What A Day - Everything Is Feinstein

Episode Date: October 16, 2020

A new study shows eight million people have fallen into poverty since May, when the CARES Act money started running out, but lawmakers in Washington still can’t agree on a second relief bill. We review the current state of negotiations, and how the delay is affecting Americans in need. Yesterday the Senate Judiciary Committee wrapped up their confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, with no big surprises except a few frustrating moments where Democratic ranking member Dianne Feinstein went out of her way to signal approval for the process and for Lindsey Graham.And in headlines: Thailand declares a “state of extreme emergency” after protests, three people who were traveling with Biden and Harris test positive for COVID-19, and the BTS IPO. Plus Crooked's own Erin Ryan fills in for Akilah.Show Links:"Inside the Fall of the CDC" https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-the-fall-of-the-cdc

It's Friday, October 16th. I'm Gideon Resnick. And I'm Erin Ryan, filling in for Akilah Hughes. And this is what a day where our TVs made us make a major choice last night, between watching one candidate's town hall or just going for a walk outside. I struggled with that choice for hours, and by the time I knew it, it was 1am and I was already asleep. I went outside and watched TVs tuned to both town halls through my window. That is the spookiest possible way to engage with politics. My neighbors are afraid.

On today's show, the state of the COVID economy, what is next for Amy Coney Barrett, then some headlines. But first, the latest. If they vote on it before the election, you are open to expanding the court? I'm open to considering what happens from that point on. You know, you've said so many times during the campaign, all through the course of your career,

it's important to level with the American people. It is, but George, if I say, no matter what answer I gave you, if I say it, that's the headline tomorrow. It won't be about what's going on now, the improper way they're proceeding. Just this week, you retweeted to your 87 million followers a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden orchestrated to have SEAL Team 6, the Navy SEAL Team 6, killed to cover up the fake death of bin Laden.

Now, why would you send a lie like that to your followers? You retweeted it. That was a retweet. That was an opinion of somebody. And that was a retweet. I'll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don't get that.

You're the president. You're not like someone's crazy uncle who can just retweet whatever. That was a retweet. Oh, my God. So much whiplash going between those two clips. You get a clip of Joe Biden's town hall on ABC last night where he is being an adult, responding to questions about specific things specifically, and Donald Trump yelling about retweets.

It was a lot. These two events happened at the same time last night. And you know what? Luckily, I was the one that got to watch the Biden town hall. And I have to say, you really have to switch gears between listening to the two clips of them. Yeah, I mean, like our country's beautiful boaters, I was stuck with Trump, which is, I suppose, what I get for letting you pick first. Gideon, I just have to say props to you for being a really gracious host

and letting your preference for Biden be known, but then saying you can pick Aaron and then letting me just be like, no, I pick Biden. It was great. I make a lot of sacrifices for this country. What can I say? I mean, you know, and the town hall that you watched, which I was able to glean from Twitter, Trump was his usual liar combative self, which didn't look really good opposite Savannah Guthrie as the moderator if he's trying to win over white suburban women voters. Biden was also his usual professional self. So not sure much changed about the race from those two town halls. But next week, we might get one more debate from these guys. God willing, Satan willing, some force willing.

But in other news, we got additional unemployment numbers yesterday, indicating again that the economy is still far away from recovering to pre-pandemic levels. Let's go through the top lines. Yeah, so 885,000 Americans filed new claims this past week, according to the Labor Department, which is an increase actually from the week before. And it's been hovering around that 800,000 level for several weeks, which is less than the height of things this spring, but still record levels historically speaking. And right now there are a number of other factors that are causing even more concern.

Restaurants that might have been able to salvage their businesses with outdoor dining could struggle more as the weather gets colder in certain places in the country. The country is also seeing a major uptick in COVID cases overall right now, which could lead to more closures. And additional federal aid is long gone with no immediate solution in sight. More on that point in just a bit. But economists have said that there's little evidence federal unemployment benefits kept people from trying to go back to work. And some have pointed out that the number of unemployed people is currently outpacing the available job openings, leaving them with no viable options. You know what else the number of unemployed people is outpacing the available job openings, leaving them with no viable options. You know what else the number of unemployed people is outpacing? The population of Wyoming.

Like 885,000 people is so many people. There are 589,000 people in Wyoming, which I know because I have a tab open on my browser right now that says Wyoming population. That is crazy numbers of people. Oh, yeah. And there's also more and more evidence of how effective the CARES Act was in helping people this year, which goes to show that this is a problem that the government can deal with, no matter how big it is. Yeah. I mean, they have a really recent example. The CARES Act was passed in late March, and the additional

aid that was flowing from that in the form of checks and federal unemployment money actually kept more than 18 million people out of poverty, according to researchers at Columbia. But the researchers found that since May, when the CARES Act money started running out, the number of people in poverty has now grown by 8 million. A separate study from the University of Chicago and Notre Dame found a similarly bad trend. The New York Times article on these studies is really worth reading. In it, they highlight one family in California that is currently living on $350 a week plus food stamps. The parents described skipping meals so that they could feed their kids and selling tools to pay for diapers. A preventable travesty, to say the least.

And you look at that story and just multiply it by the millions of people that are going through it. And the researchers also highlighted that these pains are disproportionately being felt by Black and Latinx Americans, and that child poverty as well is rising at a rapid rate. Which brings us to the current relief talks in D.C. The Democratic House has passed two different large packages since May, but Republicans in the Senate have refused anything coming from the House because they want something much smaller. They also want judges. Then there's the president who has flailed wildly on whether he wants a deal or not, to the point that some Democrats were questioning if his tweets were being influenced by his roided up condition. So where do things actually stand now? They're in a really bad place. And it's shameful because,

like we said, people are hurting at the moment. So here's my understanding of where things are and the incentives of all the sides that are in the mix here. First, there is Trump. On Thursday, he called for an even bigger stimulus package than the $1.8 trillion proposal that he had Treasury Secretary Mnuchin offer before. He also said on Fox Business that Mnuchin, quote, hasn't come home with the bacon

and that China would pay for this package, which doesn't make any sense to me at all. But this comes after last week when the president erratically said that he wanted negotiations stopped until after the election. And it also comes at a moment where he consistently trails in polls with very little time left in the race. Then there's Pelosi. She's been resistant to cutting a deal with the White House of late, saying that what is being offered is just not good enough, according to The Washington Post. She's standing firm on her $2.2 trillion proposal and has been keeping up talks with the White House and just yesterday got Mnuchin to support money for testing in the bill.

Pelosi reportedly thinks that she has more leverage over Trump now to get the aid she thinks is necessary, especially as he's struggling in the presidential race. But it's certainly a risk, and that's left a number of Democrats frustrated that no deal will get done and that there's just gonna be more suffering in the months to come, especially as these COVID cases rise. A recent CNN interview with Pelosi where she lashed out at Wolf Blitzer questioning her about tactics in this didn't help the cause.

And then finally, there's Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He is the bigger stumbling block in all of this because even if there were some deal between Pelosi and the White House, he thinks that Republican senators would oppose it. And yesterday, he said himself that he wouldn't bring it to the floor for a vote. Instead, he wants to vote on a much smaller bill. So maybe it is that McConnell thinks Trump is going to lose and he wants to make things harder for a Biden administration, and or that this really is just not a concern for him. But what he remains jazzed about is the courts. Okay, Gideon, I have to climb on a soapbox for

a little bit. Climb aboard. Look, I think what is happening right now is a really perfect encapsulation of why regular people fucking hate Washington. Oh, yeah. This isn't a game. If you're a kid and you don't know when the next time is that you're going to eat, that impacts your mental health in a way that lasts for your entire life. And to Mitch McConnell, this is a fucking game. I'm sorry, this isn't a game.

To the people that are actually living out the results of policies that are enacted by people who will never actually be impacted by those policies, it's not a fucking game. This makes me furious. And I could just rant for an hour. Maybe after this, I'll go into my ranting closet at home and just yell about the space

between people in Washington making the laws and the people in the rest of the country who are impacted by the laws. But we need to move on. Moving on to the courts. Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary wrapped up their confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett. There wasn't a ton of news or surprises from the final day, which was just witness testimony. But seeing things move ahead was nonetheless upsetting to the millions of Americans concerned about Barrett's beliefs on reproductive rights, on voting rights, gun rights, election integrity, global warming, and well, pretty much everything. But you know who wasn't that upset? Ranking Democratic committee member Dianne Feinstein. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank you.

This has been one of the best set of hearings that I've participated in. And I want to thank you for your fairness and the opportunity of going back and forth. It leaves one with a lot of hopes, a lot of questions, and even some ideas, perhaps some good bipartisan legislation we can put together to make this great country even better. So thank you so much for your leadership. I mean, that sounds pretty helpful to a guy in a Senate race right now, to me, just that clip alone. But I mean, is she doing VO for his reelection campaign against a Democrat? Yeah, what the fuck?imenting the man spearheading the process that many of her fellow

Senate Democrats and many Democratic voters believe is a sham wasn't the last bad idea Senator Feinstein decided to try out in front of TV cameras yesterday. After the hearing adjourned,

DiFi was seen masklessly shaking hands and embracing Lindsey Graham as if their teams had just played off against each other in a regional volleyball tournament. Oh, and also that we're not in the middle of a goddamn deadly pandemic. After what she said before, a friendly wave would have done more than enough, communicated the same sentiment.

It's like, don't add insult or, you know, health problems to injury here. Or shoot him a text. Shoot him a text when you get out of the chambers. Be like, sorry, I had to be so cold. This is something my constituents are very upset about. And acting as though this is all fine is insulting to them. Aside from health risks, in response to Feinstein's offensive display of civility, progressive groups have had enough.

The Twitter account for Indivisible tweeted, Senator Feinstein's behavior today was a perfect summation of why we can't just elect Democrats. We need to hold them accountable too. And WOD listeners will remember that yesterday we talked to Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, about the courts. Well, following the hearings, his group issued a statement demanding that Feinstein be removed from her leadership position on the Senate judiciary and be replaced by somebody who isn't going to try to cure what ails this country with raw dog COVID hugs. I know you think that's gross, but... Because it is. It's a gross phrase.

It's accurate. The statement read in part, if Senate Democrats are going to get their act together on the courts going forward, they cannot be led by someone who treats Sunrise activists with contempt and the Republican theft of a Supreme Court seat with kid gloves. Yeah. So here's a little bit more from our interview with Brian Fallon about Feinstein specifically. I think Dianne Feinstein is somebody that is not equipped to lead this committee if Joe Biden becomes the president and the Democrats flip the Senate. We are going to need to explore court reform solutions to undo the impact of this nomination being jammed through. And Dianne Feinstein is not up to that task.

You know, when we talk about the fact that Democrats have let their guard down on the courts, that's happened on Dianne Feinstein's watch. She's been around since 1992. That's happened on Patrick Leahy's watch. He's been around even longer than that. That's happened on Dick Durbin's watch. The Democrats that failed to bring the intensity in these hearings are the same Democrats that have let us get rolled by the Republicans these last several years.

There is going to need to be a bottom-up commitment from young progressives to prioritize the issue of the courts. But these Senate Democrats that were the most senior ones on this panel, they're part of the problem, not the solution. Ultimately, I'm afraid. Gideon, do you think that his interview with us yesterday might have inspired him to get serious about fighting with Feinstein? I think when anybody comes on WOD, that's how it works, right? No, I mean, but seriously, demand justice is not screwing around. And for that, a lot of progressive voters are going to be glad. Yeah, that's for sure. So right now, though, what is next in the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation process? Unless something catastrophic happens, and it very well might, since 2020 has been nothing if not a string of preventable catastrophes, next week Republicans will move her nomination out of committee. Then the full

Senate will likely vote to confirm her the week before the election. Ooh, Halloween. Spooky. We'll be watching, but that Squad, and for today's temp check, we're looking ahead to Thanksgiving, a holiday many are considering not celebrating or celebrating differently because of the pandemic. Infectious disease expert and Tony the Voice former star, Dr. Anthony Fauci, weighed in on this dilemma this week, telling CBS, quote, Now, of course, it's always harder to bite the bullet than it is to bite the turkey, but I digress. Erin, if you end up calling off or limiting your own family's Thanksgiving dinner this year, which parts will you not miss? So Gideon, I never related to that sort of like suburban raised trope of urban dwelling white people complaining about their extended family, that was never something that I was like, I never had the racist uncle.

I had the communist uncle. You know, like it never quite was something that was like, oh man, I'm going to have to hang out with somebody who likes George Bush. No, I would have to hang out with uncles who would not shut up about how much they hated the Iraq war. The reason that I don't go home for Thanksgiving, which I've shared on my podcast, Hysteria, before, is that I am from rural northern Wisconsin.

And in rural northern Wisconsin, the week of Thanksgiving is also the opening week of deer hunting season. Now, my family are hunters. My dad hunts, his brothers all hunt, my brother hunts. And so to go home Thanksgiving week My family are hunters. My dad hunts. His brothers all hunt. My brother hunts. And so to go home Thanksgiving week is to basically enter deer slaughter zone, where you can't go anywhere without the smell of mammal blood. Love it.

You can't drive through town without coming up at a stop sign behind a guy with three deer carcasses in the bed of his truck. I can't go to my house without encountering various deer being drained of blood. Now, my family doesn't do sport hunting. It's all like subsistence. We always ate venison as a kid. So I respect hunting as like a sustainable practice. But it's not something that I want to take vacation days to spend time around. And so I don't really go home over Thanksgiving. I am excited to cook for my husband and friends who come and social distance sample my mac and cheese on Thanksgiving, but I'm not really going to miss the family holiday.

Same question for you, Gideon. What are you going to do for Thanksgiving? It's a great cue. I haven't had the deer hunting issue as it were personally that's because you're I mean inside boy stuff you know yes yeah we I think my family does venture a little bit more on the inside boy spectrum than the deer hunting spectrum more recently I think with Thanksgiving one of the things that was the choice, I think, if you live farther from your family is like, if you're going to make one of the big trips later in the year, right? Are you going to do like the Thanksgiving chunk of trips, especially if you're working or the Christmas

chunk of trips that, you know, you could build one or two weeks around. And now the pandemic has made it a lot easier in the sense that I won't be going anywhere. So for me, the idea of being alleviated of having to think about, you know, major travel is a bit of a weight lifted. But other than that, I don't know what my plans are. Is Friends giving us a safe thing to do? Perhaps. We'll see. I don't know. I think that what's really important here

is that nobody needs to make up a bullshit excuse to not go home for Thanksgiving. Right. But just like that, we have checked our temps. Stay safe. If you are going to travel and see your family, stay safe and stay sane.

We'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Let's wrap up with some headlines. the Hunger Games series. Protests have gone on for months now, with activists demanding to reform the monarchy in parliament, but this week's protests are the first to be held while Thailand's king and queen are in the country. They're usually abroad. Honestly, if I were a king or a queen, I would also usually be abroad. Since the emergency decree was issued, riot police have been breaking up peaceful protests

and arrested at least 20 student leaders. The declaration also bans gatherings of more than five people and any news publications or online messages that, quote, harm national security. Pretty much every government organization had a bad time this year, but the CDC had one of the worst. A ProPublica report published yesterday describes part of what made that year so bad, and in particular, how the White House turned the CDC into a tool to advance Trump's agenda. Veteran specialists were often marginalized, silenced, or reassigned just for doing their job.

And no one at the agency had faith in Trump's appointee, Dr. Robert Redfield, as their director. In one revealing anecdote, at a point when almost 130,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 and the White House was using CDC quarantine rules to deport children at the border, Dr. Redfield asked the CDC's chief of staff to halt the deportation of a Peace Corps member dog who didn't have a valid rabies vaccine. I swear it's in there. That chief of staff stepped down shortly after. CDC experts confessed that they no longer had faith

in what their own agency tells the public in fear that declining public trust in the agency could have bad long-term consequences. We'll link that story in our show notes. So the dog detail in the story is pretty damning, but one that stuck out to me is Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner poking their heads into CDC meetings despite the fact that neither of them have any knowledge of public health or science. Like, I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to have Penn legacy admission confidence, you know? Yeah. That's true, rich, dumbass confidence. It's a real thing. I mean,

if you solve the issues in the Middle East, you can solve a pandemic. I mean, it is it's a one to one. Oh, my God. Okay. After working its way through the White House, coronavirus got cocky and thought it could take a swing at the Democratic nominee. Two people who were flying with Senator Kamala Harris tested positive for COVID-19 Wednesday night. But according to the campaign, neither was in close contact with Harris. We must protect Kamala Harris at all costs. By the way, the campaign is still canceling the senator's travel through Sunday just to be safe. She'll do virtual campaign activities instead. After the two diagnoses, contact tracing revealed a third positive test on Joe Biden's airplane. The test was of a charter company employee, but they were more than 50 feet from Biden at all times and wore a mask for the whole flight, as did Biden. If this all sounds overly detailed, that's kind of how it sounds when you're taking precautions during a pandemic.

The Trump version of this is basically a White House staffer tested positive at some point, and at another point, that person and the president spent one hour blowing on the same tuba. Both Biden and Harris tested negative yesterday, and Harris is set to return to the campaign trail on Monday. One quick quibble with that copy is I don't believe that anybody in that White House knows how to play an instrument, much less the tuba. I did, though, blow on this tuba, so I will be getting a test very shortly.

Behind every great band stands a group of dedicated investors. That was made clear yesterday when the management company behind k-pop stars bts made its initial public offering which nearly doubled the company's value to 8 billion u.s dollars so as both a finance guy and a lover of shockingly precise dance moves i'm qualified to say this deal is dynamite but it's risky too because big hit bts's management company, makes almost all its revenue off of BTS. We all know that the BTS army is loyal and will never leave the band, but the real army of South Korea has mandatory conscription. And as early as next year,

BTS members could start getting called up to serve their 18 months. What impact that could have on Big Hit's stock is unclear. Basically, potential stockholders will have to ask themselves a question. Do you want to play it safe and put your money in a boring-ass company that makes air conditioner parts? Or do you want to take a chance and be part of a movement? You know, Gideon, I have many thoughts on this. One of which is the fact that big news earlier this week was the Democrats and the Biden-Harris campaigns' massive fundraising haul. I think they raised like a billion dollars this year. One billion.

The company that manages BTS is now worth $8 billion. I feel like the Democrats just need to invest in forming a boy band. Yes. Then I won't get more emails that are like, Aaron, I can't afford a bus ticket back to D.C. and I just need $8 if you can donate tonight. We just need to be

a boy band. And I think the moral of the story is BTS rocks. And those are the headlines. 100%. 100%. That's all for today.

If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, bite the turkey, and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading and not just the rising price of bts stock like me what a day is also a nightly newsletter check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe i'm aaron ryan i'm

gideon resnick and please don't share a tuba it's unsanitary normally and especially now what a day is a production of crooked media it's recorded and mixed by charlotte landis sonia tun is our assistant producer our head writer is john milstein and our executive producers are katie long akilah hughes and me our theme music is by colin gilliard and kashaka