The Dispatch Podcast - Coronavirus and China

Episode Date: April 1, 2020

Sarah, Steve, Jonah, and David discuss China's role in the coronavirus outbreak, how governors are navigating this crisis, and the impact of the president's daily briefings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Isger, joined as always by Steve Hayes, Jonah Goldberg, and David French. Today, we'll talk a little bit about China's numbers and what effect those have had on the American response, and is good politics always good press? Finally, we'll look at some of what's going on in those presidential daily press conferences, and then end with a little good news. Steve, I'm coming to you first this week, because I want to talk about the numbers, the modeling, China's numbers, and you're my numbers guy when it comes to all of this stuff. So perhaps what I'm most curious about your perspective on is we've seen a lot of debates over when to use per capita numbers and when to use raw numbers. Do you have strong feelings on this? Well, I do.

I think per capita numbers generally, if you're doing comparisons, country by country comparisons, obviously per capita numbers will give people a better read of relative spread and extent of spread. And I think they should be used in that context. The raw numbers, I think, aren't entirely useless because they help us understand the growth. And certainly, they can show the exponential growth. And it is pretty clear to people. What I think you can't do is mix the two. And I've seen this. CNN had in the same day in one area, you use. used per capita number and then another area used the sort of raw totals, both of which the way that they were portrayed made the Trump administration look bad. I don't think you can do that.

I don't think you can mix and match. I think generally speaking for an understanding of where we are relative to Spain, Italy, I think China's numbers are honestly very difficult to use in any context because we simply don't know what the actual numbers are. But on a relative basis, it's better to use the per capita numbers. Jonah, as we are talking about China, on the one hand, we have China's official numbers. I think that by and large, we've all rejected those as being accurate. On the other hand, we have these, I don't know what to call them. You know, pretty made up based on the number of earns being delivered type numbers.

how do we judge what's going on in China or does it matter at this point? I think it matters. It may not matter on the day-to-day crisis handling that we have here. But, well, let me take that back. I think there are different ways matters. One is if China actually isn't out of the woods yet or even close to out of the woods, that has some ominous implications for how long this is going to last for us because they've actually done, I mean, we know they have done some draconian things there that we would be

presumably unwilling to do here. I don't see, you know, America welding people into their apartment buildings like they did in China. And if they still can't get a hold on things, that tells us something about what the future might look like. It also has some relevance insofar as all of these headlines that you see in these various sort of blue checkmark people who want to believe that China's totalitarian – excuse me, that China's totalitarian methods are great and worked and that China's better than us and they're handling it better and all of that. that why people, I mean, this goes back to Lincoln Steffens or something, the tendency among

progressives and now a certain sort of strain of the authoritarian or neo-authoritarian right that wants to look abroad at strongmen and dictatorial regimes and say, see, that's the way we should be handling our problems, is really kind of disturbing. So, and also there's just, so there are long-term implications about this that the, that China's lies and they are, they are, it seems obvious to me that they are lies. Why would China be closing down its movie theaters now and closing down all these buildings in Shanghai if there are no new domestic cases, right? I mean, that's a big deal. So I, I think that the, I think that the, The long-term implications for how China is not a honest player, even during a time of

sort of global crisis, is something that we're going to have to take the heart. It's also a sort of die marker about what institutions foreign and domestic that China has co-opted or corrupted. The fact that the World Health Organization seems to be running a praetorian PR effort for the Chinese Communist Party is deeply disturbing. thing we're going to have to deal with in the long run. And David, just to take up exactly where Jonah left off, we've seen disinformation campaigns from China. There was a very disturbing video of an interview from a Taiwanese reporter to a member

of the WHO where he sort of refused to acknowledge Taiwan. Right. But we're also seeing some of that from Russia. China's not the only player in this game. And Russia announced today that they were sending over a shipment of medical supplies to the U.S. in a humanitarian relief effort. So I want to talk a little bit about the disinformation campaigns, but also should we be turning away help from Russia if they're sending a plane full of N95 masks, for instance? You know, if the masks work, I don't think we should turn them away. But, you know, if the masks work, I don't think we should turn them away. But, you know, when I look at China, I see the Soviet Union accept completely and fully integrated into the world economy. That's when I, when you see this behavior out of China, it really is bringing back a lot of the bad memories that we, that you had in the 1980s where, you know, you really had this entire cottage industry of people existed who were dedicated to trying to figure out what was really goal.

on in the Soviet Union? What was the actual truth of the matter regarding everything from wheat production to tank production to economic numbers to the, you know, political machinations within the Soviet Communist Party? I mean, we called them Sovietologists. And there was a huge cottage industry trying to figure out what is going on. And it was vitally important at that time for many, many reasons, including Soviet military intentions, etc. But here we have, we have really no clue. And I've had some people that I really, really respect who tell me, I think we can believe these Chinese numbers. And I'm looking at them right now. And they say they shut down huge sections of their country with the most draconian orders imaginable.

And they say they've had a total of 81,554 cases in a country of more than a billion people with a total of 36 new cases in the whole country. In the whole country, 36 new cases yesterday. I'm sorry. I just flat out don't believe it. And to go back as to why it's important, you know, if this is something that ripped through China to a much greater degree of severity, the fact that we didn't really know that, that that didn't imprint upon the world consciousness and the way that it should have probably

cost a ton of lives because it's taken people a while to sort of figure out that this thing is really, really serious. And everybody has sort of crossed a different, there's been a different threshold for everybody about the, oh crap moment. I know for me, I'm looking at China, I couldn't figure out what was really happening. And then you see Italy and then you have the oh crap moment. well, if we had known the full extent of what was happening in China, if there had been transparency, I tend to think lives could have been saved. Maybe we wouldn't have done better on testing and maybe we would have still been bad on our early response to this, but would all countries have been equally bad? But yeah, I mean, I think one of the real threats,

one of the real dangers we have here and one of the real challenges we have moving past this is this, this should be a eye-opening moment to people that we're doing. dealing with a hostile foreign regime that is also the second most powerful economy in the world and is also fully integrated or integrated in multiple ways and comprehensively integrated with the world economy. And that presents enormous challenges. Yeah, Sarah, just to put some more details out about the actual numbers, we have a good piece on the website today by Jerry Beer. who contributes to us regularly and has been following the numbers, I think it's fair to say,

and I mean this in the most positive way possible, obsessively. And he says, if you look at the first report in China on January 25th and then look a week later, they moved from 1,200, roughly 1,300 cases to 1,700 in a week and reported that nearly 200,000 had been identified as having had close contact with infected patients. So that same week, more than 5 million people left Wuhan because of this spring festival and the epidemic combined. And that festival typically generates three billion trips.

It's the, quote, largest annual human migration in the world. And we are to believe that despite all of that in this nation of 1.3 billion. billion people today, there are no new original China cases of this. I mean, it's inconceivable that that's accurate. It's almost so absurd that it's laughable, except that this is obviously so deadly serious. So, Steve, how do you then explain the Trump administration's relationship with China as of today or moving forward? You know, on the one hand, you'll see the president say something relatively positive about the regime, and then you'll see his son, Don Jr., tweet something highly negative about it. So we don't necessarily have a consistent message from the family,

at least. No, nor from the administration. I mean, I think this is sort of the pattern of the Trump administration as it relates to authoritarianes around the world. Not all authoritarian, but certainly some of the people that give us the most concern. I think it's true, obviously, with Vladimir Putin and Russia, where there is a Trump administration policy, and then there is a Donald Trump rhetorical policy, where Trump is much friendlier in his public comments to Vladimir Putin and Russia than the administration's policy has been.

The same is true here. And I think one of the things that's pretty damning about the Trump administration's early handling, of this crisis is the number of times that the president himself seemed to be vouching for China and Xi and the regime. They're saying, in effect, they're working hard on this, they're in front of it, they've got it under control. That was bad information, and there has been a wide variety of reporting about U.S. intelligence reports starting in late January through February, contradicting what the president was saying in public. So at precisely the time that

the president was offering reassuring words to the U.S. public about what was happening in China and about the Chinese government's ability to get in front of it. You had intelligence reporting from the U.S. intel community saying, no, no, no, no, this is much worse than the Chinese are telling us. We should be alarmed. We should get in front of this. And we still didn't see the kind of urgent action in those, you know, what people are calling the two lost months, you know, January, late January, and certainly February, that would have been responding to the kinds of alarms being raised by the U.S. intel community. And that's going to be a problem. I mean, I think it's going to be very hard for the Trump administration to answer that.

But Jonah, to sort of what you were saying before, is this something we deal with now in terms of our relationship with China, or do we wait and reset our relationship with China in the future? Oh, I think you wait to reset your relationship with China, but you also make it clear that we think there are a bunch of lying liars who lie and don't take their stuff seriously. And just, you know, to bolster Steve's point, there's also the debate that he raises here, which is sort of a quasi-obsession of mine, which is, you know, because there's a certain groundhog day feel

to these press conferences from Trump where he constantly, himself and among his coterie, emphasizes how brave and important and difficult and wise the decision to cut off travel from China was, but you never, which, okay, I think he deserves, I personally think he should, stop bragging about it. You know, he's got that on the record, but, and I don't think it provides

any comfort or solace to anybody right now. It's so it's clearly a political marker more than anything in terms of information people can use. But what you never hear, and I keep waiting to hear a good faith or read a good faith explanation of this, is what did he do with the time he wisely bought us. My understanding is that South Korea and the United States both had their first cases around the same time. South Korea got started. You know, that's where the per capita testing thing is really important. They got moving really quick. And while South Korea was scrambling to tackle it, Trump was himself and through his various spokespeople saying this was no big deal. This is like the flu. You had Mick Mulvaney going to CPAC and talking about how

this was all, you know, an attempt by the media to under, you know, to get Trump. And that's not the messaging you do if what Trump is saying now is true that he always saw this as a major problem and a major threat and it was really good that he cut off travel from China because it's a bought us time to prepare. That's not what an all-of-government preparation and response team messages if they are actually believe it was actually all hands on deck to grapple with this how much the reason I bring it up now is one I'm obsessed with it but two um because it's sort of like the China stuff uh it is really important it is really relevant it is uh central to the case for the for the re-election coming forward but it is not that important right now and um the people

want to have that argument right now while we're trying to figure out how to save lives can go overboard with it. But it's also important not to let, you know, that get memory hold. And so it's, it's a, it's a question of degree and tradeoffs in terms of what are we going to spend our times talking about and thinking about. But I think when we're clear of this, there are going to be enormous arguments about China's role, about Trump's response and everything in between, and they're legitimate. I may want to have a little bit of one of those arguments right now because I think we have this fantastic, if you read the Morning Dispatch newsletter, normally we sort of break this up

into three stories and they're all kind of, you know, bite size, and it's just to really start you off on your day with a deeper dive into some of the top stories. But today, for those to work on the morning dispatch, we got a little obsessed with some of the history from 1918 to 1919 in the Spanish flu. And so we went very long on the history of the Spanish flu. But it's a fabulous read, and something that I think, at least for me, stands out when I go and read these histories, is, A, incredibly similar reaction to the country. If you think American culture has somehow shifted dramatically, maybe not so much. Because in September, you're seeing a lot of people say, huh, oh, look, we have this new thing. And then some people saying, yeah, it's just like

the flu. Don't worry about it. A lot of people saying we can't economically sacrifice. It's okay to have some people die. And then in October, that balance shifts a little. And by November, everything is shut down. And it, it, that sounds like, like a pretty similar timeline to what we saw here. Now, to the point we've been making, if we had known China's numbers earlier, I think that balance would have shifted sooner for David's oh crap moment. It moves the oh crap, you know, barometer to a different timeline. But we didn't. So when you're looking at sort of these backward looking, whose fault, what should have been done differently, you do have to live in the information that you had at the time.

And I wonder, you know, you, for instance, in December or January, whenever the first case that we knew about really was, early January, you don't want to shut down the entire U.S. economy at that point. That makes no sense. And so before we start doing all this backward-looking stuff, I guess I'm curious in this moment now where the appropriate window was and how far off you think we really were, David, I guess. Oh, boy. I have notes, by the way, but let David go. That's a great question. I think when I talk about the oh crap moment, I also should say there is an information disparity

here because my oh crap moment is based on publicly available information. Donald Trump has intelligence reports. And what we're going to need to know in the day, in the months that follow is what were those intelligence reports telling him. And, you know, we don't even have to go back. And let me interrupt really quick on that, because I agree. What I don't find persuasive are the reports saying, economists in the White House warned of a possible pandemic hurting the economy back in 2018. Like, well, no joke. We all knew hypothetical things can happen. That, to me, is very different than actual intelligence of what's going on. Right.

So we need to know what was the actual intelligence that he received. That's something we need to know. It was intelligence, though, that we can also look at some concrete actions. We know that there was enough of a warning for him to do a – it wasn't a total shutdown from China, but a partial restriction on travel from China. So there was at least enough to trigger a reaction at that time. time. But if you go back and you look at some of the things that Trump himself is saying, you know, he's insulting Chuck Schumer because Chuck Schumer thinks that he's, that Trump should

be appropriating more money to fight coronavirus. So he's insulting Chuck Schumer for that. He tweets last year, 37,000 Americans died from the flu. It averages between 27 and 70,000 a year. Nothing is shut down. Life in the economy go on. At this moment, there are 546 confirmed cases. of coronavirus with 22 deaths. Think about that. Date of that tweet, March 9. Okay, so one of the thing we can argue all day long, based on the current information that we have, is what should the magic date have been that we really mobilized to go after this thing? And I should note that the country that mobilized most effectively so far to go after this thing was a free country, South Korea wasn't an authoritarian country.

It was a free country that employed means and methods involving comprehensive testing. So the alternative in Earth 2, it isn't we shut down the economy in January. The Earth 2 alternative is that we mobilize a South Korean-type effort, which prevented them from having to shut down the economy. So I think there's a difference between saying what was the magic go moment when we should have pressed go on full-on measures to take this on. And the fact that Trump's public rhetoric was way, way past that date irresponsible, way past that date. Whatever that date was, it was irresponsible well past that date. And that really, that really does matter. And one last

thing about this constant bragging that he did the partial travel shutdown from China. Good on him for doing that, but it's about like, imagine if someone, if we're in a wartime moment, and you know, you've got the red coats burning Boston. And the president says, well, I knew of the red coat menace months ago. That's why mobilized the reserves. And then somebody points out, but you didn't deploy them to the front. That's sort of the, with Trump, what you had was a moment where in response to what he was seeing and the information he was receiving, he took a correct action over criticism from some in the media and some in Congress. And then we lost a ton of time. And how much time we lost. Precisely, that will be for future, you know, a future

investigation to determine. But we do know time was lost and that that is having real consequences. Jonah, I see you bit champing. Yeah, so David covered a lot of the things I wanted to say, but I will add, it is the only point, the only point of shutting down, even though he exaggerates, it's David, right, he exaggerates how much he shut down travel from China. But the only point of doing that is to buy yourself time. and if and if you did that for if you didn't do that to buy yourself time then it wasn't a wise decision it's not something to brag about and it feels more and more like he was amenable to doing that because he likes the idea of closing borders he likes the idea of travel restrictions it's in his comfort zone and his wheelhouse and he took the approach of checking a box

hey, I did it. Let's move on to talking about Sleepy Joe Biden again. And the only proof that he was wise to curtail travel from China is if he then used the time that that bought to not necessarily shut down the entire economy, but to like rally the private industry to come up with better tests or increased production of masks and ventilators. These are these things that he's bragging now about how quickly the private sector and all of government has responded to this pressing need. But if he legitimately understood what the pandemic was when he closed down, travel from China, those balls would have started rolling a lot earlier.

And maybe they did. But then if they did, if they were doing things back then under the scenes. Why were they messaging the opposite? And why aren't they talking about any of that? And so the more I watch the press conferences and the more I hear the sort of self-aggrandizing spin and chest thumping and self-pitying about the narrative that he wants people to believe without providing any further evidence that that narrative is in fact true as he presents it, the more the angrier I get about those press conferences because they're, they cease to be about conveying important information or to be primarily about conveying important information

and more about, you know, Donald Trump's political or psychological need to be at the center of all things. God, you guys are so good at anticipating my segways. So Steve, I want to talk about some of the political implications for some of these governors who are dealing with us on the front lines. But here's my segue that I think you are uniquely qualified to discuss, which is the awkward position that it actually puts someone like Tom Cotton in. On the one hand, we've seen Tom Cotton make some moves towards perhaps running for president in 24. And he's been supportive of the president publicly on a lot of things. He has occasionally criticized. He's withheld for big moments. But when it comes to this, he is the senator who probably has the most

that he can point to to say, I raised my hand early. But implicit in that is, and I was ignored, and the administration didn't do enough. And so politically, how awkward is this for Senator Cotton moving forward? And how does he navigate this? Yeah, very good question. He was undoubtedly the senator who I think was strongest on this early. He was calling for shutting down fights, closing off travel. He was calling for restrictions on travel from China that went far beyond what the Trump administration eventually settled on

and was talking about this as a pandemic that threatened sort of day-to-day life in the United States long before most of his colleagues in the Senate, virtually all of his colleagues in the Senate. It's a good question. I don't, I mean, it'll be interesting to watch because obviously, you know, as we sort of ease out of this crisis moment that we're in, and we're still in a crisis moment, I think we will be for several weeks, maybe longer, then there will be much more of that kind of looking back. And I do think it puts kind of difficult position, because on the one hand, he's, of course, going to want to tout his sort of early pronouncements about just how problematic this would be. On the other hand,

He's a, as you point out, a supporter, generally a strong supporter of Donald Trump. And this will be, as we move toward November, probably the most hotly contested part of that election is what did Donald Trump do? What did the Trump administration do in the face of the information that we had to prevent what was coming? And it'll be interesting to see if Cotton defends Trump on that. I guess I think he probably will look to find the good things that Donald Trump did, the China restrictions being foremost among them, and highlight those in order to, you know, tout Donald Trump's leadership on this. He'll have to do that in an awfully selective way.

However, for all the reasons that we've discussed for the last, you know, 15, 20 minutes. I mean, there are so many holes. And it wasn't just, you know, the occasional tweet from Donald Trump. It was a steady, steady number of pronouncements over weeks in which he was downplaying this seriousness of this. So it'll take quite a bit for somebody like Tom Cotton, who's smart and certainly knows, I would expect firsthand through his conversations with Donald Trump that Trump wasn't taking this seriously beyond. what Trump was saying in sort of public pronouncements. And to your point, every time he compliments something the administration did in the run-up now to 2020 November election, he undercuts his own argument that he was Cassandra at the gates

for 2024. But let's focus on 2020. So David, you have Democratic governors. I'm going to use Whitmer and Cuomo as taking two different paths here. Let's do our Robert Frost Road Not Taken, or two roads taken. And you have the president, I think, trying to pin them in to provide publicly positive statements about his response and what he's doing for their states. With Michigan in particular, it's a fascinating example because he also wants to win Michigan. If they do that, then he can cut that into ads saying, you know, the Democratic a governor of Michigan praised my response and then run those ads in Michigan. On the flip side,

the governor of Michigan is also worried about her state and needs a certain amount of federal assistance. How do these governors balance that? Who's doing it well? What do you look to and say, ah, well done? Well, first, can I just back up and just say, it's really gross and terrible that there is a widespread perception that grounded in an awful lot of reality, that to really get Trump to activate on your behalf, there has to be a layer of flattery attached to it. And so I just find, I just think that's, we've gotten used to it, so used to it that we kind of laugh at it sometimes, but it is really gross and reprehensible. So who is playing the gross and reprehensible game better?

I would say it's, you know, look, it's impossible to know because I think one of the things that's, a lot of this rhetoric is just going to be overtaken by events. And if you look at the numbers that are coming out of, that are coming out of Michigan, and I've got the Michigan numbers right in front of me. Michigan has now the fourth most total cases. It has more than 250 deaths. It's recording a large number of new cases every single day. This is the kind of thing that ultimately at the end of the day, cutting an ad that says, oh, look how awesome Donald Trump did, in a state where there might be just an overwhelming amount of grief

and an overwhelming number of funerals. is just going to be thin political gruel. However, if we are miraculously able to arrest this thing in the next couple of weeks, three weeks, four weeks, five weeks, and it doesn't hit those projections that Dr. Fauci and Dr. Burks have provided, then the flattery will look more credible. I just think that events are going to overtake so much of this rhetoric. If we are, if we are, fact on the front end of something that's going to be awful on a scale of American history that in our lifetimes we haven't encountered, that a lot of this is just going to feel totally irrelevant. So I guess the best way to say it is let's talk about how effective the rhetoric of

today is in about three months. And I bet it won't matter one bit one way or the other. but I don't I'm not sure I agree with this Jonah and I want to see what you think of my argument which is I think that the governor of Michigan tried to be more political and that that has actually not worked particularly well for her whereas Cuomo there's like this draft Cuomo movement going on and Cuomo I think has been in some ways the least political governor of all the governors hit now you can argue that the reason there's a draft quomo movement is because he is the epicenter of the crisis, and that is the main difference. But he has, I think, publicly been very, very clear that he doesn't want to get dragged into fights either way.

And he'll praise the administration when he gets stuff right. He'll push back against Chuck Schumer, which he has done publicly in his own party several times. And that, at least within the Democratic Party and I would argue the country as a whole, has been very effective, compared to some of the governors who I think are trying to navigate this with an eye towards November. Yeah, I mean, the irony is, I don't know, let's look at this way. The irony is that I think you're probably right, but Whitmer has a more obvious path to the vice presidency than Cuomo has to anything, right? And not to get on my hobby horse about weak parties and stuff, but in a more properly ordered system where parties had greater strength, there would be a way for a draft Cuomo movement to actually work. It's hard to see how that would happen.

And I was talking to Jim Garrity about it this on my podcast yesterday with the added irony that the only way historically that a draft Cuomo movement would work would be chicanery on the floor. of the convention, which may not happen because everyone will be on Zoom. So there's that, too. But I do think, though, that I think Cuomo has handled it well. I mean, there's a little much, there's a little too muchness to some of Cuomo's stuff, but he's handled it well. But I think one of the things that he benefits from that's different from Whitmer and Inslee is that, first of all, the crisis is much worse in New York.

which gives him a sense of the man of the hour that you don't necessarily get. But also, he benefits enormously from the fact that it's in New York. You know, as people know, my wife worked for Nikki Haley at the U.N. And I think Nikki Haley is very talented and all sorts of things. But one of the things she benefited from was that she was in New York. And New York City is really the only other place in America. where if you are a political star, you can get access to the same media exposure that you get in Washington, D.C.,

while not being part of the garbage soap opera. And that was a real advantage for Nikki, because what she could do was simply talk about the stuff that she thought really mattered and stay out of most of the backbiting day-to-day intrigue things. And I think Cuomo benefits from that in a certain way, that let's just, my understanding of that is that Jay Inslee is actually handled this pretty well. But he's Jay Inslee and he's in Washington State and the time zones don't work and he ran for president so he seems, you know, so Trump can ding him for that and all the rest.

Meanwhile, most of the major media is actually living in New York watching Cuomo every day because Cuomo actually matters more to them. And that's a, that's an asymmetric advantage that Cuomo has. But I do think, you know, there's a strong case to be made that if we were. were in, you know, that if you were just talking about, if we were at a company or a platoon, you know, you know, on the front lines, and you had the ability to use reason and moral suasion to try to figure out who the best person is to deal with the crisis at hand, or if you're in a lifeboat, the Democratic Party would pick Cuomo and dump Biden, because Biden just does not seem like the guy the country needs to grapple with this afterwards.

But I just, it's very hard to, there's a certain underpants known problem. It's like, you know, step, step one, identify, you know, launch draft Cuomo movement. Step two, question mark, question mark, question mark. Step three, total victory in 2020, right? I just don't know how you get from A to C on all of that. Well, can I just interject, setting aside, Joe's underpants. The, yeah, the problem. I think with one of many problems with a draft Cuomo moment is I think, you know, while we anticipate

that New York's peak will come in the next couple of weeks and things have the potential to be really, really difficult, I don't think this just goes away. I mean, this problem may move. But what do you mean by this? The COVID-19 problem, these challenges, you know, it may be the case that New York is beyond sort of the worst of the worst in a month, but there are going to be things that will still need to be dealt with. And I think it'd be hard for Andrew Cuomo to sort of, even if there were a, you know, the party decides moment and or I think the only way it would, anything like this could happen is if Joe Biden himself said, you know what, probably not my time. Let me bring in somebody else. And I think that

that's unlikely. But even if that were to happen, Cuomo's going to have, a lot to do to continue to get his state through this problem, even if the worst of the crisis is behind. I think just on Cuomo specifically, it's interesting. I've done a lot of reading and covering Andrew Cuomo over the years, my very first story for the weekly standard back in the summer of 2001. Andrew Cuomo was running for governor then, and I followed him around the state, and he wouldn't give me time. I mean, I kept calling and trying to get official time in interviews, and he wouldn't do it.

So I just literally rented a car and drove around everywhere that he went in the state. And then as soon as he was done glad-handing at the end of these events, I would walk up and ask him a bunch of questions. And what struck me in reporting out that piece, I spent quite a while on it, and I ended up interacting with him a bunch. But looking at him then and looking at his tenure, as the HUD secretary under Bill Clinton.

Andrew Cuomo is an intensely political person. Everything he did was politics. And if you go back and look at his travel during his HUD years, during his HUD secretary years under Clinton, he took something like five times as many trips to New York on behalf of HUD official business as he did any other state in the country because he knew he was going to run for governor. What stands out to me in watching him in this context is how apolitical he's become.

And I think that's one of the reasons for his success. Now, you know, it wouldn't, I think, would you really foolish for anybody to be terribly political in this moment, particularly elected officials. But he seems to have gone out of his way to compliment Donald Trump when Donald Trump does something. And, of course, the incentive there is that New York needs a lot from the federal government. but but he has uh you know worked with republicans in new york state legislature he has he has been sort of in command and apolitical throughout the process in a way that probably i would suspect surprises um even some of those who have been closest to him over the years but i mean and i think perhaps this is what you're getting to the apoliticalness is the politically smart move

No doubt. So it's actually political. Yes. No doubt. No, I think that's right. Well, whether it's political, I mean, in fairness, look, I'm not a huge Andrew Cuomo fan. But sometimes doing what is your utmost statesmanlike responsibility in a time of crisis is actually

smart politics and we don't know necessarily why he's doing it, but it's possible he's doing it for the right reason, because like people are dying, you know. possible. Oh, I think he is. Just to be clear, I think he's definitely doing, I mean, I'm certain that there are political calculations in, you know, that he, that he thinks about as, as he goes about his day-to-day business. I'm, I also am, am totally convinced that he's mostly doing this because he's a governor in a crisis, and his state is asking him to lead at this time. I mean, I do think in this kind of a crisis, you have to be, you know, your decision-making has to be run by just doing what's best for people.

It is not always the case, but I think it is actually often the case that the right thing is also the politically savvy thing. I just think so often people don't find that, that totally overlapping Venn diagram. Okay, I want to spend a few minutes on some navel gazing, some media navel gazing, which is the daily press conference that I'm at least tuning into each afternoon evening. with the president. Some media organizations are doing some public hand-wringing over this. Dean Banquet at the New York Times has said that he has stopped sending reporters. On the one hand, he has stopped sending reporters for health reasons as well, but he's also said that he does not

think that they're particularly newsworthy. He was quoted as saying, nowadays, it seems that they make little news. We, of course, reserve the right to show them live via web streaming if we believe they will actually make news, but that hasn't happened in quite some time. There is social distancing in the newsroom that has cut down substantially on the number of reporters in the room, which I think a lot of people have positively commented on. But, A, are they newsworthy? And B, you know, for instance, yesterday CNN waited to cut in live to when the model started

showing up when Dr. Berks was talking and did not use the part at the very beginning with the president. On the other hand, they continued covering it for well over an hour. Where does this fall for media as we've seen poll numbers on trust in media now dip well below Congress? David. So I don't have strong feelings one way or the other about covering these things. I do have I do have a bit of weariness. Well, not just a bit, a lot of weariness with this back and forth that you see in sort of the comments about the press conferences where it's quite obvious that Trump is using a big chunk of his comments. And again, his tone varies from conference, press conference to press conference. And we're sitting there reading the tea leaves. Wait a minute. Trump is Trump again. Or wait, Trump just got sobered. you know, and we're doing all of this stuff. And it's, but most of the time, it's pretty much undeniable. He's, he's using a big chunk of that time to, as we've noted during this, during this podcast to tout his early response, to tout his, to have people shower him with praise.

And it is totally legitimate for a news organization to say, nah, you know, I'm just, no, we're not covering that. I think that's completely legit. It's also, I think a little tiresome to say to then have people jump all over the media that when Trump is turning this into in many ways of political performance, they then jump on the media for asking questions that are getting at the political angles of the crisis in the middle of the crisis when the president of the United States is doing this. But of course, you know, the business model of much of conservative media is to make every story about how evil the media is. So I really don't have strong feelings about when or a media organization should cover the press conference and when they shouldn't.

I do think that I have strong feelings of the press conferences providing new material information cutting in at that moment is, you know, I think quite prudent. And of course, reporters are watching them all the while. You know, you can see them on different feeds. And you can then use your own platforms to put out the information that's truly important. it. But, you know, yesterday, how long was yesterday's? Was it two plus hours? It's 412 years. Yeah. Yeah. That is a little extra, as I think millennials say these days. That was... Millennials and David French. Yes. Exactly. So I really don't have strong feelings about when you're going to cover it, when you're going to not. I mean, the core information from the

press briefings will get out to the public through every meaningful, media enterprise. But I am really tired of this notion that says, hey, media, even though the president is performatively political in these press conferences, it's your responsibility media to not provide any pushback to the president along those lines during the press conference, because that means you media are trivializing this. I just, that is not an argument that impresses me at all. I disagree with David pretty, like with some underlines in what he said, in particular, because I think it continues to make the press look antagonistic, and I don't think they help that case in the Q&A portion itself. Jonah, I know you had thoughts on a certain PBS news reporter.

Actually, I have very few thoughts about Yamish Alcindar. I have meta thoughts about the turning her into an allegorical tale of evil media versus triumphant, heroic and noble president. I kind of agree with you, Sarah, about that it's not worth the drama to sort of dive in and dive out of covering these things if you're a cable news network. I have zero problem with the New York Times not sending a reporter to the press conference. I mean, David touched on this, is that different outlets cover things in different ways. we cover the press conferences in the morning dispatch and elsewhere, but we don't send someone there.

You can watch them on TV and you can use the information that's pertinent and you can criticize the information that's not pertinent without physically sending someone there. But like what will all do is respect to like Brett Bear, whose show is just being bulldozed by these things. It's perfectly legitimate for a cable news network to cover a press conference and during a global pandemic and all of that. what I find just beyond just annoying in the terms of David put it, but really just sort of

grotesque and dysfunctional is the sort of vice and virtue signaling cycle that we get into. So Yomich El Sinder, who I don't think I've ever met, she seems like a perfectly capable, yeah, liberal reporter. And I know she's liberal because of the thing she says on shows like Morning Jell. that, you know, because she gets out of her lane and gets very liberal and fine, okay, the idea that I'm shocked by a liberal reporter is, you know, that ship sailed a long time ago.

But she asked, she started, what set this whole weird thing off in terms of her was she tried to ask a perfectly legitimate question as far as I can tell. Tough, but she said, you know, she pointed out that Donald Trump had said, she couldn't even get the full question. out. But she said, you know, on Sean Hannity's hero, you said that some governors were asking for more

ventilators than they needed. And he cut her off and started to go after her in quasi, not quite personal terms, but invidious terms. And straight up said, you shouldn't be here asking these nasty questions. You should be congratulating us on what we're doing. Now, I just, I, you know, what about as a is the lowest form of punditry, but, you know, imagine if Barack Obama had said to a Fox News reporter, you should be congratulating us on what we're doing here. You know, Sean Hannity would have Vietnamese monk style upended a jerry can of gasoline over his head and set himself on fire. And so what bothers me about the way we are, if you follow Twitter, you know, the sort of conservative media, anti-media,

own the media, own the libs, own the lib media guys. The way they're all covering this is since Trump picked a fight with Yomiche, the mainstream media is making fools of themselves by turning her into a hero. And also defund PBS, right? And also send your checks now.

And my problem is, is that it's all this tribal signaling crap. Like, because Trump said designated her as the enemy, therefore she is the enemy and we must hate her. And at the same time, no, I keep looking at these pieces that people write about how the mainstream media is making fools of themselves turning her into a martyr. And I think they have a point there.

I mean, she's not a martyr. She just asked a good, tough question. But no one wants to make the case about why what she asked was wrong or bad or inappropriate. in any same in any way and it's just this sort of like two tribes lining up on the sarongetti doing these ceremonial displays of chest beating BS rather than actually getting to the substance of anything okay Steve it's not that I disagree with Jonah Jonah is obviously always right about everything but that's a really wrong take for you to have as the host of this thing I think

that that soundbite should be in the the rolling intro credits and music for the this podcast. But there's like some nuance there that I think is missing, which is a question can be a good question. It can be a fair question and a tough question and all of those things. And yet, sort of what we were saying about Cuomo, the smart thing can also be the right thing, which is to not try to be antagonistic, to ask the questions in the most straightforward manner because it is not we're not talking about impeachment or politics or

re-election we're in the middle of a crisis we're trying to get information from our government you as the reporter in that room are our representative at that point of sort of a we the people fourth estate type idea and so it's not about trying to get attention I'm not actually singling out Yamiche here or John Carl the cutie pie or Jim Acosta or any of the other reporters who have have been singled out, because that's where I do think Jonah's right. At the same time, I think they have some responsibility to not treat it as an antagonistic exercise in a Cuomo-esque fashion.

I think they would do themselves a favor, thoughts, feelings. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there, and there's a lot in Jonah's world tour from Vietnam to the Serengeti. I agree with you. I mean, I think it's, you know, reporters have an obligation to ask clarifying questions. Donald Trump spends a lot of his time when he is speaking at these things, making questions or sort of thinking aloud in ways that very obviously contradicts what public health officials are saying. Repeatedly this has happened.

I think reporters in the room have every obligation to try to pin the president down on that. And if it looks antagonistic, too bad. If the president is saying things that aren't true, reporters should be very aggressive in trying to get him to either back up his assertions or, as he's described them, hunches, point out ways in which they contradict what we're hearing from public health professionals. That is, I think, the core part of the job of the reporters in the room. But we all know, because we watch these things, and I suspect many of our listeners do too, there's a difference in the way that, say, a Jonathan Carl asks a question, and a Jim Acosta

asks a question. I mean, Jim Acosta, you know, every time he has an opportunity to ask the president a question, it is antagonistic in the proper understanding of the term. It's not just that he's asking a tough question of the president to elicit information. He's asking a tough question of the president in a showboating, look at me, I'm so great, I go after the president kind of way. And that is where I think people develop this disdain for reporters in the room. And frankly, having spoken to a lot of the reporters who are in the room a lot with Jim Acosta and the others who do this, the reporters hate it when they do this.

Other White House reporters hate it when there's this kind of look at me questioning. I think those are two different sides of maybe of the same coin. And while I think it's absolutely essential that reporters ask these tough questions and get in the face of the president when necessary, and they don't always have to be polite. I mean, when the president is nasty, I think it's better to keep your cool and ask your questions dispassionately, but be tough and aggressive.

It's also just not helpful when you have people who are doing the obvious showboating. And Acosta is one. There are a handful of others who do it virtually every time they're in the, in a position to question the president. And I don't like to get into questioning people's motives. But it feels when you watch it like they're performing for the cameras and like they're trying to impress their colleagues as much as anything. And that's bad.

I think it's one of the reasons people are so frustrated with the way the media is conducting itself. David, you have a quick thought. Yeah. So a big part of our job is determining what is the right, what should be the right proportion to which you cover something or you care about something. Let me give, let me make this concrete. So there's a sort of weird world out there that is policing, sort of policing anti-Trump or Trump skeptical commentary relentlessly. you're talking about the president too much. Why haven't you written about the squad lately? You know, sort of going back to pre-coronavirus kinds of arguments. Yeah, President Trump said this awful thing, but didn't you see what Ilyan Omar said? And it's this kind of what aboutism.

And I'm thinking, wait a minute, I can disagree with Ily on Omar, but also recognize that she's a freshman member of Congress. And there is the president of the United States, which one is going to be more consequential. I think I'll focus on the person who's more consequential. And I get a lot of that sort of feeling when we're talking about the president's response to the coronavirus and the media. Number one, I'm getting really, I'm just trying to not use the term the media. If the problem is Jim Acosta, we should say it's Jim Acosta. We should use the actual names of the people who are the problem because not everyone in that room, as Steve very ably pointed out as the problem. But there's this sort of thing out there now that you're supposed to, if you're going to critique the president of the

United States, probably the most powerful man in the world, you're going to should also, of course, just to show how balanced and fair-minded you are, devote equal time to quote-unquote the media. Well, I think Jim Acosta's questions as antagonistic as they are of so much less consequence that it's almost hard to even see them on an electron microscope compared to the fact that the president of the United States, the person who is running a response to a pandemic that is ravaging the American economy and has cost 4,000 lives and counting that he gets up there and just riffs during the middle of this thing, often saying things that are flatly not true, have to be politely contradicted by his science advisors.

and has this sort of need for, you know, tin pot dictator-style flattery throughout this whole process. To me, that is so much more consequential than, oh, Jim O'Costra was rude that I feel like there's just not even in the same universe. Yeah, I think David's right. This is the dynamic that bothers me about the Yamish thing, about all of these things, is like about the coverage of the press conference. shame on CNN for not covering the whole press conference fine shame on the president and a lot of his enablers for creating an environment where people think they shouldn't cover it right

I mean this is a two to tango kind of thing when the president violates democratic norms he gives a permission structure to his enemies to violate democratic norms as well and it becomes like trying to even out the legs on the table until eventually just it's the surface on the floor because each one goes a little further than the other side. And this gets to your point, Sarah, about doing the right thing is actually good politics. If Trump were capable of just reading his opening statements, which are usually, I find problematic, but they're usually just politically fine, and then not do this performative Q&A thing, looking for opportunities to do his shtick, he'd be in so much better shape. But he does this stuff. It pisses off the press

who feel like they're being exploited for his political agenda and they want to push back and they overreact. And then Trump gets to use the overreaction of the media to yell fake news, which causes more overreaction. And, you know, and pretty soon the whole thing looks like the fight scene from Anchorman. It is, it is, Trump has a responsibility as the president of United States to behave in a way that doesn't ignite this kind of cycle, even if the other people in the cycle deserve a lot of blame too. Okay. And with that blood pressure raising ending from Jonah,

what I asked each of you to do coming into this morning was to have some good news to end with, instead of cocktails or movies, to go find a news story that had either made you laugh or just brightened your day a little bit and I'm going to start as my prerogative. So in North Carolina, the Wake County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has started a live Facebook feed.

It goes out every day at 2 p.m. for those who are interested, Eastern. Potential adopters can chat with the camera operator, ask questions about specific pets. You can also ask the camera operator to give belly rubs, deliver treats on their behalf. And this has been wildly successful with actually a lot of adoption agencies around the country in this time. Spring is often the time that puppies and kittens show up at these adoption facilities. They are low on staffing, and in a lot of places, the response has been overwhelming, and a lot of these animals are getting out. There is no better quarantine buddy. I think Jonah and I can attest than a great cuddly cat or dog, and I have a lot of friends who have

adopted because it's a perfect time to train your dog. So this is going really well across the country and trying to meet that need, there's going to be even more need here coming up. So it really made my heart sing that these adoption facilities are figuring out how to social distance and adopt pets. And if you're curious, what you do is you do a little like, you know, sort of McDonald's takeout for your, you know, drive-by adoption. And you do all this adoption stuff online over Skype or Zoom, et cetera. And then when you're ready, you have a meeting place and they drop the animal and they move six feet away and then you go get the animal with some hand sanitizer. David, what has brightened your day?

Well, to that point, one of the, a good news story is back in early last week, there were so many pet adoptions that the city of New York was running out of dogs to foster. So that's a good news story. People were needing friends in the quarantine. I don't have a good news story. more than a fun diversion. One of the side effects of having my college-age kids at home has been discovering, as they've relentlessly sent into our group text message, our family text message,

dog TikTok, where you can literally spend infinity time scrolling through the most delightful from, you know, like 10 to 30-second videos of dogs doing. awesome things. And it is incredibly captivating. And to the point where I've thought, because I have three dogs, two delightful Labradoodles and one very cantankerous older Lauchin. And I've started to think, huh, do we have a dog TikTok channel in our future in the French family? But I think that's too ambitious but I would just encourage you dog tick-tock is a delight I agree with that there's also a great cat tick-tac-toe tick-tock that you can find say that 10 times fast exactly so Jonah well I so obviously I am a fan of dog and cat videos on the

internet what I have proven my bona fides on that and I don't need to virtue about any of this in any way, although I do highly recommend the Doggist, which is a great photographer, a dog Twitter account. I don't have a story either. I have, you know, a lot of people are putting out inspirational little videos or even just sort of, you know, memes or insights. And I saw just this morning this really sort of was, you know, it was text over, you know, heavenly clouds. And it was a very inspiring observation. It said, if people tell you that one person can't change the world, they clearly haven't eaten an undercooked bat. and I just

I found that deeply moving Okay, I'm going to be giggling about that for the rest of the day, Steve Yeah, so that's, I mean, hard to top that. So I have, that's why I wanted to go to last. I have two, one of which I'm going to leave as a little mystery. The first I would say, just type into Google the following phrase,

child left with hilarious lockdown haircut after asking brother for old man hair you will not be disappointed and my second one actually comes from Stephen Colbert of all people

I am not a Stephen Colbert fan I've probably only seen his show I bet less than a half a handful of of people but he played something on his show last night, which is now available by searching on the internet, that was a duet that he recorded with John Prine, who has been stricken with COVID-19.

And Colbert recorded this duet in, I believe it was 2016. And it was never aired. They didn't put it on the show. He said he thought he might put it on the internet version of the show, but it sounds like it never even made it there. He played it last night, and the song itself is terrific, but the introduction to the song has Colbert saying, this will probably never be broadcast unless something terrible befalls the world, and we need to, you know, provide something uplifting or something to that effect. And then they perform this song for three minutes. It's pretty great. It's

definitely worth a listen. And with that, thank you all for being here. And thank you, listeners, for tuning in. We look forward to your thoughts and comments and to talk into you next week.