The Daily Beast Podcast - We’re All Just Living Under the Tyranny of Joe Manchin w/ Andy Slavitt, Rep. Ritchie Torres & Jason Kander

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

“Everything’s a question mark, because we no longer live in a democracy. We live under the tyranny of Joe Manchin,” says Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) of the current state of Congress. The congressman, who represents “America’s most impoverished district,” New York’s 15th, joins Molly Jong-Fast on the latest episode of The New Abnormal to talk about why making President Biden’s child tax credit permanent could be his administration’s greatest legacy. But it all rests in the hands of a single—tyrannical—senator. Also on the show, Andy Slavitt, Biden’s outgoing coronavirus adviser and author of the new book Preventable, says it would be “healthy for us to try to hold to account not just the president, but ourselves, each other” after 600,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. Former Missouri secretary of state and Majority 54 podcast host Jason Kander also goes in-depth with Molly—who asks how Democrats can possibly take back red states “if we can’t get people like you to run? No pressure.” Tune in for his response and what we can learn from Georgia. 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 to a down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

We have a great show today with Andy Slavitt, who of course has been the senior advisor to the White House's pandemic response, who will talk to us about that along with his new book, Preventable. Then we will talk to Congressman Richie Torres, who represents New York's 15th district, and he will talk to us about representing America's most impoverished district and how that affects his legislative work. But first, we have former Missouri Secretary of State,

and host of the Majority 54 podcast, Jason Kander. Welcome to the new abnormal, Jason Kander. Thank you for having me. Very exciting. Actually, what's very cool is that New York City and state has been sort of, we've sort of been swapping out our Democrats for younger Democrats. Yeah, that's a fact. There's been a lot of that going on there.

Yeah, pretty exciting stuff, though. Yeah, no, I was never in Congress. And honestly, like, I never really wanted to be. I did have this brief period where I was in a phase where I thought I wanted to be in the Senate, but I came through that phase. Now I'm just, I don't know. It's being, particularly in the House, I appreciate everybody who does it, but being one out of 435, having been a member of the state legislature,

man, that's a hustle that I don't have anymore. But you did run against the worst member of the Senate. I mean, like, if you had asked me that in 2016, I'd have been like, yeah, he's the worst. But as we sit here today, like, I can't honestly say that. Like, I mean... Really? Because I feel like I can.

Well, you are certainly capable of doing... But, like, to be... I mean, like, he and I disagree on all sorts of stuff and everything. Like, I'd say pretty much every single thing. But, you know, he and I, like, we text. We have a relationship. There are things we work on together now. And I can't say that about the other.

senator from my state, for instance? I mean, I guess. I mean, remember, the other senator from my state is Josh Hawley. I mean, this is a guy who... No, it's true. I mean, yes. You mean the guy who is pro-insurrectionist? Yeah, like, the guy I ran against has a lot of failings, but at least one of them is not

tried to overturn the election. Right, that is true. So, I mean, which, look, it is a sad statement that we will. accept that as like any kind of, you know, feather in your cap. But that's where we are with Republicans at the moment. But Roy Blunt is not going to, I thought he wasn't going to run again. No, he's not running again. He decided he's retiring.

So there's going to be like a 9,000-way primary, including both Eric Grightens and the guy who, you know, burst onto the scene by wielding an AR-15 at Black Lives Matter protesters who were just walking down his street. Oh, yeah, that guy. I know that guy. What is that guy's name, that crazy guy? His name is Mark McCloskey. And my thing about that guy is that if you look back at when that happened, like, there's all sorts of things wrong with that.

And he broke the law. He threatened people with the weapon. Like, that all goes without saying. But I just feel like we should give a little more attention to the fact that that guy during lockdown was wearing a polo shirt with khakis and it was tucked in. Like, that's a weird dude. Like, who was doing that? Like, who had their shirt tucked in at that point in 2020? Like, nobody.

Nobody had their shirt tucked in. Well, that whole story of how they bought that mansion and then they restored it. And then the street was a private street where you weren't allowed to walk. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I think is, like, so amazing about this Republican Party is these are two idiots standing with guns threatening people because they're racist, right? And then all of a sudden they are elevated to superstar status in the Republican Party. I don't know what to say about it other than

like I really enjoyed his announcement video where he was on a quote-unquote farm, which I assume is his vacation house, like in his very expensive looking faux flannel shirt. I mean, I just was like, that is, that is quite something. Yeah. I mean, so you're not going to run. No, uh-uh. I got a great job I love. I very much feel that I'm still, you know, part of that national conversation to the extent that I want to be.

I have a podcast that's pretty popular, political podcast called Majority 54, so that that keeps me very much feeling like I'm part of things. Not to mention I'm still on the board of what America vote, the organization I founded. So I have my bit of political activism and then, and then, my day job is I'm the president of veterans community project. I'm building campuses with walking clinics and villages of tiny houses for homeless veterans and like walking clinics for all veterans all over the country. And I love that job. So I'm very happy doing what I'm doing. Playing baseball, coaching little league baseball. It's it's right where I want it to be. So what do you, I mean, how do Democrats take back red states if we can't get people like you

to run? No pressure. Well, look, I think that because obviously, I've had this conversation with a lot of people, sometimes over microphones, and sometimes it's just regular folks asking me, and sometimes it's senators calling me. And I always say the same thing, which is, look, we have got to get over this thing where we think that every two years, our ticket is to find savior candidates. I'm very flattered that people think that, you know, I'm, you know, one of these, quote unquote, like one of the people who can actually win. Like, that's really flattering. But everybody looks at Georgia and they say, look what Stacey Abrams did. And that is great. Like, Stacey's a very close friend of mine.

I've known her for over a decade, and I was there at the beginning of her doing that and, like, there in the sense that she was calling her shot, telling me what she was going to do. I was with her when she announced for governor. I, you know, introduced her to the crowd. I've seen this up close. The Stacey Abrams model is informative, but it is informative to a point. And not about what we think it is. It's not as informative tactically as people think, because what Stacey did is something

that can be done in a state like Georgia, where you take a demographic that is, you know, underrepresented in voter registration roles and you make sure that they're represented at the polls. Like, you can absolutely do that. Wait, can you do that in? In many states, many southern states. But you can't do that in Missouri. Missouri, you know, is always arguing with itself and with the country as to whether it's Midwestern or Southern.

Right. But the fact is, is that an underrepresentation of African Americans on a voter registration rules is not one of our biggest problems. What is your biggest problem? I would argue, in fact, that we are much more like a Colorado or a North Carolina was several years ago, which is if you get the right donor group together

and you combine them with the right activist group and you put in the right amount of time, you can create the infrastructure for an ongoing progressive table that really gets things done. Is somebody doing that? There are people beginning to do that kind of thing. But the point I'm making, Molly,

is that instead of thinking of all this of like every two years, let's find the candidate that can do this. The part, the lesson to learn from Georgia is that while John and Ralph, who I personally like a great deal and like also as a fan of them being senators like a great deal, they're both awesome. Neither of them are people that you would have looked at and said, well, you know, if we have a liberal black preacher and a liberal Jewish documentarian, that's our silver bullet to win Georgia. You would never have said that. And so just get your state to a place where it's competitive, and then you don't need to go find the perfect candidate.

You just do the work. So I'm a big fan of yours, but I'm going to push back here a little bit. Well, good. That makes for better content. Let's do that. I talked to Warnock early on in his campaign, and I thought, this guy is the preacher for Martin Luther King's church. He's amazing.

He is amazing. I'm just saying on paper, nobody would have ever gone out and picked those two profiles and said, this is, you know, like without hearing him speaking. You know what I'm saying? That's my point. I mean, I think a black preacher in this, in a southern state is like a really good candidate. And in fact, the fact that we only have now 12 African American senators is what is really a symptom of how disenfranchised African American voters have been. But we were talking about that. Well, but wait, let me say one more thing about that, because I agree, but I agree conditioned upon Stacey's work had already been done to make that one of the, that's my point, is that whatever it is in your state, in Georgia, it was making sure that black voting power was what it should have been, right, to represent the state accurately. In another state, it's something else, but whatever it is, you have to get, you have to get the infrastructure of your state in place

before you can have that candidate that can be successful. That's my point. Instead of every two years going, well, let's get the candidate that can win Republicans and they can't. No, just make your state what it should be and then the right candidates can win. I mean, except that I think Democrats don't spend enough time focusing on really great candidates. It's like, you know, we have, I mean, there have been many times in this cycle and this wasn't true for us off, but it was really true in this last Senate cycle.

We had candidates who lost as congresspeople and went on to run as senators. It wasn't situations like a Beto O'Rourke who could for sure, I think, win a Senate race. It was people where they had lost a congressional seat and had had a lot of money and then went into a Senate race and got creamed. And so I actually think that when Democrats are aggressive about recruiting candidates, that can actually be really. good. And the idea that I keep seeing again and again and again when I interview people is that Democrats feels that because they do good work, somehow voters are going to notice that. Yeah. I guess my thing is like in states like mine where you got to remember, Missouri, Trump won Missouri in 2016 by more than he won Mississippi. Yeah. And so in states like mine,

where people are going like, we just have to find the right candidate. Right. My point is those two things are not mutually exclusive. Like, let's use, let's use, you know, Reverend Warnock as the example here. Like, incredible candidate, you know, outstanding. And if the work had not been done for the voters, if you didn't have the voters, you can't win. And so that's my, my point is like, because this all goes back to your original question about me running, which, and so what I'm saying is when people come to me and say, look, the only way we're going to win is if you or Claire run, then I'm, what I'm saying is, uh, well, then that's a problem. If the only way that the only hope that we have is to run to people who,

I would imagine that our greatest strength from the people who are coming to us is everybody already knows who we are. Well, if that's the case, then we haven't done the work to create the environment where, because there are lots of awesome potential candidates out there. So Jason, let's talk some more about you actually. You were a secretary of state. Yes, sir. It seems like Republic of, gotten this clue after this last election that if they get people in these office, that they can overturn elections. I imagine you more than anybody else has seen what could be done here. Do you have any thoughts on this subject? Yeah, it's super frightening. So the super frightening part is obvious to everybody

now, thankfully, which is that, yeah, like if you control the levers of power and elections, then there's an awful lot. There's more than like a thumb that you can put on the scale. And it is And it is super frightening that we have come to a point where one party is not just that they want to use that power to win elections. It is that we are actually having a disagreement in this country now over whether democracy is good. Right. One party has lost its mind. Yeah. My wife pointed out actually on our podcast not long ago, she came on as a guest to talk about this because my wife came to the United States at the age of eight as a refugee from the Soviet. Union, and she pointed out that there is a assumption that people make in America, that everybody is in favor of democracy, and that that is the wrong assumption, that there are lots of people

who don't want democracy. But that wasn't, that's new. That is new, and that is super scary. And now, on the bright side, from my perspective, as a former Secretary of State and as somebody who founded a voting rights organization in 2017, everybody on our side seems to get that that's a big threat now, or most people do, with the exception of foreign. like, you know, one senator in particular, but like... Oh, which one?

Yeah, well, like, obviously, I think Senator Manchin is a little behind on picking up on the threat here, and I hope he comes around. But my point is that when I started Let America Vote in 2017, the tyranny of Joe Manchin. Or just the, I don't know, the ongoing persuasion of Joe Manchin is how I'd like to think of it. But when we started it, it was because if, at that time, and when I was Secretary of State and when I was running for Secretary of State, the big challenge was that if you were to poll an issue like photo ID at that time, like 70% of Democrats thought that it made sense and that you should have to have a photo ID. And Republican elected officials, they were all on the same

page, like, oh, we're going to use this to our advantage. We're going to game the system. And nobody else had caught up. So when we started Let America Vote, it was to, for the very first time, have not a legal battle against it, but to actually wage political battle against voter suppression and now cut to, and I'm not taking credit for this, I think everybody, you know, came to these realizations along the same timeline, but you cut to five years later, and it's like everybody at least gets it on our side. And that is good. We know what fight we're in. And that puts us in a much better position to actually fight it. It's interesting to me, do you think, though, like just for brass tax-wise, like in Texas, and in a lot of these different states,

You've got some people. I mean, how do you fight crazy people running for Secretary of State? You have to take it head on. It's like everything else. You have to actually make your argument. When I ran for Secretary of State in 2012, again, this was, I was running in Missouri as a Democrat, as a liberal, and at the time, even the majority of my party, overwhelming majority of my party disagreed with me on photo ID. If you think back to that time, what every Democrat in the country running for Secretary of State was, doing was one of two things. They were either coming out for some soft form of photo ID or refusing

to talk about it. What I did is I made, I only had two TV ads in that entire race. It's all we could afford statewide, you know, like two ads that ran over and over again. And one of those two was me arguing against photo ID. And we won that race in Missouri, in a red state, running for Secretary of State because we made the argument. Now, we didn't just, we did just come out and like, do the talking points, we made an actual argument about photo ID so that even people who disagreed with me could go, I can see why he feels that way and he seems to believe in something. So my point is, the way to beat these folks is to make an argument and to never ever fight this fight on their ground, because they will win when we are on their ground, like every other

issue. Can we talk about Kansas for a minute? Because Kansas is a place that is somewhat similar, and they now have a Democratic governor. And that is because Republicans were allowed to run wild and ruin the state. That is precisely why. Back when I was in the Missouri legislature, like 08 to 12, was when Kansas had Sam Brownback in charge. And what they were doing was they had so dominated the state the Republicans had that they

basically decided that they were going to create this like conservative, perfect laboratory. And Brownback, of course, was wanting to run for president and use it to run for president. So he was like just cutting tack. It actually was like, I don't know if you remember that episode of the office. It was Coke Brothers dream, right? Yeah, it was Coke Brothers dream. And you remember that episode of the office where Michael starts his own? Yes, paper company.

Yes, with the same clients. Yes. Yeah. And he just, all he does is he just charges less, but he makes no money. He goes into like terrible debt and he goes bankrupt. But at first he's stealing all of the clients. Well, that's what was happening. Kansas under Brownback was taking.

all sorts of, you know, corporate headquarters and everything. Everybody was relocating to Kansas for a short period of time because it was just, you know, bargained basement prices on taxes. And then next thing you knew, that all came home. The bills came and they couldn't pay for schools. And I don't care how rural or urban your state is. If you can't pay for schools, particularly in a rural area, and I don't care what part of you are, you are screwed. And that's what happened in Kansas. And it came back to bite them. And that is part of how that and Laura Kelly ran a great campaign, but that's how, is the legacy of Brownback is how you end up with, with Democrats winning in Kansas. Now, she's going to have a real re-election battle on her hands.

Don't we think it's interesting, too? So the other place where they ran the place into the ground was Louisiana, where they also got a Dem governor afterwards. But they did run on Republican ideas or bad ideas, and this is what we get when we follow them. And Dems refuse to ever do that on a national scale. Yeah, I mean, I would give the Biden campaign, when it's talking a national scale, I would give them a lot of credit. I think that was a campaign where they were making an argument. And now it helped that like, gosh, you couldn't have the win more at your back and the facts more on your side. Because I've been talking about this now ever since the 2016 race.

I've been the guy who people came to for, you know, hey, how do we, because I won all these Trump voters, even though I was a progressive and everybody. How do we do this? And I feel like there's a lot less convincing for me to do of this now because I think a lot more people have, gotten the idea that, hey, what we stand for, people actually like, so we got to make a case for it. Now, what's changed is now the debate in the party is a different one. It is, should we be more moderate or should we be more left, but still, either way, you know, very, very much like Democratic. And I think that now the point I have to make to everybody is that's a really false choice because I live in Kansas City, Missouri. I got a lot of neighbors who are Republicans.

And I promise you that when all of us see on Twitter, like an argument between AOC and Claire McCaskill, they don't see any difference between the two. And as a result, like this whole internecine argument about, well, which approach should we take is silliness. Because most folks outside the party don't see the difference. And what we have to focus on is liberal policies can be very successful anywhere in the country if the argument you make, for them is based in what's going on in people's lives. And that is, that is just simple. It's this. It's that in the Midwest and in the South, what everybody, including me, is worried about is how am I going to make sure that my family can be happy, healthy, safe, and nearby? And the disconnect between the coasts and the Midwest is usually not about policy, left, or right,

or whatever. It is about not speaking to the fact that we all are worried that our kids are going to have to move to Chicago or New York or L.A. or San Francisco to get a good job. and then we won't be able to be around our kids or our grandkids. Like, that's what's going on for the middle and upper middle class, and for everybody, really, in the Midwest. And that's what we've got to speak to, because our policies address that. Who do you think would be a reasonable candidate for that Senate race? Well, I'm not going to get into that because I got all those people

who are thinking that they would be good candidates calling me, and I'm just staying out of it. Is it a huge group? On the Democratic side, there's a few. Maybe there will be more. Yeah, I think I think what I'm saying is clear. I just, I don't want to weigh in on it. It's all good people.

But that's why my focus is like, I mean, look, my focus is building villages of tiny houses and walk-in clinics for veterans every day. But with my political bandwidth that I have, it's much more just about helping build progressive infrastructure and the progressive argument across the country. And in Missouri, too. Yeah. And across the Midwest. But like, as far as who the can is going to be, you know, we'll have a primary that'll get one. worked out and I'll support that person. Yeah.

Oh, thank you, Jason Kander. I hope you'll come back and talk to us about veteran stuff. I will. Andy Slavitt is the former senior advisor to the White House on pandemic response and the author of Preventable, the inside story of how leadership failures, politics, and selfishness doomed the U.S. coronavirus response. So first, let's talk about your book. Yes.

So talk to me about what is your book about? And how did you have time to write a book? Well, you know, as I was both participating in and chronicling the pandemic as it was going on, you know, I had kind of a front row seat as I was talking to the White House and talking to governors and talking to scientists and so forth. And, you know, I tried to get that information out during the pandemic. But it said here after a year, I realized that for us to be able to move on, and heal, you know, we're going to have to take a little bit of stock of what happened, have some accountability for what happened, quite frankly, and just kind of remember it.

So I tried to write this in a very friendly, easy-to-read way so that you could experience the pandemic without the fear, but also through the eyes of the people who were actually behind the scenes, doing a lot of the work and making stuff happens. It was a fun but hard thing to do, of course. We know from reporting there was a lot of malfeasance during the Trump administration when it came to COVID. I mean, we know that just from things Trump said during press conferences. So my question to you is, why are there not hearings? Because even in the UK, where Boris is still in power, they have had hearings on Boris's COVID response.

And Boris's COVID response was not nearly as bad as Trump's. You can apparently even attack the Congress physically. and not have hearings in this country. It's true. So 600,000 people dying. And look, the name of the book is preventable. Right. And, you know, one of the things I think you'll, I think when Dad laid the impression,

and when you read the book, it's that those 600,000 people, not all of them had to die. Now, we were going to have a pandemic, and people die in a pandemic. Everybody who died wasn't entirely preventable. But after a while, there was a response that would have been. And, you know, it is going to be healthy. for us to take a look at what happened. It's going to be healthy for us to try to hold to account, not just the president, but ourselves, each other.

There were times when we failed each other pretty profoundly as well. You know, I think looking at that and understanding it, understanding the fact that, you know, there's a part of the book that's just called the room service pandemic. There are a lot of people who were doing just fine during the pandemic, getting Amazon deliveries and so forth. But for that to happen, there had to be a lot of people delivering Amazon packages and working in the warehouses, they had very little protection.

More than half the country was deemed a essential worker. Right. So there's a lot of things we need to look at. The meatpacking plants are a great example. I mean, I just wrote a piece for Vogue, and I think about this all the time last week, that where, you know, and I, you know, I did all this research on why people don't want to go back to work and why there's a labor shortage. And some of it is because, like, the rates in which these people died, like, I mean,

I'm pretty versed in what happened with, COVID and I, some of these rates, I was like, that can't be right. Well, I mean, on the one hand, we have people who had to have their big Mac. Right. Right. And on the other hand, we had people who, because of it, had to work in incredibly close quarters that were very loud with bad aerosolization in order to just make an hourly living. And the fact that those people died in large numbers and were infected in large numbers didn't deter us. It didn't deter the president. It didn't deter the country from saying, you know what?

We need that. You know, there were for everybody who said to me, you know, I don't know anybody who died from COVID or I don't know many people. I thought, you know, what about all the people that are growing your food, that are delivering your food, that are at the grocery store serving you, getting you your food? You may not know their names, but these people are a big part of your life. And those are the people that are dying. Yeah. No, so I'm curious to know when you, you went and were, so you had watched this slow moving humanitarian disaster in America, which is like, you know, you had watched Donald Trump make all of these mistakes that he had been advised not to, right?

Like there were so many moments in which, like, lives could have been saved. And then you go into the White House. What was that like? Well, you know, I had been in the Obama administration. I had led our way out of a different type of emergency. And even during the Trump administration, you know, I contacted the White House. I contacted Jared Kushner. You know, every one of my conversations with Jared Kushner with Deborah Burks, you know, they're in the book. And, you know, the job that they had to do was essentially, at a bare minimum, acknowledge that we have a a serious situation on our hands, show a little bit of empathy, lead the country by asking for even a small amount of sacrifice. They didn't do any of those things, and they didn't plan and put together a competent response. And largely, it had to do with the person who they all worked for. If they had worked for a different person, if they had worked for George W. Bush, things might have been different. When we came in, our job was a bit different.

I just have one more question about Jared Kushner. You saw that reporting where he said, you know, those governors need to pound the pavement for their people, and if they don't, you know, then blue states are going to die. Do you believe that reporting? Look, I think anyone quote can kind of be sensationalized. So, you know, I do believe the reporting, but I think in general, the broader point there was he really was acting as his father-in-law's political operative. What he wanted was the president to get the credit for opening up the country and that if and when things went bad, he wanted the governors to get the blame. And so he thought he had devised a strategy whereby Trump could say, hey, we're opening the country,

knowing full well that we weren't ready, and causing that to fall to the governors by saying the governors are going to handle it from here. So it was an abdication of responsibility that was a political strategy. It wasn't a good political strategy, by the way, because, you know, the president ended up not being able to avoid a accountability. But I think he was doing the job that he thought he was there to do, which is to protect Donald Trump. Deborah Birx has really kind of gone down in the media as the villain in this story. Do you think that's unfair? People who thought Deborah Birx was bad hadn't yet met Scott Atlas. So we were, we find ourselves begging for Deborah Birx at that point because, you know, at least she meant well. At least we know she knew something about public health.

Right. Was she co-opted by the president? Was she overly optimistic? Did she not stand up at moments when she could have, you know, and in the Middle East, many of those are difficult things to do, difficult decisions. But look, if you stayed as part of the Trump administration and you were a public health official and you thought he was going to respond as if he wanted to take care of the public health crisis, as soon as he didn't, you know, you were in a position where you were going to be part of the problem if he stayed or you could always tell yourself you're more part of the solution. And, you know, she did some good things, I will say. And in the book, you know, doesn't try, tries not to say someone is good or bad, except Scott Ellis. And, you know, she went out on the road to meet with governors and people in countries and had a bit of a redemption tour once you got tossed out of the White House. And, you know, the last part of the book is right before the presidential election, she and I together in a room standing, talking, and our conversation is how the book ends because there is, it's quite an interesting moment. Oh, this book sounds amazing. I can't wait to get a copy. I've yet to

get a copy. I feel like Larry King. I think you have one. Hopefully you have one. Well, I think they sent me a digital, but I will get, I will buy and I will buy a real one. Okay, so talk to me about Scott Atlas because like that, it was the moment he came in, I thought, oh, we're really fucked. So I had a conversation. I was on the phone with a number of people, including Ryan's Previtz, at one point left year when he had left the White House and he was talking to this group of people about what he thought the strategy of the White House response to the coronavirus response. And he said, we are going to get our own experts to fight back against the pointing-headed experts.

And, you know, in this day and age, if you get one person with a medical degree, to say, well, I see it this way, then you all of a sudden can say, well, so experts see it one way, some experts say it the other way, and you kind of played the media for that 50-50 coverage. Right. It took them a while to find somebody. They went for months. I shouldn't be laughing. They were hoping to get somebody with a Harvard degree or Stanford degree and who had epidemiological credibility.

They couldn't find one. Scott Atlas did have a Stanford degree, but he was not an epidemiologist. He didn't think about infectious diseases, but he was willing to go on Fox TV and say what the president wanted. And the president was both squashing dissent within the administration and looking for people who would support his point of view. So he found, he, he carried, he created Scott Alice is a bit of a Frankenstein monster that was created to do exactly what Trump wanted. So once he was in, the only thing we knew for sure is that whatever was going to come out of Scott Alice's mouth was whatever Donald. Trump wanted it. Right. It's so inconceivable to me that people went along with this, like Scott Atlas, but I guess they did. Talk to me about what it was like going into the White

House. I mean, it must have been really scary because you're already on this collision course, and I'm just curious, you know? Take yourself back to end of December, beginning of January. Yeah. Like thousands of people are dying every day. Everybody who wants a vaccine can't get one and is exceedingly frustrated. More than half of the vaccines that the Trump administration was sending out to states were not getting into people's arms. Right. And more than half the people didn't, wouldn't have said they didn't trust the vaccine. Yeah.

And, you know, we were having, you know, 3,500 deaths every day. Now, President Biden came in with a very clear-eyed perspective, which is bring the country together and the pandemic, take accountability, set goals, and execute. And so from my perspective, that made my job very, very easy, relative to someone who was working for a president who was saying, this thing doesn't exist, it's going to end at any moment, et cetera. So we had, we had, we had, we didn't inherit an inventory of vaccines. We didn't inherit a plan, but we had a boss who basically said,

you all aren't going to sleep until we fix this for the country. And it was very inspiring. And there were great people there. Ron Clayne, Jeff Science, Tony Fauci, and many others I can name, all of whom are experienced in one form or another in government and dynamics and health care and leadership and accountability. And, you know, for nothing. In addition to this, we asked a secondary mission, which was to get people to see the government could work again. The government could be honest and And the government could be there because this is not the kind of problem. If you're big government, small government, I don't care what you believe in. This is that kind of problem that can be solved without leadership.

If you enjoyed this conversation with Andy Slavitt, on this week's bonus episode of the New Abnormal, he will be a guest where we will air the rest of this conversation. To hear this, along with all of our past bonus episodes and gain full access to the Daily Beast fearless journalism, head to newabnormal. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than PizzaGate, 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. Richie Torres is the congressman from New York's 15th District,

who sits on the community of financial services as well as the committee on Homeland Security. Welcome, Congressman Torres. It's an honor to be here. We're very excited to have you. I have many, many, many questions. and since you come from my city, my first question is who is your mayoral pick? So I am the co-chair of Andrew Yang's mayoral campaign.

So I was impressed with his advocacy for universal basic income, which I thought was prescient back in 2019. Because the outbreak of COVID, we saw depression level unemployment. We saw catastrophic loss of income. And I feel Andrew's advocacy for universal basic income. income laid the groundwork for the stimulus checks, for the expansion of the child tax credit, which is a form of basic income for families with children. And I was looking for a candidate who was radically independent of the political establishment in New York City, which to me has radically

failed the people of New York. And just like him as a person, you know, he's a decent person. He projects optimism. And optimism is what we need in a moment of recovery. So talk to me about your district because you have, I saw you, you said on Bill Marr, that your district is actually the poorest congressional district. So the South Bronx is known to be the poorest congressional district in America. Ground zero, racially concentrated poverty. During the peak of the pandemic, the unemployment rate was as high as 25%. More than half the residents in the South Bronx pay more than half their income on rent. That's before you factor in the cost of utilities and transportation and food and prescription and drugs. You know, most families in the Bronx are struggling to put food on the table and pay the rent and keep

themselves and their families afloat, especially in the midst of COVID-19. But COVID-19 has shown the South Bronx to be what I call the essential congressional district. It's the home of essential workers who put their lives at risk, the peak of the pandemic, so that the rest of the city and the country could safely shelter in place. So the people of the South Bronx are among the most resilient people that I know. You have like this amazing story of growing up in public housing and being in Congress now. How does that affect your legislation? Personnel is destiny when it comes to public policy. And I cannot help but be a product of my lived experiences.

I spent most of my life in poverty. I was raised by a single mother who had to raise three children on minimum wage, which in the 1990s was $4.25 an hour. I grew up in public housing, living in conditions of mold and mildew, leeks, and lead. And I got my start in politics as a housing organizer. And then at age 24, I took the leap of faith and ran for public office. I had no deep pockets, no ties to the dynasties of Bronx politics. But I spent a year knocking on doors. And I won my first campaign on the strength of door-to-door, face-to-face campaigning.

What's remarkable was that seven years before then, I was at the lowest point of my life. I had dropped out of college. Oh, me too. I was struggling with depression. Also, too, yes. Substances. Yes, I'm sober 23 years. Let's go. Go on. There were moments when I thought I've taken my own life because I felt the world around me had collapsed. And then seven years later, I became the youngest elected official in the largest city in America. And today, I'm a United States congressman. So I often tell people my story is the story of the Bronx. It's a story of struggle, but it's also one of overcoming.

In my mind, the federal minimum wage is a crime in this country. I mean, it hasn't gone up in, what, at 20 years? I mean, how do you get this up? I mean, it just seems impossible. The House is fine, and then you don't have 10 sane Republicans. The minimum wage is not even a living wage. It's a death wage. It's a start-dmission wage.

By every metric, the minimum wage is at historic lows. It lags behind the historic average. It lags behind the cost of living, inflation, and it lags behind productivity. You know, I've seen reports indicating that if the minimum wage had kept pace with productivity, with American productivity, we would exceed $20 an hour. So we're living in a country increasingly where people are working harder and harder than ever before, but are getting poorer and poorer. And instead of the working poor, we now have the working homeless.

about half of the household heads in the New York City municipal shelter system are working people. And the promise of America is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can have a fighting chance at a decent life. That's no longer true. There are working people who are languishing in the shelter system. So what do you do? For so long, we've had Republicans standing in the way of legislation. We had Mitch McConnell having a legislative graveyard. Now he's back and Democrats are in charge.

Look, there's no magic bullet, but I would cite two policies. I mean, one, as I said before, I represent the poorest congressional district, and there's no policy that would do more to lift the South Bronx out of poverty than the child tax credit. So families will receive up to $300 per child every month. He's a game changer for families who are teetering on the brink. And it's worth noting that child poverty cost our country up to a trillion dollars in lost economic. growth. And for every dollar we invest in poverty alleviation, it has a return of $8. Does that need to go through Congress? Can't that go through reconciliation?

So the centerpiece of the American Rescue Plan was the expanded child tax credit. Right. But it needs to be extended and continued. Doesn't it expire in September? Yeah, which cut child poverty by 50%. As you said, the American Rescue Plan only extends it for a year. the president proposing an expansion until 2025. I feel strongly, as does Congress members Rosa DeLora and Susan Del Bény, that it should be permanent because for us, a permanent progressive child tax credit would be to families with children what Social Security has long been to senior citizens. And I could see, you know, I would argue that this has the potential to be the greatest legacy

of the Biden administration. So can you do that? Do you think you can get a past? Everything's a question. because we no longer live in a democracy. We live on the tyranny of Joe Mansion. So talk to me about the tyranny of Joe Mansion. Every day is a new day with the tyranny of Joe Man.

I know it's characterized by a fetish for bipartisan, for its own situation. It seems to me, I mean, what would you do differently if you sort of chart a path for the Democratic Party in America? Well, I mean, we have a system that, is so fundamentally broken. Structure of the Senate, much like the Electoral College, concentrates power in a small subset of states that are much more rural,

much more conservative, much whiter than the country. America is increasingly becoming a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy, but you would never know it from the structure of the Senate. Like the structure of the Senate is keeping us frozen in the past. You know, the notion that one US senator who represents a state, one fourth the size of New York City has the power to derail the priorities of Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate and a Democratic president.

It is absurd. It's an indictment of just how profoundly broken our system has become. I mean, you and I both know there are now two black senators. There have only ever been 11. I mean, or now 12. I mean, there clearly is a real problem with disenfranchised voters. in large swaths of this country. How do you address that?

Well, there are two pieces of legislation that would make our society more democratic. The first is HR1 for the people, which is democracy reform. It includes election reform, redistricting reform, campaign finance reform, ethics reform. Joe Manchin recently came out in opposition to HR1, which will ensure that Republicans have, have a structural advantage in the years to come, an unfair structural advantage. And then you have

the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which not only would restore what was lost with the Shelby decision, the Supreme Court decision, but would actually apply the preclearance requirement to all 50 states. So changes in election law and election procedure would require preclearance, would require review and approval from the civil rights division of the Justice Department in order to prevent voter suppression. You know, the lesson of history is crystal clear that states and localities by and large cannot be trusted to respect voting rights in the absence of federal oversight. Some of the problem with that bill is the questions about campaign finance, right? Because in this bill, there would be government would pay for some campaign stuff, right?

The campaign finance includes a system of public financing of campaigns and matching. But the purpose of public financing is to, limit the influence of big money in politics, which is a public good. Right. But wouldn't it be better just to limit the amount of money you could give? No, you would have to do, you could not limit contributions without matching funds because campaigns are expensive. Television commercials are expensive. Sending mail is expensive. It costs millions of dollars to run a modern congressional campaign. And you could not limit contributions without a system of public financing that ensures that

candidates have enough resources to run a modern congressional campaign. If it were capped at a certain level, then everyone would have to have small congressional campaigns. Right, but campaigns have fixed costs. Commercial are expensive. Mail is expensive. So look, I would say look no further than New York City. The success story of campaign finance reform, a small contribution can be matched by a factor of eight in New York City. I don't know. I mean, New York City is a great example because we have done really well with certain things, but like, for example, our elections are kind of a mess. Right, but that's separate from the campaign finance system.

Right. No, I know. But I'm just saying, like, we've succeed in some ways and not in others. I'm curious about this thing you're doing to combat the Muslim ban. Can you talk about that? Because that's really interesting and cool. Yeah, so in the United States, there are multiple paths to immigration. You know, some people come here on the basis of family.

others on the basis of employment. But if you come on the basis of a lottery, the Immigration Act of 1990, if I recall correctly, establishes a lottery. And if you win the lottery, you can earn a visa. You can earn the legal right to come to the United States. And the lottery is reserved for immigrants from historically underrepresented countries, particularly from Africa and the Middle East. So there were immigrants from majority Muslim countries who applied for a visa and won the lottery, only to have the American dream stolen from them, the Trump Muslim ban. And even though the Trump Muslim ban itself has been rescinded, the victims of the Trump Muslim ban were never made whole. Their visas were never restored.

And so for me, it's insufficient to rescind the ban. We have to reverse the legacy of Trump Muslim ban. And we have to undo the damage and make the victims whole. And so I have legislation known as the Keep Our Promise Act, which would accomplish that goal. I saw you on Bill Maher the other day and you had extremely nuanced take on Israel. And I would love for you to tell us it. My hope is that the consensus remains in favor of a two-state solution. You know, we should not privilege both Israelis and Palestinians have struggles

for liberation, have struggles for self-determination. And we should not privilege the Jewish struggle for liberation over the Palestinian struggle for liberation, nor should we privilege the Palestinian struggle for liberation over the Jewish struggle for liberation. We should seek to reconcile the two in the form of a two-state solution. And I do worry that a two-state solution is crumbling as the consensus position in American politics. I oppose BDS because it is incompatible with a two-state solution. But I also oppose the settlements. I oppose annexation because it's incompatible with a two-state solution. I am very excited about you. I loved having you. Thank you so much. You're just really a light. It's so cool to have great congressmen coming from

our city. So I'm happy to be here as a congress member in the tyranny of Joe Mansion. Hello, Jesse Cannon. Molly Jungfest. So many assesle. so little time. It's all happening today on The Daily Beast, the new abnormal. I want to talk about someone who has been or fuck that guy before, and who is a particular favorite of mine for this category because of any number of reasons, but mostly his incredible smugness.

The best thing he ever did was when he wore hair in a can to meet the press. I feel like he will never live that day. because the next day his hairline went back to normal. You went back to looking like an alien with a large head. Yeah. Now, what's interesting to me about this man, who I affectionately call Santa Monica Gerbils, is that he does not, he usually, even though his ideas are stupid and racist and really come from a place of bigotry and a lack of education,

he usually doesn't sound like a Louis Gomert. That's stupid. Louis Gomerid is the new word for stupid we're using. He actually sort of sounds usually like a little bit faux intelligent, but on this incredible clip on Fox News, and he's clearly trying to get a contributor ship to Fox News, a swollen-headed Stephen Miller attacks Joy Reid for having a car, it having doors, and her locking those doors.

I think the odds are that she has doors on her home and locks on those doors? I mean, what are the odds that she has a car that she locks when she leaves it at night? I mean, this is our country we're talking about. I say to Stephen Miller, fuck you.

Jesse Cannon, who is your fuck that guy? Well, my fuck that guy comes from the same wheelhouse of fascist, awful, awful human being. It is another Hall of Famer just like Mr. Miller, one Tucker Carlson. Oh, tell me more. The white power hour has really, really, really been ratcheting up the white power. And I think this was like, you know, we always say like maybe this was the worst one.

I'm like, I can't even keep track at this point anymore of his worst aggressions of just say, basically like doing the on-air version of a SIGHile. But what he said this week that was pretty appalling is that immigration is the most radical possible attack. on the core premise of democracy. Now, just out of charity, I will say that saying that it's the most radical attack possible really means he has very little imagination. I can think of a few things personally. If I really wanted to go down this road, but, you know, no one's ever accused Tucker

of being the best and brightest. I think Tucker should really, really, really think about what maybe made democracy possible was a bunch of immigration and just because now it's not going the way of his preferred skin tone, which I notice is getting orangeer and orangeer. I'm really wondering if this is going to be a new race at some point. I think they must have like something in the water over at

News Corp where they all get orange. Don't you think this is a trend after, you know, a certain one, Cheeto Jesus came onto the scene that they're now seeing this as the aspirational look? I wonder if it started with John Bainer. Oh, you are

right. Wow. Right. How crazy would it be if Trump was like looking through the paper version of Politico and he sees Bader's arge facade is like there it is that's my look. It's like the question we always find ourselves so like entertaining is when did the Republican Party lose its fucking mind? Was it Nixon? Was it Sarah Palin?

Was it Spiro Agnew? And this is the question is when did the Republican Party decide orange was the new white? And I think it was with John Boehner. Orange Lives Matter, baby. Take a scotch and a bag of marijuana and pour one out for the former house leader. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science.

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