The Daily Beast Podcast - The Likely Reason Trump Won’t Denounce the Vaccine

Episode Date: January 4, 2022

Co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy discuss some new nicknames for the former first daughter, including Ivanka “I Tried” Trump, as well as the reason Trump won’t ever diss the vaccines. Plus, vaccine expert Dr. Peter Hotez tries to answer Molly’s COVID-19 questions, including what the CDC was thinking when it made that 5-day rule and if Omicron will go away and The Nation columnist Jeet Heer confirms that Canadians are in fact prepping for America to become a fascist state. 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 Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundit and a writer at The Atlantic and Vogue. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. And on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Dr. Peter Hottes, a vaccine scientist who combats anti-science, and author of Vaccines Didn't Cause Rachel's Autism.

We'll talk to us about the latest on the Omnachron variant. Then we'll talk to Nation columnist and sub-stacker Jeet here about all the fuckery. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Johncast. Don Jr. Wilson and Chief. The heir to Trumpism.

And his sister, Ivanka, are subpoenaed to come in and talk in this civil suit. Discuss. It's a sad day. I feel bad for both of them. Wait, are you being ironic? I can't even do it with a straight face. Yeah, I can't get through that. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, I mean, good. It's a shame. It's only a civil inquiry. But civil inquiries can maybe lead to criminal inquiries and criminal subpoenas. You know, this is about whether the Trump organization and the, you know, the Trump family in general, whether they. have inflated the value of their assets in order to get, like, better loans or more loans, but then at the same time, deinflated them or lowered them the value of their assets to reduce taxes.

As all good Americans do, I think, you know, tend to do both. That's what you want in your ruling class is that kind of behavior. Well, I'm sure when she's president, she'll stop doing that. She'll grow into the office. We have to give her a chance, right? I mean, it wouldn't be fair. I mean, usually her M.O. is to, she will probably testify that, well, she opposed all of that. She was against all of that.

That, you know, that's her, that's always her big thing. Never has there been a person who has been more against things she's gone along with. I know. Than Ivanka Trump. You know, we were talking. talking before we started recording that this new reporting that Ivanka Trump went in twice to try to get her dad to stop to stop the violent insurrection. I tried. That's what her nickname is. Ivanka, I tried. You know, Ivanka, I hated myself the next day Trump.

Did she, though? That's the claim. Right. I almost hated myself. If I were, if I were normal, I would have paid to myself in that's state Trump, but instead, my husband is starting a fund in the Middle East, where he brought peace. Yes. So it makes a lot of sense. Oh, that's his reward. When you solve millennia old problems, you get to start a fund. I think that's the least we could do for Jared.

I'm pretty sure that's written in the Bible. I think it is. In the book of hedge fundery. It's the book of funds, yeah. Yeah, the book of funds. That's right. Yes, right after Psalms. It's Psalms and then funds.

Psalms and then funds, yeah. Thou, thou solveth the peace in the Middle East. Thou geteth thy carried interest. But really, kids. So we got Don Jr. and Ivanka. We'll see how that goes. I mean, I think it is, Tish James is how she's, you know, her nickname. But she has, you know, she was going to run for governor.

and she did take a step back to stay in this job to finish this case, which I actually think is unusual in American politics to see someone really just commit to the job in that way. And I was pretty impressed by that. Yeah, very unusual. I mean, you know, unless, of course, she had internal polling that showed she wasn't going to be governor. But who knows? But look, you know, but I don't, look, I'm not, I'm not trying to. bag on her. In this case, I'm

sort of glad she stayed, let her continue the work that she's been doing and, you know, drag all of them into court. I want to know what Barron knows. At some point, we're going to find out that he's sort of the mastermind behind all of this, I think.

Some might say he's the Kaiser Soze. Exactly. It's a puppet master. The puppet master. But it is, I mean, I do think, you know, are the New York State Governor, Kathy Hochel, you know she's doing a reasonably good job because you don't ever read about her. It's kind of nice.

Right. Yeah. Unfortunately, the only time I hear about her is we have to get COVID updates every day again. Like we're back in, you know, April 2020. But outside of that, you're absolutely right. Like, I don't hear much about her, which I'm after the last narcissist, I'm very happy about. Yeah. I think that's probably a pretty good sign that things are largely okay, which is not to say that I endorse,

you know, I don't know. again, I've gotten in trouble for being too nice to New York state governors before, and I will never do that again. Yes. I didn't forget it. It seems Mr. Trump has fallen out of favor with some of his biggest fans because he got a booster shot and he defended the vaccine when he was interviewed by Candice Owens. What are you guys seeing there? The best part of, I mean, I watched little excerpts of that. And the best part was her trying desperately to lead him where she wanted him to go.

and him sort of being, like, I can't even give him credit. I think he was just too clueless to pick up on what he was trying to do. Yes, I think that's right. He's just not hip to those early millennial cues. Right, exactly, exactly. And then, of course, you know, her big defense of him that he just, you know, he's old and he doesn't, he's not on the internet enough, as if being, like, like, the less you're on the internet, the more you probably know.

I mean, let's be honest. Like, and her whole thing is, you know, oh, he's not on the internet. He doesn't know. It's like, yeah, that's not how it works, given the amount of false information on the internet. Like this whole, all he's old and doesn't. Like, it's like, this is the guy you want to be president again in 2024. Like, on the one hand, you love him and he's your savior. And on the second, but now he's like this senile old man who can't open a web page.

Well, what I think is amazing about this whole thing is he took this sort of, you know, this, this creative stance of, and I'm not saying this in a good way, this is meant to be pejorative, but he took a creative stance to try to embrace anti-vaxxers on both the left and the right. Right. Because, and there are a fair amount of like women who used to be lefty kind of, you know, soccer moms in California who now believe that vaccines cause infertility and that this is, you know, there's some QAnon, natural food. anti-vax, Michigas, and those people have kind of gone over to Trump. The newest thing is, is that the vaccine has, is getting people pregnant.

Right. Oh, I hadn't even heard that one. That's the new Qaeda wave on the vaccine, yes. He sort of was able to stretch his insanity to appeal to some of these people, but the problem is fundamentally killing off your base is going to give you problems. Well, and the other thing for him is, it's like fundamentally, he can't, because the vaccines were developed while he was president, he has the insatiable need to take credit for them. So they can't be bad. So he's sort of trapped, you know, he's got the anti-vaxxers who,

at this point, you know, that's a part of the Republican base. But by the same token, his ego can't let the, I mean, he's already, you know, he's got his name on everything and, you know, with all his buildings or whatever, I'm sure he's not happy that his name is not on this vaccine, but he loves to call it the Trump vaccine. If you're saying the vaccine is bad, then you're you're saying he's bad in his mind. Right. So there's this fundamental disconnect. It's like one of those things that if you were a robot,

these two things, you'd see his head start to like, you know, smoke would start coming out of it because he couldn't put the two things together and then his head would explode from the fundamental, you know, disconnect between those two things. Yeah, you know, he wants to take credit for it, but he doesn't want to alienate his anti-vaxxers.

But it seems like that when he said he got the booster, I guess he decided he couldn't thread that needle anymore, Or he just wasn't paying attention. But there's also the fact that when he, you know, he got the booster sort of in secret, not necessarily in secret. Right. No in secret. Like no one knew.

And, you know, when you think about maybe the bit of good he could have done by getting it publicly and having it filmed and, you know, him saying, get the booster, it's good for you. And he, of course, chose not to do that because fundamentally he's a coward. And, you know, he was trying to, like you said, he was trying to thread this needle. no needle pun intended, but of getting the booster, because of all people, Trump is going to do something that's going to benefit him, which obviously he knows the vaccine will, but without making it public and maybe, you know, getting other people to follow suit because he doesn't want to alienate those people. So he's just, again, fundamentally he's a coward. And, you know, I'm glad he's come out

in favor of the boosters. But as with everything, it's, you know, it's too little too late for me to I'm not going to give them a standing ovation for it. I'm going to stay on my couch. I don't think you could actually speculate that whether the supporters are mad. I mean, there was a flurry of TikToks of the Alpha Maga-Karens getting very mad. Oh, really? Well, you know, as our TikTok correspondent, yes. Yes.

I can tell you that. That's amazing. I'm actually on TikTok a lot, but anytime they put a political video in my feed, I block that account. So they've gotten the message because I need a place that is completely politics free because obviously Twitter ain't that place. And I'm not on Instagram. And I'm like, TikTok needs to be my safe space, you know, from politics. And you're really missing out. You see, I click like every time I see a shirt on a blonde woman that says, I carry a gun and hate the vaccine. Are you triggered lib? I'm like, hell yeah, I am. Give it to me. This is what I've been looking for, babe. Okay. So speaking of the Qadon Karens, somebody no longer has a Twitter account, or at least one of them is gone on, Miss Marjorie Taylor Green. What are you guys seeing there? She got put on break from Facebook, which imagine how bad you have to be to be put on break from Facebook, the home of Ben Shapiro. Right? I mean, it's kind of incredible. Like, oh, yeah, let's not, you know, too crazy for it. But she's sharing all this Vaxer. It's spelled Vennard.

and it's a vaccine adverse reporting system, but it really, it's set up like so many unsuccessful American experiments on the honor system. So you don't have to put in, you can, you can just put in whatever you want and say whatever you want. And there's no, it's not like you have to be a doctor or a nurse or a healthcare professional to report a symptom. People end up posting a lot of crazy shit on there. And it happens to be sort of one of the favorite places for, for anti-vaxxers. And so, unsurprisingly, Marjorie Taylor, it happens to also be one of the favorite places for Marjorie Taylor Green.

And that is how she got banned from Twitter and timed out from Facebook. Yeah, I think you're being a little unfair to the VERS thing. Because I don't think it's as bad as you think. I think it's just, it can be misused is the problem. Right. I did some reading about it, and it's done a lot of good things. It's really helped doctors and stuff discover bad side effects from vaccines in the past and stuff like that. Yeah, but not anymore.

And she's not doing anything new. This has been part of the anti-vaxxer playbook for like the last year or whatever. When they'll look at it and they'll see that, you know, if you just look at the chart on VERS, it looks like there are 20,000 like or whatever X number of excess deaths or deaths that were caused by the vaccine is how they like to phrase it. when the fact of the matter is that's not even close to the truth. And then the thing that bugs me is they know, like even MTV as sort of not bright as she is, she knows she's peddling lies. Like this isn't just she's misreading a chart.

At this point, it's been debunked so many times, you know, because Tucker Carlson has done this and a bunch of other people have done it. And so, so yeah, she got booted off of Twitter. The thing that amazes me is, like, we've had these conservatives and populists and whatever for the last year. saying that the number of COVID deaths when you look at the total population is sort of insignificant. And that's one of their big things. Oh, only 0.5% of the people that get it die. Why are we worried about this? But then, like, two conservatives will get booted from Twitter and suddenly it's like

it's a national crisis and we need to have an emergency session of Congress to pass laws about it. And it's so anger-making. And of course, they always play the free speech card, which is obvious nonsense since Twitter is not the government. You saw that J.D. Vance was like, this company must be crushed. Yes. Well, that's what I'm saying. It's stuff like that. The same people that are walking around and have been for like the last year saying, well, COVID's not that big a deal because if you look at the percentages, it's very low. But then, you know, Marjorie Taylor Green gets suspended from Twitter. And it's like, well, we must crush this company. And it's like, you know, any claims that they might have had to, you know, being pretend free market people just sort of fly out the window.

And it's like, we must have fascism. We must control the, you know, Twitter must be nationalized for the public good. And it's like, really? Because Marjorie Taylor Green and her dumb tweets aren't there anymore? They're such loons. Yeah, it's amazing. I'm very impressed by that. But, you know, it is, and it's good fundraising for Marjorie Taylor Green.

And she will now, as I, you know, I got the email she sent out this morning that showed where you can now follow her on get her and telegram and, you know, whatever else. Have you maxed out with her, Molly? Have you maxed out your giving? I don't give to any political candidates. Thank you very much. Not allowed to. Okay. Now, Matt Greenfield, but I don't know who that is.

We are mining Ethereum outside our window. No, good for you. Don't let your apes get stolen. 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 Soladadad 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 first. favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles to become a member head to new abnormal the daily beast.com that's new abnormal dot the daily beast.com. Dr. Peter Hotes is a vaccine scientist

and the author of Vaccines didn't cause Rachel's autism. Welcome back again to the new abnormal, Dr. Peter Hotes. Oh, happy new year, Molly. Thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. So we have a lot of questions for you. And Jesse and I, actually, when you came on, Jesse and I were arguing about this. So I think we should start on this. The five-day quarantine. The CDC has lessened the quarantine from 14 to 10, and now we're at 5. What do you think? Well, remember, there's both quarantine and isolation. Isolation is when you know you've been infected and you're isolating. quarantine is when you've been exposed and you're waiting to see if you become infected or not. You know, the five-day period, it was partly borne out of the fact that with previous

lineages, you were shedding virus mostly from the two days before and after you became symptomatic. And so, therefore, the thinking was, well, we don't need that full 10 days for most cases. and therefore after five days you can put a mask on and then go about your business thinking that there's a relatively small likelihood that you're actually shedding virus. And therefore, you can go out into the community. And of course, the reason they're doing this in part is one based on science, but second, based on the fact that now with risks of knocking out the whole healthcare workforce, knocking out the transportation hub, so many employees are calling out sick that it would just shut down the whole United States infrastructure. That was part of it. I think the, and I had a couple of things, though, that my scientific colleagues in some cases, even though I've pushed back a little bit,

are along the following lines. One, a lot of that data is based on previous lineages, and O'Mocrin is so different in terms of transmissibility, so we don't. really know if the same rules still apply, it's still too new to have studied. I think the one that upset most of my colleagues the most was the fact that prior to going back into the workplace or in public, there was no antigen test requirement. And I think that disturbed a lot of people. And part of it, I think, was even though they say it's not, I think part of it was the fact that we just don't have that home antigen tests widely available, so it would kind of defeat the purposes of shortening the timeline in the first place. But then I heard Tony Fauci over the weekend say,

well, the CDC may roll that back and may require antigen tests after all, which of course doesn't make the CDC look great, the fact that it looks like they're simply just caving to public pressure rather than making scientific decisions. I think more likely the way it really worked was there was probably some internal discussion, maybe some internal debate, and now they're rethinking and likely going back to the antigen test. I haven't heard any announcement today, though, about that. But I think that that's what you're looking at is, you know, this balance between trying to follow the science, not putting in onerous restrictions, and not shutting down the nation, because that's what's already starting to happen, even without government-ordered

lockdowns or shutdowns, it's happening organically because too few employees are showing up to work to staff restaurants and staff TSA and air traffic control and hospitals. And so how do you mitigate that to prevent loss of life for other non-COVID reasons? In New York, we're a little bit ahead of the rest of the country, as we always are. In December, it really felt like everyone I knew had COVID. And, you know, I had the head called and the scratchy throat and, you know, I did a bunch of tests and some had two lines and some had, but, you know, I wasn't very sick and I was fine and I'm going to go get the blood tests. But I just, a lot of people I knew had it. And, you know, it definitely meant that there were less people, you know, things had to close just because there

weren't people. I remember Jesse said that in his neighborhood in Brooklyn, a lot of restaurants just closed because there was no one to come in and work in them. That's right. And that's right. So everyone's reading their hands about lockdowns, and you don't really need a government lockdown. It's unfortunately happening organically. And I think you're right that it has launched initially in North East, New England, Mid-Atlantic states, and that's sort of ground zero right now. But it's going to move over time. So a lot of questions I've been asked on cable news network, when's it going to peak? And I say, well, it doesn't really work that way in the U.S. never really has over the last two years. It comes in waves. and now that wave looks like it's moving traveling south. It's going into Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi. That's going to be the next big place.

And eventually it'll head out more out west. And the hope is that as it's traveling out of the northeast into other parts of the country, the cases start going down, actually, in the northeast. So you get some respite and you get a break so that you can open up all the schools and restaurants and get back to some level of normalcy again. But there's no guarantee. And the reason is because we have seen waves start to go down and everyone starts high-fiving themselves

and then it gets stuck there halfway and then a plateau's for a while. So it's hard to know if that's going to happen or not. I mean, what we've seen anecdotally in New York and also in South Africa and also in the UK is that it sort of rips through a city in about a month. At least anecdotally, so far from South Africa, and the UK, there hasn't been a huge uptick in deaths, like there have been with previous variants, right?

No, but on the other hand, the deaths have remained kind of steady, and the hospitalizations have gone up. And the worry is for this variant that, you know, if you've got enough of the health care workforce knocked out at home, then you're not taking as good a care of patients, and that's when that itself can contribute to mortality. So I think that's the danger, though that's a big danger point. Another is, the fact that two of our three monoclonals that would ordinarily give to people with breakthrough or other infections do not work against omacron so it leaves only one the one from glauaxosmith Klein slash veer and that's not available in abundance and we still don't have paxlovid in sufficient amounts because we didn't move fast enough on that in terms of i know producing it

yeah what's happening with that well it's it's been released for emergency use but it's got to be made in sufficient quantities and we don't have it yet. And that kind of leaves us with remdesivir. And plus the testing is still not up to snuff. And you need the testing to get the existing medicines. So when you package all that together, what you get is even though the virus itself may not cause as severe disease, the terms of the impact on the population may not be that much different from previous waves. It may be a very significant wave as a consequence. Well, and also what we've seen in New York is that it hasn't, it hasn't, deaths haven't ticked up, but some of that is probably because we have a very high vaccination and booster rate. Right, but you are getting an uptick in hospitalizations and some untrach, and a lot of those are probably among the unvaccinated and a lot of those will lose their lives.

So we are going to see an impact on deaths, unfortunately. again, not as dramatic given the number of cases that you'd ordinarily expect from an omicron wave, but still significant. So right now, for instance, in New York, they've had about a 50 to 60 percent increase in hospitalizations. And if you look at the graph, it is going up. Same in D.C., same in New Jersey, same in Delaware and Florida is also getting hit pretty hard. I mean, I feel like, you know, there's a lot of people who are angry at public health professionals are saying, well, you're changing your recommendations. But I think that there's not enough talk about how, you know, Omicron is not the same as Delta. That's right. It's a different animal. Just like, you know, when the mayor of New York, you know, Mayor Adams said, you know, we've done this before. We can do it again.

They've never done Omicron before. It's so much more transmissible. It's almost as transmissible as Beasel. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see how it goes. I think part of it, the frustration that you're seeing, because I do think the CDC director is a good CDC director, Rochelle Walensky. She's got to do a lot of change management in the agency, which you can imagine doing change management in a federal agency. I don't even know how you begin doing that. And during a pandemic. But, you know, I think people are just sick of the pandemic. And I think they're just sick of just a low tolerance for anything right now, no matter what it is. And I think that's also being reflected. I do think that it's interesting that we find ourselves in a situation where, like, public health professionals are, again, bearing the brunt of, it's like a fundamental disconnect with, like, the reality is it's a different variant. I mean, the thing I saw in December was that it's just so much more contagious. Yeah, this, and, you know, as I often will say, each variant has its own unique set of challenges or the other way to say that is each variant has its own. unique little shop of horrors. And with Omicron, it is that super high transmissibility that can cause so much disruption in the workplace, social disruption, and the fact that it's still not a totally benign virus. It's still causing hospitalizations. So it's still enough to cause a rise in hospitalizations

and that one-two punch of people knocked out of the workforce, rise in hospitalizations. Also, some of the interventions don't work as well. It's causing people to question vaccine, the effectiveness of vaccines because it looks like the booster dose, although it works okay. And initially after you get it is not holding up as well versus Omicron, as many of us has hoped. I can't tell you how many times I've said to you, Molly, on this podcast, it's not one and done, it's two and done, but it'll be three and done because you get a big rise in virus neutralizing antibodies, then it's going to hold up for a long period of time. It doesn't look like it for Omicron. And what we don't know is it unique to Omicron or is it turning out that the RNA technology is not as durable as we

initially hoped? And so these are all important questions. So it's causing everybody to question all of the assumptions that we've developed over the last two years and that in itself causes instability, causes people to question public health infrastructure and the fact that the public health infrastructure is already depleted. And of course, we're balancing it now on the back of the schools and asking the schools to figure out the testing and the contact tracing, which is a situation that we never should have put our educators in. So all of that is creating instability. And then it turns out that at the end of this week, there's something else that's going to be happening. This little thing called January 6th, that's going to have some instability

as well. So this will be a tough period for us. I mean, that is, you know, an important thing to talk about. The other thing I want to talk about, because we're talking about is shedding the virus. So I feel like a lot of the public health messaging has sort of treated unvaccinated people and vaccinated people the same as shedding the virus. Is that true? Is there a reason for that? Well, once you get really high virus neutralizing antibodies, what we've seen these vaccines,

what we've seen is some of that virus neutralizing antibody gets into the mucus membranes of the nose and mouth, and it actually binds up the virus to reduce virus shedding. That's why being vaccinated with really high virus neutralizing antibodies will cause you to stop transmitting the virus. So let's look at a couple of scenarios. So when people first got their first two immunizations, it was done on the basis of stopping symptomatic illness. But then in Israel, they showed, hey, guess what? It's also stopping asymptomatic transmission. And that was very exciting.

And people, that's when the CDC rec said you could take off your masks. and everybody felt like they got to get out of jail free card and they were high-fiving each other. But then something happened. The immunity started to wane. And it waned enough so that there was no longer as much antibody in the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth. And you were shedding virus again. And then they had a back pedal on that. And they said, well, it looks like you are shedding some virus.

But wait, get the third immunization. That's going to give you an even a larger rise in virus-neutralizing antibody. and that's going to do it, and it's going to be more prolonged. And sure enough, that's likely the case. The problem now is with the Omicron variant, it looks like that level of virus-neutralizing the antibodies not holding up as well. So people are shedding some virus once again. So it's the seesaw effect of what's genuinely happening with the boosters,

but now having to realign the messaging because of the unique features of Omicron. In other words, it was hard enough to explain all that in a 30-second soundbite as it was with the previous lineages, now to have to put an asterisk on everything because of what's going out with Omicron, I think, has been really challenging. It's interesting, though, to me, because one of the things that I've been seeing a lot in New York is people who test negative for COVID, but then still have a lot of the symptoms. And in the UK, too, we saw this. You know, I don't know if you saw this reporting that said that, like, a much larger percentage of people in the UK had Omicron but tested negative because of having all the vaccine.

Because testing antigen negative, right, because the vaccine was still limiting the amount of virus. Right. And because the antigen test is less sensitive and may be a better indicator of how likely you are to transmit the virus, that was the case. The problem, though, is, you know, if you start doing PCR tests, PCR is so sensitive, it can detect virus fragments, bits and pieces of virus, even though you're not shedding virus. So, for instance, Molly, you're still PCR positive. If you were to do a PCR test from your illness back in December, even though you're not symptomatic anymore. I don't know if I had it, but I did have eight negative antigen tests. Right.

I mean, there are other reasons to get up a respiratory infection. I'm here, of course. But, you know, assuming that it was COVID, your antigen could be negative and you're not shedding virus to infect others, but you could still be PCR positive. Right. But having remnants of that. Say you're PCR positive. You're vaxed to the hilt. You're not shedding virus. Do you need to be quarantined if you're not shedding virus? Well, no. That's, well, first of all, you shouldn't get a PCR test if you've been vexed to the hilt and you feel well. I mean, because. Right. But all my kids' schools. are doing PCR tests before they go back to school.

Oh, really? Well. Yes. All the, which, so they're all doing PCR tests, even though they're all vaccinated. I think that's going to be very hard to interpret because I think a lot of kids could be PCR positive and not shedding virus. I think in that case, you might want to do the antigen test, even though it does have reduced a sensitivity. Because it's going to be very hard to interpret a lot of PCR tests. And some people could be shedding, you know, could have positive PCRs, for days or weeks afterwards. So I think that's going to make it very difficult.

I think that's ultimately the biggest problem with a lot of this public health messaging is that it's not completely clear. And I understand that it's not clear because nobody knows. Well, also, the other problem is the schools are not getting the appropriate guidance from local and state health departments. And they're basically telling the schools to figure it out and asking educators to suddenly get masters in epidemiology in public health, which, you know, which is unfair and asking the nurses to figure this out. So I don't know that doing a PCR. Now, certainly, it's the most risk-averse.

If you're PCR-positive don't show up to school, well, sure, you're not going to be infecting anyone, but you're going to wind up sending, having a lot of kids at home who are not shedding virus who don't need to be at home. So that's where it comes down. I feel like this is the first time ever where we've left with, I feel like I've left with more questions. Jeet here is a substacker and a columnist at the nation. Welcome back to the new abnormal Jeet here. Good to be here as always. We're so glad to have you back.

Let's start because you do live in our neighbor to the north. You said before we started recording that there has been a bunch of articles in Canada about how Canada can prepare for the fall of the United States discuss. There's actually quite a bit of chatter in Canada. that. And to be honest, like... And in America. In America, but also like in Europe and in many other places, like how to prepare for what is going to happen in America where many people are thinking, you know, like it could become much more authoritarian, either a return to Trump or some sort of Republican takeover power and

sort of erosion of democracy. I want to emphasize like just how striking it is that there's a lot of features of this in the global mail, which is like a very, a very, mainstream Canadian business newspaper, it's sort of our cross between the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. Like it has both elements. And in some ways, it's a little bit closer to the Wall Street Journal. And for that publication, which is really aimed at guys who work on our equivalent of Wall Street, you know, like the kind of business conservatives who are looking after trust funds, if they're the ones that are worried that, you know, the United States could become authoritarian, that's really notable. And I then, you know, as I said, we know, I think we have

good reason to think that these conversations are happening in Paris, in London, in Berlin. Some stuff that your listeners will be familiar with, with the fact that the Republican Party has sort of turned against democracy in a big way, that they've embraced the idea that the election of 2020 was stolen, that they're putting in place election officials to do what was not done in 2020 of overturning the election. And there's a possibility that Trump will return, but it doesn't really require Trump. I mean, it's the party more than the man. So, yeah, and I think that has all sorts of implications for foreign countries,

for how they're going to relate to the United States. Like, what do they do? And maybe one thing to emphasize is the sort of insecurity, it creates an American foreign policy that, like, no one thinks, like, they can make a deal with or an agreement with the United States that they can rely on anything, right? That, you know, like, it's a country that elected Trump wants, and he pulled out of the Paris Accord and he pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal.

Right. So why trust? Why trust the United States? And then, and more broadly, beyond extending beyond that, you know, the countries that think of themselves as democracies are wondering, like, well, how would they relate to the United States, you know, like if it ceases to be democracy, or if it erodes from being a democracy. So, I mean, I think it's good for your listeners and for Americans more broadly to know. I mean, this is what the world is talking about. This is the way, you know, things are discussed.

I have a slightly contrary or maybe not so dire. Yes, not so dire. Come on down. No, no, I should say not so dire, but it's dire in a different way. Oh, good. Okay, first of all, I think that the Democrats, I mean, okay, they haven't passed the Voting Rights Act, but if you look at the state level, it looks like they've done a pretty good job of engineering.

they're doing a kind of counter gerrymandering or engineering their own states. Yes, that's certainly true. They really short up their positions. They didn't roll over, which for Democrats is amazing. Yeah, it is amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And really, I mean, one has to look at it, like, we're more broadly than, you know, just one election or things.

I mean, like, it is a case that, like, you know, like, more than half the country really hates Trump and what he stands for, you know, like, it's something like 62% of Americans don't want Trump to ever run again. Yeah. But, I mean, that doesn't mean that, you know, can't become president. I mean, you can, you know, with the electoral college, he could definitely become president again. But so I think that what's going to happen more broadly, that is already happening is you're going to get like a long stalemate, a long Cold War inside the country.

Right. Where like really nothing gets done, but neither party is able to garner a supermajority that you need to get things done. So like, let's say, you know, Trump or someone like him gets in in 2024, even with a Republican super Republican trifecta, it's still going to be hard for him to get things done as it was, you know, honestly in 2016. There'll be a lot of resistance, even more so.

And then, you know, Democrats would have a good shot in 26. But basically what you're going to have is kind of like this perpetual seesaw driven by negative partisanship, one party or the other getting in and then driving out all the other voters. And yeah, I don't know how, I mean, it's hard for me to see any sort of stable government.

And so, I mean, I know a lot of Canadians that are worried about, you know, America becoming authoritarian. Right. And I think it will become more authoritarian, but I think there ought to be a lot of resistance. My more broad thinking about this is, though, that, like, really what you're going to see is a lot of instability and a lot of gridlock and not being able to deal with wrong. And I think we already kind of see that with, like, the COVID situation, right? Right. where, like, you know, you kind of have the inability to deal with this is partially driven by the fact that the Republicans and Republican-affiliated outfits like Fox decided, well, maybe it's better to like, you know, keep the pandemic going to hurt Joe Biden. Right. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I literally think like, if you're thinking at the level of Fox News, like, you know, spreading anti-VAC sentiment, like, I mean, that's literally the logic at work, which sounds like nuts. Like, how could anyone think like that? But, I mean, here we are.

Yeah, I mean, that's what's so interesting to me is that you have a situation where you really do have a Republican Party that is completely committed to power. And then you have at least a Democratic Party that is fighting back because you and I both know Democrats have a long history of rolling over. But, you know, and not fighting back. But, I mean, I just think that the center cannot hold, right? you can't have one party responsible for keeping democracy going and also trying to get power back. It's just an undoable situation or trying to maintain power. I mean, the two run contrary to each other. Yeah, no, they do.

And I think that's always been the kind of tricky thing about Biden's position, which, I mean, I grant you, it did, you know, help him win the presidency. Right. But, I mean, like, he was both arguing for, you know, like, we're going to, actually. I'm going to be the one that will restore things to the way they were before Trump and gets up to return to bipartisanship. I mean, he really did run on, you know, like, I'm Joe from the Senate, you know, like, I know how to work with people from the other side. That is at odds with, like, the current moment where it's like the two parties are so hyper-partisan. And to the degree, I mean, people, I mean, I think people rightly blame Mansion and cinema. But to some degree, you know, their whole logic is the logic that Biden partially ran on.

I mean, Biden gave like two different messages. One is that he's going to pass a lot of these very ambitious bills that will really shore up American democracy and also he'll work in a bipartisan way and restore the old comedy and civility. And so that's a mixed message. And the different parts of the Democratic faction are unhappy with him because you're getting neither, right?

Like you're because of the mansion wing, you're not going to get a big shoring up of American democracy and big spending bills that you need. But because of everything, everything is so partisan, the people like mentioned, actually, you know, they're not really getting what they wanted either because they're not getting, there's not going to be returned to bipartisanship either. I mean, unless you have a time machine, there's no world in which you're getting back to bipartisanship. No, no, of course. I mean, I've always thought that that was a kind of fantasy. The problem is that there's so many American institutions, and this goes beyond the government, but that are kind of based on that center, you know, as you said, the center cannot hold.

There's so many institutions that are based on a kind of, you know, 1950s view of politics where you have two parties that are, you know, a little bit different, but, you know, close enough and they can work. And you have a lot of people who are willing to cross aisles. You have liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. And you still have a few conservative Democrats, but a lot less, but you don't have any liberal Republicans. And then you have both also the two parties really in a deep existential way loathe each other and see each other as a threat to the country. it's this combination of gridlock and hyper-partisanship. I mean, there is a wing of Trumpism that is fascistic as a real threat, and we have to guard against that and fight against that.

But the long term or the broader prospect is this problem of an ungovernable country, right? Of like, how do you get anything done? Yeah, I mean, I have a few thoughts on, I mean, maybe like, you know, since we're starting the New Year, you want to have a more positive note. We can think a little bit about, you know, how things can get done. You know what I'd actually like to go to because I think it opens the door to it of this idea. I'm writing my newsletter. Wait, what?

Not to plug my newsletter in the Atlantic. You should subscribe now. But I'm writing about Marjorie Taylor Green, who only was on her committees for one month before she was stripped of her committee assignments. But she, this weekend before she lost her Twitter, did a whole tweet thread about how we should, between calling Democrats termites, which, as you know, is this, the same language we've seen in other, you know, it's a fascistic language of dehumanizing your enemies. But she also made a whole plea about a national divorce. And so there definitely is the bar right friend, which of course, as you and I both know, has pretty much kidnapped the Republican Party, is now shopping a pro-sivil war narrative. So I'm curious to know what you think of that. I don't think it's quite a civil war because of the traditional sense.

Right, right, right. It's more of an Ireland. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's more northern Ireland or Lebanon, right? Because, I mean, like, I mean, the basic geographical fact is that in the Civil War, you had the slave states which were all together and, you know, form a nation, and you had the non-slave states and a few states in the middle. But, I mean, basically, it's very clear-cut geographically.

In America right now, I mean, like, basically, in every single state, you have these urban centers that are quite progressive and liberal and rural places that aren't. So like in New York's, you know, if you go to like, you know, upstate New York, you're going to see a lot of Trump fans. Whereas if you had conversely, if you go to Mississippi, you know, like Jackson or wherever, like, you know, you can find a lot of listeners to your program. Let's hope. Yeah. So it's more likely that you're going to get like, yeah, sort of prolonged. I mean, we already see some violence, you know, I mean, we shouldn't say that it's going to happen.

It's already happened, you know, like, you know, like the synagogue shooting, Charlottesville, even just very recently, it got like no attention, but there's this guy in Denver. They shot up five people, you know? Yes. And he's his profile. And it's all like super mega, super in-cell. You know, he's a writer of these like novels, one-hand type novels. Right. He kills five people.

He killed five people. He wrote a book about it, doing it. Yeah. Well, no, he wrote the book. The book came before the killing. Yes, that's true. And he had been on right-wing sites and everything, and it didn't get a lot of publicity. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was totally a part of this culture. And so, you know, like, there's going to be a, you know, like, you know, a fair bit of that. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's going to be, like, the sort of prolonged kind of struggle. And in some ways, I mean, like, think that these, a lot of these sort of red state laws that are very cultural worry are maybe designed to, like, sort of foment that sort of stuff and bring in a level of, like,

civil society violence or aggression into these debates. I mean, I think that that's what's really going on with these Texas abortion things, you know, like authorizing the bounty hunter. That's not quite civil war, but it's civil war-e. Right. It's civil war light. And you saw that there are other Republican state laws that have bounty hunters like that. For example, there's a banned book law that they're working on where if libraries have

sexually explicit books. I mean, I have to say the library law kind of delight. me because I hope it encourages people to use libraries, is all I'm going to say. Yeah, I mean, the younger listeners will not understand this. But back in the 1970s, half the population got their sex education from your mom's paperback novels. That's right, man. And so, libraries are incredibly dangerous, and everyone should go there right now and take out lots of books. That's right. No, no. All these things, I mean, they are trying to agitate this base. Culture wars, because they know that the base gets excited about culture.

They get excited. And yeah, that's the one thing that they get excited about. I mean, it is actually very curious that, you know, the opposition to the economic stuff is really coming, you know, from within the Democratic parties, like Mansion or Larry Summers out of office. Whereas, I mean, the Republicans are really focused on the culture wars, though, because, I mean, they maybe have a sense that a lot of the stuff, you know, Biden wants to do are actually quite popular. And we'll just let Joe Manchin do it. I mean, Joe Manchin's doing the Republicans a huge favor. Yeah, I mean, well, Joe Manchin is getting a lot of money from it. The thing that gets me so upset, you know, is that there are, you know, these, a lot of members of Congress on both the right and disturbingly the left are trading stocks and then serving on committees to regulate that.

It's too insane. Yeah, no, no, it's a real problem. Yeah, yeah, no. But again, I mean, that sort of feeds into this sort of authoritarianism. I mean, people talk about authoritarianism, you know, like there's this Trumpist movement that wants a strong man. But I think that what has to have, you know, like that sort of movement can only flourish in a society that seems like it's gridlocked and where there's a lot of corruption in like high levels of office. And, you know, like that was the kind of classic situation of sort of, you know, 1920s. But I don't think it's going to quite go there.

I think that there's going to be more like an extended period of. instability. And within that framework, like, what do you do? I mean, like, I think this really strengthens the case for, like, Biden, you know, trying to govern like Obama did after 2010 of, like, you know, like, you know, like, pros and cons to getting rid of student debt. But I mean, like, for me, the biggest pro reason is this is something you can actually do, right? You can actually just sign of a, you know, just signing a pen and you can do it and you can give something to your, to your base. Yeah, to get them happy. And also, just your supporters because there'll be a lot of other people on the other side. They'll see that,

oh, the president actually did something that was good for me and, you know, diffused some of the anger. Anyways, I just think that. But also it just makes you look strong, right? It makes you look like, you know, like you're fighting for something. To me, like, that's the most worrying thing about what Biden is doing. Like, you don't, and I understand he wants to be the anti-Trump and, like, lower the temperature. Right. I don't know that it's up to him. And also, it doesn't look like he's out there fighting for people. And I feel like, you know, if you look at his numbers, especially when young people, like, I feel like that's a real issue. If people need to have a sense that, you know, you have a president who's like, you know,

out there in the trenches, you know, I was like, fighting for you. Yeah. Yeah. One way, temporary solution is a band-aid solution. The long-run solution is going to have to be like, you know, the Democrats really rebuilding and getting enough of a majority to do stuff. The short-term solution is these executive orders. And it's also like the state's, level. I mean, there is, you know, federalism is usually a conservative thing, but I mean, in a lot of these blue states, you're getting, you know, very strong democratic majorities. And also the nature of those majorities are changing that a lot of the more conservative Democrats have been sickled out of politics. And so I really think that, you know,

that might be the area where things need to be pushed like that. This is where you can, you know, like shore up stuff and get at least some stuff done. I mean, those seem like to me the short-term solutions for what is going to have to be like a long war. Like, Germans, of course, have the military terminology. And I won't use those German phrases, but they make a distinction between knockout war and trench war, right? Like the knockout war is where, you know, what they wanted in World War II, the quick blitzkrieg victory where they would take Paris immediately.

But the trench war, you know, is what they got in World War I. And I feel like, you know, like we're in a long period of trench war. warfare, you know, you're just going to have to, like, keep fighting and duking it out and, like, looking for local victories where you can. And then that seems to be the way forward. Thank you so much, Jeet here. I hope you'll come back. Oh, of course. I always happy to be here. 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 podcasts. Andy Levy. Molly Johnfest. There are people who annoy us. Very many. Who is the person who annoys? you today. I think mine for today is going to be a young lad named Tim Poole. I don't even know how

you describe him. I guess he has a very popular YouTube show or whatever. I don't know. Anyway, he's a moron. He's most famous for wearing a beanie. Yes, yes. He is a beanie baby. And he's Canadian, right? You know, I don't know and I don't want to know. I don't know why, but I just don't want to know. So how did he raise your eye? Well, the other day, the Illinois Holocaust Museum tweeted that to keep everyone safe, they were going to require guests to show proof of COVID vaccination. And Lil Tim decided that he was going to quote tweet and say, the Holocaust museum demanding your papers for entrance is the perfect way to explain to someone the definition of irony. The only conclusion I can reach from this is that he doesn't know what irony is or he doesn't

know what the Holocaust was or both. Yeah, I think that's fair. I replied to him on Twitter saying L-O-L, you are truly a moron. And Twitter decided to give me, before letting me post it, popped up a little thing saying, do you want to review this before tweeting? We're asking people to review replies with potentially harmful or offensive language. And I said, yeah, I'm all good here. And I went Did you get in trouble? I did not. I did not. And then some guy started arguing with me.

And I, you know, told him he could, he should kindly fuck off. And Twitter gave me the same thing. And I was like, I said kindly. Like, I don't, you know, I'm out here being, I'm out here being polite. And you're giving me warnings. Like, I don't understand. But I got a bunch of replies saying, oh, yeah, if you tweet those, you're going to get put in Twitter jail, and I haven't yet. Obviously, a large part of me would love to get put in

Twitter jail because then I could go about my life. I don't think so. I have this serotonin machine staring me in the face all day. But anyway, fuck that guy. I would like to propose from this, fuck that guy, a new rule. If you are fighting with the Holocaust Museum, you are the bad guy. Yeah, it's just, and they've been doing this for a while. He's not the first to do this. Like, I've tweeted about this before. Like, who was it? Some idiot was fighting with the Auschwitz Memorial.

Yeah, exactly. Like, if you, it's a, it should be the moment where you say, hmm, I'm fighting Auschwitz Memorial. That should be the scene in the movie where you are, you know, you're standing over the sink and you just throw water on your face and you look up in the mirror and you're like, what am I doing? What have I become? What have I become?

I think I know what he's become, actually. My theory is I'm convinced of this with Tim Poole is that he's determined to make Godwin's law obsolete by doing land speed records towards it every day. He's doing speed runs of Godwin's law, yeah. Oh, he's pretty amazing. This is what I've learned from Googling him while you were talking. He's 35, and that's pretty much it. And he's not Canadian. He's from Chicago, which is basically the same thing.

Yeah, I shouldn't say that. We have a lot of Canadian listeners, or at least two or three. Canadians are great. Canadians are the best. We need them to give us citizens. Yeah. I have had girlfriends who have been living in Canada all my life. You don't say.

Nice. So my fuck that guy is, I don't know if you know of him. His name is one Donald J. Trump. and he was president of the United States. No, that can't be right. Recently, when not playing golf and speaking at weddings and bar mitzvahs, he is giving his full and total endorsement to Victor Orban. Because if fascism is wrong, he doesn't want to be right.

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