Pod Save America - “Third shot’s the charm.”

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

President Biden grapples with criticism from Republicans like Donald Trump, journalists, pundits, and fellow Democrats over the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan. Then, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talks with Jon Favreau about the Administration’s announcement that Americans will be offered Covid-19 booster shots starting in late September. 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 Dan Pfeiffer. On today's show, President Biden grapples with criticism from Republicans like Donald Trump, journalists, pundits, and fellow Democrats over his decision to withdraw American forces from Afghanistan. Then, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy chats with me about the administration's announcement that Americans will be offered COVID-19 booster shots starting in late September. One quick note before we start. booster shots starting in late September.

One quick note before we start. This week is the season finale of All Caps on YouTube, hosted by Jason Concepcion. All Caps will be back in the fall, but until then, you can catch Jason on his podcast, Take Line, as well as a brand new podcast we're launching called X-Ray Vision. Each week, Jason will deep dive into your favorite films, TV shows, and comics, including Shang-Chi, The Legend of the Ten Rings, and Why the Last Man. The X-Ray Vision trailer is out now, and the first episode drops on August 30th. Subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.

All right, let's get to the news, which has been dominated by Afghanistan. I would highly recommend listening to the latest pod save the world on this subject. I think Tommy and Ben did an outstanding job providing context, perspective, history, nuanced takes that are hard to find on social media and cable news. As for us, you know, unlike many Twitter users, Dan and I did not suddenly become foreign policy experts shortly after the fall of Kabul. But we do have some experience in politics and media. So we're going to spend most of this episode talking about how the events in Afghanistan are shaping domestic politics and media coverage here in the U.S. That obviously starts with President Biden, who sat down with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Wednesday for his first one-on-one interview since the Taliban took over Afghanistan. Here's a clip.

Look, I don't think it was a failure. Look, it was a simple choice, George. When the Taliban, let me put it another way. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government getting in a plane and taking off and going to another country, when you saw the significant collapse of the Afghan troops we had trained, up to 300,000 of them, just leaving their equipment and taking off, that was, you know, I'm not, that's what happened. That's simply what happened. But we've all seen the pictures. We've seen those hundreds of people packed into a C-17. We've seen Afghans falling. That was four days ago, five days ago.

What did you think when you first saw those pictures? What I thought was we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did So you don't think this could have been handled the sex that could have been handled better in any way no mistakes No, I I don't think it could have been handled in a way that there we we're gonna go back in hindsight and look But the idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing. I don't know how that happens.

I don't know how that happened. So for you, that was always priced into the decision? Yes. So the president also said that U.S. troops will now stay in Afghanistan until every American who wants to leave can leave, even if that means extending the mission beyond his August 31st withdrawal deadline. And that he also wants to help evacuate between what he said is 50 and 65,000 Afghans. As you heard in that clip, what Biden didn't do is admit any mistakes. It seems like the message from Biden's Monday speech and this interview is, you know, the Taliban's quick success may have surprised us, but I stand by my decision to withdraw when we did. Leaving more troops there after 20 years of fighting only would have led to more Americans dying in another country's unwinnable civil war. And now we're focused on getting our citizens and our allies out safely.

What do you think about that message in the context of the hand that Biden's been dealt here? Well, I think, as is often the case, I consumed this clip from this interview on Twitter first, right, with people telling you what it says. And I actually think in listening to it, Biden's answer was more complicated and complexed and nuanced and perhaps not as clear as it should be as some of the Twitter shorthands of it were. He did not admit mistakes, but he also didn't say we didn't make any mistakes. He sort of kind of half said, well, in hindsight, but now we're moving forward.

And he did – when George pushed him on just the horrifying pictures that everyone saw, he said, well, that was four days ago, clearly implying we have improved the situation and addressed it. the situation and address it. We're taking a step back from – I think that's just important because this answer in the ultimate example of intellectual laziness has been treated as Trumpian. Never admit mistakes. That's not exactly what happened here. It's more complex. I think in fairness, not super clear. There was a little bit of a conflicting message there.

He kind of – there was a little bit of a conflicting message there. In general, or to take a step back, what he is trying – I think what Biden is saying is going to be quite compelling to the majority of Americans, which is we have a choice here. And it is a nearly inevitable outcome, is not something he is willing to do. And therefore, all of this, put aside the very real execution errors in terms of getting people out that others more schooled in these things can speak about. Tommy and Ben spoke about that excellent episode. But the broader point here is what is happening is evidence of why we have to get out.

Could we have gotten out smoother? Could we have gotten out in a more humanitarian-friendly way? Absolutely. But the die was cast here, and that's the argument he's making. That is correct. I think that the press is now in a situation where their belief is if he doesn't take responsibility or admit mistakes with regard to the execution errors, they're not going to let him off the hook. Right. Like it's one of those things that, you know, we've seen this happen before. Like if you're a president and and

everyone has come to the agreement that you did something wrong, unless you own up to it, you're still going to be in the barrel. And I do. I mean, now, my view on this is it's just too soon to tell. Right. Like if you if you don't believe if you're someone who doesn't believe the Taliban could have been defeated. Right. If you do believe they could have been defeated with, you know, after 20 years, a couple trillion dollars, thousands of U.S. troops. Please explain why. I haven't heard any compelling explanation. If you don't think they could have been defeated, then I think I think Biden and the Biden administration deserve to be judged on whether we can evacuate every American and Afghan ally safely. We don't know

that yet. Clearly, they didn't get that done before the collapse of Kabul. That's clear. But they're trying now. And whether they succeed remains to be seen. You know, we've heard as of this recording, there have been we heard this morning from the administration, from the military, that there have been 12,000 evacuated since July, 7,000 since Saturday. The military hasn't experienced any security incidents at the airport yet. Of course, there are also reports that outside of the airport, the Taliban is making it very hard for Afghans to get to the airport in the first place. So I think this all remains to be seen. But the press is definitely in the current mindset of you don't apologize and take responsibility for what we all believe is a horrible mistake,

then you're screwed. Yeah, I think there's a paradox to Biden's messaging in the sense that I think the average American will find this compelling, but it will further inflame the media who are telling the story to the average American. And there is a tradition in Washington where when you are, as you said, in the barrel, which is an Obama term for when you are at the center of a media firestorm where the media, Republicans, and some Democrats are all coming at you for the same thing for something. And in those situations, the tradition is you have to do one of two and sometimes both of these things to get out. You have to fire someone. Heads must roll, right? There's a bloodlust in Washington. And you have to eat ceremonial shit on national

television. You have to go hold a press conference and just let them beat the shit out of you. Or you have to give an interview with a well-known, respected, tough interviewer. A long time ago, that would be someone like a Tim Russert who was just going to kick the crap out of you and you're going to admit your flaws. Washington can pat itself on the back and move on. Now, Trump did not do that ever. That was not his thing. And what was it? Will that work for him? Well, he's also currently living in Mar-a-Lago and not the White House, so maybe it didn't work for him. We don't know, but this is the test. And sometimes, President Obama sometimes gets his backup because he doesn't think he's wrong and therefore doesn't eat shit in the beginning and then eventually has to. We'll see how this plays out. And I think what happens on the ground will make a big difference. Do, you know,

is there more stability? Are Americans getting out? Are allies getting out? Is there a change of circumstances? And then this will end up being yet another in a long history of, from a political perspective, not the very real national security a long history of, from a political perspective, not the very real national security humanitarian issues here, but from a political perspective, one of these August firestorms that doesn't make it to Labor Day. I wonder what you think about the criticism that Biden has not expressed more empathy for the Afghan people. We've seen this from some reporters and pundits. Tommy and Ben also talked

about this on Pod Save the World. And look, I hate to be the kind of pundit that is like, the president must emote on demand and then things will be better because it seems like it's an optics thing. But I'm actually genuinely curious why President Biden is not speaking more about sort of the situation, the dire situation that a lot of our Afghan allies are in as we're trying to get them out of the country. Because I don't know what you lose by talking about that. Yeah, I am. I am equally mystified by that. I like it is like he is one of the most empathetic people that either of us have ever met. And so I am curious about that. There's going to be a lot of messaging about this in the coming days. Maybe we'll see more of that. It's not just our allies, right? It's the people of Afghanistan broadly. It's every woman and girl in Afghanistan who is now living under the rule of the Taliban. You can be frustrated with the corruption of the Afghan government. You can be frustrated with the corruption of the Afghan military leaders who cut these side deals with the Taliban and believe that it is not in America's

interest to send our troops to fight and die in the middle of a civil war and still be heartbroken about what's going to happen to the people there. You can do all of those things. I hope we see more of that. I do not believe it's some sort of political calculation. That's just not who Joe Biden is. Maybe he's responding to all the criticism about execution or his original decision, and maybe he's defensive about it or pushing back. But I do hope we see more empathy just because that is authentic to him. Yeah. And I think what he's trying to say here is human rights are critical, but that military intervention isn't the way to uphold human rights around the world. And he basically says that at a later point in the Stephanopoulos interview.

And that, I think, is a valid point, an important lesson to take away from Afghanistan. But I think you probably could spend a little more time on why human rights are so important and how much you care about them, right? Before saying, yes, there's a way to uphold human rights through diplomatic, economic pressure, et cetera, et cetera. But military intervention is not one of them because it has now failed every time we've tried it. I mean, you can go around the world and find dozens of places on any day

where the US could go in and help people, right? And Biden mentions this in the interview. He talks about, he's like, look at what's happening with the Uyghurs. Look what's happening people. And Biden mentions this in the interview. He takes about, he's like, look at what's happening with the Uyghurs. He mentions a few places in the world where human rights are being violated and we're not intervening militarily. And every president has to make a decision about whether that is in America's interest to do so. Right. And so that is the choice. And I think it is, we'll get to what I imagine will be a quite passionate conversation about some of the press coverage of this later in this podcast. But when all these reporters keep saying Biden's cold calculation that Americans will care more about American citizens and American soldiers than Afghan citizens, that treats this as if Biden invented the idea that you make decisions based on American interest and about what you are willing to put American lives at risk for.

Like that is every foreign policy military decision in the history of this country, in the history of the world, frankly, relies on that calculus. Well, it also ignores the fact that the Biden administration is trying very hard right now to evacuate Afghans from the country. Yes. You can blame them for not having done it earlier. They should have. There was obviously poor planning or at least at the very least, the Taliban success surprised them, caught them unaware, which they have admitted, and they could have evacuated more people before. But they're certainly trying now. So it's not obviously not a cold political calculation right now. They're trying to evacuate Afghans and bring them to the United States and to other countries.

compound the political problem here was that even though Biden, who has been crystal clear for a decade in his view that we cannot solve the problems of Afghanistan, I think everyone, Democrats in Congress, the Biden administration, the president, everyone, ourselves was overly triumphal with the decision to withdraw. He didn't declare a mission accomplished or anything, but it was seen as this big and poor thing without properly setting expectations. Because what is happening with Taliban control was going to happen now, three months from now, six months from now, a year from now. And that's what all the intelligence said. That was what all of the trends in the country suggested. And sort of setting the stage and preparing people for what was going to happen, I think, would have possibly removed at least some of the shock in how fast this was going to happen. Yeah, I mean, look, Biden said in July it's not going to be a chaotic exit, and it was.

It's very simple. Everyone can understand that, right? He was incorrect and, you know, about that point for sure. All right, let's talk about how Americans feel about all this. The short answer is confused with the huge caveat that polls taken in the middle of a rapidly changing news event are even more unreliable than usual. Here's a summary of what the data is telling us so far. More Americans still support Biden's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan than oppose it. But that support has dropped since last month, especially among independents and

Republicans. People don't think Biden has handled Afghanistan in the last several weeks particularly well. No surprise there. His average approval rating is forty nine point eight percent, which is the lowest of his presidency, though there is plenty of evidence that his number started dropping well before the Taliban's victory. But just to give you a sense of how confused people are, to put it charitably, a Reuters Ipsos poll found that Americans support sending combat troops back into Afghanistan right now by 50 to 36 percent. The same poll also found that Americans support completing the withdrawal of all troops from Afghanistan by 61 to 25 percent. 68 percent of Americans agree that the war in Afghanistan was going to end badly no matter what when the U.S. left and 63 percent agree that the rapid collapse of the Afghan government shows why it was right for the U.S. to leave. to leave. But by 51 to 32%, Americans think it would have been worth it to leave troops there for another year. Jesus Christ. What do you make of all this carefully thought through public

sentiment? Ever since you sent me this poll last, yes, afternoon, I've been trying to find a way to put this into a coherent narrative. And I actually think that when you, it seems super conflicting on its face. I do think there is some coherence, which is we need to get out. We need to get out better. It may take sending some troops temporarily to get the people we need to get out safely. And so that is okay. And so it actually, it actually, what this tells me is that people pretty much agree with what Biden is doing and also are surprised, frustrated, shocked, and disappointed by how quickly the Afghan government that we have been supporting and the Afghan military we've been

supporting for two decades fell. And so there is some, like – this is an incredibly complex issue with a series – with 20 years of history and mistakes and 1,000 years of – 40 years, 50 years of Afghanistan, U.S. intervention, all of that coming together. And it sort of – it does make a little bit of sense that people are going to have somewhat conflicting emotions. The other part of it is, and this is an indictment of the whole effort, is we, America, dating back to the day we took our eye off the ball and invaded Iraq, is to have tried to do this war on the cheap. We want to do this, but we don't want to have a lot of people there. We want to spend some money, but not a ton of money. We want the American people to not really have to pay attention to it unless you are someone who has a family member who is over there. We want to spend some money, but not a ton of money. We want the American people not really have to pay attention to it unless you were someone who has a family member who was over there. And so people have tuned out of this war for a long time, in many cases, since the day bin Laden was killed. And so all of a sudden, it's on the news again. And they're like, how did we get here? So the fact that people are – there's a little bit sort of destabilizing

sense that we're back talking about this. And the news is 20 years later, it's September 10th, 2001, again in Afghanistan. That is, you know, I think disorienting to people. Yeah, I think the crude summary of how people view this, according to all this data, is we're sick of war. We want troops home, but we don't like images of chaos and destruction and violence. So fix it. You're the president. Fix it. But do it, but do it cheaply and don't bother us with it. Right. That's, that is, that is sort of public opinion on this. And so no, no one likes seeing the U S lose a war. No one likes seeing violence. No one likes seeing the images that we've seen

over the last few days, but they also feel like they don't want to commit troops to this war because they'd rather not be involved in a war. So like that, that's the, that's what public opinion is right now is the long-term political impact of what's happening this week and what's happening in Afghanistan dictated entirely by factors like how well this evacuation goes, or is there anything else that Biden and the White House can do or say to sort of mitigate the political damage here? Absent some extraordinary circumstance where there was a terrorist attack in America that was related to this, or if we end up in a situation where Americans are losing their lives in Afghanistan, American citizens who did not get out, I do not believe Afghanistan is

going to be front of mind for the American public for particularly a long time. I don't think it's a particularly positive thing to say about the American public, but we tune in and we tune out, particularly on foreign policy issues that we feel are pretty disconnected from our immediate lives, right? Unless you are one of the people who serve there, who knows people there, you are disconnected from it. And I will just say this. Forget about foreign policy issues. The attention span of the average American voter on any issue is as small as it's ever been. Right. Like there was a violent insurrection against Congress to try to, you know prevent uh the president from taking office

there was an attempted coup and everyone's just like can donald trump still be the republican nominee and president maybe you know like like in in 2020 people saw their neighbors and families dying of a deadly disease we now have a vaccine for it people are dying again and there's a whole bunch of people not taking the vaccine like memories are so short now right so it's like i think back in back in the day when we were in the obama white house you could say oh yeah well there's a difference between like people's memories attention span on domestic political issues versus foreign policy now i don't even know if there's much of a difference i mean it's and like i said i don't know if this is i don't want to say this is a good thing that everyone's going to forget about this, because it is very possible

that we leave behind a lot of Afghan allies who wanted to leave Afghanistan like that is that is a very possible outcome here. But I don't know that America that American voters can sort of like keep these crises and these issues in their head for a very long time. And there's a tendency in political punditry and analysis to silo these things. Like how do you fix your Afghan political problem? And it's like, well, we got to do a press conference and you should go visit some troops. And maybe there will be some Afghan refugees to go invite to the White House or something like that. And like all of that does matter.

But the way to think about these things in terms of political risk is, do they contribute to a damaging political narrative? Is this one data point? Does this undermine the notion that the American people have that Biden is a strong and competent leader? Because that is why he won the election, was competence. And he has demonstrated that throughout this presidency, that is what has kept his approval ratings up the entire time. It is impossible to know whether this is going to impact that in the long run. What I think will actually be determined that is probably what happens in the next month in Congress, right? Because to the extent we've seen some diminution in Biden's approval rating, it's among Democrats. And if Biden follows up a difficult situation in Afghanistan and is treated as, quote unquote, bungled in all of the headlines, and we can fight over how bungled or not bungled that is, with failing to get his two bills out of Congress, with a debt ceiling battle, there's a whole bunch of things that can come together to create this narrative that undermines his strength. And we should be clear, Democrats have

zero fucking margin of error, right? Biden has been up until this last period here, averaging about between 51 and 52 in approval rating. That is as low as he can possibly go and us hold the house. And it may even on its own not be high enough. So the idea that anything is going to bring him down is deeply concerning and sort of an existential threat to the entire enterprise for 2022. I'm of the view that passing his legislative agenda in Congress is necessary, but not sufficient. Like I think that his strongest political position will be if the pandemic is under control, the economy is in good shape, and the world is quiet, generally. The world is quiet relatively. I think if those three things are set up, it still doesn't guarantee a win at all, but that puts him in probably the strongest political

position. My view of that, and I think this is a longer full pod conversation, maybe on the calendar year turns, is all of those things are necessary, but not sufficient. But it's not stability and calmness. It is the 20 million or so Democratic voters who got engaged in the process in 2016, recognizing that this is an election with the highest possible stakes, and that they are deeply worried that we can very quickly fall right back to where we were just a year ago. No, you're right. I mean, we absolutely need all of those voters. But as we know from 2020 and other elections, there's also a ton of voters who aren't paying too much attention to the news, don't pay too much attention to politics, or just tune in a couple of weeks before election and then go vote. And for those people, it's going to be the conditions in their lives more than

all the machinations of what's going on in Washington, I think. But you're right that we need all the people who got involved in 2020 as well. We don't have that. We're losing for sure. So this brings me to sort of what Biden's dealing with in terms of other Democrats. You know, some Democrats in Congress are not only criticizing Biden on Afghanistan, at least three Democratic led Senate committees say they'll hold hearings about the withdrawal. What do you think about that? I'm sort of torn on this, right? Like we do not want Democrats in Congress to be like Republicans in Congress, right? To just put aside all of their constitutional obligations to just be a bunch, like the Republicans were, just a bunch of criminal conspiracists or apologists or anything like that, right? They should do oversight where oversight should be

done. But these hearings are performative, right? When Bob Menendez puts out that statement, I'm sure he has some, you know, he feels very seriously about the Senate and separate and equal, but all that. But it's also a way to get attention. It's a way to be able to spend more of his Sundays with Chuck Todd. about what's happening is by hauling Biden administration officials before Congress and creating a forum for Republicans to play politics on national TV and then buttressing that Republican message by doing performative lashing of them. If Joe Biden is not returning Bob Menendez's calls, if Bob Menendez cannot get Lloyd Austin or Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan to talk to him about what's happening, then yes, he should absolutely haul people forward. But this is theater, right? If it is just theater, then it is counterproductive and it serves no one other than Bob Menendez or the other Democrat. I just picked Bob Menendez because

he was the one whose statement I found most annoying. Yeah. You can believe that oversight is the right thing to do, but you should understand that we sort of operate in reality here and the reality is that it's that politics is often a zero-sum game and if there are a bunch of democrats holding hearings and republicans obviously get to participate in those hearings and grill the biden administration about afghanistan for weeks on end it will keep it in the news and it will drag down b Biden's approval ratings and likely the approval ratings of Democrats in general and hurt the Democrats chances of keeping the House, keeping the Senate and ultimately perhaps keeping the presidency. So that's just something to keep in mind. I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's that's that's what will likely happen if there are long drawn out sort of hearings that are that are investigations. When we come back, we'll talk about what Republicans had to say about Joe Biden's

withdrawal from Afghanistan. Hint, it's not good. Republicans aren't letting Democrats have all the fun. The same folks who fully embraced Donald Trump's deal with the Taliban to withdraw all U.S. troops now see an opportunity to inflict political damage on Joe Biden in a way they haven't been able to yet. So some of them are criticizing the execution of the withdrawal, like some Democrats and journalists have. The neocons and the hawks are doing their, you know, we should have stayed for everything. But the MAGA wing of the party, which is basically the whole party, has decided to zero in on the refugee issue, hoping to open a new front in the culture wars by scaring people into believing that brown foreigners are coming to terrorize their communities. And of course, Donald Trump himself hasn't been able to shut up about this over the last few days. Let's take a listen.

All of the years our country has ever been so humiliated, I don't know, would you call it a military defeat or a psychological defeat? There's never been anything like what's happened here. We will see many refugees from Afghanistan resettle in our country in coming months, probably in your neighborhood. And over the next decade, that number may swell to the millions. So first we invade and then we're invaded. It is extraordinarily expensive to resettle a refugee in the United States. They get free health care, they get free education, they get free housing, they get free food, they get cash welfare. Thanks to Biden,

they control more of Afghanistan than they did before 9-11. Our borders wider open now than it was after before 9-11. This president refuses to do anything about it. Is it really our responsibility to welcome thousands of potentially unvetted refugees from Afghanistan? So there you have it. Let's start with Trump. How do you feel about Donald Trump being out there on the attack? Donald Trump, who invited the Taliban to Camp David, cut a deal without the Afghan government to withdraw U.S. troops. Also, a deal that freed a bunch of Taliban prisoners, one of whom is now president of Afghanistan, and then put out statements after he left office and when Joe Biden was president, criticizing Biden for not withdrawing troops even earlier than he did. That's the Trump who's out there criticizing Joe Biden now. He also, in that interview, just decided to pat the Taliban on the back

for being good fighters. Yeah, no, of course. I mean, could you just imagine what Fox News would do if Joe Biden had done that? I mean, look, it's weird. Donald Trump, model of consistency. It's strange that he is not being as consistent here. But I think that there is a – this was a really interesting part of the Tommy and Banker conversation on Pod Save the World that I think

Democrats in the Biden administration should talk about more, which is how Donald Trump's mishandling of this tied their hands in a lot of ways. It was a terrible deal. He cut out the Afghan government, sent the contractors home, released a bunch of Taliban prisoners, and Biden was forced with – this was always going to be a shitty choice, always going to be a tough choice. But Biden's ability to – his hands were tied by this in a lot of ways. And I think there are, that is a story that has not been told enough in our overly simplistic media narrative of this. And I think it also helps politically to remind Democrats of the

role Trump played in creating this situation. Well, I think that, andim newell has a great piece in slate about this which is a lot of these trumpier republicans including trump himself because they were all pro-withdrawal and in fact criticizing joe biden for not withdrawing fast enough they want to jump in on this joe biden pylon that's happening in the press and even among some Democrats. But they know that they were that Joe Biden basically did something that they wanted him to do, which was to withdraw completely from Afghanistan. So their only option is here to start a culture war over refugees, which is what they do best. You should definitely read this Jim Newell piece in Slate. So you should definitely read this Jim Newell piece in Slate, but he talked about how Stephen Miller kicked this off with a few tweets. And he said, Miller, whose morning routine is sipping coffee and scanning the United States overnight birth certificates to check how well the Caucasians kept up.

Just a great way to describe Stephen Miller. That's neither here nor there. But I do think it's something to watch. And it's also because, look, there is some reporting that the reason that the Biden administration was so slow to process a lot of these special immigrant visa applications is that they were concerned about the domestic political backlash over bringing Afghan refugees to the United States, which I really hope isn't true, because that, I think, deserves a lot of criticism to be worried about that kind of the political situation there. And, you know, one administration official told Politico, it's like they want the credit from liberals for ending the Trump cruelty to immigrants and refugees, but they also don't want the political backlash that comes from actual refugees arriving

in America in any sort of large numbers. Now, again, the Biden administration is currently trying to bring Afghan refugees to the United States. So they are doing the right thing now. But I do wonder, how do you think about the politics of the refugee issue and how this plays out in general? As we sit here today, the public broadly and in a bipartisan fashion supports increasing the number of special immigrant visas for our Afghan allies.

But that is one moment in time. And we should recognize that there is nothing Republicans want more than an opportunity to merge fears about immigration with fears about terrorism. Because if you look back to 2016, it's always like, who's going to pay for the wall? Mexico. But really, what was the real sort of consolidating powerful issue for Trump was the Muslim ban, right? That was about keeping, in just the most blatantly racist way possible, merging those issues, right? Keeping people, if we let people come here, that they will pose a threat to us, that they will kill us. And they've shown great political power with their base, at least,

demagoguing people coming across the southern border. But where it has been the most powerful dating back to 9-11 is demagoguing Muslims. And one of the things we know about refugee issues is people, politicians, are often for them in the abstract, and then they fall into nimbyism as soon as you actually have to put those refugees someplace. We saw this in 2014, dealing with unaccompanied minors coming across the southern border, is when it came time to put them places, even some Democratic governors did not want them in their states. And so what's going to happen? We saw this. There's all this talk about how Obama was unable to close Gitmo. But the reason he couldn't close Gitmo was because the Democratic Congress with a gigantic majority passed bills every single year saying you could not close Gitmo. And why did they do that? Because they did not want any of the people from Gitmo to come be

in their states, either in a supermax prison or in the community. And so that is going to play itself out here. And I don't think we should be overly, I think this is an issue that we can take on and win, but it is coming and it is going to come in the grossest, most aggressive Fox News driven fashion you can possibly imagine. And that's precisely why it's not an issue that you can avoid, that Democrats or the Biden administration can avoid. You can't just think, OK, because it is a divisive issue and the Republicans are going to start a culture war over it and it's uncomfortable and it might be politically challenging.

I'm just going to try to ignore it and talk about some other message because the Republicans and Fox News and the right wing media ecosystem is not going to let you ignore it. I do think that once you make the decision to welcome Afghan refugees, you've got to defend that decision because otherwise the Republicans are going to attack you for it anyway, and you have to make the best case that you can. And I don't think avoiding it helps. No, and I think who the messenger is matters a lot here. And one of the things that's been really powerful over the last few days is hearing from veterans who have worked with Afghan interpreters, who work with the Afghan what we, who these,

who our allies are and what we owe them, I think really will be much more effective than just a bunch of politicians making the case. Yeah. But going back to our earlier discussion in terms of long-term political effects, this is going to be part of the case against Joe Biden from Trump and the MAGA wing of the party, right? It's the southern border. It's refugees. And it's just going to be Joe Biden fucked up Afghanistan. And now we have a bunch of Afghan refugees. Joe Biden fucked up the border. And now there's a lot of immigrants in the country. Look at the chaos all around us. Everything is broken. Everything is on fire. Basically, the 2016 message from Donald Trump just reprised for 2022 and 2024. I mean, it's pretty easy to figure out what the message is going to be. That's going to be it.

I mean, I guess that when you think about the politics of this, the Republicans have been pushing this chaos incompetence message against Biden from the very beginning with no success. They failed in 2016. They failed up until now. I don't know that they have succeeded, but they have a thin reed to hang on to. And to give you a sense of how powerful their megaphone is, I saw a poll out this morning, which asked people who they blamed for the spread of COVID. And north of 60% of Republicans blame people coming across the southern border. So you can already see- Oh, yeah. It's a big thing. It's all over Fox all the time.

And people believe it, even though it makes like it's one of those things that requires three seconds of Googling. Came over the border and then they walked over to Florida. Yeah, that's right. Which is impressive. Well, Americans have never been great at geography anyway. I mean, you remember, I think we might even talk about this last week. But in 2014, when Tom Cotton, when running for

Senate in Arkansas, went out there and pushed the conspiracy theory that ISIS was infecting undocumented people coming across on the border with Ebola. Right. So, you know what's coming here, right? That's the bingo right there. You hit them all. All right. So, last thing I want to mention before we leave this topic, the politics around Afghanistan are also being shaped by the media coverage. And I'll divide that into two categories. You've got a lot of journalists in Afghanistan, like CNN's Clarissa Ward, who are risking their lives to tell important stories and show heart-wrenching images of Afghans trying to leave. And then you've got a lot of ostensibly neutral political reporters

and pundits who've been openly criticizing and blaming Biden's decision to withdraw troops for what the New York Times called a, quote, humiliating final act in Afghanistan. Politico called it a cataclysmic event that marked, quote, the most devastating period of Biden's presidency. And Axios just called it, quote, Biden's stain. Media reporter Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post took issue with the coverage in a piece titled The Afghan Debacle Lasted Two Decades. The media spent two hours deciding whom to blame. She went on to write, if ever a big breaking story demanded that the news media provide historical context and carefully avoid partisan blame, It's the story of the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Instead, we got winners and losers coverage that tends to elevate and

amplify punditry over news and to assign long lasting political ramifications to a still developing situation. So I usually expect this kind of behavior from the political press, but even I was surprised by how little objectivity that many of them have shown. Why do you think so many reporters and pundits have covered the withdrawal this way? I think it is a combination of a series of biases. And I think the biggest mistake we all make is using the term the neutral press, right? Journalism is an endeavor conducted by humans. All journalism has a bias. Some of it is a political bias. Some of it is a financial bias. Some of it's a cultural bias. But there is a bias. And the issue, you can't, up until the moment where Mark Zuckerberg finishes his project of ending journalism and just puts AI in charge of news,

it's going to be done by humans. Those humans will be biased. You can't eliminate bias. You just have to be more transparent about it. And so I think there's a couple of interplays here that are happening. One is, and I find this one understandable and perhaps even admirable, is there are some journalists who have spent their careers in Afghanistan. They know the Afghan people. They know, they have interpreters and translators worked for them over the years and are now, they're in community, you know, they're messaging with them and they are stuck outside the airport and they are- Some help save their lives.

Yes. And they are passionate about those people. And you know what? They should be. They should be. We need more of that, right? Like Richard Engel had a sort of a moment that went viral when he reacted very negatively to Biden's speech. It was pretty clear, even though he is, you know, he's a legendary war reporter, but in that moment, it was clear what his bias was, right? And so that is driving, and you see that with a lot of Watergate, the media treats accountability as the raison d'etre of being in journalism. Your entire job is to keep whole politicians accountable. And this is not to say that the media shouldn't hold politicians accountable. We need more of that. We need better investigative reports.

We need more, you know, sort of accountability Jerusalem all up and down local news everywhere. But if that's, if the only purpose is to hold people accountable, what you do, especially in situations like this that are complex and nuanced is you blame instead of explain. Yeah, because like, no, I totally agree with that. And if you ask a lot of journalists what their job is, they will happily say and proudly say it's to hold people in power accountable. When I would argue that their job is to report stories, if that reporting leads to people in power being held accountable, great. But that should be a byproduct of just reporting the story as it is and explaining, like you said, and explaining to people what's actually going on and providing context, historical context, other context, providing a sense of proportion,

how important one story is versus another. Like that's the job of journalism. If that happens to hold people in power accountable, great. But if you go into it with that, is that your first goal? You're going to have this kind of stuff. It says so much that when Ezra Klein and others started Vox, they called themselves explanatory journalism. That should be an oxymoron, right? The whole point is to explain to people what is happening. And as you say, there should be actual, we should be investigating. If you have reason to believe that there's corruption or a president's lying, dedicate your resources to get at that. And one of the flip sides of the accountability

journalism problem is this is what leads so many people, progressives, to tweet at Maggie Haberman. It's like, why aren't you holding Trump more accountable? It's created a false impression among the public that the job of journalists is to bring down presidents because they saw the movie once with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman that said that was the job. And it's not. It happens sometimes, but it's not the job. And so I think that we're seeing that here. And then you add one more piece of context to this, which is, this is the, you know, as Margaret Sutherland pointed out her piece, an incredibly complex story. It is a story of 20 years of mistakes and decisions that were made by four presidents in that period of time. But we're operating in a world of cable news and Twitter

and the internet, which are just not mediums designed to tell complex, nuanced stories. You need something that fits into 280 characters. So it's Biden bungled this, not the long history of American military hubris or the miscalculations in the post 9-11 mindset or all these things that are all part of this. It has to be who's to blame and how do we hold that person accountable as opposed to telling the actual story. And it's very hard to tell that story in 30 second soundbites and 280 character tweets. I think there are also two other reasons. One is there has been a long tradition among some in the political press corps to sort of take the view that we talked about earlier that military intervention can somehow help uphold human rights around the world wherever they're threatened.

the Iraq war, right? We have seen it multiple times. We've seen it with Syria in the Obama administration, right? Like there are elements of the political press corps, especially those who cover the Pentagon and who talk to generals and military leaders who sort of have a bias towards military intervention as a potentially good thing that can help uphold human rights and nation build and all the other stuff. Like that is a bias that many report, not all, but many reporters who report on this stuff tend to have. Eric Levitz wrote a fantastic piece in New York Magazine that you should all read about this. He wrote, in recent days, much of the mainstream media has comported itself as the Pentagon's Pravda. He said, if news coverage focuses exhaustively on the shortcomings of Biden's withdrawal, while largely ignoring what our client state's abrupt collapse tells us about our two-decade-long occupation, then the lesson of Kabul's fall could be quite favorable for Beltway Hawks. Presidents shouldn't end wars in defiance of the military brass unless they wish to become unpopular. And it's a good point because the phrase, you know, overruling

their generals or overruling the military is always seen as bad, even though the job of a civilian commander is to make the final decision on their own. That's why we have civilian command of the military, right? It's the president's job to listen to their military advisors, to listen to their generals, and then make a decision based on what they believe is in the best interest of the United States. And I think in some cases, we progress, anti-Trump progressives fell into a trap during the Trump years was because Trump was overruling generals, overruling the intelligence communities, is then siding with them, perhaps less critically than we should or more uncritically than we should. And there was Jim Sciutto of CNN, who's a good guy, maybe not great at Twitter, sent this tweet about how they got ratioed, I guess the term is.

They talked about how- Well, that made you sound pretty old. All right. Ratio? I guess the kids are calling it a ratio these days. Look, they don't have that sort of shit on TikTok. So I'm unfamiliar with this old person media that you're so into. But his point, he talked about how too often the military is forced to execute on poor decisions made by civilians. But that's the

whole point of the system is all decisions are made by civilians because they're the ones held accountable by the public. And I do think that the point you make about there is a pro-military action, pro-war sentiment among the Washington DC press corps, right? Like, why aren't you bombing? Why aren't you sending troops? Why aren't you doing this, right? It's a pro, it's pro-military action. And it's not as if at some point in the very recent fucking history, that sort of mentality didn't get us into a disastrous war that contributed to exactly what just happened in Kabul over the weekend. Speaking of which, why did I turn on CNN and see one of the architects of that war, John Bolton, being interviewed about whether Biden should have left Afghanistan?

We're going to ask John Bolton? Karl Rove is on TV? We got the whole Bush gang coming back that got us into Iraq? And we're going to hear what they have to say about this. It's crazy. It's crazy. And you haven't seen a lot of anti-war or heard a lot of anti-war voices, people who are against an indefinite occupation of Afghanistan being interviewed about what they think about the withdrawal, a lot of times you get more sort of pro-war, instinctively pro-war, pro-military voices. Yeah, that has been a long Washington tradition that sadly continues despite everything that has happened. If there's one thing that's 20 years, last 20 years have taught us since 9-11 is the folly of that approach. And yet we still are doomed to repeat it over and over again. Yeah. And I do think, you know, just to, to end this whole conversation, like, again, it is, it is completely fine. And I think, uh,

important to like hold the Biden administration accountable for errors that it makes. But if we're going to treat sort of the the tactical errors in withdrawing from Afghanistan as the most important or only story after a two decade long war, then that is insufficient because there are many broader lessons that we should be learning from what happened in afghanistan over the last two decades and those lessons go beyond what happened a week ago right like we just said multiple presidents trillions of dollars mult thousands of americans in combat like let's try to step back and take some broader lessons from this before we just focus or, you know, before we just focus on who's to blame right now, because we both can't think ahead too far or behind too far. It's just this like presentism.

We always have to be in the moment and talking about who's to blame right now when there are probably larger lessons to learn about the value of military intervention. I mean, those lessons are complicated. It involves knowing history. It requires having a knowledge going back, very specific knowledge about decisions made that go back 19 years. All across the board, we are obsessing with what I think are very real tactical errors made by the Biden administration with the fact that on the larger strategic question, he appears to be right. And I think what has happened,

you put it like, I don't want to diminish in any way, shape, or form the logistical and tactical errors that happened in the evacuation. Right. Correct. Everything that has happened proves Joe Biden correct. Yeah. Like that, the fall of the military and the government, everything that happened shows that, as he said in his speech, not another year, not another thousand troops, not another five years is going to change the outcome. And at some point, some president has to make the decision to bring people home.

And he did that. Which, by the way, 63 percent of the American people agree with, right, from that poll that the rapid collapse of the Afghan government shows why it was right for the U.S. to leave. And that was the poll taken, you know, a day or two ago. OK, when we come back, I'll talk to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy about the administration's plan to offer COVID-19 booster shots in September. Welcome back. On Wednesday afternoon, Biden administration health officials announced that beginning the week of September 20th, they're hoping to start offering COVID-19 booster shots to any American over 18 who's eight months past their second shot

of Pfizer or Moderna. Here to talk about why the administration decided to do this and what it means for you, U.S. Surgeon General and friend of the pod, Dr. Vivek Murthy. Welcome back. Hey, thanks, Sean. It's good to be back. So I have a bad habit of COVID doom scrolling where I follow a lot of epidemiologists and public health experts, and they were sort of all over the place on this booster announcement. Dr. Celine Gounder, who's advised the Biden administration on the pandemic, said that she thinks the CDC's data supports giving boosters to highly immunocompromised persons and nursing home residents, but not to the general public. Can you talk about how you all decided that it makes sense for a young, healthy 20-year-old who's eight months

past their vaccination to get a booster shot? Absolutely, John. It's a really good question. So let's just talk through this a little bit. What we know about vaccines in general, John, is that protection does tend to wane over time. And that's one of the reasons we were looking at the data really closely to see if there were more breakthrough infections as time passed. And what we saw in the recent data, including data that we collected just in recent days, was that there does appear to be a trend to reduce protection over time. Now, let's talk specifically about what kind of protection, because the breakthroughs that we were seeing were more in mild and moderate cases. That was, you know, that's always concerned us.

The good news is that you still had a high degree of protection against hospitalizations, severe disease and death, which is the most important job of the vaccine, to save your life, keep you out of the hospital. So that seemed to be still at a very high level. But as we looked at the overall trend, and as we thought about our own clinical experience

and experience working on illnesses and epidemics, our feeling was that that declining trend would continue and would likely lead to an erosion and that protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death. And we wanted to be ahead of the curve. And, you know, if you wait until that data shows up, you're actually too late. Because by the time you get the data, it's usually a few weeks after things have happened, there's always a bit of a lag in the data. And then it takes time to actually react to that and get people to come in and take their booster shots. And by that time, you've lost a lot of valuable time, which translates to lives. So because we knew that this was an important decision, and that would have big implications, we pulled together the

top medical and public health experts throughout the Department of Health and Human Services, everyone from the FDA commissioner, Dr. Janet Woodcock, to Dr. Tony Fauci, to Dr. Francis Collins, to Dr. David Kessler, Dr. Rachel Levine, the CDC director, Dr. Rachel Walensky, myself and others. And we looked at the data, discussed this in great detail and came to the conclusion that we needed to be ahead of the curve. And this was a way to do it, is offering booster shots to the general population. And finally, why the 20-year-old versus just the 70-year-old or the person who's in the nursing home. And here's why,

because when we looked at the trend, we saw the reduction in protection was across the population. Because when we looked at the trend, we saw the reduction in protection was across the population. And we wanted to make sure that everybody was, in fact, protected. And what you're enjoying right now is a high degree of protection that was extended, if you will. But we are actually prioritizing the vulnerable, John. And this is something most people don't know, because the time schedule in which we're doing this, getting people vaccinated on their eighth month anniversary, is that the time schedule in which we're doing this, getting people vaccinated on their eighth month anniversary, it turns out the people we vaccinated first were the vulnerable, long-term care facility residents, healthcare workers, and seniors. They will be the first ones we vaccinate once again. I know it's still very early, but have you seen any

real-world data, perhaps out of Israel, that shows boosters do work? Yeah, it's a good question. We have seen actually some early data, it's been public, that has come out of Israel showing, in fact, that the boosters do seem to be having an effect on improving protection. But look, the truth is that, you know, we've got to dig into that data, we've got to look at it much more closely. We didn't make this decision, though, based off of solely one single data set or off of Israeli data or UK data. We made this data, this decision based on our composite look at all of the data. And it was what we saw, in fact, in the U.S. data that we found particularly compelling in terms of the decline in protection.

So on the other side of the spectrum, some experts are pointing to data out of Israel that immunity wanes after five or six months and asking, why are we waiting until eight months? Like just personally, my parents are over 65. They got vaccinated in late February. Should they be worried about how protected they are against Delta between now and when they can get their booster shot in October? Well, it's a good question, John. And my mother is and my grandmother in the same boat as your parents, they got vaccinated sometime in that timeframe. And here's what I would say, we know that, you know, even when you hit this six month mark,

that your protection against severe disease, hospitalization, death are high, right? So if you are vaccinated, wait six months ago, you should still feel good about the protection you have. That's why we're actually not recommending people go out today and get booster shots. But there is an increase in mild and moderate breakthrough infections. And so this is where it comes down a bit to people's risk tolerance and their preference. You know, when I, you know, talk to my parents, I, you know, I make sure that even though they're fully vaccinated because they live with kids who are unvaccinated and because they tend to be very sensitive and risk averse about bad health outcomes, you know, they go out and they wear a mask when they're in public indoor spaces. You know, they take that extra layer of precaution and that's the right thing to do. So it's a little bit, you know, going to differ from person to person.

But the good thing is six months out, you still got high protection against the worst of COVID. So I'm one of the 13 million Americans who received the J&J vaccine. And I've been given a lot of conflicting advice on whether I should try to get myself a booster now. On one hand, I'm a bit of a rule follower, so I don't want to lie or cut in line to get the shot. I know it's not approved yet, but I want even less to get infected and potentially transmit the virus to my unvaccinated one year old. Like, should I be worried about how protected I am right now by the J&J vaccine? Well, John, it's a good question. And you're certainly not alone. We have 14 million people in the United States who receive the J&J vaccine and their health, their well-being, their extended protection is just as important as anybody who received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

Look, what we do know is when you look at the data that the protection people got from the worst of COVID was also high with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. And data out of South Africa recently with the Delta variant continues to support, again, high degree of protection against the worst outcomes of COVID. But we do know that there are breakthrough infections happening, mild to moderate cases with the J&J vaccine. And we do believe that J&J recipients will likely need a booster as well. The reason that we didn't include a specific plan for J&J in yesterday's announcement is because we are actually waiting on some more data to be submitted from the companies to us, and also additional, about a second dose of J&J, as well as additional data from what are called mixing studies, where we actually look at using one vaccine first and then another vaccine. An

example might be getting J&J first and then getting a second dose of Pfizer or Moderna. And until we look at those studies and have the FDA actually evaluate them for safety and efficacy, we can't formally recommend them. But I do know that when it comes to immunocompromised people who have received J&J, that some of their physicians have been boosting them with Pfizer or Moderna because there wasn't, again, a formal recommendation there. They knew they needed something. And I don't think that that's an unreasonable approach for those physicians to take, given that there were not, wasn't enough data for the CDC and FDA to make a formal rec. And I'm sure you saw that Zuckerberg Hospital in San Francisco is offering boosters to J&J recipients just based on if their physician

has told them it's okay, even beyond just immunocompromised people. Do you think that's reasonable? Well, I might, and I say this, you know, just as somebody who's practiced medicine for years and seen just, you know, the, that medicine is both an art and a science and that a lot of it has to be tailored for what people's individual needs are. So, you know, I believe that, you know, we should, you know, generally allow doctors and patients to make decisions based on their individual risk tolerance or individual preference or individual needs. And so when I hear about doctors recognizing that some patients need some additional assistance

or support, and they have to look at different options that perhaps the federal government may not be able to recommend, I recognize that. I think every physician's got to make those decisions in their clinic about how best to serve their patients. And I think that's a reality of the world that we live in. So speaking of kids, you know, we're talking about a third shot for all Americans over the age of 12 when kids under 12 haven't been able to get their first shot yet. Schools are opening now and, you know, masks or no masks. We know Delta is an incredibly transmissible variant. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb was on TV yesterday saying he could see the agency potentially

speeding up their approval process on vaccines for five to 11 year olds if enough kids started getting infected, getting infected and getting in trouble. Do you think that's possible? And what's your sense of the timeline right now? Well, it's an important question. And like, you know, Johnny, you and I both have young kids who are not eligible to be vaccinated. And I, you know, I think there are a lot of parents out there like us, you know, who really want a vaccine for their kids, especially during this fall school season with Delta, you know, in the air. And I think that what's really important to recognize here is a couple of things number one that the fda's top priority is covered vaccines and they know just how extraordinarily important it is for our kids who are vulnerable right now without a vaccine so they are going to move heaven

and earth to do everything they can to to make sure that the the evaluation is as quick as it can be while still being thorough because they want people to have faith and confidence in the evaluation that's done but they also first need to get the data right from the companies and so the trials are still ongoing the companies need to gather the data from the trials they need to analyze and they need to submit their application to the fda so that it can do its evaluation but as soon as it gets it i i can tell you from my conversations with FDA, this is their highest priority, COVID-19 vaccines. So you said during the White House briefing yesterday that you don't accept the idea that we have to choose between vaccinating Americans and vaccinating the world. Practically speaking, though, you know, right now we've got 10 countries using 90% of the

vaccines. If all those wealthy countries follow the lead of countries like the U.S. and Israel and decide to give boosters, how do we get the rest of the world vaccinated in a time frame that both saves lives and prevents the emergence of new variants? Yeah, and I'm glad that you said that piece at the end, the emergence of new variants, because that is one of the reasons it is so essential that as a country, we do everything we can to help vaccinate the rest of the world. We want to prevent new variants from developing elsewhere and then coming here and affecting the rest of the world. So here's what we have to do. If you assume the pie is fixed, John, that we have only a limited number of vaccines, then yes, giving more vaccines to Americans in the form of boosters will take shots away from people in the rest of the world. But we can't allow that pie to stay the same size. We have to grow the pie. And that's why

we are accelerating our work on the global front. In addition to donating already and delivering over 120 million doses of vaccine to other countries, we are now moving on the half billion doses that we have purchased from Pfizer for the rest of the world and starting to move those out to the rest of the world. And that's just the beginning, John, because we know that the real big ticket items that can help here are pushing the companies from a tech transfer perspective to get knowledge about production to other countries and to companies that can actually locally produce vaccine. And so helping stand up that local manufacturing capacity is another area of focus for us that will really help expand the pie.

Bottom line is we have to do both. We don't have a choice. We have to protect Americans. We have to vaccinate the rest of the world. It's what we need to do to stay safe. And it is our, I believe it's our role as a global leader to make sure we're doing that as well. So last question.

Pfizer met with the CDC July 12th about the need for boosters, laid out their case, laid out the Israeli data. CDC disagreed at the time, said they had conflicting data. Israel ends up being right. CDC essentially agrees with Pfizer's case this week. Can you talk about why the initial data wasn't compelling back in July? And I sort of ask this question because in general, sometimes it feels like if I want to know what's going to happen in the U.S. with regard to COVID decisions, I need to like follow the Israeli news. Like, do you sometimes,

do you wish we had more information faster here? Is it about just looking for more data in the U.S.? Do you feel like the CDC is getting information and data fast enough? Well, I'll tell you, John, as somebody who loves numbers and data, I always want data yesterday. It's always too late for me. But look, what you're pointing to is a legitimate challenge that we have in the United States. It's been a problem for many, many years, which is that we have in the United States. It's been a problem for many, many years, which is that we have fragmented data systems in our country. We have a public health infrastructure that has been underfunded and has eroded over the years. We have so many different data systems that don't always talk to each other. And so with other countries,

which have more centralized and data, some public health systems, which have invested more in public health more broadly, they're able to extract and pull in data from what's happening around their country much more efficiently than we are. That's something we have to fix, that we have to get better at as a country. And it's why my hope is that coming out of this pandemic, that we will recognize that those longer term investments in infrastructure, public health infrastructure, are absolutely essential so we can understand more quickly what's going on. With that being said, keep in mind, Israelis actually started their vaccinations and ended up vaccinating a much larger portion of their population

much earlier than we did. From a timetable perspective, they're ahead of the United States and much of the world. And we saw the Israeli data. We saw data from other countries. But the CDC needed to do, though, was to gather the data from here as well and look at everything in totality. One of the things that you're always taught in science is don't trust a single source of data. Like, it may be well done, et cetera, but you need to collaborate because there are just inevitably various factors you can't control for in data sets.

And so when they started to see a pattern emerging, John, and this pattern in particular became clear in over recent days when multiple data sets from the U.S. came through, data from healthcare workers, data from long-term care facility residents, data from New York State, as well as what was called the IV cohort, which is a group of more than 20 in sort of health systems from states, all of that data started to point to the same pattern, this reduction in protection against mild to moderate disease with a still high protection against severe disease. That's when it became clear there's a pattern here.

There's a trend here. We see where it's going. And that's why we have to act. Dr. Vivek Murthy, thank you so much for joining Pod Save America again. Come back anytime. We love having you. Well, thanks so much, John. Good to be with you again. Take care. Thanks to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy for joining us today. And everyone have a great weekend. Bye, everyone. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production.

The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and 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.