Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Michigan's Senate Primary Could Give Democrats Their Clearest Midterm Message Yet

Episode Date: July 28, 2026

Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov preview Michigan's August 4th Senate primary, starting with last night's televised debate between progressive Abdul El-Sayed and moderate Haley Stevens. Hot topics were: Israel, AIPAC, utility costs, and who would actually focus on Michigan dominated the exchanges.  Trump was also in Michigan yesterday, appearing at a General Motors facility to tout his tariffs and their promised benefits for the auto industry — while blaming Biden and Obama for the state's economic struggles. Will his "the economy is great" message land in a state that's felt real manufacturing pain? The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to clear the way for a sweeping executive order placing major new restrictions on mail-in voting ahead of the midterms, following a loss in the lower courts. Trump is also pressuring Senate Majority Leader John Thune to pass the SAVE America Act before the August recess, even raising a call to end the filibuster in order to do so. Why is Trump pushing so hard on voting restrictions — and how worried should Americans be about the integrity of the November elections? Day one of Lindsey Graham's funeral services was held today, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky both in attendance — and both meeting individually with Trump while in Washington. It's Trump and Netanyahu's first face-to-face meeting since the start of the Iran war. Is there any chance this meeting moves the needle on the conflict? Ahead of Dr. Anthony Fauci's subpoenaed testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday, Sen. Rand Paul has released over 1,100 pages of Fauci's personal diary. Do these documents tell us anything new about COVID's origins — or just the private thoughts of a health professional whose celebrity was on the rise? Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, now streaming only on Hulu on Disney Plus. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Scott Callaway. And I'm Jessica Tarliffe. Before we get started, make sure to tune into raging perspective tomorrow at noon Eastern time. Jess and Aaron will be live streaming on SubSec and YouTube every Wednesday. Make sure to also hit subscribe to get access to all of our content and help our show reach more folks. All right, let's get into it. Things are heating up in Michigan as that state heads to the polls next week. In the Democratic primary for Senate, progressive Abdul-El-Said, sparred against moderate Haley Stevens in a televised debate last night where Israel and APEC were focal points. They traded claims about which of them would confront rising utility costs and which would be more focused on Michigan while in the Senate. Let's listen to a clip.

You know, my opponent is on these big podcasts. You know, he's running a podcast himself. These folks are making fun of the way I sound. But yet, I sound like the people who need help. I'm the only candidate in this race who's never touched a dime of corporate pack might. I want to see long-term peace. I want to see a two-state solution. I am deeply proud to represent one of the largest Jewish populations in a congressional district in the country.

This is a community that I have grieved alongside, that I've mourned alongside, and have fought to bring the hostages home. And I'm still working to get us to long-term peace. They've set a record in this race to help elect my opponent because they know that she'll be a reliable vote. I want your tax dollars spent in Michigan to provide schools in Michigan, to build health care in Michigan, to build roads in Michigan. Just give us the color commentary on the debate. This race is a tough one. And it's really going to be the first opportunity that we can see

if the far left can be moderate in not just a blue district, right, on a statewide level. And Abdul al-Sayyad is not actually technically DSA. He identifies as a capitalist, which I think is a good thing, and certainly should help him in a swing state like Michigan. But this means a lot for the future of the party and the internal dynamics of what's going on here. It is also increasingly getting uglier, the kind of barbs and insults that are being exchanged. Al-Sayyad has made sense. I think regrettable comments about how Haley Stevens can't even string a couple of sentences together, for instance. There's leaked audio of him talking about John Fetterman, actually, and how he would support a primary of him. He says, ideally, you would put one ogre on a pike, and then everyone else gets the message. You know, people are certainly making that into at a time when there's a lot of violence, political violence, you can't be talking like that. So there's a lot of swirl in that direction and then picking on Haley Stevens as being inauthentic

accusations that her accent has changed and evolved and the, you know, stick it to them is all an act. But I think that it's really good that we are having this particular race for the Democratic Party and for understanding where voters in a swing state are in the battle of, you know, Medicare for all and Israel is committing a genocide, and we need to tax the rich into oblivion versus the more establishment model. There had been pressure on El Sayyed to release his financial disclosures, and he had been massively slow walking that. They came out yesterday, and they include that he and his wife have several rental properties abroad in India and in Dubai, that they're making hundreds of thousands of dollars off of them, and his whole thing has been,

like the little guy against the rich, right? And in New York, Mamdani has framed that about the landlords, right? And we've frozen rent and we're doing piettaire taxes and a lot of it is about housing. So now you have Al-Said that he is actually a landlord himself. People are certainly pointing out that his Dubai properties are currently being shielded by Iron Dome technology, which the U.S. and Israel shared with the UAE at the kickoff of the war in Iran. And I think it puts in focus for people that the left has been going on and on about the one person and that I'll say that is not this working class hero guy that he might have been marketing himself as. You could say the same thing about grand platinum. Remember, you know, we heard that he's just a lowly oyster farmer.

But he went to fancy boarding schools and had a famous architect grandfather and, you know, couldn't really make a living on his own. and I think he sold like all of his oysters actually to his mom's restaurant. So that is going on in the background. Plus his wife, who is a psychiatrist, does not accept Medicare. He's a Medicare for all guy. So those currents are pulsing massively through the pro Stevens crowd at this time. And I think it's making it, you know, even more interesting. I think it's going to be very close.

A nail biter. And I do like a nail biter. What are your thoughts? Look, I find some of the stuff you're talking about. about a little bit hypocritical. The financial disclosure delay, was the story that sort of stood out to me. When a candidate sits on his own financials

for weeks under pressure, that's not an oversight. That's a candidate in a campaign calculating the cost of transparency or deciding transparency was higher than the cost of the story, hiding it. So he purposely decided to try and release it under the cover of dark, realizing that a lot, quite frankly, that the music of his life does not match the words of his

campaign. And this whole, I'm not a socialist, I'm just a capitalist who understands how capitalism works. It's kind of a, in my opinion, it's a bit of a non-answer. It's sort of tantam about saying, I'm not late. I'm early for the next meeting. You know, what is your actual position on this? and he's the only candidate to call for abolishing ICE outright, and I don't think that's in line with Michigan. So it feels like it's kind of a national primary for a 2028 position, and it feels like he's running, it doesn't feel like he's running for Senate.

It feels like he's running for a certain type of fame on MS now and also on Fox. And, you know, obviously, well, let's talk about this. What do you think Stevens' liabilities are? We've talked a lot about Al-Sahed. I think that, you know, taking corporate PAC money and especially the funding from APAC is a liability in a Democratic primary right now. I think she speaks movingly about, I think her congressional district, Michigan 11, she mentioned this, you know, one of the most populous Jewish districts in the country. and she did, you know, fight for hostage return

and has been very outspoken about it. She's for a two-state solution. Like, she's not some sort of Ben-Gavir, right? But I think that taking money from corporate PACs, especially when APAC is involved, is anathema right now in democratic politics. And there are a lot of mainstream or establishment Democrats,

whatever moderate Democrats, whatever you want to call them, who are issuing now taking corporate money. And that's a threshold or a litmus test, I should say. So I think that that is a liability where they feel like she's going to be more of just a rubber stamp on Chuck Schumer's agenda. And Mallory McMorrow was kind of this middle ground between them who had made, you know, not supporting Chuck Schumer a cornerstone of her campaign. but Stevens feels like she's part of the fabric more. So I think that that's a liability. I think that some people might just not feel like they connect with her,

like her personality. I like quirky people. She seems quite quirky. I know a lot of people who are friends with her, but I certainly listen to, I'll say Ed speak. And when he talks about these issues that he's passionate about, putting aside if there's a hypocrisy level to it, he, to me, is just more compelling. And his agenda is more in line where the primary base of voters

seems to be from what we've seen thus far. We don't have a ton of data how that bears out, though, on a general election. Do I think that Mike Rogers, the Republican, who barely lost to Alyssa Slotkin, would be more excited to face off against Al-Sahed 100%. And I'm really curious to see how it turns out that the black vote actually splits. So Stevens has been racking up support from black community leaders, especially in the faith community. This guy, Reverend Wendell Anthony, Detroit Pastor, who led the NAACP there for decades, just came out in support of her and said that he's concerned about Al-Saiet's support for the uncommitted movement in 2024. That's a big deal in Michigan, where a lot of people, because Kamla Harris wasn't strong enough,

or strong enough against Israel or pro-Palestinian, however you want to cut it, basically, you know, wavered about what they were going to do in the election. Al-Sayed voted for Kamala Harris. He has talked about that and that he told people to, but he was associated with that movement. And I think that is definitely a strike against him if you're being strategic about how do we win elections, right? Like it's Democrats versus Republicans. It's us versus Trump. And I thought that was interesting. that he pointed it out. But I'll say it actually has, you know, a few black pastors who have come out in support of him. And Haley Stevens went and spoke at one of their churches actually recently, which I think is a good thing, right? Like it doesn't mean all the congregants are for him. And either way, you're running to represent all Michiganders, not just those that like you.

There are so many different elements that are factoring in on this race. But I think it will turn into a race between charisma and a left-leaning agenda that primary voters seem to be into and someone who feels, you know, reliable and is focused on doing the work. Yeah, it feels as if this is an important race in terms of bellwether for where the party is headed. And then ultimately, the results of the general where the country is headed, because Michigan is a bit of a bellwether for the rest of the nation. And if you were to split-screen the campaign, it would be Sanders and AOC rallies versus. is Stevens doing these kind of retail visits to black-owned businesses.

So you have kind of national movement politics versus someone who's actually kind of doing the unglamorous math of winning Michigan. It's also somewhat indicative of what the Democratic Party is going through right now because it feels as if all the creativity and dynamism and energy is coming from the left or the far left, if you will. But the big question mark is how does this play in a general, it's a swing district. Like what, you know, we know the far left is excited about this.

How do moderates feel about it? And he does feel like, I actually thought she did better. The little I've seen of her, I've thought she's not a very good candidate. And I thought she did better last night. I thought she came across as a little bit more, I don't know, real. For lack of a better term, I thought she came across as more Michigan. And I do think that in Michigan, I have this stereotype, I guess, of Midwestern people, that they're just generally speaking a little bit nicer

than the rest of the nation. Yeah. And I think she's going to hang this ogre on a pike thing around his neck. And letting, basically, it makes the case without having to make it herself that this guy talks about killing his colleagues for sport when the cameras are off.

I mean, that just feels like a really big own goal. It definitely is terrible phrasing for it. I think the best way, if you want to swing it into an attack against Al-Sayyad is, you know, John Fetterman's not particularly popular right now with Democrats. And he's apparently flirting around with the idea of actually caucusing with Republicans, even though he votes with Dems, like 95% of the time and really only feels differently to us about Israel and sometimes like DHS funding.

But the argument that I think you can make about it, which is important, is that Al-S is saying that he wants to primary sitting Democrats and that that's an attack on the party more than it's an attack on John Fetterman or debating the O'Gar on the Pike violence aspect of it. And I think that that is something for traditional Democratic voters that will resonate. If you say, yeah, I want people who are going to fight. I want that anger, that oomph. I don't want milk-toast candidates anymore, but I also don't want to be in a perpetual state of civil war

where the left is always coming after the centrists or the moderates and making their lives miserable in a primary, which most of them had been able to hang on throughout them. There have been a few cases not, but like you look at, you know, what was thrown at Richie Torres, for instance, and he won with over 70% of the vote, but had to waste millions of dollars out of a war. chest because of that. Like, that's what really sticks out to me about it. And how do each measure up in

terms of polling in a general? It's still, I mean, it's hard to know right now. So the general consensus is that Stevens would be a stronger candidate against Mike Rogers in a general election. There's a new poll out that has her beating Mike Rogers, 45.5 percent to Mike Rogers, 44.7 percent. So close, but it's still a win. And reminder, again, that's Locke in only one by two points. And then Mike Rogers beats El-Said 49% to 38.7%, still about 10.5% of Michiganders that are undecided in who they're going to go for, which makes sense when you think this is a swing state. That's why they call it swing. So speaking of Michigan, Trump is also in Michigan yesterday speaking on the economy at a General Motors facility and appearing with Republican

candidates, including Representative Tom Barrett, who has voted with Democrats. several times to limit Trump's actions in Iran and is considered vulnerable. Trump touted what his tariffs would do for the auto industry. Well, it could be a hand what they're doing. While he planned Biden and even Obama for economic hardships in the state, Trump continued defending his tariffs this morning. Let's listen. With the economy, that's going to be your focus. I was your focus yesterday in the midterms in Michigan.

Are you worried that the tariffs that you put forward over the last couple of days will will hurt the economy as they adjust in bringing manufacturing home? No, because it's bringing hundreds of billions of dollars. I was at General Motors yesterday. They have the best year. They have the most trucks, the most cars. The tariffs have saved General Motors. What I've done to the auto business.

So disconnected from reality. Like, all the time. And the amount that we're bringing in from the tariffs, have you noticed how massively it changes? It's like, what did he say, hundreds of billions of dollars this time. Sometimes it's up to $19 trillion that he's brought in between his incredible tariffs that were ruled illegal and the investments. He's completely delusional at this point. Just a little bit of background of what reality is on the ground in Michigan.

His approval is at 33%, which is really bad. That's Sarah Longwell's Bush line is at 32%. So you're basically there. Seven thousand manufacturing jobs have been lost. 3600 construction jobs. The average household has paid $3,400 in additional costs since Trump got elected, can draw a straight line from that to your tariffs. And 130,000 Michiganders drop their ACA plan because the subsidies weren't extended because Republicans wouldn't do that. Just one and three Americans currently supporting the war in Iran, according to the new Reuters EPSO's poll. So basically, if you're listening to Trump now, It's for pure entertainment. It is not for any sort of fat-based reality.

Yeah, the tariff argument really only works as a bedtime story for a kid who is wearing MAGA pajamas. I mean, it's just he's standing in a GM plant trying to sell tariffs save manufacturing in a region where non-farm employment fell almost 1% year over year. And that's not spent. data contradicting him in real time. He's, and then blaming Biden and even reaching back to Obama for the economic pain is kind of a tell that he knows his current numbers don't cooperate with his bedtime story. And you don't, you don't go back, you don't reach into the barrel two administrations ago

unless the present tense is working against you. So, you know, Michigan's unemployment rate sits at 5% above the national rate. with Wayne County, which is the state's biggest labor pool, it's 6.4%. The economy is great. It is a message equifying for a national audience that just toned after the state he's standing in. And the gap between this message

and the actual reality on the ground is, you know, is the actual story more than anything he said on the podium. So this feels, I don't know, I don't, I think this is more, I think it was there for turnout. it's kind of persuasion math, reminding his base that the tariffs are for him and that they kind of buy into it. They're ignoring the effects at this point,

believing it'll be long-term good to put America first, and those evil Canadians have taken advantage of us. I don't know how people in Michigan actually feel about that. The result of this is going to tell us a lot, I think, not only this primary or this general, but tell us a lot about what happened.

Anyways, I find it very, very interesting. Interesting. Support for the show comes from Quo. Communication is key when you run a business, but if your team's communication is messy or just not there, customers can feel it. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled QUO, the business communication system built

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Trump has been chasing voting restriction on multiple fronts. And it's interesting because it also seems like once he's out of office, he doesn't really care what damage that those initiatives are pursuing those initiatives due to the Republicans or democracy. Why do you think he's pushing so hard around this? I think that he's like a dog with a bone about it. And he can't think strategically. You know, for all of the arguments that we're made about, you know, Donald Trump has the best instincts and he's game planned out all of this. It doesn't feel that way when he's railing against things like voting by mail, which he does himself.

We should note that he is a happy vote by mailer. But the stuff that he's advocating for just is going to make it harder for Republicans to win elections, everything from the way that you can actually vote to things like the Save America Act. And I'm glad that John Thune, the Senate majority leader, is just like, fuck off about this. I'm not getting rid of the filibuster. He went on Hannity last night and said it again. And, you know, it's leaked audio and its direct audio where he's basically just saying this is a non-starter. Certainly in its current form. And the president is not interested in any of the modifications that, like, a sane person, like Lisa Murkowski, has laid out.

So she has to go to the Wall Street Journal and write an op-ed about how the Save America Act as it stands is just going to disenfranchise voters. And she thought, I don't know if you read it, but she laid out the hurdles that people are going to have to get through to be able to vote, including the amount of time that they're going to have to spend people coming from rural areas, especially in a state like Alaska, to be able to get the right documentation and to be actually be able to cast their vote. So I think that he, as he becomes more adult and more childlike, frankly, you realize that these are his favorite toys. Like, you know, the Save America Act and tariffs are his Barbie and Ken, essentially. And he doesn't want to play with anything else. And the rest of you who have other agenda items be damned. Yeah. So day one of Lindsay Graham's funeral services were today.

And they'll continue tomorrow in D.C., Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin N. Antiniaou and Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky were in attendance. Both leaders also met with Trump while in Washington, and it's Bibi and Trump's first meeting since the start of the war in Iran. This morning, Trump said, And if they had a nuclear weapon, you wouldn't have Israel around. Frankly, if I weren't president of the United States, Israel today would not exist. Jess, is there a sense that any progress might be made on Iran with White House meetings between Trump and Bibi, or is the relationship getting worse? Definitely getting worse.

and he's openly talking about it. He was saying on Fox and Friends, like, it doesn't matter what BB says. I'm in charge. And, you know, I think it's very meaningful that BB came out and said, you know, we don't need U.S. aid. And that was to preserve some semblance

of a relationship with us, but also reading the tea leaves. That Trump is pissed. He is really angry that the pervasive narrative and I would say the truth, certainly based on what we read in regime change,

about the situation room meeting where B.B. pitched him on the war in Iran on, I think it was February 11th. And what has happened since has soured Trump on Israel and how Bibi runs his country and his prime ministership. You know, Trump doesn't like people who try to outfox him when he notices that it's happening. A lot of times they're outfaxing him, but he doesn't notice. But he is onto all of BB's maneuvers and the way that he's manipulating the future of U.S. involvement in the Middle East for what he sees as only being Israel's gain. And the fact that whenever there's a ceasefire or maybe a chance at diplomacy and we could debate whether that's actually feasible that we would get a diplomatic solution, that BB comes in and is like, well, I'm just going to keep bombing Beirut, for instance. And then, of course, Iran says, well, if Israel is doing this, then all the terms are off. And you're at where we are now, where people are having to make the argument like Jesse Waters yesterday on the Five, tried to market an environmental regulation fee as different from a toll and saying, well, maybe we just have to give that to Iran. Let them save face. So they're basically accepting the fact that Iran is going to be tolling the Strait of Hormuz in perpetuity and that they,

now have full control over that enormously powerful waterway. So I think it's going to be very tense with Trump and BB. He's probably going to be cursing, which he has been as of late when they have had phone calls. I just hope that we don't have something horrible like what happened between Trump and Zelensky with that Oval Office meeting the first time, you know, where he wasn't dressed appropriately and wouldn't take their shit at the level that Trump and Vance wanted and so got publicly berated like that. Yeah, I still have PTSD from that meeting. I think Trump correctly feels like he was played

and it's backfired on him. And Maggie Haberman was saying when she was on her tour with Jonathan Swan about their book that basically Beebe laid out this plan in the situation room and Trump bought it and the people who actually have domain expertise, the National Security Advisor, and I think just to give credit words due, Vance,

I forget if it was the head of the CIA, but somebody, they brought in someone who actually has domain expertise and who described Bibi's plan as farcical around regime change. Yeah, John Radcliffe. Yeah, thank you, John Radcliffe said it too. Said this is just not, this is just not realistic, but Trump bought into it. So I think Trump has,

Trump basically bought the intelligence and the agents and the advocacy of a foreign leader over his own security apparatus, and it has really hurt him. This is the quagmire that keeps on giving and also just puts on full display the incompetence around our decision-making at the highest levels and the fact that Trump is kind of under the illusion that he's negotiating against himself,

that he gets to decide what the IRGC wants, and he's frustrated that they aren't listening in doing what he wants. Also, it's just hard to imagine. I mean, the funeral is interesting because it's not about the passing of Graham that's the story here, quite frankly, it's about the seating chart at his funeral.

And funerals are foreign policy venues now. And this ridiculous statement, if I weren't president, Israel wouldn't exist. I think there have been few things that have been worse for Israel than Trump and Netanyahu. I think the majority of Israel now, I mean, keep in mind,

I think Netanyahu is running in sort of similar depressed levels of popularity in Israel. But it just, what's happened here falls into this trope that Israel is not good for America, that you have a guy here

who's fighting for his political life by going on a war footing that is not good for the region, not good for America, and also just not good for Israel. And it is, It's just, and I've said this for a while, maybe with the exception, I will. Maybe for reasons Putin shouldn't be included because we don't know who would replace them.

But there are a few things that would be more accretive or beneficial to the world right now than if two of those attendees, Trump and Netanyahu, moved on. I mean, they've just caused, you would argue, so much damage in terms of global instability. And you have one basically appears to have nudge the other into what will largely be seen as the first ballot Hall of Fame mistake of this administration, not only the decision itself, but more so how it was executed without thinking through. I was reading about Carter when the hostages were taken in Iran during the revolution, and Carter was contemplating an actual ground of invasion or a military assault, not just a rescue operation. And Brzezinski, I forget his first name, but Mika Brzezinski's father, who was a national security advisor, basically back then, this is like 1979, said, just keep in mind if you go in, and he was saying,

you can't go in, they'll seize control of the Strait of Hormuz. So this wasn't like a new creative idea. And when we interviewed Secretary Clinton, she said that that was always their fear was around the Strait of Hormuz. So Trump meeting with Bibi, a funeral is the perfect low-stakes venue for that. No communique staff, no expectations. There's plausible deniability if nothing comes of it. And not a follow-up statement is usually the answer. optics, not negotiation here. And Zelensky's showing up is kind of the, I think, the biggest message here. And that is Ukraine still needs to be seen next to Trump right now, whatever the actual

state of the relationship is, that he's still, and I think he's very savvy. He still recognizes that he needs Trump. I would add to that, though, that he is showing up for Lindsey Graham, who was an incredible friend to Ukraine. And there are very few issues that Lindsay Graham. actually had backbone about when it came to Trump, and one of them was Ukraine. And he visited constantly. He was always in touch with Zelensky and lobbying the government as hard as possible to give the Ukrainians everything that they needed to execute that war.

He has always been so clear-headed about who Putin is, you know, who our enemies are. And I think he's there, obviously, to continue the U.S.-Ukrainian relationship, but really not honor Lindsey Graham and the help that he afforded the Ukrainian people. I think that's a valid point. The 26 Chevrolet Tracks is the stylish SUV for those on the move. And with the standard Chevy safety assist package, you have the backup to handle every turn with confidence. The 26 tracks. Start your build at Chevrolet.ca.

In other news, Senator Rand Paul has released over 1,100 pages of Dr. Anthony Fauci's personal diary entries as part of his COVID-Origens investigation ahead of Fauci's subpoenaed testimony before the Senate Homeland Security Committee tomorrow. The diary largely echoes past disclosures reflecting Fauci wrestling with the real scientific uncertainty in the pandemic, but also paints a picture of Fauci as a bit self-absorbed, mentioning encounters with celebrities like Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts. Jess, did we learn anything that contradicts what Fauci has previously said in public? Do we know anything new about what started COVID? Not necessarily about what started COVID.

I mean, the crux of the fight is, you know, they were telling us that it was a penguin, you know, let loose in a wet market. And it was obviously the lab where gain of function research was ongoing, which the U.S. puts money into. And all of the West was putting money into. That's a normal procedure. So the right is seizing upon that because they feel like this is one of those core, hoaxing. right and bad bill of goods that we were sold by the lefties in government though. Anthony Fauci served for what over five decades, Republican and Democratic presidents and has this incredible career. The diary entries are really cringy. I don't know if you've spent much time with them.

I am not a dear diary person, especially like Dear Diary, I'm the most famous person. Everybody's obsessed with me type of person. But it's a bad look. I think for someone that's a public health official. And I guess how it works with subpoenas, even though it was his private diary, because it contained work product, that they were able to get their hands on it. There is acknowledgement about the fact that the disease is being spread,

even when people are vaccinated. That was certainly how it was sold at first, that if you got vaccinated, you weren't going to get COVID and ended up that it just made it a lot easier for you to manage, having COVID, especially if you are older, if you've had the vaccine. But that's one of the things that the right is all hot and bothered about.

And it's going to be very ugly at the committee hearing. COVID is one of the big challenges or litmus tests, I think, for Democrats, especially, you know, from big blue cities and blue states, how they feel about the lockdowns in retrospect, especially vis-a-vis kids who the evidence suggested. from very early on, we're not getting the disease and we're certainly recovering quite quickly from it. And we kept kids out of school. And they really needed to be in school. They needed that for technical learning, you know, falling behind in reading and in math, but also for the social emotional aspect. And when you and you deal, you have kids in their teens, you teach kids

who have been affected by lockdown, and you see it in all of them, the way that they talk about that period in their lives, whether they missed out on their junior or senior years, what their experience was having to do remote learning in a worst-case scenario. Remember, the New York Times did a big piece on how school systems who were giving out tablets

were finding in kids' search history how much they were looking at ways to self-harm and how deeply depressed and isolated. they felt. And I think that that's something that for those who are opposed or are still on the edge, I guess, of being okay with the Democratic Party or whoever it is that is the representative on their ballot, that they do want to hear from them that we did some things wrong. And we were trying our best, right? I don't think anyone was ill-intentioned about it or like making a shit ton of money off of it, but that, you know, real mistakes were made, especially when it comes to young people,

you know, businesses that couldn't reopen, that ended up going bankrupt. And then also, I think a tremendous amount of fraud, right, that occurred with the COVID funds. And I think that Fauci is going to get all of that spewed at him. Some of it fairly, some of it unfairly. But it's worth our attention. Yeah, there really hasn't been, I mean, obviously World War II kind of defined our society for the next 50 years. And it feels like COVID is right up there in terms of such a massive epipen or paddles to the corpus of our society. And it's interesting. There really hasn't been a book kind of outlining. I think we still underestimate the impact, the scarring, and the lasting structural changes it's had on our society.

And everything you said absolutely was correct. That we overestimated the risk to, to young people, I would argue a lot of teachers' unions, use kids as drug mules, even though the workforce in our schools is one of the least vulnerable because it was primarily made up of young women. We had enormous learning loss. They think that approximately roughly half a school year in math and reading was basically kind of structurally a setback that hasn't recovered yet. And it has almost everything in our nation. It was outsourced mostly to low-income and minority kids the hardest. And that gap is not closed. I would love to see the data, but I think people just substantially increase the amount of time they spent indoors and in front of a screen.

And unfortunately, a lot of young men and most of us just have not gone back. And then inflation in the wealth gap, stimulus plus supply shocks set off inflation that we really haven't recovered from. And then mental health, especially among young men and teen girls. The isolation accelerated the youth mental health crisis that was already. well underway, anxiety, depression, social disconnection. They all spiked and they haven't, you know, again, that delta has not closed. With Fauci, I mean, let's be clear, I've never understood the venom towards Fauci. And I think the CDC made two critical errors, both around communications, one telling people that masks don't help. Don't wear masks. Remember that? And then everybody must wear masks.

Say, well, which is it, boss? And then they claimed the reason they said that was because they were worried that there would be a run on mass and health care professionals wouldn't be able to get them. It's like, okay, so you were lying to the general public? What are you lying about now? And then what you just mentioned, this notion that the vaccine would prevent you from getting COVID, the equally powerful message would be, yeah, you can still get it, but you're not going to die from it. Right. And I believe you were 90% less likely to die. And there's all these just heartbreaking stories of people not getting the vaccine

and then being told to call your loved ones, you're not going to make it. And them saying, please give me the vaccine. And having to be told, sorry, boss, it doesn't work that way. But 1,100, you know, look, 1,100 pages in the headline is a scientist wrestled with the uncertainty during a once-in-a-century pandemic, who also, like, loves his 15 seconds of fame and name-check's Barbara Streisand and Julia Roberts. I don't think it's a scandal. I think it's an 80-year-old who clearly is a bit of a narcissist.

And my sense is when I saw the summary of this, there's nothing here we didn't already know. I remember him walking out with the nurse who had gotten Ebola and making sure it was a photo opportunity with him walking her out. And I think this guy's focused way too much on. Fauci and not the CDC. I think the most interesting thing here is about the timing of the release, because when you release it the day before the hearings, you're trying to connote that it's some sort of bombshell and that it's a strategy to sort of preload the narrative. So the hearing plays as confirmation, not actual discovery. And, you know, the self-absorption, okay, that's a personality flaw, not evidence about how COVID started. What I'm scared of is that you're going to have a bunch of

conspiracy theorists and people playing into the red meat at the far right that, you know, Fauci should be prosecuted, which I think is fucking insane. And that they'll let the tone of the diary substitute for actual fucking data regarding the origins of this pandemic and how we prepare for it, you know, how we're better prepared for it again. But I also feel like it was the great accelerant of income inequality and laid big. just how ugly income and equality was, that there was a group of Americans. Well, let me back up.

I've said, and I'm self-conscious saying this out loud, because I'm older, because I have some money, because I have relationships, because I had a nice place to shelter in place, COVID was arguably the best two years of my life because I was molesting the earth, traveling, meeting with clients, not seeing my kids a lot,

working my ass off, and all of a sudden, I was forced to stay at home and not travel and spend a bunch of time with my kids. It was just, and watch a lot of Netflix. And the toll it took was on my youngest son, who I just never appreciated how much young kids need to be socialized around other people.

But there was an enormous, enormous segment of America who had to load up their igloo cooler with Diet Coke's and diabetes medication and head out as an Uber driver and subject themselves to risk because they couldn't afford to stay at home. I mean, and I can't even imagine what a single mother had to put up with with a kid at home who was doing quote unquote, by the way, remote learning for young kids was the most ridiculous fucking thing I'd ever experienced. They can't do that. Kids on my kid was, my youngest was nine, and I remember going into his room and watching him.

him on an iPad, try to learn. And it was like, okay, this is, this is almost doing more damage than it is good. It was just absolutely ridiculous. There was a piece in the Atlantic that was very hard hitting about how these essential workers don't want to be essential and that the idea that you're going to come out like on your balcony and, you know, bang your pots and pans as a thank you doesn't fix the problem, which is that they have to be working a checkout line or driving cars or driving ambulances or mobile morgues or whatever is going on, that they didn't ask for this. To your point about income inequality. And I'll just throw in, not that I want some enormous pity party for me, because I had enough

money during COVID, but my dad was dying. He was in an ICU, which was the scariest place that you could be when COVID was peak. and no one knew what to do about it pre-vaccine. So did two and a half months in an ICU. And then was moved to a nursing home for his recovery where everybody was dying. And he was one of the first patients in New York who was able to get the vaccine, thank God, because he was in there.

But I woke up every day, just petrified that he was going to die because of the thing that it wasn't going to be the cancer that was going to kill him. It was going to be COVID. And I find it really hard to have thoughtful conversations with people who say things like arrest Fauci, Fauci as a traitor, et cetera, with my experience actually taking care of someone who was on the front lines of vulnerability to this disease. Right. Like, they would have, like, COVID would have killed my dad in 10 minutes. There wouldn't, vaccine or not probably with how weakened he was from chemo and the disease.

And I want to be balanced about it, and I especially want to stand up for our kids, because God knows how angry I would have been as a mom if I had had children in a school age that were being forced into remote learning. Or, God forbid, you're too poor. You don't have access to the Internet, right? The stories of kids that are working at Taco Bells and McDonald's is because, you know, we haven't been able to get broadband to the entire country, which is a national embarrassment. But I do struggle. with it because we were all scared out of our minds and for very good reason, you know, millions of people died of this disease. It's estimated about three million lives were saved because of the vaccine and how good it was in making COVID more tolerable for folks, especially if you're older. But I have trouble getting there on the arrest Fauci front when you think back to how scared everybody, no matter your politics, was of this deadly disease and something that. that we knew nothing about.

You know, it happens once every 100 years. How could you expect him to have all of the answers? Is the public servant too into getting his just desserts and is thrilled by the idea that there are people wearing t-shirts with his face on it? Absolutely. Could they have been more straight shooters about things like masking and what the vaccine was going to do for you based on his journal entries? Yeah, they could have been better at it.

But this disease, it killed. And I think the people who worked in, you know, these hospitals worked in the NIH, the CDC, their goal was to keep as many Americans alive as possible. And that is one of the more just reasons for you to get up and go to work that I know of. Yeah, the question I would have to anybody is, all right, who got it right? Like who? Well, they would say like Sweden, right? And there's evidence, the whole herd thing, the whole herd mentality thing that just let it run wild didn't work either. And then people say, well, what about Florida?

And if you actually look at the data now, Florida had about the same mortality levels. Nobody got this right. Everybody thought China got it right because they were especially hard. And they did lockdowns and they had concerts. And then they got hit hard. And so I'm going to take advantage of the hall pass to talk about COVID horror stories. I pulled Prof.G off of Spotify during COVID. And the reason why I thought Joe Rogan did enormous damage to the health of America

by having one day Sanjay Gupta on thinking he was both siding the issue and then having a total fucking quack who had his medical license revoked talking about how an MRNA vaccine was altering your DNA. And I have or had a 52-year-old cousin, big strapping, Andrew Levine, big strapping, handsome guy, thin, not vulnerable, who he and his girlfriend bought into this anti-vaccine bullshit, conspiracy theory.

And he, just a series of, like, terrible instances. Poor health care, apparently got pneumonia at the same time he got COVID. was in the hospitalized, recovering, was on a ventilator, but getting better, took him off the ventilator, crashed and died. And just along the lines of all the second order effects here, left his, obviously left behind, survived his girlfriend and a little boy. And then six months later, his girlfriend killed herself. I mean, and I believe this total anti-vaccine, non-science conspiracy theory politicization of the vaccine. I'm not questioning a podcaster's right to discuss this issue.

Now, when you're talking about something like this, you have to have some fidelity to people smarter than you, actually looking at the data around the potential death, disease, and disability that you could unwittingly, I don't think Joe Rogan is a bad person, that you could unwittingly levy because you haven't read the actual fucking science. If he had been a total fucking nut, it wouldn't have been as bad as him both siding the issue because the day after you saw a credible

doctor, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, you were presented with this quack. And I think his massive footprint believed, well, it's sort of a coin flip. You know, there's good arguments on both sides. There weren't. Anytime they talk about the vaccine causing death or we're waiting for a shoe to drop because there's very few free lunches, they trace it down and they've had a difficult time finding any vaccine-related mortality when it's normalized for other factors. So this was, there's still going to be, I think, we're waiting for the definitive book on how this is structurally shifted our society and who really acted irresponsibly here. And it wasn't an 80-year-old head of the CDC excited about Julia Roberts' name-checking. That's not who the problem was here.

This is up there with, you know, don't take Tylenol if you're pregnant and like don't get your measles and your mom's shots. It's a bunch of BS. You can make decisions about, you know, vaccine schedules for your kids. But every doctor worth their salt. I was advising people to get the vaccine to protect them. And I was pregnant at the time. I got vaccinated. One, I was 24 weeks pregnant, which felt a little scary. But, but. my OB was adamant that this is the way to protect my unborn child. And then I breastfed for six weeks after Cleo was born to make sure that she continued to get the good effects from the vaccine. So I'm with you on this. The journal is cringy and it is embarrassing. I think it is always good for people to be reflective of what they could do better. We all aspire to be people that learn and grow from our mistakes, but people in looking at this in their rearview mirror, you know, six years later, not, you know, taking account of how insanely scary this period of time was and trying to make it out like these folks were being malicious. I think it's just absurd.

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