Pod Save America - “Sick of vaxxing nicely.”

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain joins to talk about the President’s new vaccine requirements, Republican politicians have a meltdown over Biden’s announcement, and Donald Trump commemorates 9/11 by skipping the memorial ceremony, hinting that he’s running again in 2024, and doing color commentary at a Pay-Per-View boxing match in Florida.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Tommy Vitor. On today's pod, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain joins to talk about the president's new vaccine requirements, Republican politicians lose their shit over Biden's announcement, and Donald Trump commemorates 9-11 by skipping the memorial ceremony, hinting that he's planning to run for president again, and doing color commentary at a pay-per-view boxing match in Florida.

Good times. But first, John, tell us all about the return of Love It or Leave It Live. Love It or Leave It is coming back. We're calling it Live or Else. I like that. We'll be back starting next week with live shows at the Arena Cine Lounge Outdoors. You can go to cricket.com slash events. We're going to do shows every Thursday night

until we head to New York to do our big show at the Beacon. You can get tickets for all of these shows at crooked.com slash events. It is vaxxed only, by the way. It would be really funny if it wasn't. So you're a tyrant like Joe Biden putting in a vaccine requirement. Absolutely. Okay. Bullies you root for.

That's very exciting. I can't wait. One more thing before we start. We are only one day away from Election Day in California, where a few right-wing activists have forced a recall of Governor Gavin Newsom. If you're a registered voter in California, check your mail for your ballot fill it out return it by tomorrow september 14th you should have already gotten the ballot by now or if not go vote in person tomorrow on september 14th if you've already voted you're not off the hook remind every single california voter you know again make sure you vote no on question one to stop a republican takeover of california

and of course what i just said not authorized not authorized by a candidate or a committee controlled by a candidate because, you know, I was going to go for that workaround, but no siree. Checking all the boxes. No puppeteer strings from Gavin Newsom in here. Biden's here today. Yeah, he is. In Long Beach. Before you all get excited, not on this podcast, but he is going to be in Long Beach with Gavin Newsom this evening. He's in the LA.A. area.

But next best thing, we have Ron Klain. So that's pretty cool. The Ron Klain interview is one of the best interviews I've ever heard. It doesn't happen for three hours. We're time traveling people. You're going to hear it. Visit votesaveamerica.com slash California to learn more about the recall. All right, let's get to the news. President Biden has launched a new front in the war against COVID-19 by announcing a vaccine requirement that will apply to roughly

17 million healthcare workers, most federal workers, federal contractors, and all private sector businesses with 100 or more employees, though those employees can also submit to weekly testing if they choose not to get vaccinated. The president also announced that employers will be required to give employees paid time off to get vaccinated and that major retailers will now be selling home testing kits at a much cheaper price. Here to talk more about this, as well as a few other things the Biden administration has going on in September, White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain. Ron, welcome back to the pod. Thanks for having me, guys. So 1,600 people are currently dying every day on average, the vast majority of whom are

unvaccinated. Were you surprised at all by how quickly the debate turned to questions around tone and potential political backlash over the mandate as opposed to the impact of the policy itself? No, look, I think the president said in his remarks that we've seen pandemic politics in the United States, people trying to politicize what should be a science-based, evidence-based approach to fighting this pandemic. We've seen governors threatening to cut the salaries of school administrators if they require kids to wear masks. We've seen governors trying to fight efforts to promote vaccination in their states. So look, the political backlash is something we expected, but the president's doing the right thing. It is time

to put this pandemic behind us. It's time to get the rest of the country vaccinated and to enable everyone to go back to kind of a more normal way of life. And the only way to do that is to really put on these kinds of requirements to raise the share of the country that's vaccinated. You know, when we came here in January, we launched an unprecedented program to make the vaccine free, safe, and available, available at 80,000 sites. People had five months, 80,000 places. For 90% of Americans, it's within a five-minute drive of their homes. And still have more than 75 million Americans who haven't even gotten the first shot. That's something we needed to address. That's what the president's plan does.

How confident are you that what the president announced on Thursday will survive these Republican legal challenges? Well, I'm very confident. I mean, first of all, you went down, you and John went through the list. You know, the requirement that federal employees be vaccinated is clearly within his authority. The requirement that federal contractors also clearly within his authority. These requirements on various healthcare facilities come from the ability of Medicare and Medicaid to regulate the facilities where they get the vaccines. The one that I know people have debated the most is this requirement to use the occupational safety and health administration's ability to regulate workplace safety to impose this vaccine or test requirement. I think what the lawyers have told us is that that's a very standard application, essentially,

of OSHA's authority to protect the workplace. OSHA tells you if you're working on a construction site, you got to wear a hard hat. You know, they tell you if you're working around noxious chemicals, you got to wear a respirator mask. Well, we're in a pandemic right now. And to keep workers safe, to keep people in the workplace safe, requiring vaccinations is part of OSHA's mandate, part of OSHA's responsibility to keep people safe on the job. Dr. Fauci just said in an interview that he supports vaccine requirements for air travel. Polls show that around 60% of

Americans agree with him. Have you guys been discussing either a vax requirement or a vax or test requirement for air travel? No. As Jeff Zions said recently, it's something we continue to look at. We want to kind of weigh the number of people that these requirements get vaccinated versus the burden on the vaccinated, having to show proof every time you go onto an airplane, having to wait at longer lines than TSA. But I think it's something we'll look at as we continue to progress. We think the most efficient vaccine requirements are ones that where people are kind of in a permanent situation, on the job, you know, in the military, where they verify once and then they're verified in that scenario. We think we're going to pick up the vast majority of Americans with the

requirements we've put in place. About two thirds of people who work in the workplace will be be subject to these requirements of either vaccination or testing. But look, I think we'll continue to look at other measures to be taken if we need to take them. I am officially confused about this debate over boosters. There's a report out this morning authored by 18 scientists, including two who are leaving the FDA,

that says none of the data so far provides credible evidence and support of boosters for the general population. Doesn't the CDC's own data and the data out of Israel contradict this? Well, John, I'm not going to debate the scientists about the science.

What I'll say is this. We're going to let the FDA and the CDC sort this out. They have a big advisory committee meeting, I think, at the end of this week or early next week. They'll make a decision about who needs boosters, when they need boosters, under what conditions they need boosters, whether that's the general public or just older people, in what age groups. In Israel, they've been going down from the oldest citizens gradually down to lower age groups. We're going to let the regulators decide that. What we've done at the White House is do two things. First, we bought the boosters,

so we're ready to go whenever the regulators give approval. And we've set up a distribution system. So what will be very different than back in December when vaccines were first approved and the FDA said, yes, go on vaccines, but you couldn't get a vaccination. You didn't know where to get a vaccination. You had to wait weeks or months to get a vaccination. This time, whatever the experts decide are needed on boosters, they will be available immediately within 24 hours to whomever is authorized to get them through a massive network of retail distribution.

So there have been a few moments where it seems that the administration and the CDC have not been necessarily at odds, but have been communicating differently about the threat, whether it's the contagiousness of vaccinated people, the need for masks. Have you been frustrated personally in your role at times by the way in which the CDC has communicated information to the public? Look, I get that it's frustrating for people who you hear something from the CDC, then the facts or science changes and the message changes. But that is what science-based response to an epidemic means. The CDC reacts to new

research, new science, and new developments in the pandemic. They react to new information as the variant and the virus changes. And I know we all wish, and as a human being, I wish that there would just be one set of scientific research. It would be clear cut. It would be completely black and white. We would know the answer. The answers would never change. We'd never learn anything different. That would obviously make life easier. And for me, as a policymaker, it would make policy easier and explaining policy. But what we're committed to is to having the CDC determine the science and changing our policies and our approaches as that scientific information changes. And that's what we've seen over the course of this year. That's what we're doing.

And I think the public can have confidence in that, that we're going to do whatever the best science tells us to do as the science and information develops and as this virus changes. tells us to do as the science and information develops and as this virus changes. Public health experts say that Delta means we have to learn to permanently live with COVID-19 as an endemic virus. What does the White House think about that? And what does that look like for people? Well, John, I don't know what that's going to look like if that's the outcome here. I think what we know we need to do right now is to reduce the number of cases, reduce the number of deaths, reduce the number of hospitalizations by getting the rate of vaccination up, by having people wear masks where they need to wear masks, by protecting our kids in schools, by getting the schools open full time and doing all those things. I don't know what the end game is. I don't know how many cases of COVID we'll have after we do all that. But we need to do the work we need to do right now, which is to get that vaccination rate up and move to where we can bring down the number of cases, number of hospitalizations, the number of deaths. other things on your plate this month. Rolling Stone just reported that the president assured Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that he's ready to push for filibuster reform to pass voting rights

legislation. You know, this is near and dear to our hearts. Is that report true? I'm not going to comment on his private conversations with the leadership of the House and Senate. Look, I think on voting rights, what we're really looking for is first for there to be an agreement among the key Democratic senators, the so-called gang of eight that's been meeting to try to work out a compromise version of H.R. 1, S. 1, to try to bring the For the People Act back before the Democratic caucus and get support. That's the next step in the process. We're going to take this one step at a time. Has the president's position on filibuster reform with regards to voting rights changed at

all? I'm just not going to get into that, John. The next step in this process is to get a plan that 50 Democrats are for. Once we get there, we'll go from there. I tried. You tried. I tried. What can I do?

So in negotiations over the, I'm going to call it the Build Back Better bill, because I don't know whether to call it an infrastructure bill, a jobs bill, a social safety net bill. We could use a shorthand, not your biggest problem. We've seen some versions that are circulating that push prescription drugs to 2025, that push the, say, dental provisions for Medicare to 2028. Mike Donilon, your colleague, gave an interview

talking about something that's been clear from the beginning, this effort to do things big and fast so people really can see a difference in their lives in 2022 and 2024. How do you balance that with these negotiations over price to make the math work and to get some of these moderates on board? Well, look, I think we can put together a very strong package that has broad support among Democrats. I wish some Republicans would join us in the effort to cut the cost of child care, cut the cost of elder care, bring down the cost of prescription drugs. But if they won't, we're going to proceed with Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate to get that done.

Now, we're a Democratic party. A lot of people have different views inside our party. I think ultimately we can come together and put together a package that does all these things. We're going to have to find a way to balance all that inside the cost envelope we have, inside the ability to pay for it. But I think we can make significant historic progress on the key goals of this bill, as well as the critical goal of fighting climate change by making the investments we need, particularly in clean energy tax credits and other measures that will help put us on the track to a clean energy future. It'll create a lot of jobs. It'll combat climate change. It'll make us all healthier. How confident are you that

some kind of clean energy standard will end up in the bill? And how important is that to you guys? I think all of it's important. And look, I'm fairly confident we can find a formula that works for our Democrats. I'm confident that we can put it together with other things around it. And fighting climate change is a critical, critical part of this legislation. It's one of the four main crises President Biden was elected to address. And we see that passing this Build Back Better measure with very strong climate change measures is a really critical objective for our administration. So Ron, I have these two friends. I'm trying to plan a trip with them. And I promised one of them that the trip would cost $1,500. And I promised the other friend it would cost $3,500.

Do you have any advice on what I should tell them to get them both to go on the trip? Well, actually, I think that's a great question because what I would tell them both is, let's find common objectives on where you want to go, how much fun you want to have when you get there, what you want to do, what it's going to be like. And I think that's a lot less about the price tag of the trip and more about the right objectives, the right goals, and the right kinds of activities for that trip. And that's really, all kidding aside, what we're talking about here. Whatever the final price tag of this winds up being, what it has to do is meet the moment on the problems we have as a country in terms of things like child care and elder care,

housing, those kinds of things, the critical crisis of combating climate change, providing some relief to middle-class families who deserve to have their taxes cut, and that it be paid for by finally doing something about tax reform long overdue to raise taxes on those at the high end of the scale, to raise taxes on big corporations that are paying no taxes at all. That's the critical objective. In the end, what I'd say is, and this is where I have to break your metaphor, John, look, the cost should be zero. It should be zero because we should be able to make the tax system fair enough to pay for the help that we need to deliver on climate change and help families dealing with the expenses they're dealing with in this country. One last question for you. What's the vibe like on the Joe Manchin houseboat?

What's the food situation? Talk to us about the water pressure. What is it like when he's entertaining? I had a lovely dinner with Senator Manchin. We had a great evening. He served Italian food. It was delicious. And look, I enjoy every conversation I have with Senator Manchin. We have different perspectives and different points of view, but he wants to do the right thing for the country, for his state. We are working with him very hard. I have a great deal of respect for him. Again, we have our differences. There's no question about it, but he's been a great partner and ally of our administration, played a critical role in delivering the rescue plan, played a critical role in getting us this far. We're going to work with him going forward.

But you guys, people probably don't get this always from reading the coverage. You guys and Manchin and Bernie, you're all talking behind the scenes all the time, right? It's not just communication with each other via op-ed and the Wall Street Journal. Yeah. I mean, John, you worked at the White House. You know what this is like, which is I have phone calls almost every day with one or more of those individuals, whether that's Senator Sanders or Senator Manchin or Senator Warren or Senator Schumer or Senator Whitehouse or Senator Schatz or Senator Brown. You go down the line. Right. And and obviously a lot of people in the House as well. And so, you know, I think that this is an ongoing conversation. I understand

why the press focuses on the differences, and there are differences, and there's no doubt about those differences. But what we're having a conversation among people who all think we need to do something about childcare, who all think we need to do something about prescription drugs, who all think we need to do something about elder care, climate change, all these things. And the difference in American politics is not among those people. The difference is between those people and a political party that's practicing climate denial, that doesn't want to do anything about these critical challenges. That is the fundamental difference in American politics. It's not between these different variations of how Democrats want to tackle it, but between Democrats who are working to come

together on a plan to tackle these problems and Republicans who right now, and I fear will not change, all to a person are saying they're going to vote no. Very much agreed. And you stand by saying that you enjoy every single conversation with Joe Manchin. I'm kidding. Don't have to respond to that. I do. Look, that's my job. I like it. I really do love it. Ron, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America. Please come back again soon. We appreciate it. Of course. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. All right. Let's talk about the reaction to Biden's announcement. Healthcare workers and public health experts praised the vaccine requirements. Most businesses and unions welcomed the vaccine requirements.

Most Americans are in favor of vaccine requirements. But most Republican politicians and pundits completely lost their shit after the speech. Full meltdown. Among other things, they called Biden an authoritarian, a tyrant, a fascist, and a rotting bag of oatmeal who said that some asshole on fox called them a right that's so vivid and mean i know the fox news chiron was quote biden declares war on millions of americans so that was subtle the republican national committee and almost two dozen republican governors have promised to sue the administration. And just to give you a sense of how this is playing out on the campaign trail,

Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance called for mass civil disobedience, while his opponent, Josh Mandel, compared Biden to the Gestapo. Always something about it. And he did it. He drove into the middle of a cornfield where he found a Trump sign in the middle of the night. And he stood in front of it with just headlights, I think, illuminating him. I missed that. He really did look like the children of the corn. Someone did a cut of the movie poster and him side by side. And it was uncanny. Josh Mandel, one of the dumbest politicians alive.

I know we all hate J.D. Vance. That guy is worse. But the thing about it, yeah. Well, and it's also, it is, there's some comfort to the fact that J.D. Vance is, J.D. Vance and like all of his big tech Peter Thiel money from California

is losing to Josh Mandel, one of the dumbest politicians. Well, I think, I think it comes, you know, look, you can pretend to be dumb,

but there's nothing like authentic. That's true. Political dumbness. That's a good point. Can't fake it until you make it when it comes to stupidity.

All right. Tommy, Axios ran a piece um about the vaccine requirement responsibly titled america's civil war of 2021 uh-huh that credulously quotes an anonymous gop congressional staffer saying quote every republican in the country is salivating over joe biden igniting the vaccine debate uh Should they be? What do we know about the politics of this issue? So let's start by being nice. There's a Civil War comparison to be made, but it's probably 600,000 dead in the Civil War,

600,000 plus dead from COVID, not from the mandate. That is true. Why was that being nice? I don't know. I'm just trying to be nice to Axios. I'm glad they preemptively elevated to civil war status i appreciate the interesting thing about that article is did you guys notice that it actually enraged conservatives no they were very mad hugely mad there was an entire fox news write-up of how mad they were via tweets if liberals are mad conservatives read looks like we're doing something right

because the conservative take was how dare you call this a civil war? There was mass disobedience last summer over George Floyd, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's always like, I'm rubbing your glue. It's very much the same thing. Yeah. So I think it is true that if you look at conservative media, this is now the thing they are all focused on. If you look at Ben Shapiro's Twitter feed, which I do every day, every morning, several times a day, He tweeted that he's vaccinated. He's in favor of nearly everyone he knows getting vaccinated, but he calls Biden's mandate tyrannical, authoritarian, anti-science bullshit. So

Ben is pro-vaccine, but he just doesn't want the government to do anything to help people get there. And I think that position does not count. That is not a real position to be pro-vaccine and anti-mandate. If you believe the vaccine is effective and necessary to protect the country, then you believe that it should be required because that's what we've been doing with vaccines the entire history of the fucking country. They've all been required. There's a long list of vaccines you have to get

before a kid goes to school. Facts don't care about your feelings. If I don't support these mandates and if my wife had a wet-ass pussy, I'd take her to the hospital. All of these guys. It is 11 a.m. and I was not ready for that. I was not ready for that here on a Monday morning.

There's a huge part of this Republican ecosystem that knows that half of the Republican base is now anti-vax. So this gives them like a fig leaf to offer to these guys. But I think among the broader American public, there's recent polling that suggests that Americans will support these vaccine mandates. Gallup found 56% support employers requiring workers get vaccinated, 61% support vaccine mandates for air travel. So we'll see. Now, permission to be contrarian? Granted. Thank you both. Here's the thing that keeps me up at night. In 2020, the polls were way off, as we recall. One of the reasons was because during COVID, you had a bunch of liberals who were more

likely to respond to surveys that skewed the data on the horse race. It also skewed data suggesting that the country was more in support of government intervention to stop COVID. I worry about that happening here, maybe. That's just a thing that's in the back of my head. Now, long run, the Biden people are probably thinking what really matters is getting this thing under control, getting the economy back, right? Like getting people back to work.

Cases go down. We'll stop talking about this mandate stuff. But I don't know. It makes me worried. Permission to be contrarian to your contrarian. Please. Just let me know when this wraps um no i think it's all right let's go back to the to the uh the anatomical discussion that you brought it is um i didn't it is a great point i actually am concerned about it because i'm as i'm concerned about all polling these days since

2020 the one thing that's different with this is we have actual numbers of people who've gotten vaccinated in the country and the number of people who've gotten vaccinated in the country. And the number of people who've gotten vaccinated already would suggest that, of course, a huge number of that is a bunch of Republicans who've gotten vaccinated. And so, I mean, I do think this is your classic wedge issue for the Democrats and that just about all Democrats support vaccines, vaccine requirements, independence, a majority of independence. And like half the Republican base, one poll showed that one third of Trump voters support a requirement. The Steve Shales super PAC that supports Biden. They did a bunch of polling in the swing states and they found support for corporations requiring vaccinations is between 61 and 68 percent in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and

Wisconsin. Now, again, that's corporations. It's not quite the government, but it's the it's it's a similar idea. And also time and again, we have found that like ideological concerns are very real and important and but also much more salient to people who think about politics all day and much less to people actually being asked questions. They don't care about the outcomes. The other piece of this is, yeah, we don't know exactly what the what the polls mean. But as you know, Dan wrote a great message box about this. Everybody should check out message box about like this opportunity to kind of realign around vaccinated versus unvaccinated. And maybe this is one of those rare issues that can trump kind of party identification,

especially when Republicans have spent so long turning the vaccine into an identity issue. Well, OK, there are a lot of Republicans who are now vaccinated. And the other piece of this is maybe the polls are wrong and actually people are a little bit more unsure about these kinds of mandates. Let's make the argument. Let's see what happens if we're actually talking about this. Which is Dan's point. Democrats have not really engaged in the argument yet. And Tommy, you touched on this, but there's sort of a larger political issue at play, which is concerns about the pandemic right now are dragging down Joe Biden's approval rating, possibly more than anything else. If he doesn't end the pandemic, he's going to have a hard time getting reelected

and vaccinating more people is the fastest way to end the pandemic, right? So even if the polls didn't show that people were in favor of vaccine requirements, you'd want to put in place vaccine requirements to end the fucking pandemic because that's the best way to make sure you get reelected. Yeah, Joe Biden was elected on the promise of delivering competence in defeating the pandemic. Now, there's plenty of like bad punditry blaming Joe Biden for every single thing in the world outside of his control,

right-wing misinformation, the Delta variant. But what is true is that if he fails to successfully get us out of this, people will hold him responsible for it, fairly or not. The other piece of this is, it is remarkable how quickly the kind of punditry around this issue

moved past 1,600 people are still dying every day. Like there is no ability for like political mainstream coverage to keep that as a present part of the debate. It is immediately to blow back, immediately to the problem of what this will do for persuasion. It's also very difficult to persuade unvaccinated people to get the vaccine after they've been killed by COVID. They become an unreachable group of voters. That's a tough argument to make.

It's worked in the military since the Department of Defense announced that active military were required to get vaccinated. They did this on August 25th. The percentage of military members with one shot went from 76 to 83 percent. So it's working. Worked at the Department of Defense, worked at the VA. Dennis McDonough, VA secretary, there was the first department to do it. It's worked there. It's worked at private companies like United and Delta. Love it. What do you think led the Biden administration to embrace these requirements now as opposed to weeks or months ago? Yeah, I mean, Jen talked about this on Friday. She was asked because originally many months ago, Joe Biden said he was opposed to this. A little while after that, you know, Jen was asked about this and she said that that was not their role.

They gave three answers. One, they were surprised at continued resistance. I think we all are. I think we talked about this many times. We knew that there would be holdouts. I'm not surprised that there is a hardened group of right wing people that have not gotten it. And I'm not surprised that there's some hesitance in the broader population. I'm surprised by how much it has been sustained. Even after approval, they talked about the fact that they had hoped that full approval for the vaccines might move some people. it seems like it's helped, but not enough. And the third piece of this is we're in the middle of yet another surge. Maybe it's peaked, but immune compromised people, vaccinated people, children, they

are all put at risk because of unvaccinated people. And the way Biden said it at the speech, I thought was great. We have to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated people. That is, I don't think it's more complicated than that. The approval, it feels like an eternity in politics, but it was two weeks ago. Yeah. One argument from a few of the slightly saner Republicans that's getting picked up by some of the nonpartisan media is that Biden's vaccine requirement and his decision to specifically call out the unvaccinated in his speech will only harden opposition to getting the shot.

The Associated Press headline was Biden's war on the unvaccinated. Not too much different than the fucking Fox Chiron. And Jake Tapper said, I don't think scolding is the approach. What do you guys think of that, Tommy? I think it will probably harden some people, harden some opposition. But their bet is that for every Josh Mandel who drives into a cornfield and like films himself yelling, there's an even greater number of people who haven't gotten vaccinated because like didn't have the time or they're young or they were on the fence or they were nervous and now they have to right and so like that's the bet there's a big chunk of these what 80 to 100 million people i think they say this order covers will just decide

it's not worth fighting this let's just get vaccinated the other piece of this is yeah um it's a mandate it's not about persuasion. That's the whole point of it. I can't understand why people don't get that part. It's really wild. It's so wild to me. It's also people who have laid at Joe Biden's feet the failure to persuade people who are completely consumed by right-wing media. And now when they move beyond their persuasion, they blame him for moving beyond persuasion and not sticking to the old tactics that weren't working. As if as if these sort of pundits have some third way to kind of get get hardened opponents to go for this. It's very silly.

Hardened opposition is like a phrase that people are saying, and I don't really know if they know what it means. It's like, find me the unvaccinated people out there who are still considering getting their shot after half a year, but now they won't because their employer is requiring it. Who are those people? Yeah, I was thinking about it. I was about to go to Rite Aid and then fucking Joe Biden announced that. No, now I'm not doing it. My opposition is hardened. My opposition is hard. Yeah, I do think like broadly speaking, you can divide the unvaccinated into kind of two. And this you have to kind of blur your eyes, there's two big groups there's like ideological basket of deplorables yeah sure uh he wrote the line for hillary uh their ideological objectors like their right wing

they're hardened already they're hardened against biden they're hardened against the vaccine like some of them still will get the shot because of this mandate because like they may do like blood and soil on social media but there's golf clubs at the back of that F-150. And like, they're not, they're not going to like follow JD Vance to the root of Reveille and start pulling up, pulling up cobblestones. Like they're not going to do Les Mis with him. He's a venture capitalist. Nobody knows who he is except people in DC. So not worried about that. I mean, look, crazier things have happened, but beyond that, like, okay, you look beyond the right wing and like, there are hesitant people. And like, I mean, look, crazier things have happened. But beyond that, like, OK, you look beyond the right wing and like there are hesitant

people. And like, I do think sometimes, you know, people are people and it's not a decision not to get the vaccine. Like, I do think you see in some of the kind of data and some of the kind of interviews, like a decision to not decide. And this forces some people to make a decision. And the other piece of this, on top of getting some hesitant people off the fence to kind of like treat this as a deadline, there's leave to get the shot.

There's leave in case you have side effects. And I do think that like a big, you know, that people that have decided not to get it so far, some of them are worried about losing hours, losing their job because of side effects. Yeah. And that's a really good point. I mean, this this immediately gets covered from a political perspective. And so, you know, there's a tendency to treat the unvaccinated as a bunch of right wing Republican Trump supporters. And that's just not the case. And I think the requirement is going to have the biggest effect on people who aren't those right wing Trump supporters who are unvaccinated, which are like you said, Tommy, a lot of young people, a lot of black and brown people, a lot of people who aren't engaged in politics at all and are just like, I'm not quite sure. There's a ton of totally understandable vaccine hesitancy.

This will push those people. Let me tell you one use case, though, from a far right MAGA person. You guys remember Dr. Ronnie Jackson, White House doctor, famous pill pusher turned MAGA idiot, congressman in Texas. congressman in Texas. Ronnie was on Fox News this morning and he said the only reason he got vaccinated was because he knew that Nancy Pelosi

wouldn't let him travel abroad on Codels until he got vaccinated. So in his attempt to go on Fox and Friends and rant about vaccine mandates, he accidentally made a great argument for why they work. Great case, Dr. Ronnie.

Wild. Thank you, Ronnie. It is so wild watching him scream on Fox. He was the most mild mannered physician. Guy like barely raised his voice. He was just screaming on Fox about vaccine mandates. Yeah, it's almost wild. Almost as if we have a broader set of incentive structures

on the right that turns people with ambition and a lack of moral courage into genuine monsters on a regular basis. Yeah, but even like the Ben Shapiro, like the Daily Wire, whatever the thing he works for, like they said they're going to resist. They're going to sue. I guarantee you half that office, 75% of that office is vaccinated.

To the barricades. To the barricades. Also, again, this is not about getting every last, I mean, I don't believe anyone thinks that these vaccine requirements will get every last person vaccinated. But some is better than nothing. And again, like, you know, we're not going to hit herd immunity now. But just, you know, getting that 54% up to 60% to 65%, like that's going to have a huge effect on saving lives and ending the pandemic. And, you know, sure.

Will there be some headlines that say Biden vaccine mandate hardens opposition amongst insurrectionists? Sure. Yeah. Harlan Hill will be upset. He might go to Philly again to fight. What do you guys think the best way for Democrats to talk about this issue is, you know, Gavin Newsom, Terry McAuliffe have made it centerpiece of their campaigns. You can imagine Democrats in the midterms doing that as well. Like what's what's sort of the best way to talk about this on the trail? I don't know yet. I'm, I'm sort of wary of using the California race as an example because Gavin Newsom's problem was the Democrats either didn't know there was a campaign or they weren't motivated to vote despite receiving a ballot in their mailbox at home. Um, he needed to get a whole bunch of Democrats to, to wake up and vote. And I think the biggest gift to Gavin Newsom was

Larry Elder becoming, you know, the front runner on the Republican side. So we'll. And I think the biggest gift to Gavin Newsom was Larry Elder becoming, you know, the front runner on the Republican side. So we'll see. I think like in some ways, just the best thing that happened to candidates in 2022 is a better economy and just less Delta in the world. And Biden has done the hard work for them in sort of pushing to get us there. Yeah. I mean, look at the debate over vaccine mandates is still among the most salient issues in November of 2022. We have big fucking problems. That's true. But, you know, even right now, as we're making this argument, like turning the temperature down and saying we're just trying to protect people's health and safety, like we have all kinds of vaccine mandates. It's not that

big a deal. And everyone's kind of overreacting. We're just trying to keep people safe. And all these people are making it about politics. I know before I like dig into polling, I always think like what makes most sense to me. And I thought that the we have all kinds of vaccine mandates and we always have made a lot of sense. And then sure enough, when I read Dan's message box, Navigator Research tested a message that was just that it's with vaccines have been required for children for decades. This is just another one of them. They tested that against a Republican message that was, you know, vaccine requirements are a violation of personal freedom and everyone should have the choice to decide whether they want one or not. And the message about schools requiring vaccines forever beat out the Republican message by 17 points.

So I do think that's something turning the temperature down, I think, is a good way to put it. Yeah, you're out on the trail. the trail. Okay, before we go, we should talk about Saturday, which was the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks. President Biden and Vice President Harris commemorated the day at different events. George W. Bush gave a speech in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and then attended a name reading ceremony at Ground Zero with the Obamas and the Clintons. Donald Trump was also invited but declined to attend. Instead, he told some New York cops and firefighters that he's probably running for president again, and then flew off to Florida where he provided running commentary at a pay-per-view boxing match with his son. Here are the two geniuses previewing the fight. We're here at Hard Rock in Florida, and we're going to have, hopefully, a very great night with a lot of great champions.

And they're going to be, to them, they're going to be having a good time. I wouldn't want to do it. A lot of people wouldn't want to do it. But they look like they're going to have a good time. I just saw a couple of the fighters, and they love doing this stuff. So we're going to watch Evander and Vitor. We're going to watch Anderson Silva. Pito. Pito is the 10th. So we're going to watch Anderson Silva. We're going to watch Tito.

We're going to have some fun tonight. Guys, I think this is going to be a lot of levity at the end of a rather somber day. That was my favorite. I love people who say things like that. I love people who are like, I love humor. There's going to be a lot of levity. Don Jr. just can't talk. I kind of want that music to be playing in the background every time Trump talks. Yeah, Trump is actually spinning. It was weird.

What do you guys think the reaction would have been if Barack Obama or George W. Bush or basically any other politician in America skipped a 9-11 ceremony to host a pay-per-view boxing match? Tom, you think that would go over well? There's been all these moments along the way where he just defies the normal laws of political gravity. And it's so frustrating, right? Like calling McCain, making fun of him for getting captured and tortured. There's one. Yeah.

That skipping the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One seemed like a moment that should have pulled him down. A Democrat. Suckers and losers. Remember what he called the troops after World War Two at the D-Day Memorial? Yeah. No, it's it's super bleak that if that how close it's still. It's just it it just reminds me every time I see how awful and ridiculous it is. It's like, man, this fight should be easier. Yeah.

It should be a little bit easier. I just can never tell if it's if this is just a unique to him skill or ability or built an advantage or if it's just that a democrat would face the unrelenting assault from fox news in the conservative media ecosystem that he just doesn't have to deal with i think he's also successfully worn us all down yeah right like it's true he has there are no expectations for him anymore he's always going to do the worst thing and be the worst person it's just baked in already so when he does something like this you're like yeah of course that's what he's doing on 9-11. Yeah. And it has always, it is also like, it is an extreme example of a larger trend in Republican politics and in the way the media covers Republicans and Democrats generally, which is we only ask responsibility of people we

expect to be responsible. And so all you have to do is, is signal and portray yourself as profoundly irresponsible and valueless, and nobody expects anything else from you. And the media just moves on and bakes it into the kind of stock price of your politics. Now, during the many hours of commentary, Trump did not say anything too new or outlandish, but he did have a message for one of your favorite Pod Save America hosts. Let's listen. for one of your favorite Pod Save America hosts. Let's listen.

Congratulations. You know, Vitor, your stock was very high, but your stock is even higher tonight. I'm going to have that as my ringtone. For those confused, the boxer's name is Vitor Belfort, who beat Evander Holyfield, who's 58 years old. This is the most washed up fight of washed up people. I would rather watch Jake or Logan Paul fight

whatever fucking sentient being will get in the ring with them. Can we let Holyfield in the ring? Holyfield hadn't fought since 2011. Didn't, am I? That's a long time ago. Was he involved in some sort of ear incident? Was it, did Tyson bite his ear off?

Was it his ear? Whose ear did he bite? I don't remember boxing in the 90s. Yeah, Mike Tyson was the ear biter. Yeah, no, Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear. It was, okay. Actually, I think he did it twice. It was in 1997.

He got two bites of the ear? Fool me once. The thing about two bites of the ear. The thing about Tyson is, uh, oh, it's the same match. Oh, same match. The thing about... Oh, oh, it's the same match. Oh, same match. I see. The thing about,

oh man, what made him go back? Yeah. And when Tyson was asked about that, you know, you eat Alvander Holyfield's year,

30 minutes later, you're hungry again. Oh my God. It doesn't make any sense. Tyson was interviewed about it and said, why'd you do that? And he said,

because I wanted to kill him. Yeah. It's like, okay. Very clear. Back to Trump skipping the 9-11 ceremony with all the other uh living presidents love it what do you make of trump choosing to visit with the cops

and firefighters instead i like for whatever reason the second i saw that i sort of made a connection to the fact that right now the lapd is suing against vaccine mandates i think he sees how interesting i think he sees white cops and firefighters as sort of a part of his base and a group of people that are on his side. And so he's on their side and he likes he likes that as part of his sort of authoritarian choir. Yeah, I feel like he's also setting up the populist dichotomy again, right? Like he doesn't want to be part of the elite club. There's the Obamas and the Clintons. They're doing the official ceremony.

I don't want I'm with the I'm with the real people here. I'm sick. I'm sick of this, this, you know, clubby 9-11 memorialization, right? Oh, that's the official thing. That's I'm going to do something different because that's that's what he's trying to do. But even the pull aside with the cops and the firefighters, I think he was ranting about Biden in Afghanistan and like the election lie. And just he just talks about himself. Well, and so he got a question about 2024 during that pull aside. And

he said, I know what I'm going to do, but I'm not supposed to be talking about it yet from the standpoint of campaign finance laws. But I think you're going to be very happy. Should Trump start being treated as a presidential candidate again? I mean, he's just skirting campaign finance law, right? And he just doesn't want to officially announce. Yeah, which is what every, which is what every, that's not a special thing for him. That's what they all do. But yeah, he's running for president.

He's the front runner for the Republican nomination. Yeah. I mean, the, yeah. Yeah, well, you know, Politico told me a couple weeks ago that it was because of Afghanistan that he was now going to, Trump was now deciding to run for president. Was it Politico or Washington Post? It was a bunch of outlets took, I'm sure, Jason Miller on background saying that the reason

Trump is now deciding to run. No, actually, Jason Miller was on the record. A bunch of Trump aides were quoted saying that, oh, Afghanistan is what really tipped the balance for him. And now he's going to run as if he wasn't always going to run. So as Trump says this, and he's been dropping a lot of hints, this is probably the most forward he's been. There's a new CNN poll out that has 51% of Republican voters saying that the party has a better chance of retaking the presidency if Trump is the nominee. 49% say the party would be better off with a different nominee. That's actually closer than I would have thought. What do you guys think? Is this still Trump's party or is this a party that wants Trump-like politicians? I really actually like I'm trying to understand the kind of like, I don't know, arbitrage between the bigger majority that thinks he should be the nominee and then the smaller majority that would like to see somebody else.

Well, there was another question. Do you think he should be the leader of the party, which was in the 60s? But that leader of the party was, I guess, a little slightly different for people than nominee. Well, right. Well, so there's leader of the party, but then just sort slightly different for people than nominee well right well so there's leader of the party but then just sort of there's continuing polling about who the nominee should be and he leads those by a large margin so like it's a sort of i my i what i have a feeling it is is just like an outlier poll actually what did you think tommy i just sort of think it kind of doesn't matter because if he runs he wins

with that number and he scares everybody else out of the race because like ron desantis knows it's political suicide to to upset the maga base by running against hair trump so that's exactly where we are too and that's why that love it that answers your question because i think you could add up the percentages of all the other candidates in those polls and get them to be close to trump if you had i don't know plus all the other candidates and it would be close to that 51-49. But again, when you actually run the race, you're going to face the same thing that they all did in 16, that Rubio did and Christie did.

No one wants to be the one to go after Trump because then DeSantis goes after Trump, Trump kills DeSantis, and then Christine Ohm is the new front runner, right? And the other thing too is it's, you know, as Bizarro Trump it's, you know, as... Is it going to be that nominee? As bizarro Trump would say, Joe Biden,

don't judge him against the almighty, judge him against the alternative. It's all fun and games to think, oh, of course, yeah, I wish there was another alternative to Trump. But when push comes to shove, there's going to be seven other people on that stage and they're all going to be mini-Trumps and much worse than him

because they're going to be doing an impression of him. Or you got, like, Bill Weld throwing worse punches than Evander Holyfield or something like some washed fault. It's gonna be worse than 2016. In 2016, you had a bunch of them that like belatedly started taking on Trump. They have now built an entire party that is a cult around Donald Trump. It is the reason for existence of the party. There was another question that's seen in poll like, how important is it to being a Republican that Donald Trump won the 2020 election and Sixty-something percent of people said it was it was a one of the most important reasons that they're a Republican

Yeah, worship Donald Trump and believe that he won the last election Yeah, I think it's like a kind of done deal Trump is now the kind of like the brand Republicanism is that the operating system or like the engine underneath it, but that's not what's public facing Like you don't realize it's like unreal engine in video games Like you don't realize you're playing on a Republican game because the brand is Trump you are you have bought a Trump game Just so it's a big sir. I mean yeah, what is that? What is he big so what OS are we what Republicans are big sir unreal engine is a kind of a? Let's just move on.

One of the most notable moments from the weekend's 9-11 events came during George W. Bush's speech when the former president basically compared the 9-11 hijackers to the Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. Here's a clip. The dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life,

in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit and it is our continuing duty to confront them uh trump folks weren't too happy about that part of the speech don jr shared a tweet calling bush the worst president ever uh what'd you guys make of bush's comments first of all like children of the same foul spirit like man i'll tell you you know what absence makes the heart grow fonder i still fucking hate this guy and And I am like the kind of ponderous. Flashback to like, I feel like growing up,

right? That was, I like came of age during the Bush presidency and it was so like, he just still talks the same way. It's the same speech cadence, the same writing. Yeah. That,

that, that, the children of a foul spirit. It's this sort of like vaguely kind of like Bible with a head injury kind of like I can't. I know. I like it. It really does give me kind of like these terrible feelings from the Bush years and a reminder that while, you know, the people on our news are goldfish who every day wake up anew, unsure of what the day will bring, not remembering the day before. Like those eight years were terrible.

He did terrible, terrible damage. He set the fire that led to Trump. And I don't want to give him any credit for being vaguely honest in kind of ponderous language now. I don't care. You couldn't find even the most mild criticism of George W. Bush's record

anywhere on the television during this event. Yeah. And that's a problem. Not even the most mild. Hey, maybe we should also talk about... Nah, let's just talk about it as a unifying speech. As if the Afghanistan news cycle, by the way, didn't just transpire. Right. Well, there's been this like there've been a lot of important lookbacks, I think, 20 years after 9-11. We've had Afghanistan, drones, legal framework. Like, maybe this take won't land well in D.C. or, you know, in New York.

Let the sirens go at D.C. There's a take coming. This isn't going to land well gonna land well dc here it comes get to your bunkers maybe there's a little too much civility after 9-11 guys you know what i mean like maybe we came together a little too much and we didn't really have a lot of tough conversations about like how 9-11 happened how it happened on george bush's watch all the things they missed all the warnings about al-qaeda, all the lack of information sharing. Everything that came after,

the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay. The absolute torture. Bloodlust and desire for revenge that we all felt, but that's what brought us together. Donald Rumsfeld is the centerfold in Vanity Fair. Yes.

I'm not just talking about the Iraq War. It was torture. It was Gitmo. It was half committing to Afghanistan for the first several years of the war. I'm glad that there are all these lookbacks that are happening we're all like taking a tough look at the obama presidency and drones and all these things it's just like watching all these reporters talk about how moved and amazing it was to hear george bush talk about january 6th like i'm not that desperate to hear republicans say that

storming the capital was bad we should also talk about all the other stuff i'm glad yeah i should say like i'm glad he said it again these things happen and everyone's like you either love george bush again or you hate him you know it's like no good for him for saying that about uh the the people who stormed the capitol that's great everything else is garbage well it's just yeah i do think like you can have both thoughts in your head you know i think back to that time and it's like you know they're the part of the look back is like where'd that unity go and it's like you know what it's absolutely true we can have unity in this country at any moment as long as we all decide to be conservatives that is what happened in the days after 9-11 uh specifically around war too that's always been a unity and the media is definitely yeah part of that problem in

a big way i think sometimes sometimes too, when someone like George W. Bush comes out of, you know, retirement to say something true that should be easy to say, but it's actually hard because of our politics. There's this sort of like, to quote George W. Bush, like soft bigotry of low expectations. And it's like this idea that if George W. Bush is willing to say this, well, maybe other Republicans will will say it maybe things aren't so bad maybe maybe maybe uh maybe republicans aren't an unhinged fucking rear guard action against modernity i would say what it does is for a bunch of people who aren't fully engaged in politics or who only pay attention once in a while like on the anniversary of 9-11 hearing george bush call out the domestic extremists that stormed the capitol does make those people think oh yeah if george w bush is saying that

maybe republicans today are pretty fucking crazy i think it i think it has a a it helps i have no problem i think that's totally fair i am talking about the kind of pundit reaction oh well that is just like the kind of desire for normalcy that this allows them to perform for a few hours. That is that is truly gross. I think there's some I think there's one more clip from. Yeah, I do. Well, I just think it's important that like, well, obviously, we made fun of Trump. There are people who I think approach the day with the sobriety and gravitas that it requires. Can you imagine a Tony Blinken or M how did how's that guy a general jesus the other day he said that the bagram air force base is not strategically important

i wanted to grab his what do you have five stars ten stars twelve stars yeah so many stars that come on them into his ears i wanted to grab his stars shove it down his throat and say it's 400 miles from china asshole rudy doing the old uh it's five o'clock somewhere speech prep that was what a what a 20 years it's been for rudy remember that video from like 10 years ago of david hasselhoff completely shit-faced trying to eat a hamburger on the floor that's what that reminded me of and it's kind of one of those things where you're like it's jarring it's kind of funny and then you're like that guy needs some help you know it's very sad he is a disaster people and this is like a solemn

and televisions this was like maggie haberman is tweeting this used to be like a really solemn event for 9-11 families or first responders of people impacted by this now it's like getting live streamed by steve bannon and rudy's doing like blackout roast comedy like where's like what's happening it's not it's not? It's not great. It's not great. That's it. That's all the time we have for today. Thank you, Ron Klain, for joining this program, I'm sure. Thanks, Ron. I'm sure you'll do it again.

Thanks, Ron. Thanks, Rudy. Thanks, George Bush. Thanks, Vander Holyfield. Children of a foul spirit. The one I wrote down was defeated the designs designs of evil that's always about evil it's always good versus evil there's no introspection but it's also just gerson all the way it's gerson yeah it's that it's a very specific kind of overridden because uh defeated evil is fine

i don't know what designs i was getting you but it's a cadence thing i love that kind of lyrical cadence if you want us to do if you want us to do George W. Bush speech analysis, we're here all week. I'm all about celebrating the people on Flight 93 who prevented another attack. All of it is good that Bush got up there and told the troops we're grateful to them and everything

else, but man, does that guy sand down every issue into black and white. Yeah. Oh, that's his deal. That's what he's known for. Yeah, it's his thunder road. Oh yeah, you're with us or against Yeah. Oh, that's his deal. That's his deal. That's what he's known for. Yeah, it's his thunder road. Oh, yeah. You're with us or against us. Yeah, I do remember that.

Axis of evil. Famously. Axis of evil. That was something that really set things in a great place, the right direction. I do like the people just like celebrating Bush for bringing back civility. celebrating Bush for bringing back civility. And then I think back to 2002 when the Republicans ran against Max Cleland, who had lost three limbs in Vietnam

and called him soft on terror because he didn't want to ban unions in the Department of Homeland Security. Right, for that. That's what it was. It was also very, very civil in 2004 to have closet case Ken Melman going around the country

passing gay marriage bans in the Constitution. That was great. That was terrific. Anyway, that's it for this episode. Very simple. What was going on in the 2000s? We'll see you on Thursday on next Pod Save America. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. And our associate producer is Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long,

Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim,

Yale Freed, and Narmel Konian who film and share our episodes as videos every week.