Pod Save America - “DeSantis Cancels Disney.”

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Ron DeSantis cancels Disney as Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow teaches her party how to win the culture wars, Dr. Bob Wachter joins to talk about the fate of the federal mask mandate and more, and later, it’s time for another round of Take Appreciator, Psaki-Doocy edition.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, Florida Republicans try to cancel Disney as a Michigan Democrat teaches her party how to win the culture wars. Dr. Bob Wachter joins to talk about the fate of the federal mask mandate and more. And later, it's time for another round of Take Appreciator, Socky Doocy edition. But first, check out the latest Take Line, where Jason talks to Salt Lake Tribune journalist

Andy Larson about the Jazz's Game 1 win, and Sports Illustrated journalist Chris Mannix about the Celts Net series. Also this week on Stuck with Damon Young, Damon is talking all about money. He's joined by Samantha Irby and Mirsa Baradaran to unpack all the ways we discuss and don't discuss

money in society. Listen to all episodes of Stuck with Damon Young for free only on Spotify. Also, gotta have you guys sign up for Vote Save America. We're trying to get 40,000 by the end of May so that we can be ready for November. It is votesaveamerica.com slash midterms. You can go, you can pick a region. I'm in the western region. That's my region. Dan, what are you? You're southeast? You love Florida. That's why you have the south. I'm in the south because I go where Stacey Abrams tells me to go, and so I pick the south. Yeah, you tried to trade Florida to love it, but it didn't work.

I stand by that decision, and the ensuing podcast will show why. All right, votesaveamerica.com slash midterms all right let's get to the news as you know the republican party's new kink is using the power of the state to punish private sector businesses just for the crime of expressing different political beliefs on thursday florida governor ron desantis signed a bill into law to cancel a 50 year old economicold economic deal with Disney, the state's largest employer and most beloved brand, over the company's criticism of a law that targets gay and trans kids.

I think as many of you know, the Florida legislature is meeting this week to consider the congressional reapportionment plan for Florida for the next 10 years. And that is what they've been called upon to do. But I am announcing today that we are expanding the call of what they are going to be considering this week. And so, yes, they will be considering the congressional map, but they also will be considering termination of all special districts that were enacted in Florida prior to 1968. And that includes the Reedy Creek Improvement District. Dan, would you like to weigh in on the wisdom of Ron DeSantis and Florida

Republicans trying to cancel Disney? Can we first weigh in on just how lame a messenger Ron DeSantis is? Yeah, he's trying to be Trump, but he's really not. That's not Trump. That's a cheap imitation. That is like he would struggle to get a job as a public access news anchor. Like that is just really, I mean, he really leaned into the Reedy Creek District whatever at the end. Yeah, it's good messaging. Everyone was clear about what that was all about. I mean, people in all sorts of MAGA diners are talking about the Reedy Creek thing. It is dominating conversations.

Just ask any New York Times reporter. No, I think in all seriousness, I think that this is it's sort of wild that Ron DeSantis, who's up for reelection this year, a bunch of Florida state legislators who are up for reelection this year and plan to make their entire political career in Florida are waging war with one of America's most respected companies and one of the largest employers in all of Florida. And the thing that is so fucking alarming about that is it's good politics for them. That is the thing. is the thing, that it is there in a normal world forever and ever and ever, politicians would cater to the largest employers in their states or their state's largest industries. That's usually a bad thing nationally. It's why New Jersey senators for a long time were overly sympathetic to the pharmaceutical companies based in New Jersey. People from Delaware are overly sympathetic to the credit card companies based in Delaware and on and on and on and on. But here in Florida, they're taking on Disney.

And I think it says something that is worth Democrats sort of understanding, which is it's sort of proof positive that all politics are national now. of adulation from national right-wing media figures outweighs the risk of a negative editorial from the Orlando Sentinel or some local stakeholder or chamber of commerce person saying something negative about you or weighing in against you. And I think that speaks to so much of what is driving American politics now is happening right here in Florida. And I think the second point is that we have to understand this not as a fight against a corporation, but as a fight against change, right? These are Republicans who are in the death throes of a battle against the inexorable tide of cultural change, where the country is becoming more tolerant, more progressive, and they are trying to fight to, quote unquote, make America

great again, or make America less tolerant again, or go back to a period of time that was different. And Disney plays an important role in that because it's so intertwined in our cultural fabric. So I'm trying to figure out if it is good politics for them. It is unquestionably good politics with the MAGA base, right? Because everything is that Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis says, right? But like, I don't know. I know that the polling about the bill itself is mixed, partly because it depends on how you word it and what you include in the poll question so it's sort of a complicated issue but like the idea that now the government is going to punish private sector businesses for holding political beliefs that the republican party doesn't agree with uh seems like a bridge too far like it might have been a bit of an overreach for a lot of people. I don't know. Well, that is correct, but someone has to make that argument. Nothing is inherently good

or bad politics. It is just how the argument plays itself out and which arguments are made and which arguments are heard. And one of the reasons why the polling has been mixed on this bill is there are not enough people with loud enough voices making the right argument against it. And so that is the issue. This is an opportunity for Democrats. I don't know. I'm not necessarily saying it's an opportunity. It means that we're going to all of a sudden defeat Ron DeSantis or a bunch of these legislators in gerrymandered districts. But there is an argument to be made here, but not enough people are making the argument. But there is an argument to be made here, but not enough people are making the argument.

Yeah. I mean, again, Florida Republicans voted against banning all sex education for kids in kindergarten through third grade. And instead decided to pass a law that specifically bans discussion about sexual identity so that a teacher can be sued for merely answering a question about a student's gay parents. And now, because a company said that they disagree with that law, their government has threatened to punish them in a way that raises people's taxes, potentially. None of that seems very popular. But you're right. People have to make that argument as opposed to just being like, Ron DeSantis, what he did is bad and crazy and who cares? You have to really actually make the argument about why it's bad. And there's a lot to work with. I just want to say there's a lot to work with. I mean, it's also worth noting that when we say Disney said they didn't support the

law, that's giving them a lot more credit than they deserve. They put out a fucking statement. Under pressure, right? Under pressure, right. Yeah, no. What happened here is Dizzy's new CEO and their new head of public affairs, who's this like old Washington hand who sort of like hung around at bipartisan salons and parties when he worked in D.C., completely misunderstood who the Republican Party was. So they tried to take no stance, thinking that that would appease the Republicans. They then took a half-hearted stance against the bill, and now the Republicans want to cancel them, literally, putting the cancel on cancel culture. which Facebook should have learned this lesson,

Disney's learning this lesson, hell, the New York Times should have learned this lesson a long time ago, is appeasement is a strategy doomed to fail when you're dealing with a bunch of bad faith people. But also, I mean, there's something dangerous here, which is Ron DeSantis and Republicans are basically sending a message to all private businesses, which is like, you disagree with the ruling party

and you will be punished. And that is, you know, that's getting to be sort of authoritarian shit right there. Because today it's a message for businesses, tomorrow it's a message for individuals. If you're on the side of a political issue from the ruling party and you put out a statement, just a statement saying you disagree with us, there will be retribution. And I don't think a lot of people want to live in that country. I actually would say the majority of Americans don't want to live in that country. And if you're on the side of kids and teachers and parents, the Republicans will come after you.

That's what this is. And just in case any of you are wondering if Ted Cruz would weigh in on this, fear not. Here's a clip i think there are people who are misguided trying to drive you know disney stepping in saying you know in every episode now they're gonna have you know you know mickey and pluto going at it like really thank you for that image senator but it's just like come on guys like like these are kids and and you know you could always shift to Cinemax if you want that. What kind of Cinemax is Ted Cruz getting? There's Mickey and Pluto.

What's going on there? I mean, Ted Cruz, like, once again, if we had our Fox News that would do Fox News style headlines, it would be Ted Cruz reveals preference for animated mouse on dog porn. Ted Cruz, famous for liking a tweet that showed porn. I guess it was his staffer. Sorry. Oh, sure. Yeah, sure it was. Sure it was. Yeah, I just Sure it was. Yeah. I read the tweet for the articles. Ted Cruz does have an amazing ability to take whatever the argument is and then do it in the

dumbest, least appealing, least persuasive form humanly possible. Yeah, which is very clippable. That's why Ted Cruz gets a lot of airtime here. Yeah. We probably all win with that agreement but again it's it's it's back to what we're just talking about with desantis that like you know first of all none of that's happening with disney movies second of all if a disney movie is showing something that you don't want to show your kids don't fucking watch it it's a free country like the republic this is this is such republican overreach and that they have now decided they don't want to just you know fuck with public sector stuff

they actually want to go in and think that the government's job is to tell the private sector to tell parents to tell doctors to tell everyone what to do with their lives how to live their lives who to love who to marry who to. This is what the Republican Party is now. This is the party of limited government and personal freedom. This is where they are now. This is where they've moved. There is freedom of speech as long as you say what we want you to say. Right. Yeah. That's bullshit argument, freedom of speech. They're not for freedom of speech. They're for making sure that you believe what Republicans believe. All right. We've talked a lot about how Democrats should respond to these Republican culture wars. And this week, Michigan State Senator Mallory McMorrow showed us how it's done.

After a Republican colleague sent out a fundraising email accusing her of being a troll who wants to groom kindergartners and teach that eight-year-olds are responsible for slavery, she gave an impassioned five-minute speech that has now been viewed millions and millions of times. Here's a clip. I didn't expect to wake up yesterday to the news that the senator from the 22nd district had overnight accused me by name of grooming and sexualizing children in an email fundraising for herself. So I sat on it for a while wondering why me? And then I realized, because I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme. Because you can't claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of, quote, parental rights if another parent is standing up to say no. So then what?

Then you dehumanize and marginalize me. You say that I'm one of them. You say she's a groomer. She supports pedophilia. She wants children to believe that they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they're white. Well, here's a little bit of background about who I really am. My mom taught me at a very young age that Christianity and faith was about being part of a community, about recognizing our privilege and blessings and doing what we can to be of service to others, especially people who are marginalized, targeted, and who had less, often unfairly. important than performative nonsense like being seen in the same pew every Sunday or writing Christian in your Twitter bio and using that as a shield to target and marginalize already marginalized people. Dan, why do you think the speech went viral? And what, if anything, can Democrats learn from it? I think it went viral because it's something that we have not

heard enough, which is authentic moral outrage at morally outrageous conduct and rhetoric. Like what the Republicans are doing. You think we've been short on moral outrage? I think we have been short on authentic moral outrage from Democratic politicians, for sure. Yeah, from politicians. Yes. I mean, look, I'm not saying that there's not a we are not awash in moral outrage on Twitter. Look, I'm not saying that we are not awash in moral outrage on Twitter. But among the people that we have sent to Washington and to state capitals and elsewhere to fight back against the people doing this morally outrageous conduct, you don't hear

it enough. And it was authentic. It used her biography and her values as a way to push back on it. And it does connect. And other people have drawn this connection, but it does connect with the Senator Brian Schatz speech about Josh Hawley, is what Republicans are doing is so cruel and so disgusting and so dangerous and so dishonest that you have to call it out for what it is. And you have to do it with equal amounts of passion that they bring.

You have to do it with as much passion as they bring cynicism to it. And I think we need to see more of it and more politicians doing it in a way that I think feels to the listener and to the audience and to Democrats equivalent to the threat we are facing, if that makes sense, equivalent to the conduct that we are trying to combat. So I think that the most important ingredient in that speech is exactly what you point out. She called out the bullshit, she hit back, and she hit back with passion. I think that is how you get noticed. That is how you get people's attention. That is how you make sure that you are drawing on something that people

feel in their gut about this moment, particularly Democrats and liberals. I also saw a number of people on Twitter. I tweeted the speech like everyone else did. And a bunch of people said, you know, I'm more conservative and I still found that speech very persuasive. And I do think that there is a way to direct that kind of passion. Because I think, you know, I've made a joke about the moral outrage. But we haven't seen enough of it from Democratic politicians. But we hear it all the time from people, moral outrage. And I think figuring out exactly how to direct it is important.

You mentioned her identity. She said a few times in that speech, I am a straight, white, Christian, suburban mom. Part of what I think what she was trying to do is she refused to let Republicans own being Christian or being moms or being suburbanites, right? She happens to identify all of those things, but she redefined why you can be all of those things and still be a progressive. She talked about universal values that the vast majority of people in this country should hold, right? She talked about, we want to, she wants to raise her daughter to be curious, empathetic, and kind. And she said, she talked about how children, we want our children to feel seen and heard and supported and not targeted and marginalized.

And that is a feeling that every parent who has children wants for their child. That is just that is more universal than what you might hear from any one party. And then she did something that Anat Shankar Osorio and Heather McGee and everyone who believes in sort of the race class narrative has tried to tell Democrats to do, which is at one point towards the end of the speech, she says, people who are different are not the reason that our roads are in bad shape or that health care costs are too high or that teachers are leaving the profession. And what she's trying to say is that the other party, that other state senator who sent out that fundraising email, she is trying to divide us and she is trying to target people for the purpose of political gain and to distract from the problems that everyone in this country wants to solve. They are the ones obsessed with sex

and sexual identity and race and all of these other issues. That is what the Republicans are obsessed with right now. They're obsessed with these culture wars when there are a lot of people in this country who just want to be respected and seen and supported, and then they want a government that's going to fix the fucking problems in this country that people really care about. And they have, you know, Heather and Anat and all those people have found through a lot of research

that that message, calling out the bullshit, calling out their divisions, calling out their intentions, and then talking about a lot of the economic challenges that all of us face is actually the most persuasive, not just for our own base, but for a lot of voters in the middle. and at sort of the appeal of this speech, is that it takes an issue where Republicans are trying to divide us and uses it as a way to unify people, to bring people together, to demonstrate that the broader viewpoint is what is within the American values or family values, is to define them broadly in a way that is appealing to lots of people. And I think the political opportunity here, and this connects to Republicans fighting over a tax break for Disney, whether, you know, and frankly, I have no idea whether Disney should have a tax break. Our policies are generally overly favorable to corporations anyway.

But the fact that they're focusing on Disney and the private lives of Pluto and Mickey or whatever else you want to do is evidence that they are focused on everything other than the things you care about evidence that they are focused on everything other than the things you care about. They're not focused on inflation. They are not focused on the economy. They're not focused on gas prices. They're not focused on healthcare. They're not focused on the cost of your prescription drugs. Democrats on the overwhelming majority of these issues,

even putting aside even however you poll Florida. But that is an argument. I know the Florida law is one that we can win if we try to win it. They have chosen unpopular issues that are low priorities. That is a flashing green light to proceed ahead with confidence and aggressive messaging about it, right? All this whole thing about your Democrats through the culture wars. There's a whole thing in Playbook about how this speech is causing Democrats to revisit what they take on the culture wars. And that conversation is always happening completely removed from people who actually engage in politics. When your opponent does unpopular things that people do not think are important, you hammer that home. And that is not a choice between inflation and culture wars or gas prices and standing up for kids and teachers. It's all part of the same thing. And this speech should be a roadmap

for people on how to begin to do that. Yeah, and look, this isn't, oftentimes I think the conversation is too simplistic. And this speech appealed to people within the Democratic Party on all sides of the debates that we've been having. People who think Democrats should hit harder, people who think Democrats should have a broader appeal.

People who think Democrats should excite the base, right? Like this speech checked all of those boxes, which should show people that it's possible to have an effective and unifying message as a party. Because you could see the people were almost like annoyed that they were all agreeing with each other on liking this speech. You know, like James Carville liked it, who thought that Democrats were, you know, he was like complaining

about woke language. He thought it was a textbook example of a speech we should do. Very liberal and progressive people love this speech. People who thought that Democrats aren't fighting hard enough should like this speech, right? So it is totally possible to deliver a message that works, that unifies the party, that excites the base, that appeals to a broad group of people, and that is effective. And I think that the state senator showed us that during that speech. Do you know who could give that speech and should give that speech? Joe Biden. Joe Biden.

Joe Biden. I mean, it's just like, I'm not picking on Joe Biden. I mean, Joe Biden has a lot of shit on his plate. He has limited opportunities to communicate. Every time he goes out there, he rightly has to talk about Ukraine and inflation and all these other things. is deeply offended by how Republicans are targeting trans kids and gay kids and teachers and everyone else like that. You just know that offends him to his core as a Biden, as he would say. And I think there will be a moment where that comes out. I hope it's sooner rather than later, but it is like, that's exactly what we want to see. And that would be, I think it would get equal levels of praise. Joe Biden has never been the most enthusiastic culture warrior, but he is a very willing and very powerful moral advocate. And this is an opportunity for moral advocacy that I think would have

political value. And someone who, like our old boss, does not want to cede the ground of patriotism or religion or, you know, or any of those things to Republicans, right? Like this goes back to shades of Obama's 2004 convention speech when he stood up and decided that like Republicans weren't going to get to own patriotism, that he was going to talk about why he loves this country, but that he loves this country for a bunch of reasons that progressives found appealing because of our diversity. Right. And so, like, I do think that that not ceding the ground to Republicans on a whole bunch of these issues and redefining them as is what progressives deeply believe in is is key to this whole messaging conversation. So there was a political story this week that has

White House officials saying that even though Biden has been consumed by Ukraine, as you just mentioned, he's about to refocus on the economy and inflation. We got to pivot. We're working up to a pivot. And there's also a bunch of advice from Democratic strategists that can sort of be summed up by Simon Rosenberg, who's quoted in the piece. And he said, Democrats have one overriding political communications priority now. We have to convince voters that things are better because of our time in power. What do you think of that advice? Like Simon's a very, very smart guy. And he's not wrong that convincing voters that their decision to put Democrats in power has mattered in their lives and that things are better than if Donald Trump

and Republicans had stayed in power. I just think that is necessary but insufficient to get where we need to go. People are incredibly frustrated at the economy and that every poll, every focus group shows that is driven by legitimate, real feelings about inflation. We can argue about the media coverage, which has certainly not done a great job of covering the nuances of the economy. There's a Navigator poll out today which shows that only 3 in 10 Americans think the economy has created more jobs than it's lost in the last year, which is sort of a searing indictment of the media and just the ecosystem in the United States. But it's hard to tell people things.

We may think so much better if they don't think things are better. So you have to, I think, at least explain what you've done. But the point of that is not to say, please thank me at the polls in November. It is to say, we said we were going to do those things. We did those things. They were good things. And you should use that as a reason to believe us when we say we were going to do those things. We did those things. They were good things. And you should use that as a reason to believe us when we say we're going to do these other good things, right?

It is proof of what you are going to do, not a reason in and of itself to get votes in November. It's not Dems deliver. It's Dems are going to deliver. And the reason you know we're going to deliver is because we did deliver, right? It is a little more nuanced than sort of hashtag political advocacy. Again, what's more effective as a message? Your concerns aren't real and you've been duped by the media or I'll fight to lower your costs, my opponent wants to raise them. to raise them. I mean, I just, it's really hard. Look, people, you know, that poll that you just mentioned. Yeah. So people's views of how many jobs the economy created are off. But there was

also the, you know, the Navigator poll also showed this week that a majority of Americans feel concerned about their own financial situation. Yeah. You know, and it's one thing to say, oh, the media didn't quite cover the jobs boom well enough. And so people's perceptions are warped. Totally true. But you can't tell people that their own views of their own financial situation are wrong and that they have just been duped when that is what they feel when they are looking at prices of things. And I think all you can do there is say, look, these fucking again, Rick Scott wants to raise taxes on 100 million people and take your health care away. That's their plan. We have a different plan.

You elect more Democrats. You give us a bigger majority. We're going to lower your costs on health care, on prescription drugs, on energy, across a whole bunch of issues. The reason why I think this is hard is, you know, Biden's been out. He's done a bunch of events on things the bipartisan infrastructure deal has delivered. But the reason that is hard, and I think I have been very excited to see the Biden White House more aggressively start drawing contrast with Republicans over the Brick Scott tax plan, is I was sort of struck by something Ezra Klein said in this really great interview he did with

our friends Anat Shankar-Sario and Sean McElwee on his pod. And in general, we don't recommend non-crooked media pods on this pod, but we will in this case, because I think it was an excellent conversation. But Ezra said, you can only make politics about the issues and controversies that unleash enough energy to capture public attention. And that is a thing that should be imprinted on the brains of every person who works in politics, which is, you see this in that Navator poll. Everyone loves the Biden economic agenda, except the problem is the Biden economic agenda, because it is not in danger of becoming a law anytime soon, is not something that is going to capture public attention. So you have to frame it in a way to capture public attention. The way you do that is with conflict. And I actually think that that

brings us back to that speech we were just talking about, because what is capturing public attention right now are these culture wars. You have to connect those culture wars to the things you want to talk about, the things that you want to do and the things Republicans want to do that people don't like. And so it is combining all of those things, and you have to work from what is getting attention. And you're not just going to be a go around and just saying something is different than having people hear things. Right. If Mallory McMorrow got up there and started yelling about how the roads haven't been fixed and health care costs are too high and teasers are leaving and she didn't mention any of this, none of us would know that that

speech happened who weren't in the room at the time. Even though that would have been a very popular message, should it have been polled? Voters would say, yes, I'm very glad that she said that. I find that very popular. But we live in a world where you have to break through with your message through a very fractured media environment. And the only way to do that is to hitch your wagon to some of the culture war debates that are happening right now. And by the way, it's good to stand up for children, you know, and make sure that children are heard and seen and supported and not targeted and marginalized, which is what she said. Okay, when we come back, I will talk to Dr. Bob Wachter about where we are in the pandemic.

This week, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Florida struck down the federal mask requirement on planes, trains, buses, and other forms of transportation. And while the Biden administration has announced that they will appeal the ruling, the mandate is currently gone and may not come back. Here to talk to us about how to think about assessing our risk and our pandemic response going forward, the chair of UC San Francisco's Department of Medicine, Dr. Bob Wachter. Dr. Wachter, welcome back to the pod. It's a great pleasure to be here, John. Thank you. So the DOJ is appealing the ruling because the CDC clearly wants the authority to protect people during a public health emergency, which it seems obvious to me that they should have. I know you agree, but the CDC was also about to reassess whether the mask mandate was still necessary in a few

weeks anyway. Under what conditions do you think it would be appropriate for the CDC to drop the mandate? Yeah, I think it's a tough call the CDC to drop the mandate? Yeah, I think it's a tough call. First of all, absolutely. I think the idea that a judge could take away the authority of a federal agency to enact a mandate in the middle of a public health crisis is really dangerous. Dangerous for the next pandemic, for a bad variant. So I'm glad that they're appealing it. In terms of what the CDC should do or what's the right call,

I think we've gotten to a point where it's a closer call than it was six months ago, in part because individuals have so many tools at their disposal to keep themselves safe. So I think the reason they kicked the can down the road till May 3rd was to see what's happening with this mini surge. And I think the answer is we're seeing an uptick in cases,

but not seeing an uptick in hospitalizations. And so I think it's a reasonable decision to pull back the mandate. Certainly a lot of the public does not want a mandate. And I think individuals for the most part can keep themselves pretty safe on public transit. Yeah, so that's sort of the public policy on this. Let's talk about our individual risk.

Like I've seen some experts say that, you know, it's less risky to go maskless on a plane than it is in a crowded restaurant, especially, you know, when the plane is in the air because the ventilation is actually quite good. What are your thoughts on that individual risk assessment on a plane? Yeah. I mean, to make a decision about whether to wear a mask on a plane requires that you multiply about 22 fractions times each other and we should have all listened in fourth grade and when they tried to teach us how to do that it's really hard i mean to me here's my general

rule my general rule is that i'm now comfortable not wearing a mask in indoor spaces if i'm with a group of people who i know to be fully vaccinated and I know would not be there if they felt sick, and it's worth it not to wear a mask. So eating dinner with friends or family, there's no way that I figured out how to eat dinner without taking the mask off. To me, that's worth it. It's worth the risk. If I got COVID from that, I'd be pissed. But I would say, all right, that was a reasonable decision. To be in a closed tube for six hours with 150 strangers whose vaccination status you don't know and keep your mask off, I think is riskier than I want to be. So, you know, compared to an aluminum tube where you're sitting shoulder to shoulder with 150 people, a plane is safer than another version of that that didn't have such good ventilation and filtration.

But I think it's important to people get a little magical about this and say the plane is perfectly safe because it's got such good ventilation. It doesn't. It's not perfectly safe. There have been plenty of cases of transmission on planes. So to me, with the amount of COVID in the environment, in a flight with 150 people on it, there's a pretty good chance that someone on the plane has COVID. Maybe they're the person sitting next to you. I don't particularly wanna talk to the people next to me.

Maybe I'm antisocial. So I prefer keeping my mask on during the flight. I'll take it off for a minute or two to eat something or chug a drink. But that's my general take on it, that I think it's reasonable to not have a mandate and force everyone to do it. But for an individual, I think the risk is high enough that it's worth still being safe in closed indoor spaces with people whose vaccination status you don't know. Now, say you're someone who's decided, okay, I'm definitely going to wear a mask on a plane still, and I want to wear a well-fitting KN95 or N95 on the plane.

Now, you're a little extra nervous because the mask mandate has dropped, and there's a bunch of people who aren't wearing masks on that plane. How worried should you be? Because part of me thinks, look, before when the mask mandate was still in effect, it was a mask mandate that like cloth masks counted, which we know now with Omicron aren't all that protective. People were taking their mask down eating for, you know, an hour at a time here and there. So if you can one way masking with a well-fitted KN95 or 95 still keep you pretty protected

on a plane if a lot of other people aren't wearing masks? Absolutely. And part of the reason I know that is I'll go into the hospital to take care of a patient who I know has COVID. Not like on an airplane where the person might have COVID. I know they have COVID. I wear a well-fitting N95 and the number of cases of transmission from infected patients to healthcare providers is really quite small. When we saw a lot of it early in the pandemic, it was before there was testing, it was when hospitals are chaotic, but it doesn't happen very much. If you are fully vaccinated and boosted and you are wearing a well-fitting N95 or equivalent,

I think you're safe. And I agree with you completely that it's not like it was perfect. Everyone was masking perfectly, you know, two days ago and now they're not. Right. You know, I mean, people seem to have this ability to eat and drink for six hours at a time. It's really impressive. So, I mean, I sort of went onto the plane knowing that it's safer than it would be because most of the people are wearing masks, but many of them are wearing crummy masks. Many of them are not wearing them well. They're eating, they're

drinking. So I think it's not exactly right that it went from incredibly safe to incredibly unsafe over the course of a day. Yeah. I sometimes worry that we spend a lot of time and energy talking and arguing about masks when by far the most effective mitigations against Omicron, especially are boosters and treatments like Paxlovid, which not everyone has knowledge about or easy access to. What do you think? Well, I think it's an and rather than an or. I don't like the duality that some people are pushing, which is like vaccines are more important than masks. I think that's right. I think everybody should get vaccinated and should get boosted.

I do think that wearing a mask in a risky space on top of it is reasonable. And we don't really talk about, you should use either an airbag or seatbelts. We say that the combo is better than either one alone. And so I think the most important thing by far is that you are vaccinated and boosted. Certainly the first booster is a no-brainer.

The second booster is a little bit closer of a call. I got mine. I think it's reasonable to get if you're eligible. I think it's reasonable to wait as well if you're at very low risk. PaxLavid is really, really effective. So it's another tool that if you do happen to get COVID, if you can get access to PaxLavid, it lowers your chance of a bad outcome by 90%. So it's the combo of all of these layers of protection

that really is why COVID is no longer nearly as great a threat as it was a year ago. But yeah, at a public policy level, if you could only push one thing, you would push vaccination and boost. But I don't think we can walk and chew gum. We can push that, we can push only push one thing, you would push vaccination and boost. But I don't think, you know, we can walk and chew gum. We can push that. We can push packs of it, but also tell people, particularly if you're at high risk, it is reasonable to wear a mask in situations that

are risky. So just zooming out on where we are in the pandemic right now, it seems like about half the country was infected with BA1. BA2 is even more transmissible, is now driving case increases among the people who didn't get BA1. I noticed yesterday that we get now BA4 and BA5 are even more transmissible than BA2, and they're starting to drive case increases in South Africa, which means that, you know, weeks from now, they'll eventually be here too. You got places like China instituting inhumane lockdowns that still aren't preventing an Omicron surge there. Like, it does seem like this thing is going to keep spreading and keep becoming more transmissible until it finds every last person. Like, do you agree with that?

And then if so, how should that inform our behavior and our public policy? Yeah, I don't agree that it's going to find all of us. I'm, you know, I'm two years into it. I haven't gotten COVID, I don't think, and I'd like to keep it that way. And I'm going to do my darndest to keep it that way within reason. I'm traveling freely. I'm having dinner with friends, but I still am trying to be careful in risky situations. So I, you know, the picture you just painted is pretty depressing, but probably not that far off. And the thing that might be the most depressing is prior surges. Let's say there's a new variant that is more transmissible and we're seeing an uptick in cases.

Prior surges then led to a reaction on the part of policymakers and individuals. It's like, oh, man, it's coming. It's getting bad. I am going to be careful again, or I'm going to get that booster. It's pretty clear now that for many people, they are quote over it. And that's really dangerous because it means they will not, even if you say it's okay to begin letting your guard down now, because the caseloads are lower and hospitals are not overwhelmed. You know, part of our protection is that we'll act rationally if things start going sour. And that's my worry.

That's my biggest worry, actually, that people will be complacent, will just be tired of everything. They're fatigued. That's understandable. Nobody wants to wear a mask, but we will not react appropriately if we start seeing a significant uptick in in cases and you know i had a reporter

ask me the other day like when are we going to stop talking about this and i said when you stop calling me it's like i mean it is going to be a thing for the foreseeable future you know i think we have got to the stage where it's no longer the first item on the news every day people are beginning to want to get on with their lives that's understandable but yeah i do think we're going to have this sort of rolling set of threats that that come through and uh we're gonna have to learn to live with a version of this this may be about as good as it gets the way we are now for the foreseeable future which is a pretty terrible thing to think but it's a hell of a lot better than it was a year ago right and i and i do think even if not everyone gets infected it does

seem like most people get exposed and and it seems like the most important thing is if you're going to get exposed to COVID, you want to do so where you are vaccinated, up to date on all your boosters, you make sure you have access to treatment if you need it. And it does seem like that message, because, you know, we're so far behind on boosters in this country, hasn't been getting through. What do you think the federal government should be doing right now that they're not currently doing? I think they're doing a pretty darn good job. It's confusing. People are tired. The partisanship is really problematic. I think figuring out, is there a better booster out there is really important

because the latest studies of the second booster which showed that two months after it it was no longer working to prevent symptomatic infection that's pretty disheartening so it it does seem like omicron has figured out its way at least partly around our vaccines we got to come up with better ones there's a lot of research going into it paxlovid or maybe even a better version of packs of it is really important so making it as freely available as possible to people and getting the word out i mean there are a lot of doctors that don't really understand it and aren't using it well i mean it's a miracle drug it lowers your probability of getting super sick and dying by 90 percent including in

immunosuppressed people so that's really important i think the messaging on masking has to be better even if you don't have to here's why you should in these kinds of settings. And giving people permission to say, and here's why it's reasonable not to in these kinds of settings. It's not like we're being doctrinaire and you need to act like it's March 2020. I think all of those are really important. And unfortunately, it's not one thing. It's sort of, and then, you know, then thinking about this in terms of the long haul, what is our system to monitor variants, to know that things are getting worse when there's so much home testing, you can't really

trust the case counts. That's important. Ventilation is important. There's a lot to do here. But I think the administration has handled things really well, given the complexity of all of the variables and all of the moving targets. And the minute you think you have a handle on it, there's a new variant and a new curve ball. It's pretty tricky. Yeah. So last question, just maybe your best guess on timelines for a couple

important developments that we need here. One, you mentioned Omicron specific boosters. Do you think maybe by the fall, they'll be ready with those or? Yeah, there was a study or at least moderna released some early results the other day of a rejiggered booster uh that was a mix of the original and and and targeting a part of omicron and it seemed to work better than the the original uh the original vaccines and that's the first time they've been playing around with rejiggered vaccines for months makes all the sense in the world that they'd be able to come up with something better and more targeted. None of them seem to work better than the original. So this does seem to work better.

My guess is if you, you know, I just got my second boost two weeks ago. When it's time for my third boost, my guess, which will probably be the summer or fall, my guess is I'll be getting a different vaccine than the one I got two weeks ago. Vaccines for kids under five. I have a 21 month old, been really waiting for this one. What do you think by the summer? Like, daddy, I want my vaccine. Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, they keep pushing back the timeline. I think they're working on it really, really hard.

You gotta get it right. I mean, you gotta get the dose right. So it's not too high and causes fever in all the kids, which is a problem. Obviously not too low, which was what happened on the first test. It seems like they're closing in on it. It seems like summer is a reasonable timeline for that. And then the last one, I know a lot of people are concerned about this, long COVID treatments or even just studies about how much vaccines reduce your risk of long COVID in the Omicron era? Yeah, I mean, the problem with long COVID

is almost by definition, you have to wait a while to see what happens and study it. I now think about long COVID in two different buckets, and this is different than I would have said two months ago. I now think about what are the chances that I'm gonna feel crummy three months after I got my infection? And I think the best studies say that is somewhere between 10 and 40 percent of people will still feel have a

symptom brain fog fatigue something a few months out and that that risk is lowered by about half with vaccination not to zero so still five or ten percent the second bucket for long covet which i didn't worry about that much two months ago is in the last month there have been four studies that looked at the one-year outcome of people who got covid and when you compare them to people who didn't have covid the rate of heart attacks the rate of strokes the rate of blood clots the rate of diabetes were all higher so there may be now this was pre-omicron because we don't know what the one-year outcome of omicron is because it hasn't been around for a year so maybe omicron will be more benign maybe omicron and a vaccinated person will be more benign but i think at least for me part people say why are you so wimpy about

getting covid don't you know it's quote just like a cold first of all it's not just like a cold in a lot of people second of all i really don't want to get long COVID. That seems pretty unpleasant. Third of all, I really cannot say with any degree of security that there is not an increased risk, maybe comparable to being a smoker or having high blood pressure, of having some bad long-term outcomes, increasing my chance of a heart attack or a stroke or diabetes. Until we know that for sure, I think you have to respect this virus even if we've gotten to a point that we're not as worried that you're going to get super sick and die the way we were a year ago more research i mean they're putting a lot of money into it i think we will learn more and more of it about it as it goes along it's a great reason to be vaccinated not

only it lowers the probability of long covet but probably more importantly it lowers the probability to get covet yeah can't get long code if you didn't get COVID. So we need to know more about it. At this point, there really is no proven treatment for people with long COVID. There are long COVID clinics that are trying a whole variety of things. And I think it's almost sort of experimenting on each one, trying stuff to see whether it works. But that is what I now am afraid of from a COVID infection, much more than getting very sick and dying of the acute infection. Dr. Wachter, always appreciate your analysis and advice. I know you got a standing O at Love It or Leave It in San Francisco a couple

weeks ago. Will we see you at the Pod Save America show in Oakland in June? I would love to be there. That would be great if I'm going to get another standing. My wife was sitting there like, oh my God, people actually pay attention to you. If that's how we get you there, that's how we get you there. We'll promise a standing up.

Love to. Thanks so much, John. Thanks, Dr. Rockner. Take care. All right, we're back. And before we go, our chief take officer, Elijah Cohen, is back for one more round of Take Appreciators. All right.

Look at this, Elijah. Nice hat, man. You go to one Red Sox game. That's all it took? Yeah, well, I had a great time. Red Sox are. That's all it took? Yeah, well, I had a great time. Red Sox are a historical organization, and I'm staunchly an anti-Nets guy, so I'm going for the Celtics right now. Have your feelings about Tom Brady changed at all?

No. God. Guys, great to be back. Welcome to Take Appreciators. I'm going to run through some takes that have come to you fresh out of the content industrial complex. The producers have seen these takes John and Dan have not. They'll get the reactions and rate them on a scale of one to four

politicos with four politicos being the worst. Thanks to John Apatow for pointing out that we never established what is the wrong end of that scale in this setup. So John and Dan, are you ready? I'm ready as I'll ever be. I've never been more ready for something so important. All right.

John, as you noted at the beginning of the show, we're going to start with Jen Psaki and Peter Doocy. We want to do this segment today because Jen Psaki was on for our DC live show last week and that appearance generated some takes. In case you missed it, y'all asked if peter ducey was actually a stupid son of a bitch uh jen said he works for fox and they give questions that might

make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch and from that quote discourse was born so there's a tweet fox is the only cable news network j Jen Psaki hasn't negotiated a fat check with to go work for. How is language like this towards Peter Doocy, quote, respecting everyone and healing the soul of America? This is no better than the Trump administration and how they treated the press. And it's gross. Any guesses for who said that? Yeah, I believe that is XView co-host Megan McCain. Very good.

That's correct. I will say that Megan McCain is my go-to always intake appreciator. If there is a dumb take that I cannot figure out who could possibly be, I feel like that's the safest bet. For me, it's Hugh Hewitt. He's always a safe place to land. Does Hugh Hewitt still exist? I don't know. I stopped.

I muted him at one point because I was fighting with him too much online. I realized that that was a stupid fucking thing for me to do. So now Hugh Hewitt doesn't exist to me. That's what the mute button is, people. You just mute them and they're gone forever. Do you know what the journalistic version of the mute button is? The Washington Post op-ed page.

I'm going to be in so much trouble for that they're really good people who work there so if you write good stuff you won't be muted perry bacon we love you oh yeah yo perry's great perry's great um anyway i just want to say something about the the sake juicy thing like i can't believe how many takes there have been on this and how much that broke through. Like, I got home from the road, saw a bunch of family and friends, you know, have been talking about the news for a week on the road during these shows. The only thing that broke through to people, they were like,

oh, wait, wasn't that your show with Jen Psaki got in trouble for what you said with Peter Ducey? By the way, like, first of all, this is all Dan's fault for setting up Jen with that question. But then Jen goes out of her way after she makes that comment to say, like, I know that this might not be popular with this crowd and I might get booed here. But Peter Doocy. And then she tells this wonderful story about Peter Doocy and how he showed grace when Joe Biden called him a stupid son of a bitch and how he's nice and really went out on a limb there with our liberal crowd at the Pod Save America show and did not get any credit for that. Did not get any credit for that. Just got a bunch

of shit and bad faith takes from people like Meghan McCain. My takeaway from this is my new saying, riffing off of Ezra here, which is you can only make podcasts about the issues and controversies that unleash enough energy to capture public attention. And that is obviously Peter Doocy. So that's coming back again. I'm only giving Meghan McCain two politicos here because I don't think she was actually trying to troll. I think she was just lazily reading through Twitter, not even looking at the real context and just decided to get outraged for no good reason. So I don't even think she was trying to try in that hard on that one. Yeah, I'm going to give her one political. I don't think Meghan

McCain has ever tried to troll intentionally once in her life. I just think her natural state of being is unselfaware trolling and so this is just another example of that so you don't get a lot of credit for me her resting troll face resting troll commentary resting troll feed resting troll feed that's right yes yeah really bad takes but always in good faith uh do you guys have any other takes you want to get out on sake i know we branded this one as a sake only segment but we're just doing one before we move on to some other let's move on let's move on yeah okay great well this is a first for take appreciators it's a chiron and i know you're thinking like a chiron like come on just trust me on it okay uh this is very related to uh the

a block where we talked about the culture war. Here's the Chiron. Ron DeSantis nets more wins as he energizes the right with his anti-woke pro-freedom strategy ahead of 2024. Any guesses to what network aired this Chiron? CNN Plus. We will never know

RIP Quibi RIP CNN Plus not easy to start a media company is it I mean it has to be Fox or OAN or Newsmax because if it's a mainstream outlet then

If it was on Fox or Newsmax it wouldn't be in this segment but that is straight up CNN right there What? CNN minus? CNN classic I need to speak to the manager on that

Who the fuck let that happen? What show was that on? Shame. Shame, CNN. You should be more ashamed of that chyron than CNN+. Unlike CNN+, that chyron will live forever. They aired the podium in 2015. It feels like we're going back to that.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's bad. Notches more wins. What is he winning? You know what? I'm giving that a full playbook. That gets four politicos it gets a full playbook i'm gonna give it three just i'm gonna leave some room for growth here all right this is gonna need some background because it's about the libs of tiktok twitter account and that whole story that's going on oh boy oh boy buckle

up for all you normal people out there who have touched grass in the last month. Lives of TikTok is a conservative social media account that takes fringe points of view and feeds them into shows like Tucker Carlson for them to air montages. A Washington Post story this week revealed that it was run by a January 6th attendee because, of course, it is. And then that Washington Post article got a lot of bad faith backlash backlash from conservatives are you guys with me so far you need me to explain any of that i think i got it i think yeah i'm following the string yeah i got it okay now here there's so many bad takes about this account and then this the story about who's behind the account but this one's special uh it's from real clear politics and the title of the article is

the new class chasm in the culture wars this piece argues that the washington post and other liberals refuse to engage with the actual content being posted on lives of tiktok which i suppose is an interesting point if you're a fucking idiot that leads us to this quote like so many of our culture wars this one is about class and the class chasm separating politicians and pundits and journalists from average Americans. It's that class chasm that's really being obscured in the erasure of the videos from lives of TikTok. What does class have to do with this at all? I don't even understand that take i'm confused by it that's yeah it's i'm so that is a really dumb fucking take one one politico yeah it seems

really stupid i was i was i was waiting for some kind of like josh holly marco rubio we're the party of working people against the elite libs kind of thing. But they didn't even try to make that argument. Lazy. Try better. I was trying to find, while we were going through that terrible take, what I thought was a good take about this. Because the big fight over this is that Taylor Lorenz identified the person behind it, and she was accused of doxing them. And Matt Iglesias had a tweet that said that there was a time when entire cities would get doxed in one book at a time. And there was a number that you could call to dox anyone you asked for. It was called the dox pages. The dox pages. But as evidence that Matt Iglesias

needs to listen to Offline more than anyone I have ever met, I am like 700 tweets through his feed and I haven't gotten to his tweet from yesterday about this. I was like scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. I looked down and the next thing I see is one hour ago. So it's like, yeah, no, that's a, it's a log off. They'll definitely log off. It was a great tweet though. Great tweet. Great tweet. Yeah, no, there are, there used to be phone books. You could look up people on them and get their whole addresses. Yeah. I mean, the discourse on this whole thing has been just mind-numbing and terrible. And I'm sincerely jealous of you

if you're listening to the show being like, what is any of these words? Were you living in blissful ignorance of something stupid? Well, let us change that. Thanks for joining us on Pod Save America. I'm going to admit something that doesn't speak well of me and is very not offline because this whole story that Taylor wrote

is like right in my wheelhouse. And it's been a busy week and I haven't even gotten to read the whole story yet. I haven't gotten to read this. I've done the thing that I hate which is I've seen so many takes on the story without reading the story itself. Always a bad thing to do. Do you want to use this as an opportunity to push your

excellent interview with Taylor Lorenz on offline? I have an excellent interview with Taylor Lorenz on offline which? I have an excellent interview with Taylor Lorenz on Offline, which is a podcast you should check out that comes out every Sunday. So go check it out if you're still listening to this podcast. And if you are,

you definitely need to listen to that other podcast. Thank you, Chief Take Officer Elijah Cohn. Thank you, Dr. Bob Wachter for walking us through the latest on COVID. And thanks everyone for listening. Hope you all have a great weekend. And go read that great Taylor Loren story in the Washington Post. And then listen to her on Offline.

And then maybe take a walk outside. Then take a walk. Don't scroll through Matt Iglesias' tweets. All right. Bye, everyone. Bye, everyone. 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 and Charlotte Landis sound engineer the show. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Sandy Gerrard, Hallie Kiefer, Ari Schwartz, Andy Taft, 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 crooked media.