The Daily - The Field: The Shy Biden Voters Among Florida’s Seniors

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Florida’s seniors played an important role in President Trump’s victory there in 2016. Older voters, who are mostly conservative, make up around 25 percent of the swing state’s electorate and turn out in astonishing numbers.They are also disproportionately affected by the pandemic, and polling suggests that Joe Biden is making inroads with Republican-leaning older voters.In Florida’s conservative retirement communities, however, the decision to switch from Mr. Trump can have consequences and many stay quiet for fear of reprisals.Some of these consequences are obvious: One resident who erected a sign in support of Mr. Biden woke up to “Trump” written in weedkiller on his lawn. Other effects are more personal, and more insidious.Today, Annie Brown, a senior audio producer at The Times, speaks to some of Florida’s seniors about their voting intentions — including one, Dave Niederkorn, who has turned his back on Mr. Trump and almost lost a close friend in the process.Guests: Annie Brown, a senior audio producer for The New York Times; and Patricia Mazzei, the Miami bureau chief of The Times, who covers Florida and Puerto Rico. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily Background reading: Older people are a crucial voting bloc in Florida. In a speech earlier this month, Joe Biden made his pitch to them.“If it’s here, it’s here” — how retirees in Florida’s Villages confronted the coronavirus in the summer.

Can you describe for me your nails? Oh! My nails are red-white. The baby is red, next is white, the middle finger is blue, the pointer is white, the thumb is red, and then it says Trump spelled out on the five nails. Sorry, did you do it yourself? No. The gal that does my nails is a big Trump supporter and she said to me, kidding, aren't you going to put Trump on on top of this? No, my gal that does my nails is a big Trump supporter,

and she said to me, kidding, aren't you going to put Trump on on top of this? And so when she got almost done, I said, well, where's Trump? So she went and got her little brush and painted it on. Wow. So. From the New York Times, this is The Field. I'm Annie Brown in Florida. Can I ask, is this your magnifying glass? Yes, I'm legally blind.

Oh, really? Yeah, I have to use that to read. Doris Cortese is 81, and she's often called the godmother of the Republican Party in Lee County, Florida, though technically she's the vice chair. How long have you been vice chairman? Two, four years years we're up for re-election in december well good luck thank you i don't know if i want it or not right now until after the election it's like somebody else can have it but then after the election it'll cool them down so so what do you need I was just curious what your day has been like. What

have you had to do on 13 days before the election? What does your day look like? Last week, I went with my colleague Patricia Mazzei, a veteran Florida and politics reporter, to visit Doris in her campaign office, tucked in a strip mall between a pizza place and an escape room. Early voting had just begun. The day has been very hectic but very good. People that are coming in wanting to have help with their absentee ballots. People calling with questions about early voting, where they can vote. Calling to say, how do we think the campaign's going?

What is your answer to that? My answer to that is that it's great. We've had an increase in vote by mail. We're having a big increase in early voting. So it's going to be a very, very big turnout in Lee County, which is very exciting for us since Lee County is basically Republican. We should get about 90% is what we're hoping for. Really? 90% of our Republican vote, yes. You've probably been asked this question and it probably gets

annoying, but the polls that show that older voters are not sticking with Trump in the way they did in 2016, what do you think about that? Are you feeling that? We're not seeing that here at all. We're getting a big, big group of baby boomers and senior citizens for Trump. So you're noticing the opposite. Yes, I'm noticing the opposite. Florida is often thought of as a kind of presidential bellwether for the country. Since 1928, there have only been two instances where the winner of the state has not gone on to become president. In 2016, Trump continued the trend, winning Florida by a mere 1%, just over 100,000 votes. And a big reason for that win was his support among seniors, who make up about a quarter of the state's electorate.

These voters tend to be conservative, and they tend to turn out in astonishing numbers. He's never been focused on you. His handling of this pandemic has been erratic, just like his presidency has been. This year, with the pandemic disproportionately affecting older Americans, Biden has tried to peel off some of those voters. So many lives have been lost unnecessarily because this president cares more about the stock market than he does about, you know, well-being of seniors. It may be working. Polling suggests that Biden is making some inroads with older voters who lean Republican. And because it's Florida, even a small shift towards Biden could hand him the state. And if history is any indication, the presidency. So where are these seniors who have flipped? And are there enough of them to turn Florida blue?

If you're looking for old people in Florida, there's one obvious place to start. The largest retirement community in the country. With over 120,000 seniors, the Villages has 50 golf courses, 100 pickleball courts, and a polo stadium. Live the lifestyle you've always dreamed about. Golf free for life on all of our executive courses and enjoy free membership in all of our... It's an old people metropolis. All of a sudden, you're here and you see that, hey, this is for real. With a bit of a naughty reputation. One elderly Casanova described it as a paradise of pleasure.

At least it is for the guys. Why? There's 10 women to every man at the Villages. Blackman says Viagra is consumed like candy. You know about the Villages. It's a freak show for seniors. There's a lot of gossip among retirees across Florida about the villages, some more true than others. They have cocktails all day long. This one checks out. It's got the highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases in the state, at least it did a few years ago.

Not so true. There was a story about a 48-year-old guy screwing his 68-year-old girlfriend in public. Not kidding. Surprisingly true. I know we laugh about it, but he goes, maybe we should think about moving next. The message from these seniors is that retirement does not have to be boring. It can be fun and maybe even a little wild. be fun and maybe even a little wild. It's great to be with you and back at the Villages. I like the Villages. It's also infamous for its political significance. And I see you driving around in

those beautiful golf carts, the most beautiful carts. I want to get one. Highly conservative and with enough seniors to make a difference. Presidential candidates make ads geared directly towards the villages and campaign stops just for them. And you're always fighting for me and I'm always fighting for you and I appreciate it. That's why we're here. It's sort of symbolic of the hold that the Republican Party has historically had on seniors in Florida. Four years ago, I was nervous to put my Hillary sign out. But now there's hope. But what drew my attention was reports this year of the very thing I was looking for.

I think we all came out of the closet for this election, as we call it. Trump supporters flipping and voting for Biden. It is red. And it is a Republican enclave. But, you know, the lucky little Democrat who's still 28% of the population in the villages and we're growing. This is Chris Stanley, who runs the Democratic Club at the Villages.

So how many people are you encountering in the Villages who voted for Trump in 2016 who are now not voting for him or voting for Biden? At this stage, I've lost count. And she's been telling anyone who will listen that there are switch voters here. Probably hundreds. Hundreds that she's heard of. Hi, this message is for Judith. Hi, is this Paul? Hi, is Heather there? Hundreds that she's heard of.

Hi, this message is for Judith. Hi, is this Paul? Hi, is Heather there? Hi, Ellen. My name is Annie Brown. So, using the village's official list of 3,000 clubs and social groups. I'm sorry for this completely random phone call you're getting. I saw that you run the Country Music Jammers. I start calling around. I saw that you ran the country music jammers. I start calling around. I saw that you ran the amazing Jewish women club.

I see that you run a clogging group, which sounds so fun. And I saw that you head up the Dixieland band. Is that right? And I found some very chatty seniors. You're dating them down there? Mm-hmm. Who are experiencing this flip from Trump to Biden. I want to understand a little bit about your transition.

But when I'd asked them to speak with me on the record, I heard a lot of, I just don't like to talk politics. Okay. One woman's husband didn't know she was voting for Biden. Yeah, yeah, okay. One couple didn't want their neighbors to find out. While the husband told me why he was voting for a Democrat for the first time, his wife yelled off the record continuously in the background. Okay, okay,

no problem. Thank you so much for your time. All right, bye-bye. In fact, when all of these cable news channels and newspapers come knocking at the Democratic Party door of Chris Stanley. Oh, my God. I have had a local ABC, NBC, CBS is here, CNN, Inside Edition. Looking for one of these supposedly hundreds of switch voters who will talk on the record. And how many people do you have you condemn them to? I had only one for the longest time. Now I have three. She doesn't have a lot to offer them.

It's pretty tense right now. And it's only getting tenser. She says there are some obvious consequences to coming out with a Biden vote in the villages. You might find that beer has been poured all over your golf cart. Pretty bad vandalism. One man with a Biden sign in his front window reportedly woke up to the word Trump written out in weed killer on his perfect lawn. And that's, you know, that's long

term expensive damage. But the personal consequences might be even more insidious. In the current climate, if you were a Trump supporter and now you are not, it affects your social life. We're a very active people here and we're very social. And if you come out publicly against Trump, you might need to find a new golf game. Have you seen this happen? I have seen this happen? I have seen it happen. And it's sad. They weren't welcome to the club anymore.

They lost their friends. You know, their entire social group went away. Politics is part of your makeup here for a lot of people. You know, you got white hair and you wear a size six shoe and you're a Republican. I mean, it's all part of who you are. Politics is ingraining people here. I mean, this is my point about the villages. Everybody wants to go talk to people there, and they all talk to one person. And I don't know how much that tells you.

My colleague Patty, the veteran Florida reporter, had been advising me against focusing on the villages. You know, it's become a big political reporting cliche in this state, which is that you go to the villages to talk to older voters. So just to be clear, you're calling my decision to report in the villages a cliche? An understandable one. You know, the golf cart caravans are hard to resist. I don't blame you, Annie. I don't blame you. I blame me. Though even Patty was moved by the weed killer.

I don't even know what to say. I don't know where to start. It reminds me of this idea that there was in 2016 that there was a shy Trump voter and how there are some Democrats in Florida who have said, oh, this year there is a shy Biden voter. But I had never heard it put in the terms of the people who don't want Trump written

in weed killer in their lawns. It's sort of wild. Do you think it's worth paying attention to, this elusive, shy Biden voter? I do because you have to try to look at it from all the possibilities of what could happen when you're a reporter, right? And so if you have polls suggesting that older voters, retirees, seniors, are shifting politically in some way, we have a responsibility to go find out who they are, where they are, and what that can tell us about the country and the election. She just didn't want to find them in the villages.

She wanted to go to another Republican enclave, three hours south, called Lee County, which is still very conservative, but not as conservative as the villages. The villages went for Trump by about 40 percent, Lee County by about 20. Patty thinks that if Biden is gaining any traction there, that's probably more representative of trouble for Trump. Lee County is in southwest Florida, and that is one of the areas that we have seen in recent election cycles has really helped Republicans get elected, in part because people vote in such high numbers. Remember, Trump only won in 2016 by a little over 100,000 votes. So any sort of erosion or slippage in his support in a place like this can add up and become a big deal if it happens statewide. But how would it feel on the ground?

Do you expect that a place like Lee County, you'd be able to feel that erosion just like out in the streets? No, you would not be able to feel Biden's support out in the streets of Lee County. So then how do you look for it? You start asking everybody you know, do you know anybody who switched their vote from 2016 to 2020? When we got to Lee County. Okay, my name is Francis Rooney, and I'm the congressman for District 19 in Florida, which basically is the western part of Lee and Collier counties. We called on its representative to help point us in the right direction.

And tell me about your district, Congressman. Well, it's a very interesting district. It's obviously a lot of coastline. It has a lot of retired people, as you might expect. There's an area called Cape Coral, which is a lot of retired people, almost all retired, very high number of retired people, a lot of them from the upper Midwest. And then you have Sanibel and Captiva, which are more wealthier retired people. And then you move south into Fort Myers. You've got some retirement homes and gated communities. Then you go south into Naples and you get a lot of retired senior management of companies, some ambassadors, some admirals, generals, a lot of retired CEOs. There's just a

little bit of everything. It's a very diverse district. Congressman Rooney says his constituents are classic conservatives. Bread and butter, traditional Republican values of thrift, limited government, defending life. Those are very important as well. Would you describe it as staunchly conservative? Oh, yeah. The loyalty to President Trump in our area is very strong. So it's not necessarily tactical or issue-centric. It's just strong loyalty to him. I think for some people, the fact that older voters would stick by the president, given the sort of disproportionate impact that the coronavirus has had on older

Americans' health and safety and their lives, that it's confusing. So what do your constituents tell you about that? Well, they don't blame him. They don't blame him for it at all. I asked him what he thinks about the idea of this shy voter. A lot of the talk is that older voters here are turning on the president. Do you see that happening in Lee County? I don't see it happening in Lee County. It may happen in other parts of the state. So do you think that the reports that Biden is peeling off a significant number of older voters, do you think they're overblown or they're just happening elsewhere? Well, I can only speak for my area. I think I think that would be vastly overblown in my area. I'd have to look for myself. It's a long line here at the Cape Coral Election Center in Lee County.

People are in tank tops. They are in flip-flops. We have voters in wheelchairs and in walkers. Lots of Trump hats. Lots of gray beards. Lots of motorcycles. Do you fall into the 65 and above category? I'm 76, November 16th. All right, so you solidly do. You've cleared it. Cleared it. the 65 and above category? I'm 76, November 16th. All right.

So you solidly do. You've cleared it. Cleared it. Yeah. Can I ask who you voted for today? Trump. Trump. Yeah.

Absolutely. Donald J. Trump. Did you vote for him in 2016 as well? Absolutely. Of course, Congressman Rooney was right about his district. They're sticking with the president. about his district. I don't care what the fake news says, we are going to win. They're sticking with the president. Because Trump is the king of kings. They don't blame him for the pandemic.

Like Donald Trump said, it came from China. So he had no control over it. So they're doing the best they can with what they have. Can't pin it on the president or anybody else. It's China. All these rules. I agree there's a pandemic, but I think in this case, it's kind of overblown.

Do you find that people in your community are starting to question the president? The people I know, no, not at all. And they don't know anyone who is switching their vote from Trump to Biden. You've seen, do you know people who have switched their votes from Trump to Biden?

I don't know of anybody within our circle that has. And then Patty called. Annie, we found one. She said she might have found a guy. Either I give you an address or can we... He's 77 years old. He lives in a retirement community. And his name is Dave. Hello! Come on in.

Hi. Just me. Do you want to do the tour first? I think so. Okay, well then let's go out. Okay, great. I'll show you on the front of the golf cart. At the Pelican Sound Golf and River Community. Describe what we're looking at. Well, it's the name of the cart.

Most residents name their golf carts after themselves. Most people have Mr. and Mrs. and, you know, whatever. But not Dave Niederkorn. This is Roscoe's ride. Who is Roscoe? He's the dog, my dog. I'm going to get... You know where your priorities are.

Oh, I'm going to get... You know where your priorities are. Come on, John. Okay, now get up in this chair. Okay. All right, sit there. Huh? You happy we're going? Are you happy? Twice a day, he and Roscoe go for a golf cart ride.

Oh, he sits there like a king. Uh-huh. And he knows it's his vehicle, you know. And he points, you know. They go see the new tennis courts. Now this is the clubhouse. Or the clubhouse that just won Golf Inc. Magazine's Best Clubhouse of the Year, renovation category.

This is one of the nicest things that we have, I think. Or they go to Dave's favorite spot. It's a beautiful ride down this river, and then you get out into the gulf, and then there's a big, huge beach. And when they've had their fill... Okay, I've shown you pretty much everything without showing all of the... They turn around and head home. Okay, we're back. Are you happy? They turn around and head home. Roscoe is Dave's main companion, after his wife of 46 years passed away a couple of years ago.

And he's really the only creature Dave has been spending time with since the pandemic began. Could you describe where we are? Over on my lanai. What the hell's a lanai? Oh, well, it's like a porch with a screen over it. So when I visited Dave last week in his home in Pelican Sound, we sat in the backyard six feet apart on the lanai with the usual Floridian sound of landscaping behind us. Tell me about where you grew up and what politics were like in your family

growing up. Well, I grew up in Chicago, the west side of Chicago, and we had 10 kids, and we didn't have the most children on our block. The Schwartzes had 17 children. Oh, my God. You got to think back then, the entire neighborhood was like that. And politics was Mayor Daley. So that was politics. Like many retirees in Florida, Dave is originally from the Midwest. In the 60s, he was drafted into the army, and his politics basically took shape from there. He went to law

school, started working in sales, met his wife Mary, and started a family. He worried about his mortgage. He worried about being able to send his kids to college. And when he goes to vote... Did you vote for Nixon? Yes. He votes Republican. Ford? Yes. Did you vote for Reagan?

I voted for Reagan, yes. Ten presidential elections in a row. I voted Republican with the Bushes. So I voted for both. Then in 2008, after 40 years of voting for Republicans, he, like many other Republicans in Illinois, is compelled by and votes for Barack Obama. Would you vote for Romney? Or Obama? Obama.

But in 2016, he's back to looking at the Republican lineup versus... Because of Hillary. I didn't like her. She was kind of a brash, ego kind of person. And I probably was, at that time, somewhat of a chauvinist. Because that's, you know, in a sense, that's how I was brought up. You know, Dad was the king. the king. Back at that time, we didn't have belief in women in terms of their intelligence. They were just good at having babies and taking care of kids. And they're very nice, you know, all this kind of happy horse pucky. And I was part of that. It's just how I was brought up. And then Mary straightened me out. Dave's wife is sort of key to his transformation over the years. Unlike his mother, he says, she wasn't afraid to speak her mind. Let's say I brought my boss home for dinner.

And he'd say something or whatever. And she'd say, well, that's stupid. She would. And you'd go, oh, my God. And she wasn't afraid to tell him when she thought he was wrong. She would. And you'd go, oh my God, oh, can you see? And she wasn't afraid to tell him when she thought he was wrong. What would she say? What was her kind of... She wouldn't say anything. She just slapped me on the side of the head, you know, and get with the program.

Dave says there came a point in their marriage when he had no choice but to change. but to change. She finally put her foot down and I knew that I had a choice of either learning how to be more sensitive or I wouldn't have her anymore. And that was a big awakening, I'll tell you. So there was this evolution that took place. I am almost nothing like I was when we first got married. But by 2016, Dave was still not evolved enough, by his own calculation, to vote for Hillary Clinton. You know, Hillary, I probably didn't have the vaguest idea what her programs were, how good of policies she had. I never listened to those. I just didn't like her. So here's Trump. I don't know this guy from a hole in the wall.

You didn't have an opinion of him already? No. In fact, I knew he existed and he seemed like he had a lot of money. It seemed like, well, that he must be a successful businessman. And I would say to myself, well, anything's better than Hillary.

When President Trump comes to office, Mary was nearing the end of a 40-year-long battle with breast cancer. And about a year into the Trump presidency, Dave goes to check on her one morning, and she had passed away in the middle of the night? When she died, I felt like it was my responsibility to continue to grow, to continue to be sensitive, and that I owed that to her. Does that make any sense? See, my wife has never stopped teaching me.

See, my wife has never stopped teaching me. So I learn from her every day, even though she's not here. And in addition to this newfound responsibility, he just had a lot of time. I'm by myself. I've spent a lot of time watching TV and the news. time watching TV and the news. And when a story comes on about the president, he's sort of checking in with Mary as he's watching. I know what she would think, you know, I can hear her. So pretty quickly, Dave is regretting his vote. He's troubled by what he's seeing on immigration. All these people that come in over the border and they rip families apart. To me, that's just unconscionable. He's troubled by the impeachment proceedings.

But unlike so many of the voters I spoke to in Lee County, it was the pandemic that really puts him over the edge. Well, I didn't, you know, like I said, going into it, he wasn't on my top 10 list. But he had an opportunity to show leadership. Leadership, you got to do things outside of yourself. Some things you don't like, you're doing it for the good of other people. He has none of that, zero. So when the coronavirus hit, he turned it all over to the governors. And I thought that was the stupidest thing that you could have a

centralized, that's why you have the federal government. But no, he went, not my job. And he sends it out to the governors. That to to me, was just totally unforgivable. I could put up with probably most, even the sexual things he did and whatever, but to me, when you're a leader and you abdicate your responsibilities and it hurts people, and then that leads into the fact you don't care about people. You just don't. God. Anyway. Do you think of yourself as a Democrat now? No. But only because the Republicans always do what Trump wants.

But I'm not, it doesn't mean I'm going to vote for every Democrat. But in this election it does. Oh yeah, in this election it does. In this election, it does. And like so many older voters in Florida, Dave's politics in this election are impacting his social life. I have this friend, had this friend, and he is for Trump. And I got to the point where I'd sit there and I'd say, I don't want to have anything to do with you.

I don't want you to be in my inner circle. Dave and his friend used to play golf together on Sundays or go on double dates with their wives. We would go out to dinner, and then we'd start. And what about this? And what about that? And it got to be, we were thinking, it's a joke, right? But then it got to be more and more serious, because Trump became more and more a lunatic, as far as I'm concerned. And so it wasn't so funny anymore.

Dave says the last time they talked, he hung up the phone. But he's conflicted about it. He doesn't know if it was the right thing to do, or what Mary would have thought. Do you miss Mary when you're kind of working through these tensions? Oh, yeah. Yeah. More than you could know. A big part of my life is gone, and, yeah, I keep looking for it.

It's hard to say how representative Dave is, for him to have made such a dramatic shift, guided by the memory of his late wife. I don't think we can say that it's representative. I think we can say that if Biden is going to have a chance in this state, then he is going to need a lot of people like Dave. But in conversations with six of these Trump to Biden switch voters in Florida, I did hear some consistent themes. That they hated Hillary more than they liked Trump. That they were well on their way to switching their

vote by the time the pandemic rolled around. In fact, if Biden had been the nominee in 2016, perhaps they would have been tempted to vote for him then. As Patty says, this is a specific type of switch voter in Florida. There are people who, if they voted for Trump, did so with serious reservations already. And in some cases, they didn't vote for him. They voted third party sort of in protest. And then seeing the Trump presidency was sort of their final thread connecting them to the party. So either they left the party or the party left them, but they were already sort of on the verge or getting close to that when they voted last time.

But we both think there's a second type of switch voter in places like Lee County. I think there's also a sort of old school Republican who would still describe themselves as a conservative and say that it's the president who is not a conservative in the way that they see the old mold of the party. It's just even harder to know how many of these voters there are. And those might be even shyer voters in terms of telling you how they think, because they're not ready to abandon the party that they have been a part of for a long time. They sort of feel like this is perhaps an interlude of Trump, but that they still believe, for example, in talking about budget deficits and fiscal conservatism. And they're not really sure where to go or if they have a political home in this election. And they're not really sure where to go or if they have a political home in this election.

I don't know. People are going to be writing books about this situation for years. While I was in Florida, Congressman Rooney, who is himself retiring this year, was attracting some attention in his district. He'd recently given an interview where he said that he thought Biden would do a better job than Trump in handling the coronavirus. What he hadn't done, however, was announce that he would be voting for Biden. So toward the end of our conversation, I started to ask him about this idea, that social pressures might be preventing people in his district from saying if they planned to switch their vote away from Trump. You know, that's an interesting point. I think that it's so intensely partisan and emotionally charged right now, the whole issue of the election,

that there are probably more people that don't want to say how they're going to vote now than there ever were. They just don't want to say what they're going to do, because they're going to get criticized by somebody in their family or their neighborhood or something. You know, you just don't want your neighbor screaming and yelling at you when you pull out of your driveway. I also wonder about the like, how particularly strong the social consequences are here in a place where people have come to retire. And so the majority of their life is spent socializing and being with friends and family. Do you think that I'm onto something there with the sense that here it might be even harder to come out with a different opinion because of-

Well, I definitely think you're right about that. These people, a lot of them, they're retired. They have a lot more time to spend with their friends, to spend in eating and drinking and playing golf and doing things with people. And so it increases the cost of having someone get mad at you. Right. You could actually not have anything to do tomorrow. Might not find a golf game. Right. So we are mere days away from the election. Have you decided who you're voting for? Well, every day is a new day in this thing. I'll decide when I go in there a couple of days before the early voting ends next week, late next week.

What information are you waiting for? I don't know. So you don't have any idea who you're going to vote for when you go in there? I haven't really thought about it. What do you have to lose in terms of not divulging where you are in the process? Like, why not? Probably nothing. But, you know, I just kind of think voting privately is a sacrosanct right. It's worth noting that Rooney publicly endorsed Mitt Romney in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. I just don't want to say.

I've said a lot of things that I think about the candidates. I've said a lot of things I think the vice president is really strong on and that he's a really good guy, a decent human being. And I met him a few times. And his key people are really good people. And that's probably enough to say. You know, you're a lifetime conservative. You're retiring to your home district filled with Republicans who are likely to vote for a president who represents some stuff that you don't agree with. And even if you're not running for reelection, it seems to me like you might have something on the line here, something that's more like

your identity or your place in the community. Oh, sure. There's risk to stepping out of any of this stuff, especially as polarized as we are. I mean, you know, it's uniquely monolithic right now about this president. So do you feel some of that same pressure we were talking about of like losing friends, losing your place? No, I don't think I will. But there will be people that are going to say, wow, you should have been closer to the president, should have done some of the good. Yeah, that would be something. Like Doris, the godmother of the Lee County Republicans, she's told him explicitly, get out.

Well, thank you, Congressman Rooney. Okay, thank you. All rightoney. Okay. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye. Bye. Here's what else you need to know today. The Times reports that the number of new coronavirus infections in the U.S. is now averaging more than 75,000 a day, a record high that is fueling calls for a national mandate to wear masks.

As of Thursday, the U.S. had surpassed 9 million infections since the start of the pandemic. I think it will be easily by the end of 2021 and perhaps even into the next year before we start having some semblances of normality. During an appearance on Thursday, the White House's top pandemic advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, said that the virus would continue to disrupt American life until at least the end of next year and blamed states for reopening too rapidly. It really depends on what you mean by normal. I mean, if normal means you can get restaurants to open at almost full capacity, you could have sporting events to be able to be played with spectators, either in the stands or in the arena, then I think that's going to be well, well into 2021 and perhaps beyond. I think one of the things... 2021 and perhaps beyond. I think one of the things... Thank you. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Lansford of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolmec, Michaela Bouchard, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Nora Keller, Mahima Chablani, and Des Ibequa.

That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.