The Daily Beast Podcast - Mark Zuckerberg Doesn’t Want to Fix Facebook

Episode Date: May 7, 2021

We might not have learned much from the Facebook Oversight Board’s punt this week on former President Donald Trump, but we did learn something: How utterly disingenuous Facebook has been on enforcement of its rules on hate speech.The social media giant, it turns out, never did have a strong system in place to deal with people like Trump. For years, New York Times writer Kara Swisher tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Also in the show, New Yorker staff writer Patrick Radden Keefe talks about his new book, Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Family. Finally, the economist and editor of The Black Agenda Anna Gifty explains why if we center economic policies on Black women, then “everybody inevitably benefits.” 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 its 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 Kenan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have an amazing episode where we'll be talking to Patrick Radin-Keefe, New Yorker staff writer and author of Empire of Pain, the secret history of the Sackler Dynasty. Then we're going to have a great conversation with Anna Gifty, an African-American economist and editor of the Black Agenda. But first, we have one of my favorite podcasters and writers, the host of Sway and Pivot as well as New York Times writer, Kara Swisher. Welcome, Kara Swisher.

Sure. Thank you. Back to the new abnormal, one of my favorite guests. I have to tell you, like, I do think you are one of the smartest people we've ever had on this. Oh, really? That's a low bar, though, I suspect. Thank you. I'm sure.

No, we have doctors. Doctors, okay. Book learning. You have people who did book learning. I'm just clever. We love those doctors. First, we have to talk to you about the Facebook decision. Sure.

You, I feel like you're the go-to for this. What's your take on this? Well, I mean, there's a lot of different takes. there's some really amazing work that's being done by a lot of writers sort of analyzing it in tons. There's a lot out there that's being done, Casey Newton, Ellen Duick, and Andrew Marins.

My take was something I wrote before the decision because I thought they might lift the ban with some caveats. That's what I thought they would do with either an apology or something else. Or if you do it again, you're off your turf for good, this and that. But they didn't do that.

What they did is something I didn't think they could do or would do, which was throw it back in Facebook 's face saying this is you're trying to you know you handed us a bag of shit and we're going to give it back to you without any comment essentially and they did make comments obviously about what they think should happen but they certainly didn't want to be the ones to make this decision which was Facebook's and so it exhibited a little independence they still have all these issues around the fact that Facebook bought itself a Supreme Court I do think they are independent but I do think they have

very little power to do anything really but this was this was a nice flex I thought but it didn't do anything. That's the thing. It didn't do anything. It just kicked it back, right? The one thing that it did do is it showed you how disingenuous Facebook has been, because they revealed it in that Facebook for years has been like, Kara, he's newsworthy, he's newsworthy, this whole thing.

Turned out newsworthy was never an element of the decision making. They just decided not to get rid of him when he violated the terms. They had no internal, they just were doing it haphazardly and Catch Us Catch Can, which is what I always suspected, and that's what this report showed, I think. I saw an interview with the head of this review board. There's a lot of hits. There's quite a few. Yeah. I thought he was brilliant at not answering a single question. I got a little better interview out of Alan Russ Bridger because he's a journalist and you can shame journalists than telling the truth. But you saw that TV interview where he just

was like, end on one hand, you know. Well, no, I think they didn't want to make a decision. I think they were correct. This is not theirs to decide. Facebook should have a system in place to deal with this and stop with this highfalutin stuff. Like, oh, he's a public figure. Well, that didn't enter into your decision making. Oh, he's this. He's not doing this. Well, he broke your law five times unless you're not enforcing it. And so I think just showing light on how badly the system is in place and how haphazard it is in place and how dangerous it is that they don't really, it's sort of like a chemical company going, oh, we're supposed to have, you know, filters. Oh, yeah, that's a good idea. Like it lays in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg.

And he keeps trying to fob off. He made this thing. He doesn't want to have responsibility for it. He doesn't want to fix it. And he wants to hand it off to other people. And then give us a speech about free speech, which is like, give me a break. This is just someone who, and then, you know,

play into the hands of the right wing who were like, this is about the First Amendment. And you're sort of like, the First Amendment doesn't apply to Facebook. It applies to you, senators or congressmen. What I wrote in my column is they're trying to level it up to some ridiculous, big, lofty discussion when it's really about an angry old man who lies persistently and breaks the rules, vomiting up all kinds of bile, and then actually dangerously doing things that are dangerous. And, you know, they wouldn't question, they didn't question when Alex Jones had to be taken off. They didn't question lots and lots of people. And they just have to run their

business like it's a business and take care of the impact of things they do. It just seems that that's the one plus of this committee. Like, if you had to choose, is this that Mark Zuckerberg is a coward or that he is evil? No, he's not evil. He's not evil. He's not a coward. He's ill-equipped to do it and he knows it. But then what? Then you have to really look to Congress, which is like it's too big. It's too, there's not enough choice in social. If there was competition and Facebook didn't dominate everything, you would have, you know, another service that says, you know, we're going to be safe. We're going to kick people up when they misbehave. why could Jack Dorsey make this decision and not Mark Zuckerberg? I don't know. I don't have an answer to that. But he did. He did it slowly. He did it way too late. He did it 1400 days into the Trump administration after. But he did it. Finally. I give him credit,

but not that much credit. It took an attack on the Capitol. I was like, okay, we're going to let him do this. We're going to let him do this. Break the law. Break the law. Break the law. Okay. I don't want to be a handmaid into sedition. Yeah. No, I'm not going to do that. I mean, anybody would have made that decision. And even then, Mark Zuckerberg couldn't do it himself and man up and make the decision that needed to be made because he didn't want to be attacked by the right wing, which of course went into full screen mode after this thing, which is just a ridiculous, performative weird dance they do at this point. You know, talking about the First Amendment, they, I'm like, you haven't read it because it's not what it says. But I wonder with this Facebook stuff, like the top, I mean, we saw this a lot yesterday. the top 10 sites on Facebook are often Ben Shapiro. Yeah, that's Facebook's own technology.

They've argued with Kevin Ruse, who writes a lot about this, about that. It's complicated to, and I would agree with Vasen this regard, is everyone has their own experience on Facebook. So it's not top 10 is kind of deceptive. That said, right-wing stuff does very well on Facebook. This idea of being censored is laughable on every single metric that is shown. And, you know, but that's just their thing. It's like, you know, it's like trans.

Kids are, you know, overrunning sports teams and ruining the experience for the girls. And then when you ask the governor, name one example, like Stephanie Ruled it, doesn't have one. It's all based in bullshit and lies and making things up. So Donald Trump now has a live journal. He's calling a social network. Well, it's not even that. It's like a press release site. It's true.

Your live journal had more features. Yeah. So a lot of people are concerned. Cara that we're going to have these two separate worlds and they think that that's what's made our political system so bad if we're conservatives have their own social network and everyone else has it. Where do you seeing there? Do you have fears of that? I'm not as concerned. I'm concerned when we're all talking to each other. That's my concern. I just interviewed Frank Luntz today and he was weeping at these focus groups. Wait, would say that again? He's gotten very emotional about

the focus groups, which have gotten insane. I mean, he has. He should be actually. These folks are disturbing. Anybody would be disturbed by him. Yeah. Was Kevin McCarthy there? No, no, whatever. I asked him about that. You should listen.

Oh, I have. I don't care if he's his roommate. Like, I don't know what's going to. With Tucker Carlson, who cares? No, I don't care, but it's the fact that Tucker has gotten obsessed with it. Whatever. What is he giving him extra toilet paper? I don't know.

It's ridiculous. It's bizarre. It's strange. He's trying to insinuate gay, I think. I think that's what he was doing. Just weird. The whole thing is weird. But Tucker Carlson is malevolent, so there you have it.

So getting back to this, yes, there's a danger of it's called the splinternet, right? And it's not just here in this country, but there'd be a Chinese internet. There'll be, you know, that's more authoritarian and more surveillance oriented explicitly, as opposed to our implicit surveillance mechanism by the big companies. That was Mark's idea. I remember having a late-night discussion with him about how he can bring people together. And I was like, why do you have to? It doesn't, that's not how this country, like, I just, I think it's one of these things that when,

when it happens when people get to be in a reductive twitchy digital environment, they don't necessarily, doesn't necessarily help the situation. What helps is in person encounters. What helps is having people in your family, just like with this vaccine, a lot of this anti-vax stuff, people don't know what to do. Actually, it turns out if your doctor, in certain cases, tells you to do it or a family member or it works a lot better than, you know, a celebrity, except for Dolly Parton, who we do whatever she says. Yeah, she's amazing. Everybody likes.

We can all agree on Dolly Parton. Really, that's pretty much it. And so I don't know if it's such a bad thing to have different ones. I mean, what's interesting for Trump is that there isn't Twitter works so well for him. And he's never getting back on. And that's the one that pains him. That's the one that really is a problem for him going forward. He's getting not nearly the amount of attention because of that.

He can't rant in this sort of twitchy, quick, fast. fast-moving way. It's like yelling out to your own people. It doesn't work as well unless the media is there, your detractors, your fans, the bots, Tucker Carlson, like everyone, and Sean Hannity's got a like, the bag of rage has to go off for that. So it's like you have to have everyone there. So I don't know if it's the, so what? So what, if they're talking to each other? So what of liberal? Meaning we don't get to understand them? Yeah, that's a problem. But I don't think that's a new fresh problem. It's just made worse by the internet. One of the very annoying things they do on Clubhouse is they constantly talk about how because you're talking, it's less destructive

than, say, Twitter. Yeah, I would agree. I think social audio is interesting. I think people do behave a little better when there's presence. It's even better in person, person, although people do look at some of these Franklin Zoom things. They're just, they're yelling. They never met each other and they're calling each other evil. It's insane. And they see each other. It's not like they're like tweeting at each other. Yeah. The more proximity, you have the less you are liable to be an asshole, I guess. That said, you know, these things can't, you know, the problem with those things is they're ordered a little bit of time, I think, for a little bit of the time they're saved. But you could be subject to multi-level marketing,

all kinds of lies and stuff like that. It's very persuasive. You know, there's all those issues. I find them great. I do it on Twitter. I don't do Clubhouse because my social graph is over at Twitter and I don't feel like creating another one. It seems like Clubhouse is sort of disappearing. Well, it's something I predicted a month ago. I was like after the pandemic and that's a feature and everybody else is going to copy them and people get tired. It's like a little cute thing that you use and then you stop using it. And that's one of their issues. I think they've done a nice job.

I think it's just inevitable. Yeah. I mean, I also think their goal of making VCs celebrities was kind of unbearable. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's. I mean, I say this as someone who's married to a VC who I adore.

Like, I had a pretty favorable idea of VCs before. I went in Clubhouse and afterwards I was like oh man yeah you know I thank you welcome to my world for the past few years I would rather not hang out with them that's one of the reasons I didn't I was like I didn't like the tonality of the constant media bashing I'm like oh my god like move along because I don't think about you for one fucking second so I don't know why you're so obsessed with us and also they gave themselves millions and millions of followers yeah on Clubhouse yeah sure I just didn't want to start another social graph I just didn't need it the thing I put to them was what do I need you for And I guess I don't, but, and I get why some people would.

And there's some really, there were, it's an interesting phenomenon. I do not dismiss the phenomenon anyway. I'm sure they'll do just fine, those people. Kara, you've done some of my favorite interviews with Jason Freed, who I always found to be really brilliant, but this base camp thing seems off base. It is. It's a real stain on him.

So as a society, we're seeing, you know, Texas and Georgia corporations are getting more politicized. will there be companies that are able to pull the politics out of their company like Jason wanted to with Basecamp or is it inevitable that every company is going to become politicized? It's very kind. There's a lot of layers. I'm hoping to get J. I had them, both of them, to do an interview with and then they bagged out. They ghosted me. They didn't ghost me.

They were very polite and weepy about it. But they're going to come back on. They promised me to do so. And if I don't, I'll publish all their texting. No, I won't do that. Well, yes, I will. I have had such a good rapport with him. I do.

I like him. I think he's got a lot of great ideas. I think here's a couple problems. He put himself out there as a very culturally sensitive person. And the books were about that. And I agreed with a lot of it. And I think a lot of people look at the people who left. I've been here 11 years.

I've been here 14 years. I've been here seven years. Like this is these people stay. It is a small company. It stayed a long time. And they've had some very innovative ideas around management. They were way ahead in remote. They were way ahead in lots of areas that a lot of people just take for granted now.

And then they wrote books and sort of celebrated themselves, which is fine, whatever. A lot of people do that. The Aicoco wrote a book and wasn't as successful as his book was. And so, by the way, Lea Ococo did a lot from cars, but, you know, whatever. This is what happens. And Donald Trump wrote at the art of the deal. Like, let's be clear. It's kind of, wrote.

Yeah, well, whatever. You know what I mean. But it helped him get the status that he had in order to run for president. Here's where they messed up. One is there was more to it than just what he was doing. There was all the stuff behind the scenes going on, that they did. didn't reveal that we had this diversity inclusion thing that just started. They hadn't gotten up speed. They kind of mischaracterized the effort so far and pretended they were screaming on their

Slack channel, I guess, and they weren't. They really weren't. There was some difficulty around this issue around a list of funny sounding names. They didn't disclose that. So there's lack of disclosure. And obviously, there's tensions just like in society and they never let those go out. And one of the things that Silicon Valley does is they, if you've ever been to any of these, they have these meetings where the CEOs come, and Google really pioneered it. Because the company yells at the CEOs about anything, like ask me anything on Reddit, that kind of stuff.

So they have this culture in Silicon Valley. They have meme generators where people can comment, and then they upload things. And all over these companies, they let their employees talk in a way that no other industry does. So they have a feeling that they can talk. That's one. Two, they act like they're your family.

Like, hey, we're all together. You know, they do a lot of the food, a lot of the culture. we have our volleyball court. It feels different. They feel like you belong and you matter and you have an influence because they have to do that because it's hard to hold on to talent.

And so they pet them all day long. And they say, we're interested in diversity. Talk about it. But then one, they do nothing about diversity, creating a situation where they, at least they let them talk about it, but they actually do nothing.

And if you look at statistics, they do nothing. So then they go, we haven't done anything about diversity, But now you can't even talk about it. Like, are you kidding me? They had this escape valve for people, which most people thought was bullshit.

I did among many. They didn't walk the talk and then you couldn't talk. So instead of like, are you kidding me? You give me nothing and nothing. And then everyone understood, guess what? They don't respect you. You're not their family. They just want you to make things for them to become richer.

That's what I think happened. And it was such a cloddish way to do it and such a like, I have all these feels about it. Like, you know, the two founders had a lot of feels. And it was like, honestly, they're the leaders. And it just made you realize they were made uncomfortable by some things that were being said and didn't want to hear it anymore. And I think I want to talk to them about it because maybe that's not what they think,

but I think that's what happened. I've talked to a lot of people. And being made uncomfortable, when you welcome being made uncomfortable and then you're made uncomfortable and then you say, shut up is a prescription for disaster. And that's why it had such an outsized influence. And I think a lot of people in Silicon Valley leaders are like, oh, I'm so sick. hearing these people, but I can't tell them on that. You know what I mean?

They don't want them to shut their trap and go back to their desk and code things. I feel like the thing that we keep getting to is that Congress needs to put some legislation together for technology. There's lots of legislation. But you know what I'm saying? Like they need to sort of update legislation. Well, they don't have any. There's not.

So there's, but it's a lot of issues. You're like, look, none of them are together. One's privacy. One's data management. one is a hate speech, one's around, which is very difficult because of the First Amendment. One is they're too big, and so there's not an ability to be innovation

and enough companies to be innovative. So there's all kinds of legislation. I just didn't interview with Amy Klobuchar. I mean, she understands this. This is systemic and it's very widespread, so it's not one thing that's going to solve. Breaking up Facebook is not going to solve our problems. Neither is suing.

Some liability issues should be brought up. Maybe they should be a little more liable for their things. Maybe we should give money to the enforcement agencies. you know, that's a big, that's a big thing. Amy Klobuchar is pushing for Senator Klobuchar's. And she's right. It's huge. Literally, there's more VR people for Facebook than there are at the FTC, I think. It's crazy. Like, come on. Like, that's just Facebook. Talk about Google. These are the richest and most powerful people running the richest and most valuable companies in the history of the world. And we're acting as if, they're acting as if they're victims. And that's an exhausting thing that I've had to deal with for many years. Oh, God. I'm sorry. Because I'm really mean to them.

I can tell you how many people. But they love you and they want to come on your show even still. They don't want to. Mark Andreessen called it Stockholm Syndrome. I think he's right. Do you think any conservative has ever really understands 230? Yeah, I do. I think Josh Hawley does.

Look, if he would stop going down conspiracy highway about, you know, them shutting down conservative voices is simply not true. He has some very interesting ideas about it. I have to, I mean, I hate to comment Josh Raleigh on something like this, but he does. He knows, I think he does, he's a very smart legal person. Even Senator Grassley, some of the stuff he's working with Senator Klobuchar and is really interesting. Mike Lee, I don't agree with him on everything, but he did a very good job in those Apple app hearings. And among Democrats, there's a lot, Senator Morner, Senator Klobuchar, Representative Cicillini. There's dozens of people who are really smart on this stuff.

And within the agencies, they just put Lena Con on the FTC or is about to go on the FTC. They have Tim Wu at the White House now. We'll see who they pick for Assistant Attorney General for what will be the Facebook and Google stuff. Google stuff actually right now for antitrust. And so, yes, there's plenty of people in place. It's just the will to act and do something and regulate this group of people and these group of companies.

And that has not been president. Ultimately, getting back to the Facebook board and we can finish up on it is that, you know, this Facebook board stopped being, at this point, I'm like, what do I care about them? It's not their fault. It's the fault of our Congress, who actually has power to act in some way,

are regulators. They do it in Europe. They do it across the world. And these are U.S. companies. And they need to find a way to preserve capitalism and innovation at the same time, say, enough is enough controlling all these markets and being irresponsible around hate speech or controlling markets and going into businesses to compete with smaller businesses so that you control the entire landscape.

And that's a problem. Yeah. Oh, thank you so much for joining us, Carrie. Swisher. No problem. 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 Soladadadobrian. 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. the daily beast.com. Patrick Radden-Keefe is a New Yorker staff writer, an author of Empire of Pain, the secret history of the Sackler dynasty. Hi, Patrick. How are you? I'm good. Welcome to the new abnormal. It's great to be with you. Well, we're very excited to have you. Talk to me about how you decided to write this book. It started

with an article in The New Yorker that I published in 2017. That came about in kind of a weird way, but I had realized that the Sackler family, this big philanthropic dynasty, had made most of its money from opioids, from Oxycontin, this drug that it helped

kick off the opioid crisis. We should mention the book is called Empire of Pain. Important if I'm going to plug your book, I should at least say the fucking title. Anyway, continue. And so I didn't, I mean, I was not the first person to break that news.

I think the thing that was strange to me was that it kind of hadn't caught up with them. You know, the family was still very much sort of perceived as like paragons of philanthropic giving and kind of revered in elite circles in New York and London. So I wrote this piece and that somewhat changed the conversation, I think. But I didn't at the time think there was a book. It was only later in early 2019. I thought there was a book. And the reason was basically that if I was going to tell the story, I wanted to tell it as a real kind of vivid family saga

where you felt like you had some intimate access to these people, even though they weren't talking to me and, in fact, were threatening to sue me. So it was this question of, can I get close enough to them, that you'll feel like you're really there with them and having a kind of voyeuristic sense of their lives. And so that was only really possible when a bunch of internal documents came out through litigation. And then also,

there were all these people who found me. Like, this happens sometimes when I write a piece in the magazine is that it's like putting a bat signal in the sky. And so these people seek me out and say,

oh, I've known them for years. Let me tell you what I know. Yeah, I've known them. So when I read it, I was struck by that too. So people started coming to you and telling you stuff. And then you were like,

I've got a book here. Well, so what happened was that after the piece came out, these people sought me out. And of course, my first reaction was like, where were you when I was writing it? You know, like, why could I not find you before? These amazing sources who came to me when it was too late. And I just kind of, you know, I kind of hip-pocketed that stuff for a while just because I sort of thought, oh, maybe I'll do something else, who knows? And I would get back to people, but I wasn't really planning anything. And then, you know, I had, the whole time

I'd been sort of wondering, like, what would the Sackler say? How did they see this? I tried to get them to talk with me. They wouldn't. They wouldn't even give a statement. I thought they would give a statement for the New Yorker piece, which was, like, there is an opioid crisis, and it is very sad, but it's not our fault. And, like, they didn't even do that.

They were just like, you know, screw you. We got nothing to say. And then what happened was that Morah Healy, the Attorney General in Massachusetts, sued not just like I think almost pretty much every state in the in the union is suing the company over its role in the opioid crisis, but she was the first person to sue individual family members. And she had this incredible legal complaint, which was 250 pages long, full of all these internal communications. And I read that, I was just so shocked. It was answering a lot of questions I had had. And I actually live tweeted it while I was reading it. And I was just in this like state of

high dudgeon. I was so. appalled by what I was reading. And I think pretty much by the time I finished that, I thought, you know, I thought, A, there's a, there's material here that could be the basis for a book. And B, there's a kind of imperative to do it because this is an important and really outrageous story. So who did you think was the villain in the family? Just because I want to, you know, I always beat around the bush. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think at some point in the book, I say that there's, I think there's kind of concentric circles of culprudel ability. And to me, the, like, the red hot bull's eye is Richard Sackler, who's a second generation Sackler, who was running the company for a time, is very intimately involved in the

launch of Oxycontin. He's a doctor. He's a doctor, yes. So he knows what he's doing. I met him before. Did you? So tell me, so you have to tell me your Sackler connection here. I just knew them from New York and have many concentric circles, which involve children and New York world. But I did meet Richard, I was struck by him. Presumably not by his personal charm. I couldn't put my finger on what it was. But there was something where I was like, there's something, something here

that's not, not right. He's a strange guy, and I think a very compelling. And look, I've never met him. I've never talked to him. And a genius. I've met a lot of very smart people in my life, and I thought something really off here, this person is really smart. Yeah, I think he's very, very smart,

and I think there's a kind of family trait. One of the big creative decisions in doing the book was to really devote the first third of it to the life of Arthur Sackler, who dies before OxyContin is first introduced. And to your question of, like, who do you blame? Arthur's heirs all say, like, you shouldn't even mention him in the same breath as OxyContin because he died beforehand and his heirs haven't benefited financially from it. All of it is true. However, in Arthur's life, I think that I think Arthur sort of created the world in which OxyContin could do what it did. Yes. I also think Arthur was the person who figured at

you could advertise drugs. Yes, and how to do it and how to co-op the FDA and how to sort of snow physicians and influence physicians through medical advertising and marketing. Yes, totally. But Arthur also shared with Richard this trait that I think of as the kind of signature family trait, which is, it's funny. I think a lot of people see this story and they think of it just chiefly as the story of greed, and there's a lot of greed. But to me, the more interesting quality is a kind of stubbornness, a sort of stubborn refusal to ever acknowledge. that you might have hugely fucked up. I think that may be a wealthy family thing, but yes, I agree.

I think you're right. And I mean, this is, it's funny because I think, like, I don't know that I mention Trump at all in the book, but one thing I did think about again and again is, this is particularly true of the Sacklers now, is that it's a real hazard, I think, when you're a billionaire, that you're, you're surrounded by all these people whose livelihood depends on, like, laughing the hardest at your bad joke. There is a kind of strange sense in which I think over time, that can, like, make you delusional. Yes, I think that's right. I think one of the things people always think about when they see this is, like, did you get any sense of why they thought they could get away with this?

Was it just that power was so seated for so long throughout the 90s and early 2000s, and then that changed? Like, do you have any read on that? I think some of it initially is hubris. I think there was a kind of literally they had this dream. drug, which is an opioid. People have known for thousands of years that opioids are potentially quite addictive. And for that reason, doctors, you know, were fairly careful about prescribing them and use them as kind of an extreme solution for severe pain. The Sacklers and Purdue do this kind of amazing two-step where they're like, so first of all, let's market this drug not just for

extreme, you know, cancer pain and really severe chronic pain. Let's market it for moderate pain, too. Why not? You know, their tag line was they said it's the one to start. with and the one to stay with, which if you want to sell a lot of drugs, it's like a really great strategy. And then they say, and it's not addictive. You know, we've kind of cracked it. Like, it's not addictive. And their sales reps would say again and again and again to doctors, it's addictive less than one percent of the time, less than one percent of the time. And that was just a hypothesis. Like, that was totally just wishful thinking. There was no scientific basis for saying that. So I think in the first instance, it's just hubris. They were like, wouldn't it be great if this

worked out? Then it doesn't work out. And I think there's a kind of a is of denial, which frankly is still sort of going on to this day, where they don't want to acknowledge it. And so they sort of blame it on, they say, oh, the drug's not the problem. It's people who are abusing it. It's these, like, immoral junkies. And then I think the third piece of it is that our system is designed to insulate people like that from the downstream consequences of their own bad decisions. And that's like everything. That's the FDA. That's the Department of Justice. That's all their high-end lawyers. That's all their spin doctors. I mean, look, there's no question. I agree with everything you're saying here. It's a great

crime, right? But my question to you is, because they kept the pharmaceutical company private, and it was the only private pharmaceutical company, how much were they able to be held responsible in a way that other pharmaceutical companies were not? Well, I mean, it's complicated. The fact of it being a privately held company is, I think, really, really key and a privately held family-owned company. Because the company ends up, I mean, they really fucked themselves. There's a line in the book where I talk about how, like, because, you know, I interviewed 200 people for this book, many, many, many of whom worked at Purdue Farmer over the years. And they, and I said that, like, multiple people independently compared the experience of working at Purdue to living in the show's succession. It's true.

Like people from like different periods of the company who did not know each other would say independently, like, I don't know if you've watched Succession. It was a little bit like that. So you have this kind of strange sense in which the family, it kind of imprints itself on the company and the family members would intervene. Like the Sacklers today say like,

oh, we were just board members. We just voted on stuff. We really didn't have much to do with it at all. Like I have the receipts on that, right? Like just years and years of emails, like multiple CEOs writing these pleading emails to the Sacklers being like, please, I'm trying to be the CEO of your company. Like, can you stop intervening and making an impossible for me to do my job?

And they don't really have any response to that. But at the same time, you know, I think there's this thing that happens where in 2007, the company pleads guilty the first time to federal criminal charges. And if it was a public company, I think you would have seen like all kinds of heads roll. I think there would have been a real house cleaning after a federal felony. share holders would have demanded it. Absolutely. And instead, what happens is that, like, they totally circle the wagons. There were three executives who pled guilty to misdemeanors, basically to protect the family.

And, like, literally the family, they pay millions of dollars to these guys who took the fall. They put a portrait of one of those guys in the law library at the company. So it's a big agreed statement of facts, which gets hashed out with the Department of Justice Richard Sackler subsequently says in a deposition, he's at. about the agreed statement of facts, which is kind of the roadmap to what the company did wrong. And they're like, is there anything that was shocking to you in that? He's like, oh, no, I never read it. So, like, they're just, it's crazy.

But of course you read it. Well, he said under oath, he was like, yeah, never read it. So basically you get, you know, what I think in a public company would have been a huge fork in the road, right, where they're like, okay, we really need to change for Purdue and the Sacklers. It's just a speed bump. So talk to me about what happens next. I mean, it's interesting. You know, when I started writing my piece in 2017, Purdue said there was this guilty plea, you know, 10 years ago. And after that, we really got religion. There's a few bad apples, but we really got religion. And, you know, we completely started. We had a corporate integrity agreement and we had a really robust compliance department. We totally cleaned up our act. And part of the story I tell in the book is that, like, that's not true at all. You know, there's a quote in the book that somebody witnessed the CFO of the company. So the company was, fine $600 million in 2007, which, you know, at the time it was making billions of dollars a year. And the CFO of the company said of the $600 million fine, like, that's nothing to us.

Like, we've had that in the bank. So they expand their sales force. They double down. They keep doing a bunch of the same stuff. We know this now because they just pled guilty again to new criminal charges last November. I thought that they had taken apart their sales force. So that does happen after my New Yorker piece. comes out. So that happened in 2018. They basically start saying, okay, we're not going to, we're not going to market these drugs anymore. And eventually they do away with their sales force. But that doesn't happen until 2018. And I should say that there's like, at that point, they have like, they, you know, I interviewed one former sales rep who's like, come on, man.

Like that drug's already selling itself. Like, you know, at a certain point, like by 2018, when they've been marketing the drug for 22 years or longer, right? You know, since 1996, there's already a robust market of people who are going to, you know, it's the one to start with and to stay with, right? Jesus. What do you think is the lesson here? To me, this is, in a narrow sense, I think it's a story about the, and you see it with Arthur Sackler starting in the 1950s.

Like, the mingling of medicine and commerce, I think, has been very dangerous in this country. And long prior to half a million people dying in the opioid crisis, I think there were indications of this. You go back to Valium, right, which Arthur Sackler marketed. There's indications of this. And I think, you know, just on a personal level, right, it's like you see your doctor and you want to kind of put yourself in their hands and trust them. And part of what was astonishing for me is looking at the, you know, the history of the pharmaceutical business, kind of getting between you and the doctor and that relationship. It's really sleazy, because, you know, I'm 23 years sober. I got sober when I was a teenager.

Every time I go to a doctor, I'm like, you know, I'm sober. And they're like, oh, yeah, we know. How about this? And even, like, one of my beloved doctors, when I was pregnant, she's like, you just go home and have a glass of wine. And I was like, no. I was like, come on, man. So I do feel like you can't, you have to advocate for yourself with your doctor, and that they don't always, as much.

as they love you, they don't always necessarily have your back. Well, and they don't always know. I mean, I've had these conversations with Dr. Friends where I talk about Purdue and they're like, oh, yeah, these companies, you know, they really do everything. They pull out all the stops to try and influence us. But of course, I would never be influenced by any of those blandishments. And, like, there's a statistic in the book where I found out that, you know, for a period of time there with Oxycontin, Purdue had a budget of $9 million a year just to buy food for doctors. And it's like, they're not, now like, they're not spending that money if they're not pretty convinced they're getting a good return on their investment, you know? So I think there is. And then the larger lesson for me would be just that I just think it's about the way in which our institutions are co-opted by big money in ways that can lead to systemic failure. I think ultimately the story of the opioid crisis, the story of systemic failure, the fact that we haven't been able to see real accountability is systemic failure. But again and again and again, when you look at the specifics of it, what it's about is, I mean, to take somebody I pick on in the book a little bit, it's like Mary Joe White,

the former U.S. attorney in Manhattan, you know, who ran the SEC for Obama and is a partner at Devil Boys in Plimpton, this revered lawyer, she has been like a bagwoman for the Sacklers and Purdue, you know, going back to that first guilty plea in 2007, and she's still working for them today. And what about Chris Dodd? I haven't dug into Chris Dodd at any length specifically, but I do think that Congress obviously has been co-opted in. in ways large and small as well. What are you thinking of specifically? In the movie, there's some really interesting stuff about Chris Dodd getting a donation.

And, you know, I mean, but that's true with a lot of people. It's true with a lot of people. I mean, there's a line in my book where Richard Sackler says, you know, we can get any senator or member of Congress on the phone in 24 hours if we want to. That, I think, was very much the attitude of the company. And you've got to remember, I mean, the pharma industry and opioid makers specifically, they spend more on lobbying than the gun industry does.

Oh, I'm so depressed. I mean, I do think it's an interesting story. It has the virtue of some, you know, being interesting as a story, hopefully not a total unrelenting slog. What do you think happens to Purdue now? They declared bankruptcy. Well, they did, but I mean, so here's the thing about declaring bankruptcy. Right.

is that they, is that the company, so we now know that over the last, you know, decade or so, the Sackler family is quietly pulling money out of Purdue. They took more than $10 billion out of the company. And as this is happening, there's more and more and more lawsuits against the company. And then eventually when like when the coffers are almost empty, the Sacklers say like, oh, too bad. Company doesn't have any money anymore. Like, sorry about all those lawsuits.

We're kicking it into bankruptcy. Yeah. And so now you have this crazy spectacle. where there's this bankruptcy court in White Plains. Purdue Pharma is in bankruptcy there. And the Sacklers are sitting on the sidelines, having pulled $10 billion out of the company before it went bankrupt. And their money is safe. Yeah, no, I know.

I mean, and a lot of the family has moved to Europe. So there is a big branch in Europe, and a lot of the money is outside the United States. So even in a situation in which you had creditors trying to collect, it might be difficult for them to do so. Yeah, forget it. I mean, who even knows where everything is? And then they own the Amman, too, right? Yeah, this is, right? I tell this story about this resort in the Turks and Kekos, yeah.

Yeah. Where Mortimer Sackler Jr. was an investor. And, you know, I mean, to give you a kind of vivid illustration of the way in which these people live, you know, there's a crazy story that I learned, which is that it's this super elite resort. And from time to time, there are refugees who leave Haiti on little boats and try and get to Turks and Kekos. And the boats capsize. and the bodies wash ashore. And at the resort, they had this big thing, which was they were like, we cannot have our guests seeing any of these like unsightly dead bodies.

And so they would have somebody who would sit up at night scanning the water because if a dead body wash ashore, the real priority was like, we need to get this dead person off the beach before any of our plutocrat guests should wake up and look out. This is the most dystopian thing I've ever heard of my entire life. I thought you were going to tell me they take the refugees in and they let them stay and the Amman. Yeah. No.

No. That's not where I was going. I was like I had a scenario. I was hoping for like a happy ending or it's like yes, well, you know, but, but no. Holy shit. That's the worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Yeah. I mean, really, I'm going to go take some antidepressants. I mean, Jesus fucking grace. Thank you, Patrick. That was amazing. That was a pleasure. Thank 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 of 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 podcasts.

Anna Gifty is an African American economist and editor of the Black Agenda, Bold Solutions for a Broken System. How do you get involved in economics? Yeah, you know, it's a question I get a lot, and I think it was kind of an organic, sort of accidental kind of thing. So a lot of you don't know this, but I started off in biology, and it was mainly because my parents are African immigrants. And if you are a child of immigrants, you know that you only have a couple career choices because, you know, that's just what it is. So out of the limited choices of engineer, lawyer, and doctor, I decided to opt for a doctor because I wanted to, you know, impact people back in Ghana, but also, you know, be able to be able to, sort of sort of center young people, and I felt like as a pediatrician, I could definitely do that. But I really hated it.

I hated the classes. It wasn't my cup of tea at all. And I sort of accidentally fell into learning more about research in college. And that led me to work at a public health lab, which then led me to ask questions about, you know, data, where it was sort of like, okay, we're collecting this data from the field, but what are the broader implications of this? And you know, sitting in a lab where they're looking at blood cells, that's not the kind of questions that they're asking. And so that's when I realized that I think I need to sort of shift my toolkit so I can ask broader questions. But I would also say that like, even before I got to college, I had a lot of exposure to sort of the econ politics space through very organic mediums. So my dad and

my brother would often talk to me about politics. My brother is substantially older than me. So he'd be watching The Daily Show. I'd be in middle school. You'll be watching the Daily Show with John Stewart. And I'd be like, I want to watch PBS kids. And he's like, well, I'm watching TV. So you either join me or you leave. So I said, okay, fine, I'll join you. And kind of looking at this very frustrated white guy on television, but he was speaking a lot of sense. I was like, yo, like, this guy's making several points. I wonder why people aren't listening to him, but not knowing that obviously the Daily Show was a lot bigger than I thought. And so, So that combined with kind of my obsession with TED Talks, you know, when I got to college and got into math and eventually economics, I realized that everything that I had done sort of prior to college had sort of set me up in a way to really take this space on.

Right. So, for example, the TED Talks that I was watching, turns out I was watching economists. So Ingoo Iwele was one of those economists that I was following her talks. Like every time she posted something, I was listening to folks like Paul Colio. then be some moyo. So, you know, there are people who I like the way that they were thinking about the questions around the world, but I didn't know what they were. I was like, what's an economist? Is that like a lawyer or something? Like, what do they do? And then obviously when I got into the field, I was like, oh, okay, it makes a lot of sense that I'm here now. Yeah. And so talk to me about your

general thesis. Ooh. Because I feel like you have an important thesis. Well, yeah. I think, you know, know, if we're thinking about a thesis as a way to summarize the essence of my purpose, I feel like I've been brought to this world to center black people, specifically black women and young black people, and do that through every possible medium. And so obviously, like, if you follow me on Twitter, it's Afronomics. Can you explain to our listeners what that means? It's Afronomics? Oh, it was actually like a really fun play on words. So I like black people. I am black. and I like to amplify black people. And oftentimes what I'll be amplifying them about is around economics, politics.

And so I decided to combine those things. I wanted to go with Afronomics, but somebody had already taken it. So I just went with it's Afronomics. Can you explain your idea of economics more focused on black women and the sort of idea behind that? Yeah, absolutely. So that's actually not my idea. That's Janelle Jones's idea. So Janelle Jones is the chief economist of the.

Department of Labor currently, and the Department of Labor basically handles all the jobs and job recovery in our country, and it's pretty significant because she's the first Black woman to assume that position. And so she has this term, I would say more so framework called Black Woman Best. And so Black Woman Best says, if we center economic policies on Black women, then everybody inevitably benefits. And the way to think about that is Black women are worse off than essentially every other group on several economic dimensions, so to kind of give you some, you know, numbers at one point during the pandemic, black women's unemployment was, you know, around 16 percent, right, as compared to other groups. If we're thinking about 2008 financial crisis, black women actually

lost more jobs during the economic recovery period than any other group. In fact, all other groups basically gain jobs as a result. So this idea of centering the economy on those are most vulnerable so that those who are less vulnerable than those folks benefit as a result. Right. Exactly. And can you give me some of the ways in which this works, like that the economy can do this? Yeah. So, you know, let's talk about an idea that has been circulating around the Twitterverse, but also in policy discussions, right? This idea of canceling student debt, right? A lot of people are like, okay, we want to cancel the debt. We want to forgive the debt. But who actually is just going to benefit. So, you know, I often say that it's very interesting to me that, you know,

the way that America looks at black women as the saviors of democracy, but are not intent on actually saving black women from the anti-democratic policies that are currently in place. And one of those examples are, you know, student debt crisis. So it turns out, you know, black women actually have the highest student debt across all groups irrespective of race and gender. And so that means that if we actually were framing the policy discussion around forgiving the debt of black women in mind, then everybody would inevitably benefit because everybody else's student debt is less than black women's student debt. I think another example, too, to think about that's a little bit more relevant to today is the stimmies, right? So stimulus checks. This idea of people not getting enough money to

survive, right? If you're looking at it through the lens of maybe a white guy who already has a well-off job, then yeah, maybe he will take that stimulus check and go invested in some stops. Who knows? But then you have to look at it from the perspective of the most vulnerable and those who are essentially the breadwinners of their household. So according to the Center of American Progress, 68% of black mothers are the primary breadwinners of their household. And that's pretty significant, right? Because it says that, okay, black women already are disproportionately represented in jobs that are considered essential now, but are still low-paying, still no-benefits-type jobs. And then they're not getting any support from the government during a catastrophic crisis

that is going to affect their families for generations. So this idea of, you know, targeted Stimis and even the conversation around how much it would be giving people for, you know, survival or whatever, right? If you're looking at it from the perspective of, I'm a, you know, super, you know, well-known economist. And, you know, I have all of the answers with respect to my research. But you're not looking at it through the lens of actual people. You miss sort of the mark. And to the point around 68%, black women not getting these stimulus checks is not just about those women not getting stimulus checks.

It's about the generations that come out of those women, right? And the communities that are inevitably affected by the fact that these women aren't able to build wealth. Yeah. That's really interesting. We had Paul Krugman on here the other day, and he was talking about how child payments will actually do incredible things for children. Do you have thoughts about that? Yeah, I think that I agree with that take. And I think it will also go even a longer way for black women and black families overall.

There's also this idea called Baby Bonds that Derek Hamilton, who was an economist, introduced. And I believe Corey Booker actually ran on that platform as well. Whereas this idea of that, you know, everybody who's young is born with a certain amount of money that they can then sort of cash in when they're 18. And that also sort of thinks about the racial wealth gap in a nuanced way, right? The racial wealth gap, just to kind of put it in very layman terms, is basically the gap between blacks and whites with respect to wealth and wealth building. And if we think about, you know, this whole narrative around pull up by your bootstraps, if you work hard, hard enough, you'll make, you know, you'll make it and you'll get to where you need to be.

Black people can work as hard as they want. They will never get the amount of wealth that white people have in this country unless there's significant policy changes that ensure that that racial wealth gap is closed. And so obviously the child tax credit or, you know, sorry, what you were saying, right? I know, I said, well, what are we supposed to call? It was like, it's not a credit. Right. Right. That's one way, right? And then I think even the stimulus checks in some sense can help sort of people survive. That way, you know, if we're thinking about wealth building, they're not losing wealth on top of all the economic and health crises that are happening. And then if we're thinking also about, you know, small businesses, right? The majority of minority women own businesses are owned again by black women. And so this idea of centering policies that are aiming to close the wealth gap at the end of.

the day is, you know, really critical. And that's why, you know, quite frankly, if you are following me on Twitter once again, like, I was incredibly excited to see my mentor, Dr. Lisa D. Cook, be considered potentially as a governor of the Federal Reserve system. And so to give some additional context around what that is, the Federal Reserve essentially takes care of our economy. They make sure that our economy is healthy. Oftentimes the people who sort of regulate interest rates and infuse cash as needed. And so having somebody who specifically understands how the economy and racism are intertwined will be critical. And so having someone like Dr. Lisa D. Cook, perhaps in that position will also allow her

insight to then inform how we think about broad economic policies. Yeah, that's going to be a big deal, I think. Do you have any thoughts about Janet Yellen? Yeah, she's great. Janet. She's a really cool person. And I think she's gone through her own evolution, as I've mentioned before, you know, this idea of understanding that diversity or the lack thereof around the 2008 crisis is really why that crisis began in the first place, right? So, you know, there is a Howard economist called Dr. Williams-spriggs, who has mentioned in many interviews that essentially had there been more black and brown economists who were listened to around the time when black and brown communities were getting sort of the 2008 crisis before 2000.

2008, we might have not had a crisis to begin with. And I believe that Janet Yellen actually agrees with that take, even emphasizing that more women would have even been better to include in the room as well. you know, and so I'm thinking about that more broadly, right? So not just, you know, white women, but, you know, black women, brown women and so forth. And so, you know, I think she's somebody who gets it and she's getting it. And, you know, I've said in interviews that just like Janet Yellen, just like Biden, like, it's really going to be about who they surround themselves with, who's their cabinet, right? Who's the people that are informing their overall view of how things should move? And I'm quite excited, to be honest.

You know, I listed some folks recently on Twitter that, you know, are black women who are super progressive and who have these bold ideas that I really think if adopted can really change things for the better. I feel like the general consensus from 2008 is that we did not do enough. People were not bailed out enough, right? Auto companies were bailed out and corporations were bailed out. People themselves were not bailed out enough. Can you talk about that for a minute? Yeah. I think to some extent I agree, right?

I'm not an expert on the 2008 financial crisis. Quite frankly, I was, I believe, in elementary school. Yeah, stop bragging. No one likes a bragger. Right. But I think, you know, from what I understand of the situation, absolutely. I'll share a very personal thing with you. So as you guys know, the big shore is based off of the 2008 financial crisis, the whole premise.

is, you know, a couple guys on Wall Street decided to bet against the housing market failing, and they won. And, you know, at the very end, I believe his name, Michael Baum, I'm not sure if I'm saying his name correctly, maybe it's Matthew Baum, I'm not sure. But he doesn't want to sell his shares, right? Because he knows it's going to make a buttload of money, but he also knows it's going to be at the expense of everyone else. And, you know, there's a moment in the movie where, you know, these two young guys are like,

oh my God, we're about to be rich. And, you know, Brad Pitt's character, I forgot his name too, is like, at what expense, though, everybody's going to lose their jobs, right? And so I think a lot more could have been done around ensuring that, you know, at least there was a safety net to catch people who were inevitably going to lose their jobs. I also think the fact that, you know, the whole system, wow, I'm about to be very hot with this, the whole system was aware that it was rotten. The whole system, right?

And we got to get a sense of that from the movie and also different articles that have come out around it. But this idea of like everybody knew that this was all kind of BS and they were just kind of playing along and letting the good times roll. And so when all of it failed and then it seems like, you know, the only way to get through it is to then bail out the people who were willingly participating in, I would say, one of the worst economic schemes we ever seen, right? And that be at the expense of everybody else. I mean, like, there's nothing ethical about that, right? And, you know, one thing I've said when the Wall Street Betts thing was happening was, you know,

I understand that, you know, the narrative isn't completely the little guys versus the big guys. But, you know, to some extent, it's a little encouraging to see, like, the little guys kind of win, right? This idea of like collective people, ordinary people, teenagers, you know, coming together and saying we're going to stick it to hedge funds because, you know, we can. And I think that's, for me, I think I enjoyed it because I don't know. I've never, I just never seen Wall Street be held accountable, quite frankly. And, you know, I think that's where I think they could have done a lot more. The fact that, you know, even I think shortly after that, and, you know, my favorite, one of my favorite Congresswoman, Elizabeth Warren went in on Wall Street bankers around this, right?

It's like, I think Wells Fargo CEO made a bunch of money, like making fake accounts. Like, people are still on their same shit, basically. So this idea of like not holding Wall Street accountable, that's where I think people dropped the ball who were empowered that should have, you know, stepped up. Yeah, that is so helpful. This has been so great. Thank you, Anna. Thank you so much, Molly.

Always a pleasure. Folks, I just want to tell you on this week's bonus episode, we have curb your enthusiasm and the Goldberg's Jeff Garland. To hear it, you need to become a member of Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. To do that, head to new abnormal. That's new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal. com. Hello, Jesse Cannon.

Hi, Molly Jong Fast. So, what's on the agenda? Who is the worst person? All right. So I think the worst person in the entire world is Tucker Carlson. You know, Molly, I'm sadly watched Tucker Carlson last night for about 20 minutes, and I, like, lost time. I was so horrified. Well, I think that Tucker Carlson wants to kill us all.

I think he definitely wants to tear America in half, and we have to start looking it in the eye, that he's trying to cause a gigantic rift in America. It's not he's running for president. He actually wants to sow a divide. Yeah. I mean, I think he wants ratings, but I think that if sewing a divide comes with that, that's okay too. Don't you think he has bigger plans than just ratings? I think he's just a nihilist.

Yeah, I think he's smart and nihilistic. And, you know, if that works for him with ratings and making money and power, then good. And if I don't think he really cares. I don't think he, you know, gives his shit about anyone, which is why. Yes. Tell me why he earned this today. You know, what's interesting about Tucker Carlson is that when you push back as a culture and say, like, I think it's a bad idea.

You're spreading anti-vax rhetoric, and it's going to, you know, cause people not to get vaccinated and then die, or there's going to cause, you know, what's going to happen is if people don't get vaccinated, they're going to be variants, and variants are going to travel around and infect people, and then the virus is going to mutate and will eventually mutate to a point where the vaccine doesn't work on it. Now, recently we got all this really good news, which was that basically the vaccines work on a lot of the variants. pretty well, which is miracle and means we could conceivably have this hot girl summer. But Tucker Carlson's working hard to fuck it up for us. And last night he went full anti-vaxxer. There's this Center for Disease Control's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System.

And it has for a long time been sort of a clearing house of anti-vaxxer bullshit because it's completely self-reported with no oversight. So you go on there. if you're Alex Berensen, who is also a total fucking asshole, excuse my French, and you would type in that, you know, you had the coronavirus vaccine and then you died, right? And so now as a dead person, you are putting that in the database. It's a very kind of scammy situation with filled with self-reporting and no oversight. And so Tucker Carlson has decided that this explains all of it and that many more people are dying from the vaccine. and that it's underreported.

And of course, he's not an anti-vaxxer. He's just asking questions. But the question he wants to ask is, why would anyone in the world get a vaccine? And so for today, I say, go fuck yourself, Tucker Carlson. Right on. Well, mine is, I mean, I got bad news. Trump may be off Twitter, but people with even worse brains than Trump are imitating his stupid use of language. And today, that's new aspiring leader of the Republican Party, Elise Stefanik, who unfortunately is now talking like a Trump, walking like a Trump, and trying to be just as Craven and serve her own personal interests just like a Trump.

Just as Craven? How is that possible? Well, I think like many people, she's seen that power may be coming her way. and she's saying, what can I do to be the most horrible person to feed the members of this party that want me to just do all the horrible things and be cruel. And now we have another asshole to add to the pile. Yes. She and Liz Cheney fight, fight, fight.

Can they both lose? One would hope, but I think unfortunately... America loses. Someone I can't feel sorry for losing is Liz Cheney, and I think she is. the loser here. Yeah. Well,

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