What A Day - Like A G7

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

The G7 summit ended on Sunday, with President Joe Biden and several other world leaders pledging to send one billion COVID vaccines to poorer nations and endorsing the idea of a global minimum tax. Today, Biden is set to meet with NATO leaders before meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday. Yesterday in Israel, the Knesset voted to approve the new coalition government which includes eight different parties of varying politics who unified to oust former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Naftali Bennett was sworn in as the new prime minister. He and most of his cabinet worked in Netanyahu’s at various times during his 12 year tenure, indicating that massive changes won’t come quickly. And in headlines: Darnella Frazier receives an honorary Pulitzer Prize, Nancy Pelosi promises to probe the Trump DOJ, and a ride on Bezos’s rocket sells for $28 million.For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

It's Monday, June 14th. I'm Akilah Hughes. And I'm Gideon Resnick, and this is What The Day, winners of the prize at Westminster Dog Show for wanting to pet every athlete. Yeah, and I also just found out we won the award for telling the most dogs that they're a good boy. So, you know, we're really cleaning up. Yeah, no one has ever done it as much as us. It was a historic event, quite honestly. Yeah, they were going ever done it as much as us. It was a historic event, quite honestly. Yeah, they were going to kick us out.

On today's show, the future of Israel with Benjamin Netanyahu no longer prime minister, plus we'll have headlines. But first, the latest. America's back at the table. The lack of participation in the past and full engagement was noticed significantly, not only by the leaders of those countries, but by the people in the G7 countries. And America's back in the business of leading the world alongside nations who share our most deeply held values. That is President Biden speaking in Cornwall, England yesterday, wrapping up his first meeting with other world leaders as part of the G7 summit. So, Akilah, there was a lot on the agenda here, so catch us up on what they agreed to. All right, so in good step forward news, leaders pledged 1 billion COVID vaccines to poorer nations,

but obviously there are more than 1 billion COVID vaccines to poorer nations, but obviously there are more than 1 billion vaccines needed to protect the whole world, and UN head Antonio Guterres said as much. And another actionable item, leaders endorsed the idea of a global minimum tax to prevent companies from shifting zip codes to outrun their tax obligations. But then again, for that to take shape, other big countries need to get on board. China has entered the chat, so TBD on how to even the playing field. There will be a meeting next month among more world leaders called the G20, where this is expected to be high on the agenda.

And representatives from countries like China, Brazil and Russia are expected to be there. Right. But there was some inaction as well here and stagnation of discussions that disappointed critics as well. Of course. So we were all waiting with bated breath to find out if climate change was finally going to be taken seriously on a global stage since there've been a bunch of half steps.

And while it seems to be more of the same, the leaders failed to set an end date on the use of coal and they failed to set a target date for when most new cars are supposed to be greener. The year 2030 was thrown out, but what is the plan? Like, are they just going to come and tow my Nissan cube in January of that year? Like, what are we talking about? They are.

And, you know, let's not forget that we live in a global car buying market. So if you're not going to seriously spell out how to enforce greener mandates for cars, how do you expect to stop the sale of foreign vehicles that don't meet the standard? The G7 summit would have been an excellent time to discuss those finer details. But I guess a video of the Queen of England cutting a cake with a sword is going to have to suffice. Yeah, that sword can also be used on carbon emissions. It's kind of interesting. So Biden is set to meet with NATO leaders today and tomorrow before meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday. Any further updates there?

Yes. So unlike in the Trump years, there won't be a joint conference afterwards because like what even was that? You know, it's truly maddening to think of all the stuff that we just put up with for four years. But we're going to get even deeper into it on tomorrow's show with Pod Save the World host and former deputy national security advisor for President Obama, Ben Rhodes. He joins to tell us more about what to watch in this new relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Turning to some other international news, Gideon, there was a big changing of the guard in Israel. So that was sound ABC News captured yesterday of people in Jerusalem celebrating the ousting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A week ago, we talked about

his long tenure coming to an end, but take us through the final stretch. Yeah, it was chaotic. So yesterday in Israel, the parliament or Knesset held their vote of confidence on this new coalition government that had been in the works for a while. As a reminder, that coalition includes eight, yes, eight different parties of varying politics who basically unified essentially only to oust Netanyahu. And that's exactly what happened. Extremely narrowly, though, the vote to approve the new government was 60 to 59 with one abstention. So now Naftali Bennett, a far right religious conservative who made millions in tech back in the day was sworn in as the new prime minister. He's going to serve for two years before Yair

Lapid, a former journalist who has attempted to position himself as kind of center politically ends up taking over. Meanwhile, Netanyahu, who faces a trial on corruption charges, has thrown around the word fraud in regards to this new government more times than I can conceivably count. He's also clearly going to remain a strong presence as the leader of the opposition to this government. This is him in the Knesset yesterday. OK, so part of what he's saying there in the speech ahead of the vote that took place is, quote, I will lead you in a daily battle against this bad and dangerous left wing government and bring it down. I mean, kind of weird to be bragging about how you want to bring down the government. But, you know, we're living in weird times.

Indeed, we are. So yeah, I think it's pretty clear what he's going to end up being up to in the next couple of years. Yeah, it's all of his plans. What are people expecting from how these new prime ministers will actually lead? Yeah, I mean, I think one of the kind of open questions people have at the moment is how and if this coalition actually does hold together. Plus, they could avoid crucial issues like Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which would mean much of the same for the lives of Palestinians. Here's how Haggai Matar, the executive director of PLUS 972 magazine in Israel, described this coalition when we spoke about it last week. You have hard right settlement, pro-settlement fundamentalists, in a sense, on the one hand, and you have Palestinian Islamists, and you have Jewish secular liberals. And all of them really

were kind of at each other's throats up until recently. And the one combining factor keeping them all together for now, is their common hatred to Benjamin Netanyahu, basically. Yeah, whole coalition of people are just like, I hate that guy. Yeah, no, seriously, that is like the one thing. And one of the other indications that we're not likely to see some kind of massive change in Israel is that Bennett and most of his cabinet actually worked in Netanyahu's at various times over his 12-year tenure. Yeah. And what could this new leadership mean for U.S.-Israel relations? Like, how has President Biden been handling it so far? Well, he reportedly spoke

with and congratulated Bennett while Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited Yair Lapid, who right now is serving as the foreign minister, to meet in the U.S. So despite resistance from the left and pushes for the U.S. to rethink its unwavering military support for Israel, it doesn't seem at least for now that the crux of the relationship is going to change drastically. Here's how Mattar was thinking through what the new post-Netanyahu dynamic might look like. So I think there's definitely a history between the Democratic Party and Netanyahu, and not a good one. The Biden administration seems to be growingly concerned with Netanyahu's ongoing government. The question is how they'll see an even further to the right prime minister stepping in, someone who really comes from the

heart of the settlement movement. Yeah, and Mattar said some of that dynamic could be countered by Yair Lapid, who has this good relationship with several politicians in the U.S., including within the Democratic Party. So much remains to be seen with all of this, and we'll keep following it in the days ahead. But that is the latest for now. It's Monday, Watt Squad, and today we are doing a segment called The Solution, where we propose a fix to a news story that has created chaos in our world. Last Friday, a veteran lobster diver in Cape Cod visited one of the least popular places to swim in the entire world, the pitch-black mouth of a humpback whale. 56-year-old Michael Packard was diving when he felt a huge shove and everything went dark.

He was inside the whale for an estimated 30 or 40 seconds before it started shaking its head and then released him back into the water, presumably via spitting or puking, common methods for whales. Packard suffered significant injuries, but no broken bones. But of course, one thing has consistently been overlooked

in this story, the experience of the gentle giant who accidentally swallowed a man. So for the man versus whale's mouth incident in Cape Cod, here is the solution. The enormous whale who ate a man needs to know it did absolutely nothing wrong. I mean, if any of us were 66,000 pounds and half asleep from always singing sad songs, it's likely we'd mistake a man for an edible sea creature. I mean, after all, men in wetsuits basically look like little turtles at the center of four wiggly eels. And furthermore, whales who eat men are way overrepresented in media. Whether their food is guys from the Bible or the dads of wood toys who want to be alive,

if this whale did eat the man on purpose, it would be our fault for failing to give him positive whale role models. And lastly, while everyone is talking about the bones and body of the man who was eaten, has anybody stopped to ask about the soft pink mouth of the whale? Like those who have eaten too many kids in their sour patch form know it can be so painful. I mean, we must assume the same about non-sour patch men. So to the confused whale from Massachusetts, even if you ate a man on purpose, we forgive you. Wow. That was the solution to this whole problem. We'll be back after some ads. Let's wrap up with some headlines. Headlines. Frazier to, quote, highlight the crucial role of citizens in journalists' quest for truth and justice. The recording went on to become a crucial piece of evidence at Derek Chauvin's murder trial.

Frazier recently described her experience of recording Floyd's death as traumatic and life-changing, but also said she was proud of herself for helping to get out the truth. She was just 17 at the time, trying to buy snacks from the corner store with her nine-year-old cousin. She also became a key witness during Chauvin's trial. Chauvin is set to be sentenced next week, and the three other officers involved in Floyd's fatal arrest are scheduled to face trial next year. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to probe Trump's Justice Department over recently uncovered subpoenas this past weekend. In case you missed it, tech giant Apple revealed last week that it was subpoenaed by the FBI in 2018 to share communication records and other data about 100 accounts, including those of journalists and Democratic Congress members like Representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell and their staff.

The subpoenas included a gag order, which expired recently. This mass effort to harvest information happened during the investigation into whether Trump and his team received help from Russia during the 2016 election. Trump's DOJ also notably subpoenaed Apple for data on an account belonging to Don McGahn, who was part of Trump's White House counsel at the time. It's not clear why, but some suspect it could have something to do with his involvement with a leak related to the Russia investigation. In addition to a congressional probe, Biden's Justice Department is currently leading its own internal investigation into the subpoenas. A pharmaceutical company's powerful stand against perfectionism has led the FDA to tell them to throw away 75 million COVID vaccines. That company is Emergent Biosolutions. We've spoken previously

about lax production standards at their Baltimore plant that allowed 15 million Johnson & Johnson doses to be contaminated. But last Friday, the FDA ordered an additional 60 million doses to be Marie Kondo'd, later explaining that they were manufactured at the same time as the contaminated ones and might also be impure. The main issue was that AstraZeneca and J&J vaccines were being produced too closely together and vaccine prep areas were used to transport production waste. But thankfully, no shrimp tails covered in cinnamon as far as we know. Thus far.

The FDA did approve 10 million J&J doses from the factory for use, but Canada rejected their shipment of 300,000 of them on Saturday. Yeah, they're nice, but they're not that nice. Consumer goods prices are rising and rocket ship tickets are no exception. The auction for a ride to space alongside Jeff Bezos and his brother ended this weekend, netting $28 million from a yet unidentified beneficiary of our country's craven and perverted tax code. The July 20th trip aboard a Blue Origin spaceship will take the auction winner just above the so-called Carmen line, considered to be the official height at which space begins. I thought we were in space this whole time, but I was wrong.

From launch to landing, the ride will last about 11 minutes, barely exceeding the max length of one Quibi. If you crunch the numbers, that works out to be about two and a half million dollars per minute for the lucky person who gets to network with the Bezos brothers while emptying their bladder into a spacesuit from Amazon Basics.

The $28 million will be donated to Club for the Future, Blue Origin's foundation to inspire kids to pursue careers in STEM so that one day they can join a team that sends billionaires on tiny little space vacations. Amanda, I hope this is the middle seat. Yeah, honestly, I hope that they don't have any drink service. And those are the headlines. One thing before we go, this Pride Month, Love It or Leave It, host John Lovett

returns to the stage for an exclusive Pride performance called Out of the Closets Into the Streets. On June 24th, join John Lovett and a lineup of your favorite LGBTQ plus acts as they bring the celebration right to you. Out of the Closets and Into the Streets will be streamed live on June 24th at 4 p.m. Pacific time. Join the fun on Crooked Media's YouTube and Twitch pages.

That is all for today if you like the show make sure you subscribe leave a review avoid the mouths of whales if you can and tell your friends to listen and if you're into reading and not just very reasonable selling prices of rocket rides 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. And wash your spacesuit from Amazon Basics. Yeah, I mean, Lord knows we don't know what fabric it's made of. No. Once you get into space, too, it's going to need another wash.

You don't know what comes up there. Maybe buy two, but not from Amazon. Yeah. What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It's recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Sonia Tun and Jazzy Marine are our associate producers. Our head writer is John Milstein, and our executive producers are Leo Duran, Akilah Hughes, and me.

Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.