Trump Goes Bananas

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Right now, we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known.

I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening alongside politicians and thinkers like Corey Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Waltz, Katanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God, and so many more.

That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Welcome to Pod Save America.

I'm John Favreau.

I'm Dan Pfeiffer.

Dan, I like your new setup.

All we did, John, is we just moved the desk back a little bit.

We got some new lights.

It's a whole new world done here.

For those of you who are just listening, you're going to want to check it out on YouTube because,

Dan, you're going to see Dan in a whole new light.

Just literally a whole new light.

Several new lights, in fact.

All right, Dan, on today's show, we got Epstein.

We got redistricting wars.

We got deportation news, quick check-in with the brothers Cuomo.

They won't be here.

We're just going to check in on them.

Very important because people were.

And we got Dan's interview with Michael Osterholm, a vaccine expert, about RFK Jr.'s decision to cancel funding for mRNA vaccines.

But let's start by...

Just stepping back for a second.

Because we are all well accustomed to having a deranged sociopath running the the country, it's easier and probably better for our mental health to avoid freaking out about every crazy thing Donald Trump says and does.

But since the economic news has gotten worse, his deportation regime has become unpopular, and his Epstein scandal has split the MAGA movement, Trump has been on the defensive.

And whenever he's cornered, He gets even crazier and more destructive, which has especially been true this week.

And I think it's worth paying attention to.

We're going to talk about a lot of it on the show.

Just a sample, Trump said he's happy to hear that his Justice Department has launched a grand jury investigation into the make-believe crimes of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Obama's administration.

He is purging the Justice Department and FBI of more senior officials because of January 6th.

While we also just found out that one of his current top DOJ advisors turns out to be one of the rioters who's on video screaming to kill cops.

So that's what we got at the DOJ as we're purging the people who prosecuted the rioters.

He's slapping huge new tariffs.

Liberation Day has come and gone.

August 1st is coming on.

He's still slapping huge new tariffs on prescription drugs, electronics, anything that comes from India.

No rhyme or reason.

And here's a few other choice comments from Trump this week.

You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work.

They're just not doing that work.

And they've tried, we've tried, everybody tried.

They don't do it.

These people do it naturally, naturally.

I said, what happens if they get it to a farmer the other day?

What happens if they get a bad back?

He said, they don't get a bad back, sir, because if they get a bad back, they die.

Mr.

President, what are you doing up there?

Are you considering taking over the D.C.

police?

Is that an option on the trip?

We're considering it, yeah, because the crime is ridiculous.

Fallon has no talent.

Kimmel Kimmel has no talent.

They're next.

They're going to be going.

I hear they're going to be going.

The BLS overestimation by 1.5 million jobs.

That's a, Mr.

President, that's a gigantic error.

And I don't know if she's...

I'm not going to be a good idea.

Might not have been an error.

That's the bad part.

If it was an error, it would be one thing.

I don't think it's an error.

I think they did it purposely.

So

just because that was a lot, that was Donald Trump on CNBC talking about how undocumented immigrants who work on farms are genetically suited to do so because they don't hurt their backs because if they hurt their backs, they would die.

That was Donald Trump on the roof of the White House walking around, I guess, to check out plans for his new ballroom that he's going to build in the White House.

He was talking about having the federal government and perhaps the military take over D.C.

This is based on a single carjacking.

news of a single carjacking.

And then he finished up there with an event today, Thursday, in the Oval Office where he brought in quack economist Stephen Moore with a bunch of charts to show that these are the new numbers.

These are the new jobs numbers that Donald Trump deems true.

Forget about the BLS because he fired the BLS director.

So now we're having made-up jobs numbers.

How are you feeling about all this, Dan?

Do you think things seem to be getting worse?

Do you think voters think things seem to be getting worse?

Are we all just boiling frogs at this point?

I think the frogs are pretty close to boiled here, John.

I mean, like, you can watch all of this and like, you can either cry or you can laugh.

And sometimes it's for good for your mental health to laugh at the absurdity of Trump.

But I think we should be crystal clear that we are seven months into this.

We have three and a half years to go.

I don't think I am surprised by how bad Trump is.

Like, we knew he'd be terrible.

I don't think I'm surprised that the people around him in this administration are so much worse than the last time.

And we kind of knew that was coming.

I'm not really surprised that the Republicans in Congress are just kind of going along and cheerleading everything.

Like we knew that would happen.

But what I think is perhaps most surprising and alarming is

how meek the resistance to what Trump is doing has been.

Like in this week, we had Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, in the Oval Office for an announcement of Trump where he presented him with a fake 24 karat gold award.

It was real gold.

Real gold.

The award was fake.

The gold was real.

That's very important.

The gold was real.

Yeah.

And so Tim Cook's the CEO of Apple.

Apple is the most powerful company in the world.

If there's any person in America who could resist having to debase themselves in front of Trump, it is Tim Cook.

I'm not saying that Tim Cook and Apple should turn, you know, that Tim Cook should turn Apple into the resistance HQ.

No, but you can at least avoid this embarrassing display where you give a fake award to the mad king and you slather him with praise so that he will give you better tariffs.

Like take Harvard, right?

Harvard,

there's one institution in America that has the power and the war chest with their massive endowment to stand up for the first amendment and academic freedom it is harvard and what are they doing trying to cut a deal the institutional democratic party has failed over the first seven months to make themselves a credible vehicle for anti-trump sentiment and resistance in this country and it you see this every you saw this over the weekend with all these fucking dishonest yahoos in tech and wall street trying to explain the firing of the BLS director is that this was really just a decision that Trump was making because of a disagreement over statistical modeling and not a lunatic who didn't like the jobs numbers and wants to create his own reality.

And it feels to me, and I think this is just like a really dividing line in how people are thinking about Trump, is it feels to me that all these people, Tim Cook,

the business community, even some Democrats, view this as a period to survive.

And if we can just make it through the next three and a half years, and whatever we have to do to make it through, right, we'll give him a fake award.

We'll pretend like he's not a lunatic.

We'll give money to his inauguration.

Whatever we can do to make it through the next three and a half years, it was what we have to do.

And we'll be better on the outside of it.

There is no evidence that what comes after Trump with this Republican Party is going to be better than Trump.

It may be less ridiculous, but it's going to be no less extreme.

It'll probably be smarter and more effective.

And so the time to fight is not three and a half years from now.

It's right now.

So I got so mad watching everyone this week because every time one of these people who could fight back doesn't, when they give in to Trump, it strengthens Trump and weakens the opposition to Trump.

And that is where we are.

And I think it's a very, we're, I think we are in a very, very dangerous place.

And people keep making decisions for their own personal short-term interest without seeing the bigger picture of what is to come.

Because today, Apple's fine.

Tomorrow, Tim Cook could do something to piss off.

They could run the wrong show on Apple TV and Trump and he could come right after him.

So if you give in now, he's just going to take and take and take.

And it's put us in a, I think we're in a very, very bad place right now.

Yeah, I think your point about like short-term self-interested thinking is the right point.

It's the central point here, because to build a country, to have a country that's successful, you need to think about the long-term and future generations and what might happen down the road.

And you need to think about not just yourself, but the other people that you share the country with.

And it is very clear that many elites in this country are not thinking of either.

And guess what?

Tim Apple,

he got his exemption from the tariffs, right?

Trump has decided to have 100% tariffs on microchips, but Apple is now exempted because Apple has made one of those bullshit promises to invest a lot in the United States, which is like no one's going to be able to check.

So you can just say whatever.

And he's given him a gold bar.

He's given him literal gold.

goes to the Oval Office,

hands Donald Trump some gold, donated to the inaugural committee.

And Tim Cook's probably like well I got a board of directors and I got a bottom line and I got to figure this out and and I got to just get through this right and it's like yeah maybe you'll get through this maybe you get your exemption but but what happens down the road what happens to the economy what happens to like everything in this country that made your success and your company's success possible what's going to happen there and the other thing I see is and you know and we I think Democrats can get a lot of shit by the way there are some Democrats that are fighting really hard there's a lot of people who've been out in the streets there's organizers who've been fighting really hard.

Like, I do think some of the people who have been as worried about Trump as they have been for the last decade have really been, you know, working hard.

What I have noticed, and I don't know what you think, like in my own life, is there's a lot of people who don't like Trump and probably didn't vote for Trump, but they see everything that's happening and they're like, I've just, I've tuned out.

I can't.

I can't tune in anymore.

It's just, it's all crazy.

It's like washing over.

And some of it's exhaustion.

And some of it is like, well, what are we supposed to do?

And some of it is like, for my own mental health, I'm just going to

worry about myself, my family, my friends, and pretend that what's happening in the country and what Trump's doing isn't really happening.

And so it's this sort of like willful ignorance or

this hope that maybe if you just like close your eyes, then everything will be fine in a couple years.

And it's just not going to be that way, right?

Like we are, we're going to talk about redistricting and these wars and like the, you know, Trump trying to basically lock in a permanent Republican majority.

You know, if you had asked me when Trump first won the second term back in November, if I was really worried about the 2028 elections or the 2026 elections, I'd be like, yeah, kind of, who knows?

It's Trump.

You know, you never know what he's going to do.

But seeing how they are handling redistricting for the midterms or sort of any challenge to their authority whatsoever, how they've handled the courts, how they've handled businesses, how they've handled institutions, colleges, civic society in general.

Like, I don't know why they would just sit there in 2028 and be like, well, we lost fair and square.

So, you know, I guess J.D.

Vance ran a good campaign, or Donald Trump, you know, tried to run for a third term.

You forget about Trump.

J.D.

Vance ran a good campaign, but he did lose.

And so Donald Trump and J.D.

Vance and the whole administration will just be relinquishing power and walking out of the White House.

I don't, maybe they do that, but I don't see why they would if you looked at the last six months of all of their actions.

And then the question is like, what is everyone else doing?

What are we all doing?

Yeah, it is, like, I have the same experiences with people in my life who they're exhausted.

They find it too stressful.

They have too much going on in their lives.

But I think there is one, and I, and I understand all those sentiments.

I often feel exhausted.

I often feel like I have too much going on in my life.

Like, that's how everyone feels.

I often feel like I don't know what to do about all this.

Yes.

But I think one of the things that has been tremendously successful in the worst possible ways for Trump is he, and this goes to Tim Cook and Harvard and Democrats not shutting the government down earlier this year is that Trump is convincing people that resistance is futile.

Yes.

And so, because what you need,

it is so hard.

to care.

So it's so hard to fight, right?

To get up and do all the things that so many people are doing, right?

Like I very specifically use the the term institutional Democratic Party, right?

Because there are people all across the country, including Democratic politicians who are fighting their asses off.

I was speaking more about

it's not even each individual member of the leadership, it's just the fact that the party's as an entity is in the toilet in terms of its approval ratings, right?

But is that until we can convince people that there is hope for something better, and that's what fueled, that is what fueled the resistance in 2017 was if we can just win the House, we can do a whole bunch of really good stuff, right?

If we win the House, then we can stop his legislative agenda.

We started holding hearings.

He got impeached for whatever that was worth.

And then it's like, if we can win in 2020, then we won in 2020.

Like we did all the things and he's still here.

And so that is going to require someone, right?

And it may be a bunch of people who are running for president in 2028 or a bunch of people who are on the ballot individual states in 2026 to provide hope for something better, right?

That there is a way out of this, that there is something on the other side of this that is not just more Trump.

I also think that the

way people are getting information about what's happening, I mean, you know, you and I, we've been a broken record on this forever.

We started this company, this podcast.

But like, it's so broken.

It's like even more, it's exponentially more broken than it was even in 2020 through 2024.

Like, you know, it's just like there's Twitter is garbage.

Blue sky, no one knows what's going on over there.

Sorry, all your blue sky people, but like

you mentioned something.

Yeah, well, you know what?

It's, it's pretty minuscule, the membership there.

And, you know, I'm on it too, but like, no, nothing, you're all talking to yourselves there.

Cable ratings are like just shockingly bad.

Like half the ratings of like this, an average podcast, Pod Save America, like in prime time for some of them, like CNN.

It's just, it's, it's wild how that.

And network news, we were talking the other day.

We're like, who even, who, who anchors the network news these days?

It's just like, it's like, that's all broken.

So television stuff is broken.

Papers, Washington Post, like a mass exodus from the Washington Post.

New York Times is doing well, but it's basically just the New York Times.

I don't know, Politico.

Like,

it's just really hard for...

So, you know, I criticize people who are like turning away and not knowing what to do, but also it's sort of like hard to get good information about what the fuck is happening right now.

Yeah, I mean, that is a huge part of it for sure.

Like, most people can go about their lives and know none of the details of what we're talking about here unless you opt into political news.

I mean, all the things you just mentioned about the state of the media is something I've been working on a message box for a couple of days about this, which is what it, and I'm going to just give, I'm going to, I will preview it now, which will now force me to finish it, but is that we've been sort of like talking about the changing media for a long time.

And it sort of always seemed like sometime on the horizon was the end of the old media order.

Well, that time is now.

We have crossed that threshold.

It is everything is collapsing and of itself.

There There are still profitable, like the New York Times and Dow Jones remain profitable media businesses.

The right is ascendant with Fox News, but cable is collapsing faster than anyone imagined.

Last month was the first month that more people streamed TV than watched linear TV.

And the thing that should scare people is that's not YouTube TV.

They're not streaming news.

Well, they're streaming YouTube.

on their TVs, which is the big thing.

And everyone in their understanding of politics, how they conduct political campaigns, how they communicate information all has to change to reflect that reality because we're still running the old playbook.

And it's one of the reasons why people can't get information because we keep running and telling people who have no reach anymore or no credibility anymore and expect it to filter down to the people who are going to make political decisions in this country or make decide elections in this country.

That's why we need everyone to subscribe to the Potsday America YouTube channel because when people go to YouTube to learn about politics and news, we want them to see progressive content like we have, not right-wing slop that is currently dominating YouTube.

And there are asymmetric to this development for both parties, or at least for Trump and then everyone who's not Trump, because Trump wants us all to be exhausted and turn away and just feel like, I don't know what's going on.

I don't know what's true and what's not.

Like that benefits him, and that does not benefit us.

Like we, we actually need people paying attention, informed, and able to use the many platforms we have to coordinate and communicate with each other to try to figure out how to fight this.

All right.

We just had to talk about our feelings at the beginning there.

I feel unburdened slightly.

Yeah, it was good.

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All right, let's talk about the story most responsible for Trump feeling cornered lately.

His refusal to release the Epstein files and the subsequent ongoing cover-up.

J.D.

Vance was supposed to hold a strategy meeting at his residence about how to deal with the political fallout that included the kind of officials presidents usually turn to when they have political problems.

The Attorney General.

the deputy attorney general and the FBI director.

But once CNN found out that meeting was happening, Vance, in his fucking annoying, holier-than-thou way, said, Oh, it was completely fake news.

And how dare you ask that question?

Completely fake news.

What you should get better reporters.

Only for CNN to break the story just hours before we started recording that the meeting was real and it did happen just at the White House, not at J.D.

Vance's residence.

So technically, he was telling the truth.

Well, no, because they also said the meeting was canceled.

And then it turned out it actually just happened in nothing.

Canceled at his house.

Canceled it.

He canceled at his house, yes.

Well, he said he's like, it was never supposed to be a meeting at my house.

Never.

That was never the case.

Without saying

the real truth.

We also learned this week that in Ghelane Maxwell's nine hours of testimony to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Trump's former defense lawyer, she reportedly said that Trump never did anything with Epstein in her presence that concerned her.

Ghelaine Maxwell, convicted child sex trafficker, whose word you can always trust.

Perjure.

And surely those comments had nothing to do with the Trump administration's decision to relocate her from a federal prison in Florida to a minimum security facility in Texas, nicknamed Club Fed, a move that shocked even Bureau of Prisons employees.

On Tuesday, Trump finally faced some real journalists and got a question about this from CNN's Caitlin Collins.

And here's how he answered.

Two questions for you.

One, did you, were you aware of and did you personally approve the prison transfer for Ghelaine Maxwell that your Justice Department?

I didn't know about it at all.

No, I read about it just like you did.

Do you believe that she's credible to be listening to?

Your deputy attorney general sat down with her recently.

Well, he's, let me tell you, he's a very talented man.

His name is Todd Blanche.

He's a very legitimate person, very high,

just a very highly thought-of person, respected by everybody.

That seemed right to you, Dan?

Didn't really seem to answer the question there, at least the second part of the question.

He did say at one point, like, oh, it's normal.

That happens.

Yeah.

That's a thing that happens.

No, it's not a thing that happens.

You don't, you don't move convicted sex offenders to uh minimum security facilities that are known as club-fed.

That just doesn't happen.

No.

No.

No explanation.

I mean, when you read through the things that have happened this week, right?

The fact that there is some sort of

like potential assumed quid pro quo between the Trump administration and Glai Maxwell for a testimony that is favorable to Trump.

It is that there is a meeting of the people in charge of the investigation to plot political strategy for one of the close associates of the child sex trafficker at the heart of this investigation.

Loretta Lynch said hi to Bill Clinton on a tarmac.

Yeah, we got a special counsel out of it who gave us

an entire fucking

roadblocked coverage on Fox News.

Straight news reporters, pundits, the whole thing, the whole, and other, and mainstream outlets too.

It was the biggest scandal of

those couple months, Bill Clinton saying hi to Loretta Lynch on a tarmac.

I'm going to keep screaming into the void about this, but we have lost all capacity as a

society to put what Trump does into into like a larger context.

Like, I'm just going to use these sentences to describe what is happening here and just take Trump out of it.

Take the words Jeffrey Epson, and just think about how the political world would react to it.

The president of the United States was a longtime friend with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

It is discovered that the president is mentioned many times in the files that came from the investigation into that child sex trafficker.

And now the entire federal government, including the Department of Justice, is working to do everything they possibly can to prevent the public, the media, and Congress from learning about the nature of the president's relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

Including launching a criminal investigation into the president's predecessor and his administration based on absolutely nothing.

Congress had to go home because they couldn't answer questions about it.

Because they were so afraid to take a vote that would force disclosure of files that may, once again, disclose information on the president's long-term relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

And now the president's personal defense attorney is potentially granting special favors to the co-conspirator of America's most notorious child sex trafficker in order to generate favorable testimony to protect the president.

Who, along with the vice president, who hosted the meeting with the attorney general and the FBI director and everyone else, spent the campaign that they just won voluntarily promising to release the Epstein files.

Right.

This is where we fall into the trap: is that

people want to make this about hypocrisy and broken campaign promises.

It is about child sex trafficking.

That's what it is.

And this is a scandal.

And people are going to think this is hyperbolic and nuts.

I've said this a couple of times now.

This is a scandal as big as Watergate and Oran-Contra.

Right.

At its outset.

Like the fundamental proposition here is a massive government conspiracy tied to covering up information about child sex trafficking.

That is what is happening.

Seems like a big deal to me.

I mean, you know, Trump said he was worried this week about the people who might be mentioned.

I'm sure he is.

But aren't involved and who could be hurt by something that would be very, very unfortunate, very unfair to a lot of people.

Again.

You know,

let's take Donald Trump at his word here.

And none of those people that he's worried, including himself, about everyone else finding out about in these files

broke any laws.

Right.

So the cover-up is just trying not to embarrass a bunch of really rich and famous people, including the president.

Yes.

And there's a workaround to that.

Still a pretty big scandal.

And there's a workaround to that too, which is just release the mentions of Trump's name and redact other people.

If that was really your concern.

Also, as a note, according to reporting from ABC News, Todd Lanch asked Maxwell about 100 different people in the meeting.

So I'm pretty sure if they release the transcript, they will not be redacting those names.

So they're not that concerned about it.

It is a speed bump on the way to trying to protect Donald Trump from any sort of political fallout from this relationship.

Well, Dan, they don't have to redact all hundred names.

They only have to redact the names of the people who are Donald Trump and Donald Trump's closest friends and associates.

Of course.

If you're a Democrat, they don't have to redact your name.

I'm sure they will.

Some famous person who might seem like a Democrat or maybe is a rhino-Republican, they don't have to redact your name.

It's just, it's just Donald Trump's name they have to redact.

So our old buddy Norm Eisen has FOIA records relating to the transfer decision on Glene Maxwell through his group, Democracy Defenders.

Any chance we ever learn more about the mechanics of this?

I think there's a chance we'll learn more, although I'm not sure it's through FOIA because I just don't trust that the administration that's driving a Mac truck through the First, Fourth, and 14th 14th Amendment is going to adhere to the letter of the law when it comes to the Freedom of Information Acts.

But there are like...

That's where there's sticklers there.

It does seem that a lot of people had to be involved with this decision and

people seem deeply uncomfortable with it.

Like there are still like there are quotes from Bureau of Prisons employees to reporters on off the record or on background suggesting how strange this is.

So

I think we may discover what happened here, hopefully sooner rather than later.

So the House Oversight Oversight Committee, they're getting involved too.

The James Comer, he subpoenaed testimony from a bunch of high-profile Democrats and Trump detractors, including Bill and Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, Jeff Sessions, Eric Holder.

Anyone missing from the list there who might be able to shed some light on maybe past secret deals that Jeffrey Epstein received from government officials?

I mean, one person I would just mention, which I'm sure this was an oversight,

is Alex Acosta, who was Trump's labor secretary, who was was the U.S.

attorney, who cut the very specific deal that allowed Epstein to leave prison six of the seven days a week because he was on some sort of strange work release program and served almost no time for sex offenses, child sex offenses.

Well,

he is very busy now on the board of Newsmax, the right-wing television station that has leaned the hardest in the direction of...

Maybe Ghelane Maxwell is actually good.

But he also said, like, there was reporting around the decision and things he said that really deserve more explanation about how it was said that he was really connected, had high up friends, which is

why this deal, he was told to cut this deal.

He claims he made a reference to him being connected to

he is like it is comments from Acosta that are the heart of the idea that Epstein was somehow connected to intelligence.

Like he suggested that at some point.

Israeli intelligence.

Yes.

And so it's worth like he's, he'd be the first person on the list if you really wanted to get some answers.

Because had he not cut this deal, imagine all the people who would have been spared what Epstein and Maxwell did.

Because it was another decade before, more than a decade before he was actually brought to justice or arrested before dying in prison.

So you wrote a message box about all this Epstein stuff Thursday, about sort of why it's important to make sure that Trump doesn't distract us and move on to another,

move on to the next scandal or whatever he wants to move on to.

How do you think we should go about that, making sure that he doesn't distract us from this?

I think it, like, we have like limited, for all the reasons we said in our long diatribe about the broken media ecosystem.

But I think we should just have to continue to keep the pressure up.

I think when Congress comes back, that Democrats have to, at every opportunity, demand a vote, right?

Use every platform they have to do it.

And I think it really, and it gets back to just focusing on the core proposition about what is happening here.

And it is just make, like, help people understand why this is a big deal.

And just keep hammering at it, keep hammering at it, keep putting pressure on the press to do it.

Like, you can, like, there is still great reporting happening on this.

A lot of all the things we mentioned are CNN, ABC, but you can kind of feel the

Like the investigative press is working.

The political press is starting to get their August wandering eye to other stories.

Because what is really interesting to the political press, because they're not the ones like digging deep into the department, the Bureau of Prisons to find who signed the transfer order, it was two things.

One is Congress, right?

With like, what's happening in Congress?

Like, how does this affect this?

They can talk to the members about it.

They're out of town.

But the other one is tension in the Republican base.

And that tension still exists.

The polling shows it still matters with voters, but some of the most prominent voices have been brought to heal by Trump.

And like, so that takes away from the political press.

But I think we need to keep making this a political story, keep talking about it, just keep putting pressure on people as much as we possibly can.

Because I really do believe, and maybe I sound crazy, I think this is a massive, important scandal that at least we need to pull every thread to get to the bottom of.

Like, if we get through this presidency and we never know what the Epstein file said about Trump, that would stink.

Yeah, it's just, it's like it, it would be a massive failure of civil society.

I at least want to know before America ends, you know?

It's like,

what's going to happen first?

The end of the Republic or releasing the Epstein file?

It's like when a TV show gets canceled before they can bring the story to close.

That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying.

I want to get to the finale.

So there continues to be real-world evidence that the Epstein thing actually matters to real people.

Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood made the audacious and for a Republican increasingly rare decision to hold an actual town hall in his district this week.

Here's what it sounded like when the subject of accountability for Epstein came up.

Why are you covering up the Epstein files?

I am for the release of those records.

All right.

All right, Mike Flood.

We love that.

Reporters who were there said that everyone in the room, even the Republicans, were cheering for more transparency on Epstein.

But on basically every other subject, things didn't go so great for Flood.

Let's listen.

Next slide, please.

No taxes on overtime.

And more than anything, I truly believe this bill protects Medicaid for the future.

We believe it.

I can tell you, we're going to see an influx of money into Nebraska hospitals.

Sounds like a good time.

What do you think they were chanting there at the beginning?

Wasn't it tax the rich?

Tax the rich.

Thank you.

Thank you, Austin.

Thank you, Dan.

I couldn't hear.

Getting old.

So put on your strategist hat for a second.

What were your first thoughts seeing that town hall?

I think it does highlight what I believe to be probably the most underdiscussed story of the first seven months of Trump's presidency is that despite like obvious dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party, high disapproval ratings, polls that show that we want new leaders.

That despite all of that, the grassroots anti-Trump movement is as fired up as it has been since the beginning of the Trump era in politics.

So you saw this with the No Kings rally.

We've seen this in other town halls happening.

People are much more fired up.

The resistance was a big story in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020.

The press doesn't cover anymore.

It doesn't get attention, but it does exist.

It is real.

And people are fired up about what is happening.

And, you know, just pretty fired up about the the republican budget bill and the cuts to medicaid and the tax and the tax cuts for the rich and i think that can drive a lot of good political outcomes in 2026.

And to be clear, the people I was talking about earlier who are turning away, it's not the resistance.

It's the normies.

Right.

And I think that you're going to need to get, bring in some of the normies into the anti-Trump resistance movement who we didn't have before, just because the level of danger right now is so much higher than it ever has been that I think you're going to need a bigger movement than we've ever had before.

But you're absolutely right that I think the energy, and again, we're not hearing about this energy as much.

We're not seeing it as much because all of our information channels are broken, but it was good to know that it's certainly there because, you know, they're like, oh, it's Democrats that showed up.

It's like, great.

I don't care who shows up.

It's a random guy in Lincoln, Nebraska, a random congressman who decides to hold a town hall and it gets packed.

Like Annie Carney of the New York Times was there.

She lines out the door around the building like it was a presidential campaign of people trying to get in.

So whether that's, you know, Democratic energy, anti-resistance energy, anti-Trump energy from, you know, former Republicans, whatever, it's great to see.

And, you know, just a reminder, if you want to help out folks that are going to these town halls, if you want to make sure the Democrats take back the House in 2026, then just go to Vote Save America.

Our friends at at VodeSave America are ready to help you do something about it that can tell you ways to donate your time, donate your energy, donate your money to really make a difference.

So very important.

Go check out VotesaveAmerica.com.

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So, Republicans are responding to angry voters showing up at town halls by trying to pick better voters.

Trump and the rest of the MAGA establishment are hard at work trying to lock in a permanent Republican majority by rigging the congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Trump thinks this is the least we can do for him, as he said on CNBC this week.

We have an opportunity in Texas to pick up five seats.

We have a really good governor and we have good people in Texas.

And I won Texas.

I got the highest vote in the history of Texas, as you probably know.

And we are entitled to five more seats.

They're just, he's entitled.

The entitlement apparently extends way beyond Texas to any state with a Republican majority.

Conversations are happening in Missouri, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, and Indiana, where J.D.

Vance visited on Thursday to pressure the state's Republican governor, Mike Braun.

Politico reports that Republicans think they can get 10 or more House seats just by redrawing the maps.

As we've talked about, Democratic states are threatening to counter with California in the lead, but it's not clear which other states can make it happen or when or how many seats there are left to squeeze out of those maps for Democrats.

And in response to Texas Democratic legislators making the completely legal decision that has precedent to leave the state and deny Republicans a quorum to redraw the maps there, Texas Senator John Cornyn asked the FBI to hunt them down and drag them back home.

And apparently the FBI said, sure, no problem.

So that's where we are.

Now we're using federal law enforcement to scour the country for Texas Democratic state legislators so that you can forcibly bring them back to the state legislature so that the Republican governor can redraw maps to hand Donald Trump five more seats so that he can keep control of Congress.

Sounds very democratic, doesn't it?

Yeah, just it's what the founders had in mind.

Thriving, thriving democracy.

Everything is completely normal.

What do you make of all this insanity?

It's quite concerning, I'd say.

I mean, look, Republicans know the Democrats are favored in the midterms.

Right.

The map is harder than I think a lot of Democrats think, but given how Democrats turn out in midterm elections, given Trump's approval rating, just given the general thermostatic reaction where the country reacts to a new president and they go the other side,

there was always this segment of the electorate, even if they voted for Trump, who wants a check on power.

And so you would imagine that we're favored.

So what are they doing?

And the polls are bearing this out.

Yeah.

And not only bearing this out, but the margin, the Democratic margin on the generic ballot in polls has gotten larger over the last couple of months.

And it's not where it was in 2018, but it's certainly well within a place where you would expect the Democrats to have the majority.

So Republicans had some options here, right?

They could, Trump could try to do more popular things.

Trump could try to stop blowing up the economy.

Republicans could distance themselves from the unpopular president to try to improve their brand.

They're going to do none of those things, right?

What they're basically trying to do is to rig the election, to take this very extraordinary step.

of mid-decade redistricting to draw new maps to benefit them.

And they've given up all pretense of coming up with even a reason for why they're doing it.

Like it's just that Texas Republicans are doing it because Trump said to do it and Trump's doing it because Trump thinks they deserve it.

Even if it means you fundamentally do not understand math to think that you deserve it, because that's not what the election results show in Texas or elsewhere.

You know, you get this a lot from people.

Like every time I write a message box that is like, that is how something could hurt Republicans in the midterms.

The response you get from a lot of people on our side is, well, the problems will just cancel the midterms.

And it's hard to imagine how they, like, how you actually cancel elections in a country where elections are run by states.

That's like hard to fathom.

But this, you don't have to do that.

You can just pick the voters for the election in a way that helps you maintain power.

And that's what they're doing.

And it's brazen and aggressive, and it's quite dangerous.

What do you think about the potential for widespread public blowback to these moves?

Because, you know, we've

process arguments, they're hard to make.

They are, you know, process arguments about democracy and elections.

You know, we've been down this road before.

They're important to make.

They're hard to make.

They are hard to break through for people who are not paying as close attention to politics.

They're sort of hard to understand.

I bet if you polled people on like, you know, do you think

politicians should get to choose their voters?

They would say no.

But what do you think about,

what do you think people know about the extent of what's going on?

I think they know very little about the extent of what's going on.

I think Democrats can use it as a data point in a larger argument, howby Republicans have become representatives of the broken political system where politicians only care about power for themselves.

I think you can use that.

The argument, like I support the Democratic states responding because I think brute force is the only viable response here, but it is, it does make the message more murky because they can say, well, Democrats do it, Republicans do it.

This is all just

no one's going to, no one's going to look into who started it.

And I don't like, we'd have a cleaner message if California wasn't doing it, but we'd also have fewer seats.

And so like you, I would pick the latter.

I would pick having the seats rather than the cleaner message.

Yeah, I don't think this is something to campaign on.

I think this is like an inside fight that we just have to fight.

It doesn't seem realistic to expect any Republican-controlled state to resist Trump on this.

I don't know if you disagree.

And what's your current tally on who comes out ahead here?

Oh, the Republicans almost certainly come out ahead.

It's not even, I don't even think it's close because California has to go through extraordinary measures themselves just to do this.

New York, like as you guys talked about on Tuesday, Governor Hochul is talking a strong game, but it is very hard.

Experts do not believe they can get this done before the 26 midterms.

Illinois is already a state where it's very hard to get more seats out of without putting more Democrats at risk.

Maryland can get one seat, right?

You can get several, you can get a couple seats out of Missouri.

You can get five seats out of Texas.

Florida is looking at possibly getting five seats if they push forward in response to California.

Indiana can get a seat.

So I think Republicans would come out ahead.

Yeah, it seems like California can neutralize Texas, but then, you know, that's why J.D.

Vance went to Indiana, and that's why Missouri is thinking of moving ahead.

So, I mean, I guess if California neutralizes Texas, it seems most likely that then they come out a few seats ahead.

You know, we've talked about this before, but Florida has some challenges in redistricting

in time for the midterms and some of the other states, but it seems like the most doable for them are Indiana and Missouri.

Yeah.

And Ohio.

And then you get

a lot of that.

Yes.

Ohio's another one.

So that sucks.

But

they currently, what do they have?

A currently two-seat majority or whatever.

Like every seat is going to matter in this situation.

But as we've said before, and I brought up your point here on Tuesday's pod, even when they, in Texas, if they gerrymander new seats that they think are Trump plus 10 or Trump plus 15 from the 2024 results, that's not necessarily the case in 2026 when Latino voters are already shifting away from Donald Trump by pretty significant margins.

And I think in Texas, the long term, the medium to long term is even more likely devastating to them than just the short term.

Because they had the opportunity.

In Texas, they had the opportunity to draw these districts in 2021.

They specifically chose not to because they didn't want to dilute the Republican electorate across too many districts.

They were like building in, they were basically did incumbent protection because they saw changing demographics.

The changing demographics were not entirely Latino-related.

They were also suburban, you know, growing suburbs, growing exurbs, and those becoming more Democratic.

But there, I mean, there is risk in this for Republicans in the right year,

the wave washes over the dams they build.

Yeah.

Adding to the chaos, Donald Trump's announcement on Truth Social Thursday morning that he's ordering the Commerce Department to conduct a new census and that, quote, people who are in our country illegally will not be counted.

If this sounds familiar, it's because Trump tried to include a citizenship question on the 2020 census and a 5-4 Supreme Court majority said no.

So blatant violation of the Constitution to do this, which says that all persons should be counted.

Supreme Court ruled against him six years ago on this.

What's he doing here?

He's going to try again and try.

He's got a slightly different court this time.

So, you know, will that matter?

Oh, I guess because it was Roberts and the four liberal.

I guess because it was Richard against Britain.

So could he get a 6'3 out of this?

Or 5'4 in the other direction?

Maybe.

I will say if he if if he somehow gets away with not counting, violating the Constitution and not counting undocumented immigrants in the census,

places like Texas, Florida probably lose seats as well.

Yeah.

As California or New York or whatever his target is.

So it's not isn't clear that not counting undocumented immigrants absolutely benefits Trump.

It does completely, by the way, fuck up social services.

That's the bigger deal here.

There's been some studies of this which show that it would have, over the course of time, a very limited change in how House seats and electoral votes are allocated.

But the bigger thing is, is it would just radically screw over people,

screw over states and communities who have high undocumented populations.

Yes.

And not, by the way, not just the undocumented populations.

No, no, the schools.

Like

your school funding is based on the population in your community.

If you cut out a bunch of citizens on Medicaid.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's bad.

It's bad.

It's not bad.

It's bad for everyone, but particularly American citizens in states and communities that happen to have a decent number of undocumented people in that community.

One last thing on district maps.

The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to Louisiana's congressional maps and asked for a briefing on so-called majority-minority districts, a long-standing practice under the Voting Rights Act.

Can you explain for people what's at issue here and what the consequences would be?

Yeah, this is a five-alarm fire because Section 2 of the Voting Rights Access, you cannot deny someone or dilute political power based on race.

In its most nefarious way, in the past, they would draw the districts in a way to dilute the black vote to the point that

it was like spread out so thin over every district that there was no political power.

And the way that this was remedied when people sued that these maps were violations of the Voting Rights Act was you would create a majority-minority district, which is why in the southern states like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, that are very Republican but have large black populations, their Democrats have a couple of seats because they've drawn these majority and minority districts.

Like Alabama has two Democratic seats.

Mississippi has one Democratic seat.

Just to give you, like, I don't think people realize how large a part of the population these southern states, black people are.

One in four people in Alabama is black.

One in three people in Mississippi are black.

And so if they strike down, if they say that majority and minority districts are a violation of the Equal Protection Clause, then we will lose seats almost every Democratic seat in the deep South because they will just divide the black vote up in a way that suggests that there will be no representation for the black community, no representation for Democrats from these.

It is a

huge, huge deal.

And it would be the complete fall of the Voting Rights Act.

It's like the last thing remaining as the Roberts court has chipped away at it year after year after year.

If they take this down, that will be the end of it.

Yeah,

I guess the only potential reason for hope is that they have looked at Voting Rights Act stuff before and as they chipped away at the whole Voting Rights Act, they have not touched this yet.

But again, maybe, you know, I don't know if we've seen a case with this court, with this composition yet on this.

So who knows?

But it's quite concerning, is what I'd say.

So Trump isn't just trying to stop counting immigrants.

He's, of course, also trying to deport as many as possible.

Here in L.A., ICE agents are now jumping out of the back of Penske rental trucks at Home Depots to arrest any Brown people they suspect of not having papers, which Mayor Karen Bass says is violating a court order prohibiting the government from racially profiling.

The Trump administration has now asked the Supreme Court to take a look at that temporary restraining order so that they can go about racially profiling all that they like.

So that's stay tuned on that one.

In Texas, the new Fort Bliss detention camp is about to start holding at least 1,000 people in tent-like facilities and will ultimately hold up to 5,000, making it the largest detention camp in the country.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also approved the use of military bases in Indiana and New Jersey for the same thing.

The Trump administration is also bringing back their family separation policy by telling parents they have a choice.

They can either be detained and deported without their kids or leave the country with them.

The New York Times has found at least nine cases where families have been separated.

The administration is also now targeting pro bono immigration lawyers for the first time.

DOJ is currently trying to sanction Joshua Schroeder for the crime of challenging the deportation of his client in court.

So now they're sending a message not just to the big law firms, but to lawyers who are doing pro bono work for immigrants.

And Ice Barbie herself, Christy Noam, announced this week that there's no age limit, no more age limit or college degree required if you want to mask up and join Stephen Miller's secret police force.

The Department of Homeland Security actually tweeted, quote, serve your country, defend your culture.

No undergraduate degree required.

One person who signed up to defend his culture, actor Dean Kane, last seen playing Superman on a series that ended in 1997, he said he'll be signing up to serve ICE.

So Dean Kane, newest ICE agent.

Dan, are you ready to defend your culture?

Amidst the freak out of the Sydney Sweeney ad where everyone was talking about the

Nazi, you know, Nazi

eugenics.

The use of the term culture here is that is not coded language, that is as explicit as you could possibly be about what we're talking about.

I thought we were talking about crime.

I thought the whole thing was we want to protect our borders, we want to keep Americans safe, and or maybe we want to

make sure that, you know, if you're further to the right on immigration, you want to make sure that these undocumented immigrants aren't taking jobs from American citizens or benefits from American citizens.

That was an argument at one point.

Now we're just straight to culture.

What culture are we defending?

What culture do they think we're defending?

Yeah, there's a real, it's a very interesting follow-up question here for the people who tweeted this out and the people who are in the city.

Yeah, please, please.

Please describe the culture that you think we're defending.

Is it Stephen Miller's culture?

Is it Donald Trump's culture?

I guess it's like the culture of just making a bunch of money off your public office.

Is that the culture?

It's the culture of white Christian people.

That's what it means.

White Christian people.

That's what it means.

That That is.

Billionaires?

Is that the culture?

People who can take as much as they can possibly get based on how much power they have?

I mean, this is just, it is a very common phrase used by people pushing neo-Nazi, white supremacist, eugenics-based ideas.

Like, that is what that's what they're saying.

It's like, it's not even like we used to do a lot of like, oh, he said, he's winking to the proud boys.

And it's like, that's not even that.

Like, the people, they're not winking.

Like, this is what they believe.

This is not like some clever political signal to get the Proud Boys to support drop.

This is just the people in charge now believe this.

Like, it doesn't even occur to them to not use this language.

Like, it is, it is what is what they, there's no subtlety here.

I know.

And it's, it is not like a random Republican politician is tweeting this.

It's not even like some White House staffer.

This is the Department of Homeland Security, the name Homeland Security.

It's supposed to be about keeping America safe, not about defending your culture.

A culture that, if anything, is about a place where anyone can become a citizen and we're a multi-racial, multi-ethnic country of 300 million people.

I thought that was our culture.

Apparently Stephen Miller thinks no.

I'm going to a preview of my conversation with Pete Budigej this weekend on the Sunday show.

I showed him a clip, a very disturbing clip of a J.D.

Vance speech that he gave at the Claremont Institute over the July 4th holiday, where J.D.

Vance actually says that the Declaration of Independence and the ideals in the Declaration of Independence are over-inclusive, over-inclusive.

And that should not be, America should not just be thought of as a creedal nation based on an idea, based on a belief.

Because if you believe in the Declaration of Independence and what it says in there, that could mean a billion foreign citizens trying to come into America just because they believe in the ideals of America.

And we can't have that.

It's fucking wild, man.

It is not.

It's

a longer conversation to be had about J.D.

Vance because I know, I know.

There's a lot going on.

I started to have it with Pete, but I could, I could have, I could have a much longer conversation about J.D.

Vance because also this week, by the way, Trump said he is the most likely heir apparent to the MAGA movement.

Though then he made sure he got in a Marco Rubio mention because he likes to.

play reality TV host there and he's he's setting up the competition for 28, but he did say he's the most likely heir.

So it will be with, unfortunately, J.D.

Vance will be around for a while.

Hard to believe, but we've saved what's potentially the most dangerous news of the week for last.

Secretary Brainworms Jr.

announced that the Health and Human Services Department will be pulling the plug on federal research into mRNA vaccines that are currently being developed for the flu, COVID, cancer, and other conditions.

Kennedy claimed that mRNA vaccines aren't effective against upper respiratory infections, despite the fact that they saved millions of lives during a pandemic that was about an upper respiratory infection.

Donald Trump used to take credit for mRNA as one of his signature accomplishments.

Here's how we responded.

We're reminded of that this week.

You were the driving force behind Operation Warp Speed, these mRNA vaccines that are the gold standard.

Now your health secretary is pulling back all the funding for research.

He's saying that the risks outweigh the benefits, which puts him at odds with the entire medical community and with you.

What is going on?

Research on what?

Into mRNA vaccines.

Well, we're going to look at that.

We're talking about it, and they're doing a very good job.

And, you know, that is a past.

Operation Warp Speed was, whether you're Republican or Democrat, considered one of the most incredible things ever done in this country.

But, you know, that was now a long time ago.

And we're on to other things.

So one of the many, many experts sounding the alarm about this reversal.

That includes Trump's...

first surgeon general was tweeting about it this week as well.

But one of the other experts is Dr.

Michael Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and the author of the upcoming book, The Big One, How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics.

He spoke with Dan just before we recorded.

Here's that interview.

Mike Osterholm, welcome to Pod Save America.

Thanks.

Appreciate being here.

So earlier this week, The Trump administration canceled $500 million in grants for the development of mRNA vaccines.

You called this one of the most dangerous public health decisions you've seen in your career.

How will this set us back?

Well, it actually sets us back in several ways, but let me just land on the most important and one of real significance.

And that is that today we are really poorly prepared globally for an influenza pandemic.

If we were to have a really truly big one like 1918,

it would exceed anything we saw with COVID.

And there is a way to get better prepared, and that is to to have vaccines that you could quickly make and deploy.

Right now, globally, our capability of making flu vaccine is at about 2 billion doses in 15 to 18 months.

And what I mean by doses, I'm talking about two vaccinations per person.

So basically, three-quarters of the world would not have vaccine in the first 18 months, and some of them would never see it.

That's just because we have this very outdated 1950s technology for making flu vaccine and chicken eggs.

Well, along comes RNA.

And

the mRNA right now that we see is a perfect candidate for making flu vaccine.

And some of the early research surely supports that.

If we had that vaccine available at the time of the next pandemic, we could probably make enough for the world within 12 months.

which would fundamentally change the whole game around an influenza pandemic.

That now has pretty much been thrown out the window with this new change, as the U.S.

government will not be basically supporting overall

mRNA vaccine work.

And more importantly, they continue to support a type of research that has been going on since the 1950s.

Salk himself was involved with it.

And it's really unfortunate because we just don't see a lot of upside on this particular vaccine, but that's what they're now counting on at NIH.

Yeah, I guess that's my question, right?

The critics of RNA vaccines or mRNA vaccines say that

they don't catch mutations, that there's questions about them, and they want to go back to whole virus vaccines the way we used to do it.

One, how do you respond to

the questioning of the efficacy or safety of mRNA vaccines?

And what are the downsides of going back to the old way of doing it?

Well, first of all, the old way of doing it was no longer used because it didn't work all that well.

Actually, believe it or not, a split cell vaccine, which we have now, is where we break the virus up a bit, is actually provides more contact with different parts of the virus that would otherwise be protected as a whole virus that gives you a better immune response.

So, we've abandoned host cell, you know, 40 years ago because it was not providing us with good results.

Somehow, I think there are some that now believe that just because it's in the hands of the current leadership at the NIH, it's suddenly going to change and be different.

We don't know how.

Our center actually is responsible for tracking all influenza vaccine work in the world.

And we have a website that's maintained that actually today you can go on it and find out exactly every product that's out there, where it's at in terms of its research, what phases it in, what it's dealing with.

And so we really have some expertise in flu vaccine evaluation.

And I can tell you that the virus from the NIH at this point does not even rank anywhere near

of interest to most researchers at all.

You know, obviously $500 million is a lot of money.

Can the private sector step in here?

Are the pharmaceutical companies continue to develop these vaccines?

Or do they need government support to do it?

Well, this is where it gets more complicated.

And I say that because number one is that there was about $500 million

already put in by industry.

And that, I think, is going to evaporate quickly because the handwriting's on the wall.

Why invest in something for which the U.S.

government is not going to support or move forward?

And so if anything, we've lost a lot more than $500 million

in terms of

research dollars.

The second thing is it's just going to have a dampening effect, I think, on a number of biotech sides in the United States because they see this uncertainty.

You know, we've heard people talk about the business impact of the terrorists.

It's about the uncertainty.

Well, now there's even more uncertainty about what this administration will do, not based on science, but largely based on ideology.

What will they do?

And so I think you're going to see a lot of companies that would otherwise be in this business actually getting out or moving to a country outside the United States.

And so...

I mean, you brought up influenza several times here.

We are right now

watching very carefully bird flu in this country with obviously fears that it could be communicable to humans.

I assume this affects that, our efforts to prepare for that as well.

It does.

And it's really important when we talk about influenza.

We're talking about all the viruses, whether it be bird flu or seasonal flu, whatever that goes on and causes the pandemic.

But let me also remind people, as much as they don't want to hear this, and they surely don't find it necessarily moving because they just don't believe it.

But one of the concerns that we've had is that the kind of coronavirus that we had with COVID was not the worst of the worst of the viruses.

This particular virus actually was highly infectious, but actually killed at about a rate of about one to one and a half percent of the population that it infected.

If you look at SARS and MERS, two other coronaviruses, SARS hitting in 2003 in China, spreading around the world somewhat and brought under control, MERS taking off 2012, you know, we saw it too.

Those viruses killed between 20 and 35% of the people, but they weren't that infectious.

And so we were were able to contain them.

It wasn't like dealing, it was like dealing with a wildfire.

It wasn't like dealing with the wind.

Well, in the last few months, we've now identified a new coronavirus in a bat in China that actually has the characteristics of transmission like COVID and has the ability to kill like SARS and MERS.

So it's got the two worst things you'd want to see in one virus.

That virus could be the cause of a pandemic tomorrow, which imagine instead of having one and a half percent of the population dying, you're now talking about 20, 25%.

That is not just scary talk.

That is real.

You know, nobody wanted to believe the COVID pandemic was going to occur.

Look what it did.

And now I'm telling you, we need to be better prepared just for what could be a much worse kind of pandemic.

And is it that this technology, like, would you start developing a vaccine for that now?

Or is it just when that possibly became a pandemic, the capacity to quickly spin up a vaccine goes down because we are not supporting the development of these vaccines.

The answer is yes and yes.

What I mean by that is that

our goal with both influence and coronavirus vaccines is to get ones that are more universal.

They would cover a broad brush of them.

And that's actually part of this work that we've been doing with the vaccine roadmaps.

And so wouldn't it be ideal if you had a vaccine that you could take and eight years later, suddenly a pandemic breaks out with a totally different virus, but you still have protection.

So we're working on that very thing.

In the meantime, if you can't get that, at least what you want to have is the capability of making an effective vaccine against the virus that emerged, and you can make it in such quantity quickly enough that you can actually have an impact around the world.

You know, we say often, and it may sound trite, but it's really critical: vaccines are important, but not that important until they become a vaccination.

And so, the key feature is going to be: can we get people to take it?

Which was actually the third point I was going to make about Mr.

Kennedy's comments.

He, you know, again,

created fear in the minds of many people by what he said.

These vaccines aren't safe.

The benefits do not outweigh the risks.

You know, you leave people with statements like that that are just factually not true.

Of course, that's going to diminish interest in the vaccines.

If there are people out there who are, you know, we now have the federal government of the United States spreading anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine misinformation.

If people

have questions, you know, concerns, like where should they go to get good information about vaccines right now?

Well, this is one of the challenges.

The federal government's agencies used to be one of the most reliable sources, NIH, NCDC.

You can't trust them now.

You can't.

There's some very incredibly qualified people who still work there.

Not everybody's gone.

But the problem is that the leaderships in both cases are now ones, the people who are inserting into whatever they put out, ideologic information, not scientific information.

And so that's a challenge.

I think it's going to be places, and I surely don't want to sound self-servant here, but our center, for example, has a major website presence where we have news every day.

It's current every hour.

And so there's places you can go get that.

The information is linked, not just what's on our site, but whatever credible information is out there.

So we kind kind of do the actual evaluation of should this information be linked.

So there are places like that.

There are centers

at Brown, there's a center at Johns Hopkins, there's our center that are providing, I think, the information that people can count on and use.

Well, Dr.

Osterholm, I would say when I heard this announcement, I thought it was bad.

But now after talking to you, I realize it's really, really bad and I'm quite concerned.

But thank you very much for this information.

It's important for our listeners to know the consequences of these decisions coming out of HHS.

Thanks, Dan.

We're going to go to a quick break, but one reminder before we do that.

If you need an outlet for all the rage you're feeling processing the news, highly recommend Hysteria's YouTube series, This Fucking Guy.

Every month, Hysteria hosts Aaron Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonico take a deep dive into the worst people in politics.

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The show has covered Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Stephen Miller, my buddy, and lots more.

But the new episode of this fucking guy is all about DHS secretary, Ice Agent cosplayer, and noted dog killer, Christy Noam.

Wow, exciting.

Also, check out this week's South Park.

Great, great Christy Gnome content, which...

We covered on our YouTube channel, the Pod Save America YouTube channel.

You should check it out.

Subscribe to the Pod Save America YouTube channel because, you know, when people are searching for Sidney Sweeney Discourse, we don't want Megan Kelly's show to come up.

We want Pod Save America to come up, right?

That's

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all right a few hopefully lighter items before we go starting with a a quick check-in on what those zany cuomo brothers are up to uh

so there's andrew uh who's refusing to take no for an answer from the voters of new york in his quizotic mission to run for mayor as an independent.

And we learned this week that he may get some help in that mission from another New Yorker who doesn't take no for an answer when he loses, Donald Trump.

The New York Times reports that Trump is considering getting more involved in the mayor's race and that he and Cuomo spoke by phone after the primary.

Cuomo, who's trying to sell himself as the hard-boiled vet who can take on Trump, also told business leaders this week that he actually doesn't want to fight with Trump and he thinks they'll basically see eye to eye.

So, Dan,

I'm no political expert here.

Is Donald Trump's endorsement the one you're looking for when you're trying to win over the voters of New York City?

Is that a helpful endorsement in New York?

I would Donald Trump made gains in New York City in 2024, but he still got his ass kicked.

And so it's sort of a crazy thing.

Like it just speaks to the absolute cynicism of Andrew Cuomo, which is his path to victory is essentially being the Republican nominee who then gets a slice of the Democratic electorate.

And so that's why he doesn't want to fight Trump anymore.

He's trying to get Curtis Sleewa's votes and some of Eric Adams' votes.

That's how that's his coalition.

There is no path for him as the candidate of independence and some Democrats.

He knows he can't win with Democrats.

And so he's completely changing his stripes.

He ran as the guy, the one guy who was tough enough to take on Trump.

But now that the voters said no way, he's changing entirely who he is in a last-ditch, pitifully desperate attempt to win election.

How excited do you think Zoran Mamdani is?

about Trump potentially getting involved in the city.

He did a little press available about this, and the excitement seemed palpable, I would say.

Their campaign must be like, yes, more.

Please come campaign for Andrew Cuomo or Eric Adams or both or neither.

Just come to New York.

Say nice things about him.

So unfortunately, that wasn't the only Cuomo in the news this week.

Andrew's equally brilliant brother, Chris,

former CNN anchor, now News Nation anchor, he attacked AOC on Twitter this week over a video of a speech she gave on the House floor about the Sydney Sweeney jeans ad.

The only problem, The video was a deep fake, clearly identified as such, and only sounded like a real speech if you're an absolute fucking moron.

Here's a sample.

Sidney Sweeney looks like an Aryan goddess.

And the American Eagle Jeans campaign is blatant Nazi propaganda.

I mean, fuck.

Watching that sultry little temptress squeeze into a Canadian tuxedo, three sizes too small.

with her bouncy little fun bags on the screen staring at you, piercing through the core of your soul, with those ocean blue eyes that could resurrect the Fuhrer from his grave in Argentina.

Honestly, it gets better, worse, better, funnier.

So the younger Cuomo posted an outraged reaction, reading, nothing about Hamas.

What?

Or people burning Jews' cars, but Sweeney Genezad?

Deserve time on floor of Congress?

What happened to this party?

I'm just speaking like this because the spellings were all over the place.

Lots of typos.

Fight for small business, not for small culture wars.

He really unloaded a lot in one tweet.

After being mocked by the entire internet, not often the entire internet comes together for something anymore, but they did for this.

Called out by AOC herself, Cuomo replied with a sort of apology, not really, reading in part, quote, you are correct.

That was a deep fake, but it really does sound like you.

No, it doesn't.

Before doubling down on the Hamas thing, demanding that she send him a video of her demanding that Hamas surrender immediately.

So that's it.

We just all got to, everyone send your videos of you calling on Hamas to surrender to Chris Cuomo by EOD.

Thank you.

So I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I watched a three-minute clip of Chris Cuomo from his show addressing this controversy.

Yes.

Now, I watched it on the internet because I would not know how to to find it.

That's a you're a real sick.

If you told me that the winning lottery numbers for tomorrow's Powerball were going to be a broadcast on News Nation tonight, I would not be able to get that.

I would not be any richer.

But I watched it, and I would say I know Chris Cuomo a little bit because I used to do political workout with him.

He used to used to spot him.

Never invited me to the gym.

I was not a spotter for him, but I used to do CNN.

Like, I was a CNN political commentator for a few years.

And

like the sh the like America's centrist Jimbro

is a lot, but I actually really thought he would just like genuinely apologize and just say like I fucked up.

Like that is something I think in the past he might have done before he was fired from his job for advising his brother on his brother's scandals while he was at CNN.

But it's here nor there.

But he didn't.

The three-minute clip is basically that, is that tweet.

He's just, he just, he says, I, I messed up.

It was a deep fake.

It was AI, but how it like, but it sounded like her.

And then he went on a tirade about how

she

has not demanded that Hamas surrender, which is the one thing Hamas has said they're waiting for.

I'm telling you, they are in the tunnels.

Yes.

And they are like, if enough people on social media, libs especially, call for us to surrender, we're coming out of those tunnels with our hands up.

I mean,

this war could be over.

Yep.

Unfucking real.

Speaking of the Sidney Sweeney controversy.

Oh, yes.

we here at Pod Save America, we found ourselves in the middle of a right-wing discourse on it this week.

My fault.

I started it.

Yeah, it is your fault.

Please enjoy the following clip of Megan Kelly and Charlie Kirk appraising our merits.

My own thought on it is, having engaged in a back and forth at length with one of the Pod Save America guys last night, again, who remains a mystery to me.

The only one I know is that Tommy guy.

I don't know the other ones.

And this guy seemed genuinely hurt that I didn't know who he was after arguing with him.

Nanny Ven, one of the other guys.

Tommy Venner

something, I think.

Maybe one of these days you'll solo a show and then I'll learn your name.

But until then, you're just one of the pod save America guys.

Sorry.

Never

testosterone group of complainers and whiners.

But please continue, Megan.

I don't know.

Where do you want to begin there?

I mean, I don't know why I don't ask him this day, but Tommy, what's going on?

Yeah, I mean, I asked Tommy.

What's the backstory?

He refuses to disclose.

Oh, does he?

Yeah.

And the way she said, Tommy, it was very, it was very loving.

In an otherwise pretty tough couple seconds for Megan, it was like, except Tommy.

I know Tommy.

Yeah, it's very strange.

I would also say, what I'm most, am I outraged by the low testosterone thing?

No.

No, I don't.

What I am outraged by is that she does not know about the fucking hit podcast, Offline with Jon Favreau, a solo podcast with your goddamn name in it.

This isn't a big thing either, but we're using solo as a verb now.

We're soloing?

Yeah, I think that's a verb.

I think when you are in music and podcasting, I think you solo.

She's soloing.

Okay, I'll give her that then.

I will say her bit to me

about not knowing me, like, I don't give a fuck if Megan Kelly ever knows me or I talk to her or whatever.

Just doesn't matter.

But the bit just seems really weird and forced to me.

Like, she spent a good part of her day responding to me on Twitter a person she has followed on Twitter for years and has replied to before and the reason she knows my name is because it's right there in the Twitter account that she was replying to for several hours I mean that was a wild use of your time of your time

well you know what I don't get into Twitter fights anymore that I don't think I can win.

And this one was so fucking ridiculous because it started with Megan Kelly lashing out at Beyonce in a Levi's ad.

And the people who told us for a couple weeks that the left was losing their mind over Sidney Sweeney and jeans and how fucking crazy, she decided to then go crazy over Beyonce in a Levi's ad.

Called her fake, called her fame fake, called her success fake.

Beyonce, who has just like one of the most talented, successful people in the world.

And it's like, you can, you can not like her music if you don't want, but what what are you doing and my only response to megan which wasn't really a response to her but i was like here's the thing you take a poll of the country and i don't know 80 90 of people would be like i like the sydney sweeney ad i like the beyonce ad i like both of them or at the very least i don't dislike either of them because most people are normal and megan kelly is not

as are all the people fighting about this online i sent you some polling that buttressed your argument with Megan Kelly.

Did you use that?

Did you reply with that?

No, because then I saw the New York Times story did a whole, they did an analysis of social media about this that just a Times story just ran.

And, you know, my whole contention was this isn't a real fight.

This is a couple people on the left posted TikToks and tweets about this.

The right then saw those lefties.

I don't even know if they're lefties, the people who complained about the Sydney Sweeney ads who were saying it was, you know,

eugenics or Nazi or whatever.

And then the right found those, and then they decided to do a couple weeks of roadblocked coverage of this quote-unquote scandal.

A bunch of media outlets wrote about the scandal.

They did not necessarily criticize Sidney Sweeney.

I believe that in terms of media outlets, it was like one MSNBC op-ed on their on their page and like one Washington Post story.

That's about it.

And then everyone else wrote about the controversy.

So the New York Times said, in fact, by the time right-wing users were in an uproar, only a few few thousand posts on X mentioned Ms.

Sweeney, according to data by Tweetbinder, a social media analytics company.

Fewer than 10% of those expressed clear criticism of the actress or ad, according to the analysis by The Times, which used AI to help flag posts for review.

Lovely.

Overall, there were three times as many posts supportive of the campaign and Ms.

Sweeney on X as there were posts critical of them in the days after the campaign began.

An analysis by The Times showed.

Nearly three-quarters of posts that were critical of Ms.

Sweeney or the ad had fewer than 500 views.

Here's my question to you.

Why are you telling me this?

Why are you telling me this?

Why aren't you telling Megan Kelly this?

Well, I did.

Well, I call her Laura Ingram now.

Actually, today I called her Ann Coulter because we're just, I'm just going to do that now.

And so I did post the screenshots from the piece in my last exchange with Megan right before I came in here.

I know.

So

you don't know if she's been replying to it.

I don't know.

No, I don't know.

That's exciting.

Jane Costen, our what a day host came into the office yesterday, come into my office yesterday and said, please stop, stop arguing with Megan Kelly.

And I promised Jane I would.

But then the time story came and it was too good not to, it was too good not to post.

And also, I wasn't going to talk about this.

And then Megan did what Elijah predicted she would do and decided to talk about the whole Twitter controversy on her show with Charlie Kirk.

Left me no choice.

Yeah, that's fair.

I just would like to remind our listeners that every year we do our New Year's resolutions and we all had different things we're planning to do.

Mine was related to my physical and mental health.

I think love it wanted to read more books.

I can't even imagine what earnest thing Tommy had.

And yours was to post more.

And you, for the first time, are crushing it.

I've never, I've never made a New Year's resolution that I have kept more than this one.

Well, which is a great bounce back from your, I'm going to volunteer more from last year.

It's like giving up broccoli for Lent, you know?

You're just like, lean into it.

Next year will be drink more.

It's perfect.

That's our show for today.

Thanks to Dr.

Michael Osterholm for coming on.

I'll be back in the feed on Sunday talking with Pete Buddijej and answering some of your questions.

Be sure to check it out.

Have a great weekend.

If you want to listen to Pod Save America ad-free or get access to our subscriber Discord and exclusive podcasts, consider joining our Friends at the Pod community at crooked.com slash friends or subscribe on Apple Podcasts directly from the Pod Save America feed.

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Pod Save America is a crooked media production.

Our producers are David Toledo, Emma Illick-Frank, and Saul Rubin.

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How hard is it to kill a planet?

Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Are we really safe?

Is our water safe?

You destroyed our town.

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

We call things accidents.

There is no accident.

This was 100%

preventable.

They're the result of choices by people.

Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.

These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

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You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad-free right now in the Wondry app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.

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