The Daily Beast Podcast - How Tucker Carlson Is Making MAGA World Turn on Each Other

Episode Date: October 25, 2022

There’s GOP in-fighting among Trumpy Republicans when it comes to future House leadership positioning and Fox News host Tucker Carlson made it a whole lot worse. What is going on? New Abnormal podcast co-host Andy Levy and Daily Beast politics editor and guest host Matt Fuller try to figure it out and answer the questions they have about it, in the latest episode. Plus! Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, warns Andy about the holiday COVID wave that’s coming and the scary twist that will make it unlike past waves. And Daily Beast politics reporter Will Sommer, also co-host of the podcast Fever Dreams about the shenanigans of the far right, joins to tell Andy all about the racist, sexist alt-right homophobe who raised $1 million for an alt-right superhero movie and promptly lost it in the most hilariously dumb way. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennett, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have today.

First, we're going to speak to Dr. Peter Hottes, who's co-director of Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, and he's going to tell us all about the latest news on the vaccine and the emerging variants. Then we're going to talk to Will Summer, who's a reporter at The Daily Beast, and he's going to tell us about all the cuckoo-o-ness going on in Maga World and QAnon and how they're becoming one and the same. But first, we have senior politics editor at the Daily Beast, Matt Fuller. Matt, thanks so much for being here.

Oh, thanks for having me. So let's jump right into this, and there's this story going around that is, it's a bizarre little story that somehow involves Tucker Carlson and the future race for the Republican whip of the House. Yes, I'm very familiar with this story and all the fallout. I'll give you just a crash course a little bit on it. Republicans are assuming they're going to win back the House, and they're already sort of shifting around who's going to run for what and who's going to be one Republican majority. The assumption is Kevin McCarthy would rise to speaker. Current GOP WIP, Steve Scalice, would rise to the majority leader. And then there's sort of this race for the number three spot.

Currently, the number three position is Elise Stefaniac, the GOP conference chair. But in a Republican majority, there's sort of a new spot because everyone sort of rises up one. And Stefanica said she's not going to run for WIP. So that's left this very conspicuous opening. And we currently have three people running. Two are really the heavy favorites here. currently the NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer, who's sort of the campaign chief in charge of trying to help Republicans win back the majority. And then there's Jim Banks, who's this Republican Study Committee chairman, which is a very large group of Republicans.

It's a conservative organization in the House. We're talking like 170 members. Most Republicans are part of the RSC. It's not exactly the most firm organization. It's always been sort of a question mark of what exactly do they do? I mean, once in a while. But no, he's clearly an up-and-comer. He's got very strong ties to Trump World and to Don Jr.

And he's also put his hat in the ring for this number three position. And then there's Drew Ferguson, who's also very well connected. It certainly has some, you know, roots within the party here that as the chief deputy whip, he knows how to win these sorts of races or go after these things. So he's definitely a powerful ally, someone who could surprise people. But right now everyone's sort of looking at him as an also ran and someone who might be able to tip the scales one way or the other if he gets on board with someone's campaign here. So anyway, this race, which is not supposed to be happening anymore right now because

Republicans haven't won the election yet, right? No one wants to look unseemly that they have, you know, they haven't won, but they're already campaigning. But it is very much in swing. It's getting a little nasty between Jim Banks and Tom Emmer. Our reporters, Jake LaHut and Zach Petrizo really looked into this, talked to Trump World, and there's a lot going on here. Trump World clearly has their favorite, which is Jim Banks.

But there's a lot of people who note that, hey, you know, this is a closed-door election. It's not like Donald Trump gets a vote. It's not like you'll be announcing your vote. Anything can kind of go here. And if Tom Emmer, if Republicans do win back the majority, which is really the only instance when this sort of election would happen, there's going to be a lot of goodwill for the guy who really helped in that endeavor. And in that case, Tom Emmer might really have a leg up.

So anyway, it's already getting bitter. And what happened was a GOP strategist. And I really do want to be careful here because there's been all this trying to susse out who the source of quotes are and everything. But a GP strategist noted that Jim Banks, you know, he's always had a little bit of an establishment streak. He's always been wanting to be liked by the establishment. And they said in this quote, they noted that Tucker Carlson's son, they said he was 24. He's actually 25. Buckley Carlson is actually his communications director, which is sort of an odd thing to note. But, you know, it caught Tucker Carlson's attention.

Once that happened, Tucker, I think sort of went on the warpath, trying to find out who said this quote. He called Tom Emmer on Friday and reportedly said, if you don't tell me or figure out who this quote is, I'm just going to assume it's you. And I'm going to war, basically. So there's been this great fallout, I guess, from this one quote in this story, but it kind of proves the point of the story, which is that this is already a very bitter fight. Right. Each side kind of has some very powerful allies. Yeah. And it's just so it's now become this thing. And so we've got what passes for celebrities in the MAGA circuit, like your Marjorie Taylor Greens and your Donald Trump Jr.'s out there attacking Emmer and Marjorie Taylor Green tweeting, I stand with Buckley, which is just beyond bizarre, but whatever. And, you know, Donald Trump Jr. accusing Emmer of directly leaking stuff to the, as he put it, the left wing Daily Beast. And it's just, it's just getting really, really ugly. And like you said, they haven't even, I mean, look, it's going to be weird if they don't take the house back. I think. I think everybody pretty much assumes that. But it hasn't happened yet. So like you said, it's sort of unseemly to be, you. You know,

know, chicken counting. Yeah, the truth is, everyone wants to do the campaigning. Like, you have to, if you're going to win this thing, you actually start, you have to do the chicken counting. And this is, by the way, this is for the GOP whip, which is the chief chicken counter in the house. Sure, right. It's an important position in that regard. But you also don't want to be seen as campaigning. Exactly.

So it's a very tricky position. And both sides, you know, they both said sort of anodyne statements on the record. They were focused on inflation and winning back the house. And we're not even talking about this. But the reality is, again, the follow-up from the stories made it clear that there are people who are very focused on this race. And certainly it's become even more top of mind after Tucker Carlson started getting hot on the case. What's amazing about this is like Tom Emmer, who is, again, as you said, he's the House Republican Campaign Committee Chair. It's not like he's some, you know, Mitt Romney-esque Rino or, you know, Jeb Bush crony.

He's full on into what the Republican Party is now. Now he's being treated as if he's not. I mean, it's sort of an interesting race because both them are trying to run on these like Magor credentials and who's closer to Donald Trump and who's run more of the mantle. And it really is a true competition in that regard. Like both these guys are trying to be as tight with Donald Trump as possible. And it's funny that, you know, in that story, I thought the most damaging information was, you know, the ways in which both these guys have in the past distanced themselves from Trump, whether that's Jim Banks after the Axis Hollywood tape, you know, sorry saying I've had

enough and this is, you know, my daughters deserve better than this. That's a tweet that Donald Trump probably was not aware of and when he sees that is going to go, whoa, that's kind of interesting. And all the same Tom Emmer after January 6th, according to the book by Jonathan Martin and Alex Byrne, according to that book, he was banning about the idea of maybe censoring Trump in the wake of January 6th. And that's also going to be news to Donald Trump and used against both these guys. So it's very interesting for two guys who have really made their names now by aligning themselves with Donald Trump and defending every transgression of Donald Trump that this is all a competition, but, you know, who can be the most loyal? And yet they're still

finding little ways in which there was just the smallest disloyalty that could really puncture their chances here. Yeah. I mean, look, it's almost like it's a cult. I know no one has said that before, but so let me be the first to say it's almost like a cult. And it really is where it's like they sit around and they look for the slightest. It's like the morality police in Iran or something like that. You know, is like is the hijab, you know, an inch too high? And if so, you know, you're in big trouble. And it's like the same kind of thing where it's just like, you know,

are you're not perfect? You don't have the perfect record that you have the slightest thing. Well, then you're the equivalent of excommunicated or at least until you're reeducated or whatever the hell they want to call it. But it's just amazing. Yeah. And there's this other element in the story, which the NRCC sent out an email around the end of September. It was like a late Friday night. And basically, the email was,

hey, we have polls to show Desantis ahead of Donald Trump and a head-to-head matchup in a GOP primary. Basically, vote with your dollars. Do you want DeSantis or Trump? Let us know. And it's just like a stupid fundraising tactic. It's not like Tom Emmer wrote this email. Right. Right. Again, it's become this huge fallout in Trump world where, you know, people who are close with Trump, who talk to Donald Trump about these leadership races were like, I don't think he's seen that email because if he had, probably would have put out something on truth social about it or yeah, that would be disaster for Tom Emmer. And again, it's like, this is just some staffer and the NRC is shooting emails out all the time. They're just trying, they're sticking, throwing whatever against

the walls of course. Everyone knows that, oh, no, Donald Trump wouldn't take that. And it is because I won't exactly say a cult, but another sort of euphemism for that that I've used in the past and borrowing it from a reporter friend of mine. The GOP has become a biker gang. that it's it's about who can win and you know who's who's the strongest and that in that regard certainly Donald Trump has shown that he's you know a leader of this biker gang and uh republicans are all sort of falling in line yeah but the other thing this story gets to is is just is the power of Tucker Carlson and the fact that this has become any kind of a deal is only because of how much power Carlson has in the party and the fact that he can go you know which for all we know

he may do tonight. He can go on his show that's watched by millions of true believers, and he can just utterly trash Tom Emmer if he so chooses, and that will become the narrative. For sure. And that's, I mean, that's the big threat here. And I think everyone's sort of gaming out. What does that look like for Republicans if Tucker Carlson just gets on the air and starts slamming Tom Emmer? What does that do for the midterms in general? Those are all sort of big questions hanging over this. And frankly, it's the type of thing where, look, I don't want to say that Buckley Carlson's not good at his job. or didn't get his job in a fair way. Okay.

But it's also certainly clear that it's got to be in someone's mind that, hey, your father is really one of the major leaders of the conservative movement and has the biggest megaphone out there, right? And at a moment's notice, can Jim Banks get on Tucker's show? Or if you cross Jim Banks, you know, does that mean you're crossing Tucker Carlson? Those are all things that are in people's minds. And I think it's fair to consider that as we sort of go about this story. and how it's unfolding.

Yeah, and it's also interesting to think, you know, that Tucker may be getting phone call saying, look, whatever you're going to do, can you wait until after election day? Oh, for sure. And I'm sure that that's been part of this conversation that, hey, you're going to spoil this. And I know that Tucker Carlson doesn't exactly think of himself

as a reporter or anything, right? He's really pretty clear that this is an opinion show and he spouts off about whatever he wants to. So I don't think he's got too many, I guess, responsibilities towards, well, this is what's going on right now. I need to report this out. Right. Yeah, no, I don't, I don't think the phrase report this out is in the, it's not in the handbook. Speaking of election day,

we've got a ton of polls coming out, you know, as we approach, we're less than two weeks away. And there are, there are a number of polls that seem to show Republican candidates making gains, either extending leads or making races closer where they're behind. And then there are some other polls that show, you know, at least in some states, Pennsylvania governor, for example, that the Democrats seem like they're in pretty good shape. What do we make of all these polls? There does seem to be a general sense that the tide is turning against Democrats and sort of in, yeah, and in favor of Republicans. Yeah, well, I mean, look, a lot of history is going against Democrats here, which I think they've always known. Democrats control White House and Senate and the House. In a midterm

election, that's always a tough proposition for the party in charge. What you're also getting here, is these economic concerns, right? And we're seeing that more and more voters are saying the economy is their number one issue. And that really is bad news for Democrats. Democrats do well on issues like abortion, health care, guns. They don't do well on the economy. And I'm not saying that one side is better on the economy or another, but I can tell you confidently that voters believe Republicans are better on the economy. Right. And I think it's close to 20 points. I think it was this most recent poll, it was 47 to 28. 47% said Republicans are better on the economy. With people more and more concerned about the economy, if gas prices are going up, the

inflation concerns are even higher, that's really bad news for Democrats, independents, who, again, you have to be thinking about who are the voters who are undecided right now, right? People who are weighing this issue between Democrats and Republicans and saying, oh, you know, well, gas is up a little bit. I guess I'm going to go with Republicans here. This is not the great climate for Democrats. When there are real concerns about the economy, I know we have unemployment at three and a half percent. The stock market still seems to be doing pretty well. Everyone sort of sees in the short term and long term that there is some sort of recession coming. There are real concerns. And obviously inflation is a real concern. It's not just a U.S. concern. We should be clear.

This is a global concern. Of course. It's happening everywhere. But voters are going to blame Democrats. And that's always been clear. And I'll also note that some of the more interesting stuff we've seen is just how closely the polls have followed gas prices. And when the gas prices go up, Democrats do best. bad. When the gas prices go down a little bit, Democrats do a little bit better. And that's really been the story of this midterm campaign. And with gas prices, you know, they really rose in the month of October. Now they may be falling just a just the slightest bit. And that's also, we're seeing maybe just even in recent days that Democrats are doing just maybe a little bit better. But it's

really going to come down to how are voters feeling on election day and who goes out in votes, right? I mean, the old trite cliche, it all comes in turn out is happens to be true. Yeah. Really Republicans feel good about the fact that when you look at the likely voter screens, right, not just registered voters, but likely voter polls, they really start doing a little bit better. And a lot of these races are within a couple points. And if that's the case, then likely voters, if the polls come out how most pollsters think they're going to come out, right? This is closer to, they think, maybe the 2016 and 2020 elections where the polls didn't quite nail it, that they didn't really capture some of the Republican enthusiasm. Whereas in 2018, I,

I think the polls were almost spot on across the board. Like it was every race, it was like they nailed it. But right now people think, no, it's more like a 2020. It's more like a 2016. And who comes out to vote is going to really matter here. And frankly, the polls didn't quite capture the Republican support in either case for Donald Trump in 2016 or in 2020. And I think most people think it's going to fall closer to those elections, in which case you're looking at a, you know, to use a term from, I guess a decade ago, maybe even more a decade, unsue the polls. If you unskew the polls a little bit, things start looking even grimmer for Democrats.

Yeah. And in addition to the economic stuff, like you said, in particular gas prices, the other issue that seems to be working really well for Republicans right now is crime. And we've talked about this on this show before. And to the point where even in a state like New York, which is fairly reliably blue, we've got a real tightening in the governor's race here between Democrat and incumbent Kathy Hockel and Republican Lee Zeldin, who is the kind of Trumpy, Republican that you don't generally associate with New York Republicans when you think of potential governors and stuff like that. But the gap is closing bigly, as Trump would say, in New York. And look, hopefully I think Hockel will pull it out, but it's not a sure thing. And in that case, it seems to be

hitting the Democrats on crime. You can say all you want that, you know, well, if you look at the crime rates nationally, they're not rising the way you say they are, but it doesn't matter. Crime is one of those things. If people think it's up, that's all that matters. Yeah, you're talking about tried and true methods for Republicans here. And I also think crime is a fill in for a lot of concerns, right? Yes. Whether that's immigration concerns, whether that's, I don't like homeless tent cities around. And, you know, there's a lot of those things, which if those are your concerns, you generally tend to vote Republican. So anyone who says, I'm really concerned about crime, if you told me that, I had no nothing else about you, I'm going to assume you're probably voting for a Republican.

By the way, that doesn't necessarily have to be true. There are a lot of cities right now. I mean, we're watching in Portland, Oregon, where that governor race is suddenly tight because there's been a lot of issues with those homeless tent cities and crime. And people are actually concerned. This is true in San Francisco, right? The whole bastion of San Francisco. So there are real concerns, and I don't mean to be dismissive of anyone's concerns about crime.

I'm sure people are truly touched by this issue all the time and feel like we've got to do something about this. But it just happens to be one of those issues that Republicans clearly have an advantage on. If the issues that voters are going to the polls matter most are the economy, inflation, crime, that's really good news for Republicans. If a voter goes to polls and says the issues I care about most are abortion and health care and guns, obviously really good news for Democrats. But it seems like generally the issue that most voters are caring about is the economy,

is things like inflation and crime. In fact, I think it was something like 44% of people said the economy was the number one issue. and then everything else was in single digits. So it's clearly the economy is the big thing here. And crime, I think, is one of those motivators, right, where Republicans have had a lot of success driving out their base, whether that's through migrant caravans or whatever, having sort of manufacturing an issue that is definitely beneficial to them,

and crime is definitely fitting the bill in that sense. Yeah, it's really interesting that, as you point out, Democrats actually have an edge when it comes to guns, but Republicans have the edge on crime because, you know, you would almost think that those would be linked, the other way. Because in general, you know, obviously Republicans oppose gun control, but come out as, you know, supposedly hard or tough on crime. And so you would think that, but it's, it's just very

interesting that it breaks down that way. Yeah. And that's one of the reasons I think crime is, again, somewhat of a fill in for some other concerns. In the same way that, you know, people said, I had economic concerns in 2016. What does that really mean? And who are you really concerned about? And, you know, are you concerned about your job disappearing to, to whom? Like, what's the the issue there, I think. It's some fair questions. Joining me now is Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Ballar College of Medicine. Dr. Hotes, thank you so much for being here with us. Thanks, Andy. It's great to join you. I want to start with something you said a little over a week ago

at a conference. You said, we need to fix the CDC and put them out in front of fighting COVID. and that, quote, until we do that, we're definitely not ready for another pandemic. What struck me about this is it feels like the fixing the CDC part is an incredibly tough task. As you yourself said at that same conference, in the battle against COVID, the CDC came up small every time. Yeah, that's right. Starting in 2020, they missed the entry of the virus from southern Europe into New York. So by the time people realized all these COVID cases were showing up in emergency rooms in Manhattan. in Queens and elsewhere. The virus had been here for a month at least, probably longer. It had come in from Southern Europe and missed. That was totally missed. Then there was no leadership

in terms of a response to prevent it from going into the other states. And diagnostic testing was a debacle and genomic sequencing never got really underway. And then there was a problem with, there was no modeling and no predictive modeling. I mean, we had to look to the universities like the University of Washington, University of Texas, Austin, Johns Hopkins for all of our modeling. And they just were not ready for prime time in terms of a pandemic. And the point is the U.S. taxpayers are paying, I don't know what the number is right now, I think around $15 billion a year for this. And what are we getting for it? And then you might say, well, okay, then is therefore should we just dissolve the CDC? And I would say, no, strengthen it and modernize it because we really don't have a lot of alternatives.

If you look at, I mean, there's a lot of talk about creating a pandemic threat response initiative in Washington, D.C., to which I say, well, didn't we learn the lesson with the Trump administration? That's Washington, D.C. is the last place on the planet. You want to put that? I mean, I think when you look at all the options, I think, in my view, the most straightforward and the one that makes the most sense is really strengthening and I call modernizing the CDC. I think Rochelle Walensky is a good CDC director. I think she was given the impossible task of trying to do change management at that agency without a lot of help. But if she could, and there could be a concerted effort across the government to fix the CDC and focus it and have it modernized to do all the things it's supposed to do, I think that's by far the best solution. So as a layperson, my sort of my arc regarding the CDC was sort of prior to COVID, I had

I guess you would call it kind of the Hollywood view of the CDC, all these, you know, unbelievably smart people who don't care at all about politics, working to keep us safe every day from exotic diseases that turn my organs into lime jello. And honestly, post the beginning of the pandemic, I sort of have the opposite view of them. And I'm guessing I'm far from alone on this on all sides of the political spectrum. You know, obviously, look, the right wing has their own insanity. But I know plenty of people on the left who don't think that the CDC is up to the task. So, you know, pre-pandemic, your view was shared by many of us. And by the way, when I served as U.S. science envoy in the Obama administration for the Middle East and North Africa, CDC was

the gold standard, right? I mean, that was every country in the Middle East and North Africa aspired to build its own version of the CDC and emulate the CDC. And for a lot of things, they've always done a great job. You know, if you have a foodborne outbreak in Minnesota, that's who you want on top of this. Or if you have, you know, a new respiratory virus outbreak of small size, I think they just couldn't make the mid-course correction to deal with something as vast and extensive and deadly as COVID-19. And I think that took everybody by surprise, because that's what they were set up to do. And no question in the beginning, you had the Trump, White House meddling. But on the other hand, the White House has been meddling in federal agencies

since the founding of the Republic, right? Right. So that shouldn't be too new. And certainly the people that Trump brought in in the West Wing didn't make things any easier by downplaying the severity and claiming it was a hoax or saying that the hospital admissions were catching up in elective surgery and all this kind of nonsense. But it still should have held up better. And even after, you know, the Biden administration came in, they still didn't seem to be on top of it. And I think Michelle Wilensky, Dr. Walensky, the CDC director, has rightly pointed out that there needs to be a significant change. And I think some of the criticism has been they're too focused on getting the papers out and the MMWR, the morbidity mortality weekly reports. They're not,

they can't move in real time to adjust and do mid-course corrections. And so I think the one thing I would say is put the emphasis on giving the CDC director the personnel and funds to make that happen, number one. Two, if you need to bring in some outside people to advise her, that's fine. Next, don't rely on her to do it all by herself. She's going to need help from people who really understand what they're doing. Many may have to come from outside the agency. And then I think we have to get out of this mentality that the CDC needs to be everything to everybody. They were set up, You know, in Atlanta, when malaria was endemic to the United States in the mid-20th century, and there's a reason why it was in the southern part of the U.S. because of all the endemic tropical and emerging infections,

and that's why our School of Tropical Medicine is located in the South as well. But now it is having a lot of trouble with all the modern bioinformatics and modeling and everything else like that. It needs to modernize, and I think it needs to be done at the expense of some of the other things that it's doing, maybe in the area of chronic diseases, you know, chronic conditions, we could rely more on the state agency. So I think there are things that may need to go away to realign. And I don't want to be prescriptive by recommending what it is now. Let this be analyzed. So I think those are some key points. I think another is remember how Congress has set up the CDC. I think that also is setting them up for failure because it relies on the fact that we have a functioning health system.

in the United States, and we don't, right? I mean, I think COVID is exposed that. We Israel has a functioning health system. The UK has a functioning health system. We have something called Amazon pharmacy and a bunch of pharmacy chains and some hospital systems and don't really have. And the state and local health departments have been bullied and depleted of funds and personnel. And the CDC historically has been an advisory capacity. They would say, well, we have to be invited in to do this and it's really up to the state health departments to lead it. We've seen how that fails also. So there are some infrastructure things that have to be done to give the CDC a little more control or build up the state and local health departments more, but business as usual

doesn't work. And that's going to be really hard to do because especially where I am down in the south where conservative states, red states, they're not going to welcome the CDC or at least the leaders won't, the elected leaders won't. And yet they're not. likely prepared to bolster the state and local health departments either. And I've seen this here in Texas, you know, where we are, for instance, we have two health departments. We have a city health department and for Houston and a Harris County health department. Harris County is the second largest county in the country after Cook County. And it's really well functioning. And, you know, it has its issues sometimes, but overall, it's an outstanding health department. The problem that you get into Texas is you go into

some of the smaller rural counties and they're really lacking. And so there's a lot of heterogene in the quality of state and local health departments. And I'm guessing that's true across the country. So it's not only about fixing the CDC. It's fixing that whole chain of state and local health departments. Yeah. And as you said, it's just there's no way Republican governors are going to upgrade their state health departments. So I don't know what the answer is there. But I want to, I do want to move to, I feel like every day I'm reading about a new Omicron variant that's resistant to the treatments we have. and that, you know, we need to watch out for a mutated strain that's going to make the vaccines obsolete.

And then later that day or in the next days, I see something else saying, no, that's just fearmongering. There's very little evidence to support that. And I'm talking about instances where both of these positions are coming from scientists. They're coming, they're not coming from, you know, misinformation peddlers. And it makes it really hard to know what's going on. How do we deal with this? So I think the way you have to is parse it out in steps. Otherwise, it can get too overwhelming. So let's take the vaccine issue first, and then we can take monoclonal antibodies. With regards to the vaccine issue, remember, the mRNA boosters are not holding up as quite as well as we'd like in terms of protection, not only gets infection, but also hospitalization. So protection versus hospitalization, and this is data. coming from the CDC is showing that there is a decline in the protection going from, you know,

depending on the data you look at from roughly 80, 90 percent protection versus hospitalization to around 50 percent or less after you're several months out. So the first point is you need to get a booster every few months. And by the way, that messaging has not been very clear cut. No, it's been awful. They're still clinging to this idea that two immunizations is full immunizations, which is nonsense. So you need to be mindful of your booster status and keep up with your boosters. Point one.

Point two, this new booster, this bivalent booster, has, of course, the original, an MRA encoding the original lineage, plus one encoding the BA5. And BA5 is still the dominant circulating one in the U.S. The concern is what's happening now in Western and Central Europe,

in Germany, France, Austria, maybe northern Italy, and elsewhere, that you are seeing a rise again. And historically, when there's been a rise in Western Central Europe, then it follows that it occurs in the U.S. a few weeks later, beginning with the Northeastern U.S. So I think we should expect that could happen again. Here's the problem. In the past, when you had a big rise in Europe and you were predicting, oh, here it comes in the U.S., it was always associated with the dominance of a single variant, whether it was Alpha in early 2021 or Delta in the last half of 2021 or BA1 Omicron or early 2022, then BA2, then BA5, you reliably

could know what that variant is. This time around, the rise in Western and Central Europe is kind of a mixed bag of different variants. It's the BA5, yes, but some of these newer BA4 and BA5 spin-off that I've labeled the Scrabble variants because they use high variance. value Scrabble letters like Q and X and B. And we'll see if that name catches on. And so the problem here now is the rise is not associated with any one obvious variance. So what's going on? Is it, I don't know, is it, you know, some, you know, I talk to people like Mike Osterholm and Eric Topal and

others a lot on a regular basis. They're saying maybe there's some behavioral change component, maybe, you know, October Fest and things like that. But then if that's it, then we should expect a rise on top of a rise if one of these sub-variants, one of these scrabble variants really starts to gain dominance. So that's the worry that one of these scrabble variants takes off. And then the question is, how much will this new bivalent booster protect? And since they are derived from BA5 or in some cases B.A.2, I do think there will be cross-protection. But we just have not, we just, it's too new to have any human data to support it. And I think that's where, so that I think the confusion is the fact that one, this new rise is not

associated with any particular variant. We don't know what to look for. Second, we don't have human data to know what the, really what the extent of cross-protection is going to be against the scrabble variance. And to make things even more complicated, it's not just a matter of what's in the vaccine. because remember, a lot of people are not only vaccinated, they're either vaccinated with breakthrough COVID infection, or they have vaccinated, breakthrough COVID infection and then boosted. So there's exposure of the immune system not only to the original lineage in BA5 in the new vaccine,

but also BA1, BA2, or BA4,5, depending on what you had the breakthrough infection for. And that may give you an additional advantage because you're basically instructing your immune system, memory B cells, there's a whole lot of variation going on. And your memory B cells are responding by adding variation on top of variation. So there's this phenomenon called epitope broadening. And data from Rockefeller University and others show that, you know, when you have infection and getting boosted on top of that, you got a lot of epitope broadening. And that's a long way of saying, if you've been vaccinated and you've gotten your new booster. And somewhere along the line, you've had some previous COVID infection, either before or after vaccination or boost. Good possibility you'll be able to weather these new

Scrabble variants pretty well. But we don't know for certain. So if you had to game it out for this winter, and I'm guessing, you know, this is at the heart of what our listeners are going to want to know, what do you think we're looking at? I think we should always anticipate a worst case scenario. And the worst case scenario is one of these scrabble variants, becomes dominant, gains ascendancy, and then the question is, are we ready? So for the in Europe, the one that seems to be accelerating the most is BQ 1.1. The only place where you have a single dominant scrabble variant accounting for the rise appears to be in Singapore, where you have one called XBB. So I think we should anticipate the possibility that we'll have a BQ1 or XBBB. wave coming in this winter. It may not happen, but we should be ready for it. And then you have to ask,

okay, what's the most impactful thing I can do to protect myself and my family? And it gets back to getting your bivalent booster. That is the single most important thing you can do. The second most important thing you can do is if you're a senior especially, say over the age of 50, 60, and you do have breakthrough infection, don't forget to take Paxlovid. Because, you know, my discussions with people in the White House have been that there's still too many seniors needlessly losing their lives because they didn't get put on Paxlova. So I think the message is, another message, is on a numbers basis, even though the number of people dying every day of COVID is far less than it was at the peak of the Alpha or Delta, we're not losing 2,000 to 3,000 Americans a day.

We're losing 3 to 400 Americans a day. It's still a leading cause of death. And overwhelmingly, those deaths are occurring either among those who are not vaccinated or not keeping up with their boosters. So even though lots of people have been previously infected or even vaccinated, and that is having some mitigating effect on reducing the deaths, when you're making your individual health decisions for yourself and your family, it's all about being mindful of keeping up with your boosters. Can I personally do something about whoever is in charge of naming these strains? Because I have to say, and I mean this like half jokingly, but I also mean it half seriously. Like I think it's a lot easier to wrap your head around. Okay, this is Delta, this is Omicron, you know, it's just, it's one Greek letter. But we start talking about BA1, BA2, BQQ.

What's like when we first started, right? I mean, if you remember there was all this alphabet soup. And that was the whole reason for going to the Greek nomenclature. Right. So I don't know why they got away from it. It's because the truth is the difference between BA5 and the original Omicron is pretty large. It warrants its own Greek letter. So I don't know why they went back. I decided to simplify it by calling them the Scrabble variants and maybe that'll catch on or not so people have some idea what we're talking about. Yeah, no, and I like that, but I do think that people's eyes tend to glaze over. So what happens is they're like, ah, it's just another Omicron variant or what. whatever, and they don't take it seriously. And everything just starts to sound like a rush song. It's like Y, Y, Y, Z, as opposed to, you know, oh, well, now we have the, you know, Sigma or Tao or something like that. And that lets you know, hey, this is a, this is a brand new version and you got to take it seriously.

Instead, it's just all this terminology and lingo. And I don't think that serves anybody any good. Yeah. And we're not pushing hard enough on the boosters. And, you know, and my proof for that is, you know, as of a week or So only 11 million Americans had gotten the new bivalent booster, which is a single digit percentage of those who could get it. Right. So we're clearly not, and I've suggested, you know, elevate this to the level of having the president or the vice president to a press conference to say, get your booster. So we're still not doing that. And it's, by the way, the cable news channels are not covering COVID like they used to. You probably noticed.

I haven't been on, you know, the cable news channels nearly as much lately. And that's true of my colleagues as well. So it's all eyes on the midterms and all the other craziness. Except when you're being yelled at on Fox. Yeah, right. But so we've got to put that front and center again just to get people. So the three things that aren't happening is knowing getting their booster, this new byvalent booster. Second, not enough seniors who do our breakthrough infection are getting Paxloven. The third is nobody's vaccinating their kids are very few. So that's another vulnerability that we have, especially when we're seeing our pediatric. guys use fill up with kids with COVID and RSV, respiratory and essential virus and influenza. And by the way, get your flu vaccine too. Dr. Hotes, thank you so much. And folks, you heard it here not first and

hopefully not last, but please go get your boosters and get your kids vaccinated. Thank you so much, Dr. Hotes. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Andy. Great talking to you. Joining me now is Daily Beast politics reporter Will Summer. He's also the co-host of the great podcast, Fever Dreams. Will, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. There are a ton of things to talk to you about, but there were a couple of specific reasons I was excited to have you on. First is, I love fever dreams, and it's really been fantastic in the past few months. It feels like you got rid of some dead wood or something.

Yeah, yeah, Swin went to, uh, yeah. Oh, is that what it? Yeah, I guess that is it is, yeah. Yeah, it's, since I went to live on the farm or whatever have you. I hadn't even thought of it, but you're right. That is the reason. It's, he's no longer there. The second reason I wanted to have you on is a piece you wrote for The Beast last week titled Anti-Woke Superhero Movie Blown Up in Million Dollar Con. And I thought, first of all, whoever wrote the headline, Sheskis, the story itself, I loved it so much because every part of it was kind of funnier than the last. Can you walk through it for our listeners? And please, you have to start by explaining who theater bill. Yeah, he goes by the nom de moron Vox day. I have loathed him for years, but he's, thankfully, he's not a household name. So start with explaining

who he is. Yeah, well, you know, it's funny you mentioned that, you know, you've loath this guy for years, because he really is kind of one of these sort of deep right-wing internet characters who, you know, when you start looking into this stuff, ends up being a pretty prominent figure. He's really been at play for a while. I mean, he was, so this is a guy, as you said, he's a blogger named Vox Day, or, you know, that's his pseudonym. And he has this army of fans, and they, they sort of originally coalesce around a lot of, the social justice warriors are ruining my geeky hobby kind of issues. And so he was like a big Gamergate guy. He did a lot of stuff about like, oh, the comic books are too woke.

They tried to do a coup essentially in these science fiction awards. And so he has this kind of thing over and over. And I should also say, I mean, that makes him sound, I think, relatively harmless. But, you know, he's also, he has this history of kind of racist statements and saying women shouldn't have the right to vote. And just kind of a vile personality all around is, is I guess, you know, the foreknowledge you need going into this. Yeah. So he decided that he was going to do a, the headline aptly puts it an anti-woke superhero movie because this is, as you said, this is one of those guys. who, you know, he gets mad if a woman wins a Hugo Award in science fiction. You know, he's jumping

out the window if that happens. And same for comic books. And it goes back to the video games to Gamergate, all that stuff you just said. So he then decides that he is going to crowd fund a superhero movie called, was it, Rebels Run? Rebels run, exactly. So he had put out these comic books that were called Alt Hero and sort of if the Echo around the Alt-Right, you know, is obvious, you know, that's no accident. And so these are sort of like, they're heroes, but rather than fighting, you know, like a supervillain who wants to blow up the world, they're fighting cancel culture and like, you know, UN troops who are out to arrest conservatives. And one of them is surprised that the breakout star is the sexy lady named Rebel, who's sort of a confederacy themed superhero. She's like a

country girl. She wears a like a Confederate flag, a Bustier. And so then this goes so well that they say, well, let's crowdfund a movie around Rebel and sort of, you know, show these wokeies in the MCU. What's up? He raises a million dollars, which was above the target that he had said because he is, of course, a heterodox thinker. And by that, I mean a racist, sexist, homophobe. And his fellow free thinkers who somehow all freely think the same bigoted things give him this money to make this movie. And he has the money then he says, all right, I'm going to put this money in escrow. He gives it to this dude, basically.

Yeah. So he raises this money where he raises a million dollars. And so, you know, I think that alone is a sign that these are a bunch of trolls on the internet, but they have like some amount of power in size that they can raise a million dollars. And so then he says, well, this money is going to be used. He kind of works out some financial arrangements with some investors. And they say, well, you can raise this money. You know, we can then use that as a deposit and then we'll loan you an additional

three or four million. And I have to say from the trailer, it looks like higher budget than, you know, the average conservative movie affair. Because of his sort of past controversies, it seems unlikely that he was going to be getting a loan from like Bank of America. And so he has to go to this company that says we're banking the unbankable. And so his company transfers the money to them in escrow. But unbeknownst to him, the guy who runs this company is, according to an indictment that's still being worked out, is a big time fraudster in many, many ways, including crypto. He's making fake crypto mining rigs.

And he's kind of cutting deals for PPE in China. This is kind of at the height of COVID. And so suddenly, Vox Day comes and he says, hey, here's a million dollars. Hold on to this for me. And this guy, James Wolfgram is his name, because I love these little bits that he was a, he called himself a cryptocurrency billionaire, which apparently was not true. And he would go on social media and post pictures of these really expensive cars. And it turned out they were just like stock photos or he got them from other websites. Exactly.

It would say, like, you know, look how rich I am. You know, here's my Maserati. But in fact, he's just Googling like Maserati, cool. Oh, my God. And so basically this guy was running what, in essence, at least turned into sort of a pyramid scam, right? Because Wolfgram, he was in debt to one of his other clients, and he used Vox Day's money. I hate even saying that name, but he used Beal's money to pay off those debts, correct? Exactly. This other client had said, here's $4 million, buy me some PPE from

China. It's kind of unclear why this person thought that he would have the connections to do that. But so they give him the money, and then he turns around and then, you know, according to the prosecutor, or spends it on these various legal fees he's already facing. So then he's out several million dollars. So then Beale rolls up and says, you know, here's a million dollars from my fans for this movie. Hang on to it. That guy turns around the next day, buys a million dollars in PPE from China for this

earlier client. And so now the movie money's gone. What's so beautiful about this is they use this crowdfunded money to buy goods from a country that all these people hate to fight a disease that all these people think aren't real. Yes. Yeah, you know, honestly, this might be a Robin Hood situation. They're spending it to buy PPE. Certainly, perhaps I think many people would consider that a better use than for rebels run.

I mean, for real. And then the sort of the topping on this Sunday of awesomeness is Bill's response to this, he says, after this all comes out, he says, quote, I strongly suspect that this whole thing was a targeted operation intended to break our community. So in other words, it's not, I'm a gigantic dummy who gave a million dollars to a con man. And it's the usual it's they did this to us because they fear us or whatever. Exactly. Well, you know, I should say this guy has this whole community. They call him something along the lines of like the evil lord of the evil legion and his fans are his minions. And so he's got this community and he's claiming, oh, yeah, you know, people are really out to destroy us. You know, I didn't get into it in the article because, you know, he just didn't have any evidence for it.

But he sort of has since become paranoid about everyone else involved in the movie. And so, you know, this is all, I want to say, this is all taking place in 2019, 2020. Now it's 2022. and people start saying like, hey, where's that movie we paid for? And so that's why after this indictment came out, he sort of explained what happened to it. But then we have to place this in the context of a larger push in conservative media to make more movies. So like Breitbart is producing movies and Ben Shapiro's company is producing movies. So what struck me as a funny anecdote was, I mean, this guy, very, I think, off-putting guy to even people who agree with him ideologically.

And he's constantly picking these like one-sided feuds with bigger conservative figures. So he was like, my producer was just constantly, me on saying, you don't want Ben Shapiro to beat you, do you? God. Absolutely amazing. So are we going to, sadly, are we living in a world that just doesn't have a Rebels run movie? Is this just gone forever, do we think? Well, you know, don't worry because, you know, they still have to do the restitution,

potentially, presuming the guy who allegedly stole the money is found guilty. You know, there may be some money to come out of it. But things might work out anyway, because now he's creating another movie, a lower budget movie starring his friend, this comedian turned sort of anti-Semitic hate figure, Owen Benjamin. Owen Benjamin is a moon landing denier among other things. And so he says, wouldn't it be funny if Owen was the head of NASA? So we'll make a, kind of like, I guess that Space Force show on Netflix, but with Owen Benjamin running it. Oh, boy. He's not done with Hollywood or sort of, you know, try to make his own Hollywood yet. All right. Well, thank God for that. Okay, so that was the

fun part of this interview because it's just a bunch of nab. doing dumb things. But unfortunately, as you know better than most people, because you cover this stuff, you get into the scary parts of this. And that leads me to something that took place over the weekend. What was this thing called The Great Awakening? So this is a sort of a traveling road show of fever swamps, the craziest cooks on the right from all different sort of points of view. I mean, you have a lot of QAnon people. You have some kind of like washed up kind of like sea list Trump world figures. You have like some really hardcore evangelicals. You have like COVID people and sort of, you know, hydroxychloroquine people. And they're all kind of jammed together. You know, they've done, I don't know,

maybe a dozen, maybe more at this point. And each one is kookier than the last. I went to, I think, the first one last year in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And that was nutty. I had to get through security because they thought Antifa was going to come like trash it in this summer of Tulsa. I mean, it is a really crazy experience. And it's run by this guy who's kind of a Tulsa businessman named Clay Clark. It's sort of like if Gary V. was into hydroxychloroquine. Oh, God. Wow. I really hope our listeners don't know who Gary V is and now don't have that image in their head. Yeah. And so, I mean, you know, basically what this thing is, it's, it's just a days long show and people get up and they'll rant. And in this case, someone got up and said, you know, all right, time to pray that the angel of death visits the following

people. And they put up a big graphic and it's, you know, Fauci, Brian Stelter. I mean, it's all these It's kind of like, it's this crazy mix of people that they hate and they're like, oh, I hope this guy dies soon. But, I mean, really, that's just a taste of it. It is a truly crazy experience. When I was there, Jim Cavizal, who folks may remember is playing Jesus and the Passion of the Christ. Sure. He revealed that he's an adrenochrome guy, so he thinks the Democrats drink children's blood. Oh, God.

I saw Lynn Wood perform, this kind of lawyer about town, big Q&N guy. And he was like, had the house. I thought they were going to go kill the queen because he was like, tell it to the Democrats. Tell it to the House. of Windsor! And the crowd just went nuts. I mean, it is really, I think, bang for your buck, maybe like the craziest experience you can have right now in the United States. So this is, and I think I misidentified it as the Great Awakening. The Great Awakening is the overall catch-all term for what they think is happening or going to happen. I guess reawaken America is the name of

this traveling road show. So the way that this goes from like the nutty, cookie, funny, you know, realm into the scary is the people who sort of align themselves with this movement. And in fact, I think the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, Doug Mastriano, was scheduled to speak at this last event? He was, yes. Yeah, so Doug Masteriano, the Republican nominee, I mean, this is a guy who really has his fingers all over different kinds of fringe connections. He was scheduled to speak. He didn't show. I think it's a little unclear why he wasn't there. But yeah, I mean, so he was supposed to be there. I mean, this is a truly, truly crazy event. And I think it is just a sign that, you know, increasingly we're seeing the lines blur between Republican officials and Republican politicians and stuff that would just be, you know, in past years, even back in 2016, 2018, just with. too crazy to touch. And now these people are seen as some voters to court. Yeah. And I'm looking at, you know, some of the other names of people who at least were supposed to be there. And it's the, you know, it's the Roger Stones, the Peter Navarro's, Eric Trump. I don't know if he ended up showing up or not, but these are people who were scheduled to speak. And that gets us to Michael Flynn, the erstwhile

national security advisor and, you know, full on election denier. And you wrote a piece like three or four days ago about a new group that he's putting together called One More Mission. That's right. Yeah. So Michael Flynn has become, after 2020, he's become really sort of the face, maybe the most prominent face of election denial. And, you know, he's a big QAnon guy. So he has all these kind of projects going on. And he's a big reawaken America guy. So this one more mission group, he's teamed up with Patrick Byrne, who is the founder of Overstock.com, weirdly enough. And so he's very wealthy. And he's really into these kind of various election denial schemes. So their group, America Project, is funding this other group called One More Mission that really is very vague about its Michael Flynn connections. But its goal is recruiting police officers

and veterans and other first responders to get them to monitor the polls. And so they really kind of, as I said, they kind of cover up their connection to Flynn and Byrne. They just say, oh, you know, this is just one more mission, is saving American democracy. But certainly in my experience, from talking to them, they're really kind of covering up the fact that the This is just sort of another election denial attempt on their part. In covering up these connections, they seek to sort of portray themselves as nonpartisan and sort of like you would think, oh, that's great. We need poll watchers.

You know, these are people who will make sure that everything's running smoothly when in fact they are there for a very specific purpose. Exactly. From talking to them, there's a lot of like vague talk about, you know, like American democracies in trouble. People are questioning the legitimacy of the vote. They connected me with this former Green Beret, who is a part of their group and, you know, who also runs a vice.

vitamin supplement company on the side. And he said, well, you know, there's just some questions about elections lately. And I said, well, you know, what do you mean? Let's dig into that. He said, well, it's not for me to say. But, you know, the reality is, I mean, Patrick Byrne and Flynn, they were at this meeting at the White House where people talked about, you know, declaring martial law, having the National Guard seized ballots. If I can speculate for a moment, I think one more mission is sort of an attempt to have voter fraud believers who are more credible than the ones they had in 2020. I think about like Rudy Giuliani's Melissa Carone, the blonde woman who looked kind of crazy and was ranting. Right.

People like that. And so I think this time they're like, well, maybe we can get some cops, some firefighters. It'll look a little more credible when we start yelling about mules, stuff like that. Well, and that's sort of the scary part, again, is that they have potentially at least maybe learned a little bit from some of the missteps they made in 2020. And they're attending to at least appear more credible on the outside. and people are not going to dig deep into this, and they're going to take that, you know, they're just going to accept that at face value.

You know, I think certainly people who are kind of like looking for proof of election fraud or Republican supporters, who are sad whenever a Republican candidate wins, I think all they need is sort of a veneer of legitimacy to their beliefs. And so I think that's where stuff like 2000 mules and these sort of these documentaries that, or the Mike Lindell, kind of all his charts, none of that stuff really makes sense,

but I think you can look at it and just go, Oh, all right, like, good enough for me. Right. You know, I can believe this. And so I think that's exactly what they're up to with one more mission. You couldn't make a two-hour movie out of it if there wasn't something there. Exactly right. Speaking of which, before I let you go, because so few people have watched this movie and I, unfortunately, one of them, and I know you are too.

Because you talked about it on your podcast without having me on as a guest, which I yelled at Kelly while about. So I'm going to yell at you about it, too. My son, Hunter. Yes. Just an incredibly awful movie. No, it's so bad. I mean, this was supposed to be, I don't know, I had high hopes, I guess. I think Hunter Biden's life kind of lends itself to sort of a Scorsese-style treatment.

You know, I think there's a lot of opportunity there. But as you said, I mean, it ends up being, you know, there's like a little pizzazz, sort of bafflingly filmed all in Eastern Europe, in Serbia, I believe, just with some really bizarre choices. And then it ends up just being like reading Breitbart where it's like, all right, you know, and then here's how I did this similar shady deal in Ukraine. and then, you know, and then I did it in China. I mean, they really took, I think, the sex and the drugs out of it.

Yeah, they sort of nodded at going in sort of like a little bit of a surreal direction. There was one scene where, what's her name, Gina Carano. She plays a Secret Service agent, and there's this one sort of fantasy dreamlike sequence where the actor playing Joe Biden is like sniffing her hair and her neck and then they're dancing. And that was at least, you know, visually interesting and nutty and out there. and it was like, if you would have given me 90 minutes of this, at least it would have entertained me. But instead, like you said, it was a lot of info dumps.

And it was a lot of putting words on the screen a la Adam McKay movies. Yeah, Adam McKay should be suing them because, like, they took all of his, like, there's so much fourth wall breaking, so much that like, it's layered into each other. So like, Gina Carrano will start telling you a story facing the camera. And then Hunter will start doing it inside her story. Yeah. I said afterwards, I said Adam McKay has a lot to answer for this movie. You know, obviously not intentional on his part, but he is sort of the godfather of this movie and he must pay.

I mean, just the characterization you have like Hunter's bodyguard is this insanely red-billed guy who's like saying, oh, you got to read the Gateway Pundit. I mean, just like really slapped together. It's insanely bad. And it just, it could have been a so bad it's good movie, but it's not. It's just bad. Anyway, well, thanks so much for coming on. Folks, listen to fever dreams if you're not already. Hopefully you are. It's a great podcast about the radical right and all the wacky stuff that's going on. And I can't recommend it more highly.

Will, thanks again. Thanks a lot. Jesse Cannon. Andy Levy. So Jesse, you're joining us to do Fuck That Guy for today, which is, I think as everyone knows, it's your favorite segment. You know, I oldly show up with, I'm really angry about something. I appreciate Matt Fuller. who is sort of a fill-in guest host, which is a long, a title with a long and honorable history, I think. Thanks to Matt for doing that for us. But obviously, he is a reporter,

and we do not want to compromise the integrity of the Daily Beast by having a reporter do a fuck-that-guy segment. I mean, this podcast already compromises the integrity of the Daily Beast on every episode. Well, hold up now. I like to think it strengthens it. Yes, yes, yes. Just let me sleep at night, Jesse.

Please. All right. So who's your fuck that guy? Well, you know, it does bring me great joy to always talk about one. Ted Cruz, you know, especially since I'm very angry that he showed up into our fair city, thinking that he could walk these streets this week. But what we found out is, as usual, Mr. I had to contest the election, was hiding scared during January 6th, a supply closet. Because that's clearly what you do when people were just, you know, sightseeing.

and, you know, it was a nice, peaceful mob. As always, this man is the most full of shit person in the business and truly a person who knows how full of shit they are. Yeah, he's just, he is just unbelievably soulless. And it was so nice seeing him, he turns up at Yankee Stadium, and he's sitting there in his really good seat behind home plate, and just people all around him, just in a picture, just giving him the finger. If you do a search, you can find audio of people,

just yelling at him. And it's just absolutely fantastic. And this is all in response to him tweeting minutes from opening pitch in Yankee Stadium. It was so cool that it just completely backfired on him. And just anything bad that happens to him, I'm always happy. I just keep thinking about too that, he was in Ohio the day before talking about, you know, those working class Ohio voters and how the elites don't understand you. Meanwhile, his kids' private school, costs more than the average Ohio and makes a year. Then he comes to New York, which he's always putting down. Total full of shit guy. Yeah. And of course, he gets the prime seat at Yankee Stadium, right behind home plate, like right by the field, which, you know, I'm sorry, the average working

man or woman is not sitting in those seats. No, it was the Kissinger seat, right? Yeah, exactly. Yes. Oh, God. So who is your fuck that guy? So my fuck that guy is, He's no stranger to the segment. He's a Supreme Court justice. He has a wife that is trying to overthrow the duly elected government of the United States. And you would think that would be a bad thing for a Supreme Court justice, but apparently you would be wrong. Anyway, so it's Clarence Thomas. I'm sure you've guessed that already.

On Monday, he issued an administrative stay to prevent Lindsey Graham from having to answer questions in Georgia about anything he might have done. or how he might have helped Donald Trump try to overturn the election totals there in 2020. So, you know, prosecutors have been wanting Graham to answer questions. He's been saying, no, I shouldn't have to. I'm shielded. And courts have consistently ruled against him. But then, of course, you get to Clarence Thomas. And he decides that not so fast.

Let's shield the guy. and until we give it a full hearing. So as usual, it's no pun intended. What a coup to have a Supreme Court justice in your pocket like that, who you just know will help you out whenever they can. And look, we'll see what happens when the full court hears on this, I guess. But hopefully they will not follow Clarence Thomas's lead. But for that reason, he is my fuck that guy for today.

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