Pod Save America - “Flyin’ Ted.”

Episode Date: February 18, 2021

The MAGA vs. Mitch McConnell battle heats up with Trump’s return to public life, Joe Biden and progressives debate how much student debt to cancel, and Texas suffers from freezing storms and rolling blackouts while Ted Cruz jets off to Cancun. Then Dr. Anthony Fauci talks to Jon about variants, vaccination timelines, and what he’s learned from this pandemic.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail].

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, Dr. Fauci is here to talk variants, vaccination timelines, and what he's learned over the last year. Before that, we'll talk about the battle of Mitch versus MAGA, what President Biden wants to do about student loan debt, and what this week's brutal winter storm can tell us about the failure of Republican leadership in the great state of Texas. in the great state of Texas. Two quick housekeeping notes. Representative Gwen Moore of Wisconsin joined the hysteria crew this week to talk about Republican legislators' attempts

to suppress votes in Arizona and Georgia. So check that out. And over on the Crooked YouTube channel, I joined Alyssa Mastromonaco on her series, Let's Break It Down, to talk about how the State of the Union address was written in the Obama White House. Fond memories, Dan, fond memories. Have you contemplated the fact that there may not be

quote unquote State of the Union this year because people can't sit together in the Capitol? I did not contemplate that. Yeah. Well, I figured because they were all there for the certification of the election slash insurrection that they would be able to be there and sit together. Yeah, it's an open question. It's really, it's up to Biden if he wants to do it with all those people there. I can't imagine anything worse than writing a State of the Union address,

except for writing a State of the Union address that would be delivered over Zoom. Look, it was always a great time. I was always a joy to deal with during the process. It was just, it was always a great time. I was always a joy to deal with during the process. It was just, it was a lot of fun. Go to youtube.com slash crooked media to hear all of our stories about the State of the Union. Check it out.

All right, let's get to the news. On Tuesday's pod, we talked about Mitch McConnell trying to have it both ways on impeachment by voting to acquit Donald Trump and then tearing him a new asshole in a speech on the Senate floor. In a stunning turn of events that literally everyone could have expected, the former president objected to the minority leader's remarks in a 600-word statement that read in part, quote, Mitch is a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack who will never do what's right for our country no arguments there literally the most truthful thing he's ever said ever said total agreement

with Donald Trump according to Politico Dan that was the toned down version of the letter the original apparently mocks McConnell for having multiple chins because self-awareness is Trump's strong suit. He ended by threatening to, quote, back primary rivals who are MAGA loyalists in midterm elections. So Mitch versus MAGA, who are you rooting for? No one. Everyone to lose. That is probably correct. What do you think, though? Who should we be rooting for here?

Well, I want someone to release the Zack Snyder cut version of the Trump statement. Put it out there, someone. Leak it. I don't know. I hate Mitch McConnell. I hate Trump. In their current position right now, Mitch McConnell is much more dangerous than Trump in the sense that he can do things other than call into Fox News and OAN. I have found the

coverage of Mitch McConnell's speech to be infuriating. There's actually a pretty good New York Times story today which points out how Mitch McConnell has got himself in a bit of a pickle here by trying to have it both ways and ending up with neither way. But the thing that bothered me about the coverage, which is why I find it strange if my reaction to something happening is the same as Trump's, like that causes some amount of self-reflection, but, and all the coverage of Mitch McConnell speech and Mitch McConnell speech itself, it never wrestles with the fact that he himself promoted that big lie for well over a month. And so the question I guess comes down to if they are going to have a fight of sorts, whether it's a battle for the soulless center of the Republican party or something else, who should we root for? And I don't really know the answer to that. I don't know.

What do you think? I mean, I will say just narrowly considering primaries in 2022, I certainly don't want to promote, nor will I, more Trumpy candidates. nor will I more Trumpy candidates. But I do think that in many cases, if a Trump backed candidate who's fucking cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs wins a primary, we will have a better chance of defeating that candidate than we will a Mitch McConnell backed more establishment Republican. What if it's the opposite? I think it's I think it's only the opposite. I mean, it depends on the state. Right. Like, I don't think I don't think, you know, a completely Trumpy candidate in Pennsylvania necessarily has a better chance

in a primary than another Pat Toomey, who's really conservative, but not as Trumpy. I mean, it depends on the candidate, right? Like if it's a candidate, labeling a candidate Trumpy is also tough too, because there's a million different ways to be Trumpy, right? Like you could see someone with Trump's faux populist appeal doing well. You could also see,

like, I don't think Marjorie Taylor Greene wins a statewide race in Pennsylvania. I don't think she wins a statewide race in Georgia either. I agree with that. You know, or if she could win a statewide race in Georgia if there was a really weak Democratic candidate. But if you told me on the Democratic side, would you rather face in Georgia Marjorie Taylor Greene or David Perdue again? I would say Marjorie Taylor Greene. Yeah, I think I think that's right. And I think there's probably a special exception for

QAnon conspiracy believing people who were kicked off their committees. But there is an interesting question of if Trumpy is like right wing appeal to Fox News, like right-wing appeal to Fox News, Hannity, and McConnell is Paul Ryan policies, establishment backed chamber of commerce Republican in a election determined by turnout. It's not to me a given that the McConnell candidate will be better than the Trump candidate. It's possible that it'd be the opposite. And I think like, you're right. It's going to depend on who that person is. Is it it'd be the opposite. And I think like, you're right. It's going to depend on who that person is. Is it merger Taylor green or is it Doug Collins or is it something else? But the, I think the, the big,

the question here is is Mitch McConnell being in that job or, or, you know, or, and I would, we should also note that according that for this giant battle for whatever the Republican Party, the McConnell people have basically said he's not engaging anymore. He gave one speech and he's like, I got this covered and you moved on. So I don't know what kind of battle this is going to be. He's scared shitless. We'll see if he actually does the work. All this time we hear like, we need people like John Boehner or Paul Ryan to be in their position, or Mitch McConnell to be in their positions of power to serve as some sort of bulwark against Trumpism, the Tea Party, and all of that turns out to be complete and utter bullshit. Mitch McConnell was in his job, and Trump incited a violent insurrection that almost murdered all of Mitch McConnell's colleagues.

a violent insurrection that almost murdered all of Mitch McConnell's colleagues. And so I'm not sure that we are that much better off or it makes any bit of difference, whether it's McConnell or Lindsey Graham, who was in charge of the Senate. I think it's the same thing at the end of the day because of where the locus of power is in the party. Well, and that goes to my point about who do you want to win a primary, right? Because normally you'd say, well, it's dangerous to elevate the Trumpy candidate because look, we all did that to Trump in 2016 and then Trump won, right? But I don't think that the country necessarily is better off when establishment Republicans win primaries or even win general elections at this point, because they don't do much of defending the fucking country from Trumpism, you know? I mean,

it's also like some of these are like, you know, distinctions without a difference. Like, think about the Madison Cawthorn race. Remember when Madison Cawthorn won his primary? He was not backed by Donald Trump. The Trumpy candidate lost. And then Madison Cawthorn was like invited on fucking Morning Joe and everyone was like, oh, young star of the Republican

Party beat the Trumpy candidate in the primary. And it turns out that Madison Cawthorn is just as fucking Trumpy as the rest of them and like showed up at the Stop the Steal rally. Dan Crenshaw, same situation. Yeah, same thing. So it's like Mitch McConnell candidates aren't necessarily like, they're not like Ben Sasse and Mitt Romney.

I know, I'm not trying to say that they're wonderful. I'm not going to react strongly to that. I have to be careful around you. But they're not like that necessarily. They could still be pretty Trumpy candidates. So I'm still looking for the candidate that we have the best chance of defeating, which is usually the less extreme candidate. Yes, that's what all the political science research shows. Even to this day, even with Trump winning in 2016, it still shows that.

So McConnell's MAGA problems go beyond Trump himself. Lindsey Graham said that if Mitch doesn't understand that Republicans need Donald Trump to take back the majority, he's just not looking. Ron Johnson said that he doesn't think Mitch speaks for the caucus and that he, quote, needs to be a little careful. Sean Hannity called for McConnell to be replaced as leader, as did a county Republican chairman in Kentucky. Do you think McConnell's job as minority leader is in any serious jeopardy here? No, I don't actually. You need someone to, the Senate caucus writ large is not the House caucus. They're on the Republican side. There is not this block of freedom caucus people who actually control the sway. It's a lot of MAGA-adjacent institutionalist

Republicans who've been there for a while. And the people most likely to sort of seize on this moment and challenge it are Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, two people hated by every other senator. It is very, very rare for a Senate leader to be deposed within their own caucus. I'd be curious. People have quit because of scandals like Trent Lott, but I don't know that anyone has been deposed in modern history at least. And it just seems very hard to imagine that happening in this case given who the likely challenges are. You need to be popular and well-liked among your colleagues to take down someone like Mitch McConnell. And Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz have

spent their lives being neither well-liked nor popular with anyone. Yeah. And then you have to ask yourself, why would all of these Republican senators who are really pissed at Mitch McConnell rally around someone like John Cornyn right who's still not quite trumpy enough to be beloved by the maga base but is also like doesn't really satisfy the concerns of the rest of the caucus so it doesn't seem like it's it doesn't seem like it's going to happen nor does it really like if mcconnell was replaced by john cornyn i think like or someone like that i don't think we'd all be better off well i mean it mean, it's the Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy example. Exactly.

Right. Exactly. In fact, we all and we said when our favorite our favorite Republican leader, Paul Ryan, left that Kevin McCarthy would be worse. He's the same. Exactly. He has been. No, actually, at least on one important matter, he has been much braver than Paul Ryan because Paul Ryan made Steve King,

a valid white supremacist, chair of the Constitution Subcommittee, and Kevin McCarthy kicked him off all of his committees and basically ejected him from Congress. So it's a small point in Kevin McCarthy's favor. Okay. You know what? okay um you know what i i appreciate your feelings for paul ryan and i appreciate that the grudge is going to be held no matter how long we do this show i am still mad about putting a white supremacist on the constitution subcommittee yeah no it was bad it was very very bad uh mcconnell's people told cnn that his plan is to never utter the name donald trump again which is

really funny uh this is most certainly not donald trump's plan he broke his longest stretch of silence in four years yesterday with a series of friendly interviews where he was clearly distraught about the death of his good friend rush limbaugh to whom he delivered a moving tribute during a call into fox news is outnumbered let's listen to this compilation that uh jordan yule put together and he was one of the people that said we were going to win he thought we were going to win into Fox News is outnumbered. Let's listen to this compilation that Jordan Yule put together. And he was one of the people that said we were going to win. He thought we were going to win. Well, Rush thought we won. So do I, by the way. I think we won substantially. And Rush thought we won. I was disappointed by voter tabulation. And a lot of other people feel that way, too. But Rush felt that way strongly.

And many people do. Many professionals do. I think it's disgraceful what happened. We were like a third world country on election night with the closing down of the centers and all of the things that happened later. And I don't think that could have happened to a Democrat. You would have had you would have had riots going all over the place if that happened to a Democrat. We don't have the same support at certain levels of the Republican system. And he was furious at it. And many people are furious. You don't know how angry this country is. He was somebody that really felt that was a very important victory for us. We should have had it, that we did have it, but he was somebody that felt that was a very important election,

and I did too. I mean, I did too. You see what's happening now. We played golf together a little bit. He was a very strong guy, physically very strong, hit the ball a long way. What a tribute. What a tribute to Rush. Remind me to have Donald Trump eulogize me. So I don't want to spend too much more time on Trump. Last question on this. Is there any way for Democrats to exploit this sort of Mitch versus MAGA saga to push more Republicans out of power?

Republicans out of power. Absolutely. I mean, that is the core of politics is uniting your coalition and dividing the other's coalition. And so finding ways in which to make Mitch McConnell the embodiment of what Trump and MAGA hates about the Republican Party makes it harder for Mitch McConnell to elect people to the Senate because Trump is not going to be on the ballot in 2022. A large coterie of his children may be on the ballot, but he will not be on the ballot. And so this idea that Mitch McConnell, this hated Republican who betrayed the MAGA movement, who espouses all these policy positions that are universally unpopular, but Donald Trump kind of sort of ran against 2016, is to Democrats' advantage. The way we are going to win is if the Trump voters who turned out in Pennsylvania,

Wisconsin, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Arizona, do not turn out in this election. And Trump and Mitch McConnell being in a big fight certainly makes that more likely and possible. And we should find ways to keep that fight going as long as possible and communicating it directly to voters. Yeah, back to the original question we asked. Root for chaos in the Republican Party. That's what we need to root for. All right, let's talk about the current president. Joe Biden took his first official trip away from the White House on Tuesday. He flew to Milwaukee for a CNN town hall that was totally normal, pretty informative, generally reassuring, even a little boring at times. Generally reassuring, even a little boring at times. At one point, the president simply referred to his predecessor as, quote, the former guy. What did you think? What did you think of the town hall, how Joe Biden did? Exactly the way you described it.

It was so comfortingly normal. Just a normal president talking to voters about issues. And Donald Trump was not really a part of it. I mean, obviously, he looms large over everything. But it's about helping people deal with the pandemic and get help and student loan debt, which we'll talk about all these other things. It was just normal. I also think Biden has really found just this great, and he's been this way since the general election really started. It's just this real comfort in knowing what his strategic home base is. He's going to be presidential. He's not going to be overly partisan.

He is not going to talk about Trump. And he's just going to focus on uniting people with sort of the macro definition of that, not the appease Lindsey Graham definition of it. And he's just been very, very good. And he has found this way to be adhering to the strategic guidance that I'm sure his team has given him while still being completely and totally authentic and human. And it's not a very, it's not an easy thing to do on national television, for sure. Or an easy thing to do for Joe Biden. Let's be honest, he has spent a lot of his career delivering very sort of undisciplined,

loquacious answers to questions. And he now, he still does that sometimes. He still rambles on a little bit, but he's always catching himself. You can always see that he's editing himself now, that he's trying to be more disciplined, that he's trying to be more strategic in his answers. He was like that during the campaign. I think it's why he ultimately came out ahead in the

primary when he was losing badly and then, of course, did really well in the general election. He has gotten better. And I think we saw that in the town hall. As you mentioned, I think one of the most notable moments came when a listener asked Biden the following question about student debt forgiveness. Let's take a listen. We need student loan forgiveness beyond the potential $10,000 your administration has proposed. We need at least a $50,000 minimum. What will you do to make that happen? I will not make that happen. It depends on whether or not you go to a private university or public university. It depends on the idea that I say to a community, I'm going to forgive the debt, the billions of dollars provide for early education for young children who come from disadvantaged circumstances? But here's what I think. I think

everyone, and I've been proposing this for four years, everyone should be able to go to community college for free, for free. That's that's cost nine billion dollars and we should pay for it. And the tax policies we have now, we should be able to pay for you spend almost that money as a break for people on racehorses. And I think any family making under one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars whose kids go to a state university they get into, that should be free as well. So this wasn't really new. Biden campaigned on canceling $10,000 worth of student debt. But after the town hall, Chuck Schumer and Elizabeth Warren, who've been part of the progressive push for Biden to cancel $50,000 of debt, released a statement that read,

the Biden administration has said it is reviewing options for canceling up to $50,000 in student debt by executive action, and we are confident that they will agree with the standards Obama and Trump used. The White House responded by saying that Biden doesn't favor forgiving up to $50,000 in student debt, quote, without limitation, and that they've asked the Justice Department to review whether Biden has the executive authority to cancel that much debt in the first place. So a lot to unpack here, Dan. Do you think Biden is against the $50,000 cancellation because he doesn't want to do it or because he doesn't think he has the power to do it? We have to disentangle two questions that I think have become a little sort of aggregated together since the election. During the election, much of the discussion

around student debt cancellation was about legislation to do that. Since the election, Elizabeth Warren, Senator Schumer, and others have pushed forward this idea that he has the executive authority to do that, that that is something within his power. During the campaign, Biden was for canceling up to $10,000 in student debt, but he did not go as far as others who wanted a much larger number, including complete, you know, eliminating all student debt or canceling up to $50,000. So that is one aspect of it. He has clearly said himself, and he reiterates it, Jen Psaki reiterated, he reiterates at town hall, that he is closer to $10,000 than $50,000 in terms of what he feels comfortable from either a policy and or a political perspective to do. Then there is another question about whether he has the power to do it, whether it's $10,000, $50,000, $5, whether that is something that exists within the president's commonly accepted executive authority. And that

is Warren and Schumer believe he does. There is precedent that suggests that they are correct. But it's also worth remembering that a president only has as much executive power as the Supreme Court says he or she has. And a 5-4 Supreme Court that existed when Barack Obama was president with Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg may have a very different view of how much power a Democratic president has than a 6-3 court with Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Jen said, and I thought this was a pretty compelling point, which is they want an opinion from the Department of Justice. They do not yet have an attorney general or a team at the DOJ yet. And once they have that, this would be the Office of Legal Counsel, I believe, which provides legal opinions to the government on what they can and can't do. And so I imagine that they will

put that forward when there is someone in place to render that opinion. Last thing I'd say is the opinion on the books right now says the president does not have that. Now, that opinion was written by the attorneys at the Department of Education, who are Betsy DeVos's attorneys. So that is not a binding opinion or one that we should take particularly seriously, but that is what is currently on the books. And it does make it a little bit harder to go forward until you have a superseding opinion that says you can do it. The one other wrinkle here is that if you listen to that statement from Schumer and Warren, they said, we're confident that they will agree with the standards Obama and Trump used.

So that was referring, I believe, to the fact that both Obama and Trump have used authority to sort of delay student loan payments, cancel some student loan payments. student loan payments. This basically comes down to the Higher Education Act of 1965 and whether you believe it gives the president the authority to cancel debt. There is agreement that that law gives the president some authority to cancel or postpone some student loan payments. There is not agreement whether it gives the president the authority to do a mass cancellation of debt. Is that what you took from it as well? Yes, that is my understanding. And there's a broader question about whether – and this is in the Department of Education opinion – whether they actually even had the original authority because it's a spending issue and a spending issue is delegated to Congress. Now, I think this is a bullshit opinion.

the bullshit opinion. But ultimately, this is going to end up being before the Supreme Court if you were to proceed forward, just as nearly every executive action of any merit or controversy ends up. So we should make a point about the politics of these two proposals, which we polled with Change Research last month. 55% of voters supported canceling $10,000 worth of student debt and 52% supported $50,000 worth of student debt. So both proposals fairly popular and there's not too much of a difference in support for either proposal. So what are the risks of going with $50,000 in debt over $10,000? And sort of what are the risks of the reverse going with the $10,000 position over the $50,000 position for Joe Biden? Well, I think we should just stipulate, and I think you and I agree here, that put the politics aside for a second. This is the right thing to do. We need to deal with the ballooning student debt crisis in this country. 40% of

student debt holders did not even graduate from college. So they have the worst of all worlds, which is they have this huge debt and did not get the theoretically higher earning potential that would come with that college degree. As Warren and Schumer point out in their statement, this is a huge opportunity to deal with the racial wealth gap in this country. And so I think it's the right thing to do, I would be for as much as is possible. But we should not pretend it's risk-free in either direction. There is a, you know, I was thinking about this in the, if you go back to the Rick Santelli CNBC rant that launched the Tea Party and all of that, that was about, the core of that rant was a speech to people who paid their mortgage, who bought, who who quote unquote bought homes they could afford.

There's a lot of bullshit inherent in that point. And now you are being asked as a responsible homeowner who pays your taxes to pay for the mortgages of the people who could not afford their homes, who bought homes they could not afford. This is at the absolute core of conservative messaging going back to Ronald Reagan and Welfare Queens, it is about trying to appeal to white voters by suggesting your taxpayer, incorrectly and unfairly, indivisibly suggesting your taxpayers are going to others. And just like with the Welfare Queens examples, and as happened during Obama and the housing crisis, it's finding specific like outlier examples of people who,

cause no policy is perfect, who went to Harvard and majored in poetry and a bunch of other bullshit that will get the right wing fired up who have this debt or being paid off as opposed to what the, what the average normal story about this is, which is someone trying to improve their lives for themselves and their family who are forced to pay for this outrageous cost of college and trying to keep up with that. And graduated from college in the middle of a recession, either in 2008 or just now in the pandemic one. And so there's no question this will be weaponized

against Biden for doing it. I think there's the other challenge is in not doing it. Biden won in part because through his climate plan and through people understanding the unique threat of Trumpism and Trump being reelected, young voters and young activists who were very skeptical of Biden in the primary engaged and did everything they possibly could to get him elected. And to walk away from this and to not take an opportunity to actually help people that if you do believe you have that has the risk of demobilizing the young voters who helped get Biden elected and that we're going to need to hold on to the House and the Senate in 2022. Yeah, I mean, the right wing, the bad faith right wing attacks on either action is going to be are going to be the same, whether Biden goes with 10,000 or 50,000. So then my question is, if you either have the authority to do it via executive action or you can get it through Congress, I guess, via budget reconciliation, because it's not getting through otherwise unless you get rid of the filibuster.

And I imagine this is something since it has to do with spending that could be done through reconciliation, though we can double check on that. If you can get it done, you're going to get the same kind of attacks whether you go with 50 or 10. So why not help more people? Now, Biden's trying to make the point that I'd rather spend the money on early childhood education. And also, it's important to make sure that anyone can go to free community college or free state college, public college, if your family's making under $125,000 a year, free community college for everyone, right? So ostensibly, he's making the

point, there's a set pool of money. And if we're going to spend it on something, I'd rather spend it on 10,000 versus 50,000 and use the rest of the money for early childhood education and for making college affordable for other people who are trying to go. But then the question is, is there really some limited pool of money for this, you know, in a world where, thankfully, Biden and the Democrats are much less afraid of the deficit than we all were back in the Obama administration. So I'm not sure that I understand Biden's reluctance to cancel $50,000 worth of debt as opposed to $10,000 worth of debt, both from a political standpoint or a substantive standpoint. I guess the counter case would be, and I would be for cancel as much as possible because

it has a stimulative effect on the economics that puts more money in people's pockets. It puts more money in the pockets, in most cases here, of the people who are the biggest consumers, right? You're putting in the cores of that, sort of essentially the core demo, if you will. But the one thing I will say is, and I am more guilty of this than most, is we say, well, they're going to attack you for $10,000, they're going to attack you for $50,000. What difference does it make? There is actually, when you dig into a lot of polling and message testing, yes, that is true in the initial attack, but the power of your response is somewhat mitigated by

the numbers. It very well may be that in a back and forth, that it's only $10,000, it's better than $50,000. There's some some point the number there's a case of diminishing returns, but it may be, and the Biden folks may know this, that 10,000, there is some sort of tipping point for people's view on this, and it's closer to 10,000, 50,000. I don't know the answer to that, but I don't think it's a guarantee that the politics are essentially the same between the two. Yeah, I don't know. It seems close to me. Yeah, but I definitely think that's true when you get to numbers that are too big for anyone to comprehend. It's 1.5 billion or 900 million.

That, I think, is just sort of all the same. But 10,000, 50,000 are real numbers that people confront in their lives, in their paychecks, their bills, their mortgage payments, et cetera. I will say, you know, as a final point on this, this is the way that politics should work, right? Like, it's good that Schumer and Warren and progressives are continuing to push Biden on this to go to 50,000, right? Like, he's saying no, he's saying 10, everyone else is pushing 50. They should keep pushing him. And if he has, you know, a good defense for it, he can push back. But like, yeah, I, I think he should do 50,000. You should, if you do too, you should keep pushing them on it. It's, you know, it's important. It's actually comforting and how it's

happening, right? The, the, the pressure is firm, but respectful. It's not calling him corrupt or anything. It is making the case and they are aggressively doing it. It is the more moderate Senate leader and then a progressive senator like Warren pushing. I think it's... And the best way to get it done is to really push hard on it. I think it's great

for it to continue to happen. So, let's talk about the winter storm and freezing temperatures that have left millions without power and killed at least 20. The situation is particularly scary in Texas, which is facing the biggest blackouts at a time when temperatures hit four degrees Fahrenheit. It was colder in Dallas than Anchorage, Alaska. In Texas, no power. So the outages, which could last all week, happened for two main reasons. One, the demand for electricity surged to a level that the Texas power grid couldn't handle. And two, the supply of energy dropped because the frigid weather disrupted the state sources of natural gas, coal, wind, nuclear, and solar power. People are freezing. Some don't have access to

food or water. Some have died. And the poorest communities have been hit hardest, with one San Antonio resident telling the Texas Tribune, quote, I understand we live in a less cared for neighborhood, but we're human like everyone else. What am I paying my taxes for? Good question. So first, it would be great if everyone listening could help out people in Texas right now. The Texas Tribune has put together a list of local organizations you can donate to. We've all tweeted it out. Beto O'Rourke has been tweeting about it. You can also just go to texastribune.org to find it. We will tweet the link again. We'll put it in the show notes. The Republicans who run Texas have responded to this crisis. Governor Greg Abbott attacked the Green New Deal. Rick Perry said that Texans would rather have more blackouts than have the federal government manage its outdated power grid. The mayor of Colorado City resigned after telling his constituents,

quote, no one owes you or your family anything. I'm sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout. And Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz, who tweeted this week that he has, quote, no defense from mocking California's blackouts over the summer, hopped on a flight to Cancun to presumably film an episode of

Insurrectionist Gone Wild. Fly in, Ted. I was laughing about, I just wanted you to know, I was laughing about Fly in Ted, Flying Ted. I was laughing about, I just wanted you to know, I was laughing about Flying Ted, which Dave Weigel tweeted last night, all night long. Woke up in the middle of the night laughing about Flying Ted. Where would you like to start, Dan, on all of this? It's hard not to start with Ted Cruz. We can start with Ted Cruz and then back into all the policy debates. I do think that a number of our younger listeners are going to be interested in your insurrectionist gone wild joke.

Do a little Googling and be fucking horrified that there was a moment in time. Don't Google. That there was a moment in time when there was a large industry of selling incredibly misogynistic video tapes. Mail order video tapes. I mean, it fits with all of the coverage of sort of the media culture of the 90s from the Britney Spears documentary, et cetera.

I was just going to say, yeah, it is. Anywho, Ted Cruz, what were you thinking? So for those who weren't paying attention to how this story unfolded, it started on Twitter last night with some people like taking pictures of Ted Cruz in the airport. We weren't even sure at first if it was Ted Cruz. Then it sort of looked like him. Then it was the mask that, you know, that he has used on the Senate floor. Then it looked like Heidi, his wife. Then it looked like ted cruz because people took some more pictures of him on the plane and then people did a little sleuthing and then they found because no one the reason that it was hard to believe is because no one could believe that he could be that fucking

stupid like everyone knows he's an asshole but he's he's he's known as like a clever or a smart guy who's an asshole right no one thought he could be so stupid as to leave his constituents literally freezing so that he could hop on a fucking flight to cancun but ted cruz was that stupid ted cruz was this and he was that big of an asshole and just as we were just as we're recording now uh he put out a statement blaming his kids saying that his kids wanted to go on vacation so he flew down there with his kids and then he rebooked a flight home today after the controversy erupted yes and what an asshole ted cruz just as big an asshole as you thought, but even dumber.

I mean, for many politicians, this would be career ending. Yeah, no, I would say that. Now, Ted Cruz is not up, of course, until 2024. So he's got four years. And, you know, there's obviously a lot of people like, oh, and everyone's going to forget by then. And it's 2024 and whatever. He'll get away with anything. Look, I get it. It takes a couple hours for just about everything in politics to be memory hold,

but I don't think it's going to be that hard to remember the time that Ted Cruz went to Cancun while his state was literally freezing to death. I just don't think it's going to be that hard to remember. It is, as you sort of watch this play out over the last several hours, it is the difference between how this would be experienced by a Democrat and what would be experienced by a Republican. The right-wing media is actually leaping to Cruz's defense. And Dinesh D'Souza, just a horrendous person, said that Ted Cruz was doing Texas a favor by going to Mexico to get off the power grid and stop being a drain, right? Which then even that defense was shut down by someone tweeting that Ted Cruz had asked for a police escort once he got to the airport Wednesday to leave for Cancun. So he did take law enforcement resources away from the crisis so that he could fly to Cancun for a fucking vacation, which he blamed on his kids during a blackout where people were freezing to death.

I just I cannot I can't get over i am i was convinced that was not ted cruz or that was him flying back to texas from dc or flying back to d i did think that it seemed impossible to imagine that anyone could be this dumb that anyone could be this. But kudos to you, Ted Cruz. So the most common disinformation being spread on the right about the energy crisis right now is that renewable energy is to blame for the power outages, especially wind energy. Here's one of the more absurd takes from Tucker Carlson. So unbeknownst to most people, the Green New Deal came to Texas. The power grid in the state became totally reliant on windmills. Then it got cold and the windmills broke because that's what happens in the Green New Deal. You're without power. Millions are still

without power tonight. Several have died. Now, the same energy policies that have wrecked Texas this week are going nationwide. They're coming to your state. Fucking asshole. Well, what's wrong with Tucker's take, Dan? Well, first, how is it possible that AOC, Ed Markey, and Joe Biden enacted the Green New Deal and we had no idea? Yeah, it's a trial Green New Deal in Texas. They passed a law. They forced it on Texas.

No one else has it yet. No, I didn't realize that Greg Abbott and the Republican legislature in Texas and Ted Cruz and John Cornyn were all big Green New Deal fans. I didn't know that they had tried to implement it in their state. Who knew? There's bipartisanship right there. I think it's probably worth getting into just like a little bit of detail about why this is so wrong. Because this is one of those things that you're going to have to talk to your MAGA loving uncle about any minute now. No, my I saw my mom over the weekend. She's like, just got a message from your aunt saying, oh, hope you're hope you're happy with all your wind energy.

Look what it did. And I didn't even know the whole story yet. And I was like, why is she talking about wind energy? And then I started reading that. I was like, oh, okay, there we go. This is another conspiracy. Yes, okay, so let's do, let's explain why this is wrong. One, Green New Deal, not in law.

Not a thing that has happened yet. So it is definitely not because of the Green New Deal. Number two, Texas only gets a fraction of its energy from wind. As of at least a few days ago, according to the Austin American-Statesman, yes, it is true that half of Texas's wind turbines are down because of the weather. The other half are up and running, and the ones on the coast where it is warmer are actually generating above average amounts of energy. The primary reason that they're having the power outages

is because of natural gas, hard to get natural gas energy during unexpected winter weather like this. Number three, wind turbines work in the cold. Two of the places with some of the highest per capita wind turbines in the country, South Dakota and North Dakota. I don't know if you've ever been to the Dakotas, John, but it is cold as shit. You can weatherize wind turbines. They did not do so in Texas, in part and in fairness, because this is a once in a century cold event. But it can be done and you can have your wind turbines work. They chose not to do that in Texas. That is what is happening here. It has nothing to do with wind energy. It has nothing to do with the Green New Deal. It has to do with the fact that Texas is facing a once in a century cold spell that is preventing the access of fossil fuels to fuel the energy needs of the state at this time. of which energy sources have been disrupted by this storm and how much. Number one, by far,

as you said, is natural gas. Number two is coal. So two fossil fuels are number one and number two, and then it's wind. The larger issue here is the grid has failed, right? The electric grid in Texas. And the reason it failed is because it was not ready for this kind of once-in-a-lifetime severe storm. And so, of course, the demand for electricity surge, people tried to heat their homes, which the grid wasn't ready for because people don't try to heat their homes like this to this level in February in Texas. And then all of these energy sources were frozen out because they were not weatherized, like you mentioned. So what is the solution to this? Because while this is a, we keep saying once in a century weather event in Texas, climate change we know is making extreme weather events, not just in Texas, but all over the country, much more frequent. And we do not have an energy infrastructure to deal with the effects of climate change, which are already upon us, as we are seeing every day. And so, like, all this discussion, Dan, about a new electric grid and building a new smart electric grid, did it bring you back to our days in the White House? You mean the smart grid?

The many, I mean, how many times did he write a speech about the smart grid? Barack Obama was obsessed with an infrastructure plan that would allow us to build a new, smarter energy grid that could transmit all of the renewable energy that our country is now creating. And that would sort of withstand weather disruptions like this that would withstand outages um that it's smarter that is more efficient and all of us smart political communications people would all roll our eyes when he talked about the smart grid because we're like no one knows what the fuck an electric grid is or a smart grid it's going to be hard to explain to people. And Obama told us it was really important and he was correct. Yeah. And now, so let's talk about what President Biden can do.

He's already declared a state of emergency in Texas, sent FEMA to provide generators and emergency supplies. But looking beyond the immediate crisis, he's also has pretty ambitious climate and infrastructure plans. What in those plans could sort of help mitigate something like this from happening again? Well, certainly updating our power grid and weatherizing it and updating our infrastructure writ large is going to have a huge part of this. It's a big part of his Build Back Better plan. There's a lot of reporting this week that the next item in his legislative agenda is the infrastructure plan. I think he met with union leaders earlier this week on that. There is a climate mitigation piece which involves preparing for these once-in-a-century events that we now

know happen once every couple of years in some cases. And then there is also the continuing to update our energy infrastructure, which has lagged for decades. It's something we've been incapable of doing. Everyone's got to make a joke about infrastructure week under the Trump administration, but it has remained true that we have done nothing significant on a broad scale, non-stimulus related infrastructure plan in an incredibly long time. Yeah. And so much of over the last several years when we've talked about climate change, it's about policies that will prevent climate change. Climate change is here. And a lot of the policies around climate change now, including a lot of Biden's policies, is around climate mitigation, climate resilience. It's

fighting the climate change that's already here. One big way that you do that is through building the right infrastructure. I mean, the other thing that we should mention is Texas's power grid is its own power grid. It's not connected to other states like most other states are connected to each other. A national power grid that is smarter, that is built to carry renewable energy could connect in a way that if one state had an outage because of a severe storm or severe weather event, there could be power stored in another state

that could be transmitted to the state that's dealing with blackouts. So like that is the future that we could have if we invested sufficiently in our infrastructure and specifically green, renewable energy friendly infrastructure, which is what Biden's plan would do. Yeah, it seems. Could you imagine if we shipped energy from states that have extra energy to the states who need it in a very seamless way without upsetting the idea of Texas sovereignty? I mean, it's wild. It's wild. Well, I'm sure that, I'm sure the Green New Deal fans, Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz will be, will be on board with that. Yes, that's, that's good.

When we come back, I will talk to the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci. I'm now joined by the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci, it's always great to have a fellow Holy Cross alum on the pod. Good to be with you, John. So I was very excited earlier this month when you said any American would likely be able to get the vaccine by April. I was a little less excited when you said on Tuesday,

it's more likely going to be end of May, early June, and a little less excited when President Biden said end of July during the CNN town hall the other night. Can you talk about sort of why this answer is a moving target and maybe walk through the timeline of how you see the supply ramping up over the next couple of months? Yeah. So, John, I think that thanks for asking the question, because there is a bit of confusion about that that I think I could I could sort of straighten out. First of all, there are three goalposts here that you want to reach. The one is when do you get past the prioritizations that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said

that when you have a limited supply, the group 1A is health care providers and nursing home. Group 1B is elderly and those who are essential members of the community. Group C are those who have underlying conditions and on and on until you get to the end, which means anybody and everybody. That's the first goalpost. That's the one that I said I was hoping would be the end of April. But given the pretty big gap between supply and demand, that we won't have enough vaccine to get to that first goalpost until I believe May, early June. That's what I meant by that.

So I pushed it up. My bad. I wasn't I didn't I didn't sort of estimate it as correctly because I didn't factor in the fact that we didn't have as much vaccine as we would like to have. Then you get to the July like to have. Then you get to the July goalpost, which President Biden said, when will we have enough vaccine available to everybody? There's a difference between available and when are you going to get it into the arms of everybody? So the July time was that's when we will likely have all 600 million doses that we contracted for to vaccinate 300 million people. Then the third goalpost is how long is it going to take you to logistically get 600 doses into 300 million arms? That likely won't be till the end of the summer. So those are the three benchmarks

that tend to get confused when you don't distinguish one from the other. Do you think that we can vaccinate enough people in the next few months to avoid another big surge because of the variants? I believe so. I believe so because you see the kinetics of the outbreak going way down right now, even without the influence of vaccine, because we haven't

vaccinated enough people to have an impact on the kinetics of the outbreak. Yet it's continuing. Yet it's continuing. Like yesterday, there were 58,000 new cases. A month ago, there was 300,000 to 400,000 new cases. So it really is going way down. Why do you think it's gone down so quickly in the winter, the Thanksgiving holiday, Christmas, New Year's, it was going up at a much accelerated rate. Then you reach a critical point, it just turns around and starts coming down. People, you know, adhere more to public health mitigations when they see the cases going, you know, off the ceiling. So that's what probably happened. So it's going to be a race. So that's what probably happened. So it's going to be a race. It's going to be a race between getting enough people vaccinated. And the vaccine is quite good against the variant. The variant that's becoming prominent in the United States is the 117, which is the one that was dominant in the UK, seems to transmit more efficiently from person to person, which is the reason why it becomes dominant, because it outruns the other viruses and gets ahead of them. So I believe that if we continue to implement the public health measures, universal wearing of masks, physical distancing, avoiding congregate settings, particularly indoors,

at the same time as we distribute more and more vaccines, I believe we can stay ahead of an inevitable additional fourth surge. We've had three of them already. We don't want a fourth one. It's conceivable that we'll get one. I think we can avoid it if we do things correctly. believable that we'll get one, I think we can avoid it if we do things correctly. And you don't think that supply issues on the vaccine side will prevent us from avoiding that surge if we keep in place sort of the mitigation measures that we have? Yeah, you know, actually, John, you bring up a good point. We are somewhat having one hand tied behind our back by the supply demand discrepancy, because the demand far exceeds the supply. If we had all the vaccine that we needed now, like the way the president said will happen

in July, if we now at the middle of February had all of that, there'd be no problem. We would open up stadiums and gymnasiums and just vaccinate everybody and we'd have no trouble being ahead of it. But it's the supply demand gap that's really the problem. Yeah. So I've had people that I know, even a friend who's a health care worker, tell me they're reluctant to get to the vaccine either because they're not fully effective or you might still transmit the virus or you still have to wear a mask and social

distance, not like anti-vaxxing things, but just some various concerns about the vaccine. Can you paint a picture for people about how their lives could change if they get vaccinated when it's their turn? Well, there are a couple of that. That's a good question, John. But there are a couple of aspects to it. One, the immediate impact on you and then the important role you play to contain the kinetics of the outbreak. So the immediate benefit to you is that you will protect yourself, A, from getting clinically apparent disease, and certainly from winding up in the hospital and maybe dying. So, I mean, if you're a young, healthy person, I'm sure you fall into that category.

The chances of your getting into trouble are slight, but not zero. There are a number of young people who are otherwise robust and healthy who've rarely gotten into serious trouble. But there's a lot of people out there who have underlying conditions that make them very susceptible to a severe outcome. So for your own personal health, it benefits you. But also by getting vaccinated, you're preventing the propagation of the outbreak. vaccinated, you're preventing the propagation of the outbreak. So namely, you're preventing the outbreak from continuing. You're one dead end in the outbreak, which is important. So there are,

like I said, two really good reasons, one for your own private, personal health and safety, and one to be a contributor to the containment of the outbreak. If variants like the one from South Africa ultimately require a booster, will that mean that everyone who's been vaccinated has to go back to square one with social distancing and staying home? Or what does that look like if a booster is ultimately required? No, I don't think it would change anything in what we do. I think we always have to adhere to the public health methods. Right now, we know that the vaccines that we have available to us, the Moderna and the Pfizer,

are very good against the UK variant, the 117. We know that they're not necessarily as good against the South African isolate, the 351, but it's quite good to prevent you from getting seriously ill with hospitalization and deaths from the South African isolate. So it still is value added, even though you might have the complication of a variant. If it turns out that another variant or even this variant takes over and you need to get an extra bit of protection, that's when a booster that's directed against specifically the variant could actually be important. Okay. So I'm in Los Angeles. Our state and local officials responded to the recent drop in cases by reopening outdoor dining, lifting stay at home orders, open hair salons at limited capacity. Do you think that was the right call? several of my colleagues in California, if you relax some of the constraints, you got to be careful you don't overdo it and just, you know, turn the switch on or turn the switch off. As you start to see cases comes down, you could gradually and carefully pull back on some of the constraints,

like maybe have limited capacity dining or opening up certain areas with the requirement for a mask and things like that. So I don't necessarily think it was a mistake at all on the part of the California authorities, as long as they don't just turn things on and turn things off, but do it in a gradual way. That makes sense. So a huge challenge over the last year has been sort of clear communication and messaging, as it always is in public health. Of course, it was a challenge not just from Trump. You know, here in L.A., there's sort of jokes going around. We've been told to stay home, but enjoy outdoor dining, but don't gather with anyone, but the malls are open. Like, what have you learned about how to improve public health communication in a fractured media environment like the one we're in in 2021? It is not easy, I can tell you that. Because there are a lot of landmines there. But what you could do is try and be as consistent

as you possibly can. And when you don't know the answer, to just say you don't know. Because if people say, oh, come on, well, what do you think it is? And then you give an answer not based on data, and then data come out and they say, ah, you see, you said something and it was wrong. So if you don't know the answer, you should just say, I don't know the answer. Or you might have to correct yourself sometimes. The way I just recently did with when I thought we would get to the end of the priority groups, which was based on the assumption that there'd be more vaccine around than there was around. And that's the easiest way around that in communication is to say, I miscalculated, period.

Yeah. You spent a lot of your career on the HIV AIDS epidemic where, you know, we ultimately learned that sort of a harm reduction risk mitigation strategy was more effective than preaching abstinence only. Do you think the same principle or a similar principle applies to sort of COVID and social distancing? Sometimes I wonder if messages that are about like stay home, don't see anyone, be locked down, or actually could be counterproductive, as opposed to telling people, well, you can do things, but you've just got to be careful and try to limit your risk.

Oh, I think the latter. I think you're onto something. That is really true. I mean, obviously, if you want an absolute, you should just say, go home and don't ever come out again. absolute, you should just say, go home and don't ever come out again. But that doesn't work. I mean, you know, society needs to continue, particularly we know the devastating impact it's had on the economy. So you really got to use some common sense about things. You know, one of the most cogent example of common sense is that we want universal wearing of masks. That's very important. But if you're out on a trail in which there is no one within two miles of you, if you put your mask down, there's nothing wrong with that because there's nobody there. You see, I mean, that's the kind of thing you got to use some common sense.

If you're in a room and you're indoors and there are people you have no idea who they are, then put the mask on. But if you're all alone in a room, the way I assume you and I are now, you don't need to put a mask on. Yeah. So a Jesuit principle that was drilled into us at Holy Cross was that we should be men and women for others. How do you think about the challenge of solving big public health crises through collective action and shared sacrifice in a big, diverse, extremely polarized country like ours? After everything you've been through this last year, do you think it's still possible? It's possible, but it's very difficult. One of the most difficult challenges that I think has hindered what we've needed to do is the fact that we have all living through and have lived through, particularly over the last year, a historic public health challenge, to put it mildly, crisis would be a better word, in the midst of divisiveness in society, that's the likes of which I have never seen in all of the decades that I've

been doing this. It's almost antithetical to an adequate response to a public health crisis. Because when you're dealing with a common enemy, the virus, to be divisive is almost like fighting a war where you have the army fighting with the Navy instead of fighting the common enemy. I mean, it really is, I don't mean to be melodramatic about it, but it's almost feels that way where you have a political connotation to everything you do.

I mean, wearing a mask becomes a political statement. You know, going to a bar in a congregate setting or not becomes a political statement. That just doesn't work when you have a common enemy and you're supposedly all in this together, which we have to be all in it together when you're dealing with a pandemic. Yeah. So I asked people for questions, the two most common questions, and then we can let you go. The first was, is there any reason that states shouldn't be allowing teachers to get vaccinated right now if opening schools is so important? Well, I have nothing. I mean, I think that we should prioritize teachers to get vaccinated because they, in my mind, part of essential personnel in the community. And that would put

them in the 1B group. And I think we should get as many teachers vaccinated as possible. The one thing that I don't think would work is to say that you can't open a school unless every single teacher is vaccinated. I think that would be unworkable. I think you can have a compromise and say, A, give them a high priority, get them vaccinated as quickly and as efficiently as you possibly can. Get them vaccinated as quickly and as efficiently as you possibly can. But you don't have to make it a sine qua non that unless 100 percent of the teachers are vaccinated, you don't want to open up a school because otherwise you would not be opening schools for quite a while. Right. And then the second one was related to that. What do you think the timeline is on vaccines for children. Yeah, that's going to be probably several months before you get to children of a certain low age. What we're doing now with some of the vaccines, particularly the Pfizer, is to do what's called an age de-escalation, where you do a phase one and then

a phase two trial for safety and to see if it induces the kind of immune response that you would predict would be protected. You don't have to do a full efficacy trial at every age group. You just need to show it's safe and it induces a good immune response. And what you would do, we would go, for example, from 16 to 12 and then go from 12 to nine and then from nine to 12, and then go from 12 to 9, and then from 9 to 6. And that's called an age de-escalation, because children are vulnerable. You want to make sure that you have safety in an older group before you go to the next younger group. Makes sense. Dr. Fauci, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for all the work you're doing. We appreciate it. Good to be with you, John.

Thanks for having me. All right. Thanks, Dr. Fauci, for joining us. Ted Cruz, hope you're having a great time in Cancun. Sorry that this scandal cut your trip short. I see there's pictures. I'm looking at pictures of him uh him arriving i think he's uh he's he's uh boarding his plane back to the u.s right now we'll see you when you get home ted

we'll see you when you get home ted cruz congratulations on finding a way to make people hate you even more than they already do didn't think it was possible didn't think it was possible but you know he's uh he's an ambitious guy, so he did it. All right, everyone. Have a good weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Thank you.