The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Ross Barkan

Episode Date: April 10, 2020

Ross Barkan

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the table, on the podcast of New York's world-famous comedy cellar, coming at you on Sirius XM 99, Rod Dogg. And we're here coming at you via Zoom, in quarantine. This is Dan Natterman. Of course, Noam Dorman is here. Didn't feel like doing the introduction today. He's coming at you from an undisclosed location in Westchester County. I'm coming from Manhattan. That's slightly disclosed.

Pardon? That's slightly disclosed. I mean, it's not. Go ahead. Perry L. Ashenbrand, who is, I forgot where. And our guest tonight is Ross Barkin. I believe I'm pronouncing that right. Yeah, that's good.

Like Ellen Barkin, but the spelling is different. Different spelling, yeah. A native of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. He's a journalist, staff reporter at Queens Tribune. He also writes for the New York Observer. And he is a publisher of his book, Demolition Night. It was published in 2018. And we'll discuss that in a bit. Guardian. Demolition Night. Guardian. Published in 2018.

And we'll discuss that in a bit. Welcome, everybody. Noam, how are you doing in quarantine? I'm all right. I'm getting a little dark. I don't know. First of all, Perrielle has coronavirus, according to her. I have.

Already. No, I still have it. I still have it. I still have it. I'm still in quarantine and I still have it. And we've been taught, this is like the third show that we're talking about this and know I'm just now has realized or has accepted the fact that I actually had it. Oh no, I have not yet accepted the fact that you actually have it.

I, but maybe you do. Maybe you're one of those barely symptomatic people. If so, you're very lucky, I have not yet accepted the fact that you actually have it. But maybe you do. Maybe you're one of those barely symptomatic people. If so, you're very lucky. I'm not barely symptomatic. I'm sick. I haven't, I mean, I feel like shit. Okay, but I'm saying like compared to people who are really suffering,

you're, you know. Well, I haven't heard you cough once. That's not necessarily a symptom. What symptom do you have? I lost my taste and smell about two weeks ago. I'm super achy. I go back and forth with having horrible headaches. If I get up and do something, I'm short of breath. Okay. That's a real symptom. What are you you a medical doctor now all right let's get on me that periel likely has it and is fortunate to be relatively mild yeah relative by the way noam uh with regard to the

ross we'll get to you in a bit we're just doing some house cleaning yeah all good with regard to the gofundme uh it's up to, I believe, 67,000. It's leveling off. It's peaking. We've bent the curve. If the curve is flattened, I don't think there are going to be too many more donations. I do want to mention that

Il Molino, the restaurant, very famous restaurant, they also have a GoFundMe that somebody put up for their wait staff and bar staff, etc. It's been up for several days and they've only got 7 000 compared to the comedy seller 67 000 so i would just say that the comedy seller staff is quite lucky to uh i'm not sure per capita uh what the difference is we have over 100 people working they probably that's interesting although i would imagine el molino And I think El Molino has two locations I don't know

If they're owned by the same people There's like $70,000 for the staff And I'm happy About that I don't know their situation But I'm sure some of them For some of them That will really be a tremendous

Help And for others of them, that will really be a tremendous help. And for others, you know, I don't know. They're going to quit. They're going to get all that money, and then they're just going to stop working when you open up again. It's not going to be that much money when you divide it amongst all the people that work for NOAM. I mean, we talk about this.

If I could, by law, I'm not allowed to get involved in that money. If I were to have a hand in distributing it, then it would all of a sudden, it would be required to, it would come under the umbrella of all the laws about a corporation distributing money to employees. So I'm not allowed to even advise how it should be distributed. For instance, if I wanted to give the money, and I would, to a family who was struggling as opposed to a waiter who had rich parents, let's say, I could get in trouble for discrimination. So Birbiglia is going to have to figure that out. But I hope that the money goes where it's needed and rather than just mathematically just divvied out. But either way, it'll be helpful, I'm sure. To each according to need, from each according to his ability. Ross

probably believes in that. Probably, yeah. You write for The Nation, right? Yeah, I contribute at The Nation, columnist at The Guardian. Used to work, Queen's Tribune was my first stop in 2012, so glad that got out there. And New York Observer, where I was a staff reporter for three years, was actually owned by Jared Kushner.

Jared Kushner. No, semi-defunfunct now the New York Observer, sadly, but it was once a very good newspaper. I was reading from Wikipedia. I do apologize. It's all right. It runs chronological. So yeah. So let me tell you why I, I, I, I, forgive me. I, I had never heard of you, but now you're, you're, you're, you're, you're way now you're way on my radar. And because anybody who listens to this podcast knows,

I was having a real problem with the way that everybody was pretending that Governor Cuomo had handled this brilliantly. And I had been complaining in real time it was happening, that they need to close the schools, there's 500, events of 500 or more, ridiculous, half capacity is even more ridiculous, what are we waiting for, Ohio is already shut down, California, I mean everything, and then I saw that Cuomo, who does have, and it's not irrelevant to me, an excellent bedside manner, but because his bedside manner was so good, and because I think it's very important psychologically

for people to have the good guy Cuomo and the bad guy Trump in some way, people just started pretending that he didn't really blow it. And you were the first non-Fox News person. I'm assuming you're pretty left of center, or at least- Pretty, yeah, pretty left of center, yeah. That's okay, so is Perry Yall. That you were the first person to just,

you know, to say the emperor had no clothes. Like, look what's happened here. So why don't you tell us your position on that? Sure, so I've covered and followed Andrew Cuomo look what's happened here. So why don't you tell us your position on that? Sure. So I've covered and followed Andrew Cuomo for a very long time, since his first term. He's been governor of New York for almost a decade. I've written critically about him for a while. I used to call him the Bill Joyce, so I covered him there as well, my frustration really derived from the fact that, as you said, he was getting credit for things that, you know, other governors were doing and were actually doing sooner. And you have, you know, a president and Donald Trump, who's obviously failed tremendously

in the response to coronavirus. So that's inarguable. And you have Bill de Blasio, the mayor, who's been quite bumbling and failed to close the schools in time and was urging people to go to their favorite bars and restaurants. Then hours later, all businesses in New York City closed, going to the Park Slope Y, et cetera, et cetera. So he's been a disaster. In steps Andrew Cuomo, who has really gotten a striking amount of credit for having nothing more than a bedside manner. You know, if you actually look at the facts of the situation, we closed schools and businesses and had a shelter in place order after most other major states that were grappling with COVID-19, whether it was Ohio, Michigan, California, Washington State. If there aren't governors you want to praise here, I would say Jay Inslee in Washington, Gavin Newsom, Mike DeWine is a Republican in Ohio. Those all come to mind. And Cuomo not only was not ahead

of the curve, in fact, he was slightly behind the curve. And tragically, with coronavirus, if you're slightly behind the curve, this means a lot of people are going to die. And it's no accident that New York is the epicenter of this. And mean, I'm trying to death count just changes every day. So I don't have the exact number in front of me. But you know, more New York City residents have now died than in September 11th, the number of climbs every day. And there are just so many more deaths. And so 4,571 according to the times right now. Yeah, for right. And it'll be higher tomorrow probably eclipse 5000. Actually, they're saying that it'll be higher tomorrow, probably eclipse 5,000 tomorrow. Actually, they're saying that it's even now much higher than that

because that number does not take account all of the people who have died at home that are likely a result of COVID-19. So it's actually- Yeah, so it's in the 5,000 range for sure. So go ahead, continue. So it's been a catastrophe. I mean, there's no way to argue

if you actually look at the facts that New York handled this well. And that's really been where a lot of my criticism has come from. If Andrew Cuomo was being held to the same standard as Bill de Blasio and as Donald Trump, it'd be like one more executive who screwed this up joined the club, right?

But he's not joining the club. He's a nationally famous, renowned governor now with approval ratings over 70%. So it's just, to me, at least, and my own view of this and how I've covered this, it's entirely unwarranted. And it's frustrating as a New Yorker. I grew up here, born and raised in Brooklyn. So it's a tragedy. I mean, this is a mass tragedy that has now exceeded September 11th. And in some ways, it's scary in a different way. And Cuomo has completely failed to contain it. There's no other way to put it right now. I think there's a sense that at least Cuomo did his best, even if his best was woefully inadequate. And people attribute to Trump, people I've talked to anyway,

attribute to Trump nefarious motives. They attribute to, well, one friend in particular that I was talking to feels that Trump simply was putting his electoral interests above the good of the country. And so he felt, well, you know, uh, he needed to downplay this, um, because he didn't really care if anybody died, as long as he could protect his image and his chance for reelection. Right. I think that's kind of madness, but let me, let me just, so let me, so I was, I think there is a sense that Cuomo did his best.

Yeah. Well, listen, I don't hate Cuomo and I, and I, just to get ahead of myself, I think that if, um, if, if I had to choose the person who would be best able to handle this situation next year in New York, I might say Cuomo, assuming that people make mistakes and can learn a lot from them. He certainly knows a lot about this now and probably wouldn't make the same mistakes twice. So let me just present this. So the New York Times today, now I have a lot of issues with the bias of the New York Times because they pick and choose, and especially their editorial page. But it's still the only place, or one of the only places to really get a thorough, you know, what's the word? It's not dissertation.

A thorough accounting of top to bottom of something that's gone on it is still the paper of record in that way and they did a very very thorough thing about the new york's response today and to their credit to their credit it says and i can i can i can share it so you can see it says shockingly i don't know i don't know if if Ross has seen this yet. Yes, I have, yes. It says, Dr. Frieden said that, this is the expert they're quoting, if the state and city had adopted widespread social distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing school stores and restaurants, all the things which we had been saying they should do, then the estimated death toll from the outbreak

might have been reduced by 50 to 80%. Jesus Christ. 50 to 80%. Now, and I had a lot of thoughts about this. First of all, I will criticize the Times because despite the fact that they printed this story, I somehow think if they did an analysis of the federal government and came to, they buried the lead. The headline to this story should have been, experts say that Cuomo's delay caused 50 to 80% times the deaths in New York.

That's the natural headline of this story. And they bury it halfway down the story. There's no question that if the Times had concluded that Donald Trump was responsible for 80% more deaths or 50% more deaths than what we've seen, that would be the lead story on every cable, except for Fox, every cable network in the country tonight. And yet it's barely known about Cuomo. So the wagons are yet being circled. And that really bothers me. I don't know if Ross wants to say anything. Yeah, no, you actually brought up the part in that article that I was going to bring up, which is, yes, I mean, that's the crux of the matter. You could really stop reading after that. Tom Frieden, former head of the CDC, former health department

commissioner in New York City, said something that a lot of experts agree with. It's something I've long felt and sensed. I don't have the expertise to come up with such a figure that I'd be talking out of my, you know, you know, what if I did that? But, you know, 50 to 80%. And it's very striking. And when you're talking about something like, like coronavirus, which is highly, highly contagious every day, every hour counts. So to give you an example, California did a shelter-in-place order mass shutdown in the state almost one week before New York did. And California had far less confirmed cases in New York. In fact, it was actually the bumbling Bill de Blasio who first suggested the shelter-in-place order. I think it was around that March 16th time. I'd have to double check. So you have de Blasio suggesting we should do this. Cuomo actually overruled him. You can go back and look and said at the time, we have no plans to do this right now. If we did it by many days, then finally did what we're calling in

New York, the pause order, which is just shelter in place with Cuomo. Cuomo loves acronyms and loves naming things, so he can have credit for that. We got this pause order around March 22nd. So we were days behind states that had far less severe outbreaks that were not necessarily ticking time bombs for coronavirus. You think of California, you've cities that are a bit less dense, people drive their cars more. New York City really was always going to be a place that will probably get hit fairly hard. But the issue is, how hard would we get hit? Could you mitigate some of the worst effects? And it's inarguable to me, at least, that Andrew Cuomo failed miserably to mitigate the worst effects. We are living in the worst case scenario of coronavirus that we could have faced. We are

Italy. New York State, I believe now, has more confirmed COVID-19 cases than Italy, the nation of Italy. And that is a stunning statistic. So what do you attribute Cuomo's, you know, his actions? We're both in front of the bridge. Well, we're both coming at you from the same location. It's all right. We can both be by the bridge. It's a nice bridge. It looks like you're holding hands from where I'm sitting, but go ahead. What do you attribute that to? I mean, wishful thinking, you know, had no one been the mayor, no one probably would have shut it down because no one was locked up in his

house a week prior to, 10 days prior to the shut. I might've been there two weeks. I had the kids to finally, yeah. I mean, why do you think Cuomo was slow on that? I think he and de Blasio each wanted to project a sense of calm in the city, which it turned out was a horrible idea. If you look at quotes from de Blasio and Cuomo, really in that first week of March,

you can look at these press conferences, each of them were talking about the fear being worse than the reality. Cuomo was saying around March 5th, you know, I'm going to keep shaking hands. I'm a politician. This is what I do. You know, de Blasio saying we have to go on, go about our lives as normal. I think for both of them, they wanted to project this sense of calm, which in different sorts of disasters may be something you do, right? This was not one of those disasters. So you start with two politicians who wanted to reassure people, yes, you can go on

the subway. Yes, you can go to the bodega. Yes, you can go to the bar, hang out with your friends. Yes, you can go to parties. When in fact, it was was a lie you could not do any of those things yes truthfully we should have shut the whole thing down on march 1st which is the day the first confirmed case that should have been the day cuomo if he had a crystal ball he would have done things differently so he he didn't realize that it would it would uh there be this many cases obviously he yeah i mean i mean, I agree. He didn't believe the science or he didn't want to believe the science? Yeah, and I would just say, the only thing I would say in both their defenses,

it is a tough decision to make to close public schools, to close businesses. You're doing extreme economic damage to the state, but you have to do it to save lives. So let me say a few things. I just don't want to do that. By the way, Ross, you're a terrific guest. I hope we get you again in the future when we're available. I'm at home. I'm inside a lot. I'm sure it won't be

too long before we have something we really disagree on. As a matter of fact, I might be able to give you something today we really disagree on. But while we're agreeing, so first of all, as to the question of what Cuomo is thinking, I think we have a clue here. This is an article in The Hill that I noticed. And it says, Andrew Cuomo to emerging coronavirus hotspots, make harder choices sooner. And among the articles, it says, he advocates paying attention to numerical projections against hopeful intuition. So what I get from that is he's kind of telegraphing that he gets it, that he was late to the game. And it seems to me the insight is that

he just couldn't believe it, which I think is human nature. I think you have to be once bitten to be twice shy. Overwhelmingly, most people need that. And that's why Asia has been much quicker on this. And there are some great people who are able to not need that, but it seems to be a part of human nature that you just can't believe it. And going further, Churchill, we needed a Churchill, right? Someone who was going to spell it out. But the truth was, Churchill was not heeded in his day. He was dismissed. And it's not clear to me that what

would have happened if Cuomo had actually shut everything down on March 1st. He would have had a tough time of it. The country was not going to end. And if he succeeded, then he really could never prove that he succeeded. You know, people say, well, what did you do? Nothing happened. You killed our economy for nothing. So he was in a tough spot. He was in Roy Scheider's spot as the sheriff in Jaws, you know, shutting down the beaches. But in the end, he got it wrong.

Let me say a couple other quick things. So he says in that article in The Times, where did I put it? There's another thing that I really didn't like. And he says here, it says, for Mr. de Blasio, and this is typical of the Times, for Mr. de Blasio, whose progressive political identity has been defined by his attention to the city's have-nots, the crisis presented a stark York are mostly minorities, blacks and Hispanics, wanted their kids to be going to school while it was death. These minority homes that are multi-generational, they would feel like closing the schools was saving others at their expense. Of course, this is not at their expense and and then you know

like just to put a finer point at it on it so there's an article in time magazine which says here it is data suggests many new york city neighborhoods hardest hit by covid19 are low low-income areas. So in this, is that, did I share that? Yeah. So in this attempt to help minorities, they fucking killed them. They killed them. So I don't, you know, it just, it makes me furious because of course they are living closer together and they are living in housing projects where where social distancing is um not practical and they are less forgive me they're less sophisticated in certain ways they're not reading the new york times uh maybe as much as some other people maybe they didn't get the message or maybe they're more naive i don't know whatever it is but the idea they also don't have the luxury of staying home. Staying home is a luxury, right? I don't know.

First of all, I don't know that that's true because- It is true. Of course it's true. Well, I mean, listen, let's just speak honestly here. First of all, a lot of poor people are home. A lot of poor people don't work or they're living on government assistance or they have their grandparents living with them who are staying with them. I mean, I know a lot of people.

My wife is one who grew up very poor, who grew up in housing projects and grew in Brooklyn. And I'm not sure, I'm sure for plenty of people, there's nobody home, but there's a lot of them who are home. And then, yes, it might, they might have to figure out how to do it, but are you helping them by killing them? No, of course not.

So that's, so what I'm saying is that for de Blasio to say that he was harming one segment on the backs of another segment, he got that so wrong because it's that other segment that's dying more. They're the ones he really harmed. The rich people, we're able to stay home, and we're economically damaged until the you know and and and we're you know economically

damaged until the checks come in from the government and the poor people are dying and also a lot of wealthy people left the city i don't know if you're making excuses for it i think it's inexcusable i don't know i don't think he anticipated that okay i think he would agree with you given what's happened but at the time, he didn't anticipate the toll that it would take on the minority community. And why didn't, what I'm saying is, why do they, why is everything, I'm going to sound like a cliche here. Why does everything come down to an identity politics thing? We as humans, we're all equally threatened with death by this virus.

And death, that comes first. Everything else becomes irrelevant at that point. If you're worried about the poor people not being able to stay home, then get some way for them to be fed. You know, take care of them. I agree. But you don't help them by sending them off saying,

go out, have a good time. Don't worry about anything. A hundred percent. You're absolutely right. We'll bury you in Central Park. Are they burying people in Central Park? They're putting the bodies there right now.

I want to be very clear. I think de Blasio is a fucking nightmare, and I agree with you now. Except, and maybe Ross can correct me here if I'm wrong, I don't think that there was any decision that Cuomo could not have overruled. Is that correct?

So, yeah, so a few points. One, yes, the state has inordinate power of the city. Andrew Cuomo can effectively overrule de Blasio in almost anything, practically speaking. So he can choose to shut the schools and do a statewide order if de Blasio doesn't want to do it. I mean, in terms of who's working, yeah, I would just counter and say a lot of the poor in the city are working in the grocery stores, minimum wage jobs, essential workers. You also have a vast working class, transit operators, a lot of people who now still have to go to work.

Let me just interrupt you. I am not saying for a second that poor people don't work. I'm just saying the idea that nobody's home. I think in a lot of poor households, there are people who actually are home because grandparents often live with them for whatever reason. The poor people who are working, first of all, they are our heroes right now. They're delivering groceries and all this kind of stuff. Where would we be without them? But for them, I just want to make the point that it was cruel to them. And it was just kind of, it's this kind of elitist.

Can I digress for a second, Ross, without you going crazy? Go ahead, yeah, digress. Because this is what minds without you going crazy? Go ahead. Yeah. Digress. Because this is what it reminds me of. So you have the issue of voter ID rules, right? Now, I don't care. I don't have a big opinion on whether these laws are a good idea, bad idea, suppress. I know Vox did a thing where they actually said it doesn't suppress turnout, beside the point to me. That's not what I'm bringing it up for. But what I've always felt uncomfortable about is the casual way we make the argument, well, you know, you can't really expect black people to get IDs like everybody else. It's just

so condescending to me. It's just this white elitist. I don't know if they realize it. Like, I own a bar. Every black person has an ID. I mean, if this is really true, then maybe we need to consider driver's licenses, because that's a lot more important to somebody's life than getting an ID to vote. And maybe they can't fly on airplanes now as easily as other people do, because they need ID to fly in airplanes. Like, how little do we think of black people or minority people that we think, well, to require them to do the same thing that everybody does is somehow racist. And, you know, so that the ease with which that mentality is out there has always given

me pause. Like if I was going to make the case that, no, you can't, it's not fair for them to get IDs. I would all of a sudden start, that would catch in my throat because I'd be spinning out of my head. Like, what am I really saying here? That my black friends can't get, or my black, the black families I know can't get the same ID that the white family can. So maybe it's true. You know, maybe empirically that, that is a true fact, but it's, it's, it's, it's dangerous to me. And I feel that it's somehow related to this notion, well, the minorities, how can they possibly handle taking care of their kids and closing the schools? How can they do that? I just have, I sound corny, I don't think they're that different in terms of common sense and being resourceful as anyone else. I think, and look, the proof is in the pudding. They are home now,

and they do seem to be managing, right? I haven't heard a lot of horror stories. With your question that you had asked if Cuomo has a right to overrule de Blasio. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think it's a lot like the comedy stellar. Noam has the right to overrule de Blasio. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I think it's a lot like the comedy stellar. Noam has the right to overrule Esty. He never does it. Oh, that's not true. Of course I would.

Cuomo overrules de Blasio a lot. That happens a lot in New York politics, actually. He shoved the subways down once during a snowstorm without telling. The point is, is this issue of not wanting to step on something? That's amazing. Really? Yeah. In 2015, over the threat of a snowstorm without telling. The point is, is this issue of not wanting to That's amazing, really? Yeah, in 2015, over the threat of a snowstorm,

the subway system, when the only time it was ever shut down, was shut down on Cuomo's orders and he didn't tell de Blasio before he did it because he controls the subway system. That's a perfect example. Imagine if de Blasio said,

we're not going to have a snow day for school. Somebody else said, we're not going to have a snow day for the snowstorm. We're going to send everybody to school because it's not fair to the poor people to have to stay home in the snowstorm. So we're going to send them to school and buses and let them, you know, let them get into car accidents. And a snowstorm is nothing compared to the coronavirus. Nothing like, but they close the schools. They don't assume this is nothing compared to the coronavirus nothing like but they close the schools they don't assume this is the end of the world for poor people if there's a snowstorm everybody's home for five days look the truth is is that everybody dropped the ball and you've been saying this from the beginning is that nobody really knew what to do or how to deal with it

no i didn't say they didn't know what to do everybody knew what to do no you said that in asia they're so much more prepared because they've lived through this before. No, I said that they were in denial about what to do, but they knew what to do. So, by the way, Ross, do you like Christopher Hitchens? Old Christopher Hitchens? Yeah, I find

him interesting. And he's a supporter of the Iraq War, which I'm not very much against. But he certainly was a very important intellectual and fascinating figure. So, so yeah, not Andy Hitch. I'm going to give you a great Christopher Hitchens quote that I found last night. I was reading him for something totally unrelated. It was an interview he did about his mother Teresa thing.

And I want to buzz as to why those who would normally consider themselves rationalists, this guy formed a mother Teresa myth. You know, he hated mother Teresa. And then at the end he says, and this really reminded me of our current situation. Then also there is the general problem of credulity of people being willing once, of being willing once a reputation has been established, and this is beautiful, to judge people's actions by that reputation instead of the reputation by that action. And I think that's exactly what, he hit the nail on the head of exactly what's going on with Cuomo. Because of his reputation, they're going soft on his action rather than judging the reputation based on the action. So the irony of Andrew Cuomo is if you

follow him a bit, he has a reputation for being an authoritarian in some sense. He has governor, a heavy handed governor, very much a fan of executive power, strong arming the legislature. The irony here is Cuomo did not act like an authoritarian when it came to COVID-19.

And if there was one time we did need a bit of an authoritarian as governor, it was this time. It was the type of governor who would say, no, we are going to close the schools. No, we are going to shut down businesses. No, we are going to go

into full shelter in place and damn public opinion. That's the kind of attitude you needed. And the irony is Cuomo did not rise to the occasion of being the authoritarian of reputation. He did not act like one. He dithered. And you have other governors who don't have that reputation. Jay Inslee in Washington State, Gavin Newsom in California, Gretchen Whitmer,

newly elected governor in Michigan. And New York, unlike other places, did have time to prepare and have time to see this coming. Wuhan was in December and January. There was no reason to think a city like New York, an international city, would not become an epicenter. We had several months of lead time. The outbreak first came in Washington state, so we could watch them struggle with it first. So in that sense, you know, there's no excuse. On the school closure thing, quickly, where de Blasio was coming from, I think he was misguided, though I get it. It's hard to shut down a school system. You know, you're talking about,

you know, over a million school kids educated. A lot of parents don't have child care options. A lot of parents have to work multiple jobs. It's a big decision. That being said, you've got to save lives. You've got to do it and figure out the rest later because yes, people are dying. And it is now, sadly, it's New York's working class and poor Latinos, African-Americans, they are being hit hardest by this because they, they be, because they tend to be lower income, um, they can't leave the city. And also it's harder for them to, to easily isolate, right? If you live in a crowded apartment, you're living with family.

If you don't have a backyard, if you're not a homeowner, much easier for the wealthy to follow all of the guidelines to hoard food, to hoard supplies, the wealthier you are, the more easy it is to ride out COVID-19. And the poorer you are, sadly, it's harder. It's just physically harder, harder to avoid going to work. These telecommuting jobs like my own, I can do journalism remotely. I can teach college. I teach at NYU. I can do that remotely. These are white collar professional jobs, but those blue collar working class jobs, person to person stuff, you can't do that remotely. You can't operate a train remotely.

You can't drive a sanitation truck remotely. You can't bag at Christie's or at Key Food remotely either. Well, we're talking about- 100% correct. 100% correct. I agree with you. Go ahead, Dan. Well, we're talking about things that Cuomo should have done two weeks sooner. Is there anything today that he's not doing that in two weeks time will be saying he should have done that two weeks sooner? Good question. So I think as of today, he is acting aggressively. I can't criticize, you know, keeping the full shutdown in order in place, enforcing social distancing. I would say that the big mistake being made right now, and this is on more Mayor Bill de Blasio, is not shutting down more streets that are not

being actively used. So people who do go outside for exercise can walk in the street and effectively social distance. It's very hard on these crowded sidewalks to get your exercise and social distance. We all have to go outside occasionally. It's human nature. But right now, de Blasio is refusing. He did a pilot program, then he just nixed it. It's ridiculous. You have less cars on the road. it would be very easy to do in italy and you would need a piece of paper saying that you are going to the grocery store or you're going to the pharmacy or you're walking your dog and other than that you did not go the fuck outside like i i don't understand people i mean are gallivanting around the city streets going on bike rides going

on walks i mean you still see they just closed the playgrounds a few days ago yeah we were too slow to do that for sure turned into like an insane asylum so ross let me ask you this yeah is this incorrect and then i feel this like if this is Is the following incorrect? That so long as the healthcare system is not overrun, they probably don't want it to go down to zero. There is some advantage to having a slow controlled stream of people who are getting this and recovering. Is that correct? To help us afterwards. It's a good question. I mean, right now, I mean, you're so far away from getting it to zero. I mean, the biggest thing, as you've heard the term a million times, is flatten the curve. So people, you know,

eventually a lot of people are going to get coronavirus. And the hope is that you flatten it enough where it becomes something like the flu and then a vaccine arrives and most people recover and you don't overwhelm the hospitals. So what would the reason be that they're still holding back on certain measures? I mean, you know, the horse is out of the barn. The economy is not like there's any much marginal more damage. So why would I would just, and I think you already convinced me that I was wrong about what I just said, but I'm just saying the, why are they holding back on these measures?

You know, in terms of the Italy question, it may be it's a matter of logistics at this point. The street closures, I don't know. I'm perplexed by that. It seems like an obvious thing to do. Just let people safely, if they do go outside, they can safely avoid each other and just go into the street. I understand you have emergency vehicles coming to the street. You can do side streets. You can leave big avenues open. In terms of the other measures, I mean, we do have a pretty hard shutdown order in statewide. I mean, the big thing now that I think New York is trying to do is get testing ramped up eventually. So one day you can test lots of people and really see who's still healthy, who's not, isolate people. We're still a long way from that.

They don't want to have people come in and test because they don't have the capacity to do it right now. I mean, the big mistake I think Cuomo made. I think I just thought of the reason. Go ahead. Yeah, you asked me before, like, what's a thing that we're going to say? Oh, that was a mistake. This was more in the budget that just got passed. Cuomo cut Medicaid funding

to hospitals, to public hospitals in particular, that are already extremely cash strapped. They run deficits. They've got poor patients who don't have health insurance or they have Medicaid. So cutting funding to them, which is something Cuomo for a long time has wanted to slow New York's Medicaid spending. So I think that was a mistake, cutting the hospital funding in a time of crisis. You know, I don't think it's a good idea anyway, but if it's something you want to address during peacetime, address it in peacetime. We're at war right now. You can't be cheap during war. You see Congress just passed a $2 trillion stimulus, so we're going to go back from war.

You've got to do everything you can. I mean, you're at war with this massive unseen enemy. So that's a mistake Cuomo has made. Wait, let me say this. So this is what occurred to me, and this makes sense to me. If they started opening the streets, I think they would worry about sending the message that they're encouraging people to go out. And before you know it, those new streets open would become crowded. Because that's what

usually happens when they open more room. It's just people file in and fill it up to the limit of how close they're ready to get to each other. So I could see maybe, and maybe there was a pilot program and that's what they found. We started opening more streets and people just started flooding out into those streets. They claim the reasoning behind the pilot program being nixed was that de Blasio didn't want to deploy NYPD for that function. That's what he gave. You may be right. Maybe it sends the wrong message.

I think it just may be a common sense thing to do because there are people are going to leave their homes and try to social distance. You know, right now, you know, you have to be very harsh. There's no doubt about it. Maybe, you know, fines did get increased for failing to social distance. I would personally like to see if you're asking me things we should be doing more, more regimented use of grocery stores maybe you know really hardly regulating how many people go in have set times

maybe i don't know this is complicated set times where people living on certain blocks can shop then a different block you go in at this time um maybe some degree of rationing of certain supplies, if there are runs on certain supplies. These are sorts of things that are hard to do. I would ideally like to see because going to a grocery store, going to a pharmacy, it's still such a hazard, and you really want to be effectively using these places and not letting them get too crowded. So if there are ways the city can be more creative about it, they should. I will say, as of today, Cuomo and de Blasio

are taking it very seriously. They are. The problem is it's too little too late. People are dying, and that's the real problem. I have just a couple points to make about people walking in the streets. Go ahead, Dan. Street closures.

I haven't been out very often. When I go out, I have really very little problem walking in the street and avoiding people. You know, when I see people coming at me, they walk away on the sidewalk. Typically, the streets aren't very crowded these days. So I'll usually walk into the street and avoid them. What I have a problem is, is like, you know, going into a store and then somebody's coming the other way in the aisle. Yeah, that's dicey that's dicey but also how dangerous is it and i guess the answer is you don't know i don't know and nobody else knows how dangerous is is it to be walking in the street with other people walking in the street uh from what i've read is and it may be completely wrong is that getting getting

this virus is difficult in an outdoor setting just just walking past somebody. That's an unlikely way that you're going to get it. It's harder. My caution with coronavirus is you, at this point, because there are things we don't know, assume it's even more contagious than you think and assume that you can get it from anyone and get it almost anywhere. That's just something that I,

given the amount of information that's come out, given how things change, how long is it airborne, how long does it live on surfaces, the safest thing you can do is assume it's everywhere, assume everyone has it, and keep your distance. So yeah, outdoor versus indoor, is it less likely if you pass someone and they don't sneeze on you or let out a fluid? Sure. No, because they're saying now that there are micro droplets. They're saying now that there are micro droplets that are in the air that can stay

there for up to three hours. Yeah, but less likely outdoors. No, that's not true. But they also don't know that you'll get it from that. We don't know. I mean, that's the thing. Concentration and certain number of viruses and a certain exposure to it in a confined area,

from what I've read, but again, nobody really knows. You're playing the odds. If they could graph the mechanism that every single person who had coronavirus got it, there would be these small half of 1%, one-tenth of 1%, and that might be the person who got it walking around outside, the person who got it from the pizza. These are very unlikely ways to catch it. I think overwhelmingly you catch it by being in close proximity to somebody who can breathe on you, probably indoors, you know, or touching your face in all these ways. But why would you want to take any risks? You know, let's say it's a 1% chance. That's

one out of a hundred. So, so if you pass a hundred people, now you're, you're in the ballpark of, of catching it. And what is it? One out of 100 people have it in New York, right? Approximately. I mean, the truth is, whatever the confirmed number of cases is, right, and the number changes nightly, it goes up and up and up. We have to assume way more have it. We have to assume more people died of it.

We have to assume, because people aren't getting tested anymore. New York, again, part of the very discombobulated response and messaging. If you recall, in the early days, it was get tested, get tested. We're doing the mobile testing sites, they drive through a new Rochelle, get tested, get tested. And then overnight, they realized, we can't do this. People are sick anyway, and we can't use resources to test. In an ideal world, you would do mass testing and you would identify the sick people

and quarantine them. That's what the functioning nations do. That's what has been done in certain other, I think it was, I think in Taiwan and Singapore, that's really what they did. Also in New Zealand. Yeah, you know, you make actually a really interesting point. I. That's really what they did.

Yeah, you know, you make actually a really interesting point. I hadn't thought about it that way, which is that the half measures don't work. The testing, when you can't do a mass testing. Sort of pointless. I mean, it's not completely pointless, but only gets you so far. It gets you so far because now we've been testing more, but there are just so many people who haven't been tested, who are sick, who have symptoms. But in the next month from now, if they get this 15-minute test

and there's millions of them, then they could maybe devise a strategy of allowing people, making sure everybody gets the test. Right, but so many people have got the the test and, you know, following people. I don't know. What's that? So many people will have died by then. You are,

I think, Noam's right. You are going to want to reach a point at some point where you can mass test people. But yeah, now isn't the time to do it because we don't have the resources to do it.

But yes, at some point, as you try to reopen the economy and return to normal, which we all want to do, you would try to mass test people so you can identify who has antibodies, who had it, who may be recovered, who's still sick. And then you can effectively isolate those people until they get better. But we're not at that point right now. We're at the point of triage. We're at the point of war. People are still dying and people got to stay home.

And there's not really much else we can do. But let's talk about Trump. What's that? What's that, Ariel? I thought that they also are really desperate for people who have had it and have recovered to Jonah's plasma now, right? That's starting up. Yes. So that will be beginning and hopefully will bear fruit. We're in the very early stages of that though. So we'll see where that goes and if that can be helpful. But yes,

that's something that is beginning to happen and maybe is a ray of hope in a very dark moment. Hariel, are you confident that you have this and after you're fully recovered, you're ready to go out there without worrying about getting it anymore? Well, my doctor told me that because they don't know enough about it, in theory, you still need to be very careful because they don't know how. So when you get something like this, you develop antibodies, which one would think that then you can't get reinfected, but they don't know how many antibodies you need.

So it's really up in the air. Yeah. We just don't know enough. I mean, we just don't know enough about this at all. We don't have enough information. We'll get more, but not now. I probably wrote a couple of weeks ago that I don't feel was adequately listened to, where some people are actually getting a mood boost from this. And there was an article,

I forgot where it was, but I saw it, how a lot of therapists are seeing some of their depressed patients actually feeling better because now everybody's in the same boat. You know, I spoke to somebody who is actually, his wife wanted to have a, what's that, IVF or whatever, you know, in vitro fertilization. In vitro fertilization, yeah. And it was stressful for him, and now they can't do it. And so he's like, good. You know, some people like the at-home time. So for various reasons, some people are actually getting – this is not most people, but that phenomenon does exist.

FOMO is dead. So, yes, FOMO, if you're missing out, it's officially dead. You cannot have FOMO is dead so yes FOMO if you're missing out it's officially dead you cannot have FOMO right now so maybe that helps people psychologically that there's literally nothing you can miss out on there's no party going on

that you weren't invited to no bar invites that you're missing out on no ball games you're not getting to there's literally nothing going on vote for Cuomo not the fomo remember i remember yes addy you don't remember 1977 i called you addy because there's an addy barking too yes there's no relation but yeah he's more famous than me he's more twitter let's talk about trump um do it uh what what is what is the biggest mistake he made he really made and what would

what is the consequence uh not not ramping up testing and ignoring it for a long time he sensed and you know to some extent he was right that this was going to probably be bad for him that it's going to tank the economy. And his entire reelection argument was based on the economy. So he downplayed, ignored it forever. That sets its tone right off the bat. People in America take things less seriously if the president takes it less seriously. Not ramping up testing, not ramping up supplies. You're talking about we've had shortages of everything. We've been so flat-footed on this. And now the United States is becoming a global epicenter for COVID-19.

So he defunded the CDC. You know, you go up and down the list. That's true, the CDC. That's been some fact checks I read, but go on. I'll go ahead. Yeah, well, I would say generally, like a lot of conservatives, he's taken a very hostile view toward bureaucracy, towards the administrative state, as Steve Bannon would call it. So in no way was, I would say for him, was a well-funded, effective government necessarily a priority.

It's not within the ideology that he is operating from, or at least the people around him are operating from. So he's poorly prepared for this. Let me push back on that just for the sake of argument. But Dan, you want to say something? Well, in terms of not tanking the economy, certainly this has tanked the economy. The economy would have been less tanked had he acted sooner.

Had he prepared. That's the irony of it. Had he prepared the economy, yes irony of it. Had he prepared the economy, yes, perhaps we would not be going to a mass shutdown, or maybe we would anyway, but less people would have died because we would have done it sooner. I mean, other countries are in a state of mass shutdown too. So we're not alone in this, but could you have saved lives? Yes, you could have saved lives. Yes, you could have saved lives. So let me, go ahead. Daniel, what was my friend's accusation

that I spoke with last week fair that Trump was indifferent to human life, prioritizing his electoral and his chances of re-election over human life, which no one thought was ridiculous, but that accusation

was made by a friend of mine. Do you think that's a credible accusation? That's a it's a hard one to make. I don't I can't get inside of Trump's head and, and make that that, you know, make that hot to take, I guess I would say. But what I would say is, I think Trump is someone who thinks a lot about his reelection prospects and where he is in the polls. This is something he talks about all the time. He's very obsessed with it. He's obsessed with his ratings, kind of his standing. So, you know, he for a long time was refusing to talk about coronavirus. This was raging in January. It would not even be addressed. You know, he downplayed it

repeatedly. Okay, actually, let me stop you there because it's a good entry point for what I want to say. So, and I'm going to say, let me preface it with something that might make your eyes roll, but I actually believe this. The president has had a lot of trouble keeping anything a secret within his administration. He says something to three people in the Oval Office

and it leaks out. He has a call with the president of Ukraine where he talks about investigating Biden. It leaks out. There's a million examples of conversation with Putin. It leaks out. I have to believe that he is very much following the advice of the medical team around him. Because I can't believe if there was some conversation where a doctor said to Mr. President, if you don't do this, people are going to die.

And he said, well, I'm not doing it. I can't believe that these doctors who've taken these kinds of oaths would not find a way to leak that out to the press. And then for instance, there is this, you said January, and that's why I wanted to the press. And then, for instance, there is this. You said January, and that's why I wanted to use this.

So in January, you have this dude saying the following, right? And I'm not crazy. So manageable numbers. Bottom line, we don't have to worry about this one, right? Well, you know, obviously you need to take it seriously and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But this is not a major threat for the people in the United States. And this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about. Okay, so... That was Fauci. That's Fauci.

That's a fucking disaster. So I'm saying, to be reasonable and fair to the president who's not a doctor, am I really going to say that if this guy seems to be acclaimed on all sides, and if that's what the guy is saying behind closed doors, that Trump was supposed to say, oh shit, I better get right on this.

No, I don't, you know, I don't know. I don't feel good about saying, as opposed to Cuomo, where it was all on the table. We knew it, you know, it's like, you have other governors reacting. This is, and then the other way he kind of got lucky is that although they were slow with the ventilators, we had everyone out of ventilators.

And, you know, I said this last week, there's this kind of idea in the law of but-for causation where, you know, no harm, no foul. If what you did didn't actually cause the damage, you're not on the hook. Now, I don't think that's the law of but-for causation where, you know, no harm, no foul. If what you did didn't actually cause the damage, you're not on the hook. Now, I don't think that's the end of the story, because if you take a gun and you point it at someone and you shoot it, but there's no gun in the chamber or you miss, yeah, you might not be guilty. You can't get sued for any damages, but you still did something very irresponsible. And maybe Trump was irresponsible in ordering the ventilators

in time. Maybe he should have known. But in the end, he kind of lucked out because there was no gun in the chamber and it hasn't caused the disaster. As a matter of fact, I have nothing to do all day, so I'm reading stuff, but I'll show you guys this if it's interesting. Daniel Kahneman talks about, you know, the famous scientist who writes about cognitive biases. There's a bias called focalism, which he describes as nothing in life is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. And I think that's what the ventilators were.

We spent so much time thinking about the ventilators, we actually lost sight of the fact that very few people are saved by ventilators. And I, and I would guess, or I don't know that all the ventilators in the world would not save as many lives as if Cuomo had simply started the social distancing 12 hours earlier.

Well, yeah. So, so I don't think, I don't think anybody could say trump has handled this well and i won't even give him credit for the travel ban in china because that's just kind of his reflex i don't like something banned you know stop the travel i i don't but at least he did it but um i don't see and then finally and then i'll then i'll let you guys so so nate cone who is a really a writer I really respect

in the New York Times, full disclosure, I know him a little bit, he comes to the olive tree, but this guy is a total nonpartisan statistical guy. And he has this article in the Times, I think it was yesterday, where he essentially, to try to figure out how America's doing, he combines all of Europe from Germany to the West as one population, which is almost

exactly the same size as America. And here, this is a response to this administrative state thing. These are all the European nations, the social democratic nations that have very robust administrative states. And the end of the story is we might be doing a little bit better than they are right now. We might end up doing a little worse, but it's neck and neck. There's no clear case to be made that, well, the countries that have this kind of ideology do any differently than the country. The authoritarian states may be doing better, but even then, I don't think that's what it is. I think what it really really is is that the countries that have been through this before are, are a lot more ready to respond to it.

If we have the same thing five years from now, I don't care if it's the most, I don't care if Bernie Sanders is president or, you know, uh, uh, Ted Cruz, I guarantee you we're going to respond to it properly. We've been vaccinated, not just literally, but figuratively. Yeah. And I think it's real, this is really not an ideological issue. It is a partisan, it has, for certain commentators, like the despicable Sean Hannity and, and don't, don't call it conservatives because you read the national review and things

like that. That's, they're not like that. But these people who carry water for Trump, not tucker carlson this time yeah they were they were just gonna parrot whatever the president said but that's not ideological if president said this was the worst thing ever that's what hannity would have been saying you know it's not like there was any he was like this is some conservative reflex to downplay a virus. I think that's just his sycophants. But I find it hard to blame it on any ideology or political party. And I'm even ready to forgive Cuomo to tell you the truth.

It just bothers me that they don't, you know, expose the mistakes. But I don't hate the guy, you know. What I would say is I agree with you that countries with much better social safety nets have also failed to reckon with coronavirus. That's inarguable. Look at Sweden. Sweden's still not clamping down. That's the most liberal country there is. Sweden's been a weird outlier. They've done very little, which is strange. Germany, for example, has had far less death.

They've handled it very well. They have a very strong social safety net. Italy has a social safety net, too. They've handled it quite poorly. Why have they had less death? What could be the reason they had less death? It's not the treatment in the hospital. With Germany, I think the key seems to be the countries that do better are those who are able to test very aggressively and quickly and

early and isolate people. Yeah, but I got to stop you there. So they haven't had less death. It's just they have a bigger denominator. So the percentage goes down. If we had included in our stats, all the people who have very, like Perrielle, very little symptoms, no symptoms at all. I have not had very little symptoms. Yeah, but you'd have been tear to, all of a sudden we'd have less death too. Periel, you're not getting it. You got away with murder if you really had Corona. You understand how bad these symptoms can get?

I understand how- Unless somebody can make the case to me that hospitals are keeping people alive better in Germany than here, then I think what we're seeing is either reflections of the population, how congested their cities are, how many people they're testing. These are all different ways of distorting the statistical picture, but they're not actually changing. By the way, are we confident that Sweden is doing it wrong? Is it still possible that when all is said and done? I'm not confident that North Dakota is

doing it wrong. I do think it's a hard sell for a state which is huge and has as many people as Newark or something to say, no, because New York is in lockdown, you have to go to lockdown, when almost nobody has it and we live distant from each other all the time. So one rural country, sorry, country, one rural state that is getting hit fairly hard relative to its population is Idaho. If you read about Idaho right now. Why?

They actually have a fairly high, it seems like they've been very resistant to social distancing. There are people there who, there are elected officials who don't quite believe in it, who aren't doing it. There hasn't been a terribly coordinated response as far as I can tell. I mean, it seems like the way to do this and to try to mitigate is to really come in early and hard on social distancing, on shutting things down and doing it aggressively early. And I would agree that that's the type of thing that defies ideology. You could be a Republican governor or executive and do it well,

like Mike DeWine in Ohio has done. You can be a Democrat and do it well. You can be a socialist country and do it well. And you can be a more right-leaning country. Do you think Sweden is headed for disaster? I'm not an expert. I don't know. But my sense is from everything I've read, if you haven't taken this seriously up until now,

you are probably heading somewhere bad. Another country that hasn't been terribly aggressive, surprisingly, is Japan. There's a decent article in the new york times about that very recently japan has been slow to move to shut things down um unlike other other countries so they they could be headed somewhere too i don't know i mean it's very hard to predict with this stuff all you can do is judge and what's happened so far and uh all i would say so far you're looking at states that have handled this better. There are those who did the shutdowns earlier. California and Washington State have had less death and less carnage than New York. Some of that is density.

There's no doubt density plays a role, but density is in everything. Density in average age. And pollution. I'm looking at this. Idaho has 72 cases per 100,000 people, which is on par with Maryland, which is 90.

Ohio, which has big cities, is only at 44. Tennessee is only at 64. Idaho is pretty significant there. Yeah, they're there. And the thing that what the scary thing with this virus is, I do think it's going to end up hitting poorer, more rural parts of the country pretty hard in that it's going to come slow. We know this is going to be probably a year long process, not in terms of maybe New York can lift some of the shutdown protocols, you know, maybe in the next few months, we'll see.

But this is something, you know, this may have two waves, the Spanish flu in 1918 had a spring winter wave, and then came back in the fall. And winter again, it went away in the summer. So you're talking about a virus that could have multiple waves. And that's a scary thing too. And that's where the states who haven't taken it seriously so far may get hit very hard. And I'm thinking about the Southeast in particular, and these other rural states that so far are viewed as a New York problem, but you can't see coronavirus that way. It's a worldwide problem. Some places may get hit harder than others,

but everywhere is going to get hit to some extent, and it's really about taking it seriously. In terms of Trump, messaging does go a long way. Taking it seriously early, saying we're going into a national shutdown. I go back to when he was saying we're all going to be in church on Easter Sunday, and it just wasn't true. He didn't actually – he said he hoped. He hoped. I mean –

Yeah, but there – I would – and this hasn't been only a Trump problem. Other executives, too, failed in this way. You can't been only a Trump problem. Other executives too failed in this way. You can't speak in, I hope it can happen by now. You have to say, look, this is bad. It's going to be bad for a while. And we've all got to sit at home and stay inside. And Trump's tone has changed on this. I think because the Fauci's of the world have really drilled it into him.

Because Fauci also wrote that. He used to have to be very serious. By the way, but can we go back to be very serious. By the way, can we go back to where we started? By the way, these are my kids. They were very badly behaved tonight at Passover Seder

so they know that I'm mad at them. Yeah, so we made you an apology bracelet. You made me an apology bracelet? You really did? Aww. That's very sweet. I've never heard of

an apology bracelet. Aww. You made daddy cry. I've never heard of an apology bracelet. Aww. I haven't either. Mila's the one who made it. I don't know how to tie the bracelet. All right. Thank you very much. But in a normal world...

Wait, wait, wait. Slow down. What did they do? They just didn't shut up and they didn't listen. They kept getting up and they were... Mommy called me stupid in the bed. Who called you stupid? She said it by accident.

Oh, by accident. Someone's going to get in big trouble. I can't believe that you guys didn't behave. I don't believe that. Oh, no. Tell her. We did. You what?

We misbehaved. You misbehaved, yeah. What did you do? We talked by meeting the him. Do you kids like Passover better or Easter better? Easter. Hanukkah. Hanukkah was not one of the choices.

You get candy and you get to get the silly string thing. Okay, from now on for Passover, you get candy and silly string. And then you get to do the Easter. Jewish holidays. I just want to say, so, so, you know, I,

I don't, I mean, it's Trump personalities trying to put a positive spin on things. It's, it's, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,

I, I, I, I, I, But I have to say, sweetheart, be careful. I have to say that in a sane world, if Trump got X level of news coverage for that Easter quote, and we know it was huge, it will be 1,000 X the fact that the Times says that Cuomo is responsible for 80% of the deaths in New York. You know, like when I think of all the attention that that offhand Trump remark got, and I compare

it to what really matters about 80% of the deaths, I'm like, I see why people just tune out and watch Fox News. I get it. Like they said, you know, they just say that the media is not for me. They're not for me. Unless I'm on team hate everything Trump does They're just leading me by the nose I mean I'll just say this The Cuomo In that article

The Tom Friedman quote On the 50-80% I would have pushed that higher In the story or emphasized that a lot more Put it that way I don't know You know what you guys 50 to 80 percent i would have pushed that higher in the story or emphasize that a lot more put it that way i don't know you know what you guys i feel like you know cuomo might have made an error since the kids are there we'll say that made an error in the beginning and i'm not excusing that but he has been doing such a phenomenal job. It's all bedside manner.

Well, it's not just, but bedside manner, it's not just that, but bedside manner is also important, isn't it? Yes, it is. So I don't know, what is the value of decimating him in a New York Times piece? Like he's-

Because the New York Times is there to tell us the truth of what happened. But they did tell us the truth. They did today. They did today. But before that, the only person saying it was Ross. Honestly. Listen, I was trying to make this case to all my friends are liberals.

And I was trying to make this case. And I was sending like a National Review article, the market. There were a few articles. And they were just getting spat back in my face because the source was considered, you know, it was an ad hominem attack on the source rather than deal with the merits. And then when Ross's article came out, I said, look, this guy

writes for the nation, alright? And then all of a sudden they had to engage me on the conversation. And all of a sudden I was like, alright, let's have him on. But wait, so it's like... Is it all of a sudden or all of the sudden, I was like, all right, let's have him on. But wait, so it's like... Is it all of a sudden or all of the sudden? Huh?

Is it all of a sudden or all of the sudden? All of a sudden. Did I say all of the sudden? Because I wrote all of the sudden on Facebook recently, and then somebody corrected me and said, no, it's all of a sudden. It's all of a sudden. All of a sudden. Okay, all of us sudden. All of us sudden. Okay, we got to wrap it up.

We should mention, Noam, that one of the comedy seller comics... Vic Henley. He died this week, Vic Henley. Not of coronavirus. No, he died of a pulmonary embolism, which ironically is a lung-related thing, pulmonary, but I don't believe in his case

had anything to do with coronavirus. He died, as I understand it, he was fine up until the day before he died, and then he wound up in the ICU anyway. And Michael Che's grandmother died of coronavirus. Coronavirus, okay. And that really bothers me. How's Boris Johnson?

Huh? How's Boris Johnson doing? Well, I was saying, Hatem, our friend Hatem. So we have a friend who's been carrying around this briefcase thing, I wish I could remember what they're called, that keep his heart beating. For two years he's been carrying this and waiting for a transplant. He finally, he was not doing well, and he went to the hospital,

and finally a transplant came through, and they had to have him tested for coronavirus and the heart tested for coronavirus. They had to get a special dispensation from Washington. It was all kinds of things had to fall in place. They gave him the heart transplant. He's a week into his recovery. He's diagnosed with coronavirus.

Oh, God. He contracted in the transplant ward. But he seems to be doing okay. And they're giving him not hydroxychloroquine, but they're giving him the remdesivir, the Ebola drug. And they give it to him very early, which is when they say that if it works, that's when it would need to be, antivirals need to come

early. And I speak to him every day and he's okay. And his breathing is okay. And he's coughing a little bit, but I think he even said a little bit better yesterday than the day before. So he may pull through. It's a great story for a journalist, really, if he pulls through. Oh my God. Or just to cover it, it's about a heart transplant victim who got it in the war. Because it really shows, it made me very skeptical of all these protocols

that you can do. You can go out as long as you do the following things and you won't catch it. Well, if they can't manage it in the heart transplant wing, then they're not that bulletproof. You know, like it's hard to keep it.

By the way, Mr. Dorman, do you know that your president Trump owns stock in the company? Oh, come on. Hydrochloroquine. You know that? Hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine.

You know that? Yeah, I don't believe. Listen. You don't believe what? I'll tell you what I think about that. If it's true. It is true. Okay.

If it's true that Trump has real money in this company. Yeah. And that you can make the plausible case that that's why he's spoken fairly about the drug. That is a huge story of corruption. I get it. However, I own mutual funds and ETFs and whatever it is, and very few people know what are in these holdings. And unless he made some trades on it or whatever it is,

let me tell you something. The New York Times is not covering, correctly in my judgment, although very hypocritically, they're not covering these sexual allegations against Joe Biden. Now, those sexual allegations, hear me out, those sexual allegations of Joe Biden are corroborated by two people contemporaneously, her father and her brother and her friend, who probably saw it at the same time. And yet it's so serious that the Times doesn't feel they're ready to disseminate that information. The fact that Trump may have this stock somewhere

in his portfolio is a much weaker accusation than the accusation against Joe Biden. And it gets reduced and weaponized into bite-sized tweets, which just add to the horrible political situation. And I'm not trying to cover for the man. If it's true, it's true. I have a feeling it's not going to be true because so many of these stories go up in smoke.

Turns out he wasn't a Russian spy either. And I think that'd be a lot of money for the president to do that. And then he'd have to sell it. It's like, whatever. And also hydroxychloroquine is a generic drug that a lot of money for the president to do that. And then he'd have to sell it. It's like, whatever. And also hydroxychloroquine is a generic drug that a lot of companies make and the.

And every doctor that I see on TV has been taking this drug and Cuomo has spoken positively about the drug. So, you know, did you see the piece about it in the Washington Post? Listen, no, and I'll read it,

but don't jump to conclusions. What's it say? The real reason- The real reason Trump is obsessed with hydroxychloroquine. Is it- One of the most bizarre and disturbing aspects of President Trump's nightly press briefings on the coronavirus pandemic

is when he turns into a drug salesman. All right. Like I said, the Washington Post had columns about how Trump is a Russian asset, whatever it is. I am not... He'll never concede that I'm right.

Well, because I want... How much money does he have to have in this stock for you to tell me? He needs to be aware of it which would which number one and it needs to be i don't know it i would say it's got to be hundreds of like i i just i have trouble you probably own stock in that company as well if you have a mutual fund it's very like i mean maybe it's true i wouldn't put it past the guy. Okay, I'll take that. But I'm making a bigger point,

which is that they will jump the gun and report a very damaging story about him on slim, Manny, stop, please. On slim, on a few fragments of evidence that everybody knows can be perfectly explainable in the way I'm doing it. But if it's Biden, when they have more than a few fragments of evidence, they properly say, hold on a second, let's not jump to conclusions. This is a very serious activity. Let's just check it out.

Once we check it out, then we can risk reporting it. So let them check it out. Let them be the same to everyone. And if it's true, it might even be impeachable to tell you the truth. I don't know. I mean, did you read the Washington post article that you just cited? Yeah. Does it say that the real reason is financial? I don't think it says that. I thought it said that the real reason in their estimation was to save his presidency. So he gets credit if the drug works. And that he has a financial stake in the company. Wait, everybody stop for a second. Mila, can I ask a question? No one stop talking for a second.

Mila? What's it like to have your dad at home all the time? It's great. Oh, man. You better. Oh, man. You better... You better get a slap. Oh, mommy would. Do you miss school, or would you rather be home,

or would you rather be in school? The thing is, whenever I'm at school, I always say I'd rather be homeschooled, but now since I'm actually homeschooled, I actually kind of miss regular school. I'll bet you do. Well, the glass is always green. Partying home all the time and not seeing your friends probably. The thing is, is like I watch YouTube and I usually don't think about the coronavirus or anything.

I don't think they're in quarantine. And then once I sit down and realize I haven't been going outside and I really think about it, it's kind of amazing. Yeah. You shouldn't think about it too much. You don't have to worry about that stuff. That's what we're here for. Okay, let's leave on this.

Well, does Addy, I mean, I did it again. Does Ross have any thoughts about hydroxy? Wait, I want to leave on this screenshot from April 7th. What screenshot? Washington Post. Trump's promotion of hydroxychloroquine is almost certainly about politics, not profits. At least not his profits.

All right, Ferriel. So all I'm saying is just breathe. Is that Bob DiBuono, that picture? Philip Bump. No. Maybe Ross knows where Philip Bump, no. Maybe Ross knows where Philip Bump is coming from. He's one of their

White House reporters. He's not a columnist. So let Ross weigh in here. What do you think? It's a good question. I don't know a ton about, in terms of the drugs effectiveness, truthfully, I don't know a ton about it. It's an uh truthfully i don't know a ton about it um

it's an issue if he's making a profit it's also true there is a nuance here with mutual funds so um it's a story i i need to really i think do a bit more research to have like a hard take on i would say on its face yes it's a bad it's a bad look Trump has had conflict of interest throughout his presidency, probably violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution, going way back to kind of his foreign holdings. So he definitely, as president, has created conflicts of interest. On this particular matter, it's something I would have to do a bit more research on. I found the research. There's some nuance on if it's a mutual fund, how much money it is. Is it something he's aware of? By the way, everybody's got to stop. Everybody's got to stop because I have to read it.

Honestly, I knew this all along, and I didn't. The problem with looking for smoking guns, of course, is that one tends to see a lot of gun-shaped objects as guns and a lot of wisps as smokes. In this case, the Times story mentions Trump's personal stake in the sixth paragraph of the story titled, Trump's aggressive advocacy suggests that the paper's own reporters don't really think that the motivation was financial. From key investment, Trump profits on promoting coronavirus drug is a much catchier story, but it's not reinforced by the data. At issue is a fund of a firm called Dodging Cox, called cleverly enough the Dodging Cox International Stock Fund. Wait

for it. Trump's personal financial disclosure indicates that he holds shares. That said, only 3.3% of the fund's holdings are in that company. What's more, Trump's disclosure filed in May shows that the three trusts each hold between $1,000 and $15,000 in the fund. In other words, Trump's stake in each trust is between $33 and $400. So come on now. All right. Are you going to learn your lesson now? Smaller potatoes.

Yeah. I mean, it's not a story I've myself promoted or done a lot of research on. So, yeah. that I've myself promoted or done a lot of research on. So yeah, I mean, there's evidence for, there are many things in terms of Trump corruption you can go after. This may not be the thread that you latch onto. There are other things. But yeah, that was my sense of it.

Again, I'd like to do a little more research, but if it's a mutual fund i the amount of money you know i it's not perhaps not the most damning thing also it's certainly possible okay promote a drug because one believes in the drug and it so happens one also stands to profit but i but it's something this and you guys guys, I think you're missing the point. No, we get it. It's not financially motivated. The real point of this is the opposite, which is that what is going wrong in our media, where clearly, if this is a $33 to $400 holding, that is not the reason he's doing this, clearly. I mean, obviously., yet this is a story that is spreading like a virus, not on,

you know, Alex Jones, but through major newspapers and their reporters tweeting it when it can't possibly be true. And they're doing tremendous damage to their credibility. Obviously, the people who hate Trump don't care what they say and they'll never leave them. Say anything you want. But to swing voters and right, this is going to get Trump reelected. They are making it so that people like I, like me, my eyes glaze over

when I hear these stories about Trump, not because I believe anything great about Trump. It's just how many times you're going to tell me these bullshit stories? How many reporters are going to tweet this nonsense and have to walk it back? I mean, how does the New York Times get involved with reporting a story implying that Trump is corrupt here when it's $33 to $400? Have they lost everything about their ethics? You can't defend it. What is a dodging cock? Dodge and cocks.

That's the name of the mutual fund. All right, on that note, listen, Ross, you're a really good guest and we should get you on again if you want, if it wasn't too painful. Yeah, no, this was good. I had a lot of fun with this. This was a very, very, very

non-comedy seller oriented episode. I hope the listeners enjoyed it. And when the comedy seller opens up again, as long as you have a mask, I'd love to meet you in person. Sounds good. I will come with a mask. We'll do that.

And sanitizer. I don't know if I'd call him a kid necessarily, but he's 30 years old, this guy. Ross? Made it to 30. Very young. A bit of a wonder, perhaps. He's also a novelist.

He wrote Demolition... Night, yeah. Demolition Night. Night, yeah. Yes, yes, I did. Which is a thriller or something? No, it's literary fiction with some science fiction elements i would say kind of very soft sci-fi uh literary fiction uh uh

sort of a satire of uh technology and uh our you know sort of google and and facebook obsessed world and and also it facilitates between the 1970s and the near future. So, you know, something of a satire of a lot of the crap we deal with every day, you know, there's some violence in there, some time travel, but, you know, also a work of literary fiction as well. So, you know into like Ray Bradbury, Thomas Pynchon, Octavia Butler, those sort of writers. That's impressive.

You know the writer Harry Enten from CNN? I know of Harry through Twitter. Yeah, I do. So Harry's a really good friend of mine and of the show. Maybe someday you guys... Harry comes to the comedy teller for free food a lot okay i really i like free food so i'll take free food there's there's

another guy you should probably you probably i i know you'll disagree with him but he's he's also very young and very impressive his name is colman hughes um i don't know i don't know him what's that oh i don't know him who is he google? Google him. Coleman Hughes. He's a, he's not, he's not conservative. Actually, he's actually pretty liberal, but he's,

he's, he's a, he's a, a, a contrarian on racial issues. He's black. Okay. And he's just graduating from Columbia this year and he's already writing for

Colette, Wall Street Journal, a bunch of other important publications. You should look him up. I'd like you to meet him. Yeah, I definitely will. I enjoy debate. I enjoy debate. I have conservative

friends, so I don't shy away from that stuff. So, curious to read his stuff. I said that Harry Anton gets to eat for free at the Comedy Cellar doesn't necessarily mean that you will. It's fair. I may have to earn it. Harry's got a bigger

following than me, so maybe he can have the free food. I'll work my way there. You're known as kind of a guy he likes to surround himself with intellectuals. I like smart people who like to argue without but don't

enjoy it as a bonding thing in a way as opposed to a nasty thing. Somebody sent me a clip of Tracy Morgan on I think it was a Today show talking about being in quarantine did you see that Noam? Howard Stern show

we'll play it on Saturday it was tremendous it was on Stern A Howard Stern show. We'll play it on Saturday. It was tremendous. It was on Stern. You mean Stern aired it? Yeah. But it wasn't, the clip is from the Today Show, I think. Oh, no, Stern was interviewing him.

Gentlemen, we got to wrap it up. At 9.30, I had to be upstairs reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Wait a second, Ross, where can everybody follow you? Where can they find you? My Twitter handle, it's just at Ross Barkin. So R-O-S-S-B-A-R-K-A-N,

not I-N like Ellen Barkin, but Barkin like myself. Follow me on Twitter. My website, Ross Barkin. Again, my name, rossbarkin.com.

Column in the Guardian and in The Nation. I contribute to other outlets as well. Columbia Journalism Review, New York Magazine. Are you a commie? Sorry? Are you a commie? My commie? I would say I'm a socialist.

I wouldn't say I'm a communist. All right. I'd say I'm a socialist. You would support Sam? Stern might have played a clip, but the clip I'm talking about isist Stern might have aired it Stern might have played a clip but the clip I'm talking about is from the Today Show I gotta take my kids goodnight everybody

Ross and the Paws are meeting you this was fun happy Passover happy Passover Dan say where they can follow us podcast at comedySeller.com We haven't had comments In a while

We'd like your comments And this episode was a very heavy Heavy heavy Serious non-comedy related episode So please let us know what you think about it And follow us on Instagram On Saturday we're having Kyle Dunnigan A Instagram celebrity of sorts.

So it'll be a little lighter, I think. And you can follow us on Instagram at livefromthetable. And we'll see you next time. Thank you, Ross Barker. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Bye-bye.