What A Day - If At First You Don't Succeed, Trial, Trial Again

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

The second impeachment trial began yesterday, with Senators voting 56 to 44 to uphold the trial as constitutional and move forward. House managers presented video of the siege on the Capitol paired with Trump’s inflammatory speech to rally-goers beforehand, while Trump’s lawyers tried and failed to frame Trump’s impeachment after leaving office as a “slippery slope.”A team from the World Health Organization has been in China investigating the origins of the coronavirus and they released preliminary findings yesterday. One prominent conspiracy theory they ruled out was the idea that the virus emanated from a Chinese lab, and they also said the virus had been circulating in Wuhan before its discovery at a seafood market.And in headlines: hate crimes committed against Asian-Americans in the US is skyrocketing, the CEO of Riot Games faces a lawsuit for gender discrimination and misconduct, and the world’s first 3D printed T-bone steak.Show Links:"WATCH: Rep. Raskin presents graphic video timeline of Jan. 6 attack on U.S. Capitol"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otfPps9s8HMFor a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Wednesday, February 10th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What The Day, the only news podcast where both hosts have cat face filters on at all times. Yeah, it's not really that bad, except for when my dog sees it and then attacks my computer. I've also been attacked through the computer by Fauci, and dangerous. You gotta chill out. On today's show, what a WHO team learned about the beginnings of the pandemic in China, then some headlines. But first, the latest. And we'll start with another impeachment news blast. And we back, and we back, and we back, and we back, and we back, and we back.

Wow. Truly, the creativity of this is admirable. God bless you, Charlotte. The second impeachment trial is officially underway. Yesterday, we heard four hours of opening arguments, and both sides made their case on whether the Senate has the power to even hold the trial. And in the end, the senators decided that yes, they do. In a vote of 56 to 44, with six Republicans joining the Democrats to proceed with the rest of the trial, which is going to continue today. But let's back up for a second to recap yesterday. So the House managers who are acting as the prosecutors here were up first.

Give us a sense of what they did with their time. Yeah, so they didn't waste any time getting to the meat of the argument, which is that the insurrection was dangerous, deadly, an attack on the country, and incited by Donald Trump. Representative Jamie Raskin, the lead impeachment manager, played a 13-minute video of the insurrection attempt as part of his opening statement. The video is available everywhere, and we're going to link to it in our show notes. But it starts with Trump's speech where he repeated the big lie about how he won the election and then tells the mob that he has, quote, evidence

and tells them to march to the Capitol. There's also graphic footage of the outmanned Capitol police being overtaken by the insurrectionists at the gates. It is really upsetting. And it honestly kind of reminds me of that montage in Ava DuVernay's documentary, The 13th, which you may remember juxtaposes the violence of Trump and what he was doing on the campaign trail with the historical context of, you know, the same kind of racist violence that happened before. So, yeah, pretty bad. Yeah, and it seemed like the senators in the room were also really paying attention to this presentation as well. They found it shocking, too.

Raskin also gave his own personal account of January 6th. Yeah. And the attack came just a day after burying his young son. So Raskin's daughter was also there at the Capitol that day and had to suffer the uncertainty and violence and fear of the insurrection. And he recounted how it impacted her. Here's a clip. I told her how sorry I was. And I promised her that it would not be like this again the next time she came back to the Capitol with me. And you know what she said? She said, Dad, I don't want to come back to the Capitol. Of all the terrible, brutal things I saw and I heard on that day. And since then, that one hit me the hardest.

That and watching someone use an American flagpole, the flag still on it, to spear and pummel one of our police officers ruthlessly, mercilessly, tortured by a pole with a flag on it that he was defending with his very life. People died that day. Officers ended up with head damage and brain damage. People's eyes were gouged. An officer had a heart attack. An officer lost three fingers that day.

Two officers have taken their own lives. Yeah, so it's even more gruesome than most of us have even heard about. Yeah, really, really terrible stuff. And then Trump's team gives their rebuttal. What do we need to know about what they had to say here? Yeah, I mean, I really do hate to focus on style over substance, but it was one of the main takeaways of Trump's defense yesterday. So his lawyer, Bruce Castor, who is most famous for

refusing to prosecute Bill Cosby, gave a really winding and abstract opening argument about the quote, extraordinary nature of senators and crime and passion. But even Alan Dershowitz, who was part of Trump's legal team during his first impeachment, said that he had, quote, no idea what Castor was doing. Even Republican Senator Bill Cassidy told reporters that Trump's team was, quote, disorganized, and that's why he voted with Democrats yesterday, which was definitely unexpected. But in terms of actual substance, Castor and Trump's other lawyer, David Schoen, eventually got to making an argument that the impeachment was partisan, a slippery slope, and unconstitutional. Here's a clip of that.

Let's be perfectly clear. If you vote to proceed with this impeachment trial, future senators will recognize that you bought into a radical constitutional theory that departs clearly from the language of the Constitution itself and holds, and this is in their brief, that any civil officer who ever dares to want to serve his or her country must know that they will be subject to impeachment long after their service in office has ended, subject only to the political and cultural landscape of the day that is in operation at any future time. Yeah, I don't know what's so bad about holding people accountable. Yeah, setting a precedent, you know, if you did something wrong, you could be impeached later. Seems okay.

Seems great. Yeah, for the record also, most legal scholars disagree with Schoen's legal interpretation. And in this particular case, Trump was impeached during his term by the House in January and has only been out of office for about three weeks. And this trial is only happening now because McConnell wanted it delayed. Yeah, but he didn't vote that it was okay to even hear it now, so it doesn't make a lot of sense. So anyway, we'll have more on that as the trial goes on. But now let's move on to our next story. A team from the World Health Organization has been in China investigating the origins of the coronavirus. They released their preliminary findings yesterday. Here's a clip. The findings suggest that the laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely and to explain the introduction of the virus into

the human population. Okay, so that was Danish scientist Peter Ben Embarek, who led the WHO scientific delegation. He was saying there that according to the team's initial findings, they don't believe the original outbreak that was first detected in Wuhan in late 2019 emanated from a Chinese lab. So this comes after the team visited the Wuhan Institute of Virology last week. That lab reportedly specializes in studying coronaviruses in bats. And that's part of the reason why in the Trump administration, there was a theory promoted without evidence that the virus had leaked from the Institute. Instead, Embark said the virus likely jumped from a bat to another animal that eventually to humans, which is a theory that we've heard before, according to the AP. WHO also said that the virus had been circulating in Wuhan prior to its

discovery at the seafood market. Yeah, for sure. So that was the big headline from the announcement, but what else did we learn? So according to NBC News, Embark said that Wuhan is not a natural environment for bats, so it's unclear still how the virus was actually introduced into the city, even after all this time. Also, apparently the team tested various animals across China and found no traces of the virus. Then the other really eyebrow-raising part of this is that the team didn't rule out a theory that has been promoted by Chinese health authorities, that the virus could have actually been imported on frozen food products. But not many scientists outside China

have gotten behind that idea. Yeah, which kind of gets us into some of the more complicated global politics in all of this. Complicated is right. So before this visit even happened, China was against letting this WHO team into the country. And they have tried to shirk responsibility for mishandling the pandemic early on, and have tried to stop important information from getting out about it. The head scientist of the Chinese team present at the news conference called for additional investigations into the origins in other countries. That's another suggestion that it didn't emanate from China. And just last week, per NPR, China's foreign ministry called for an investigation into a U.S. military base where a conspiracy theory suggests the American military leaked the virus. So lots of ideas

going around, to say the least. A lot of misdirections here to protect a narrative, and in some cases, actual punishments. That includes authorities in China sentencing a citizen journalist of four years in prison for reporting on the Wuhan outbreak, and that a doctor was forced to sign a statement calling his initial warnings about the virus a rumor. That doctor later died from COVID-19, and it's been a year since his death, and he's been memorialized as a whistleblower in all of this. Right. And some of the analysis of this press conference from the World Health Organization team has been calling it a major win for China in their PR narrative. So what can we really expect next here? Yeah, it seems like the Biden administration is just going to wait until

they hear more. A spokesperson for the State Department told NBC News that they want to see the full WHO report before making any further determinations. And while Biden has restored U.S. ties with the WHO, which were broken in the last administration, the relationship between the U.S. and China on the pandemic is still rocky. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently criticized the country's lack of transparency. And China's clampdown on information early on also led to criticism of the WHO for being deferential to China and the story that they were trying to tell. So a continued investigation will not only be part of cracking the code to the pandemic, but also likely impact the relationship between the U.S. and China going forward.

No small stakes involved. More on that when it comes, but that's the latest for now. It's Wednesday WOD Squad, and for today's Timp Check, we're talking about some upcoming Netflix-slash-Obama family programming. Yesterday, former First Lady Michelle Obama announced Waffles and Mochi, a cooking show starring two puppets and Michelle herself as the owner of a whimsical supermarket. The show comes out on March 16th, and it will feature famous chefs and celebs from around the world. And it fits with Obama's longtime mission of empowering kids to lead healthier lives. The original title of the show was, quote, listen to your vegetables and eat your parents. Truly, that's not a joke, but maybe that was a little too edgy for Netflix kids. So Giddy,

my question for you. Do you think our former first lady and puppets can teach kids to enjoy eating healthily? I wish they ran with that title. That title is incredible. Yeah, you know, I think I think Michelle Obama is capable of anything. And I'm also glad that this is not actually with Sesame Street people like I thought it was. Because if it was Oscar the Grouch, you're just eating trash. That's probably not the best thing to be showcasing to kids in terms of eating. Bad for your digestive system. So it's good.

It's good that these are new characters. I mean, I remember a few years ago, didn't the Sesame Workshop, though, make Cookie Monster start eating carrots more and stuff? And I was like, see, it's for other stuff other stuff yeah because i think they were like this is really promoting cookies and i'm like so cookies are good it's true it's true i also don't have children so i think uh i'm talking about myself not about how i'd want my children to eat it's it's a tough sell to put a very fun puppet in front of kids and say it's time for broccoli. But, you know, tougher challenges have been met and tackled. So I have faith.

I have faith that this is going to work. But, yeah, I think that, yeah, Cookie Monster and Oscar, God bless them, cannot be the messengers of healthy eating. So it's good they're not involved. That's fair. So what do you think about this? Is this going to happen? Are kids going to watch this and start loving spinach?

I mean, I think that, you know, they will be persuaded to at least sing about it, which I think will be nice. I don't know that this is a musical, but I imagine anything with puppets need to have music. But yeah, I don't know. It's like, did my nephew become a DJ because he watched Yo Gabba Gabba?

No. So I don't know that these things are all cause and effect. But I do think that it'll be nice to have just like programming from her at all. I think it'll be good for kids to see her as a role model. And yeah, I don't know. Who's to say? Who knows if we'll even have a planet? Is there a global warming show coming? Because really, we're all just gonna be eating whatever's available. Yes, we're pleading with Waffles and Mochi. Be realistic about the fate of our planet and, you know, talk to the children about global warming as well. You have the time.

You've been given a special. It's your responsibility now. I mean, you know, that's, that's the brass tacks from me and Gideon. We'll just like that. We've checked our temps. Stay safe. Why don't you go eat a vegetable or something? And we'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. The number of hate crimes committed against Asian Americans in the U.S. has been skyrocketing since the beginning of the pandemic. Just last week, a video circulated widely on social media showing a 91-year-old Asian man getting shoved hard in Oakland, California.

There were similar acts of violence reported in New York last year in which the assailants verbally blamed their victims for causing the pandemic. NYPD data revealed that hate crimes against Asian Americans have increased by a shocking 1,900% in New York City between 2019 and 2020. Over 2,100 cases were reported nationwide between March and June of 2020. And activists are calling for more attention to be paid to this trend. And many blame the Trump administration for inciting the violence through their use of xenophobic anti-Asian rhetoric when talking about the pandemic. The CEO of Riot Games, the company behind the popular video game League of Legends, is facing a new lawsuit that accuses him of gender discrimination and misconduct.

The suit against CEO Niccolo Laurent was filed by a former employee, Sharon O'Donnell, who alleges that he fired her after she turned down his sexual advances. In one instance, Lauren allegedly asked O'Donnell to travel and work from home with him while pointedly mentioning that his wife wouldn't be there. Just a few years ago, Riot Games was the subject of an expose that revealed a company culture of rampant misogyny and sexism. That story led to a class action gender discrimination lawsuit that the company paid $10 million to settle, plus two investigations by regulators in California. The company is now disputing O'Donnell's allegations and says they'll be launching their own internal investigation on the issue. Major update for those of us who missed the sight of our friend's mouths. Ford announced last week

they're mounting a large-scale effort to produce clear N95 masks, which will be available in the spring. For the millions of people who rely on lip reading and facial cues to communicate, standard masks have created a huge obstacle to understanding. Ford wants to help alleviate that problem with their masks, which will feature anti-fog technology and may be the first clear masks available to offer N95 level filtration. Ford has been manufacturing face masks, ventilators, and face shields since March and has pledged to donate 120 million masks to communities in need across the country. And then also in mass slash motor vehicle news, that is a specialty here at WADA, a group of Australian engineers published a study last week that proposed recycling discarded

single-use masks by using them to build roads. So my pitch is that if you were anti-mask, you can't drive on it and instead have to roll through the deepest, wettest mud. Yeah, I hope you get so muddy. So another barrier between animals and computers was torn down yesterday as an Israeli company called Aleph Farms unveiled the first 3D printed ribeye steak. The steak is grown from live animal cells, which mature on a plant-based matrix into a meat and end up with a similar structure, appearance, and flavor to that of real cow tissue. For me, it won't be a perfect replica unless I'm overwhelmed by the idea of cooking it and end up putting it back in the freezer and getting takeout flavor to that of real cow tissue. For me, it won't be a perfect replica unless I'm overwhelmed by the idea of cooking it and end up putting it back in the freezer and getting takeout instead.

That is how I make my steak. So-called cultivated meat is more environmentally friendly than real meat. Plus it's better for animal welfare. Companies like Aleph Farms still face regulatory hurdles before they can get their products to market though. In the US, for example, the FDA and the USDA are still in the early stages of deciding how they'll regulate cell cultured meat. Aleph thinks everything will be cleared up and their products will be ready by the second half of 2022. Until then, you can continue eating the other stuff made using 3D printers like little plastic screws and some parts of airplane engines. Yum yum. Been doing it my whole life and I don't recommend it.

And those are the headlines. That is all for today. If you like this show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, 3D print yourself a nice meal and tell your friends to listen. And if you're into reading

and not just lips through clear American-made car masks like me, what a day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at crooked.com slash subscribe. I'm Akilah Hughes. I'm Gideon Resnick. In solidarity with people who find cooking scary.

Look, it's really hot in the kitchen. I can't take the heat. Waffles and mochi. If you got a solution for getting over this fear, let's talk. Yeah, let us know. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tan 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.