Pod Save America - “Where are the tests?”

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

Trump’s failures put the U.S. behind the rest of the world on testing, Congress debates the size and scope of the next economic relief package, and Joe Biden moves closer to clinching the Democratic nomination. Then Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, host of Crooked Media’s America Dissected, answers some of your questions about the coronavirus pandemic.Crooked has started a Coronavirus Relief Fund for organizations supporting food banks, health care workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others in need. Donate: crooked.com/coronavirusWe played clips from listeners around the country in today's episode about how they've been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. if you'd like to share your story, send a voice note or video to 323 405-9944.

Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. On today's pod, I talked to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the host of Crooked Media's America Dissected, which is our twice a week in-depth podcast about the coronavirus from the perspective of public health officials and medical experts. But first, Dan and I will dive into the latest developments around the government's response to the pandemic from the White House to Congress. We're also going to talk about the results of Tuesday's primaries and where things go from here now that Joe Biden will almost certainly be the Democratic nominee. Also, please check out this week's excellent Pods Day of the World, where Tommy and Ben explain South Korea's more successful coronavirus response, how Donald Trump was warned a crisis like this was coming by the Obama administration, and what a competent government response would actually look like.

It's a really great episode. Tommy and Ben did a great job, so check it out. For those of you who have been looking for a way to help people who are hurting the most during this incredibly difficult time, Crooked Media put together a coronavirus relief fund that will split your donation equally to groups providing critical support to food banks, healthcare workers, restaurant workers, seniors, kids who depend on school lunches, and others, you can donate at crooked.com slash coronavirus. We also want to thank everyone who left us voicemails in response to us asking

how coronavirus and social distancing has impacted you. We will be sharing some of those voicemails throughout today's pod. And if you'd like to leave one, we would love to hear from you. Thank you for the voicemails and keep them coming. And finally, an update on touring for Love It or Leave It and Pod Save America. We have to cancel all live shows from March through May. This sucks. We're all sad about it. But obviously it is way more important for everyone to stay healthy. Full refunds will be available at the point of purchase. Ticket

holders will receive an email from the ticket provider with further instructions. And we really hope to reschedule once this nightmare is behind us. So Dan, let's talk about where we are, huh? Where are we, John? Where are we? I don't know. I know where I am. I'm in my house where I've been for a week now. Yes, you are part of the shelter in place, what, 7 million people in Northern California, I believe, that are sheltering in place? It's what everyone should be doing.

How's that going? You know, it's good, you know, given all things, you know, I have a lot of time on my hands, but, you know, it's the right thing to do. And I am grateful that California and where we live in California is taking the overall majority of people taking it very seriously and doing what needs to be done. And that's ultimately the right thing. And I would love it if other places around the country were following the lead that Governor Newsom and the county officials where I live who put this into effect would do. Yeah. No, I feel the same way. So you and I separately were just watching this crazy fucking press conference by Donald Trump, which is something you could say

about every press conference he's given since, I don't know, 2015, earlier. But, you know, there are a lot of lies there, as usual. There's a lot of, you know, vitriol, as usual. But I do want to sort of start with a story from Reuters that I think sums up where we are right now and why this was a story that ran yesterday. So on January 20th, the United States and South Korea both confirmed their first cases of coronavirus. Both countries same day confirmed the first case. South Korea responded with a massive immediate nationwide effort to fight the pandemic. And as of yesterday, they've tested nearly 300,000 people. And as a result, the number of new infections in South Korea have been declining over the last few weeks.

In the United States, where we have six times the population of South Korea. We have tested only 25,000 people, and the number of new infections are growing exponentially every single day. We're now well past 8,000 cases and 100 dead. We've got doctors and healthcare workers begging for more hospital beds and masks and ventilators. The economy is at a standstill. Schools are closed. Millions of people might not be able to leave their homes, go to their jobs, or open their businesses for months. We've already seen a spike in unemployment claims. And in the midst of all of this, Donald Trump gave himself a 10 out of 10 on his response to the crisis. What do you think, Dan? Would you be more in the eight or nine range or what would you give him? Is zero an option? Zero is an option in this exercise. I mean,

how did we, you know, before we get to sort of the economic fallout and the response in Congress, how did we fall so far behind countries like South Korea? And why isn't this sort of the biggest story? I mean, it's hard for this sort of the biggest story? I mean, it's hard for something to be the biggest story right now because there's a thousand aspects to the one story that is dominating the country. But there are some really important stories in the Wall Street Journal overnight, which I think get to the bottom of what is happening here. The problem we have is, even though the Trump administration was warned repeatedly about this, that President Obama and Obama's administration said that this was the thing that kept them up at night, that Trump, not only did he ignore those warnings and

not prepare for this, he took steps to actively ensure America was less prepared by firing the Global Pandemic Response Unit within the White House National Security Council, and then downplayed the warnings of everyone once the coronavirus hit the United States and has left us woefully unprepared. If we had followed South Korea's path, which was wholly available to us, then we would be in a vastly different situation, both in terms of public health and the economy. And we wouldn't have the vast majority of Americans being told not to leave their home for weeks at a time. And it really boils down to, I think, what is this unique

element of Trump's presidency, which is this combination of incompetence and narcissism. Incompetence in the sense that he has not dialed into the facts of what is happening in America enough to think ahead of anything more than a news cycle. And the fact that he was so concerned early on this process about the idea that more testing would lead to more news stories about people having coronavirus and you wanted to downplay it. And so we missed the opportunity to expedite and expand testing in a way that would ensure that we knew who had the disease.

And the fact that we cannot do the testing is why everyone is social distancing and quarantining in place and shelter in their home or whatever. But it's also just a simple fact that there are people walking around with coronavirus who have no idea and therefore giving it to other people. And then you have essential personnel, medical professionals, members of Congress, a group I don't often call essential personnel, but they are in this case, who can't get tested and therefore are being removed from the process, right? There are medical, you know, much needed doctors and nurses who have come in contact with a coronavirus patient and may be showing some symptoms of something. But because they can't get a test, they have to

leave the hospital for 14 days. And it puts us in this tremendous shortage. And this Wall Street Journal story said that there were three failures that all happened that led to where we are on testing. One is the fact that the CDC insisted on creating their own test and then screwed it up. The second is a refusal to expand the criteria of how to use commercial and private tests early, which limited the availability of tests to states and hospitals. And then the last thing was not reaching out to the commercial labs and the private companies that make these tests to warn them about what was coming, to ask them to prepare. Because even once we got more tests, we were still short on the swabs you need to

administer the test and the reagents you need to process the tests. And if we had started preparing when we first had warnings that this might happen, then we would have had the capacity to test potentially millions of Americans and dramatically reduce the public health and the economic consequences for the country. Yeah, and I think it's important to understand that it's not just a failure in the past, but it continues to be a failure even as we're seeing testing being ramped up all over the country. It's still not keeping up with the need by any stretch. And if you look at country, you know, a lot of people, and Tommy and Ben cover this on Pod Save the World, and I talked to Abdul about this as well. You know, some people are saying, oh, well, you know, China was able to contain this better because they're an authoritarian government. South Korea is a democracy. Germany is a democracy. There are other countries who

took this seriously earlier and are taking this more seriously now that are implementing mass testing. And as a result, not only will they have fewer infections, but they may not have to implement as drastic social distancing measures that not only keep people at home, but keep the economy at a standstill like us, like we are right now, and that we will have to do for some time probably. So I think, you know, as we watch these press conferences and all this happy talk and all these promises come out of the Trump administration every day that turn out to then not be true or turn out to be exaggerated, I continue to, and we'll talk about sort of the press and the politics of it later, but I continue to believe that the most important questions that

should be asked at these briefings are about the testing, because it does seem like the way out of the tough choice between our health and our economy is some kind of a mass testing program that is ramped up as quickly as possible, and it's clear that we are not there yet. So let's talk about the economic response. On Wednesday night, Trump signed the House's family-first agenda into law, a coronavirus relief bill that passed the Senate 90 to 8 and provides free testing for everyone, two weeks of emergency paid leave for government employees and employees at companies with up to 500 employees, 10 weeks of paid child care leave, $ employees at companies with up to 500 employees,

10 weeks of paid child care leave, $1 billion in food assistance to students, seniors, the poor, and food banks, and $1 billion in unemployment insurance support. That is just the beginning. The White House and Congress are now working on an even bigger coronavirus relief bill that will be at least $1 trillion. The administration has embraced a democratic policy of direct cash payments to Americans. They want to send people a check in April and another in May. The amount will depend on family size and income. They also want to provide $300 billion in loans to small businesses, $50 billion in loans to the airline industry, and $150 billion in loans for other distressed sectors of the economy. Dan, what do you think of a Republican president and Republicans in Congress suddenly embracing

a $1 trillion stimulus package? And do you think it's enough? It's almost certainly not enough. This is unlike anything the U.S. economy has faced since at least the Great Depression, which is, you think about 9-11, you think about financial crisis, restaurants were open within a day of 9-11. The impacted industries around 9-11 was primarily the airlines, when no one could fly because they had to be shut down for a while. During the financial crisis, everything else was open. Obviously, there was a shortage in demand because people had less money, but businesses were still open. Everything is closed. And I have heard from several people

in my life in the last 24 hours who have been laid off from their jobs because they work in the food and beverage industry or construction or anything else that is completely shut down. And these businesses do not have the margins where they can not receive revenue and continue to pay their employees. And this, I mean, this is really an economic situation, unlike anything we have ever seen. The projections on GDP in the second quarter are dramatically worse than they were in the worst parts of the 2008 financial crisis. were in the worst parts of the 2008 financial crisis. Which having, you know, having been there, both of us were absolutely terrifying every single day of the end of the 2008 campaign and the beginning of the Obama administration in 2009. And the sort of outlook that Barack Obama's economic advisors offered him every day was terrifying. And they were talking about sort of Great Depression-style scenarios. And I think a lot of us back then thought, well, it really can't get worse than this. And it seems right now that it is worse than that.

It is. I mean, it cannot imagine it isn't. And for some businesses, whenever this comes to an end, there will be a snapback where people who were going to purchase cars or do other things that they would check, a $2,500 check, a $4,500 check is not going to help them if they cannot work for months at a time. And even if they're allowed to delay tax payments or have evictions being suspended like they are in a number of municipalities and states in the country, how you get out of that hole is many of these businesses will not survive. And it's going to take on... The $1 trillion number is a very, very large number. And people keep comparing it to the $800 billion or so that was in the Economic Recovery Act that Obama passed. But people forget that the Economic Recovery Act was like the fourth or fifth piece of legislation that was put in place to deal with that crisis and that recession.

And this is just one. There's going to be a lot more that has to be done just to protect American workers and families from financial ruin who are struggling to get by anyway. Yeah. I mean, I think the key thing here is the timeline on this, and that if we knew this was going to be like this for two months three months four months then you could start putting a number on sort of the relief package that would be necessary to help people the problem is you know you have like this imperial college report out that sort of rightly scared the shit out of the trump administration and and boris johnson and other world leaders that's talking about social

distancing measures like this and shutdowns like this for 12 to 18 months until a vaccine is developed. I mean, if large sectors, most sectors of the economy, not just the United States economy, but the global economy are shut down for 12 to 18 months, you're absolutely right that $1 trillion is going to look like a drop in the bucket for most people who just don't have an income and are forced to stay home. I mean, it is very, very scary. And so I think the first reaction to a bunch of conservative Republicans saying, yeah, no, we're for direct relief is, wow, look, the Republicans came around. The fact that they're coming around, I think, shows that they're looking at some of these projections and coming around to like $1,000 a month is not a big fucking deal.

When, as you point out, $1,000, like two checks for $1,000 each or $2,000 each or even $4,000 each, like some of them are saying, that's not going to be nearly enough, not even close to enough, if this thing lasts four, five, six, seven, eight months or 12 to 18 months. It's really fucking scary. Yeah. This is a number that's based on what seems to be the overly optimistic projections of not just Trump, but also a lot of people in the financial sector. You see these economic projections for the rest of the year, and they're projecting this giant bounce back in the economy in Q3. And yes, that is possible, I assume, if this is something that fades soon, but there's no reason to expect that. And we should be preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, which is the exact opposite of how the Trump administration has approached this, which is why we're in this fucking mess to begin with.

So what should Democrats fight for in this bill, and how hard should they fight for it? I know you offered some ideas in a memo yesterday that everyone can find on crooked.com as part of your shelter at home extra time. You're now churning out very good memos. So, I mean, everyone can benefit from that, I guess. Yeah, I mean, as I said to you after I wrote this thing, that basically I'm writing unsolicited campaign memos for the same reason that people in solitary confinement

do pushups to keep from going insane. And so, look, if you're a candidate or organization out there, I got time, hit me up. You know, the advice would be worth what you're getting, what you're paying for it, which is zero. Free advice. Free advice. Yeah. Free, free advice. But like, I spent a lot of time thinking about this and over the last few days, as we've all had so much time about how Democrats handle this, because we know how Republicans would handle it in a similar situation, which would be if there was a massive economic tumult six

months before Barack Obama's reelection, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan's approach to this would have been tough luck, because they know that there's a strong correlation between the strength of the economy and the reelection prospects of the incumbent president. So there would be no incentive for them to do anything to help. And you say, God, that's so callous and partisan. How can you say that? Well, I'll tell you how, why I can say it, because I know it to be true, because that was the exact approach that Mitch McConnell and the House Republicans took, not seven months before Barack Obama's re-election, but two months after his election, and where they basically decided that the best way to take back power in the 2010

elections was to hurt as many American workers as possible and blame Obama. So that's what will be happening now. That is not a strategy available to Democrats because we like to be able to wake up in the morning and look in the mirror. And we want to help people. And that is a fundamental difference between the parties. And our voters would hold us accountable for that level of cynicism. us accountable for that level of cynicism. And so how do we do this with – how do we sort of navigate these politics without letting Trump off the hook for what he did?

And I think in the context of the debate, I would say the three pieces of advice I give to Democrats are, one, we have to offer an alternative. We have to let them know what a bigger, bolder, more progressive, more populist approach would look like. And you're seeing some of that already. There's an approach in the House from Maxine Waters and then one in the Senate about using this bill to cancel student loan debt. There is a bill from Fred of the Pod, Sherrod Brown, and Cory Booker, and Michael Bennett, and others that is about a $4,500 check to voters, which is a much larger sum. There are a number of recommendations put forward by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren about the sort of pro-worker strings that should be put on any of these corporate rescue packages. None of them I can use to be for buybacks.

Elizabeth Warren had an idea that if you accept the money, you have to put a worker on your board, sort of those sorts of things. So we have to put forward an alternative. The second thing is Democrats have to recognize that we have a lot of leverage here. All the leverage. Because Trump and McConnell, who's trying to hold on the Senate, need this more than politically, right? Put aside the economics, the patriotism, the morality. They need this politically more than anything else in the world. And this is a thing we know from having worked in the Obama administration during a previous financial crisis is that the public holds the president and his party accountable

for what happens and what doesn't happen. And so inaction is something that hurts them. And so we have to like, and Trump and McConnell know that, which is why they are coming here with a trillion dollar package, and they are pretty thirsty for this. And so Democrats should use that to get what they can. And so the last part of the advice is like, the point of our advocacy should show the difference between the two parties, that we are fighting for workers and struggling families, and they are fighting for corporations. That's why we have to be pushing for bans on stock buybacks and ensuring the money goes to workers and those sorts of things and highlight those differences. You have to find – we need to do the right thing for people, and we need to be seen as reasonable in trying to accomplish something because we are reasonable and we are trying to accomplish something. That doesn't mean that we have to sort of concede everything to the Republicans. And I think I saw Senator Schumer on CNN last night, and he was saying all the right things on this. And so at least at the outset, I think the Democratic mentality is headed in the right direction, even if there were some significant bumps in the road in that first House bill that you guys talked about on Monday. Yeah, I think the main lesson that I took away from how we handled the financial crisis in 2008

and 2009 is propose what you believe is needed, not what you believe can pass. And there were reasons that we had to propose what we believed could pass back in 2009. And those reasons were what you just laid out, which is the Republicans didn't want to help us anyway. And so they weren't going to give us the votes. And so we had to figure out a way to get it through Congress because we were in charge. But as you point out, Democrats have the leverage now. You know, Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell need Nancy Pelosi to pass something through the House. They need 60 votes in the Senate, which means that Mitch McConnell needs help from Chuck Schumer. And so I think that Democrats have to propose

the most ambitious package that they believe will solve the problem. And, you know, you laid out some of the ideas that have been, people have been kicking around. I do think, you know, making sure that these direct payments to people aren't one-time payments, that they happen monthly is a good idea, or at least every few months, or at least that they continue. And it's not just a one-time thing, because I do think that the more, the further we get into this, the harder politically it's going to be to continue having Congress pass these big relief packages. And I also, and you know, and Brian Boitler also wrote a piece on Crooked about what Democrats should do, and you all should go check that out. But Brian has a good idea, which is, look, if we get to November, and you know, Joe Biden is the next, you know, wins the presidency,

and he's the next president, we know what will happen, which is Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy in Congress will refuse. Well, suddenly they won't like relief packages anymore. Suddenly they won't like direct cash payments anymore. And they will try to strangle Joe Biden's presidency and they won't care if they bring the economy down. And so there should be sort of automatic triggers here where as long as GDP is under a certain amount, as long as unemployment is at a certain amount, direct cash payments to Americans and other relief measures continue automatically so that we don't have to continue going back and having to pass new packages out of Congress. So I do think that's a

good idea. I think we'll need bigger cash payments. I mean, Bernie Sanders suggested, you know, $2,000 a month, and then also that Medicare should expand to cover all coronavirus related healthcare costs. I think that's a good idea. There's also a, this is good, a proposal floating around, and I think it's been embraced by even some center right economists and some people in the White House for a trillion dollars to small businesses to help cover 12 weeks of missed revenue, though it might have to go much longer than that. And the government will pay off those loans so long as the companies that get them don't lay off workers. So there's an incentive there to keep people employed. I think that's good. You talked about restrictions on CEO compensation and stock buybacks for any company that gets help. Everyone from AOC to Elizabeth Warren to Chuck Schumer has been talking about that on the

Democratic side. So that's good as well. So yeah, I do think, but again, no matter what we go, and we talked about student debt cancellation as well. Elizabeth Warren's been pushing that. So there are a lot of good ideas out there on the Democratic side. I think the key is going to be to hold the line here and realize that the Republicans need Democrats to pass this. And like you said, make sure that people know there's a difference between the parties and who we're fighting for. One other, that we've been talking about that, uh, Congress needs to do something on is voting, uh, in November and elections. Um, and there's been a big push. There was legislation by, um, Ron Wyden and Amy Klobuchar, um, about vote by mail. Do you want

to talk a little bit about vote by mail and why it's so important? Sure. I mean, there is a very real fear that this virus will bounce back in the fall. That was what happened with H1N1. That's what happened with the 1918 flu pandemic. And if that is the case, people are not going to feel safe going to the polls. And because every polling place in America would violate the CDC guidelines on gathering. And it is just simply not possible. America, under the best scenarios, is absolutely fucking miserable at administering elections. It is a national shame. So imagine what it would be like in the middle of a pandemic where the – I don't know when the last time you voted in person, but have you ever seen a poll worker who was not in the vulnerable population?

Usually they're senior citizens. There are almost always long lines and the spaces are too small. And so what is the best things that we can do to ensure that people have the opportunity to participate in this election to exercise their right to citizens without exposing themselves to a potentially lethal virus? And the best answer is vote by mail. There are other things we can and should do just to fix our elections generally, but we saw what happened in some of these states on Tuesday where the states that had vote by mail had turnout that seemed respectable, and the states that didn't had greatly diminished turnout. And so we need to do this. And Democrats have been pushing for vote by mail, where just to give people who don't know, vote by mail is a fully vote by mail election like Oregon and Washington and what California is transitioning

to. Every registered voter gets mailed a ballot. They fill it out. they send it back. And in most cases, it just simply needs to be postmarked by election day. And there's no reason we should not do that everywhere in the country. There's a piece of legislation co-sponsored by Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden that was introduced just yesterday that would mandate it, and it should absolutely be included in this bill. In my piece, I also lay out some of the very specific things we need to do to protect voters, even with vote by mail against malevolent Republican election officials that people can read more about that have been pushed by our friend Mark Elias, the legendary Democratic elections attorney. But I think it's very important that this be in this bill for the exact reasons that Brian talked about in his piece, which is we know this from 2009.

With every passing bill, the likelihood of another bill passing goes dramatically down. The Congress only has so much energy and political will. And if it's not, this is the train leaving the station. You better put it in this one because it's going to be exponentially harder the next time. Yeah. I heard somewhere that they may sort of punt this to like a fourth relief bill after this third relief bill that they're discussing now. And, and, you know, they'll do election reform there. I really worry about that. And I worry about Mitch McConnell being willing to, you know, dive into changing our elections for the better with Chuck Schumer and, you know, Nancy Pelosi and Kevin McCarthy

and Donald Trump after we're through this relief package. I think the Democrats should be demanding it in this current package. And, you know, as Mark Elias points out in his Washington Post op-ed about this, as you should all read, is it's not very easy to do this. Like, we need to do it, but there's a number of steps, partly because states administer elections. And so it's hard to have sort of one national standard here. So, you know, there's 16 states right now that require an excuse to vote by mail. And so the Wyden-Klobuchar bill would basically say, all right, every single state, there should be no excuse to vote by mail. You shouldn't have to have an excuse. But even that's not enough because like

you said, that doesn't get you to the point where the states are automatically mailing every single voter a postmarked ballot to send in. And so, you know, that legislation also has $500 million that it would give to the states to sort of take some of these steps that are necessary. And part of those are, you know, you got to provide the free postage, you got to mail the ballots, you got to make sure that the states accept ballots that are mailed on election day, because a lot of states that have no excuse vote by mail say that the ballot has to get there on election day. And you also have to get now more workers and more volunteers to count all those ballots that come in maybe a

couple days after the election because they were postmarked on election day. So there is sort of a number of steps that every state has to take to get there, which means that this has to start happening now. This cannot be, if we wait till September or October, it's going to be too late to do this. And we have to prepare for the fact that by November, this thing may not be gone. And in all likelihood, it'll still be dangerous for at least a lot of vulnerable voters are older voters. So it's not obvious that vote by mail would benefit one party or the other, which I guess is the hope that maybe both parties would come together and make it happen. That's right. In a normal world, higher turnout benefits Democrats for the most part. Not true everywhere, but that is generally true. And history has shown in states like Colorado,

which adopted vote mail, studies show that it also helps increase turnout dramatically, in some cases, among populations least likely to vote. But in this particular case, just you fucking yahoos who all yelled at me on Twitter when I tweeted about this saying, never let a crisis go to waste. Imagine what the electorate looks like if people over the age of 70 are afraid to go vote. Who do you think that hurts? Fucking armchair Twitter political strategists in the Republican Party. Who do you think that hurts? One of the people who tweeted at me about this was one of Mitch McConnell's aides, you fucking Yahoo. Oh, they fucking some of the worst fucking people in politics well i mean look who who could not i mean look who could like is there anything to better show political genius than electing a republican in kentucky congratulations just

fucking gross um all right before we move on from, should we talk about the fact that, and I know you want to talk about this, two members now have tested positive for COVID-19, Republican Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida and Democrat Ben McAdams of Utah. to work and not sort of practicing the same extreme social distancing that the rest of us when we are depending on them to pass this legislation that will save the economy, save democracy, et cetera. Like why can't they figure out how to institute remote voting? Why are they all still huddled together in Washington and the Capitol and Capitol Hill offices potentially exposing each other to this? I mean, it seems very scary and very stupid. I really discovered this last night when I did some, I Googled Congress and continuity of government plan, and it turns out there is none. And there's an excellent story written a few weeks ago by Garrett Graff in Politico magazine who first explored this after the mass shooting in which Steve Scalise was wounded, that Congress basically has no plan if a large portion of members were incapacitated or in some way or deceased. in some way or deceased through some sort of... This was in the context of a shooting or terrorist act. And then he updated it about coronavirus. And then Paul Kane, who knows Congress as well

as anyone in the Washington Post, has another story today, which is there is no plan for this. And Mitch McConnell was on the record in the story opposing the idea of mobile voting. Now, every member votes on the same machine. They all touch it, and then someone else touches it in the House. They are near each other. Cory Gardner is apparently self-quarantining after he came in contact with someone just after being at a lunch of Republican senators, which is essentially just a meeting of the vulnerable population. And this is very, very worrisome that you could be in a place where large portions of Congress are unavailable. Steve Scalise, who the leading Republican vote counter, is currently unavailable because he is self-quarantining.

And we need a plan that means that members can vote remotely. We needed this a long time ago, but it is not implausible that large portions of Congress will be unavailable to act at a time of national crisis unless we put in place an actual plan. It is insane, and I hope someone is working on it right now. Yeah. Yeah, get on that, someone. Probably a good idea. And now, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to play some of the many voice notes that you all left us. Thanks again for calling in, and please keep them coming. Hi, my name is Stephanie. I'm from Red Bank, New Jersey. And on March 9th, I was actually laid off from my job.

Before, you know, it was really all hit the fan. And my company had given me three weeks severance, which is, you know is generous of them, and three weeks is usually enough time to find another job. The problem is that I did have several interviews set up for this week and next week, and one is canceled, one is moved to a phone interview, and even then they don't know when regular operations will start.

So they don't know when I would be able to start if I was to be hired. It is immensely annoying and frustrating, to say the least. And everyone out here is suggesting a payroll tax. And that's not going to help me because I don't have an income right now. It just doesn't help me and yeah I don't know what I'm going to do with all my bills because even if I was hired by someone I wouldn't start you know until probably well after April 1st and um I have bills to pay and I don't know what I'm going to do. I really don't. I'm really stuck. So, yeah.

So I hope that the government can do something to help me. I don't hold very much weight. I am very lucky in that I have friends and family that are willing to help me out and say they'll help me out if that comes to it. But I know that not everybody has that and I really really really hope that we can all get our stuff together and just take this seriously okay well thank you guys for

listening and I hope everyone stays safe out there hi my name is Ali and I'm calling from Brooklyn. I have been sick since Monday and actually called my urgent care. They urged me not to come in, but I defied them and visited the urgent care facility today. I was not given a COVID test. COVID test. Even though I was showing some symptoms, they're only giving those tests to folks who have a fever, shortness of breath, and all of that. But here's the thing. My job requires me to interact with the public. And I believe that if we are showing some symptoms, we should be able to get the test. For some reason, what I'm hearing on the news from pundits, that's not translating into like real life situations. So there's a disconnect, obviously.

I don't know. I don't know who can help. I don't know who to call. But I just thought I'd share my story, my experience. Bye. Hi, this is Megan. I'm from Missouri. And I work for a county health department here. We are actually one of the lowest funded county health departments in the state of Missouri. And on top of that, Missouri ranks 50th out of all the states on public health funding in the nation.

We have a staff of about 35 people to serve a population of around 350,000. end. So prior to the outbreak, I was working on things like vaping education with teens, some opioid crisis response grants, doing things like writing data briefs. And as of now, all of that work has been dropped to help our outbreak response, outbreak response team. They, there's only five people on that team. And so now the entire health department has been called in to help them, um, deal with this and help our community get through this. Um, so thanks for what you're doing. Thanks for, um, taking these, um, listener stories. Um, and thanks for, you know, all my coworkers. And I listen to your podcast every week. And it makes our day better. So thank you. All right, let's talk about how the politics of Trump's response is playing out,

which is something you also talk about in your piece. At some point earlier this week, after he read that report from Imperial College that more than two million Americans could die in this pandemic if nothing is done, you know, Trump suddenly looked and sounded like he was taking this seriously, even if he's certainly not acting that way. And after one of his daily press conferences, CNN's Dana Bash said, quote, If you look at the big picture, this was remarkable from the president of the United States. This is a nonpartisan. This is an important thing to note and to applaud from an American standpoint and from a human standpoint. He is being the kind of leader that people need, at least in tone today and yesterday,

in tone that people need and want and yearn for in times of crisis and uncertainty. Is it even worth yelling about this since we've been doing it since Trump started running for office in 2015 and now they are still doing this shit in the middle of a pandemic? Look, there's nothing more infuriating than Trump being graded on a curve, and the steepest curve in American history. But it's not going to be fixed. It will never be fixed. And it's not everyone in the media, to be very clear. But it is the general conversation just gives Trump a participation trophy for completing sentences that would never be provided to any other president, most certainly a Democrat.

And we have a choice. It is okay to yell about it. It is okay to tweet about it. But it is another reminder, and particularly now right now, that if the primary means by which we plan to convince the American people that Donald Trump is unfit for this office, is the least prepared person to be in charge during a pandemic, is someone who should be fired in November. If our primary means of doing that is through the mainstream media, we will fail at that task for a whole host of reasons we've been talking about for a long time. The media doesn't have the reach nor the cultural inclination to do our job. It is our job as Democrats to tell people that Trump is unfit. It is not the media's job. Sometimes people can get

that impression from some very good journalism that happens, but they're going to report what he says. And they may fact check it minutes later, hours later, days later, but we have to be the ones who hold them accountable. And we're going to have to learn this lesson as a party eventually, or we're just going to perpetually live in this miserable timeline. Yeah. And it does seem like because all that you just said is true about the media, that Trump's press strategy over the last week is benefiting him politically, partly because of sort of the institutional weakness of the media and how, as you point out, it's not their job, it's our job. But also, he gets to come out every day. He gets to dominate the airwaves. Everyone takes his press conference live. And he can just say whatever he wants.

He can lie however he wants. He can exaggerate progress all he wants. He can offer a lot of happy talk. And I could imagine it appearing to sort of the average American who is home, like everyone's home right now. Okay, well, this guy, you know, maybe, you know, he's, he's, he's been an asshole before he lies. I don't know if I trust him, but he looks serious. He is just talking about a lot of progress. He's saying that everything's under control. Everything's going to be great. And so I do wonder, how do Democrats handle Trump's press strategy right now, knowing that there is no bully pulpit as powerful as the presidency under any president? So I'd say three things. One, Democrats have a tendency to, ourselves included,

I am very guilty of this, to focus on the style and optics of Trump as opposed to the substance. And he's up there. He's saying the wrong words. He doesn't seem like he knows what he's doing. He's putting misspellings in his tweets. And we use that as evidence of unfitness for office. For the vast majority of the electorate, Trump's style and language and demeanor is baked into the cake. They were aware of it when he was elected. They live with it. It

is not going to be reason enough to meet the pretty high burden of firing a president after one term. And so I think in this case, we need to focus on the substance of what he has done wrong, we need to focus on the substance of what he has done wrong, right? The very specific things that he failed for weeks to invoke the Defense Protection Act to ensure that we have enough ventilators and respirators and masks, that he is responsible for the lack of testing, that he fired the pandemic unit, that he was briefed on multiple occasions about a pandemic and did nothing. We have to focus on the very specific fact-based things that Trump did and didn't do that led to this crisis and not the insane thing he said or tweeted that morning. So that's one. Two is we need to – Democratic groups, Democratic candidates need to tell the story themselves. And we can

talk about, there's a debate about this among some of our most valued and respected friends, but I think Democrats need to be advertising because Trump, like if you were some, if you were someone who consumes these press conferences and every news story, like we do, and a lot of our listeners do, it's pretty obvious what he has fucked up. If you're just someone who is trying to manage their life through this incredibly scary time and dealing with having kids at home and maybe working from home or worrying about if you're going to get another paycheck and you're just sort of surfing the news, you see Trump at his podium making statement after statement after statement, it seems like he's doing something. And so if we want to tell people the truth, if we want to inform them about that Reuters story you read, we're going to have to pay to do that. And the third thing is,

we need more Democrats to get out there. And I think that involves our soon-to-be presumptive nominee in Joe Biden being out there as the public face of the Democratic response, talking about what Trump did wrong, what he would do differently as a president. The speech he gave last week before the debate was excellent, and we could use more of that in my memo. I list a couple of things that he could do, but his presence and voice, he is the only Democrat right now who can get something in the neighborhood of the sort of press attention that Trump does. And if he is off the field, we are dramatically outgunned in the media space. And if he is off the field, we are dramatically outgunned in the media space. Yeah, I really agree with that last one, especially because I'm remembering in the 2008 crisis,

you know, obviously we were in a different place than Biden is right now because, you know, Barack Obama was the nominee. It was September, October, November of 2008. And one of the things that benefited the Democrats then was Pelosi and other Democrats sort of stepped back and made sure that all of the messaging sort of went through Barack Obama. He was the leader of the party at that point, even though he wasn't president yet. And so, you know, George Bush was doing what George Bush was doing. And Barack Obama was out there every day, you know, criticizing both McCain and George Bush and sort of showing how he would act as president of the United States. And he was speaking on behalf of the Democratic Party and he was offering the contrast.

And one of the things you and I have been talking about for the last couple of years is it has been much harder in the Trump era for there to be one voice of the opposition and the Democratic Party because we didn't have a nominee yet. Well, now we're about to have a nominee. And I do think, and it's obviously, there's a lot of challenges, right? Because there's not a campaign trail anymore. And we'll talk about all that.

And there's not rallies, but I do think we have to hear, not just statements, not just tweets. We must have to hear Joe Biden's voice almost every day during this crisis, not only as part of his campaign for presidency, but as to let Americans know what a Biden presidency would look like. So I think that's super important. To be completely fair to team Biden,

right? Like it's very easy for, you know, podcasting wasn't a huge deal when we were working on the OA campaign, but there were people like us who didn't have to deal with all the challenges of the campaign offering lots of advice. So to be fair to them, I think this is a very delicate part of the campaign. We'll talk about this, but they're trying to wind this down in a way that is appropriately respectful to Bernie Sanders and his supporters. They don't want to look presumptuous. They have a ton of work to do and perhaps more work than any Democratic nominee in history to put together a fully functioning general election campaign. He has been underfunded for a very long time now. He just hired a new campaign manager, the very excellent friend of ours, General Malley Dillon. And so they're not,

no one's on vacation there. And you have to do all of this while your staff is working from home. So there are tremendous challenges. I just think sooner rather than later, it is important for the party generally, but for Biden particularly, is to be out there now. Because the memory is short in the Trump era. And you have to strike when people are paying attention to a particular story if you want to burn it into their memory in a way that will still be relevant in November. And that moment is now. Yeah, no, I 100% agree with all of that. And I think that up until now, I totally understand where the Biden team has been and the different challenges they're facing, both in terms of challenges they'd be

facing, regardless of whether there was a pandemic because of the fact that Bernie Sanders is still in the race, and also the added enormous challenge of organizing this kind of response during a pandemic when all their staff are working from home and their nominee can't be out on the trail. So I totally understand that. Let's go back to the ad debate, the debate over sort of Democrats sort of launching an ad blitz about this right now, because, you know, as you alluded to, David Axelrod and David Plouffe, who are incredibly close, have worked together, were partners and then partners on our campaign, have been friends for life, sort of got into it a little bit on Twitter, respectfully,

um i've been friends for life sort of got into it a little bit on twitter respectfully about um about whether democrats should run ads right now and there was this washington post story about how pachranem um which is tara mcgowan's organization you know tara's been on the pod before and uh david pluff is helping out there too uh you all know pluff they're going to sort of launch some ads about trump's response to the pandemic. And Axe sort of quote tweeted it and said, you know, I don't know that this is the time for negative ads right now. There'll be a time at one point down the road, but I don't know if this is it. And, you know, Plouffe said, I disagree.

We basically have to do this. We can't just disarm because you know that Team Trump is going to be out there touting how wonderful he is every single day. What did you think about that debate? Well, I know you and I both feel this way, and anyone who worked for Barack Obama does, is that there's no people that we have more respect for as people and as political strategists than Axe and Plouffe. And just even when I was writing my book, I wrote some things that I knew Axe would disagree with. And it made it hard to write them, right? Because it's like, he's one of the smartest people I've ever known and one of the best people

I've ever worked with. And so the idea that he disagrees makes me deeply uncomfortable. And I think just to be fair to Axe's point of view, this was interpreted by some on Twitter to say that Axe was saying basically this is a time for unity behind Trump and we put politics aside. Yeah, he wasn't saying that. He was not saying that. He was making a case about the political wisdom of running political ads at a time when people are deeply afraid and deeply worried about the fate of the country. And so it's a disagreement in strategy. And I think what matters here, I agree with Plouffe in this, because I don't think we can let this opportunity pass itself by, and we can't let Trump use this to gain an advantage. We've seen Republicans use these opportunities where they

have cowed Democrats from making their political case. Bush after 9-11, Democrats lined up behind him, helped give Bush a 90% approval rating, and then he used that 90% approval rating to bully America into a war and bludgeon Democrats by comparing them to Osama bin Laden. So we should be very cautious about that. But I think the tone of the ads matters a lot. Like Pakran was talking about are fact-based digital ads that share some of the information that we have talked about where Trump messed it up with a targeted set of voters via Facebook or other platforms, which is different than the sort of stereotypical negative television ads that you see with the ominous music and the blurred faces and all of that. Like if people were watching CNN to get the latest information about how to protect their families,

and then all of a sudden was this commercial that looked like a terrible negative ad and then said, paid for by the Democratic National Committee or Joe Biden for America or whatever else, I think Axe would be 100% right. I think the sorts of things that Plouffe and Packer and him are talking about are necessary and appropriate in this timeline is my personal view. But this is a good faith disagreement. And, you know, I certainly acts feeling differently, but always makes me question my own opinion. Yeah, I mean, look, I think back to what Barack Obama always used to tell me when I'd go off to work on some speech, which is, you know, you don't have to put a lot of spin on the ball when the facts are on our side.

And to our conversation earlier, when we talked about, you know, Democrats don't need to be just focused on Trump's stylistic snafus, his crazy tweets, the things he says, all that kind of stuff that, you know, we'd probably be better off focusing on the substance of how he has fucked up this response and continues to fuck up this response. We'll be better off. I believe the same is true about any video we share, any ad that runs, anything like that. There is a mountain of evidence that Donald Trump has screwed up this response. And look, it's not just about gaining some political advantage in the narrow sense where we usually talk about it regarding campaigns, right? It is, there is a substantive angle to this, which is we want the response to be better. We want to demand a better response to this so that people can live, so that our economy can go back to normal. And if all we have is Donald Trump at a podium lying and exaggerating and telling us everything is fine when it's not, there needs

to be voices on the other side saying, hey, he's not telling you the truth. He's fucking this response up and don't believe him. And we need to demand better because lives are at stake. Livelihoods are at stake, you know, and I think it's bigger than politics, you know? And so I do think that like in this media age, right, there is an imbalance between what Donald Trump can go out and say and what all of us can say in response. And so I think that having ads like this that, again, are measured and substantive, you know, respectful of what Axe is worried about, which is that a lot of people are scared out there. And so I think you have to really be careful about the tone. But I think Plov is right. We should not disarm here. And just one other thing on this is

my bias here is, I wrote about this in my book, but I believe that the only way to have a successful communication strategy in this media age is with a substantial digital advertising component. And I think that is true now. That is true in the general election. And if Joe Biden is president, he should have an up and running campaign that is telling voters about what he is trying to do for the country from inauguration day through election day of his first term. And that is the only way to succeed in this world where there's like an on and off season for advertising is I think an outdated concept that doesn't work anymore. Yeah. So speaking of Biden, we should talk about the fact that there were primaries on Tuesday. And after the primaries on Tuesday in Arizona,

Florida, and Illinois, Ohio last minute postponed theirs. Biden is almost certain to become the Democratic nominee for president. Just to give you a little math, if Joe Biden lost every primary from here on out by 10 points, he would still win a majority of pledged delegates and clinch the nomination. of pledged delegates and clinch the nomination. In order for Bernie to pull ahead, he'd have to win the remaining contest by an average of like 40 points each contest, 30 or 40 points. So that's where we are. So it does seem like it's over, right, Dan? What do you think? I mean, the math certainly is clear. And I have to say, just even as we begin this conversation, it just even feels weird to talk about these primaries in the context of everything that's happening. You know, and we are people who, you know,

in a normal week, you and I would have spent hours before the pod, like digging into the, you know, the exit polls, the precinct data. That's my favorite thing, looking at exit polls. I haven't even looked at them yet. Yeah. I mean, it's just, it's like, and I didn't even watch election night coverage, right? Me neither. Me neither. Just kind of, it wasn't even like mainlining Twitter. I didn't, I wasn't even watch election night coverage. Me neither. Me neither. It wasn't even mainlining Twitter. I wasn't anticipating the seen enough tweet from Dave Wasserman. Although the one I was very interested in, which we should just give a little shout out to, is Marie Newman beating Dan Lipinski in the primary in Illinois. Yes. Illinois, a pro-choice progressive candidate who primaried a conservative anti-choice, anti-ACA

Democrat and came out on top. And that was some good news. Yeah. We had her on the show a couple of times and back in, I think on stage in Chicago, was that a year ago, two years ago? I don't know. I don't know. It could be anything before last Wednesday is just a different era. Yes. Yeah. But anyway, we're really happy for Marie Newman. Go ahead. So the math is very clear that Joe Biden is going to be the nominee. That is what it is.

Now Bernie Sanders is still in the race. And we don't have a primary for a while now, I don't believe. And so we'll have to see what happens next. But Joe Biden has, for all intents and purposes, clinched the nomination. And the question is, how does he begin to prepare for that? And how does he do that with another candidate whose supporters he desperately needs to be president still in the race? Any good ideas? How he brings this to a close in a way that maximizes party unity and make sure that Bernie's voters turn out for him in November. which I believe he delivered from his home and they sort of live streamed it from like an iPhone because they didn't have a lot of equipment on hand, which is understandable. But in that speech,

I think he reached out to young people who have been voting for Bernie Sanders. He talked about Bernie Sanders' agenda. Of course, he has already adopted Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy plan. He adopted a version of Bernie Sanders' free college plan. Not quite as generous as Bernie's plan. It was more like Pete's plan. But again, he did. So what else can he do? Well, I think the most important thing for Biden and Biden supporters and pro-Biden Democrats

out there is to give Bernie Sanders and his campaign and his supporters some time. Yeah, I agree. Right. Everyone tweeting at Bernie and telling the New York Times, the Washington Post, that were political or whoever else that Bernie should drop out is not helpful. Maybe those people have never lost an election and don't know what it feels like, but it's fucking hard. And it's really hard when you thought you were going to win just two and a half weeks ago. And this has been a dramatic change. And it's also happening to a campaign who, like everyone else, is in this incredibly

difficult position where they can't even gather in a room together to discuss it. Right? And so we went through this a little bit with Clinton because we mathematically clinched the nomination after winning the North Carolina primary and preventing Clinton from racking up a lot of delegates in Indiana. And she stayed in the race for another six weeks. And that was quite annoying at the time, I would say. But we were able to begin preparing for... We started doing hiring plans. I know I was already out trying to figure out what our general election communication staff would look like. We were doing meetings, talking about policy rollouts and advertising schedules. And so you can begin doing that stuff now, but it just has to be done delicately. And so Bernie being in the race right

now, particularly doing what he is doing, which is focusing on the pandemic and how to make the economic package as pro-worker as it possibly can does not hurt Joe Biden in any way, shape, or form. And so I would just recommend that Biden's senior campaign team and Bernie's campaign team are hopefully talking. At some point, Biden and Bernie should talk. But just for the rest of us, yelling at Bernie, gloating about it or anything else because you're still angry about something that happened in 2016, I think is particularly not constructive and actually pretty insensitive to some people who just work their ass off to try to elect someone they passionately believed in. Yeah. And are worried about their jobs too. And look, with the exception of Bernie's press

secretary on Twitter, none of his staffers and Bernie himself are attacking Joe Biden anymore. They pulled down their digital ads. So there is no cost to Joe Biden here of Bernie continuing to take time to figure out what comes next or how to bring this thing to a close. And so I think that's important to keep in mind for all the people who are like, well, it's hurting Joe Biden that he's still in the race and it's hurting the party. Like, it is not right now at all. So we should let him let him make that choice. Look, I do think, you know, I would say to a lot of the Bernie supporters out there and progressives, you know, on Tuesday night, I tweeted that, you know, Joe Biden will run on

the most progressive platform of any Democratic nominee in history. And that's, you know, thanks in part to Bernie Sanders and the movement he inspired. And, you know, that didn't help with a lot of Bernie's more hardcore supporters. And I understand that. It happens to be true. Joe Biden's health care plan is much more progressive than Barack Obama's. It's more progressive than Hillary Clinton's. That's true of than Hillary Clinton's. That's true of most of his policies. It's certainly true of all of his policies in comparison to Barack Obama's in 2008. And it's true for a number of policies in comparison to Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now, a couple of people rightly said in response, well, it's fine for him to have those policies now and to write them down, but how can we trust him to fight for them? And I think that's

completely legitimate. And what I would say is, look, I think for Bernie supporters, for progressives, it is going to be, you're going to be better off with a Joe Biden administration than a Donald Trump administration for a million reasons. But one of the challenges that Bernie had in this race and other progressive candidates have had for the last couple of years is with Donald Trump as president, what's on people's minds more than anything else is we have to get him out of office. Before anything else happens, we have to get him out of office because he represents an existential threat to the country. And that is true. Once Donald Trump is out of office, once there's a Joe Biden in the White House, like, progressives should push Joe Biden hard. You know, they should continue to protest. They should continue to push him on things where he doesn't live up to some of his campaign promises.

Or they should push him further left when they have to. You know, they should continue to elect members of Congress like AOC and Katie Porter and others who are going to continue to push the agenda in a more progressive direction. And they're just it's going to be easier to do that with Joe Biden in the White House and with everyone working as hard as possible to make sure that he wins. Then, God forbid, if we have another term of Donald Trump. And so I just think like, you know, if you supported Bernie Sanders, you know, your job doesn't end when Bernie Sanders leaves the race or when Joe Biden becomes president. At that point, you have to fight even harder. And I remember Barack Obama used to say this, that he's, you know, he was, he was happy that he always had folks on the left who are pushing him harder. And because he was an organizer himself and he remembers what it was like to push people in power to be more progressive. And, you know, he didn't always do everything that they wanted, but he always appreciated that they were there pushing really hard. And I think that the same is going to be true of Joe inch once he's in office and keep pushing. Because once the threat of Trump is gone, we can be free to push Joe Biden as much as possible. I think that's exactly right. And the other thing I just would recommend to the Biden campaign, to all of us, to everyone else out there is whether these are Bernie supporters who are indicating that they may not support Joe Biden or wonder if they should, or people who just generally may not vote,

shaming people is never an effective strategy for getting them to vote. And so instead of just yelling like, you're selfish, or why are you doing this? It is going to be up to Biden and Bernie and every other Democrat out there to make ourselves, to make the case for why this election matters, what the stakes are, and what Joe Biden would do to make America better. And that is the best way of doing it, instead of just yelling at people for not voting or not being there yet. So it's just like, give people space, not voting or not being there yet. So it's just like, give people space, have some respect. And I would also say just separate, there are people who are going to tell you that they're not going to vote for Biden, prominent Twitter personalities, because it's a shtick. And maybe

they vote for him, maybe they don't. But we should focus on real voters, because there are real, well-meaning, progressive voters who are wondering if there is a place for them in this party. And those are the people that we should be reaching out to and explaining who Joe Biden is, what he would do, and why this election matters, and less about people who are trolling for the sake of generating an outrage response that benefits their social media standing. Ignore those people, right? Like the vast majority of Bernie staffers, Bernie supporters, Bernie voters, they do. They're wondering if there's a place for them that's party and they are worth, absolutely worth reaching out to and talking to and making sure they know that there

is a place. And we should continue to have a dialogue with those people. And then there are, you know, certain assholes on the left with podcasts that you should safely ignore for good because they are just trying to do this to be assholes. And it's a tiny minority of people and it's not worth getting in debates with them on Twitter anymore. out to the very hardworking organizers and staffers who work their ass off for Bernie Sanders, who just want to know, who deeply believe in the things that they fought for and just want to know that the next Democratic administration and Democratic Congress is going to fight for them. And that is an entirely legitimate view. What do you think, turning to Joe Biden, what do you think that Joe Biden and his campaign should be doing right now to get ready for the most bizarre, unique, crazy general election in history with a pandemic as the backdrop and potentially a recession that we've never even seen before? In a normal world, what they would be doing is

hiring as many organizers and staffers as they possibly can to get ready for the general election. They would be focusing their messaging and their research on how you beat Trump, how you can persuade people, deciding what states you're going to invest in, building your budget for that, and all of those things. They're going to have to do those things. Now, that is dramatically complicated by the fact that they cannot have a meeting, right? They have to do it all through phones and video conferences. They can't have rallies. They can't do all those things. So I think another portion of this is our old chief of staff, Dennis McDonough, always used to do something called red teaming, where he would take a group of people and basically try to poke holes in whatever the plan is or worst case scenario to people who were not involved in it intimately.

And I think there is a really worthwhile project for Biden's campaign or a group of people who want to help Biden to design what a campaign strategy looks like if America is social distancing in September, October, and November. Like, what is your plan if there is no convention, right? Like, what is your plan if there is no convention, right? What is your plan for a VP rollout if you can't have a rally to announce it? What is your plan if there is no bus and whistle stops tour? And I think that that is a very interesting project that they should begin on. And that's not something that the current campaign manager, the communications director, the consultants can do because they're busy with the day-to-day work. So I think that there is sort of a role for a coronavirus red team for how you campaign in this environment because Trump has a very easy strategy in that

world, which is he's got several billion dollars worth of ads to run and he can walk down that White House briefing room every day and dominate the conversation. So what does a Democratic candidate do in a world in which it may be unwise to put 270 year olds in the same room to debate? That's a lot to figure out. I mean, I would just say, I'm just a lowly speechwriter. So I'll just, from a messaging point of view, we are in the greatest crisis of our lifetimes right now.

And I think Joe Biden needs to be the president that the country needs right now and needs to show how he will govern as president through a crisis like this and that is I believe what finally won the election for Barack Obama you know I heard acts saying this on on his podcast the other day that you know he believes that Barack Obama won the election sometime in October during the financial crisis when he showed that he would be the better leader in a crisis like that. And it's going to be a lot tougher for Joe Biden for all the reasons we've pointed out, but also because there's a longer runway here. We're still in late March and we got till November. But I think in words and action, he needs to be the president that the country deserves right now. And so I think that sort of overarching goal, like every decision they make should sort of flow through that frame.

I think that's exactly right. And time feels very strange these days. When you say it's March, that seems crazy to me. But it is right. He is locking up the nomination three months before Clinton in 16 or Obama in 0 way. And so he does have this time. Time is certainly not on anyone's side, because Trump actually has a much bigger infrastructure head start than any incumbent president in history. But he has more time than I think any of us anticipated, because this campaign seems to be coming to a close sooner than was, I think, anticipated by a lot of people. And so how do you use that time is really important. So I'm now going to spend the rest of my time thinking about this red team project. And if we are still sheltering in place next week, and no one on the Biden campaign calls me, then I'm going to just write it for cricket for cricket.com or something. I was gonna say, I'll be waiting for more memos.

They're gonna become stranger and more and more esoteric as time goes on. One memo at a time. That's how we're going to do this. All right. When we come back, I will talk to Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the host of Crooked Media's America Dissected. Hey, Podsave. Hey, Podsave. I just wanted to give you guys a quick voice memo because you were asking about corona stories,

and I don't want to tell you where I'm from or my name, but I work for the United States Postal Service, and we were given a briefing this morning, and they've been behind every single day on the information from the CDC, from the Trump administration, from every other country. Basically, our briefing went this morning that the only way we could leave and use sick leave would be if we showed all three symptoms at the same time, which is incredibly laughable because from everything we've read, this goes in stages. It's also incredibly dangerous. I work in a station of 30 people.

I am a regular carrier, so I have all the benefits, health insurance, union protections, X, Y, and Z. But we are not practicing social distancing. Carriers take breaks. They share food. I mean, yesterday they were sharing donuts. Today they were sharing celery sticks and ranch out of the same container. It's absolutely mind-boggling that they won't, you know, practice this stuff. There's no hand sanitizer. There's no gloves.

There's no mask. I bring my own gloves. I haven't been bringing my own gloves for as long as I've been a carrier, which has been five years. The hand soap that we have in the bathroom is like Christmas-themed. Who knows how old that is? Things are not going well with the postal service. You can read reports from MIT and other places that talk about the ability of the virus to live on cardboard and plastics.

And I'm currently delivering my route. The bag that is in my hand is made of plastics. I have no idea if the clerks protect themselves both in our station and in the plants themselves. I just want, you know, you guys don't have to play this, but if you could get the message out that, you know, aren't prepared postal service is not prepared to deal with this they're acting as if this is very very minimal that you know yes you might not be able to get it from your letters but you can get it from your co-workers you have no idea where your co-workers go after work.

I mean, here, bars and restaurants close at 5. People left work and immediately ran out to a local establishment, a local bar to get in drinks. And I understand that it was St. Patrick's Day, but it's not acceptable. So please, please get this out on Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, something. Because I have numerous customers who are elderly. They still don't take it seriously. They're listening to Fox News and just coming out the door

to try to grab the mail from me without practicing any sort of distancing I don't want to get sick I don't want to be off of work but that's the reality we're living in I am more prepared for this because of my military background and I've taken it seriously from the jump

but we don't seem to be doing it at work so thank you very much and let's get through this together hi my name is Fiona and I'm a senior at Williams College a couple days ago I was told that I would be forced to leave the place that I consider home and the place where I have my greatest support system as we transition to virtual learning. To lose closure around such an important time in my life has been emotionally devastating to say the least, and I realize that this is a time in my life that I will never get back.

I'm really grateful that I get to return to a family that accepts all parts of my identity unlike many of my peers. However, as a low-income student leaving campus means losing my work-study job which was my only source of income between now and when I start my real adult job this summer and I don't know where I'm going to get the money to rent my first apartment, which is really scary for me. But I wanted to thank everyone at Crooked Media

for bringing me joy and stability through your podcast in this difficult time for all of us. And I just really appreciate all that you do. Bye. Hey, John. Hey, Tommy. Have you listened to Hall of Shame, our brand new podcast? Both episodes, many times. So Hannah and I listened to it the other day. We had it on the kitchen while we made dinner uh rachel bonetta richard frookbaum they're hilarious their stories from sports history so there's one about a figure skating uh dust up shall we say a little bit of cheating scandal the russians are involved it's hilarious it's awesome what about a little marathon dust up as well from our hometown of

boston that's right i have to say we've been listening to a lot of news lately the news is uh it's tense yeah this is such a relief such a joy to just laugh for 20 minutes. And like we both have listened to our early cuts of these episodes, but it finally came out. And so I drove home and I decided to listen to Hall of Shame. It really just took the temperature down. I laughed a lot. Actual LOLs.

Yeah, it's great. Download it, subscribe, Hall of Shame. It's a nice breather. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. We are the hosts of What A Day, Crooked's daily news podcast. Look, we understand keeping up with the news

can be a challenge, especially when we're living in an actual pandemic and we haven't gone outside in a week. That's right. Life is like a movie, but you know what? That's why we're here. We'll be bringing you the news every weekday morning

in about 15 minutes, so you're up to speed on the latest developments, both coronavirus related and not. And as always, our goal here is to keep you informed, but not feeling like you're overwhelmed. So you don't have to count on Twitter, which can be very exciting and dramatic, but also very scary and not always real. We're going to be level headed right here all the time. Yeah. So go ahead and subscribe to What A Day now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

I am now joined by the former health officer for the city of Detroit and the host of Crooked Media's podcast, America Dissected, Dr. Abdul El-Sayed. Abdul, how are you doing? I am doing well. I'm distancing socially and trying to keep upbeat and focused. And I think

this is a challenging time, but this is a moment where our country can come together, and I hope that we do. Your family holding up okay as well? So far, so good. We've got a two-year-old, and I think she's a little bit confused about why everyone's at home all the time, but she doesn't hate it. I'll tell you that much. That's good. So I think one of the big questions on everyone's mind is how long is this going to last? There was a report from British researchers at Imperial College this week that appropriately scared the shit out of Trump and Boris Johnson and others that said we may have to enforce these kind

of severe shutdowns and social distancing for not weeks or months, but a year or year and a half. What was your reaction to that? So it was a report by a group of infectious disease modelers who are some of the best in the business. And I'd read their research in the past. And so when I saw this report and delved into it, they make a number of really plausible, thoughtful assumptions, which is what you have to do whenever you model anything out,

because of course, none of us know the future. But their assumptions are thoughtful and make sense. And let me just explain where they come to their final finding, is that for us to be able to mitigate this outbreak, we are practicing this sort of extreme social distancing, right? People aren't working like they used to. People aren't going out like they used to. And this has huge implications for society and our economy. But the reason we're doing that is because we have to slow the spread of the disease

so that the number of new cases don't overwhelm our healthcare system's capacity to deal with them. But they argue that, you know, we may come to a crest of the number of cases and start seeing cases decline. But even at that level of newly immune people who have gotten the disease and gotten over it,

it's still not enough to protect us. And so even if we stop this social distancing, that the number of new cases might start to increase again. They argue that the only way that we stop that from happening is either the doomsday scenario where so many people get sick at the same time that you get enough people who survive it that you have what we call herd immunity, or we have a vaccine. And the argument is that, well, the first vaccine trial, assuming this vaccine is safe and effective, would give us a vaccine in 18 months. We've got 14 months for the phase one, and then the phase two and the phase three can be rushed a little bit. So that's another four months. So that's 18 months. And then you have a vaccine and you can vaccinate people. And now we don't have to social distance

anymore. So this is the thinking that goes into that estimate. The hard part, right, is that in our society, you know, we believe in human rights. And that's an important thing. It's what makes us a democratic society, what makes us the United States of America. Where they've seen really successful mitigation has been in China. But in China, there's not the same respect for human rights. And so everybody has a QR code that they have to show whenever they enter any building. And their phone, in effect, is tracing where they've gone so that we know who they've come in contact with so that they can be, in effect, put into isolation or quarantine if they were exposed. And there's mandating a fever and then a test, which in our country, we just can't do because

of our norms and our beliefs, which are important. And so here's where they get to that 18-month estimate. And I think it's important that folks recognize that we're going to have to tuck in. This is going to be, we're not going to go back to the normal we knew even two weeks ago or a month ago. We're going to have to generate a new normal in this moment and then hope we can, as a society, take this thing on so that we can inevitably at the end get to the kind of normal that we all know and love. So I do want to dig in on testing a bit more here. You know, you and I were talking earlier about this smart Twitter thread from Trevor Bedford, who's a

scientist studying viruses and immunity. And he said he thinks it's possible to beat this thing earlier by rolling out a testing program that's even bigger and more technologically advanced than what South Korea has. And obviously, that's another country, you know, not authoritarian like China, but that has also been able to, through mass testing, been able to sort of bring down the number of cases over the last couple of weeks. What do you think about that? last couple of weeks. What do you think about that? And is there any way you could see that we could sort of compress that timeline that you just spoke about that they laid out in the Imperial College report? I think we can. The realization though, is that we're going to have to, as a society, deeply and fully invest in this. It's got to be priority number one. And I think in some respects, everywhere from people like you and I to leaders making decisions have sort of had this attitude of just

say it ain't so, right? And a bit of a denial about running into it and solving it rather than trying to deny that this is going to be a new normal. You know, what that thread articulates is the ability to leverage testing in the moments when it's the most effective. So in medicine, there's an old adage which holds true. And it's that you never run a test, the outcomes to which you're not going to respond to. So knowing somebody has a case, if it's not going to change what you're going to do for them, it's not worth wasting the test. But right now, we're using all of our testing among folks who are already very sick with the symptoms of COVID who are in

the hospital. What we really ought to be doing is using those tests to test people who may have been exposed, but who are not yet showing symptoms. Because if the test is negative, then we can presume that they weren't infected. But if the test is positive, that means that they may be the super spreaders that we have to isolate so they don't spread it into everyone else. Because what we do now understand is that a large proportion of the spread of this disease is through people who don't have symptoms. And so being able to identify who has a disease, even among those who don't have symptoms is really critical. And I think that's what this thread really smartly lays out is a protocol to be able to identify who has a disease, even among those who don't have symptoms, is really critical. And I think that's what this thread really smartly lays out, is a protocol to be able to understand who is where and who may have been exposed based on our cell phone geo-tracking

data, and then be able to move tests to folks who may have been exposed and understand whether or not they have the disease so that they're not in a position where they're asymptomatic, but spreading the disease in the population. And I think that could be a really smart protocol that could help us to really shrink that timeline and to mitigate the disease and save a lot of lives. So, you know, obviously, a mass testing program would be sort of at the top of the list of things we should be doing right now and focusing on, you know, if you were a former public health official, if you were running the show at the White House right now, what would be at the top of your to-do list, aside from testing, that the federal government isn't doing? What do you think

they should be doing right now? Yeah, three things. Number one, you know, the testing problem right now is just, it's a supplies problem, and we need more supplies, and that's across the board. And so with a focus on testing, I would be leveraging the government's capacity to take over our manufacturing capacities as a country to be manufacturing a couple of things. The swabs that we need to test, the personal protective equipment that frontline healthcare providers need to provide their care and to take care of patients, and then ventilators. Because part of what we talk about is flattening the curve. But the reason we're flattening the curve is because we don't want the curve to overwhelm our healthcare system, which means that one of the things we have to do is increase our

capacity to provide healthcare so that that happens. It's both flattening the curve and also anticipating the curve. The second thing I'd be doing is deploying every avenue of alternative medical care that I could. So that would mean setting up, you know, MASH style hospitals just outside of major metropolitan areas and leveraging the National Guard to be able to staff them. And then the third thing is I would be finding every healthcare worker I possibly could, folks who are still in training, folks who have gone into retirement. And I wouldn't just be directly employing them on the front lines. What I would be doing is thinking about how do I give, you know, National Guard's people a baseline level of training so that they can work under our medical professionals and extend our capacity to provide

care for people who have COVID-19. And so those three things, increasing our manufacturing of key healthcare goods, increasing our just bed capacity, and then increasing our staffing capacity, I think are really going to be critical to expanding our ability to provide care. And then of course, we've got to keep social distancing, right? So flattening the curve and anticipating the curve is critical. So another problem we're having is with young people who think that COVID-19 is only dangerous to old people. And so they're not taking it seriously and going on spring break and flying everywhere and acting like morons. What is your message to younger generations about this pandemic? If you've got a pair of lungs and you're breathing, you're at risk. And I know that

risk seems low, but 0.2% is still people who are going to get sick. In fact, the CDC just came out with new data showing that 40% of the people who are hospitalized with COVID-19 are between the ages of 20 and 54. And so, you know, that includes those beach bros in Florida who are just out having a good time because, you know, YOLO. But we've got a responsibility to move that message to folks and realize that, A, you're at risk. Don't pretend like you're not. But then, B, even if you're at low risk, the people that you know and love in your life are not. And I'll be honest with you, you know, to me as a younger, healthy person, I'm really privileged that the risk of serious disease and death is relatively low in somebody like me. But I'll be honest with you, if I got sick and got laid up for a couple of weeks, it'd be bad. But if I knew that I possibly made my grandma or grandpa or favorite neighbor or auntie or uncle sick, and they had a serious outcome and potentially died because of me, I would be devastated for the rest of my life. And I want folks to appreciate that that's a potential outcome here. And in protecting yourself, you're also protecting those folks for whom COVID-19 could be so

much more dangerous and fatal. And so we've got a responsibility to act together. This is not the time for us to be selfish. And I know it sucks. Like it sucks. Nobody wants to stay home. People have been planning trips for a long time. I had a book tour planned, 39 stops and had to cancel it all.

I get it. Like it sucks. But this is where we are right now. And we have a responsibility to think about all of us, not just our own needs and wants in a moment. So I asked folks on Twitter if they had any questions for you. And one of the most common questions that I got was about transmission. People are asking, is it safe to get takeout? Is it safe to go to the store, touch groceries? So people get the social distancing with other people, but they're having questions about transmission in terms of touching surfaces. What do you know about that? So I'll tell you what I'm doing.

If I'm going to get groceries for the family, I'm bringing some Clorox wipes with me and some gloves. And as soon as I get up to my grocery cart, I'm putting on my gloves and I'm wiping down that grocery cart with my Clorox wipes. And then I'm shopping with, you know, with my gloves on, you know, exchanging whatever money or credit cards with the teller and then wiping my credit card back down. And then when I get home, I'm literally leaving the bags on the doorstep, taking the groceries out, wiping them down in so far as I can. Obviously you can't do that with produce, but you can wipe down the bags. And then going that way. I think eating takeout is okay, but I would really be asking what is your kitchen staff doing to make sure that you're keeping us safe?

And, you know, are they practicing the best possible hygiene? And what is your sick leave policy? Because I don't want the person in the back having to come to work because they're worried about whether or not they're going to lose their job and then coughing all over the food that they're making, right? So I think this is an opportunity for us to just hold businesses accountable and say, look, you know, if I'm trusting you to keep me and my family healthy, show me what you're doing to do that. And then going from there. Well, those are some good tips. I just picked

up some of those myself. So thank you. All right, last question. You have a piece in The Guardian today about what you call the broader epidemic of insecurity that we've been grappling with for quite some time. I know this is also the subject of your new book, Healing Politics. Can you talk about what you mean by the epidemic of insecurity? Yeah, John, I had the privilege of traveling all over my state for 18 months when I ran for governor in Michigan. And I'm an epidemiologist by training. Our job is to understand patterns of disease and populations. And I thought I'd left epidemiology behind when I decided to run for office. But it turns out when you meet people in their homes, in their VFW halls, in their union halls, and you talk to them, you start putting together patterns pretty quickly, right? You start to appreciate the stress that maybe hunches somebody's back a little bit more, the emphasis that they put in the handshake.

And for me, I started to ask myself, why are we where we are politically? Why is it that people are so frustrated in this moment? How did we end up getting Donald Trump? And over the course of that 18 months, I started to piece together the fact that so many of the systems that we rely on to provide us the means of a dignified life, whether it's housing or healthcare or education or a good job, like these have been stripped out for parts by corporations who've realized the opportunity to make a lot of money and it's left us fundamentally insecure. And that insecurity becomes all the more clear when you have an offending moment like this one where we're facing a pandemic and you see the house of cards that we're left with

and how it's so easily knocked down and how that disproportionately impacts poor and underserved people. And so in this book, I sort of tell the story of my science and my own upbringing to set up an understanding of how epidemiology works and how we understand the moments that we

live in, and then make this diagnosis of an epidemic of insecurity working outward from the individual to look at all these systems, and then talk a little bit about what I think we need to be thinking about politically if we want to solve it. And the crazy thing is, as an epidemiologist who's publishing a book about an epidemic in the context of a pandemic, it's hard to appreciate sort of what you're predicting in the moment when you're writing. I mean, I wrote this thing a year ago and then now a lot of it makes a lot more sense, but it's painful. And unless we are willing to fix the undergirding of society and rebuild a lot of these systems robustly, I worry that we won't have learned the big lesson of this pandemic, that it's not just about a virus. It's also about how we as a society and we as individuals are so much more vulnerable to it

because of the context in which we live. Well, everyone should absolutely go by Healing Politics. It's an outstanding book. And also, if you haven't already, subscribe to Abdul's podcast, America Dissected. You're doing it on Tuesdays and Fridays now. We're talking, focusing entirely on the coronavirus and you're talking to experts and it is incredibly well done. I've loved it so far. So thank you also for doing this and for everything else you're doing. And I've loved it so far. So thank you also for doing this and for everything else you're doing. And I appreciate you joining us today.

John, thank you for having me on and thank you for being supportive of America Dissected. We're really grateful to have an opportunity to move what we hope is really important information that allows people to understand what we're facing and what we can do about it. Well, it certainly is. All right, buddy, take care.

All right, you too. Thanks to Abdul for joining us today. And Dan, it was great talking to another human being besides Emily. Emily and I have just been talking to each other nonstop. And it's it's rare to be able to speak to someone else. I mean, this is the most social interactions I've had in a week that outside of my wife and my daughter. So if anyone if you're any other podcasts out there looking for a guest, hit me up. I'm ready to talk. All right, man. I'll talk to you later. Bye. Stay safe, everyone. Pod Save America is a product of Cricut Media. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our assistant producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer.

Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou, Caroline Reston, and Elisa Gutierrez for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian, Yale Freed, and Milo Kim, who film and upload these episodes as videos every week.