Pod Save America - “Vax On, Mask Off.”

Episode Date: May 3, 2021

Donald Trump and his allies are winning the GOP’s civil war, Rudy Giuliani and Matt Gaetz may face indictments, and the Biden Administration weighs steps to speed up Covid vaccinations in the U.S. and around the world. Then, in the Under the Radar segment, Jon, Jon, and Tommy offer updates on the border situation and the fight against misinformation.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 show, Donald Trump and his closest allies look like they have the upper hand in the Republican Civil War, though they also look like they have a few indictments coming their way. Then we'll talk about what the Biden administration can do to speed up COVID vaccinations here and around the world. And we'll do a quick check in on a few under the radar stories we've been following here at Pod Save America for a while now. But first, two quick Crooked Pod updates. The trailer for season three of America Dissected just dropped.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed sits down with scientists and policy leaders to discuss topics like mental health, climate change, and new scientific discoveries. Guests this season include Representative Cori Bush, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and more. You can listen to new episodes of America Dissected every Tuesday wherever you get your podcasts. Also, don't miss Take Line this week where Jason Concepcion and Renee Montgomery sit down with director, producer, and comedian Adam McKay to talk all about his new podcast,

his upcoming Lakers drama series for HBO. And of course, he'll stick around for a round of Take Survivor. Check it out. I am desperate for a take survivor invite but like i just i keep refreshing my inbox thirsty i'm just thirsty i haven't seen one i'll you know i'll every week i just watch elijah get his ass handed to him by one of the guests and i'm just like wow could have been me you you know? Now you know how it feels to never be invited on Keep It, Tommy. Oh, boy. How many years is that?

We're mining a vein of hurt here. Love it. What are you mad about? I've never been on America Dissected. Cool, cool, cool, cool. Well, there we go. Agreements. All right, let's get to the news.

It was just four months ago that the New York Times reported that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell privately supported impeaching Donald Trump so that it would be easier to, quote, purge him from the party. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy then said that Trump bore responsibility for the attack on the Capitol. And former Vice President Mike Pence skipped Trump's departure ceremony for Joe Biden's inauguration. But four months later, Pence gave a speech just over the weekend saying that serving Trump was the honor of his life. McCarthy may be orchestrating a play to kick Liz Cheney out of leadership for voting to impeach Trump. Mitt Romney just got booed at his own state's Republican convention for voting to convict Trump. And last week, the former president did a Fox interview where he urged Republicans to replace Mitch McConnell and said this.

We were a third world country when it came to the 2020 presidential election, which was a totally fraudulent election in many ways, in many different ways, including the fact that they didn't get legislative legislatures to approve the many, many things that they did. It's a the Supreme Court should have had the courage to hear it. They didn't want to hear it. And they knew they didn't want to turn over an election. They didn't have the courage to turn over an election. The Supreme Court should be ashamed of themselves. Mr. President, you're thinking a lot about these elections and what took place then. Are you thinking about running again, Mr. President, in 2024?

Yes, 100%. And the polls show it and everybody wants me to do it. Well, 100% I'm thinking about running and we will, I think, be very successful. Tommy, I know we're a long way off from 2024, but have you seen any evidence yet that Trump is moving away from politics or that the Republican Party is moving away from Trump? No. I mean, 70 percent of Republicans in the CNN poll, I think, over the weekend say that Biden didn't legitimately win. No one is pushing back on this on the big lie that this election was stolen from him. By the way, did you guys see some videos that have been popping up where I think Trump just kind of lives at Mar-a-Lago, wanders into whatever wedding or fundraiser is happening and just like does open mic night about all the same grievances? Yeah, it's great.

You should check them out. He's really he's entering his Howard Hughes phase, which I think is fine. Just wandering around, muttering. Right, like hopefully this is enough. I don't know. Clearly the base still really likes Trump and the Republican Party is completely captive of its base.

What's very frustrating is Trump goes out to these various events and he does interviews where he just shits all over Mitch McConnell. And McConnell has gone from pushing back and talking about the need to move past him to just declining to comment. And so they're stuck in the same dynamic where like no one is making the counter argument against Trump. So I don't know how they think they're going to win a messaging fight or a battle for the heart and soul of the base of the Republican Party that no one joins except for Liz Cheney. And then they all turn on her. So not that I'm a Liz Cheney fan, but at least she's like willing to say something about Trump.

Love it. How do you think that this happened? How do you think we went from Republican leadership talking about potentially purging Trump and impeaching him to fully embracing him? potentially purging Trump and impeaching him to fully embracing him. There was a moment, it was about 48 hours long, it was right after the insurrection, where their own concerns for their personal safety and the actual reality of what Trump had unleashed was enough to overcome their mercenary partisan instincts and the reality that most of the people whose votes on which they rely get their news from misinformation. And in the months since that hasn't stopped, right? We haven't seen, you know, Fox News has gotten worse, OAN, whatever has gotten worse. And the mainstream,

like basically Republicans that disagree see no value in saying so because they just get attacked and it doesn't move the needle. And Republicans that supported the insurrection, Republicans that supported overturning the election that support the big lie, get to go on television and talk about whatever they want and are never really challenged on it. So there's really no political price for Republicans for embracing the big lie. And there's a huge, huge price for telling the truth. Just quickly on that, Levitt, you're exactly right.

Although we should just say shout out to Jake Tapper and Dana Bash and the team at CNN State of the Union, which has refused to invite anyone that is part of the insurrection caucus, the people who supported overturning the election on January 6th since that happened. And I think they're the only Sunday show that has made a principled decision in defense of democracy. So Dana, Jake, thank you. All your production team, thank you. It also, stealing a little bit from my under the radar, but I'll allow it. The no, but it's it's true. And it's actually it also, though, it's good television. Like the idea that like booking Republicans who support the big lie and giving them easy interviews is better than what you see when there's actually tough interrogations on another show. Like confronting people on their lives is good TV.

Yeah, I think it's easy to be lulled into a false sense of security for those of us who don't want to see Trump in politics again by sort of watching what's happening right now, because he is sort of fading from mainstream media attention. Right. You don't hear about him a lot. Obviously, he's banned from Twitter. Facebook is going to decide by Wednesday whether he's he's banned from Facebook as well. So it's easy to kind of think. And, you know, and like Tommy said, he's running around at Mar-a-Lago giving these sort of sad speeches, right? You can be like, okay, he's kind of done. People are forgetting about him. But the fact that the base of the party is still so in love with this man

and the reason that they are is because they don't believe that he lost the last election, I think is incredibly dangerous and telling. I mean, you heard him in that interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. Like he is he does not sound like someone who's second guessing a run for president in 2024. And I can't figure out unless he is indicted or unless he is just I don't know.

I can't imagine the scenario right now where he doesn't run again in 2024. But maybe I'm just freaking out about it. No, I can't imagine the scenario right now where he doesn't run again in 2024. But maybe I'm just freaking out about it too much. But also, look, what do you think? Trump is smart enough to know that the best way to stay in the news is to flirt with running for president. I mean, for God's sake, we had Will Smith on this show. And you asked him if he's considering running for president. And that episode got more pickup than anything we've ever done in the history of Pod Save America, right? So Trump is just going to play footsie until he decides one way or the other.

It helps him raise money. It helps him stay in the spotlight. It helps him bring candidates to Mar-a-Lago to kiss his ass. It helps him get the best starburst from Kevin McCarthy. It also it also it also helps him in case he is indicted to say that it's a political prosecution. So I just like I expected nothing less. But it is it. It's been so nice not hearing his voice all the time. But you're right. It's a it's dissipated at all. I think like we're sort of living in these two realities where in one reality, Joe Biden, his administration are trying to like competently govern the country and are doing a pretty good job at it, right? Doing a very good job at it. And they're passing a lot of legislation. We're feeling good about it. In the other reality, we still have a political system that is very broken, an anti-majoritarian system that is not being fixed by H.R. 1 because fucking Joe Manchin won't pass it yet. And we got Donald Trump, who's still at the

top of the Republican Party, has a very tight grip over the Republican Party. There are no alternatives to Trump forming. And if you're Donald Trump, I don't know that knowing how he is, I don't know that you want sort of your last, you know, moment in public life to be this embarrassment of losing the 2020 election when your whole party, both the official party and the base, wants you to run again and is willing to stand behind you to run again in 2024? I mean, Mitt Romney is the 2012 Republican nominee. He is in Utah, a state that was actually more resistant to Trump than most. Getting booed. But actually, I think more importantly, barely making it out without being censured, basically split 50 50 amongst Republicans wanted to censure him.

And and, you know, that Trump. What matters is what has taken hold. What matters is like what whoever the Republican nominee is in four years, they will talk like Trump. They will sound like Trump. They will do what Trump previously, to my mind, was one of the most evil people in Congress. And now she's their fucking Serpico. Now she's like the only one not taking the bribe. It's horse shit. Yeah. Cheney and Romney and Adam Kitzinger, like how are they all doing? Not well. So there was there was a special election over the weekend in Texas to fill the seat of Republican Representative Ron Wright, who died of COVID a few months ago. The late congressman's widow, Susan Wright, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, died of fake news. He died of fake news. Yeah, it was very

tragic. Who was endorsed by Donald Trump. She finished first in the all party jungle primary. So they had one of those jungle primaries open to both parties. The only Republican candidate who campaigned against Trump and the big lie, a Marine veteran named Michael Wood, who was endorsed and funded by Adam Kinzinger's country first pack, finished with just three percent, three percent. And because Republicans finished first and second in the primary, Democrats will be completely shut out of the runoff election, winning a combined 37 percent of the vote against Republican candidates, 62% of the vote in a district that Trump carried by just three points in 2020. Tommy, what, if anything, do you think we can read into these results? I mean, one, like sometimes politics is about a narrative and about

optics more than it's about winning. And in knowing that reality, I'm not sure that I would have like put much stock in the Michael Wood candidacy because a a House primary outside of Fort Worth is probably not the place where you're going to find a little pocket of like anti Trump voters right to like show that we're moving on beyond him. But, you know, this primary like a lot of people are reading this primary. There were 23 candidates, 11 Republicans, 10 Democrats, a Libertarian, an Independent. Democrats got locked out of the election. And it is viewed as a bad side because Trump won the district plus three in 2020. He won it plus 12 in 2016. So it was seen as trending Democratic. I do think Democrats, we screwed up by running too many candidates in this district and we split what could have been the Democratic vote. But it's also the case that the Republican candidates got 62 percent of the total vote and Democrats got 30 percent of the rest. So it does it could potentially speak to problems Democrats are having motivating the base in the in the post

Trump era. I don't know. These specials are always a little weird. We probably should have cleared the field. The DCCC didn't try to do so. I don't think they ran ads because it's expensive to run ads in the Dallas Fort Worth area. And they've gotten a lot of shit in the past for intervening in these sort of these primaries. But, you know, it's not a great result. Yeah. I mean, look, the other thing is so the DCCC didn't spend a lot of money. The reasonCC didn't spend a lot of money. The reason they didn't spend a lot of money, at least according to them, is that this is a district that has the potential to be redrawn, that very likely will be redrawn in the 2022 redistricting. So why spend a lot of money on it if it gets wiped out?

It was a very low turnout election. You know, the guy's widow benefited from name recognition, not just a Trump endorsement. So you can't really tell which is which. But I think you made the point about, you know, splitting the vote. Like you said, the combined vote, 37% to 62%. Not very great at all. Yeah, not good. And the fact that all it takes, you know, that once again,

you had the Trump endorsed candidate prevail and the never Trump candidate not prevail. And then the Democrats losing the general. I don't think it's like sky is falling shit, but it's it's not a great sign. We also, you know, it's not like we have House seats to spare. You know, it's a really. No, we're really. It's really tight.

It's getting tighter. A bunch of Democrats are announcing their their retirement. It's 2022 is it's going to be tough. It's looking pretty grim. Yeah, this is this is us sending up flares here, guys. Yeah, not like the whole like you're a lot of people like Joe Biden's president. Everything's back to normal. I don't have to pay attention that much.

No, wrong. The first the first midterm for almost every president, except for George W. Bush, is usually not good. You're seeing lots of Democrats decide to resign or not run again in seats that we will be defending now. So, yeah, there's a lot of trends that are looking bad. Three times the president's party has has picked up seats in a midterm. It's FDR, Clinton's second term and George W. Bush after after 9-11. More likely than not, all other trends being equal. We are going to lose the House unless something very unusual happens.

And that's possible. Right. What the reason the reason someone like FDR is able to build a coalition is because he is doing something extraordinary with the power that he has. And that is possible. But, man, the risk of going into 2024 without Congress, meaning without the ability to prevent the election from being overturned is very fucking real. Yeah. Look, the bright spot here, or I guess the path to victory here is we we start the 2022 election, the 2022 campaign down probably anywhere from five to 12 house seats just because of redistricting. So now it's like we already lost the House and we need to get it back in the election, in an election where usually the president's party loses seats.

So at that point, you know, you could say that a bunch of these districts that are on the edge are pretty close districts and that Democrats just have to work really hard. And then if the economy is doing great and COVID's, you know, declining and everything's back to normal, mostly that maybe Democrats could have some wind at their backs that they don't usually have in the midterms. But either way, it will take an incredible amount of work and organization just to sort of hang on to the House margin that we have or even at least a one seat majority.

Even a one seat majority will be tough. So a lot of work to do. One thing that could potentially slow down the Trump train are federal indictments, which are looking more likely for at least two of Trump's allies after last week. The FBI raided Rudy Giuliani's home on Thursday, confiscating his phones and computers as part of an investigation into whether he broke lobbying laws when he triedyear-old girl for sex and then offered Stone $250,000 in Bitcoin to secure a pardon from then-President Donald Trump. Love it? How screwed are Rudy and Gates here? I don't know. Rudy is in a bad position. We don't totally know yet what these searches are going to look for. The fucking Gates story, the brazenness of trying to buy a pardon. I mean, it is like the thought I had reading the

story about Gates was, holy shit, how much worse it would be right now if we hadn't gotten them out. I mean, it just it was pure corruption, pure corruption. Like you give me 250K and Bitcoin, I'll see what I can do with Jared and the lawyers. There's a lot of really funny stuff. If you read between the lines of what's happening at the White House, of the White House counsel getting wind of these little kind of crimes going on all around it and trying to figure out how to shut down crimes from getting to Trump, which he could only do is whack-a-mole with these people. But no, I would say the evidence is mounting that Gates is in some real serious legal jeopardy here. But he and

Marjorie Taylor Greene are going to take their cancel tour. They're not being canceled. They won't be canceled. They won't be canceled by the woke mob or the federal laws. Or law enforcement. Yeah, or law enforcement. The woke mob of law enforcement. Tommy, what do you think of these stories? I mean, everyone knows that the appropriate way to purchase a pardon is to hire Alan Dershowitz on like a one-day retainer, right? Those are the ways you're supposed to do it. I find it so amazing that Matt Gaetz's buddy, Joel Greenberg, wrote

not one, I think two or three drafts of a letter that was basically a confession where he detailed all the stupid shit he did. And then he used an encrypted app called Signal to communicate with him, but took screenshots of his incriminating encrypted texts, which is just like, I'm not like an OPSEC guy. I didn't work at the NSA or something. I worked at the NSC, but I wouldn't do that if I were you, if I were trying to break a law. Giuliani, I don't know. All of the Giuliani stuff seems to hang around whether or not he was inappropriately or illegally lobbying on behalf of a foreign national. If this is just a FARA case, which is the law that governs the way you have to register if you are lobbying the

government on behalf of a foreign agency, I don't know how worried he should or shouldn't be. The law is kind of opaque. It's hard to enforce. And it's confusing. And a lot of people beat the rap. But it is kind of remarkable that there was a separate search warrant for another Giuliani associate, that lawyer, Victoria Tonsing, who's just like a right-wing goon. And then they're also apparently looking for communications between Rudy Giuliani and John Solomon,

who is a horrible right-wing hack. So there's like a right-wing news and media nexus to all of this that's swirling around as well. I'm just hoping we get more impromptu press conferences from Rudy's son, Andrew Giuliani, and from his random neighbors who just like go up to the sticks and kind of like spout off on what they think.

The neighbor was fantastic. I love the neighbor. The neighbor just like my ex-husband called me, said, look out your window. And then she's at, then she's given a press conference. The most, I don't know.

I assume they're on the Upper East Side, just but it's the most Upper East Side woman I've ever seen. It was amazing. It was amazing. Yeah, I have to say, Tommy, like, you know, it talks about fair violation. My first thought was when I saw that and was like, you have all these FBI agents sort of raiding the house, like seven FBI agents taking all these laptops and computers and in serving subpoenas to the executive assistant, Victoria Tone saying, I'm like, it does seem like a lot for a fair violation.

It did make me wonder if there are other issues at stake here, legal issues that we don't know about. I mean, the larger issue of what's going on here is, if we can all remember back to Trump's first impeachment, there was a question of whether he tried to force out U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, and specifically if Rudy tried to force her out. If Rudy was doing this on behalf of Trump, it's just sketchy and awful. If Rudy was also trying to oust her on behalf of the Ukrainian government, which also didn't like her, then he is basically working for a foreign government without disclosing it, which would be which would run afoul of the law. And the warrants tell us that a judge found that there was some sort of probable cause to believe that a crime was committed and that by conducting this search that they would find evidence of said crime. So they think they're onto something. Who

knows? I look, I have big time Mueller let down PTSD. So I refuse to get excited about any of these goddamn stories. I feel like we were treated to one of these like once every two weeks by the New York Times and a third of them panned out. But I don't know. It was real deja vu seeing that New York Times story hit. It was like back to it was like a deja vu back to the Mueller days, wasn't it? Didn't it feel like that? Yeah. A lot of times when I see stories about investigations into rudy giuliani it's like when an old celebrity you thought was already dead dies you're like i thought i read this already i was so sure this had already happened the um the other piece of this too is just i find it hard to believe that rudy giuliani has been in control of his i don't know what conversations that he's had

with law enforcement but i find it hard to believe that he has been honest in those conversations based on the mendacity that's been on display for now years. And when he thought he had impunity because, and he thought that he would be saved by his, by his buddy, Donald Trump, even when Bill Barr was the attorney general. So yeah. Yeah. Obviously the difference now is Trump is not controlling the department of justice and can't dole out pardons or yeah, use Bill Barr to stop investigations, which is kind of what it sounds like happened here for several months at the end of the Trump administration. So one more question on this. James Carville gave an interview to Vox last week that's worth reading for many reasons. But one of the things he said is that Democrats should be talking a lot more about scandals like these and using them to better define the Republican Party, since that's what Republicans would be doing if Democrats were the ones in trouble. You guys agree with that? Tommy, what do you think? I read James Carville's

entire lament. I kind of disagreed with this set of suggestions the most. Like he wants Democrats to talk about Denny Hastert all the time, he said. I don't really think that's I don't really think that's the path to winning Congress in 2022 or holding Congress. We don't have a propaganda channel like Fox News that can help us, you know, move these these sorts of, you know, claims every day. I think it's good that Democrats are out there talking about all the things that they're doing for people, like getting them direct checks and getting vaccines into arms. Like, I agree that sometimes Democrats can be not the best messengers. We have a major disinformation problem and that we don't own our own propaganda channel called Fox News. But I don't know. I like I'll listen to James Carville.

I think it's good to have like fights about policy and message out in the open. But I didn't come away thinking that, you know, his suggestion of like calling cable news bookers and saying, hey, you have to cover Jim Jordan more is really the solution here to our electoral problems. Love it. What do you think? I think whether or not to cover scandals is almost like the wrong question. It's I think it is beneficial

when a scandal allows you to tell a simple story that like elucidates a larger issue in our politics. Like I think of 2006 and Jack Abramoff and some of the corruption that helped Democrats take back the house back then. It was like this perfect storm. And what was, and those stories were really effective because they played into the message, the larger message about Republicans being in the pocket of big business, not looking out for ordinary people, that we needed this change.

And so I don't know. Look, I and I think we should always be looking for those kinds of stories. I don't know if like I certainly don't think Rudy Giuliani is the answer to that. I don't know if Matt Gaetz is the answer to that. But I do think we should be looking for like examples of the kind of corruption like the secretary when what's his name? Price had to resign from health and human service. Yes. Yes. From HHS under Trump. That was a perfect scandal. That was a perfect scandal because it was a scandal about the kind of corruption like on the axis of looking out for himself in big interest instead of like the American people. And in those cases, yes, I think we should like find those things latch onto them and not let go. It just seems like some of this stuff like is like great for the Lincoln Project to put into an ad and like fire up MSNBC viewers and get donations.

But like I came away from both impeachments feeling like the message was that voters weren't all that moved by even like dead to rights corruption allegations. I agree with you on the broader narrative. Love it. I just think like, I don't know, right now, I think we have to show some basic competence as a party that we're delivering for people. Yeah, I think it's also a question of like, the different parties have different strategies to like build their own majorities. And for Republicans, it's like firing up a lot of base voters by saying that Democrats are corrupt criminals, pedophiles, whatever you

want to say. And that sort of works for their conspiracy minded voters. And like you said, they have a right wing propaganda machine that helps reinforce that message. I think the marginal voters that we're going for the swing voters that we're going for that go back and forth between parties, sort of already think that both parties and politics in general is kind of corrupt and they don't hold politicians in high esteem. And how they end up voting is like, who's making a difference in my life? Who like delivered more? Who actually kept their promises and improved my life in tangible ways? And that's how Democrats can win by proving that to people or at least proving that the other side will screw them and we will not. That's also a really effective message when it comes, whether it's economic, whether it's cultural, whatever it may be.

And so I do think that's why, like, it's fine to talk about these stories. We're talking about them. Like, if you're running against Matt Gaetz, yeah, sure, talk about this story. You know, but like, I do think there's a limit to the effectiveness of really hammering these sort of scandal stories over and over again, if you're the Democrats. All right. The other big news this week is the Biden administration's ongoing efforts to speed up COVID vaccinations in America and around the world. Here in the U.S., more than 147 million people have received at least one dose of vaccine, about 56% of the eligible adult population.

And we're already seeing the results in declining deaths, hospitalizations and infections, which are falling in 40 states and are now down to their lowest level since early October. The challenge now is to accelerate slowing vaccination rates and reaching the 20 to 30% of the population that's either hesitant, resistant or straight up opposed to getting the vaccine. population that's either hesitant, resistant, or straight up opposed to getting the vaccine. So the Biden administration says they fully expected vaccination rates to drop off in rural communities and among younger people. We're also seeing lower vaccination rates in places with high poverty rates and less public health infrastructure. Lovett, what are some of the ways that the Biden administration can fix, and us in general as a society can fix both the access and demand issues that we're seeing. On the demand side, it does seem like we're moving into a phase where like some of this, so there's, I feel like it's like convenience and hesitancy

and like hesitancy can be kind of a couple of different things. Like some of the hesitancy is like misinformation, either people that have just like genuinely imbibed a lot of misinformation or just people who have heard some things and they're skeptical. And then there are people who are hesitant because they're worried about side effects. They're worried they'll not be able to go to work. They're worried about their day. And then there's access both in terms of just people not having access to it and also just it needing to be convenient for people who are super busy. And I think, or, and just like who just don't haven't, haven't figured out like where to go to get it, haven't had the time, whatever.

On the on the hesitancy front, there's actually been a lot of really interesting research on like how you reach vaccine hesitant people. And it definitely is not haranguing people on Twitter. That is not effective. There was. Yes. Even before the pandemic, actually, there was a lot of interest in this because anti-vaxxing anti-vaxxer, it's always been around. It's been around since the existence of vaccines. But there was this group of people called the Vaccine Whisperers in Quebec. And they went to vaccine-hesitant mothers. And they built this little group of people to kind of talk to vaccine-hesitant mothers about vaccinations.

And they were able to get the rate up from like the 70s to almost 90%. And the way that you do it is you don't tell people they have to get it. They don't you don't tell people they're wrong for not getting it. You basically it's similar to like what we've said around voting, which is like you don't tell people to vote, you tell them that they want to be a voter. And you basically appeal to people and you say like, you care about your community care about yourself, you're trying to do the right thing. You're trying to weigh a lot of hard facts, like you're right to have these concerns and you kind of meet people where they are. And actually, Republicans put out an ad recently, a group of Republicans in Congress put out an ad that like followed all of these steps, right? You don't tell people they have to get it. You tell them it's

their choice. You tell them why doctors are getting it. You tell them why their neighbors are getting it. And I think we basically just have to like do this on a massive scale for a long time. And then you'll ultimately end up in a situation where it's doctors talking to individual patients and having it available at doctor's offices and just saying, hey, you're here. Do you want the vaccine while you're here? And hope we get closer to 90 percent than 70 percent. I think the doctor's point is so key because you hear a lot of people saying, well, if only Donald Trump and a bunch of Republican politicians spoke to conservatives who are hesitant to get the vaccine, that would work. It's actually shown in a lot of this research and focus groups that like Frank Luntz and some others have been doing that that doesn't work really well.

That's not effective, that it's that it's it's a message from the medical community that's most effective, especially your doctor. And in that ad that you mentioned, love it. They actually say, like, it's your choice and go talk to your doctor. See what your doctor says. See what your neighborhood pharmacist says that you trust. See what your nurse, your favorite nurse says. Right. And then talk to your neighbors, too. Like a lot of this is and the Biden administration is now saying this is more of a ground game where they're starting to shut down these sort of mass vaccination sites where there used to be long lines because everyone really wanted the vaccine. And now they're trying to in order to improve access, like bringing the vaccine to places that are underserved where people might not have had access before. And I think it's I almost think of this like how we, you know, divided people who voted for Trump into Trump fans and Trump voters. Right. Like there's a group of people who are anti-vax, very resistant to vaccine.

And because those people have the loudest voices, we talk about them all the time and we think they're the only ones that exist. And then there's a bunch of people who just haven't been motivated yet to get the vaccine or who haven't found time yet, who don't have the access. And those are the people that we should be focused on, not sort of yelling about the anti-vaxxers who we may never reach, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So, Tommy, Politico reports today that some Biden surrogates and health experts have pressed the administration to be more explicit about how fast people will be able to return to their normal lives once they're vaccinated, which could incentivize some people who are less motivated. This is one reason that the CDC eased its mask guidance last week, saying that vaccinated people don't have to wear masks outside except when they attend a crowded event and they don't have to wear masks indoors while gathering with other fully vaccinated people. And in Michigan, Governor Whitmer unveiled a reopening plan on Thursday that will tie loosened COVID restrictions to vaccination rates. What do you think of these strategies to get more people vaccinated? I mean, I think it's smart. I do think you have to show people that life is getting better, will get better, that the whole point,

the whole the thing we've been waiting for for a year and a better, that the whole point, the whole, the thing we've been waiting for, for a year and a half, what's this vaccine, because it allowed us to get back to a life that is more enjoyable. You know what I mean? And I think, you know, there was some debate over the weekend about whether Joe Biden should keep wearing a mask outdoors, you know, like sort of what that, what kind of message that sends if the CDC is now saying, well, you don't have to do that. message that sends if the CDC is now saying, well, you don't have to do that. I also think like, we should allow common sense to enter into the equation too. If like all available data suggests that it's very, very hard to get COVID outdoors, unless you're in some huge mob of people, then you don't need to wear a mask and that's okay. And like, I don't think people should be

upset by that, right? If we've all been saying we care about the science, we're going to trust the science. I think that should be our mantra on the way out of this, um, pandemic nightmare as well. So yeah, look, I I'm in, I'm always in favor of like showing people and as well as telling people about a better future. And I think part of that is going to be loosening up on some of these restrictions. Something weird that happened to me is that I took my mask off and then somebody threw beads at me. Beads? Beads. Beads. Beads. Mardi Gras. Try that. Should I try that again? Yeah, I think beads are funny. It's a Mardi Gras thing. Yeah, I mean, I actually think that's like,

yeah, everybody, you know, what's his name? Doctor. Lunatic. Fauci? No, no, he's the good one. Good doctor. Rand Paul. Rand Paul.

Oh, yeah, he's very different. Very different than Dr. Biden. Rand Paul did this interview on one of the Sunday things a couple of weeks ago ago and he was like i think joe biden should take his mask off and burn it to show people that they don't need their mask and i was like fuck you ran paul for making a point i see the wisdom in you know what i mean like take the mask off the vaccines work we got to get people vaccinated i'm in i'm in yeah i mean look my view on this is i don't think you should burn the mask. I don't think you should burn the mask, though. I'm having a mask burning party if you guys want to attend.

Look, I think if you if you want to keep wearing a mask outside, that's totally fine. You shouldn't get shamed for that. If that's it's your choice. If you want to continue wearing masks in the winter and the tough season just to, like, prevent giving cold to people getting cold. Right. Like that's good for you. But I also see some people being like, oh, I see people without masks on now. And I just think I just couldn't be an asshole like that. You're not an asshole if you don't have your mask on outside, if that's what the CDC says.

I love taking my mask on outside. Well, if we're going to say follow the science, then follow the science. And I also saw some people say this whole debate is stupid. The reason I don't think it's stupid is because of what we were just talking about, which is it really is an incentive for people who haven't been vaccinated yet to get the vaccine if they know that getting the all the reopening to what kind of rate of vaccination they can get. Because then if you're sitting around in Michigan and you're like, I want to have life again. I want to go to stores again.

I want to see people again. And you're like, OK, well, everything will be open again if we hit this level of vaccination. So everyone should do their part and then your life will be improved as a result. I also like that West Virginia is giving people a hundred bucks. I think that's cool, too. Yeah. Yeah. Pay people. Great. So even as covid rates are improving in the US, things are getting pretty bleak in other parts of the world, especially in South America and in India, where less than 2% of the population is vaccinated and there were more than 400,000 confirmed cases on Friday. In response, India and South Africa

have drafted a proposal to waive the World Trade Organization's intellectual property rules, which would suspend intellectual property restrictions on COVID vaccines and allow them to be produced locally by other manufacturers. There's a ton of pressure on the Biden administration to support this waiver, including from more than 100 members of Congress and 80 World Health Organization members. Unsurprisingly, the opposition comes from Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Tommy, I know you guys have talked about this a bit on Pod Save the World. What are sort of the arguments on both sides of this debate over the waiver? Sure. So the one thing, like India is going through an acute crisis right now, unfortunately, lifting this waiver or not won't materially impact that it's

the you know, there's other things we're trying to do to help. But, you know, I think what what people are pointing to is right now, you have a scenario where you have like a bunch of mostly white, really rich countries that have the vaccine, I think, like 80 to 6 to 90% of the vaccine doses have gone to high income or middle income countries, and then the rest of the world does not. So you have the situation that is just like unjust, immoral, but also from just a self-interested standpoint, this could worsen or extend the pandemic if you have the virus racing around countless countries with big populations and mutating. So, you know, when you dig into the timelines to get a lot of

these other countries vaccinated, it's scary because you're talking like 2023, like Kenya, top five economy in Africa, they're hoping to get 30% of their population inoculated by the middle of 2023, not 21, not 22, 23. So that's sort of what we're looking at here. So these countries are asking the WTO to waive these patent restrictions because you have companies in Bangladesh or India that are saying, the sort of big bulk containers of the vaccine and putting into the final use vials and distributing that way to just like increase capacity. The drug companies are trying to say, you know, if you do that, we won't invest in R&D in the future. They're trying to say we can meet the current demand with the manufacturing capacity they already have. But I think that's a pretty disingenuous argument because they got a ton of public money already

from the US, from Germany, from other countries. And there's also a scenario you could imagine where we will all need boosters to our current vaccine dosages. And then these same companies will be forced to focus on creating those rather than helping the rest of the world. So it's a very complicated situation because people point to the fact that it's not just about like kind of giving the secret code to the vaccine. You need someone to walk you through how you actually execute on that. You need to get all these like precursor materials and chemicals and specialized machinery, specialized machines to be able to do all this.

But the reality of COVID is we're talking about a virus that will probably be lingering in many parts of the world until 2022, 23, 24. I think it makes a lot of sense to be considering ideas like this that might make it easier for generic drug makers in other parts of the world to just increase global capacity. I think this has a very unfortunate echo to a similar fight that happened in the 80s and 90s, where mostly US or European drug manufacturers refused to allow generic drug makers to make HIV AIDS treatments. And ultimately, like the South Africa and other countries just ended up going ahead with it. And countries are threatening to sue them and take punitive steps like sanctions. So, you know, I think this is a good idea. Like, I would love for someone to just sort of lay out specifically where the need is, how this would make it faster, what other avenues are.

But it sounds like the Biden team is open to this idea at a bare minimum. tomorrow, a lot of these countries don't have the manufacturing capacity yet or the know-how to sort of make these make these vaccine companies in a lot of these countries don't have that. But then, as you just mentioned, there are these companies in Bangladesh and elsewhere that are like, yeah, we're ready to go right now if the patent was waived tomorrow. So I can't I can't really figure out what's right here. Maybe it's just the fact that there are some countries with the manufacturing capacity that could go right now, but there are others who desperately need vaccines who don't have it, which is not a great reason to not lift the waiver to me. Right. Like, you know, reporting, right, that there's like a Bangladesh company says they can make 350 million doses.

A company in Canada says that they applied for license, couldn't get it. They could do 50 million doses. Does that solve the problem? No, but it does mean more vaccine quickly. And even if it does take six months, a year, 18 months to build this capacity, we're gonna need the capacity. Like we've just been, we need that capacity. The world needs that capacity. But in part, because we just, in the middle of this,

the vaccines are a miracle that have been, that every scientist is saying holds the promise for treating a host of other diseases over time, we may need booster shots. Like it does seem as though also the White House understands this too, because they're not denying that the intellectual, like the property rights are facing are part of the problem, right? Because like Ron Klain, who is not only the White House Chief of Staff, one of the experts in, in fighting the pandemic says to face the nation, that intellectual property rights are part of the experts in fighting the pandemic, says to Face the Nation that intellectual property rights are part of the problem and manufacturing is the biggest problem, but that it recognizes

that we probably will end up having to do both. Yeah, I mean, just look at the situation we're in currently, right? I mean, the US, the Trump administration smartly bought enough doses for two or three times the US population. And thank God they did because Johnson & Johnson shit the bed on their manufacturing, right? AstraZeneca has had some real serious problems that we've or three times the US population. And thank God they did because Johnson and Johnson shit the bed on their manufacturing, right? AstraZeneca has had some real serious problems that we've talked about. So I do think just logically it makes sense to try to increase the number of manufacturers today, right? So that we're just hedged in the future. The argument that I just have no time for that I find so infuriating are the people who say, well, we can't give this

technology to Russia and China. What are you talking about? That is the most, that is the most unbelievably selfish, stupid, self-defeating shit I have ever heard. One, Russia and China, if they want the technology, they're going to steal it. They're very good at that. So let's just stipulate that. But also shouldn't we show some moral leadership here and try to help billions of people and prevent millions of deaths? I mean, I find that unbelievable that anyone would even say that out loud. You know what's funny is that because I kept reading that as a reason against doing it, I was like, that can't be the only reason against lifting this waiver because it is so fucking dumb. Look, I guess if even in the best case scenario, the waiver is lifted tomorrow, there's still a whole bunch of countries that that's not going to have a huge

impact on in the near term, which is, you know, this is an urgent problem that these countries need vaccines right now. I have seen a few in a few places that like one of the potential solutions along with the waiver potentially is to just start donating a bunch more vaccines immediately to some of these countries, because like whether it's locally produced and manufactured in India or donated to India, I guess it doesn't make a huge difference in the near term when they really just need the vaccine. Yeah, I think the answer is both. I think we should be donating all excess doses. But like, you know, the European Union just cut a deal, I think with Pfizer or Moderna, I forget which one, where they're going to buy something like 1.8 billion doses. So, you know, a lot of these doses are going to just be accounted for.

And I think what we need to do is increase aggregate manufacturing capacity. And like, you know, very smart people who I think are, you know, mean well will say, well, actually, there's a raw material shortage, create bottlenecks there. But ultimately, like, this is just kind of like an organizational challenge. And I think that we have very smart people at the White House, at the WHO, at various, you know, COVAX, which is this international entity that's been set up to try to get vaccine to low-income countries. Like, we should be able to work this out. We're not talking about a problem that's going to be solved in 2021.

We're talking about a problem we have years to work on. So like, why not start proceeding to help generic makers start manufacturing this thing as soon as humanly possible? like normal domestic policy lines, but it's actually a different kind of argument. It's like you see like kind of Democrats saying there must be a waiver. You see like the Wall Street Journal editorial board being like, this is a heist. This, the vaccine is a victory for property rights. But actually in practice,

if you look at what like the leaders at the World Health Organization have said, it's like a waiver, a license, changing the rules. These things all ultimately kind of can look the same. It's just about increasing manufacturing as quickly as possible for as many people as possible. And there's a bunch of ways to get there. OK, before we go, we wanted to check in on a few under the radar stories we've been following for a while now. Mine is an update on what Republicans and both right wing and mainstream media outlets have labeled Biden's border crisis. Well, it turns

out that on Friday, the government reported that the number of migrant children in border patrol facilities at the southwest border has dropped 83 percent over the last month. And the length of time that migrant children are staying at these facilities has also decreased as the Biden administration has done a better job of quickly finding relatives for these children to live with. I'm sure this update will be all over Fox News and Facebook this week. Right, guys? You know, know, it's a good reminder that so many of the criticisms of Biden in the first 100 days had to do with people wanting him to solve problems faster and not that he ultimately didn't solve the problem or at least make a lot of progress. You know, it's very hard to figure out how to place kids in all these

homes safely. That doesn't mean it's not like morally objectionable to see, you know, children sitting in these horrible facilities where they never should be. But, you know, it's like human beings doing their best to help them as fast as they can. Love it. You got a quick take on this? Yeah. Under Trump, cruelty was the point, as Adam Serwer would say. Cruelty wasn't the point when Joe Biden became president. That doesn't mean there are times where our policies haven't been cruel, but that was not the goal. And they're trying to get those kids into something safer and better. Tommy, what do you got? I want to talk to you about right-wing media and lawsuits. So listeners of the show may or may not have heard of Newsmax before. You're lucky if you haven't.

But it's a right wing rag. It was founded in the late 90s, propped up by a bunch of right wing billionaires, as all these outlets are. And then they added a TV division in 2014, and that quickly became a Trump favorite. So Newsmax was part of the little cabal of right wing liars that spread a baseless allegation that Dominion voting systems had rigged voting machines in the 2020 election in an effort to defeat Donald Trump. Specifically, they claimed that a Dominion employee named Eric Coomer hosted a conference call with Antifa where he guaranteed a Biden

victory. And look, this is a serious issue, but the idea of an Antifa conference call is just objectively hilarious. I think we need to pause just to acknowledge that fact. So Eric Coomer, this employee, he filed a lawsuit against Newsmax and much of others for basically destroying the guy's life. So they seem to have settled. The terms are not public, but Newsmax posted a correction apology. As a person who co-founded a media company with you guys, lawsuits against news outlets make me a little uncomfortable as a general matter. But these suits are becoming one of the only ways that individuals can get right-wing outlets to correct brazen, purposeful lies like this. A similar example was a lawsuit that got Fox News to retract its lies about a DNC staffer who had been murdered. This lawsuit also names the

Trump organization, Rudy Giuliani, One American News Network, so they should all be very worried. And then Dominion Voting Systems has a separate lawsuit against Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, and the MyPillow guy. Of course, all of this comes way too late, like the conspiracy theories have spread everywhere. They helped incite the attack on the Capitol. They made this poor guy's life hell. They made him fear for his safety. But, you know, clearly there's an epidemic of fake news. And I'm hoping that outcomes like this will make some of these like nakedly partisan right wing sites think twice before they let, say, a pillow CEO come on their air and just claim an election was stolen with with no actual basis. So a little bit of good news. And I think that I'm interested to see what happens with some of these lawsuits that are targeting Fox News for the same thing right now that are still out there.

I think that you need to get a bunch of these to really inflict some pain on these companies to start this change. And I do, you know, I share the concerns about just being able to sue media companies. But I also think the magnitude of the lies and conspiracies that they're spreading. And when called on those lies and conspiracies, they refuse to post any corrections because it's not about getting something wrong. Like someone told Crooked Media we got something wrong. We would be like, OK, we'll change it. We'll get it right.

This is deliberately spreading conspiracies and misinformation. And I think at this point, the only way you're going to stop it is unfortunately through lawsuits like these. Yeah, it's the Dominion suit starts with a B. It's billions. And that's something that no company can just ignore. Like that's like we don't know what the settlement is with this one person, but it's certainly not near what the order of magnitude of the lawsuit Dominion is seeking is, which I think it makes it a much bigger deal because like Fox News can make money without advertisers on Tucker Carlson because it makes money on the rent because it comes with cable packages for people who

want to watch sports. But they can't they can't not have ads and have this unlimited liability every time they go after somebody. So, yeah, I think it's good. Love it. What do you got? Margaret Sullivan in The Post wrote about a local Pennsylvania news radio station that is showing, I think, more courage than some of the biggest media companies in this country. As Tommy and his Twitter fuck buddy, Matt Negrin, who's a producer on The Daily Show, friend with benefit, whatever you say.

As you often point out, a lot of the Sunday shows do want to let bygones be bygones. We talked about this. This is what Jake and State of the Union on CNN is doing differently than these other channels. But it leads to these incredibly stilted moments when you have people like Rick Scott on CBS

saying that Joe Biden isn't being bipartisan and nobody points out that he tried to overthrow the government to prevent Joe Biden from becoming president. So WITF in Pennsylvania has been appending notes whenever they cover Republican politicians who supported the insurrection, even on articles around the vaccine or other issues. They say, just a reminder, on January 11th, SCOTUS refused to fast track the case, the election fraud lie that led to the attack on the Capitol, which is supported by some of these 17 Republican state senators. So I think it's interesting when news outlets decide to focus on things that are true and important,

even if they're not in the headlines. And as you said, you know, State of the Union has refused to book election deniers. But also, I like it when these anchors don't just cover what's in the news. So Jake Tapper asked Susan Collins about something she said around Trump's impeachment. Do you ever wonder that Trump did learn a lesson, but the lesson he learned was that he can get away with anything? lesson, but the lesson he learned was that he can get away with anything? Well, first of all, that was an interview that was grossly mis-edited. It chopped out the rest of what I said, which was in dealing with foreign governments. I hope that the president has learned the lesson. It is remarkable. Like these people are not held to account for the things that they said.

And at a time when, as we talked about, like the majority of Republican voters now believe that the election was stolen, it's clear Trump did not learn his lesson about abusing his power in order to kind of steal the election. And I think it's interesting that this local TV station is showing more courage

than even like giant television anchors who have incredible power to kind of shape what we talk about. I love that story. I think it's like very courageous for that local station to do that. I love that State of the Union is refusing to book election deniers. We always give people something to do. to do. I think that now that we have some local news organizations and also a Sunday show willing to take these steps, like every media outlet that's not a right wing media outlet that's never going to listen should be pressured to do this kind of stuff. Yeah. Right. Like if State of the Union can do it, there is no like why isn't why isn't this week doing that? Why isn't Meet the Press doing that? Why isn't Face the Nation doing that? They should be held account of that. They

should be asked why they're not following Jake and Dana's lead and news organizations all over the country. Why not? When you bring up people who are election deniers, who tried to oppose the certification of the election, why not add that in your statements, in your newscast? You should, and people should pressure them. Also, there was a very annoying debate at the beginning of the Trump administration where people on Twitter would just yell at the New York Times for not using the word lie. But I've now fully come around on that because I do think saying lie instead of falsehood gets at the fact that they're doing this on purpose, that they know better and that they're trafficking in lies and misinformation to gain political advantage. And I

do think that news outlets need to say the word lie to make a moral judgment about that behavior. It's not a misstatement. It's not an accident. It's a lie that helps them win elections or mislead the public. And we should just be clear about it. Yeah. All right. That is our show for today. Thanks for listening. And we'll talk to everyone later this week. Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our senior producer is Flavia Casas. Our associate producers are Jordan Waller, Jazzy Marine, and Olivia Martinez. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick.

Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Sominator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Narmal Konian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.