Pod Save America - “Fox’s Insurrection Group Chat.”

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

2021’s Congressional Clusterfu*k barrels to a close as the House reveals new details about the right-wing plot to destroy democracy while the Senate tries to save it with a last-minute attempt to pass voting rights legislation. Then, former Biden Senior Covid Advisor Andy Slavitt joins to talk about how we can prepare for the Omicron wave, and Dan and Jon discuss the media’s role in defending democracy.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.

We only have 100 days left until the 2022 midterms, and we need to make every one count. We know how high the stakes are in these midterms. Abortion is on the ballot. Climate is on the ballot. Our basic freedoms and ability to make our voices heard to protect them are on the ballot. Head to votesaveamerica.com slash midterms to take our Count Me In pledge to volunteer the weekend of July 31st and become part of our midterm madness program to get involved in the most important elections in 2022 from the Senate to your local school board. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, 2021's congressional clusterfuck barrels to a close

as the House reveals new details about the right-wing plot to destroy democracy while the Senate tries to save it with a last-minute attempt to pass voting rights legislation. Then, former Biden White House COVID advisor Andy Slavitt joins to talk about how we can prepare for what the Biden administration believes will be a large wave of Omicron infections, and Dan and I discuss the media's role in defending democracy. But first, if you're excited for the release of Spider-Man No Way Home, then you have to check out Crooked's podcast, X-Ray Vision.

Host Jason Concepcion and Marvel superfan Rosie Knight are recapping all the previous Spider-Man films, breaking down all the returning villains, and sharing their wildest theories about the future of the MCU multiverse. New episodes of X-Ray Vision drop every Friday wherever you get your podcasts. And you can now binge the entire second season

of Unholier Than Thou where host Philip McCarty explores the wisdom of everyday people falling down and getting back up again. All right. Let's get to the news.

We will have a few special episodes for you guys over the break, but this is our last regular pod of 2021. So we thought we'd take stock of what's happening right now in Washington, the beating heart of our thriving democracy.

Let's start with the House. Over in the House, the January 6th committee ended the year by not only voting to hold Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress, they have released some of the text messages that he turned over to the committee, including this one, which was sent to Meadows by an unnamed Republican member of Congress before the polls closed on the night of the 2020 election. Here's what it said, quote, here's an aggressive strategy. Why can't the states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other Republican controlled state houses declare this is BS and just send their own electors to vote and have it go to the Supreme Court? Dan, who do you think that was and what the fuck? Here's the sad thing.

It could be, honestly, almost anyone. Anyone not named Adam Kinzinger, Liz Cheney, maybe a Romney, maybe a Murkowski, everyone else is a viable suspect for that text. And I think, and the answer to your question of what the fuck is, what the fuck? I mean, this is ultimately the underplayed or undertold story about all of this is just a general Republican disdain for the idea that voters should get to pick their politicians, right? This is what happens when you're a minority party in a country with a theoretically majoritarian system is you want to do everything you can to prevent the majority from having their will to voter. So this one, it is, I would say, an accurate description

to call it an aggressive strategy. Let's just stop counting the votes while we're ahead. You know, we talk all the time about the big lie this is like put the big lie aside put the allegations the false allegations of voter fraud that no one's been able to find aside this proves at least for this member of congress this republican member of congress that all of the voter fraud allegations were completely bullshit because before there were any voter fraud allegations for any of this, this person was just like, you know what? Let's just fucking overturn the election. You people don't get to pick who represents you.

Republican politicians get to pick who represent you. That is their platform. at least of this one Republican member of Congress, that we should just overturn the votes of Republicans, Democrats, independents, whoever, because the people who should get to decide who are in power in this country are Republican politicians and not the American people. That's it. There are only two kinds of elections.

The ones Republicans win and illegitimate elections. And they're mine. That's how they think about it. So let me ask you this. Why do you think President Biden and Democrats in Congress aren't making a big deal about this? I did some searching before the pod. I did not see many statements. I did not even see, I saw a few tweets here and there from the very online members of Congress. But that's about it. I don't know. I mean, it's very, I'm trying to think about this from the perspective of being in the White House.

And you sort of think about like what's on the agenda for Joe Biden and his team every day. And let's just put aside just the fact that there's the normal stuff that presidents are required to talk about. Like, oh, the so-and-so of Finland is coming today. Or the NSC has somehow tricked us into announcing our new Asia strategy this week. And we got to talk about like oh the so-and-so of finland is coming today or the nsc has somehow tricked us into announcing our new asia strategy this week we gotta talk about that right like all that other stuff that it has importance in the world i guess there's things you say on this podcast that i'm just like i can't wait till ben hears this roads hears this and then texas well it's good because no one listens to this podcast sooner after it comes out than Ben.

Like that's sometimes how I know the podcast has come out is Ben has texted me something we have said in it. It's fun. We have fun with our world, O'Pal. That's right. But then you just think about like the other things that are on their sort of communications department whiteboard, which is you pass the bipartisan infrastructure

bill. That is a huge accomplishment. What is one of the lessons of previous presidencies is go sell your bill. So there, you know, you got the president talking about it. You got Pete Buttigieg and Secretary Granholm driving in a car together and live stream, whatever. Like you're just talking about that. And it's like, oh, also there's a, we're in the middle of a second Delta surge and Omicron is coming.

So we better use what bully pump we have to tell people to get boosters and vaccinated. So we got to do that. Yeah. And we got to make the case for the pieces of legislation we haven't passed yet. And also, why aren't you talking about democracy? And it's very hard. Now, the question will be when sort of the calendar switches and we get into next year and we start campaigning for the midterms. What is the core message? What are you going to pick? Is it Democrats deliver? Is it Republicans are trying to steal elections? Is it Republicans are

obstructing? We're going to have to pick that story and stick to it. But I'm sympathetic to the view of you should talk more about this. Yes, you probably should. But then what are the things you're going to talk about less? Right. Well, you know, Joe Biden was asked about Meadows and the contempt charge as he was going to the helicopter to Marine One. And he said, you know, I think this sounds warranted. The committee voting for the contempt charge. I haven't looked at the text, which I guess you understand. Look, I very much understand White House has a lot on its plate. It's got to focus on

coming Omicron wave, all the legislation it's trying to get passed. So I totally get that. I do think that the anti-democratic movement in this country, right, is sort of the biggest overall looming threat that we face, medium term and long term, particularly when we get around the midterms. And I think that it's fine if you don't, you know, pop off right as the text comes out, right when everyone wants you to. But, you know, they're going to make a push for voting rights, which we'll talk about. And in the new year, if the Biden administration and the president himself are leaning into voting rights legislation, which will hopefully also include some election subversion provisions, I would talk about this. I would talk about this. And I think that like, if we want,

we're going to get to this later, but if also if we want the media to cover it more than Democrats sort of have to talk about it, You have to make a case at some point. You have to do a bunch of different things at once. I mean, when you think about this moment in history in which we're living, and you flash forward a couple of years, and then you think, all of this stuff was happening. Why weren't people talking more about this? Like I think you can really – like there is something very, very dangerous happening. And there is a sense – maybe it's real. Maybe it's intentional.

Maybe it's – but the sense that a lot of Washington Democrats, like people in the Senate, some in the House, maybe some in the White House, are missing this threat. I don't know if they are really missing it, but I think if you were just to look at their public statements, you would get the sense that they think that the Republican Party is more normal and less dangerous than we think it is. And that is a position you could really come to regret. Yeah, look, and I'm also very sympathetic. I'm sure if you were sitting here in the White House hearing this, you'd be like, well, you think that Joe Biden just talking about it is going to do what? Is that going to sweep the Republicans out of power immediately? No. Is that going to change their behavior? No. Like what I do think, though, that like I was looking for stories about that text. I saw it because Jake Tapper tweeted it and a bunch of other people were tweeting it. But when you looked for

actual stories in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Politico, CNN, I found like a small paragraph in a CNN update story. Didn't find a lot of other stories about that very alarming text. And I think, again, we'll talk about the media's role here. But I think it has to start with, you know, if Democrats if elected Democrats don't talk about it, then it's not going to get covered. And I do think it's at least important for most of the country to know that this is happening. And then if people don't want to make up, they don't want to vote based on that knowledge, then that's all we can do. But they should at least have the knowledge. And that's all we can do. But they should at least have the knowledge. The other bombshell from Meadows' text came from one six committee co-chair and longtime resistance hero Liz Cheney, who read aloud messages from Fox News hosts and even Don Jr. that begged Meadows to get Trump to call off the violent mob that was attacking the Capitol. Here's a clip. Indeed, according to the records, the Capitol. Here's a clip. Indeed, according to the records, multiple Fox News hosts knew the president needed to act immediately. They texted Mr. Meadows, and he has turned over those texts.

Quote, Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy, Laura Ingram wrote. Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished, Brian Kilmeade texted. Quote, can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol, Sean Hannity urged. As the violence continued, one of the president's sons texted Mr. Meadows, quote, he's got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough, Donald Trump Jr. texted. How about those fucking heroes, Dan? Trying to

stop the mob by texting Mark Meadows and begging him to get Donald Trump to call it off. How about that? Well, if only those Fox hosts had access to the airwaves and maybe some sort of media outlet that would be very influential with the sorts of people who were storming the Capitol that day. Well, I'm glad you mentioned that, Dan. Thanks to the video team at The Washington Post, we have audio of what these Fox hosts and Don Jr., the Trump family's Conor Roy, were actually saying in public at that time. The Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement.

Now there were likely not all Trump supporters and there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd. I do not know Trump supporters that have ever demonstrated violence that I know of in a big situation. They knew there were hundreds of thousands of people that came to town. We also knew that there's always bad actors that will infiltrate large crowds. I don't care if they're radical left, radical right. I don't know who they are. They're not people I would support. If you were to take his speech and compare it to literally

any stump speech, you would see absolutely no deviation. What's the significance of this revelation, if you want to call it that, about Fox News hosts and Don Jr.? And what do we do with this information? Laugh, cry. I don't know. Both. Really the story of 2021 in so many ways. I think this is ultimately more important for the historical record than it is current politics.

Everyone with eyes and ears who is willing to look and listen, knows what happened. They know these Fox hosts are full of shit. The problem, like, I mean, it is significant that Fox, and I think the most significant part from any of the texts is Laura Ingraham saying this hurts all of us, which is sort of an admission that, oh, look what we have unleashed here with our lies and our disinformation and our search for ratings and our firing people up over a bunch of election bullshit. Like this could hurt us, right? Like not, not this could hurt the Capitol police. This could hurt democracy. This could hurt the people who were, you know, Mike Pence or anyone else. This could hurt us. Like that's why they care. And it is notable, I guess, that they texted the president's chief of staff, not the local,

the head of the local Antifa, right? So it was pretty clear they know who was responsible. But it's good that we have a historical record that even Trump's son, who apparently doesn't have access to his father's cell phone, had to text the chief of staff. I know, I realize that's a very small thing in the grand scheme of things,

but that's pretty fucked up. He couldn't, he couldn't text his dad. He had to text his dad's chief of staff. There's a lot. It explains a lot. Betavanka had a direct line to dad. The one,

the one he loves. Yes. Yeah, exactly. But I mean, the thing here is like, yes, this reveals a lot.

And in the historical record of what happened on this day, we now even have people who have lied about it being caught in those lies. But for the whatever it is, 60 or 70 percent of Republicans who believe the election was stolen, the significant plurality of Republicans who believe that Antifa or someone else was involved in this and it wasn't Trump supporters, this information is not going to change that. The problem is not an absence of facts here. There was a rally organized by Trump supporters. Trump tweeted and told people to go to the rally. He then went to the rally. At that rally, he said the election was stolen. People should do something about it. People left that rally, waving Trump flags and wearing MAGA hats,

marched to the Capitol, scaled the walls, chanted around there, Trump won, did horrible things, violently assaulted everyone in their way. Like there's no – it's on video. We don't – there's no like smoking gun that's going to get a bunch of people to do it. We have to recognize I think as we think about the politics of this that there's a lot of motivated reasoning here. We're not just like one Laura Ingraham text away from the bulk of the Republican Party being like, oh, Trump is bad, or insurrection is bad, or one six really happened. And I think that that's a really sad statement about American politics and our information ecosystem and all of that. But that is, I think, the reality of what is here. It's great for the historical record. It makes these guys look stupid and force them to sort of backtrack on air. But it's not the underlying dynamics are not going to change based on that.

I also think it highlights something else that we've talked about before, which is that no one has less respect for Republican voters than Republican politicians, and no one has less respect for Fox viewers than Fox news hosts. And because what they do in private is completely different than what they do in public. In private, they all get vaccinated. All the Republican politicians, the Fox news hosts, they make sure they're vaccinated, they make sure they're safe. And then they just spout anti-vax bullshit on the air all the time. With this, they tell people, oh, yeah, no, it was it was fake. It was Antifa, even as they're privately texting Meadows saying, please call these people off. But they incite people to go to this to to the rally to in the first place and put them in harm's way.

Right. Like who who is who is mostly dying of COVID right now? Unvaccinated Trump supporters who, who gets hurt when they decide not to expand Medicaid uninsured Trump supporters. They do this all the fucking time. They have, they do not care about their own voters or their own viewers. And I do think that that's something worth mentioning and something that Democrats should think about, too, because, you know, Democrats get attacked. And ever since ever since Hillary Clinton made that gaffe about, you know, calling

them deplorables like, you know who thinks they're deplorable? Fucking Fox News hosts and Republican politicians. They think they're all fucking idiots and they treat them like that. That's and people should know that. And the question is, how do you make that case? I don't know the right answer to that. But that is – you're exactly right, is that whether it's Donald Trump, the Republican Party, Fox, views their voters as a means to an end. Nothing more. What happens to them does not fucking matter as long as they put them back in power let them continue to give tax cuts to the rich to help the court their friends in the corporations to make sure that rupert murdoch and tucker carlson and ben shapiro and the rest of them stay fucking rich they could give two

shits about the rest of you yeah they want to be rich and they want to be in power and the rest of you can fuck yourselves yeah that's it that's that's the republican party um all right so that's it. That's that's the Republican Party. All right. So that's what's going on in the House. Let's talk about the Senate where what is going on in the Senate, John? You know what I wrote? I wrote this up last night. I don't fucking know. OK, here's what's going on. The Build Back Better negotiations have completely blown up because Joe Manchin woke up one day and decided, you know, I want I don't want it to be a dime over one point seven five trillion dollars. But every program that you put in the bill, I'm going to pretend that it has to be extended for 10 years. And I'm going to count that cost of extending the program for 10 years towards the price of the bill. That's what he has decided. So that whole fake CBO score that we talked about earlier in the week that Joe Manchin asked Lindsey Graham to ask the CBO to calculate, he's taking it seriously. He's taking it seriously.

With a whole bunch of programs that if they're extended to 10 years, which apparently they are in Joe Manchin's mind, will be way over one point seven five trillion. So now the question is, what programs can you put in a one point said there was some reporting that Manchin said that the Democrats should cut the child tax credit completely from the bill costs one point six trillion dollars if it is extended over 10 years. So if you put the one point six trillion dollar child tax credit in the bill that Manchin says can't be over one point seven five trillion, you don't have much more room for anything in the bill. can't be over 1.75 trillion, you don't have much more room for anything in the bill. The one provision in the bill that originally was authorized for a full 10 years, even before Manchin's problem, were the climate tax credits and grants and all that. They cost about a half a trillion dollars over 10 years. So you start doing the math and you realize why this whole thing has started to fall apart, because now we need to figure out. So, you know, we can get the climate stuff in there for point five for half a trillion dollars. That still gives you now one point two five trillion dollars left to, you know, find programs that you can you can include that still won't break the bank after 10 years. and you know, I have to say like, maybe it's just that Joe Manchin wakes up every morning and has a completely different outlook on the legislation. Maybe he's just dumber than we even thought.

Maybe I don't, I don't know. I'm done figuring out Joe Manchin's motivations, right? Maybe he's dumb. Maybe he's corrupt. Maybe he's trying to do his best. Who the fuck cares at this point? He's screwing everything up. That's all we need to know um but like you know did chuck schumer not know this uh dick durbin he's number two in the demo in the democratic leadership he woke up this morning and was like this is outrageous i can't believe this is happening this is not anything that we expected like how is everyone continually surprised by this what is going on i mean not a not a clue. Maybe we are stupid, but the impression everyone left when the House passed the $1.75 trillion version of the bill,

whatever that was a month and a half ago, the impression we all had was we agreed on the top line. We agreed on the everyone, right? That what they were going to pass was something that was in the neighborhood of what Manchin and Sinema were okay for. Cause we took a bunch of stuff that they didn't like out. Clean energy standard, the crazy idea to ask the wealthy to pay a higher tax rate or corporations to pay a tax rate that existed just two years ago. We took all that out to make those people happy. And then, yes, we knew that they were not going to just pass what the House passed, but they would make some changes and Manchin would obviously do his normal annoying shit and we would – he would unnecessarily means test some things because if you could just be cruel to some people in need, like that would be skiddam centrist points at the No Labels Conference or something. And then they would – then the House would pass it and we'd be done. But what his objection now is so fun. It, it is at the fundamental structure of the bill and not just the one, the house passed the bill we've been talking about for a year now.

It's like, I do not, it is either like, you're right. Is no one talking to him? Is he changing his mind? But the problem with all of it, whatever the answer to this, the problem is it is giving everyone unfair, inaccurate expectations of what can happen. Joe Manchin side, he has been talking about the what he calls the gimmicks in this bill since before it passed the House. So I don't know if if other Democrats in the Senate just didn't take those complaints seriously or they weren't listening to them. But like Joe Manchin has been complaining about this 10 year window bullshit for a long time now. about this 10-year window bullshit for a long time now. But I don't know, like, is this going to be another thing where we find out that him and fucking Chuck Schumer signed a piece of paper three months ago where Schumer knew this was happening?

Like, what? I just... It is... It's mind-boggling. And it is, like, none of it makes any sense. And there's this other story in the Washington Post, and he's, like, negotiating on these very fine details of some of the climate provisions. Well, right. Well, that's... I mean, I was going to, if there's if you want to find some good news in all of this, like Joe Manchin is not just saying, like, he doesn't seem like he's just saying this to tank the whole bill because he's in them while this is going on. He's like in these detailed negotiations about, like, the electric vehicle tax credit and exactly how it's structured

and then he said to reporters yesterday like hey don't tell me i don't like the child tax credit if you want to authorize the child tax credit for 10 years for 1.6 trillion dollars and you want that to be your bill i'm committed let's do it but then you can't have anything else so it's he's being completely unreasonable and an asshole here but but it does sound like he would approve a bill that costs $1.75 trillion as long as every program is authorized for the full 10 years. It's just, and if you don't ever know, like what is Manchin and what is his staff? Like they're probably like- Well, that's the other, that's the other part.

He's the chair of the energy committee. He's got a lot of energy staffers and I'm sure they're like in negotiations with the White House people and Schumer's office about these specific provisions. And Manchin's just bobbing along, listening to Lindsey Graham, just seeing what he hears on CNBC next and saying some dumb shit. So there are a lot of members who are relatively disconnected from the details, and he feels like one of them. But none of this is good, I would no it's not good well so there it looks like they are going to uh quote shelve the build back better bill uh until next year there are some sources in schumer's office that told nbc till march apparently um now this is a problem a because everyone wanted to build back better bill before

christmas but also in the more immediate sense the child tax credit does the authorization for that runs out at the end of the year so i don't know if they can authorize that for just one more year since that's against what joe manchin wants to do and he wants to say authorize it for 10 years or nothing um so that's a problem but i guess is this all this shit was going down. A bunch of Senate Democrats were like, hey, let's try voting rights instead. So there was this whole movement to try to pass voting rights legislation. And this was this change in strategy. This, I would say, abrupt change in strategy was previewed in a very passionate speech from Senator Raphael Warnock this week on the Senate floor. Let's take a listen. Did we rise to the moment or did we hide behind procedural rules? I believe that we Democrats can figure out how to get this done, even if that a change in the rules, which we established just last week, that we can do when the issue is important enough. Well, the people of Georgia and across the country are saying that voting rights are important enough.

I think the voting rights are important enough. I think the voting rights are important enough. Amen. So, again, just like everything else in 2021, you hear that clip and you're like, good for Reverend Warnock. Yeah, we're going to get something done. And then Politico drops a story

late Wednesday night about Kyrsten Sinema and what she thinks about changing the rules for voting rights. And we've done a lot of Manchinese translation, so we should now try some Sinema translation. This is her spokesman to Politico saying Sinema, quote, continues to support the Senate's 60 vote threshold and doesn't want to, quote, eliminate or weaken the filibuster to pass voting rights, but that, quote, if there are proposals to make the Senate work better for everyday Americans without risking repeated radical reversals in federal policy, Senator Sinema is eager to hear such ideas. What do you make of that? Those words are in the English language. They are actual words, but they mean nothing. Strung together are actual words but they mean nothing combined strung together in that order they mean nothing i mean i'm trying to figure out i'm trying to figure out

what's actually going on here because it's got to be something between mansion and cinema telling every senate democrat no fucking way are we ever going to change any rules to help pass voting rights because if that was the case then no one would be talking about this. So it's something between that and, hey, we've got a solution to change the Senate rules that doesn't eliminate or weaken the filibuster, but can still help us pass voting rights, which they clearly don't have yet. Because after this whole trial balloon was floated, Chuck Schumer this morning on Thursday were like was like, like we're gonna still try to get voting rights done in time for the 2022 election and they said we're gonna get it done i don't know so like what i'm just i would love some at some point next year early we should have some senate rules people on to tell us like where what is the what is the rule change here's the question what is the rule change? Here's the question. What is the rule change where Republicans...

So Manchin and Sinema are basically saying, we won't agree to any Senate rule change that Republicans don't also agree to. But then why would Republicans agree to a Senate rule change that would allow for the passage of voting rights legislation? They're not. They won't. So then what are we doing?

We, people who care about democracy, are talking about voting rights, election subversion, gerrymandering. They are talking about making it easier to pass bipartisan legislation. Like, part of this rules discussion comes from the fact that they were unable to pass – or it was very challenging to pass a bipartisan national defense authorization bill. And the fact that Joe Biden can't get a single fucking ambassador passed because Ted Cruz has holds on all of them. I don't even know how that works in a world in which there isn't a filibuster. There are two conversations. I mean, there's one is how do we make our lives of doing the random things that are important but not significant easier? Like how do you make the building work better? And then there is what we care about, which is like how do you make democracy work better?

And those are two very separate conversations. Kirsten Sinema will be part of the former but not the latter because her statement is – like she's clearly open to some rule changes. She did vote for a rule change that allows you to skip the filibuster one time to prevent a global financial collapse. So kudos to you, the senator from Arizona. But her statement also makes it very clear. about reversals of policy and voting rights makes it pretty clear that she'll support minor changes, but something that requires, that would allow voting rights to happen is not on the table with her. And we should come to terms with that right now. Yeah, the Politico story did say that they're all talking about potential rule changes like bringing back the talking filibuster or saying that you need 41

Republican senators in this case on the floor to carry out a filibuster against voting rights. And so in that scenario, you'd have to have 41 fucking old people standing on the Senate floor the whole time to stop voting rights. And maybe they would be able to, but then maybe the Democrats could outlast them. I don't know. So like maybe those, maybe Sinema or Manchin would, maybe they would support that. Like the 41 vote thing seems so stupid to me. Like, of course, in a world in which they had, it was a 58, 42 Senate. Maybe you, someone would get sick one day and you could sneak through some legislation, but you think there's going to be a world where Mitch McConnell is going to just slip up and there'll only be 40 senators and we're going to expand Social Security that day?

Like, it just doesn't seem like a real thing to me. I don't either. It would at least, you know, it would it would highlight just from a political standpoint, whether it would work or not. It would highlight. highlight, it would get a lot of media coverage to have this standoff on the Senate floor where you have 41 Republican senators who won't leave the Senate floor to block voting rights. And you have every Democrat, including Manchin and Sinema on board trying to pass this piece of legislation. It would at least do that. Maybe that's what they're thinking, that they just want to get caught trying here. I mean, I guess at bare minimum, if you, you might as well make it

really physically and emotionally annoying for the other side to grind democracy to a halt. Yeah. Yeah. That's the only thing I could think of. All right. So now we got all that out of the way. We got Build Back Better shelved till March till someone can figure out someone can put a lot of calculator and figure out what programs to put in it to appease Joe Manchin. We got voting rights basically exactly where we were before this trial balloon was floated. A lot of disappointed Democrats out there. I would say that the hosts of this program are among them. But what do you think is a fair and accurate narrative about Biden's first year? Thinking about, you know, now that we've had one year, one year of the Biden administration, obviously, there's a lot of criticism, a lot of pieces, you know, that this was a horrible year for Joe Biden. And so George Will wrote some column that, you know, Ron Klain was tweeting that.

What do you think is a fair and accurate narrative on the upside about Joe Biden's first year? It was just such a surprise to find out that George Will was still writing columns. Like, not a clue. Honestly, again, you asked me to name 10 Washington Post columnists. It was just such a surprise to find out that George Will was still writing columns. Like, not a clue. Honestly. Again, you asked me to name 10 Washington Post columnists. I don't know. Five? I don't know if I could do it. Greg Sargent.

EJ DeArmond. Jennifer Rubin. But then, like, George Will pops up. Perry Bacon. I didn't know that George Will was still in the rotation. Yeah, I think, like, he and Kathleen Parker, like, I think they still write stuff. Yeah, she's another one. Who knows? Don't have to think about her for years at a time all right anywho i mean one we should just stipulate that the whole like let's do a report card on the first year thing is a stupid

yeah of course it's stupid and it's all they only do it because we're heading into a quote-unquote slow news period in a normal world, probably not this year, and political reporters need something to write. But I think there are sort of two ways to look at this question. One is, let's focus on what Biden did, right? He came into office with the most narrowly divided Congress in history, where the Republican Party, the majority of whom refused to acknowledge he legitimately won the election, with a government that was a husk of itself because of the massively incompetent former president just taking out experts, putting in Fox News green room rejects, and in the middle of a pandemic where literally the White House staff could not meet in the same room.

They had to like do zooms down the hall from each other, like the hardest possible situation. Joe Biden comes in, passes a hugely historic and progressive rescue plan that has child poverty and saves the economy. Like, yes, people are very frustrated about inflation and all these other things. But if you look at the unemployment rate, economic growth, we are in an incredibly strong place from where we possibly could have been when he came in office. A historic year of job growth. He puts in place a competent government to begin managing this pandemic, ensuring that every person who wants to get vaccinated can get vaccinated. Like in this country, if you just – anyone can go get vaccinated any given day if they want to do it. Does all of that. Then passes a historically large infrastructure bill with 19 Republicans, something that I certainly did not think was possible a year

ago. I mean, maybe you were – I mean, you were always arguing about how in good faith the Republicans were. They would probably work with them. Well known for that, yes. My big thing. Passes that. Which like roads and bridges are not the thing to get me out of bed in the morning. But Biden and Harris announced today that they're beginning the process through this bill of removing every – replacing every lead pipe in this country. That's pretty cool. Like that's a good thing.

And I also read this morning that biden has now nominated more federal judges than trump had at this point so there's like a like things don't feel great in the country right now because of a bunch of things beyond biden's control like omnicron and delta and inflation and supply chain stuff and you can nitpick around all the things that you know easily seven but like that stuff in and of itself would be a if we knew nothing else would be a hugely uh consequential first year yeah look i think i think the central problem that we're all grappling with here is that when we won those two senate seats in georgia we lost our Georgia, we thought we had a real majority,

and we never did. Joe Manchin is a very conservative Democrat who voted for Chuck Schumer for majority leader, has voted for, as far as I can tell, just about every single judge, even if they're very liberal judges, has voted for the American Rescue Plan, has voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, has voted for, I think, most of Joe Biden's

nominees. It's killed a few, but voted for most of them. And that's all he's done. And he's not, he doesn't want to do a whole lot more. I guess he he though he says he's willing to spend another 1.75 trillion dollars provided you know we already talked about the math there um and is that infuriating that that's all that joe manchin will do yeah of course but i keep coming back to like what else was joe biden gonna do you know i mean i do i was talking to someone the other day and they're like why didn't joe biden get joe manchin in a and say, OK, 2024 is going to be a hard election for you in Virginia and West Virginia. You might not win. Tell me the job you want. You want to you want to be an ambassador. You want some great job. I'll give you that job in 2024. So you have to run for reelection again and just vote for all my shit. And I was like, yeah, that's a great idea. But like, it's such an obvious idea.

We don't think that Joe Biden's tried that already. You mean he hasn't tried bribery? Right. I mean, people talk about what kind of jobs you want, not bribery, but like, look,

I think I, I don't know. And as much as, you know, you can, you can criticize them for expectation setting. You can criticize them for messaging. You you can criticize them for messaging you can do all kinds of stuff if you want but like to this day i still don't know how you bend joe mansion

and kirsten cinema to your will uh as a democrat when they well cinema is another story but mansion is in a state that may not elect another democrat ever again at least in our lifetimes yeah and so with the hand they were dealt which is a fucking shitty hand by the way like we used to think that our hand was pretty bad in 2009 yeah we had 59 senators we had 59 senators and we had a whole bunch of pains in the asses there ben nelson and blanche Lincoln and all the rest of them. But we had 59 and he has 50 and one has been a giant and two have been giant pains in our asses. And he got two more variants that he had to deal with and an economy that is not back to normal yet because of those two variants. It's a tough hand. And, you know, they they they did a lot with what they have.

And that doesn't mean that we still shouldn't be disappointed or mad or angry or whatever else. But I would remind everyone, and we've been talking on this show a lot about this, like it's not it's not small, the threat to democracy right now that Republicans represent. And you have to ask yourself, as we head into 2022 in the midterms, would I rather be disappointed by Joe Manchin or have a bunch of anti-democracy Republicans running this country? And that's not a fun choice, but that's the reality of the choice that we face for sure. I mean, you sort of like, you know, you and I have talked about this both on this podcast and off that we got our expectations out of whack. Like we should have fucking known better, right? Like I, I, I, I was, I was looking at things that Joe Manchin said to, and back in January,

and I was like, fuck, we're going to pass big climate thing. We're going to pass this. We're going to be great. But like, you know, in the end, you can almost always figure out what's going to happen in politics by just looking at what politicians' political incentives are. And Joe Manchin's political incentive is not to pass a giant progressive thing. And it is – and then so you sort of look at this and say, well, Biden did all this great stuff, but he let expectations get out of control. We let expectations get out of control. Chuck Schumer certainly let expectations get out of control. He definitely let expectations get out of control. And Bernie asked for 6.5, and then we talked about 3.5 and all of this. But there is this sort of world, and this is the critique a lot. You hear

this from a lot of Capitol reporters, which is Joe Biden tried to pass FDR's agenda without FDR's majorities. And that is definitely true. But we're also in the situation where you don't run for office to manage expectations, to do the bare minimum. This is a narrow window where Democrats can do good to help people. That's why you do it. And you take risks to do it. And Joe Biden put all of his chips in the table on this Build Back Better bill. And that bet has not paid off yet. And it can come at political cost if it doesn't. But sometimes it's better to try to do something significant, to save the planet. Like, you're not going to take political risk to spend political capital to save the fucking planet.

What are you going to spend it on? And if that bet ends up not paying off and we suffer from it, like, that's going to have some real consequences in terms of, as you said, this dangerous Republican Party being in charge. But I don't know that making that bet was the wrong decision. I don't think that it was. Yeah. Look, I see a lot of people on Twitter and elsewhere being like, I voted Democrat all my life and I'm so disappointed. I don't want to vote Democrat again. And it's like, OK, the truth of the matter is, I saw a couple of tweets about John Fetterman, who's running for Senate in Pennsylvania, was on the West Virginia border and he's a very rural area doing a campaign event.

And he looks around the crowd and he's like, not a single person here who cares about the filibuster. This whole crowd, this whole crowd wants to get rid of the filibuster. And he's now, you know, running on an anti filibuster platform. I'm sure a lot of the other primary candidates in Pennsylvania will do the same thing. We're seeing Democratic candidates run against all the time like the one true thing that joe manchin said to reporters a while back was if you want a bigger bill if you want more progressive priorities elect more progressive democrats because i'm not one of them and he's

right he's right we actually do have to elect more progressive democrats so you can either choose to not participate or not vote democrat or not whatever or you can go fight to to elect more progressive Democrats. So you can either choose to not participate or not vote Democrat or not, whatever, or you can go fight to go elect more progressive Democrats. That's it. That's that's sort of the choice we face. And I think I'd rather do the latter. OK, when we come back, I will talk to former Biden covid advisor Andy Slavitt about the Omicron variant. This week, a Biden administration official told Axios that when it comes to the Omicron variant spreading throughout the U.S., quote, everything points to a large wave. A large wave is coming here to talk about what we can do to prepare as individuals and as a country is President Biden's former senior advisor for COVID response,

my former Obama colleague, and now fellow podcast host of the excellent show In the Bubble, Andy Slavitt. Thanks for doing this, Andy. Hey, thanks for having me. So last week I had a wonderful conversation with our Surgeon General for another show I host called Offline, and we talked about why it's important for our mental health to do less COVID doom scrolling. So in that spirit, I want to try to stick to Omicron questions for you, where the answers can give people an action to take or a behavior to change or something to advocate for. Because I see a lot of people just tweeting, this is going to be a horror show and i and i don't know that that's um very productive at this point yeah um first off it seems abundantly clear that every single person should get a booster who is 16 or older and six months past their second dose of pfizer or moderna or two months

past their j and j shot is that right yeah absolutely i think i think there's, and this is not as bad as it could have been category, is the fact that boosters are highly effective against Omicron. And so it's nice to go into a wave having the science at least to solve it. We didn't last year. A year ago, we went to a wave. We didn't have the science to solve it. Now we do, so get boosted. What about kids from 5 to 15 who are vaccinated, but not eligible for a booster? What should they do? How should they act? They should act like kids. Okay. You know, it's, it's, it is true that kids

five to 15 aren't eligible for boosters yet. It's also true that they probably have stronger immune systems. You know, there is data in South Africa and the UK which shows this affecting younger kids a bit more, probably not with severity. So I wouldn't panic. But I would say that, you know, for the next period of time, and I think the period of time is actually likely to be potentially very brief because it's going to be a very fast wave. I think extra caution with your kids or with anybody who doesn't have a booster is warranted. We're seeing schools close. I wouldn't be surprised if in January we were back at that for a little while. But the thing I would want people to understand,

John, is that we're not talking about something that's going to likely last months. We're talking about something that experts are predicting will peak in the middle of January and start to go down very quickly. So this is the one that keeps me up at night. My son, Charlie, 17 months old. It doesn't sound like he'll be eligible for a vaccine until February at the earliest. And it seems like you said that the Omicron wave will be here in January. Like, should I take more precautions than we've already been taking with Delta? Like, and when would you start taking those precautions? Yeah, I'd be worried about, I'm worried about kids zero to five, because there's a little bit of a perfect storm and that most of them have not socialized yet, the ones that haven't been at day school. So they don't have either prior immunity or vaccination.

And so they're susceptible to getting this. Now, where I would tell you and your wife and everybody else, a little kids not not to panic, is very likely they'll get it and you wouldn't know it if you didn't test them, if they did get it. But, you know, still none of us wants our kids to be even a little bit sick. So, you know, I think it is wise, and particularly because we're talking a short period of time, particularly we're talking because he's preschool age, hang out with mom and dad, watch cartoons, probably don't do a ton of playdates during that period of time. already December. Those of us who got J&J and boosted with an mRNA, should we get one more booster? Because Michael Lynn, a scientist and doctor who I'm sure you know, he had this whole long thread earlier this week saying that we should, that J&J plus an mRNA is much less protection than three mRNAs. Yeah. So my son, my older son is still mad at me for having gotten the J&J vaccine. He's like,

dad, you think you would have known to tell me not to get that? And I'm sure you're mad at me too. No, it's my fault. Well, every public health official said, take the first one you can get. And that's what I did. We did. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. So look, not to be flip about it, but J&J plus a boost is basically the equivalent of a boost. The data on J&J, and by the way, on Cinefarm and on Sputnik is not good with Omicron. And that's something that I wouldn't even say we could have or should have anticipated. This is, you know, know in effect i would advise people

who've taken j and j to almost forget they got that shot um at this point in time now that we have overcrime coming and and like do a do-over from your first booster um and and uh and that's just that's just kind of the reality it's a very imperfect way to look at it yeah but we don't need we don't need like we don't need perfect ways to look at we just need something as you said that's actionable and in my mind um i'd go beyond where you started so i i got my moderna booster before it was authorized specifically as a booster so i got the 100 mg moderna but i'm now booking myself i just booked myself myself a Sunday appointment at CVS to get a 50 mg booster plus my J&J. I feel like that should be enough for me then. I think this whole episode should really be about what's right for you, John.

There's a whole J&J hive here at Crooked Media and everywhere. No, it's funny though. Like I was texting with Sanjay Gupta this morning, and literally, I'm like, where are you? And all he wants to talk about, like, is his daughters and his family. It's like all of us have the same kind of reaction, no matter how kind of policy or global-oriented we think we are. Like, at the end of the day, we're like, yeah. And also, like, my family, I've got this, like, crazy situation, and everyone wants to know what to do. And I think it's very natural. I will say that it's part of the, also part of what the challenge is,

is that everybody's acting based on their own risk profile. And, you know, you've got, you know, you've got 75 million people that are in a situation your son's in where they can't get boosted or vaccinated. And you've got 100 million who probably could and aren't. Well, I want to get to sort of what the country should do and some policy solutions soon, too. For the, I think it's what, 13, 14 percent of the country now that is fully boosted. What else should they be thinking about in terms of precautions over the next month? Yeah. And by the way, I have a feeling that the number is higher than what's being reported. You're exactly right. It's about 14%. I talked

to some people at the White House today who believe that we actually have somewhat of a misreporting of numbers going on, that there's a lot of people who we think have one booster, have one shot, I should say, but what they really are people who came in, didn't have a prior record and got boosted. So the good news, bad news is, you know, you've got a lot more people that are boosted than we think. You've also got a lot more people who've got nothing who are in, in those kinds of communities. Look, I think it's all, it's all the same. I mean, we have, um, look, if you're in a position where you can afford rapid at-home tests, then if you're having people over for the holidays, it's a good idea to have people take those tests. You know, my wife calls them a day pass.

Really, you know, someone comes home from college, someone comes home, you know, you go to your parents, your grandparents. Even if you're boosted, good idea to take one of those tests before getting together. Again, presuming you can afford one, presuming you can access one. I probably spent $10 more on that and $10 less on my Christmas presents just to make sure I could enjoy the holidays. And just about on the timing of these rapid tests, because I saw some floating around too like you see some invitations to holiday parties whenever and then someone says okay uh get a rapid test or give us your negative covid test one to two days before before the event it does seem like from everything i'm reading that you should take your rapid test as soon as close to the event that you're going to as possible right yeah that's right i would and and

uh and then it could then you can enjoy it and have a good time. And if they don't do that and you choose to go anyway, then it's also not a bad idea to get one done afterwards because, you know, you don't know, you don't want to carry it from there. Will K95 masks work as well against a variant this transmissible that's going to be all over the place? Are we still feeling good about masks? transmissible that's going to be all over the place? Are we still feeling good about masks? Well, we don't have any data yet, but it works better. It's a relative layer, right? So to my mind, smaller conveniences, like why wouldn't you add the K95 mask? I do think that there's going to be some effectiveness for sure. And this thing is so contagious that without the mask, it's probably problematic. As you know, in LA now masks are required indoors, which is a good thing. Except like, I don't know about you, but if I'm dining indoors, like 97% of the time I'm eating or drinking and so is everybody else in the restaurant. So, you know, you might want to think about kind of, you know, leaning in towards more indoor dining if you can.

Right. Outdoor dining, I should say. So on the policy front, and getting back to the testing question, should the Biden administration make it even easier for people to get free tests as opposed to this policy they announced where you'd have to get reimbursed through your insurer? What do you think about this whole situation? Well, it's funny. I had a conversation over there this morning with an idea, which is that you could actually make the, because they're in a bit of a bind, right? They don't have the money yet from Congress to buy, you know, they've got some money, but they don't have enough money to get everybody all the tests that they need. The idea was to, it was kind of a technical one, but it's to try to basically

make getting a rapid at-home test work the same way it does when you go pick up a prescription at the pharmacy. They can ping your insurance, right, when you go in to pick it up. Right. So you never get, so you don't get charged or you'll get charged the appropriate amount. So hopefully they're going to implement something like that. I've been calling on insurance companies, PBMs, pharmacies to actually reduce the hassle and get this done. But this is one of those situations where in the short term, because it's happening so fast, the White House is going to need cooperation from the outside to get it done for any practical purposes. If you really want to do something by the time, you know, Omicron's here, there's unfortunately not really the time to do anything else. So

they can be criticized, but as you know, policies are perfect and you got to kind of do the best you can. Well, what else should the administration be doing in the next several weeks to minimize the damage here? What can they do? Well, I'd be talking a lot if I were there, and I think if you were there, to the public about this wave. And I know that people are fatigued and people are not listening and it feels futile, but I don't think you can quit doing that. And I think I would, so I think it starts with a fair amount of kind of continual calling people's attention to this. If you look at around the world, we're probably doing less of that than people around the world

are. And then I think, you know, there's real justification for saying, I don't really care if you get vaccinated. What I do care about is if you're going to be around people who can't get vaccinated or boosted, I should say, like in an office setting or a school setting, that you have to assure everybody that you've been, that you're not going to spread COVID. And I think, you know, the fact that Republicans have made that controversial, I think we should freaking ignore that because many of them are behaving so badly and so absurdly that for all of the people that are going to say,

you're stepping on my freedom, you have a whole bunch of other people that are saying, I'm doing everything right, and you're letting these people get away with essentially making my workplace unsafe, making my restaurant unsafe, making my school unsafe. Yeah. Will Pfizer's antiviral pill that reduces hospitalizations by, I think, 89% be ready to help people through this Omicron surge or is that too far away? No, it won't. It's the right question. It's a great question. It is probably,

you know, we interviewed for In the Bubble, we interviewed 12 scientists and we asked them four questions. One of them, what's going to be the scientific breakthrough of 2022? And the majority of them said that this Pfizer pill that you're referring to, and it's really a series of pills that you've, that if you take it within three to five days of sickness, of being aware with COVID, you're going to, it's going to do a dramatic job. 90% protect you. That's really great news. Now, this, it doesn't scale, the productivity doesn't scale really well. So it's going to be September, even in September, we're only going to have in the single millions or even 10 million doses here in the US. And look, they're doing something at Pfizer that is admirable, but we should understand that it has a ramification on us, which is that they're distributing it much

more equitably throughout the world than they did the vaccines. And, you know, they got a lot of criticism for favoring wealthy nations when it came to vaccines. That's being treated differently with these therapeutics. But it does mean there's going to be a lot less to go around in the U.S. for quite a while. We know that variants like Omicron will keep coming, potentially, until the whole world is vaccinated. How do we do that? What are the obstacles right now, both from a supply standpoint, distribution, all that kind of stuff? Yeah. So the problem just got a lot harder because the definition of vaccinated, right. Just changed right now from under us, right.

Because it used to be two and now it's three. So yeah, I would say we vaccinated, you know, eight and a half million, eight and a half billion people around the globe, which is extraordinary. And it's something we ought to be incredibly proud of. And the U S has donated more vaccines around the world for free than, than anybody. So we should feel good about that. But unfortunately, the hurdles are much higher. Here, I'll tell you what the problem isn't, John.

The problem isn't do we have enough vaccines? The problem isn't do we have enough money? The World Bank has made sure we do. The problem is that there are many countries that going from vaccine to arms, the same problem that we had here a year ago, is the real challenge. And in Africa, you know, you may have heard that in South Africa, they actually told Pfizer to stop sending vaccines because their vaccines were spoiling. because their vaccines were spoiling. So getting out to remote parts of the country,

getting people to trust that they should put something in their arms that maybe the first time they're hearing of and getting them to trust an establishment that basically screwed them over on HIV AIDS for a number of years, right? Those are real challenges. And so this last mile problem in Africa is real as in remote parts of the world.

And so we need very much an all-hands-on-deck effort. If I think about your pod save the world show, I think about the context that we don't have the same type of global leadership that we once had. The G20 as a body doesn't act in uniform. The fighting between China and the U.S. and all these, all those things hurt our ability to coordinate a massive global effort that we could have done 30, 40, 50 years ago. Well, here's where I can't figure out, like, there's the supply issue, there's a distribution issue, right? Like every country should be more generous, rich countries especially, obviously. But we have vaccine hesitancy here in the United States that we haven't been able to

solve however many years into this. Other countries have similar vaccine hesitancy that they haven't been able to solve as well all over the world. Like, what is the plan for ending this pandemic that also recognizes the reality of vaccine hesitancy, not just in the United States, but all over the world? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. And it's obviously something that we spent a lot of time on trying to figure out in the White House. And, you know, I've come to believe that in the U.S., which, and I think it differs a little bit around the world, but just to start with the U.S., 20% of the public is just pretty strongly anti-science. And this is preceded the pandemic.

This isn't about, hey, can you find a more clever way to communicate why people should take a vaccine? This is some pretty embedded stuff. And I know you've done deep research in the Wilderness podcast specifically about kind of people's attitudes and how far apart people are. This is some of that same stuff, I think, that it's the same stuff that Trump didn't create, but he wrote. And so we've got this strong anti-institutional bent, people who believe in conspiracy theories, they want to believe the things that they read that cause skepticism and doubt on government and pharmaceutical industries, all places that have their own vulnerabilities. And so we really, unfortunately, like in most things in life, if you get 75%,

you win, right? If you'd gotten 75% for any political candidates you work with, that's pretty damn good. Unfortunately, here, this virus isn't as forgiving. So I didn't answer your question about endgame, because I think we have to accept that reality and the endgame has to actually work around it. And that means that we're going to have to understand that there's going to be a lot of people that are going to get their immunity from prior infection. And there's really no other way. And that's imperfect. And more of them will die. And it's not necessarily the most rational

decision. But I think the object is pretty immovable. Yeah, I mean, look, it always sort of bothered me that some of the public health experts who weren't so hot on boosters before Omicron would say things like, well, you know, we're focused on boosters, but the Biden administration has just given up on the unvaccinated. And I'm like, given up on the unvaccinatedinated like we put in place mandates everywhere they could basically except for airplanes which they could do um but the employer one is now in court we're at the mercy of our judicial system so like i don't know what else the biden administration or all of us can be doing about the vaccine hesitant in this country let

alone other countries and so then i wonder like do you think that they're so we're not in a situation again, where we have another variant like Omicron that comes in another six months from now, and we think everything's fine. Like, are there are scientists looking into creating vaccines or creating certain boosters that would help against any kind of variant? Like, is that is that part of it? I'm just thinking of other ways that we can get out of this thing. Yeah. Well, let me talk for a second about the politics and then about the science. You know, it probably doesn't help that you got guys like Eric Schmidt in Missouri who are saying, like, we shouldn't even report data any longer on when there are cases in that race. That like the very idea of case surveillance is a bad thing. It doesn't help that there's been a hundred laws,

local laws that have been stricken from the books that basically make public health not an option in many, many states. So like all this criticism for Joe Biden, he could take it, fine, criticize Joe Biden all you want. But like where the F is the criticism for like Ted Cruz saying,

we're going to stop the government from going forward if we have public health laws. Where's the criticism for all people who are like, literally, they won't lift a finger to fight the pandemic, but they will go to great lengths to fight the people fighting the pandemic. So I think that the, you know, the fact that Biden finds himself on his heels on this is understandable because he's the president and he's accountable. But I think there's so many people who are getting a free pass or being irresponsible. In terms of the science side, I think the answer is yes in a couple of ways.

One is if they create an intranasal vaccine, you know, that becomes, I think, actually a far, there are innovations that I think people can use more. I think we also probably, if someone's, like, dead set against getting vaccinated, you probably have to talk to them about the array of tools that they can be using, like antivirals, like rapid at-home tests, and other types of things. I do think we make a mistake and maybe made a mistake by talking about, including me, by the way, by talking about the vaccine as if it was what was going to end the pandemic. Instead of now, we all know the right way to talk about it. This is a very, very powerful tool to help you and your family and your community, but it's not the end all be all.

And so people who are anti-vaccinated, anti-vaccine, some of them, I think, feel very justified in saying, see, I don't need this thing because they told us it was the greatest thing in the world and it's really not. And so I think we just got to take it in a more sensible fashion, but also understand that the virus, this is a very fit virus. If you talk to these evolutionary biologists, it's good. People aren't going to get vaccinated or boosted. They're going to get COVID. A lot of them will die. A lot of them will get in the hospital, but a lot of

them won't. And if they don't feel scared about it, there's nothing you can do. But that but but ultimately, that's going to create a layer of protection in those communities. That's equivalent to the layer of protection for vaccines are eventually and then, you know, through that process, you end up with a much more livable, less spreadable disease, we hope. Okay. Is there anything else that I forgot to ask you that people should know, information they should be armed with as they go into the holiday season? Yeah. So I'd say just a couple of things. One is no one wants to go back and deal with things that are closed and whatnot. But I think it's going to be short. I think it's going to be short-lived. So I hope people feel encouraged that they can get through that. And they just offer that as a bit of encouragement. Secondly, I think Congress can act. I'd like to get some of the pressure off of just the White

House. It wouldn't hurt to have more money for global vaccinations. It wouldn't hurt to have more money for, so we can make that rapid at-home test ubiquitous, like your question asked. And so I think if we're going to advocate or put pressure somewhere, I think that's not a bad place to do it. And finally, I just say, look, we have the tools. We all have the tools to get through even these waves. We're not in 2020 anymore. And so the panic that we kind of all feel when we hear about a new wave is really this sort of flashback and PTSD.

It is. And so some of this is take the rational questions you're asking. There are now tools and options for almost all of them that are far better than that we were before and then just be very very conscious of the fact that some nurse or doctor in a hospital is going to go through this crush in the next four to six weeks and if we can lighten the load so they can get through that we're going to be in far far better shape. Andy Slavitt thank you so much for joining.

Everyone go check out In the Bubble. It's a fantastic podcast where you can get all kinds of really helpful information about this pandemic and living through it. So appreciate you taking the time, Andy. Appreciate you, John. Thanks. All right. Before we sign off for the year, we're going to do something fairly embarrassing that will only fuel the problems we complain about

and contribute to our own self-loathing. We're going to talk about Politico Playbook. I had to at least admit it, Dan. Yeah, no, it's good. Look what we're doing. Tuesday's headline was, quote, What the left doesn't get about the media. And here's what Ryan Lizza and Rachel Bade wrote.

Quote, One of the most consistent criticisms of the political press from the left these days is that it treats politics and policy as normal when the United States is facing an unprecedented crisis of democracy. And here's their answer as to why they do that. Quote, for better or worse, campaign coverage emphasizes what candidates are doing and saying. Washington policy and politics coverage emphasizes what the president and other leaders are trying to move through Congress. If Democratic candidates aren't talking about America's anti-democratic

movement, and if President Joe Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer aren't doing it every day in Washington, then the coverage will reflect that. That is not a defense of the political media ecosystem, but just a description of it. What do you think about that argument? I think it is both an accurate description and a searing fucking indictment of political media in this country. Say more. of political media in this country? Say more. An indictment in what way? The idea that all we do is just tell people the information and let them make decisions is not how media works, right? You are choosing, like the media is not neutral, is not unbiased. They pick the things that they, where they put their,

their thumb on the scale. Certainly, and this is not a critique. I understand it. Things that are good for business for them get a lot of attention. Stories that get clicks, stories that get ratings. Do you think back in 2014, CNN had a passionate interest in the Malaysian airliner out of journalistic integrity? No. People watch that story. Do you think CNN or MSNBC or others showed empty podiums before Trump rallies in 2015, 2016 because they thought that was fucking newsworthy? No, because it was good for them. They do that. And you know what? They're a business with payroll and investors and all the above. And Politico was right that not enough Democrats understand

the media is a business and they make decisions on their business interest. They also put their thumb on the scale for things that they decide they want to care about, transparency and access. Do you think they write a gazillion stories about Joe Biden's frequency of press conferences because they think that's journalistically interesting? No. They decided a long time ago, and I don't begrudge them this either, that they have power and they're going to use that power to fight for access and transparency. And it is why they, and I think this was probably their right decision as much as sometimes it makes us feel uncomfortable, were so aggressive about some of the early investigations of leaks and whistleblowers that roped in journalists in the early parts of the Obama administration.

They kicked Obama's ass for that, and that is their right. And you know what, frankly, they should do that. But democracy is not a tax bill or a healthcare bill. It is what allows them to do their fucking jobs. You don't have to- Yeah, it involves them. They like stories about themselves a lot. They write a lot of stories about themselves. This is a story about them too. All of us, but them too. Do you know who the first people, the authoritarians come for when they take power? The press.

They take over the TV station. Look at what's happening in Hungary, right? Ben wrote about this in his book. They talk about pot, save the world all the time. Authoritarians that govern Hungary, what do they do? Take care of all the media. What is happening in Russia? And the idea that you're just going to cover it as if it was a dispute over economic policy or political strategy

is an insane life choice. And it is one where you were so beltway both sides pickled in your fucking brain that you can't make decisions that are about what's good for not only just good for the country, but good for yourself. Now, now reporters will say because i've seen them say this like democrats want us to be on their team we are not on their team uh that's not our job and to which i say like first of all i never thought you were supposed to be on our team i realize there are some democrats i would never i would never confuse you for a teammate nor want you as a teammate. That would be a really bad team that I'm putting together because they're not doing a great job for us right now.

Yes. In fact, one of the requirements of going to journalism is being the last person picked on every team in elementary school. That's how you end up with it. Oh, man. This is why they don't like us. Okay. But look, so I don't expect them to be on our team. I really don't. I don't expect you to have my position on healthcare or taxes or climate or any of it, even though you should, especially on some of those things.

But you're right. Like, even from a self-interested standpoint, you would think that the media would have an interest in protecting democracy and writing about it. I think the question is and a fair question is, what would it look like for the political press to give the anti-democracy movement the coverage it deserves? Is it about the number of stories? Is it about the tone of the coverage? Because the other argument you get from them is, okay, if suddenly we were just rabidly anti-Trump and anti-Republican party because they've become an anti-democracy party, wouldn't that just fuel the polarization that already exists in the country? And wouldn't that not really persuade anyone else because now they just think we're in bed with the liberals and all the accusations of liberal bias are correct. So what is the point of doing that?

Well, guess what? That already happened. That happened a long time ago. It happened because you let the Republicans kick the shit out of you for years and tried to appease them, not recognizing that those attacks were in bad faith. You did that while Fox, whose entire creation was about telling Republicans that the rest of

the press was full of shit and shouldn't be listened to. And what did you do with that? You kept passing orders with Brett Barrett cocktail parties, right? Like that has happened. You have lost. The war is over. You have lost, that war, the war is over. You have lost it. It is done. So you can either, you can stop trying to appease people who are not listening to you and just cover things in the right way.

And I think, I don't, the idea of like number of stories is like a fake thing in the age of the internet. It's not like there are 12 available stories for the New York Times per day and how much of our quota are we gonna use on democracy? What I think the key here is, and I think the one reasonable request to ask is you stop covering voter suppression,

election subversion, insurrections, trying to restrict them, you know, trying to anti-majoritarian tasks. Stop covering that as a political strategy. authoritarian task, stop covering that as a political strategy. Cover it as an actual threat to democracy, like you would cover in some sort of threat from abroad to democracy, right? How would you cover it? Take Donald Trump's name off of it, take the Republican Party's name off of it. How would you cover it in Turkey or China or Saudi Arabia or somewhere else? Well, I guess maybe China is a bad example because they would censor themselves in order to stay in the market, but this isn't here nor there.

But look, and I do think one of the big problems whenever we talk about the media is, you know, there's a broad definition of media that sort of covers everyone, and that's not what we're talking about here because I do think, I think especially over the last several years since during the Trump administration,

there are plenty of reporters um you see them at the washington post cnn places like that who actually are taking this threat seriously and i have noticed a change in the tone of coverage the challenge is it has not permeated through the entire media system and editors headline writers writers, Politico, at least a lot of folks at Politico, like there are still large media organizations where this is the exception rather than the rule. And I think that's the, that's sort of the larger problem. It has not become sort of, it has not been a systemic change in journalism yet.

You know, and it's not even, it's like, there are some very good journalists at Politico who write really good things, but the general roots of Politico is that they build themselves when they created the organization, the news organization as the ESPN for politics. And they have never lost that view of how you think about it. And politics is not sport. People's lives and livelihoods are at risk and how these decisions are made. And even, you know, you can say, we can point to a bunch of like bad stuff at CNN that you point at people like Jake Tapper or Brianna Keillor, who have been very, who have called this stuff out, who have called out Fox for their disinformation and really like Brian Stelter's done it. You know, in every organization, you can find people who are doing the right things and find people who are doing the wrong thing. I do want to give, there are two points I think we should make that are quasi in defense of the

press here. One is playbook is right. That if Democrats really think this is going to cut that one, I'm just going to cut that one sentence and just have it haunt you forever. It's going to be Dan Pfeiffer playbook is right. Yeah. That's you know what? Fine.

Elijah is going to cut it and just run. I look forward. I look forward. I look forward to campaign experts react with new senior producer, Yale freed. But if Democrats really think it is this true threat, we got to say it. And I think the one, the biggest misunderstanding that Democrats have about the press throughout

the entire Trump era is it is not the press's job to persuade voters for us. Yes. I agree with that. If we think Donald Trump's a criminal, the New York Times is not going to convince them of that. They may write a story, but they may uncover information which we can use to make things, but we have to make that case. And this idea that we're going to talk about kitchen table issues and the New York Times and Politico and everyone else is going to inform the electorate about the threat to democracy. That is a stupid strategy and it misunderstands their role and our role.

And this goes back to what we were talking about in the earlier segment. Like I do think as we head into 2022, Democrats have to sort of separate whatever Manchin and Sinema are going to do on voting rights legislation? Talking about the anti-democratic movement in this country and how to save democracy and why it's so important to save democracy needs to be a priority for every single Democrat from Joe Biden on down to local officials. And everyone needs to start talking about it. And everyone needs to start calling out the Republican bullshit bullshit and everyone needs to make it a messaging priority because you're right we cannot count on the media to do this we know that we're just we're going to keep banging our heads against the wall on this but we do have a megaphone all of us in on the progressive side of the aisle on the democratic side of the aisle here and democratic leaders should use that

megaphone because that's going to be more effective than complaining about how the media is not using the megaphone yeah and with that we will close on 2021 for now for what a hopeful episode let's end the year on a high note well look that's why we, we're going to record an episode tomorrow. That's all of our fun. We got some mailbag questions we're going to do. We got the pundies, which are always fun. We got our new year's resolution. So that'll be the uplifting episode you all get before the end of the year.

Until then, thank you to Andy Slavitt for joining us today. Everyone have a great weekend. Stay safe out there. And we'll talk to you soon. 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 is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Holman, and Justine Thank you.