The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - The Greatest Presidential Failure in American History

Episode Date: May 25, 2020

The Greatest Presidential Failure in American History with Bulwark Editor, Jonathan V. Last

Okay, go. Okay, good evening everybody. Welcome to Live from the Table, the Comedy Cellar podcast, the fading memory of a nightclub we once had that perhaps will reopen again someday. I'm here as always with former comedian Dan Natterman. That's right. Well, I've done some shows on Zoom, so I'm not quite a former comedian, but it could go that way. Probably doing some sort of a job retraining program now.

And Perry Lash and Brand, our producer, and our guest of honor, Jonathan V. Last. Perry, I left the V out of your introduction, but as I understand it, the V is always in there. Jonathan V. Last is the executive editor of The Bulwark, which is a never, I'd say it's a never Trump conservative website, correct? Is that a fair way to describe it? Yeah, I mean, well, that's how we get described anyway, whether it's fair or not. So we might as well just roll with it, right? Well, as I hedged on it, I didn't want you to think it was pejorative,

but that is the first thing that pops into my mind, so that's the way I put it. But you feel free to clarify. I didn't mean it as a slight at all. No, no. I'm like four sheets to the wind already, so I'm kidding. Oh, okay. No, I want to be.

Executive editor of the Bulwark and author of some books, which no one needs to punish themselves while they're under house arrest. That's a terrible thing to say. His podcast is called The Sub Beacon and he's a man who failed, rejected from 20 medical schools. Is that what you told me? 23, 23.

It's better that way because it's like one sixth of all the medical schools in the continental US. You didn't want to go the Mexico or Nicaragua or Aruba route where people go overseas to study medicine? You know, you laugh about it,

but actually my GPA and test scores were actually in the exact sweet spot for Grenada. And so as, you know, my senior year of college, I'm getting rejection letter after rejection letter in my stupid little mailbox every day. I'm also getting with them brochures from the Grenada medical schools saying, come here, we'll take you. And it was, where did you go on to Brett?

Johns Hopkins down in Baltimore. Okay. So let's, let's just take a little detour here because this is interesting to me as a parent and as someone who was, you know, I know the answer to your question though. What's the answer? Mental illness. No, no.

So the question is um so what do you account well what is the question the question is how did he go from johns hopkins to not being able to get into any medical school no that's not my question my question is how does one obviously um you went to a good undergraduate school and then you kind of fucked off, I guess. You never put together credentials that match what we presume is your intellect, considering what you've become since then. And I guess in a certain way, it's a cousin of being a late bloomer or something, correct? I mean, the way I like to think about it is that I think of it as a proof of concept for America's health care system, which is that we have a complex screening process put in place to keep people like me from becoming doctors. And that's, you know, the truth is I'm not even bitter about it anymore. I'm happy to have much smarter people than I am, like make decisions that are life and death. And so I just sort of, you know, I was at loose ends when I was 22 and I decided, well,

I'll just go into journalism because there are, there is no MCAT for journalism. They'll let anybody do this. Why is it you didn't have the brain power to get decent grades and decent MCATs? Well, I mean, somebody got screwed up somewhere. Either I fooled the admissions people at Hopkins on the way in, or, uh, I, I mean would tell people, look, you know, I'm sure everybody who works at like, you know, the Brookings Institution is very bright and everything,

but the smartest guy at the best think tank in Washington, D.C. is not as smart as like the guy who got in last to the worst medical school in America. You see, that hasn't been, that's not how I perceive things. Really? I see the smartest people as mathematicians astrophysicists research scientists i mean who have computer scientists at a high level whoever you know is involved in inventing things like cellular technology or the internet

doctors to me are mid i wouldn't say mid-level intellects, but I would say the average, I don't find overwhelmingly impressive compared to the professions I just named. Well, but compared to journalists? Well, maybe compared to journalists. Yeah, because you don't think. Okay, but you have in the elite circles of, I mean, you, you have made a name. Look behind me. I'm talking to you from a closet. But no, you're being humble because of the people that like you're, you're, you work with Bill Crystal who love him or hate him is,

is obviously an extremely bright man who can quote, quote, quote Shakespeare. And, and, and, you know, just the amount of quotes that he has in his articles and stuff. I'm like, where does he get these from? Like, is he really pulling them up out of his head, which is a talent all in itself. So you're not a mid-level journalist working at, you know, the reporter dispatcher.

You're working with the top of the top. You're working with the intellectuals. You're not working with the journalists. Yeah, we just fast forwarded through a whole decade of my therapy right here on the show. It's great. No, I, believe me, I am now very proud of where I am with myself. And I do, you know, I've come to terms. I feel like I've made it. I got to, you know, pick up papers for David Brooks once upon a time. And Tucker Carlson and I are both like, I've, you know, I may not be at the top of the profession, but like, I'm friends with all the people who are.

Now, Tucker Carlson is, I'm sorry, Tucker Carlson is an interesting story. This is really, believe me, I wanted to, really wanted to talk to you about the COVID stuff, but I'm, I'm really taken with you. And this is so interesting to me. So Tucker Carlson was a major writer for the Weekly Standard, which you wrote for. One of the best writers of his generation in journalism, I think. I think of the people in our business basically by class, like a little five or 10 year tranches.

And I think Tucker was either the best or like top two, top three at writing. I've actually never forgiven him for going whole hog into television because I miss reading his stuff so much. Well, told me recently that his he has a book out that his book was excellently written someone who doesn't necessarily agree with him just commented on the the quality of his writing but now he's and and I suppose you guys were friendly at the time correct I mean uh still are still are love him and he's gone full blown pro-Trump, almost in a way, although I agree with him on a lot of things,

almost, I was watching him at the night and I said, well, this man is almost dangerous here because he's so influential and he's speaking with such authority about issues that he should be speaking with more humility about and and people are following him and um and almost sowing the seeds of civil disobedience now and he's a big part of that does that worry you uh so i don't watch your show uh and which isn't that i don't

watch any cable news and i i I, I abhor cable news. I won't even go on cable news anymore. Like I decided like five or six years ago, like I'm out. Like this whole thing is, is bad. TV corrupts everything it touches. And Tucker's politics are not my politics, but he is a genuinely wonderful,

wonderful human being. And he's always been a great friend to me. I think I've always been a good friend to him. Like he's deeply important. I mean, I mean, I'm not even kidding when I say we have four kids, like in some large part because of like advice Tucker gave me when I was, you know, 30 years old and talking about family life and stuff like this. So I just, I don't know. I mean, there are a lot of people who complain about tucker but i'm not ever going to be one of them because he's my boy i won't put you on the spot i just but uh it is a well the other side of what you're saying that i like and actually to be

honest i i don't get that feeling a lot of the times from from the bulwark is a kind of warmth towards people you disagree with and um i guess the idea that someone you disagree with could actually be anything other than stupid that one of the things that i've been disappointed with not from you really but from just the tenor of the bulwark and crystals tweets often is how I, like sometimes if I don't agree with them, I must be a total idiot. I must be the stupidest guy in the world for me not to think that, you know, what's the most recent thing like the Flynn stuff.

Now I'm not a deep stater or anything like that, but yeah, I'm kind of suspicious about writing an email to oneself on the day of the inauguration of the next president and the FBI monitoring the phone calls of the incoming defense secretary and never telling a national security advisor and never telling the incoming president they thought that something was up. You know what I'm getting at, right? But if you read like the articles that are coming out in the bulwark now, it's like, this is the dumbest thing ever

and only a crazy conspiracy theorist like Tucker Carlson, who's way into this, would ever even pause here to wonder, did something go on here that maybe shouldn't have? I don't know if you have any comments on all that. Not really.

I mean, I think our stuff speaks for itself. You don't like it, you don't like it. Well, what do you think about this Flynn thing then? So, my life is busy enough that there are whole classes of stories that I simply happen and I never even

look at them because I know that in order to understand anything about them you have to pour hours and hours and hours into reading, reporting, etc., etc. Funnily enough, the Obamacare passage back in, what was that? 20, Oh, 2009 was one of the, like I never read a thing about the ACA outside of what was in the New York

Times because it was too complicated. And I was never going to get a competitive advantage to be able to write anything on that topic myself. And so I just beavered away at the stuff I was writing about. Flynn is one of those things as well. The Flynn story will be absolutely totally forgotten like nine days from now to get into the weeds and fighting about something that is at best a sideshow. I just have no interest in it. There are plenty of people who do have interest in it and God bless them. I'm much more interested right now in like following the epidemiology of the COVID stuff, which is where I pour my resources into as a writer. So let's go to COVID. I would just say this. I kind of agree with you. For a long time,

people were coming about this Flynn story and I'm like I don't know I'm just not that interested in it it was only after I saw that it was becoming um something that people were bludgeoned with that I began to say well you know I looked into it a little bit and I'm like well you know this this seems like it could be something here just to be very quick just so you know um I just feel like. Is he your brother? Have I stumbled into like, actually he's my brother and you guys have totally fucked him on this. Just so you know, cause I want to put in your head that where I'm coming from on that.

So just so you kind of size me up. I think that the truth of that whole matter was that they were scared shitless that Trump was compromised and everything they did was in a kind of a panic, patriotic panic to try to get to the bottom of it as quickly as they could. I don't believe any of that deep state stuff. I don't believe it was political because the political, they could have leaked all sorts of stuff prior and Comey would have never reopened the Hillary case if he was trying to make sure that, that she won. So I, I think that, that, that kind of, I think that explains it all,

but I think the rule book just wasn't sufficient to deal with the threat that they were facing, which was catastrophic if it was true, and I'm sure they did probably bend some rules. And also, this is the type of thing that I think precisely zero votes will be determined

in November based on the Flynn stuff. These stories are important in their own, not merits because truth is important uh but there's only so many hours in a day and when you write for a living like i do like you you got to focus on the stuff where you know you are actually doing your own writing and reporting i guess that's one quick question before we get into covid it has because i still am a little bit confused. I would have thought that anybody smart enough to get into Hopkins could have been in medical school. Either I'm wrong about that, or as I stated earlier, you had some sort of mental breakdown in college and weren't able to perform at the level that you performed at in high school, maybe you were involved with drugs and alcohol.

Danny Malone. Or I'm just wrong about anybody that's smart enough to get into Hopkins. Or maybe you got into Hopkins because your family had money. Danny Malone. It wasn't that. I would say, I mean, we could do 15 minutes on medical school admissions if you really care about it. But it actually turns out, so I as a high school senior just thought again,

anybody who gets into a top 10 undergrad has like a fast pass into medical school. And that's not true. It's something like 10% of, if you are within the universe of pre-meds in your class at any elite university, at best, about 10% of you are going to get into medical school. All right. I know that I stand corrected. All right. You wrote an article that seems quaint already, March 30th, which is not that long ago, saying

COVID has killed more Americans than 9-11, right? So that's when it was 3,000. Now we're at around 100,000. Is that correct? I don't think we're there yet. But remember, that's just the official number. A year from now, once people have gone through all the actual death certificates and all that, we're going to discover that it's somewhere between 20 and 80% higher than we think right now. So we're at 97,249. If my, if my very simple, very quick Google search didn't get me to read the wrong number.

I know a guy, he got into like the Yukon night medical program. Believe me, he was no genius. So, so looking back on it now, what were the key events? If, if we could, if we could play the whole thing over starting from the end of February, what could we have done differently? And what, how big an impact would it have had in your opinion? I mean, there are a lot of things that could have been done differently.

The single biggest was testing. And this is why, I mean, I get like, I turn into a crazy person about all this stuff because I happen to know quite a lot about epidemiology. Back when I was undergrad I spent time working in summers in offices of outcomes management at a couple of different medical schools. The key in infectious diseases when you have an outbreak is you have to have the capacity to test people and test them at really high volumes and with very fast processing times. A test that you send away to a lab and get the results back two weeks later is essentially useless. You have to be able to test them on site and get the results right away

or the next day. The extent to which the federal government and you can place, depending on where you want, you could blame the CDC, you could blame the FDA. All of these places fall under the executive branch, though. So, you know, the president sits at the head of all of this. And by late January, it seems to me that any semi-competent president would have thought that the only thing in the entire universe that mattered was stockpiling tests and, you know, having a single standardized test that everybody in America was going to use and just stockpiling those by the million. And we had nothing like that. The, you know, the CDC decided they were not going to use tests that were being used in Europe and Asia. They were going to develop their own test. The FDA was not allowing private testing companies to come up with their own. The test the CDC actually made didn't work very well. We didn't have very many of them. And what this meant is, you know, what you want to be doing, you know, the best thing you can do is what they call surveillance, which is when you are,

it's think of it like polling, but for diseases. So you are going in and you are taking samples from giant swaths of the population just randomly to get a sense of what the true level of the bug is. And we should have been doing that by March, and we still aren't doing it and probably won't even have the capability of doing it until the end of the summer. So stockpiling tests is the single biggest thing. If we had done that, everything would have been different. When you look at the people who sort of do historically the war gaming for outbreaks, one of the things that there was a great piece in The Atlantic about this very early on. And one epidemiologist said, what we never planned for, the variable we never planned

for was that the U.S. government wouldn't bother to stockpile tests. You know, we planned for outbreaks. We planned for things like the novel coronavirus. We didn't plan for a government response, which refused to do the basic blocking and tackling of disease management. Okay. So let's, let's handle both the political and the, and the practical. So to what extent, so you said the CDC wanted their own test. I can imagine the headlines if Trump had pushed back on that. that trump defies on cdc about tests whatever is we don't we don't we don't have any visibility into which part of the cdc wanted or not we don't know if this was

something from political point i mean it it is no by now probably wouldn't we would leave no no no we're not we're not going to know any of we're not going to know any of the real details on this stuff until we're in after action reports because we're still all in the fog of war. I'm sure you saw the Atlantic piece like three days ago, how the CDC is actually conflating test reporting. Did you see that two days ago? When they're putting out the numbers of tests that they're doing, they're actually conflating the virology reports with the serology reports. So, which is the, you know, have you ever had it? Do you have the antibodies versus do you have it right now? They're, they're just mixing the numbers together. So, I was going to say, so, cause you had written, I looked some stuff up

today and you had written about, you were very on top of this Ebola thing. Yes. I'm a total nerd for infectious diseases because again, my major major is molecular biology. I actually know something about this stuff that most journalists don't. You had written a scathing article about the CDC and the WHO and how incompetent they were when it came to the response to Ebola. Yes. And my gut is not that Obama was responsible for that, or it's hard for me to understand. I compared it at one time. I don't know if it was not fair or not.

It's like, it's like blaming Reagan for the Challenger disaster. I mean, at the point where something is handled by NASA, we, we really don't think the president is going to be, um, looking over the shoulders and second guessing the recommendations of, of the smartest people in the world, as you say, doctors are. So something really went wrong. I find it hard to believe that this was a presidential blunder. I, I'm, but maybe I'm wrong. I just find it hard to believe that. If,

if the president wasn't sitting on top of this as the most important thing and the thing that he was riding people's asses on from the sun up in the morning to sundown in the night, then that itself is a gigantic failure. Okay, so now we are... Of course, Japan did almost no testing

and they have one of the lowest levels. Countries like... I'm looking at the list that are higher than us, Belgium, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland is neck and neck with us. These are all pretty competent states, right? What I'm getting at is that I don't see the relationship between the countries that tested and the outcomes. And I also hear now that we have trouble getting people to even take the tests. We have more tests.

Cuomo is, I think today is saying that we have more capacity than we're able to get people to come and take the tests. So how confident are you that these tests could have actually. So the key is you, you need to know early, right? I mean,

the whole, the whole ball game is you have to get ahead of the virus because once the virus becomes enmeshed in the population, it is impossible to stamp it out. Then it becomes like the flu, right? It's just a thing that moves around. And what you hope for is to wind up being able to manage it. You guys still there?

Yeah, I'm here. Yeah. So you need to be able to test at a large scale early. And if you look at where we were relative to just about every other industrialized country for the first 12 weeks of the outbreak, we lagged way, way behind. We're doing about 400,000 tests a day now, which is good. The people who I trust on this seem to think that we need the capacity to do about a million, but we're actually moving in the right direction now. The capacity is ramping back up. We lag way, way behind, yet in the end, our results just don't seem to be that different. And then of course, at the same time, you have to subtract from these stats,

or maybe you have to subtract from these stats, the deaths which have been attributed to other mistakes, like the New York Times has blamed Governor Cuomo for, what was it, 50 to 80% of the deaths could have been avoided by uh shutting down a week earlier so you could have potentially had 50 to 80 percent of the new york and new jersey and don't forget that fueled the rest of the country to uh avoided which would have had america way out performing other western countries without one of the without having ever ramped up with tests you know well but so one of the reasons people were reluctant to shut down earlier was because they didn't understand the full extent to which the virus had infiltrated the population, right? I mean, if you had tried to shut everything down two weeks ahead of when we did, imagine the crazy outcry, right? How can you do this? People were still fighting when we did it. So the thing with if you shut down the country on January 29th, right, it would have done nothing. It was too early, right? You're shutting them down because the virus hasn't even gotten here yet. And all you do then is get you start the economic collapse and everybody gets strung out. And by the time the virus gets here, people want a jailbreak.

The whole point is you have to time them at the right time. And the testing is what gives you the visibility on how to time it effectively. But New York was late shutting down. We had hundreds of deaths already. Ohio shut down before us when they had 15 as opposed to our hundreds. San Francisco was shutting down. We saw what was going on in Wuhan. We saw what was going on in Italy. I was screaming and fighting with my local

school boards to shut the school down. I was fighting with my lawyers that I should be able to shut my business down earlier. They weren't just, I mean, they could extrapolate some level of the virus based on the data they have. We're having X number of deaths. We know from China, we know from the countries that do test, how much virus we must have out there in order to generate 300 deaths. I mean, so I don't see the excuse. They needed to actually have the test to show them what they could calculate without the tests.

They had the deaths. The deaths, I mean, I could do the algebra. I could take the CFR of other countries where they had a career or whatever it is. And I could have told you basically how many cases there must be in New York right now in order to have this number of deaths. And still they didn't shut down.

And then still they dumped everybody into the nursing homes. I mean, I don't know. What am I missing? I mean, I've been fighting this battle for a long time. Things are coming around to my way of thinking a little bit. I've been railing against the governor since nobody was railing against the governor.

Perriol and Dan will tell you. I mean, I couldn't believe it that they weren't shutting down Yasha Mank. You saw Yashaasha mount's article as in the atlantic um where he was saying uh cancel everything now he kind of had a hashtag yeah i was very i was very persuaded by those articles i sent them to my local um school superintendent and he looked at me like i was a crank you know well i mean you had the president united states who was basically cheerleading

half the country into believing it was all a hoax at the same time well yeah well i don't know if he's having it well yeah no i don't think i don't think he said it was a hoax i think he said that the i mean i think it's going to go with their 15 15 people dead it's going to go down to zero and come april it'll disappear like a miracle yes he cheerleaded Cuomo cheerleaded de Blasio cheerleaded. At some point. Great. Let's not vote for any of them. No, no, no. But this is the thing. This is the key point. And Fauci was making positive comments and there was,

there was a good period of time. Let's vote against all of them. But this is my point. There was, there came a date around March 7th, somewhere around them. Top of my head where that didn't fly anymore. We knew better. There came a date when I'm sure it was apparent to you, and it was apparent to me, and it was apparent to the governor of Ohio, and it was apparent to London Breed in San Francisco, that whatever people have been saying before, no, this is real, and it's serious. And then about 10

or 14 days passed before New York reacted to it. And the reasons we were given for not reacting, where are these kids going to get their lunches, you know, all'm very, very resentful. I don't want to let the president off the hook in the slightest. I'm very, very resentful of the president for sowing civil disobedience right now. I mean, I think it's outrageous that he's pretending to back up what his medical policy is while tweeting out free Michigan, this kind of thing. That's just abhorrent as far as I'm concerned. But I also don't want to blame him for all the deaths in New York when in real time, I was trying to get the guy who was responsible for making the decisions in New York to act. And I was called a fear monger. So do you want to write a piece for me

about de Blasio? Because I've actually been shot. I've been looking around to try to find somebody who is deep in the weeds on this stuff in New York City to write about what de Blasio did. No, this could be a big chance. If you could promise me that the health department will not put a proctological exam into my kitchen after I write that article, I'll write it. I can't promise you that.

But I'm 100% serious, though, because de Blasio is a... Has there been... I am from New Jersey, and so I officially hate New York. I read that you were born in Camden, of all places. Hey, it's easy with a hate New York. Who the hell is born in Camden now? This guy. This guy.

Are you in Jersey right now? No, I'm in North Carolina right now. I've been in the diaspora from Jersey for forever. I miss it so much. Every time we go back to Jersey to see my wife's parents, I think I can't wait to move back here someday. God, I love Jersey so much. By the way, the guy behind me is a lead singer of the band Snow Patrol.

I thought he looked a bit like you. So I put his picture up. Particularly good resolution, but you can research afterwards. Anyway, getting back. Dr. Last. I'll call you that. No no this could be no like a dream i'll just close my eyes and we'll jury it is about de blasio you said you but no one's looking for money because his comedy club is you know what it is in the middle of a thought about de blasio go ahead you're gonna write an article no no no what i was gonna ask you is has there been a worse mayor in your lifetimes? Is he worse than Dinkins?

Yes. Beryl doesn't even think. She's like, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm a born and bred lifelong New Yorker, and I fancy myself quite left of most. I'm not informed enough on these things to go as far as to say who's the worst. I know that everybody thought Dinkins sucked.

They probably did in that case. You know, I just go by what people say. It's a tough comparison because, in my opinion, because prior to de Blasio, we had 20 years of excellent governance in New York. And the wheels don't come off the wagon so quickly. of excellent governance in New York. And the wheels don't come off the wagon so quickly. So New York had a lot of inertia and kind of has been thriving throughout de Blasio without any real noticeable, like if I didn't know who the mayor was,

I couldn't really go outside New York City and say, look how things have changed since de blasio is mayor but i can't squeegee man don't a little bit coming back but i can't remember um anybody as dumb as de blasio and it's so embarrassing but dinkins you know he presided over crown heights and just kind of poor guy the crack epidemic was was was blowing out, blowing up at the time he was mayor to what extent he could have done something. I don't know. New York, I guess what I'm saying is that New York was much worse to live in under

Dinkins. Oh, sure. No, New York was worse in the seventies, right? And de Blasio, New York's been quite pleasant under de Blasio. No, it hasn't. We argue about this all the time because I'm the one riding. I mean, I ride, I've been riding around the subway since I was 14 years old. And I can tell you that I have not seen things this bad in a very long time. Oh, she would know. I wouldn't take the subway, but yeah.

He wouldn't dare step foot on the subway. Who are the other candidates? I take the subway quite a bit and have not noticed any deterioration in the subway. At least that's what I've noticed. But I take certain subway lines that maybe are not as affected as the ones that you take. You don't see homeless people everywhere, shuttered storefronts. I mean, isn't this- I'm talking about the subway shutters. I'm talking about all of New York City under de Blasio.

Well, I don't know if you can blame it for shuttered storefronts. Anyway, I don't like the mayor. He handled this crisis terribly. Yes. like the mayor he handled this crisis terribly and um yes although i was going to the gym on like march 15th that was amazing wasn't it it's stunning it's stunning well that and then he's like oh i just wanted to say goodbye to my workout buddies send him a text and and that's kind of my point like by the time he did that whatever whatever anybody had told us about don't

worry about this you know this was all news anybody had told us about don't worry about this, you know, this was all news already. We knew this was something to worry about. And I don't know what the consequences were, but on the other hand, I have to say the buck stops with the governor more than the mayor in a place like New York. And there's been a hands-off on Cuomo. I mean, this nursing home thing I've been Googling around and I, I don't want to, I shouldn't say, I mean, I will put you on the spot a I mean, this nursing home thing, I've been Googling around and I don't want to, I shouldn't say, I mean, I will put you on the spot a little bit, but it's not my,

that's not the point of this. But even in the bulwark, they haven't complained about Cuomo and his nursing home thing. And- Want to write a piece for me about it? No. He doesn't have a health department to send after you. Oh, maybe I would. But I mean, I'm not, I don't have the expertise to write it, but I'm just like, he told the nursing homes, they couldn't turn away anybody that had COVID. And you would think, now maybe he has a good answer to that. Honestly, sometimes when the press doesn't ask tough questions, they're not doing the candidate or the leader any favors because sometimes the tough questions expose

i mean it's like a fastball over the plate so maybe he does have an answer and i'll be unfair to him but they don't ask him about it they do not ask him about it and thousands have died jonathan when you say write a piece for you you mean in on your blog no on the bulwark or your blog i don't know the bulwark i mean your blog, I don't know. The Bulwark, I mean? Yeah. Does that pay anything? What are you, his agent now? Well, I don't know him. We'll talk about that offline.

We have different fees for different pairs of writers. I don't care if I get paid. I'm a journalist. This could be your way to make money whilst the club is not operating. I will tell you this. When the ventilator crisis to make money whilst the club is not operating. I will tell you this.

When the ventilator crisis appeared to be happening, and you remember what I did? I started doing a lot of research on ventilators. Deep dive. A deep dive on ventilators very, very early on. And I wrote to my friends, you know what? From what I can tell, once you get on a ventilator, you're probably going to die anyway. They had sold this ventilator issue to us, like this was going to be the difference between life and death. And actually, I was earlier saying, it doesn't look like it would save many lives. And I feel like they free up pretty quickly because people die pretty quickly on them. And sure enough, that, by the way, I was ready to blame Trump on, not just for the fact that they didn't stock up on ventilators,

which is a common sense kind of thing that you wouldn't need a doctor to do, but also that nobody checked the surplus to make sure they were in good working order. Because apparently when they first started pulling these things out, they had cobwebs all over them. Nobody had even gone to do a diagnostic on them. But with Trump's dumb luck, he made him need the ventilators, right? So isn't it the case that they're also saying that maybe ventilators killed people in certain cases?

They, yeah, they have said that. You'd be better off flipping them on their stomach. Jesus Christ. Why are you saying Jesus Christ? It's just such a horrible image. You're right. I mean, you're right. That is true. I just read Christ? It's just such a horrible image. You're right. I mean, you're right. That is true. I just read it. You consider that a horrible image. I wasn't quoting a chapter from your last book. It's pornography. So let's get to the last thing.

We are big, at least we, I say we. I think I've convinced my co-host that masks are a huge part of this solution here. I believe much more than testing, masks are the only way out of this. I'm not even sure you can get people to go get tested or what you can do with the information once they are tested. But I feel like if everybody would wear a mask, there's data that says we could bring the R-naught below one and ride this out until there's a vaccine. And it doesn't seem like it's a lot to ask. What are your thoughts on that, Mr. Last? So I've written about this a lot. So there is some dispute in literature about how effective masks are in stopping spread. You know, is it 20%? Is it 80%? Is it 85%? There is no dispute though, that it, that it is something right.

And so when you're fighting infectious disease, any, any place where you have low hanging fruit like that, that is essentially free in terms of how, you know, what it costs to do and be what it means in terms of modifying people's behavior. You just take it and bank it. Right. I mean, you know, if it was 10%, we would take it and bank it and say, great. And the weirdness of people on the mask stuff is again, it's, this is a total Trumpian thing. If Trump had on day one said, everybody should be wearing the masks,

then there would be no counter movement, right? I mean, the people who are now all dug in on, I will not wear that slave mask. None of them would do this because they're all Trump cultists anyway, and they'll do whatever he tells them to do. It's insane. And by the same token though, there's a little bit,

there are limits to this. And one of the things I try to talk about is, you know, you're never going to bring things to 100%, right? You can't stop transmission 100%. What you want to do is you want to bank all of the low hanging fruit, and then see for the next marginal gains, how much of a pain in the ass do you have to be with people? And so like, you know, when you're driving in a car by yourself, you don't need to wear a mask. If you were standing six feet away from your neighbor and chit-chatting for a minute and a half, you don't need to wear a mask. If you are running, out running down a path, you are not going to get somebody because there are, you know, so you need

an infectious dose of the virus particles. These things disperse reasonably quickly when you're outdoors, et cetera, et cetera. The truth is, even in a store, that's a much closer case. You know, that's an edge case. I can see arguments both ways. But for everyday stuff, if you are at an office, if you're in an elevator, if you are going someplace with a waiting room, you know, any place where you can be face to face with people, it's crazy not to wear them. And where I sort of come down is like, you know, so when you go to the grocery store, you should wear it because even if it's not doing anything, you do want to be encouraging others to view this as not a crazy thing that only weirdos do. Yeah. Well, I take it even further than you. Maybe this is because of my experience as a business owner and informs us in some way. They need to start, in my opinion, by saying everybody wears a mask when they leave the house. Everybody. I mean, everybody outside, in the park, whatever it is. And then they need to wait two or three weeks and see how that works. And if the results are promising, then they can one by one start reducing the areas, you know, using common sense where people have to wear masks until they find where they've gone far enough.

And I think trial and error is... What do you make of the anti-mask movement? Because it's a real thing. That's not a huge thing. It seems to be about 30% of the country. It's not 60%. It's not even 50%. It's like 20 to 30% of the country.

I will go with you that Trump... No, I'm not going to say that Trump should have known everybody should wear a mask back when the CDC and WHO were telling us not to wear masks. But I'm saying now. Like three weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. If the president had said, you know what, we should all be wearing masks. Do you think things would be different? Yeah, I think it would be different. And I think he's feeding into a, well, I'm going to go back to that and say, but I also think he's, it's not just masks. He's feeding into a general anti-establishment vibe on just rejecting

anything anybody tells us if it's cautious and conservative. But I will say this, I also understand that for much of the country where they really don't have very many cases and it's never really gotten a foothold, it may be overkill. I'm not here to tell you North Dakota needs to all go around in masks or Maine. I am here to tell you that New York and New Jersey, it can't just be a strong recommendation from the governor. He's got to give everybody a thousand dollar fine. And you know what? After this is all over, he can give amnesty on those fines if he wants to. But he has to do something to make people understand that we're going to treat this at least as serious as pissing on the street or as reckless driving. And right now, for whatever reason, he doesn't want to pull that trigger. And I don't think he's getting it from Trump. So it's a pox on all their fucking houses. It's infuriating. It's infuriating. So after, after 9-11, you know, everything changed with regard to hardening of security

everywhere, right? I mean, if you, if you went to a minor league baseball game in Ohio, there was somebody out there probing your bag, right? If you, if you got on an airplane in Idaho, you had to go through TSA. And even though people out in Dubuque did not, you know, no terrorists flew planes into their buildings, they did not say, this thing isn't real because I didn't see it. They didn't say, this is all a bunch of hoaxes. This is all, this This is different. And what are, what is different about it? Except that the scale is much larger. We're now like 30 X what nine 11 was in the difference is in part presidential leadership. So I, I am not a big George W. Bush fan. I did, I did not care for him all that much, uh, either as a human being or as, president. However, the manner in which he handled

the head of state duties in and around 9-11, where he did not try to turn the country against one another, he did not try to sow discord, wound up being very, very important. So we had a small surge in in anti-muslim crimes in like the first eight weeks after 9-11 but it was very small much much smaller than people feared it would be and then that fell off very quickly and in i think you have to credit the way bush handled himself in in the immediate weeks after 9-11. This stuff matters, you know, and you can

hang a price tag on it. And it's the type of stuff, honestly, that just about everybody who has ever been president before would have done right. Jimmy Carter would have gotten this stuff right. You know, it is not special. This is, again, this is the blocking and tackling of being a professional politician is understanding how to soothe in these moments and whatnot. Well, I agree with you 100%. I even said, I mean, Trump, he always wants a foil and he felt he needed a foil here.

But I think politically, this was the biggest opportunity he's ever had in his life. If he had just mellowed a little bit and been a little Carter-esque or Bush-esque, I mean, this first time I've ever seen a crisis where people didn't rally around the president, if he had just been a little soothing, he would have gotten a seven or eight point jump in the polls and he'd be sailing to re-election. Nobody blames him for the virus. And I think that the claims that he was responsible, that his early

mistakes actually mattered so much, I think are, I'm not saying they didn't matter at all, but they seem less compelling now in retrospect than they did at the time, given the fact that the absence of Trump doesn't seem to have helped our European allies. Jonathan, when you heard the word Carter-esque, did it remind you of your home state? I'm thinking of Carter-eth. Oh, Carter-eth? That's in North Carolina. We have a Carter-eth North Carolina.

Is there a Carter-eth Jersey? Of course there is. Where? Is that in the Pine Barrens? Carter-eth, New Jersey is a borough in Middlesex County, New Jersey. Population 22,844.

I don't think I've, I've been all over New Jersey and I've never been to Carteret. Okay. Yeah. I think, I think, I think Trump is going to be much more responsible for the stuff we're talking about now than he is for the CDC tests. But, you know, history will be the judge. That's my take. And I'm with you. And yet, and yet,

I wish that our governor would do the same thing. You would think it'd be even easier for him since Trump is playing games about masks. you have liberal New Yorkers who reflexively want to do anything the opposite of what Trump says. You think they would embrace masks just because the president is not. So what is mask usage like up there right now? So down in, I'm in North Carolina right now.

And I would say when I go out of the house, maybe 10% of the people are wearing masks. Like the good old boys down here are full on like MAGA on this stuff. In Northern Virginia, and I'm not right outside of the Beltway, but I'm, you know, 20 miles outside the Beltway. It is, there are only a couple, if you go to like the Home Depot, nobody's wearing masks.

Everybody, every place else you go, people are wearing masks. So it is a very gendered sort of, you know, if you are with working blue collar white guys, then they aren't wearing masks and everybody else is. What is it like up in the tri-state area? Well, no one doesn't leave the house very often.

He's in the suburbs. And so he doesn't, you know, you leave the house, there's nobody there anyway. I live in New York. I would say the mask wearing percentage is hovering at around 85 to 90%. I'd say it's very high. That's in your Upper East Side neighborhood. Upper East Side neighborhood, but people do take it seriously. And in fact, you're not allowed into

stores without a mask. Generally, most stores have signs. If you want to go into, for example, the Gristiti's on Second Avenue, or the Citarella's or Agata Valentina's or whatever, they have a limited number of people that are allowed in at one time. So there's a line on the street. And when somebody comes out, they allow somebody in. For every person that comes out, they allow somebody in to keep the numbers at some limited number. Ariel, what's your experience?

I was on 42nd Street by Port Authority the other day and I saw a very decent number of people in masks but then I also saw a bunch of homeless people not wearing masks at all gather homeless people

I don't think we should be counting homeless people they're everywhere they're not being defiant. No, but they're still not wearing masks and they're still gathering in groups. I hear a lot of stories about people coming into

areas where people are not wearing masks. Harry was complaining about it. When I drove into the city a few weeks ago, I noticed people wearing it on half their face. That's like not wearing a mask at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or with their nose over top of it. Yes, yeah.

I was downtown. I'll bring this up. I brought this up. It's this graphic from this mask study that came out. And then a few... What are you drinking, Jonathan is that a white a red wine this is the costco kirkland house brand sangria which they sell uh in a 1.75 liter bottle for six dollars amazing only the best i'm a long way since Camden, I'll say that. Have I though? This is this mask graphic.

And there's also Vanity Fair, this article recently, that if 80% of people wore masks, we could overcome the virus. It's this area up here. The blue is where the R0 turns and goes below one. And it requires a high level of compliance. It requires 80% or above compliance. It doesn't require the best masks in the world, interestingly, but it really requires compliance,

which is a high compliance, which is why I think that, you know, we should get serious about this. Everybody wears a mask. I have a question regarding the nose issue. If masks are seen as, and this was the discussion we had the other night with those two guys, that guy with that crazy Scouser accent from the north of England and the Hong Kong guy, where they said that the main reason you wear a mask is not to protect yourself, but to protect others. If that's the the case then a mask below the nose I think would do the job because

you transmit it from spittle from your mouth it can get into your nose but I don't know that it can be projected from your nose okay but Dan our guest told us we had we had the mask expert on a couple of days ago. He told us that the N95 protects others and the cloth mask protects others. But I'm not sure that we discussed whether wearing it above the nose or over the nose made a significant difference in transmission. I'm making the supposition that it does not, but of course I could be wrong. You could be right. And I don't know if you saw this, but I'm just going to show it to you so you should look it up because it didn't get that much attention. It's a really interesting article. Why is my screen like that? Really

interesting article with the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. I'd never heard of it, but you in your intellectual circles, you probably know about that. The importance of masks and exiting the lockdown. And this is a very, very, very long article with a lot of data concluding that masks could get us out of this. Lizzie, I wrote a piece about this a couple of weeks ago. There's this weird thing that you would think that the people who want to exit the lockdown as soon as possible would also be the people who wanted to wear masks.

And it's not really the way it works. The people who don't want to wear masks all want to exit the lockdown right away. And it's this weird, illogical thing, which tells me that for some percentage of the population, again, maybe it's 15, maybe it's 30, it's probably not more than 30. They are into this for something else. There is some, some tribal signaling or some emotional payoff that is really divorced from any actual policy questions about it. And I find that pretty worrisome all on its own. I mean, I would be happy to believe that 5% of the country is always crazy. And, you know, but this seems to be a more much more than five percent a lot of americans i think see themselves as as uh minute men and as uh don't tread on me they think themselves of themselves as as from that era where that you had everybody had a gun and you know it was all about personal

freedom and the frontier spirit and they don't want to let it go. I have admiration for those guys, but that was a different time and we're not living in those times. But I think people, they cling to that mythology of the frontier spirit and the Boston Tea Party crew.

Well, I wish that Trump would stop with his crap. And I also wish that the press would just take it down a notch too and not jump on every single thing to get him all riled up and his base all riled up. But I know that's about the dumbest thing I ever said because, you know, I try to... Somebody wrote on my Facebook, well, what do you think George Washington would say if he came back today? And everybody, and most of the people, and she was a Trump supporter, and most of the people on the wall were like,

he'd be disgusted. He'd think we were cowards. He would be disgusted at how this country has become a nanny state and this and that. And I was the only person in dissent who said, I think he'd be pleasantly surprised we're still here after 200 years. And I think, you know, he, he, we reasonable, he,

he would understand that times have changed. And I think be relatively pleased at how we've adapted to the, to the future. Of course, I don't know. Well, Dan, if you vote for Trump, you ain't Jewish. Well, that's not true. There's a lot of Jews vote for Trump. I'm kidding. I was trying to do some callback to that Biden thing. All right. I think we can wrap

it up. Do you have any comments? Anybody have any comments on the Biden thing? The you ain't black thing? What was he thinking? You know, Trump is selling shirts that say that, right? You ain't black? Yeah. I mean, if that doesn't show you the low level of just where he is willing to sink.

Nobody else wants to weigh in on what George Washington might say. I agree with you. I agree. I'm sorry that I don't know if this is the last thing. I agree with you. No, I think you're Washington is was an incredibly practical guy. I think he and all of the founders would be thrilled that two centuries later, the Republic is still here, no matter how much it has changed. But, you know, it's weird that they fixate on the idea that it would be masks that bother them about the nanny state, not Social Security. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's what they would what Washington, the founder, John Jay, would be like, holy crap, you guys are wearing masks. They wouldn't care about the fact that you're taking 35% of people's income in order to prop up senior citizens who don't work.

Yeah, that's right. And you're actually, all Trump needs to do is really explain to those knuckleheads the data on masks. And then they would, they would compliantly wear the masks. Or you just tell them to do it. They didn't have to explain't explain anything right this is what cult of personalities are like he doesn't even wear one though you don't even see him wearing one we got a photo of one this when i saw that i saw that yeah i actually had hoped that that would be a good thing that would help spur compliance but but that's a perfect example so he doesn't wear

one it's infuriating and neither does cuomo And neither does Cuomo. And people don't talk about that. I don't get it. It's like they should both be wearing masks. Why is Trump the villain and Cuomo is not when they're doing exactly the same thing? I don't know that they're doing exactly the same thing. Well, I haven't seen Cuomo wearing a mask. Anyway. You know why. You've said it many, many times. He's got good bedside manner. Yeah, I know. But it's frustrating. It's frustrating to me because they should both be getting it

the same. I don't think that's true. I don't think they both should be getting it the same. I think Cuomo is actually trying to do good. I mean, I'm not saying he didn't fuck up. The president should do good too. Everybody's trying to do good. No, Trump is not trying to do good. I mean, I'm not saying he didn't fuck up. The president is trying to do good too. Everybody's trying to do good. No, Trump is not trying to do good. I don't

think he's perceived as trying to do good. I think he's perceived as trying to glory to himself, whether that's right or wrong. In the end, I believe Trump is mouthed off irresponsibly and in the end did exactly what Birx and Fauauci told him to do i don't think in the end he's done anything outside of what fauci and burks and fauci and burks are not infallible

and they may have made mistakes too but i feel like especially with doctors they would not cover for him if they thought he was making decisions that were going to lead to people's deaths. I mean, if they were to do that, they would be worthy of a lot of derision. I mean, they would be complicit in death. And I just can't believe that somebody like Fauci would do that. So I have to believe that in the end, Trump is doing what Fauci tells him to do, while at the same time, telegraphing to his base, I don't really believe this stuff.

Go ahead and fight it. Free Michigan. Blah, blah, blah. And that's criminal. It's terrible. Mr. Last, you've been an awesome guest. I didn't realize you were such a funny guy and entertaining.

You're a character. You should be on TV. How come you're not on TV? Thank you. I told you I stopped doing TV like five or six years ago because I just, I hated it. And I do feel like TV destroys everything it touches. So as does Twitter. So like, I just, I don't do those things.

You should do something on television. It's a new world now. Go ahead, Dan. I'm wondering very quickly as a high school student, what – You want to know what my SATs are? You just want to keep picking at my scabs here? Get that. We're getting away from that.

I just was wondering, with regard to your last name, whether people said, like, God forbid you finished a race in last place, and they say, oh, Jonathan, be last. I was captain of the cross-country team and I ran track in high school and coach Brudnicki when uh because I was a very middle of the pack runner uh distance runner I was not a not a I was a reasonably good athlete but not a great runner and uh I won the at some spring track meet I won the 800 in in one and coach bradicky like brought in the local paper and like went around the entire high school the next day and the for last shall be first last one i

was just like jesus coach i you know i thought i had moved past this in third grade school paper though do you want do you want to here's here's the best of all the, can I, do you have 10 seconds for my, so I show up at Johns Hopkins and, uh, it's move-in day for freshmen. And I, I go up to, to the, the, you know, the, the little, I don't know, she's probably a sophomore or junior girl to me. Of course, she looked like she was 40 senses of age or, or so messed up. So I, uh, I go up and, you know, to get, to get, check into my dorm and get keys. And she says, uh, can I have your last name? I say last. And she looks at me and she goes,

Oh, that's right. Yeah. I need your last name. Cause there are probably a whole bunch of people in your freshman class that have the same first name as you. And I'm just like, fuck you eat shit and die. That was the only time i've ever really been angry it was because it was such a weird condescending thing from this god it's you know she thought you were asking or she was kidding no no she was she was 1000 serious it was like that sort of you know the condescending you know because she's two years older than i am you guys remember this right like when you're know, because she's two years older than I am. You guys remember this, right? Like when you're 18 and somebody who's 20 is just like,

there's a Monty Python routine. I don't know. Somebody goes in and has his last name is smoke too much. And it's, he has split up. I guess you better cut down then. And he starts laughing. He's never heard it before. Do you know this bit? It reminds me very much like carrying around a name that everybody makes fun of um i named i gave my uh two-year-old his middle name is flash like the superhero because his name is benjamin dwarman and i wanted his initials to be bfd like big fucking deal and all the f names are horrible but then after i said oh my god what if

he's really slow and it becomes like a sarcastic way to address him? Good going flash. But he's, he's, are you kidding? So I desperately wanted to name my oldest kid flash. Oh, look at that. And, and I was, I was not allowed to do that. And so it has become his nickname. And whenever, you know, when I, I, I hate people who talk about their kids by name on their pod.

So I, you know, I have like little code names that I use for my kids when I'm on my, my various shows. And he is always referred to as flash and the, the kids on his baseball team call him flash and he carries it around. And I just think to myself, man, could have been, could have been real, could have been on the driver's license. Dude. What kind of coincidence is that?

Let me tell you flash last is a professional baseball player that is not a major league baseball name i don't know what is it's like tyson fury in terms of just the greatest name for that profession right flash last hussein bolt how's that for a day all right well it's been a pleasure maybe maybe if you had a good experience or come on again when something else is hot and happening in the world. Yeah, well, I mean, the next global pandemic, I'm here for you. I'm sure you'll make it up to New York now and again in your field. So, I will extend to you on behalf of an invitation to come to the Comedy Club. If we ever open again.

I would love to. Didn't you guys host the commentary live show? Yeah, we do that from time to time. And we've done a few of them. I think I very nearly came to the last one. And so the next time they do one, I will make it. I will drag my ass up to New York City to come see it. And I'll introduce myself and say hi. I'm a big fan of Noah Rothman. Both his writing and personally, I really I really like that guy. He's the best. God, I love him so much. You guys really need to get together and have dinner. John is one of my oldest friends in the world. Yeah. And I, I love Noah a ton and he just hired Christine Rosen.

Who's an old friend of mine. And I mean, Abe is like the, the Jewish Joe Secchi's guy. Yeah. Love commentary. Best magazine in America. I just, okay, well, so you read Norman Podhoritz's heartfelt embrace of Trump. Have you ever read that? Yeah.

Pretty interesting. All right, listen, it's really been a pleasure and I hope you come again. Perrielle, you have his email address? I want to send him my whole, all my, all my mask articles in case he missed any of them. You're going to be on the mailing list for a lot of things, Jonathan.

I can't wait. It's it's at what's your Twitter handle at V last or at JV last. I don't do Twitter. I, so this is literally, Twitter is even worse than TV. Twitter is bad for your soul. And so I left Twitter a couple of years ago and I just gave my login credentials to half a dozen people and I said, just use this as like the classified ads in the back of a paper

or something. Put whatever you want out there on it. That's very dangerous. I've never looked back. It's great. If you guys want access to my Twitter handle, I'm happy to give it to you. Dead drop. All right. You can find us on Instagram. Just Google us. Perrielle, you want to give any other information?

Live from the table on Instagram. And you can email us at... Podcast at ComedyCellar.com. All right, everybody. Good night. Thank you. Good night. Be safe, everybody.

Thank you, Jonathan. Thanks, guys.