Pod Save America - “Darkest before the Omicron.”

The White House gets ready to fight a new variant and the same old Republican Party, Brown University Dean of Public Health Dr. Ashish Jha discusses what we know and don’t yet know about Omicron, and actor Kal Penn stops by to chat about his new book, You Can’t Be Serious, and play another round of Take Appreciator.

For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.

Duration: 1h 12m
Broadcast on: 30 Nov 2021
Audio Format: other

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe vs Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Litman, and each week on Strix scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strix scrutiny every Monday wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pate of America, I'm John Favre. I'm John Levitt, I'm Tommy Vithor. On today's show, the White House gets ready to fight a new variant in the same old Republican party. Dr. Ashish Jha is back to discuss what we know and don't yet know about Omicron, and our friend Cal Penn is here in the studio to chat about his new book and join us for a round of Take Appreciator. But first, check out the latest episode of offline. I talk to Kirkhead's own DeRay McKesson, who makes the case that Twitter can sometimes be a force for good. How about that? And make sure to catch up on the latest episode of Hysteria with Aaron Ryan and Melissa Master Monaco. Their recent guests have included Katie Couric, Monica Lewinsky, Amanda Knox, Pramila Jayapal, and more. Hysteria drops every Thursday and offline drops every Sunday right here on your Pod Save America feed. Alright, let's get to the news. Here's what the White House needs to do right now. Avoid a government shutdown by Friday. Avoid a catastrophic debt default within a month or so. Get Joe Biden's economic agenda through the Senate and deal with rising prices and following approval ratings by finally ending the pandemic, which may have just become more difficult with the emergence of a new covid variant called Omicron, a development that the president addressed this morning. This variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic. We have the best vaccine in the world, the best medicines, the best scientists, and we're learning more every single day. And speaking on behalf of millions of Americans, the president also mispronounced the name of the new variant multiple times. It's called the Omicron. Omicron, the Omicron variant, the face, the Omicron variant. I hear you, man. Either Omicron turns out to be not as worrying or, and then he won't need to know it, or it turns out to be the thing that may bring down his presidency, in which case he will learn it. I think this will work itself out. Yeah, this part of it. So early state, much like everything else, early stages, wait and see. All right, we're, we're going to leave the epidemiology to Dr. Jha in the next segment. But let's start with the politics. There were a few stories over the break about how White House officials are blaming covid for all the economic and political challenges they now face, including a quote from Jen Psaki saying quote, we're still in the middle of fighting a pandemic and people are sick and tired of that. We are too. Amen, Jen. Tommy, what extent do you buy that diagnosis of their problems? I buy it completely. I mean, you're buying. I'm a buyer. I'm a buyer, John. You hear economists making this argument, not just political leaders, but also we all just watched this happen. We watched the government shut down our economy on purpose to try to manage the pandemic and then we watched it in our own lives. I mean, my personal consumption habits are nowhere close to normal. We all used to travel what once a month. That was fun. That was fun. Not doing that anymore. Airplanes? I don't even like airplanes and I've still missed that. I do too. I used to do more shopping in person, go to more restaurants, go to more bars, order less stuff online. Our office here at Crooked Media is not fully back to normal. Sex parties. Personal anxiety that isn't back to normal. So yeah, like I'm no supply chain or employment expert, but it does seem like us as a country bumping along with 70,000 cases a day is creating some real economic challenges. And then people fighting the Biden sex party mandate. Yeah, the county by county mask mandates, the worker shortage. I mean, you got to fix all that before you can fix the economy. Love it. You buying it? Yes, I am buying it. I think it's necessary. Finally, getting another side of the pandemic is necessary, but not sufficient for restoring Biden's popularity. There's a reason his popularity was that it's most when we were at the beginning of the row out of the vaccines.

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