The Daily Beast Podcast - Josh Hawley Is Basically Making Meth For MAGA Nation

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

In this episode of The New Abnormal, Bulwark Editor-In-Chief Charlie Sykes tells Molly Jong-Fast why Josh Hawley and his fellow GOPers have major Breaking Bad vibes when it comes to supplying the Trump base with BS and the two surmise what is going on in McCarthy’s goldfish brain. Plus! TNA’s favorite vaccine disinfo buster Dr. Eric Topol shares the next big COVID vax move that could change the game and Democratic pollster John Anzalone makes the case that Biden is America’s new Marvel hero. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes it's just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. Today we have a super interesting episode. We'll be talking to Dr. Eric Topal,

founder of the Scripps Research Transitional Institute, about the latest on vaccines and what's next for the rollout. Then we'll talk to John Anzolone, a Democratic pollster about our favorite subject, how the Dems win in the midterms. But first, we have editor-in-chief of the bulwark and host of the Bullwark podcast, Charlie Sykes. Welcome to the new abnormal Charlie Sykes.

I can't believe you've never been here. I was sure we'd had you on like 15 times. I just assume you had high standards. I don't know. I was convinced. I was like, I said to Jesse this weekend, I was like, well, we can't have Charlie Sykeson again because we've had him so many. And then I was like, oh, my God, we've never had. I mean, I'm such a fan of yours and I've been on your podcast, which is incredible.

But not recently enough, so we'll have to reciprocate. Anytime, man, I'm always around for the bulwark, my, one of my, one of my, you know, spiritual homes. Let's talk about junkie horses, can we? I am so embarrassed that on my own podcast, which I just finished, I didn't talk about junkie horses. See, this is why you're actually really getting good at this, Molly, because this should have been the dominant topic today, the junkie horses. It's all about the junkie horses, but we can call Jim Swift right now and be like, Jim Swift, we need a junkie horse amendment. Amendment.

Amend him. Yes, a little footnote of the junkie horse. What do you think that was about? Donald Trump's lonely. He's got time on his hands. I don't know. Somebody must have said, okay, here's something that people get outraged about. And what was unclear to me, and I think you tweeted about this, is does Donald Trump know it's a horse?

I mean, did he actually know that the horse is a horse? And also that Joe Biden is not feeding horses crack. That Joe Biden had nothing to do with all of this. But America's going to hell. It's American carnage. That's right. Whatever feeds into that narrative, just go with it. That was sort of amazing to me.

He was like, and the world is going to hell because the horse is on drugs. Yeah. I mean, what is that? I was expecting that he was going to go off on birthing people. That this is Mother's Day and saying all the left, you know, the left refuses to say, mother. They want to call all of you birthing. people. And then, of course, she'd have a million people saying, yes, that's it. The Democrats and the left just hate mothers. That's right. So I think I felt it was kind of a missed opportunity. So he's going for the

the junkie horse. The more obscure. He didn't take the, the old Shapiro. Yeah, Ben Shapiro has tweeted that Mother's Day tweet. Yeah. I mean, if you follow Ben Shapiro, you'll basically get every meme, every narrative out there, every low-hanging bit of fruit. Let's find one, nut job from the, I don't know, feminist studies department of, you know, lower Arkansas University. And they'll put out something about this and suddenly it becomes, this is academia. They're coming for you. They hate you. Yeah. Now, you know these players, some of them well. So I'm curious to know, on Sunday, McCarthy told the money, honey, that he is supporting Elise Defotnik. What do you think is going on in his goldfish brain?

Oh, his goal for his brain is very, very simple. It's like, this is what I've been told to do. This is what I have to do. I'm going to be the speaker. I'm going to, you know, play all of those particular notes. But it was, it was interesting that he went on the Money Honey show. And that's, I mean, that's kind of a tell that you are the, you know, Republican leader of the House of Representatives. You're announcing this major thing.

And you go on Maria Bartaromo show. I mean, really? Yeah. Well, because, you know, crazy calls onto crazy. I mean, it's like from the depths that, you know, I am embracing the bat-shit-crazy stream in my party. Where should I go and announce this? I don't know, on these bat-shit crazy Fox business show. Yeah.

Charlie, I think you have a really good update there to stupid is as stupid does. Crazy goes on to crazy. Yeah, they're cognate. They flow from one to one other. So at least Stefanik is an amazing story, isn't she? Yeah. Now, she's not very right way in some ways, except she does chop the lie. Well, she was, you know, the girl most likely, too, just a few years ago.

I think it was Paul Ryan, who's really turned out to be a great judge of character. He said she's not just the future of the Republican Party. She is the future of inclusive aspirational politics. Well, apparently he was wrong, or she just simply made it. or she's made a very, very different choice. And she's going on and she's like, hey, I'm going to run to Steve Bannon. Okay, so this is the path. Yeah, Info Wars.

Kevin McCarthy goes to Maria Bartolromo. Alis Stephano goes to Steve Bannon. That calculus is basically you can't win without the base. Right. The calculus is you can't win without the complete bat-shit crazy base. I mean, see, I think people almost missed the point here that it's worse than you think it is. So people are saying that now the new litmus test is loyalty to Trump. No, because actually, Liz Cheney's been pretty loyal to Trump. It's loyalty to Trump's craziest elements. It's loyalty to specifically to his lie about the election. Because you can be against, you can vote against the tax cuts. You can vote against him on, on, you know, gay and lesbian rights. You can vote against him on any other thing. But as long as you embrace the back. shit crazy election lie.

Your goal. You're good. It's amazing. Speaking of bad shit crazy election lie, can we talk about cyber ninjas? Oh yeah, please. They're looking for bamboo. Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. I know this is your party. Or it was. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This is no one's part. I, let's see.

It's somebody's party, but you actually should play the audio of the guy because people will think, oh, you guys are making this up. There's accusations at 40, thousand ballots were flown in to arizona into arizona and it was stuffed into the box okay and it came from the southeast part of the world asia okay and uh and what they're doing is to find out if there's bamboo in the paper so what does the bamboo why why do you check for because they use bamboo in their paper processing who's they uh people in southeast asia you can't make this stuff up that they're

looking for bamboo in the ballots because there was report. There were reports that maybe tens of thousands of ballots were flown in from China into Maricopa County, Arizona to steal the election. And I'm just trying to imagine looking into the eyes of a person that believes this, you know, and trying to see, hello, are you there? What is going on in your head? Why are you focusing on the bamboo ballots here and not the North Korean ballots that came through Maine. Remember that story? I thought it was interesting. We had this Chinese space rocket coming down to Earth, the size of a school bus. Like, if you're going to be anti-China, why not focus on something that is actually from China, as opposed to this bat shittery? I've almost lost the thread of why people believe what they

believe. But you're right. I mean, the Chinese space program apparently is about as careful as, I don't know, they're not really into safety and doing stuff. Maybe that should be reassuring to some of us that they can't get this stuff. Right. Yes, but so they can't deal with their space debris, but somehow they have cunningly come up with a way to replicate tens of thousands of Arizona ballots and print them in Wuhan, put them on a plan. But, you know, Chuck Grassley, you know, Senator from Iowa, we tweeted out over the weekend, you know, why are people upset about all this? They're just asking questions. They're just asking questions, which is okay. Okay, Chuck, just remind me again why we don't have a mandatory retirement age in the Senate. I don't know. Speaking of just asking questions, we're starting to hit this place where we can't get people to get vaccinated. You know, the willing are done and the sort of willing are on. almost done, and now we have to try to convince people who don't believe in science.

Tucker Carlson last week just asked a lot of questions that were heavy on the anti-vaccing. Do you have thoughts about how public health officials can reach those? I mean, some people will never get vaccinated, but the sort of the people who don't totally get the mechanics of this. No, I don't have an answer to all of this. And, of course, it was also my senior senator from my home state of Wisconsin. Ron Johnson was also asking questions out there, raising questions about the vaccination with the same misinformation. I don't know. I wish I had an answer for you. You have this toxic post-truth media ecosystem that's very difficult to break into. That seems to create this sort

of vortex of craziness. And so how do you step in and say, you know, unless you are the personal physician of a person who is, who's binging on Fox News, unless you have a personal physician, I guess that would be the only way to do it. But I guess, you know, and this is not funny. Right. No. The utter recklessness of people like Fox News and others who are putting out information that could actually cause people to die. I mean, it's one thing to spin various, you know, memes about, you know, birthing people and stuff like that.

This is real stuff. And the other part that's bizarre about it is that if we really do want to get back to normal and, you know, all of the folks who have been opposed to the math, and, you know, there's all freedom and not having any lockdown. The best way to get rid of masks and get rid of lockdowns, right, is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. Yeah. So it's, it makes no sense, but in the most technically advanced civilization, known to man, here we are sitting with half the population,

just not believing in technology or medicine. It's amazing to me that we are in this place where we can't, where we have a percentage of the American people. including senators and congresspeople who are shopping this weird. They don't want the vaccine, but they also don't want the lockdowns. And they seem not to be able to figure out that the vaccines make the lockdowns at. Well, and also all the incentives that we're seeing in American politics, that there's no downside for being crazy and irresponsible. I mean, here's a scene from the party.

You have Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green are out there. They're out there on the speaking circuit. they are members in good standing of the Republican Party. There's no disciplinary, no disciplinary action. She's not on committees anymore. No, I know, but I mean, the Republicans haven't done anything to her. And yet, if you tell the truth about the election, like Liz Cheney, if you tell the truth, you are purged.

So there's no downside for crazy, and there's a significant downside for telling the truth. Maybe that's the significant. I know, I've kind of gone from the election. It's just, I think that there's kind of a contendant. continuum of crazy. That if you're going to believe, if you're going to believe that, you know, the Chinese have, you know, bamboo-laced ballots, you're going to believe that Bill Gates is implanting microchips in your vaccine. I mean, there's, that seems like the sort of a logical dinner table conversation that's taking place in middle America now. It's the only thing that makes

sense. So, Charlie, you mentioned the media bubbles. It seems now inevitable that Trump's live journal that he called a social media platform will turn into a social media platform. Are you concerned about the greater bubble that's going to be created of just conservatives having their own Twitter and the rest of us having their own one? Well, I think that's where we're trending anyway. And it's beyond a bubble. It's like a hermetically sealed alternative reality silo now. And so this is the danger is that you keep forcing people further and further off into the

edges of the fever swamp, talking with one another. And of course, then you have the cycle of, you know, everybody needs the stronger dopamine hit and, you know, proves the, you know, keeps people angry and outraged and fearful. So you're constantly upping the dose that you have to pedal on the street. So yeah, in 2017, people asked me about what was going on with the media ecosystem. And they said everything that's happening is going to get worse. But I will admit to you, I had no idea. I had no idea that it was going to get this much worse. and we're seeing it in the post-Trump era that, if anything, Trump's defeat has made the right crazier.

I don't think of myself as terribly naive, but I did think that maybe there would be a little bit more of a backing away from this sort of thing. Trumpian fever would inevitably break if Trump was in fact defeated. But now it seems to be metastasizing. He's out of the picture, and it feels like it's multiplying and maybe even spinning out of control. So yes. So in answer your question, I think people ought to be very concerned about this, and I'm not sure what to do about it. It's strange because you would think that if Trump were silenced, things would go back to normal. But it seems like Trump has really kind of disappeared. But, and I've heard from sort of people who are friends in that world who say they're very disappointed with Trump. They feel like he's not fighting. He's just going and playing golf. I'm like, isn't that what he did anyway?

Wait, you have friends in that world? I want to hear more about this. The people I know who, you know, in that ecosystem of Palm Beach dysfunction, are mad at him for not doing more, even though he's never done anything. But it seems like the Republican Party is able to continue on the crazy without him. Oh, very much so. And, you know, and part of it is, and this is why I think people ought to be concerned about, you know, the least the phonics of the world, you know, because, you know, she, she, I hope. hold her to a different standard than Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, let's face it, Marjorie Taylor Green is dumb. I mean, she's dumb as a box of hair. Okay, so whatever.

At least the phonics and the Josh Hollies and the Ted Cruz's and those guys, they know what they're doing. I mean, that's the real cynicism of it, that they're using their education, their insight in order to propagate this stuff. And that's the problem. I mean, these are the folks that could have. I mean, there are alternatives, right? I mean, they could have taken this in a different direction. And yet, it's like they're vying with one another, who can, who can

sell the purest grade crap on the street? You know, I mean, it really is. It's like breaking bad political version, you know? Josh Ali is down there, you know, in the hazmat suit, trying to develop the purest possible

form of crazy meth. You know? Yeah. To that point, I think that we did get another dose of which side of that Kevin McCarthy was on this morning when Adam Kinsinger tweeted a few days before January 6 our GOP members at a conference call. I told Kevin that his words in our party's actions would lead to violence on January 6th. Kevin dismissively responded with okay Adam operator next question and we got violence. This seems pretty bad that the person in charge at the wheel right now is this dumb. And it could get worse because I think the odds favor

Kevin McCarthy being the next speaker of the House. Imagine what that's going to be like for the next two years. Imagine if you have a Republican majority in power during the 2024 election. So I do think that that's alarming. Now, Kevin McCarthy is, again, one of those extraordinary stories where, you know, for a brief moment, he had a hit a little burst, a little spasm of independence and, you know, called out Donald Trump for his role in the, in the insurrection. And then he got over that very quickly, didn't he? And he's retconning the entire insurrection. He's down at Mar-a-Lago, kissing the ring. And he's leading the purge of Liz Cheney, who's basically saying the exact same thing that he said back after January 6th. Part of it is just the cravenness, his unwillingness to stand up to Donald Trump, you know, his willingness to throw any scruples about truth.

And just the raw ambition that this is his path to become speaker. And, you know, he'll say and do whatever it takes to get that power. even if it means ignoring threats of violence, even if it means downplaying and whitewashing attempts to overthrow our democracy. Does that mean that there will be no more normal Republicans? Like, they'll just get flushed out? It feels like that right now. I mean, I know there's a group of folks who are coming out with, you know, a joint letter, a lot of, you know, prominent Republicans later this week. But I do think that that's kind of the storyline right now is that. They are flushing out the normal Republicans, or at least the Republicans who aren't willing to embrace this.

Now, there is a group of Republicans that probably knows that it's dishonest and crazy, but they've just decided they're going to keep their heads down and keep their mouths shut because they think that's prudent. I mean, how many are they? And I don't want to name any names like, you know, Congressman Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin. The guys who know what's going on, but just, you know, lack the willingness to stand up. where would they be in 2024? If you decide, I'm not going to speak up, I'm not going to fight, I'm not going to, you know, correct all of this. If that becomes a habit, when it really matters, are, can we assume that they're going to step forward?

And again, I don't, I don't want to name any names, you know, like Mike Gallagher, but. Well, and the reason I'm focused on him is it might actually come down to that, because people will say, would a Republican Congress refuse to certify the election? And which I'd like to say is, no, you know, there's just enough of the normal Republicans who would stand up for democracy, that would never happen. People like Mike Gallagher, who by the way, is worth fuck all right now. So, but really when it counted, he would step up. Our friend and a guy who you had on the pod on Friday, David from, said to me and probably to you has a theory that it takes three lost elections for a party to change their course. So midterms,

Trump election and this 2022. Do you think that's overly optimistic? Maybe it is. I think that's a good formula and I think it works in the past, but I think our politics is changing so rapidly. I just don't know what rules apply anymore? Also, what does it mean to lose an election if you have a party that is committed to never losing an election? I mean, we'll never admit they lost an election. Right. No, that's a good point. Now I'm really depressed. Don't we think that the big change really is, is that now the base is leading the party instead of the party is messaging the base. It seems like that's really the flip. Oh, I think that's exactly, that is exactly right.

There's not a, I think we sometimes, I think you were getting at this before, focus on the leadership of the party. There is no leadership in the party. There are followers and they are following this base, which is crazier and crazier. And, you know, in part it's because nobody pushes back. I mean, I understand that if you stand up and you say, hey, you know, stand a thwart crazy and say, stop this, it might cost you your position. But if enough people did, maybe it would slow it down a little bit.

Right. But yeah, it is absolute, abject fear, not just of the base, but of the craziest elements of the base. And you see that playing out in places like Arizona and Texas and Georgia, certainly Virginia, with this crazy drive-thru convention. So it's sort of the worst, leading the worst. And there's this competition again, you know, who's going to pay? handed to them the most. It does feel like a spiral. The question is whether it's a death spiral

for the Republican Party or whether it's a death spiral for all of us. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast's fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles.

To become a member, head to new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal. t the dailybeast.com. Dr. Eric Topal is director and founder of the Scripps Research Transitional Institute. Welcome back to the new abnormal Dr. Eric Topol. Hey, Molly. Great to be with you. It's great for you to be back. I feel like we've been with you this whole pandemic. Well, I remember the first time we hooked up was the day the Pfizer vaccine data came out.

That was a pretty exciting day. Yeah. I know. That was really exciting. Speaking of Pfizer vaccine data, what do you think this week? Are my kids going to get the vaccine? Yeah, it should be approved this week for 12 to 15. 15-year-olds, and I wouldn't think there would be any delay as far as going forward.

So, yeah, even more transformative is the application for full licensure, because when that hits, that would have the biggest impact for accelerating vaccination because so many employers, health systems, universities, they're all holding back until there's full licensure. Right. Because of its legal issues. So that would be tremendous, and that may happen hopefully in the weeks ahead as well. Explain to me why that is a little bit. Well, it's silly stuff because we have hundreds of millions of people who've had the MRNA vaccines, both Pfizer and Moderna.

They were approved under this emergency use authorization. By the way, the first vaccine ever under the NUA. The legal people are saying, well, to have that as a requirement, when it isn't gotten full licensure and it's only emergency. So it's really a matter of semantics because once you have it out globally in such a tremendous population with such safety and efficacy, that should be enough. But now they're just waiting for this final FDA blessing. Let's talk about what you're seeing.

Well, we are in a really amazing phase of the pandemic in the U.S. because we've gotten over the UK variant B117 hump, which was a very serious threat. We're over that. We prevented a fourth wave. And so now, as long as we can get another 15 to 20 percent of Americans vaccinated in the next couple of months, we will have containment. We've never had containment. The containment, I mean, is less than one per case per 100,000 Americans. The lowest we've ever been in the pandemic was six.

And that was when cases were a lot of them were undiagnosed. It was probably 10 or 12. So right now we're at 12. And so it just shows we've got an order of magnitude to get better. And we can do that if we can just get another, you know, 30 to 40 million people to come on board with vaccination. Have we come up against the people who are vaccine hesitant or are they just vaccine indifferent? Well, it's a combination. We've got anti-vaxxers.

we've got, you know, some hesitant, some relative resistant. It's a continuum. But, you know, I do think that the biggest impact is when it becomes a requirement to work in so many places. You know, where the health system I work, it hasn't been a requirement and it should be. Every health care worker should have a vaccination. And then, you know, when you start seeing things like if you want to fly or if you want to do a lot of things. So we have not used the incentives about, you know, demasking and, you know, having much more pre-COVID life restored. And there's lots more incentives out there that haven't

yet really been actualized. So I'm optimistic we will get there. It's not, unfortunately, at the pace when we got to 4.6 million vaccinations in one day in this country, which was a, you know, that was amazing. But hopefully we can get back up to the at least two and a half to three million a day. And the most important thing to keep an eye on is how many of the first dose vaccines. Like yesterday, we had 800,000, that's great. If we could keep that going, we will be golden by end of June. You know, in my mind, those conservatives came out, and I don't want to say conservatives, because they're not really conservatives, they're Trumpists, came out early and hard against vaccine passports. And they said, it's not fair, it's not just, it's this, it's that. But ultimately,

if we had vaccine passports, we could start having sporting events tomorrow. We could have full stadiums tomorrow. We could have Broadway shows tomorrow. I mean, not having vaccine passports is a way of really slowing things down. Yeah, we're seeing that, like, for example, in Israel, where they have, you know, sports events with tens of

thousands of people all together because they have a vaccine passport program. I mean, there's only really two options. Either one, you have a passport or two, you have rapid home antigen tests. Right. Right. And if you haven't been vaccinated, that at least are shown not to be infectious.

These are the only ways we can help protect each other because eventually all the people that haven't been vaccinated are sitting ducks to get infected. Right. I mean, is there any way we can do this now or you think it's too late? Well, I think this country just doesn't want to go to the passport, full throttle. I think we'll see some watered down version.

I mean, for example, you can't go to a lot of countries traveling. Even now, you have to have certain vacuards. And that's going to be the case for international travel for COVID. And then the question is, you know, how deep do we go inside the U.S.? And that's going to be played out over time because the employer thing is the biggest. And so many employers over the next few months, when it's full licensure of multiple vaccines, they're going to move to a requirement. Just like we have flu vaccines in many states that are a requirement in the healthcare community.

So we'll see a gradual thing. be the full passport and people just get bristled when they something is mandated but in this country but it's for everyone's protection you know that's the thing i mean i just don't get it talk to me about the ip waivers i know the ip waivers are just a first step right because you need to still have someone making the vaccines right the ip waivers are you know a nice proxy that we're trying to help but they in themselves are not going to be, you know, changing anything substantively. The problem we have right now, even though things are starting to calm down in South America, it's lighting up in India and in other countries in Asia.

You know, we're seeing Malaysia, Japan, many countries are going in the wrong direction, not just India. So we don't have enough vaccines in the U.S. in our glut with the AstraZeneca, 100 million doses, JNJ, 10 to millions of doses. We don't have enough in our domain to help squash what's going on in India. But whatever we have, which we don't need, we should be distributing to Kovacs or directly to countries because it will help to some degree. But we as a country, although we were in such sorry shape last year,

we have an opportunity to be a global leader and helping all the other countries around the world. And it doesn't need to be sequential. That is, you know, we get our COVID house in order in this country and then we direct our efforts. No, it should be in parallel. It should be simultaneous. So we haven't done enough yet to help countries throughout the world, and we should be. Yeah.

No, it seems it's really kind of shocking to me. I mean, I know we're in this impossible situation, but there is a soft power, and we see right, China is sending their vaccine. There's, you know, countries get a soft power by saving lives, right? Right, right. And Russia, too, yes. Yeah. And those vaccines of both those countries have some issues.

They're not, you know, clearly that they don't have the track record publication-wise, as well as efficacy-wise. So, you know, they are being promoted in a lot of countries around the world. And as you say, that soft power. We should be doing all we can to, you know, we're so, darn lucky. I think that's the thing that people don't realize. To have vaccines, the first to roll out with 95% efficacy and unprecedented safety, and, you know, we can help make these for the rest of the world at a very accelerated schedule. So I hope we'll do that. All right. I have a question

for you that is going to blow your socks off. Actually, maybe it won't. I hope it will, though. I was walking down the street the other day, and I ran into a friend of mine who is a dad, and he said to me, we've gotten everyone in our family vaccinated, but our 18-year-old daughter. And I've heard this again and again, smart people believing that there's some fertility issue with the vaccines. Can you please explain to them why this is hooey? Wow. Yeah, I've been hearing that along with many other complete myths about, you know, things that have. been made up and fabricated, there's absolutely nothing to substantiate any effect, even a possible effect on fertility. So this is absurd, as are so many other things that have to be debunked out

there that the anti-science world has fabricated and conjured up. You know, things like the mRNA is a gene modifying and that escapes all over the body, all this complete, utter, malarkey as Joe Biden would say, or BFs, right? Right. We say, come on, man. Yeah. Come on, man. I mean, it's just sad to see this because it's so destructive.

Yeah. And for, like you say, very intelligent people are sucked into this. Just give us like a two-second pitch. We have a friend who won't get vaccinated. They say MRNA isn't safe. Give us the elevator pitch so we can use it in our lives. Yeah, this is crazy stuff because, you know, if the vaccine had gotten approval in October, you know, the October surprise, with 32 people in the Pfizer trial, then I could see people saying it happened too fast. But it was done so rigorously in waiting for the trials to be completed before they were eligible to get reviewed for the emergency authorization.

So the MRNA thing is actually, you know, extraordinary. In fact, today was the pan-coronavirus MRNA vaccine against all variants, against SARS-CoV-1, against Bat COVID. I mean, it's just amazing platform. Wait, explain to us what that is because that's a fascinating thing. Yes, so the whole idea is it turns out this virus family is eminently suitable to take down as a family. Right. So that all, instead of going variant by variant,

in the years ahead. We could just take the whole thing down because the science has progressed so well, the structural biology of the virus and the vaccines. And, you know, we can do this. And in fact, today in nature, a seminal paper from the group of Duke and collaborators where they have made a vaccine against all variants, the original SARS from 2003, that COVID. I mean, so MRNA is this exceptional platform.

You know, that really is so safe, so safe. And it makes us develop antibodies at a level that are superhuman. Yeah. Super natural. And that's why they're so darn effective. And that's why you're going to last longer than even human natural immunity. Oh, interesting. I always say to people and tell me if I'm right or wrong that MRNA vaccines have actually

been around. They were sort of tested on SARS, right? Yes. they were tested in small levels, you know, with multiple viruses before. They were in a warm-up phase. I mean, this didn't happen too fast. It took 30 years. Right. 30 years of working on MRI. And the last five years against different virus targets. So it was just kind of all the table was set. You know, the foundation was laid. And then when when COVID came along, it just was deployed in that way. But there was nothing so new. It was just a new.

It was just that, you know, everything went into this hyper-accelerated mode of, you know, let's get the sequence of the virus, let's make the RNA, let's get it in a nanoparticle, let's get it into patients, you know, first, of course, in animals and non-human primates, then in large trials, the largest clinical trials ever done with vaccines, 75,000 people in the two mRNA vaccines. And then, you know, the approvals and the rollout. I mean, this has been something that's never been replicated in the history of medicine. Yeah, it's amazing. And I feel like we are living in really amazing times. There were articles in the York Times last week about this idea that we may never reach herd immunity. I've also heard people talk about this idea that we will, we'll get to a place where we can

really treat the virus. What I think is I'm so sick of hearing, of herd immunity. Right. The concept is meaningless. What we want to get is containment of this, you know, level that we've never been close to, which is approaching, you know, the zero, like, you know, where Israel is today, where Los Angeles is now, which is amazing in itself, right, 0.7 cases per 100,000 people, right? Yeah. Or actually, you know, Los Angeles is two something, but the all idea is get below one. Then it's so incredibly contained, right? Right.

That's about as close as we're going to get. I mean, that's what we should be shooting for, our quantitative metric, not this. amorphous herdomin, which you don't know until you've achieved it, that the virus can't find a host. Well, the virus isn't finding too many people when you're getting down to close to zero per 100,000 people. So that's what I think we should be zooming in on, which is containment at the lowest possible level. And we're going to get there. We're going to be there, hopefully, by June or July. It's amazing. Did you ever think it would go this while? Well, I was really worried about the UK variant because what the toll is.

took throughout Europe, not just in the U.K. And in fact, in Israel, these were in many countries, the worst surge of their entire pandemic. You know, if we didn't have the advance warning, and we got to give a lot of credit, which hasn't been given yet to the U.K. First, they alerted us in late December. And they told us this was highly transmissible, had higher lethality. You know, this is a really dangerous variant. And indeed, it is the worst variant in that regard that we have seen. But we had that advanced warning and we had a very, you know, strong vaccination campaign and we fended it off.

We were really, really lucky. So that could have been, you know, even worse than our monster service. It's a super spreader variant. And it gets younger people really sick, right? Exactly. Because the viral load in each person who gets infected, including in children and adolescents, is much higher. So the illness that it causes is more severe.

That's why there's higher lethality. That's awful. We created a wall, you know, the right kind of wall, not the other kind of wall. We had a wall, a vaccine wall, and we blocked it. And the only state that suffered substantially was Michigan. But by the time every other state got going, and addition to their prior COVID hit from 2020, we had built a true wall. Why do you think Michigan did so poorly? Well, it's a combination of things.

For one, they got hit, you know, early. on, it was Michigan and Florida. They were getting the highest levels of this variant for spreading. I mean, you know, that's part of this kind of super spreading events that were occurring in Michigan. In addition, they didn't have a second wave there. So they were missing a lot of people that didn't have natural immunity. And then third, you know, it was pretty cold up there. Yeah. Still. Yeah. And a lot of people were indoors. Right. And there's a lot of gatherings and, you know, all that kind of stuff. So I think this combination of those three things probably accounts for why Michigan was hit so hard. And the other thing is we didn't blitz it with vaccines at the earliest

possible time before it went exponential. The military has and is giving a more broad COVID vaccine, right? Oh, yeah. The military hasn't yet revved up. I mean, the fact that so few in the military have been vaccinated is yet another part of that licensure story. We have to have to. get the whole military vaccinated. So these are the groups of people that, you know, it isn't so much that they are, the people are resistant. It's just that a process of getting this full licensure. We got to accelerate that so we can take care of the military, healthcare workers, all schools and universities, you know, most major employers. And then you'll see, you know, the wall will be fortified to the endth degree. Has J&J really taken a hit since the being pulled off the market?

I don't know. It's mixed report. It's hard to know. I mean, I think that a lot of people like the one and done. I think that we're going to see in the weeks ahead the two-dose vaccine of J&J, which could turn out to be, you know, very effective like the mRNA vaccines at that level in the 90 plus. So I think the jury's still out, but, you know, I think that it is a very important vaccine. And the issue about the clotting events, they're, you know, exceedingly rare. But, you know, but. there is still this controversy in people who are relatively young, predominantly female, that there's this risk. You know, is it one in 100,000 or one in 300,000? So that's just like an overhang, unfortunately.

Yeah. Oh, this was so good. Thank you so much, Dr. Eric Topal. I hope you'll come back soon. Of course. Anytime, Molly. Great to be with you. Great to be with you.

What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power.

Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcast. John Anzolone is a Democratic pollster, and he's here to talk to us about the landscape for Dems going into 2022.

Welcome John Anzolone to the new abnormal. Thanks for having me. Very excited to have you. You come highly recommended from your friend in mind, James Carville. First of all, I mean, what is all this insanity? It seems to me like there are 100 different things that are going to affect 2022 in enormous and also weird ways that we can't even calculate. like the census and all of these voter laws, these restrictive voter laws. Can you talk to me about what it's like in the landscape right now? Yeah, you know, I think that's right. I mean,

there's always a million things that impact the political dynamics of a cycle, right? Especially midterms, right? Because you never know who the fuck's coming out and all that type of stuff. But at the end of the day, I think there's one big footprint here is that the Republicans look in say, oh, we've got a Democratic president, and so historically, that means great things for the GOP. And they kind of forget that, you know, all the rules have been kind of thrown out the window in the last five years for politics, right? And I think the one big thing that will impact the 2022 elections is action. Like, just like, who is solving problems? Like, voters are so incredibly transactional right now is they just want things done. They don't know, they don't care who gets them

done. They don't care how they get done. And we've got a president who, you know, you'll learn a lot about a president in the first hundred days, right? And, you know, he is like America's new Marvel action figure, right? He diagnoses a problem. You know, he puts a plan together. He gets experts around him and he executes a plan. And this is a guy who is now all about action and getting things done and getting things done quickly because America has a bunch of big problems and crises. And they've been through a lot in the last year and a half. And he's the guy America is viewing as like in charge, filling a leadership void and getting things done. Do you really believe that? Yes, I truly believe that. And you see it, listen, you see it in the numbers. I mean, the fact is, is that people didn't care

how the American Rescue Plan got done. Like 64% of people once they were given the full information said, yeah, reconciliation, whatever, just get it done quickly. And the fact is, is that people are still hurting. Right. Republicans are like kind of tone deaf. They believe, you know, COVID's done. Cancer culture. Yeah, they believe that basically the economy is roaring. They believe they just, they're always putting their heads in the sand about what the problems are. They don't even try to diagnose the problems, let alone come up with a plan. But they do take responsibility for the American Rescue Act for things they voted against. That they voted against is so crazy. But I truly believe that like this isn't about aspiration, this isn't about big this, thinking, and whatever, poetry.

This is about getting shit done. And Americans went through the last year, and one of the things that the pandemic did, was it exposed a bunch of inequalities, like inequalities in health care, inequalities in schooling, inequalities in the economy, you know, inequalities in racial justice, and they want things done for them. Okay. I both agree. and also I have more questions. But one of the things I've heard is that Republicans are going to use the school closures as a way to hammer Democrats in the midterms.

What do you think about that? They have a big problem, which is that Biden had a plan that, I think, $170 billion and the American Rescue Plan goes to making sure schools have the money to reopen, that they have the testing, that they have what they have to do with ventilation, all this type of stuff. And I think that the, I want to say that the Republican counterplan, was like $20 billion. You know, so they have, they have nothing to really show for themselves. They love to try to find these wedge issues.

They're like, oh, suburban women are going to be so furious at Democrats for school closings. When if you look or you talk with suburban women or anyone, they don't blame, you know, the Biden administration for what's going on with schools. They blame a lot of different things. And they're frustrated. But the fact is, is that what's going to happen is, a president who gets a 60% positive job rating on handling the coronavirus, a 69, 70% on vaccine distribution. When kids are going to school, you know, full time in person come September of 2021,

they're probably going to give Joe Biden some of the credit for that. You seem awfully optimistic. Well, it's not about optimism. It's about reality. You know, there's a million things that can happen between now and then and the Republican. are going to try to use a bunch of different wedge issues, right? They're going to try to use the border. They're going to try to use immigration. They're going to try to use schools.

But, you know, the one thing that people kind of forget is, like, you know, they pounded Joe Biden for six months in 2020 and its popularity increased during the campaign. And so they're going to have to do better than political rhetoric, which people right now seem to be tuning out. And you can't, again, you can't debate a couple different things that they're viewing Joe Biden, you know, Americans, voters, etc. As a guy who's getting things done and trying to get things done. But there's a whole part of the population, I mean, not the same part, that believes that Joe Biden isn't even present on. That's right. And we're never going to get them.

And, you know, they've kind of decided that, you know, in some ways they're not even playing ball. but they're a universe that we were never going to get anyway, Molly. And Democrats were never going to get them. And here's the other thing is, is that those people, there's a universe of people who believe that, who will never come out to vote again. Really? Yeah, because Trump told them that, you know, it was all going to be fine and he was going to be president. And I think that there is real evidence in that, if you take a look at the Georgia Senate

races, the difference between the November vote and the general. January vote and the number of, you know, basically Trump voters who fell off and didn't vote and they'll never vote if the cult leader's not at the top of the ticket. Okay, so let's talk about Georgia because in Georgia, Biden won Georgia and then those Senate seats were won by Democrats. So there was a fall off, but it was, it wasn't totally out of left field, right? There wasn't a seismic shift between the Trump voters who voted in the election in the presidential and who elected in the runoff. But it was absolutely a trip off. And so it may not be seismic. But listen, elections nowadays are won and lost in the margins. It wasn't 16.

It wasn't 20. And it was in those special elections. And the fact is, is that we'll take the marginal drop off from Trump voters and rural whites and non-collargealates, etc. and our marginal increases in African American and Latinos, etc. That's what make elections. You know, that's the winner loss. I mean, those are the W. Right. In Georgia, how much of what happened in Georgia was activists on the ground registering new voters?

Well, I mean, there was some of that. You know, there was a universe and it's quantifiable, right, of how many new voters were registered between November and January. So that's quantifiable. And then we know that there was universes of rural counties, smaller counties, that where the vote dropped off. We know that. But I think the bigger point is that there's a universe of voter who is not going to come out if Donald Trump is not on the ticket, right? If he doesn't lead the ballot.

We don't know what that's going to be. We have some kind of idea maybe from Georgia. But the fact is that we've seen this time and time over American history and political figures, is that often, you know, it just doesn't carry over to the next election for that party if that person isn't leading the charge. And I think that you're going to see that. And you're going to have, again, either a popular president in Joe Biden or a president who is perceived as doing real things for real people.

And that's important. But there's like this theory now that, you know, obviously the Republican Party is being led by the voters, not the party, and they want to see, you know, the cruelty enacted. Isn't it just that Donald Trump was really good at selling the cruelty a lot of the time? It wasn't just the cold of personality and that, you know, we've seen other times, like, they've done well in other races where he's not been on the ballot and where the people tap into the cruelty. Well, he wasn't on the ballot in 2018.

That didn't go all that well for him. And the fact is, is that Joe Biden's job rating on the economy right now is higher than Trump's job rating on the economy when he left office. His job rating on handling coronavirus, of course, is hugely better than him. And I would also say that his traits, which are really, really important, are much better, even on the motivation things like, you know, trying to do, you know, trying to do the right thing, et cetera, et cetera. And so, you know, the fact is, is that this is a divided. nation, we know this. We know that these elections are going to be close, right? That's just kind of where we are in American politics. If you, again, believe that you win on the margins, I'd rather go and place a bet on Biden and the Democrats in terms of where Biden's numbers are, still early,

but also what they're trying to do is that they're trying to solve problems that American families are dealing with. And voters are transactional right now. I want to push back on that for a minute, because as someone who has grown up in the Democratic Party and is committed to the Democratic Party, we saw this in 2020 that there was sort of these low information voters were targeted and got in a lot of cases, right? In Florida and in Texas, we had some voters sort of tricked into voting for Trump. And we even hear this now. We hear people who say, well, Democrats like eat children. I mean, and this is like these people are being picked off.

So if these elections happen in the margins, what you're saying to me sounds like what I've had a lot of Democratic senators on here have said, which is, you know, if we do good stuff, people will see it. I'm not convinced that that's true. And I think one of the things we've seen with Trump is that, in fact, I mean, it was no-brainer, right? Hillary was wanted to offer people things and Trump wanted to offer them racism. And I get where you're going. Here's the difference is. The political dynamics have completely changed. or really, maybe the reality of people's lives have really changed.

So you elect Barack Obama in 2008. And by 2009, after ACA, he's totally handcuffed and certainly after 2010. And then you have Trump. And so think about how long it's been where you've had a Democratic Party that has a president, has House and Senate, and actually has the ability to pass things that help people. That's the difference. Pre-pandemic people were telling us, economy's doing great. You sit there in a focus group, middle-class families, working-class families, I'm working hard, I'm not getting the benefit of my hard work. It's all going to the top. Then you have a pandemic and you get what? Again, the expose of all the inequalities in our systems, health care, economy, schooling, etc. And hence, Joe Biden's bill back better. People are not looking to get back to where they were. They're looking to, to get rewarded for their hard work, and they're looking to have opportunity in this economy. And the fact is that Democrats haven't had the opportunity to actually prove themselves and have

real things done. And they're in that situation right now. And it has been a very long time. So there's a big difference between being a Democrat and saying, I want to do all this stuff, and I can't get it done, versus I'm a Democrat, I'm a president, Biden, and we can get these things done. He's already started it. And I just think that the whole dynamics are different, including the psyche of the American public, who are a little smarter on the political rhetoric and wedge issues and aren't going to let people, Democrat or Republican, get away with just kind of bloviating. I think we have to agree to disagree on this.

Because, I mean, I wish I lived in this world, but I'm not, I'm just, I mean, maybe. This is why I don't watch cable TV. It's like you're being sucked into kind of like all of the thinking. of the past is like that it's just enough for the Republicans to throw up a wedge issue and, you know, for the Democrats to trip over it. And hey, those things may happen. Don't get me wrong. I'm not like naive in this. I've been in this for 30 years. At the same time as all smart people, if we're not in a position to say, hey, we are living in a, you know, we all believe that we're living in a different time. But even today versus a year ago, we're living in a much different time.

if we do things the right way, we are going to help a lot of people, right? Right. Well, that is certainly... Hello, Jesse Cannon. Hello, Molly Jungfast. What in the hell are we going to do about these fuckers? Let's talk about those fucking assholes. Oh, so much cursing.

I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Dad, I know you're listening. You know, the listeners this podcast are known for being very sensitive to cursing. Very sensitive to cursing. Not the feature of the podcast. I feel like I'm... don't have enough because we have this segment

is called Fuck That Guy. We don't spend enough time on women. So this is this special feminist Fuck That Guy where we just talk about women who suck because we are nothing if not woke over here. So today I would like to say that she is an inhabitant of Fox business. She has enormous lips. I say this as a person who myself enjoys

the Botox and my... forehead. You don't have to make them so big. Like, we get the idea, right? The goal is not to become a caricature. I don't want to hit big ad rage. That's right. The Money, Honey, this weekend, she really provides a platform. I like to think of her as Info Wars on Network Television. You know, she finds a way to get the craziest of the cray on there. And so this weekend, even though it wasn't the craziest of the crazy, she had Kevin. McCarthy, who thinks he's going to be speaker in 2022, which is certainly theoretically possible, on so that she could ask him if he's going to toss Liz Cheney on the dust heap of history.

Now, this is in no way any defense of the Cheney's. And if anything, I'm happy to see all of these warlord families out, including the bushes, the Cheney's, whatever, good riddins to bad rubbish. But Manny Honey had he asked him. And he said, I support Elise Stefanik. So for providing a platform for just the worst of the Republican Party and for lowering the bar, if it could even be lowered, Maria Bartaroma, you are the fuck that guy of the next two days.

So fuck you. Jesse? Yes. Well, mine shares a network. Well, technically isn't the money honey's on Fox business, whereas mine is on Fox News proper on the weekends, though, because... The weekends, I think Weekend 5. Fox News is the same as Fox Business.

I'm kind of always shocked that she has a weekend night one because, you know, we know Judge Boxer Wide loves to get lit. Right. It's true. Judge Box of Wine went on a real unhinged rant because any criticism of our justice system is out of line. And because Fox News is always about making sure that this doesn't change at all and that the high ups and the powerful and the white people always get to keep their place of privilege. And she went on and on about how this is the greatest justice system, which is funny because I seem to recall she got one former guy to give a pardon to her ex-husband. And that might be why she likes the justice system because it worked for her and her friends. And she can't understand why it wouldn't work for anyone else. Yeah, that's right.

Nothing says in touch with the people like Judge Box of Wine who got a pardon for her husband. complaining about people wanting to change the justice system. Fuck you, Judge Box of Wine. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

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