We are going to give you the tools you need to live your life as normally and safely as possible.

And you saw Biden do some of that today with more, with a commitment to more masks, more high quality masks and more testing, more high-quality masks, and more testing, more testing sites, reinforcing hospitals and essential and healthcare workers, keeping schools open, doing everything we can to make it normal. Because even if the virus were to mostly recede into the background, life is not going to return to normal in America for a long time because this was a traumatic event, right? Psychologically, economically, and you just, it's hard to even fathom. Like I was just trying to think back to, I saw a picture from two years ago today, like, uh, like, uh, you know, Apple photos memory. And it's like, I'm out with people and no one has masks

on and we're just like having fun and we have no fucking clue what's about to happen. And to imagine what we've all been through and what our kids have been through and the people who, you know, this is, you know, we have not in this country suffered this scale of death in such a short period of time since the world wars. And so it's going to take us a long time. So I think you're shifting to a different metric where you're focused on different things than just stopping people from getting infected. Right. I think that's sort of how you have to talk about it and think about it and guide your policy to it. Cause I think we're running, we're running out of people to vaccinate. Once we get once God willing, soon as fucking possible, get kids

zero to five vaccinated, then we've just then there's not much more you can do with the vaccine hesitant, I think, to get them there. So this week, we had six former Biden advisors laid out a plan for what they call a new normal that talks about how we can live with COVID-19 as an endemic virus, which is basically what you're talking about. I think part of the confusion among Americans, understandably, has been it seems like there's all these shifting strategies from public health officials, experts, the administration. But the reason that they're shifting is because the virus changes with new variants. And so if I was the Biden administration, I would say new variants

require new strategies. Here's ours, right? COVID-19 may not completely disappear from our lives, but it will no longer control our lives. And then, as you said, we have all the tools we need to move beyond this pandemic. The most important are still vaccines. I would go back to that because vaccines continue to offer, even with this variant, extremely high protection against hospitalization and death. They also, according to the one peer-reviewed published study we have about long COVID among in people who have been vaccinated, vaccinations reduce the chance of long COVID by at least 50%, if not more, in the one study we have. But there's a lot more to be learned about that. Vaccines are free and available to every single American above five. Kids under five should be able to get them in a few months. Wherever we can, we'll require

vaccinations in order to keep people alive, just as we have with so many other illnesses in the past. We've also developed therapeutics, therapeutic treatments for people who get COVID that will also keep them out of the hospital, including, finally, for people who are immunocompromised, the FDA finally approved one in December that should help people who are immunocompromised. We're going to ramp up treatments of all of these therapeutic treatments this year so that we're going to have these pills for like everyone who needs them. Eventually, if you want more protection than the vaccine provides, you can wear an N95 mask indoor in crowded settings. That will protect you. That will protect you even if everyone around you is not wearing a mask. We're going to send those to everyone.

That's what they announced today. They're going to send N95s to people finally. They're going to make sure there's enough testing, better ventilation in schools, offices, government buildings, keep developing better treatments and better vaccines, double down on efforts to vaccinate the world because it's the right thing to do and because that's the best way to prevent other variants from popping up. And if they do pop up, we'll be ready. And if there are future surges or waves, hopefully they're not, but they may be, we may need to put in place temporary restrictions to prevent our hospitals from filling up or our healthcare system from breaking. Other than that, people should live their lives. You know? Like, I just think you have to...

The trick with... I mean, as soon as I saw Omicron and started learning about Omicron, I thought a variant that is more transmissible but milder, especially milder in vaccinated people, only somewhat milder in unvaccinated people, it's going to be the trickiest political challenge of all. Because if it was something much more severe,

then there'd be sort of much more support for more restrictions. If it was something that was much less severe, much less milder and not as transmissible, there'd be more support for like, okay, let's just go about living. Because it's this in-between where it's more transmissible but milder, it raises a lot of genuinely difficult political questions. It is a variant that might prepare us for endemic COVID, which for people who don't know, endemic COVID is basically you live with a low level of virus circulating around low levels of case numbers. They don't get to zero, but they're low. They're not anything near what we're seeing now for an indeterminate amount of time, maybe forever, much like we live with the flu and with common colds. Now, this was not the case at the beginning of the pandemic when we did not have these vaccines, these life-saving vaccines or these life-saving treatments. Now it is. And I do think

you're getting to the point where you, once this, and again, this is all once this wave passes, like we're in it now, but once this wave passes, you've got to start having off-ramps, metrics. You have to be prepared for the next possible variant. You have to have all this stuff in place so that, A, people aren't caught off guard next time there may be a variant. But, B, there is a path for society to go on living and people to go on living their lives. is a path for society to go on living and people to go on living their lives. I do think the politics around the pandemic already seem to be changing for Democrats and Republicans. Over the last few weeks, we've seen Democratic mayors and governors fight to keep schools and businesses open.

Meanwhile, just a few weeks after Ron DeSantis refused to answer a reporter's question about whether he's been boosted, Donald Trump said this in an interview with OAN. Many politicians, I watched a couple of politicians be interviewed. And one of the questions was, did you get the booster? Because they had the vaccine. And they, oh, they're answering it like, in other words, the answer is yes, but they don't want to say it. Because they're gutless. You got to say it. Gutless. What do you make of Trump's comments? What's his game plan here? And I use the word plan extremely loosely. Well, based on what reporters like Maggie Haberman have tweeted and reported, it seems like this is largely about Ron DeSantis, who Trump is angry at, jealous of, threatened

by. And DeSantis has sort of very prominently refused to say whether he was boosted or not for fear of trying to avoid that situation Trump found himself in when he was at that rally in Alabama a few months ago and talked about the vaccines and got booed by his own people. And so this is like a dig at DeSantis, which is ultimately at the end of the day, these Trump things are never about some sort of strategy. They're just sort of about a grievance with someone and a chance to attack someone who he doesn't like or feel threatened by. I think that's what this is. But it is, I will say, great politics. You think it's great politics for Trump?

Yeah. I mean, think about- How do you think it plays? I'm just curious as to how that plays with the Republican base, which has been, you know, their opinions range from anti-vaccine to vaccine hesitant to booster hesitant to anti-booster. Like this, this is not a base that is in love with the vaccines, though, you know, a good number of Republican voters, of course, have taken the vaccine. It, well, a couple of things. One, in the short term, in the short term being this midterm election, the pandemic is the Republicans' greatest weapon. And they have this message that is more Americans have died from COVID under Biden than Trump. their exact role in convincing their voters to not get the vaccine and therefore making them die at an incredibly high rate. A bit, a bit, yeah. As like, not substance, but soundbite, that is a message. And it is Biden promised to end the

pandemic and the pandemic is not over. And it's like, as we've said, that's not Joe Biden's fault personally, like not that it's been perfect, but it's a much thing bigger than one president can end it. But that's the message. The biggest vulnerability in that message is the anti-vaccine sentiment among Republicans. Because it's not just that it is true that the majority of the unvaccinated are Republicans, but the majority of Republicans are vaccinated. And so that is a small minority. I think Trump's power over the base would greatly exceed their qualms about the vaccine were he to run again in 2024. I also don't think anyone of substance is running against him if he does it. But I went back on a project I've been working on that will be announced at some point in the near future. Went back and looked at all of the – how the Republicans talked about the vaccine in November and December.

They fucking love the vaccine when Trump was president. Ronny Jackson, going to get the vaccine. Ron Johnson, applauding the vaccine. Love Operation Warp Speed. So if Trump decides that he wants to get credit for developing the vaccine and then attack Joe Biden for screwing up the rest of the pandemic, I think the vast, like maybe not Ann Coulter, but the actual voters are going to follow him right along, right back to where they were

two years ago. Yeah. And I think, and, and Trump is also doing what Youngkin successfully did in Virginia, which is saying, I got the vaccine. I liked the vaccine. I got the booster. I liked the booster, but it's up to you. I don't like the mandates, which is, you know, why do you think that so many elected Democrats have been fighting against closures during this wave? What's changed there? kids as safe as possible in the situation and that the cost of kids being out of school for the kids themselves, for the community, for the family is so high. And you look at the polling is very clear. It's like 30% support, 65% opposition to closing schools or returning to remote learning. So no one wants to be on the side of the 30% issue. Well, and the other big thing, I mean, kids over our kids unlike our kids uh have access to vaccines and if you're a vaccinated child over five then your chance of a really bad outcome is extremely

extremely small um now that what now what's the reason that the debate right now is a little messy is because a lot of these schools aren't closing because everyone's saying close them down and it's dangerous. Everyone's getting sick and a lot of teachers are getting sick and a lot of staff are getting sick and they end up recovering. A lot of them aren't going to the hospital,

but they're still out for a week or someone has COVID or a student has COVID and they shut a whole bunch of, they shut classrooms down. They shut whole schools down. They send people home. They quarantine, isolate. I mean it's like a real mess.

I mean that – you raise a very important point. There is a bit of a straw man argument here with other than a couple of notable exceptions like what was happening in Chicago a few weeks ago. Almost no one is arguing to close schools proactively because of a surge in COVID cases. Like that's not what Democratic mayors are doing, that's not what Democratic governors are doing, no one's doing that. But like, as you point out, some schools are being forced to close or have classrooms closed for the same reason that flights are getting canceled. The Starbucks by my house is closed. It's spreading so fast to so many people because it's so transmissible, even if most of those people are having very relatively minor symptoms that it is disrupting life and schools are a part of that. This is not this is not 2020 all over again.

is the politics around this. The USA Today poll from this week, do you support or oppose the following policies to slow the spread of Omicron? I thought these numbers were interesting. So 54% approval for masks in public spaces, higher than I even expected. 64% approval for social distancing in public spaces. Only 41% approval for vaccine requirements

for public spaces. It is interesting that the support for vaccine requirements for public spaces. It is interesting that the support for vaccine requirements, which started, I would say, majority support, then sort of went down to 50-50 and is now a little bit below that. You know, I guess the Republican sort of disinformation machine has been doing a really working overtime there. Support for remote learning, 29 percent. Support for a full shutdown for six weeks, 22%. That question is amazing. A global shutdown for six weeks to stop the spread forever. Who supports shutting the world down?

Well, the exaggeration was both on the world side and then to end the pandemic forever. I think one thing on the vaccine mandates, and we've seen this throughout, is that support is generally higher when the question is specific, right? Because public spaces is like, do you mean people who don't have the vaccine

can't go to the grocery store? Walk outside, yeah, yeah, yeah. But when they say for like gyms or concerts or government office buildings, support is generally much higher. It's a little higher. Yeah. How do you see the pandemic shaping the midterm campaign?

I mean, like, I hope to God that it has faded somewhat into the background. environment politically and socially and culturally in America looks more like it did in that sort of late spring, pre-Delta summer where people were getting things were starting back to normal. People were, you know, were vaccinated. It was easy to get a vaccine if you wanted one and people were living their lives again. And you just didn't have this constant, you know, yin yang between, can we do the things we want to do? Should we do the things we want to do? And you sort of have like a level of stability that seems, based on what a lot of the experts think, not guaranteed, but very possible. And if that's the case, then I think that will improve the national mood, which would be better for the party in power. I think that's right. I think

if Democrats need a message, either because the virus is still circulating or there's another variant, or because Republicans decide to make a political issue of it, I would make the message all about the vaccines. I would remember our jobs chart in 2012. Like I would carry around a chart of the death rate among vaccinated versus unvaccinated when Republicans start doing the, oh, more Americans have died under Joe Biden. And I would hit the shit out of Republicans for lying to people about the vaccines, which they have been doing for a long time now. And then Democrats should talk about

how they want to keep our schools and our economy open by making sure that more people are vaccinated so that we don't get new waves and new variants. And Republicans are standing in the way of that. It was right before- I wouldn't make it much more complicated than that. It was right before everything went down in Afghanistan where Biden went to the podium and then just kicked the living shit out of Ron DeSantis for stopping preventing local communities and schools from having mask mandates if they wanted one for.

I mean, Republicans are doing crazy stuff. They are basically paying people not to get vaccinated in Florida. If you are unvaccinated and you lose your job, it's elsewhere. They'll pay you to come to Florida. I mean, it is like, there's,

there's a real strong examples abound of them attacking vaccines, lying about vaccines, making it harder for people to get vaccines. It, they should, it should go. We should throw it right back in their face. That's why Trump is do it.

That's why Trump is starting to be, you know, more positive about the vaccines. He sees the politics. He gets it. Before we go, we're going to bring a listen to do our take appreciator segment next. But just as we were recording, the Supreme Court did hand down their decision as expected from the oral arguments. They knocked down the Biden vaccine mandate for employers. So that's not great. What do you do? What do you do for your Biden administration? I think you use the message that you just laid out for how you talk about Republicans in the fall. It is time. This is a Republican Supreme Court that is making it easier

for Republican governors and Republican politicians to prolong the pandemic. And I think, look, there are other vaccine mandates that are being upheld, particularly around health care workers, things that are directly related to the federal government. So I think and I was saying this earlier, I think you try to over the next year to two years institute vaccine mandates anywhere you can write federal level, state level for Democratic controlled states, local level, right? Like you try to just get as much done as possible. At this point, I wonder if they're going to look at requiring vaccines for getting on a plane, which I think they didn't look at before because they figured the employer

requirement would take care of that. Now that it's not going to, maybe you look at that. So again, it's going to be patchwork. It's going to be messier than we'd like. It's not going to. Maybe you look at that. So, again, it's going to be patchwork. It's going to be messier than we'd like.

But I think you try to use a lot of courts and a lot of other places have upheld vaccine requirements, including the Supreme Court in other instances. OK, when we come back, we'll bring on Alyssa for a round of Take Appreciators. All right. before we go, we're going to play another round of our favorite game, Take Appreciator. But this time, we're joined by the co-host of Hysteria and one of our favorite people on Earth, Alyssa Mastromonaco. Hey, Alyssa.

You guys, I could cry looking at you. I mean, I really... You're like the real downside of this whole COVID pandemic has been not being able to, you know, see the both of you in person. I know. Same here. Soon.

Soon, Alyssa. Soon. My hair will be brown by then. Okay. Chief Take Officer Elijah Cohn, what do we got? Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Take Appreciators. I'm going to share some notably bad punitry with you.

The producers have seen these takes. John, Dan, and Alyssa have not. They'll give their reactions and rate them on a scale of one to four politicos. Let's just jump right into it, guys. This one is hot off the presses. I just finished adding it. There's a suggestion from EJ, who works on our politics team, very topical, from the Washington Post titled, How Kyrsten Sinema Defended the Filibuster and Bipartisanship. There's the quote, Sinema also exhibited passion about something

that doesn't usually elicit such emotions in politics these days, bipartisanship and moderation. Guys, I know this one's fresh. Your reaction? I want to hear Alyssa. I want to hear Alyssa take this one's fresh your reaction i want to hear elissa i want to hear elissa take this one you guys i have real issues with her they're many fold um i believe elijah you tried to stump me but i did check out cnn before i got on here and i think in her speech she talks about the disease

of division um also you guys she gave the speech as jo as Joe Biden was on her way up to the hill. So anyway, it's the shittiest, grossest, like most disrespectful thing she could have done. I think she's a cunt. That's what I have to say. Wow. I mean, do we have to beep that? No, you don't because I'm a woman. That's the first ever use.

I'm a woman. I mean do we have to beep that that's the first ever use I'm a woman and every it was so many layers of asshole-ness that like you know that she played like a combative video game before she went down to the senate floor and was like you are a maverick you are a maverick and like bitch

you're not a maverick okay no you're trash there is all she wants to be is John and like, bitch, you're not a maverick, okay? No, you're trash. There is, all she wants to be is John McCain. Not John McCain. We knew John McCain. We ran against John McCain. She's no John McCain. She's no John McCain.

So how was that hot take? I'm guessing that's, I'm guessing you're going to give it then four playbooks? Four playbooks. Are they politicos or are they playbooks? I think we're having a... I thought they were playbooks. I think it's four playbooks? Four playbooks. Are they politicos or are they playbooks? I think we're having... I thought they were playbooks. I think it's four...

They are politicos. Whatever. Four politicos is a full playbook. Oh. I almost called you out on Twitter yesterday for this. I am sorry. I apologize.

I apologize. I'm wrong. So, yeah. So, full playbook. Full playbook. Full playbook. Get a new identity. Dan?

The best part about this take is the idea that there's no one out there making the case for bipartisanship. That's not the thing most fetishized by all people in American politics. So I give it three politicos for that reason. Yeah, I was going to say, I feel like if we're talking about Kyrsten Sinema's speech, yeah, the full playbook. If we're talking about specifically that Washington Post take, I might do three just because I want to save some gas for the next couple takes. Kyrsten Sinema's speech gets something that's actually beyond a full playbook. What is that? It's a West Wing playbook.

That's for a very small audience and hopefully a vanishingly small audience all right wow all right elijah what else you got well let's go to the future let's get out of 2022 i want to fast forward to 2024 so i think a lot of people knew this one was coming this is a piece from the new y Times titled Biden Cheney 2024. So this piece talks about Israel and how there's a large moderate-ish coalition that defeated Bibi Netanyahu's far-right government by putting aside their differences and coming together. It then argues we should do the same thing in America because democracy is on the line by having Biden run in 2024 with Liz Cheney as his running mate. Here's a quote. This is the democratic way of defeating a threat to democracy. Not doing it is how democracies die. So anyone want to guess who wrote it?

I mean, it was obviously Tom Friedman. Obviously. tom friedman obviously because because it sounds like that the opening paragraph reads like a parody that someone would write about a tom friedman column where he immediately starts talking about middle eastern politics with israel and palestine in order to talk about make his in order to make his case for a ticket that has joe biden and liz cheney liz cheney with a let's cheney who again we have said many times like good for her she's doing the right thing really respect her thinks she's a great messenger on tv um her constituency is i don't what what is liz cheney's constituency? Like, like, like

10 former Republicans at this point? The only thing I would say about this take, which really takes itself down, is what could possibly go wrong with a member of the Cheney family as vice president. See, I did see this because I replied to Pfeiffer's tweet with, when I really feel passionately about something, I go into the 90210 Dylan McKay eye roll emojis or whatever they are. And I was like, is he kidding? Also, I mean, Netanyahu was prime minister for like 15 years so it kind of like i'm all for israel but like it took them a long time to get rid of him too um and i thought

that his article would have been more compelling if he said like bernie and liz cheney now that's an interesting conversation starter but like who do b Biden and Liz Cheney together actually appeal to? It seems like he's missing something. Also, maybe, maybe the Ed board, maybe the New York Times editorial board. There's all those nerds. I mean, in fairness to Tom Friedman, as anyone who is a long term reader of his column knows, he gets all of his best ideas from cab drivers during international travel. And because of the pandemic, he's been unable to travel or get in cabs. So he's scraping

the bottom of the take barrel these days. All right. So, Poetico, what are you... I mean, I feel like he's probably a three. I'm going to go with a three. Because it was very expected. I don't expect better than this. It's on par for his takes.

I'm going with the full playbook on this one just because it was, again, the spirit of this game is take appreciators and appreciating a real triggering take. And I can't imagine a take more triggering than Tom Friedman talking about Biden and a Cheney joining forces also by making an analogy to Middle East politics. I just, I can't imagine anything more triggering. It's, they did it. He did it. Congrats to you, Tom Friedman. I'm going three. Cause I, I, I want to hold out hope that Tom Friedman is going to give us an even more Tom Friedman take before this election is over. Cool. Cool. Okay. Excellent. All right. All right, Elijah.

Last one. Here we go. So this one is from the Wall Street Journal. It's a piece titled Hillary Clinton's 2024 election comeback. The quote is just the subheader of the article, which sums it up. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have become unpopular. It may be time for a change candidate. And he guesses as to who wrote this yes yes i have a guess please doug shown that's correct um i would note that doug shown has

wrote uh this piece in the past in 2011 he wrote a similar piece uh encouraging barack obama to not run in 2012 uh in favor of hillary clinton how about it alissa should we haul out the uh should we haul out the helicopter should we um should we start calling some of the hill raisers you guys i feel like when hillary clinton saw that article in her clips she was like have you not read my new true crime thriller? She's like, even I've moved on. Like, Jesus Christ. Pokemon, go to the bookstore. Totally.

I mean, there's so many different ways to look at this. One, a little background for people who may not know who Doug Schoen is. He was the longtime consulting partner to Mark Penn, America's worst political consultant in American history. He advised Bill Clinton in his presidency, also helped lead Mike Bloomberg to spend a quarter of a billion dollars in order to win all the delegates in either American Samoa or Guam, I can't remember which, and is a frequent and very thirsty Fox News guest. Very thirsty.

But I would just say, here's one way to think about this take, which is why I think it should get the full playbook, is in order to beat Trump, we should replace the person who beat Trump with the person who lost to Trump. Just so crazy, it might work. Alyssa, what's your rating? What's your final words on this? I'm going to go with three. I'm going to go with three.

I, too, am going to go with three. I think it's a little... Partly because he wrote the same – like Elijah played out, he wrote the same column in 2012. He's getting lazy. He's getting lazy. Yeah, get a new take. Get a new take, Sean. Dan, your rating? Full playbook for this one.

Powerful. Full playbook. Powerful. I do want to say i do want to race them with you guys like i'm always watching the takes and the takes this week have made me want to upgrade this from a take to a full-blown narrative uh about you know 2024 other candidates a lot of people have been talking about this you guys make of this new narrative that we have like obviously we had it in 2012 as we just talked about. I will say that it is

sped up even from the usual pontification about presidential elections because it's the beginning of 2022. We got an election to talk about that's this year that's still several months away. 10 or

11 to be exact. And so I don't know if you people want to do some some wild pontificating. We got the midterms for you. And then then maybe you can think about 2024. I don't know. I agree. Not ready. I make that I make an exception for Donald Trump, who's everywhere.

Who's everywhere all the time. so it's hard to ignore. But on our side, take it easy. Take it easy. Cool. Well, thanks, guys, for another great edition of The Take Appreciators. Elijah, thank you. And Alyssa, thanks for joining us. Guys, I thought we were going to hit on some sex in the city and just like that hot takes because I was making an appearance.

But I guess we're going to stick with Liz Cheney and Joe Biden. Alyssa, can you give us your hot take on and just like that since Lovett talks about it on Lovett's not here because it's the Thursday pod, but he talks about it now every he talks about it as much as Tommy talks about Emily in Paris. So I know it's love to hear the whole thing. It's very confusing, quite frankly. Mostly, I think that Carrie has lost her sense of humor entirely. And I'm not entirely loving how they're depicting women of a certain age because like, I don't know. Let Carrie have a hip replacement because her fucking hip is fucked up. Why does it have to be a genetic disorder that she has?

I just mostly I'm in it for Miranda and and to see, you know, to see if Carrie laughs by the end or makes me laugh. That's kind of where I'm at. Her husband died three episodes ago. Okay. It was like six episodes ago, Pfeiffer. Keep up. She's still not making me laugh. And she was so judgy to Miranda.

So what? Like, if she really didn't want to pee in the Snapple bottle, she could have just yelled, hey, Miranda. She didn't have to be so dramatic about it and then slut shame Miranda, who's clearly going through some shit. Also, Miranda, too, let her hair go gray. Just saying. Also, Alyssa, you're a much smarter and funnier podcast host. They should have asked you about doing the whole podcast storyline. What even is that? What even is that podcast storyline?

It's not funny. Terrible. It's not funny. Terrible. It's not reflective of the work that goes into them either. I mean, that's my greatest critique. It's just your poor depiction of the podcasting industry. I mean, I really feel maligned.

Grievance. Now we've turned to grievance here at the end of the episode. Oh, you guys, thanks for having me. It was such a a delight to see your faces if only for a few hot take minutes let's do it again soon i mean i miss i miss you i'm around okay good uh thank you and uh we will see you guys next week have a good weekend bye everyone hot 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 Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.