Across Ireland, over 18000 apprentices are delivering key skills and talent to help drive Irish businesses. And right now, employers can avail about 3000 euro payment for every new apprentice they recruit before the end of June 2021. Discover discovered generation apprenticeship can support your business. Visit Apprenticeship Daudzai now an initiative of the government of Ireland. Hi, folks, it's Rick Wilson and welcome to The Daily Beast, the new abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly John Fast, a left wing pundit and editor at large at The Daily Beast.

I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best selling author and full time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer.

I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F bombs and try to keep our kids, pets and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Wow.

I was just reading The New York Times that I saw two familiar names in it today.

And who could it have been, Jesse? Yeah, I would like to my favorite podcast host, would it be Molly John Fast and Rick Wilson. Why? I feel like we've made it to the big time.

Well, I think the journalist was like, you're a former Republican. And I was like, you know, I was like, I never voted Republican in my life.

Well, it has certainly been a weekend of great joys for the Trump family since Thursday night. The Lincoln Project put up a billboard in Times Square.

It turns out that Ivonka does not like having her face on billboards when talking about coronavirus deaths.

Weirdly, I mean, I would have thought that she she would have enjoyed it. But if it's covered, it has to be good. By the way, it's like the picture of her from the Goya beans and then the covid death suggested. So when did you get the lawyer's letter to tell us?

Every so on Friday night, we received a letter from Jovanka attorneys. Actually, they're Trump's attorneys. And from what we're hearing, it was Trump who told Kassovitz Marquez with their attorney to sue us or to threaten to sue us. Do you think he saw it? Oh, absolutely. He was blowing up on social media. And I know that Gerard never saw it because they went squealing like a stuck hog. And so they went out of their minds, which is, of course, what we expect.

This is not unsurprising in many ways. And so Kasowitz sent this letter, which is best read in the voice of Bane.

We represent Mr. Jared Kushner, who unca troub. I write to you concerning the false malicious and who told them they can produce is displayed on billboards in Times Square and billboard ads are not immediately removed. We will show you what will doubtless be enormous pressure to punitive damages. Sincerely, Mark Kassovitz. And essentially, our attorney, Matt Sanderson, sent back a response that I know I'm not an attorney and I don't even play one on TV, but I believe the essence of the letter boiled down into the simplest of terms is go fuck yourself.

This is a pure First Amendment matter.

It is political speech, which is the most highly protected form of First Amendment speech. It is unequivocally within our ambit to do this. And we'll talk more about Mr. Kasowitz shortly. But the idea that the guy who is used to intimidating strippers and porn stars and various rando girlfriends of Donald Trump into shutting up was going to step to the Lincoln project with that same fucking attitude. Good luck.

Good luck. So you'd taken down the billboard, is what you're saying?

No. In fact, the billboard remains up even as we speak, as we're recording this in the middle of the afternoon on Monday for you East Coasters, the ivonka billboard is briefly blank. It is only blank right now because they're updating the death toll count that appears on the billboard every day. Enjoy a.

Can we just talk about the second they are the naysayers. I don't know any of them, but the naysayers who say, you know what, New York is a blue state. Why are you doing this? Explain why you're doing this.

Because I think it's important to be sad because a big part of our operations are not the biggest, but a meaningful part has been from the beginning to disrupt the leadership of the Trump campaign and a Trump world and to cause Donald Trump himself to poop his diaper and to cause these people to lose their minds. OK, by pinning down Jared and Ivanka Thursday and Friday of last week and by distracting Donald Trump for several hours of Friday last week and by being in his head still all through the weekend.

And today, we know that this sort of psychological warfare is an element of the campaign that you can't buy. You can't buy this sort of thing unless you are strategically smart about how you deploy it. So it's the eve of battle and two of the generals of Trump's army have now been paralyzed. They have thought of nothing else for the last several days. And Molly, you're quote in the Times was a chef's kiss perfection. They know that they are now so tart and so stained by what they've done in the White House.

They will never go to the Met gala again.

We've talked about this before. It's almost like giving. You've actually said that. It's like why you give money to Mitch McConnell's challenger, right?

You drag off resources, attention, time, focus from what they should be fighting and you make them fight the battles you want them to fight. Think of me as kind of like a redneck Sun Tzu, and I may not want to understand them as well as I do, but I do understand them as well as I do. And so we were also able to raise a meaningful amount of money at Lincoln Project taught us over the weekend and put it right back into digital advertising against Donald Trump.

And that's going to be going into Florida and South Carolina. The money we raised over the weekend will be in Florida and South Carolina, South Carolina in the Senate race against Lindsay, Florida, in additional advertising for seniors talking about covid. So the fact that Washington is full of strategists who've never strategized or created a strategy in a campaign, I was er quoting guys and they don't understand what we're doing and how we're doing. It is impressively dumb. It takes like a willful amount of dumb not to understand that we don't do anything randomly.

We're never trolling because we know we'll always put a fish on the hook. We know it every time we know what we're going to do to them. And we did it again in the words of the political philosopher Britney Spears, oops, I did it again.

I thought that the quote in that New York Times piece, the Staten Island guy, was like, they'll never work in the Republican Party again. I thought that. Oh, no. Romey in the briar patch. Yeah. I don't you know, I thought you were sure that Mitch was going to hire you. So on Sunday morning, I don't know.

If you watch Jake Tapper show, I did watch Jake Tapper drag Mr. Meadows to the whip and shed and deliver a beating that will take weeks to heal and special ointments. You know, hell hath no fury like a Jake Tapper scorned.

Listen, the thing about Jake is he's sort of like the Hulk. You don't want to see him angry.

There's been some talk about this, but not in my mind. Enough. Mark Meadows said the quiet part, lad. He said, we're no longer trying to control this virus, right? Yeah, we're done. Goodbye, Grandma. Right.

I think that was a source of of Jake Tapper's righteous anger. I mean, that you can see the expression on his face when Meadow said that and it was there was like a switch. And he clearly and correctly, in my view, called Meadow's bullshit on it. Yeah, I thought it was kind of amazing that we had a situation where he was like, we can't control the spread. It's very contagious. Like, Oh, really? Okay, well, I'll make is give up.

Oh, yes. And thank you for bringing that up in late October. Yeah. You think. You know, I think the funny thing is they're not even bothering to try to contain it.

They are in fact now a primary disease vector with this aggressive super spreader rally scheduled for week super spreader USA, the one the only the original monster Kofax, get there early to get exposed. First come first served experience in person, the virus that killed nearly a quarter of a million Americans, first seven hundred and fifty and get a free make the usable again at ten lucky winners will get to meet and kiss the super sprinter himself. I'll kiss the guys in the beautiful women on the as our brothers.

Ours will be up close and personal with thousands of other mega maniacs. During the excitement of a real Trump rally and the night featuring hit songs like What Do You Have to Lose? It's no big deal. You live long enough and crowd favorite. I give it to most of my staff and all of my family this weekend. One day only. They don't miss it for about covid-19 and a funeral. Homes in America. Yes. This weekend it went from president's problem to the vice president's problem.

And just all of pense world or as we call him in our house because of Borat micropenis, all of the people in micropenis world now have covered peanuts. I mean, I got peanuts, Tom. I can't wait to see if I had to say it. You just you set it up to you set it up to perfectly his body, man. You know, his body, man. Yeah.

And Marc Short also, who is his chief of staff and sort of consiglieri. It's not good.

It's not good. Yeah. It's almost like it's very contagious. Molly Yes.

Rick Wilson Since a super spreader, rallies are now a sort of typhoid Donnie traveling the country thing. And since Mitch McConnell was telling his senators it's it's finally time to run away in the closing days of the campaign. And since the polls are slipping and since the only person that can get it go on TV is Jason Miller.

And also Corey was on Meet the Press. Right.

And Corey, man, I wish he had run for Senate. I had such a fucking great ad written. Corey Lewandowski. He'll do anything to win. He'll do anything to beat a woman. Oh, and guess what? It would have worked. It would have worked like gangbusters.

No, there's no world in which he would have won a seat in New Hampshire.

But yeah, Donald Trump's had a really rough time. It seems like the most important person in Donald Trump's world is finally breaking with him. Do you know that is my jaw? No, it's not Yaka. Oh, Vanka. No, she would never leave Daddy's side or lap. It's Vladimir Putin. That's right. Well, Ademir, Putin is a defending Joe Biden and he's dissing Donald Trump. I mean, how sharper than a serpent's tooth. And to have a thankless Vlad, I mean, this is just crazy.

Can you explain to me what the thinking there is? Because I'm curious. Look, Vladimir Putin, Rand Donald Trump like an asset for four years. He ran him until he lost the value and now doesn't really have value. So I think that the whole story about Putin defending Biden over the weekend, some of it's trolling, but it's also sort of dismissing Trump now because even the Russian troll farms aren't breaking through with the intensity that they broke through with a few years ago.

Now, is that because people have gotten smarter or is that because I think they've reduced their investment? Oh, really? You think Putin doesn't have his heart in it anymore? Correct? Oh, interesting.

I think he's thinking to himself, I'm going to have to adjust. It's going to be a different world. I might as well just reset here and try to rebuild something. Now that Donald has been effectively sidelined, that is no longer capable of pushing my agenda in the successful way that he once did.

So you really don't think that Putin wants to re-elect Trump?

Oh, look, I think Putin is not a guy who's going to spend a single dime on anyone who is no longer a value added asset.

That seems like an important paradigm shift.

It could be. But look, at least Donald Trump will be able to flee to Russia for political. Oh, wait, he might not. If this works and Trump loses, where do you think Trump goes to live? Florida. Oh, I'm afraid so.

That state is not big enough for Rick Wilson. You know, I'm right. Oh. I mean, that is not going to end well. No, no, a spilled drink, a nasty look, it's not going to be good.

Suddenly there's gunfire breaking out all over the place. I got in a bathroom giving him a swirly in the toilet, watching as we're watching his wig hoover down and that thing is implanted. It's not going anywhere. Oh, Molly. All right. It's not that in place. I don't need it. Naysayer. Hey, Molly. Hey.

Do you enjoy strange overseas propaganda efforts pushing bizarrely pro Trump messages? Yeah, I mean, who doesn't? I mean. Right, who doesn't? Would you say that those are exclusively Russian or would you say that those could come from other and unusual vectors? Well, is it a Chinese cult because everybody likes a Chinese cult?

Well, yeah. Tell me more. There's a great article by Kevin Roose this week, and we'll put in the show notes about The Epoch Times. And it has grown very, very quickly into a major pro Trump propaganda outlet. It is very much one of these sort of unseen vectors of what is essentially propaganda in the current moment. It's become, as he says, it's a bullhorn for the far right and it's got a massive, massive social media following.

It's got a massive online audience. It's bigger than Breitbart, which is kind of crazy. You know, they're definitely full on Trump, full on conspiracy. It is something that Steve Bannon is praising it to the heavens. And it's just a fascinating.

What do you think it's akin to? The closest thing is Breitbart really? I have an interesting thing is so I live on the border of a largely poor Hispanic neighborhood and it is distributed so heavily, like if I go to get my favorite tacos, there will just be free ones sitting in the taco place. And they really are doing the Kraven thing of they try to just infiltrate the people that they think are going to be susceptible to their bullshit the most.

And it's really horrifying. I get it jammed in my door sometimes. Yeah, that seems not great.

There's a massive infrastructure behind it or underneath it, and I'm fascinated to see where the where the rabbit hole leads.

Eventually we watch that Borat movie and by we I mean everyone in America this weekend and the daughter becoming an an anchor and own type anchor, I almost wanted to see just a movie on that.

You really could envision that sort of thing happening. That's how it works. And a lot of these people are like popped out of the cloning tank. You spend the all one way. You get a Tommy Lawrence and the other we get a Chanel reon. Yeah. And they all have a kind of like similar look and sound. And and they've mastered the the parlance of the Trump. Right. You know, dickory. And so I think this is sort of a print and online edition of that.

But it's also one of these places that is like walls of lawyers surrounded. Everybody who's ever worked at the Epic Times is indeed up the ass. It's an unusual situation. And Falun Gong that is supposedly behind it is one of those places or one of those institutions that on the one hand, you look like it. It looks like they're trying to save themselves from oppression from the Chinese government. On the other hand, you know, they forbid gay marriage and they don't like things like medicine or pharmaceutical products or antivirals.

They definitely don't like masks. I see that everywhere. They don't like masks and they don't like they don't like interracial marriage. And there's a whole there's a whole bunch of of strangeness about the whole thing. And as somebody put it out to be, that it is not an endorsement of the Chinese government to examine Falun Gong. It's just one of those things that's like we don't even realize how powerfully Facebook has amplified this, because when you get to the bottom of any shit thing in this fucking universe now, you'll find Facebook.

It's algo has been worked, whatever way it's worked, to boost things that are that that ultimately are are detrimental to democracy, to democracy and journalism and the truth and know the minor stuff, the little things. So basically, the last couple of times I've seen the site with the most engagement from Facebook, which they, of course, say Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, damaging Robert Shapiro.

The the own Mongo has like nine out of the ten. I mean, he's the dumbest person on Earth.

The way they do this shit is they form dozens and dozens and dozens of these shadow Facebook groups, OK? Right. They're they're close groups, but they follow bingo. And then when bingo tweet something, these groups and whether it's a bot or NALGO or an administrator, they share it or pretend to share it a gazillion times. These guys have gamed the algorithm. They understand what the algorithm is and how it works. So they've gamed it. And that's fine.

It is just going to reduce Facebook further into, you know, a septic tank for these kind of crazies, right?

It's. They killed local news only to replace it with Benjamina. Dr. Robert Bright is an American immunologist, vaccine researcher, former public health official and whistleblower, as well as the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. I am so excited to have you here. Your testimony in front of Congress, I've used that opening statement in like five different pieces because it's just so succinct. And basically what you said was in this was in March and correct me if I'm wrong, but you basically said this is going to be the darkest winter in modern life if we can't get it together.

Absolutely right.

Marlene, thanks for having me on today. We knew back then. We knew from many years experience in studying and planning for exactly the scenario that we're in today, what this is going to look like and how it was going to play out. And we knew what to do about it. And we could see our government was ignoring all of those factors, all of those areas. And so it was obvious to me that without intervention now, back then, we were going to have a really bad winter.

And I did call it the darkest winter in modern history. And guess what is coming true?

That's what I started thinking about when I saw those numbers this weekend. I kept thinking, like, we have to have you on. What I would love for you to talk about is yesterday we had Mark Meadows on Jake Tapper saying we're not going to try to control the virus, which they were sort of shopping that over the last few months. Can you talk to me about how much trouble are we in here, Mali, where we're in a lot of trouble?

When I heard Mark Meadows say that yesterday and Jake Tapper, there are very few shining points from this administration related to this outbreak.

But Mark Meadows actually revealed a bit of the truth about the administration's plan and strategy that they've had all along is they're not going to try to stop this virus. They haven't done anything to try to stop the spread of this virus and start to reduce the number of people who are dying from the virus. I heard that know it's very frustrating and made me very angry. It actually made me pretty sick to my stomach as a public health expert. But he did speak the truth.

This administration hasn't done anything from day one to try to slow the spread of this virus. It's been a lot of smoke and mirrors, a lot of public service announcements, but none of it has really translated to anything effective because it's been so random. You know, the one thing that President Trump and his senior advisers tout to try to tout that they did back in January was this travel ban from China, but really want to debunk the impact of that travel ban from China?

It was too late. It was haphazard. We funneled a lot of people into our country in different places, and then we let them go randomly through our country without any type of testing. We didn't do anything after that. We weren't testing our tracking. And then if you look at the pictures from the travel bans from China and from Europe when they did that as well, look at the chaos in those airports. Talk about the world's first super spreader event that Trump and his administration, they ignited back in January and February and then spread across our entire country.

That's scary.

Yeah. So you have this background in both virology and vaccines?

Yes, I have the background in virology and immunology and making vaccines and not only just making them, but working on expanding their access globally so we can be prepared to stop a pandemic in its tracks and focus a lot on pandemic influenza. We really thought that was going to come out of the water fowl, the ducks in China and the markets. And so we lay the foundation for that type of response or with the World Health Organization and other international organizations through the years.

You know, it was interesting and disappointing is all that hard work and planning that we've done with my expertise and knowledge was literally ignored or kicked to the curb and this administration and that's why we're in the place right now.

Some of that was John Bolton, right, that they sort of took apart the pandemic response team. They were like, why do we need this if it's not a pandemic right now?

That was an incredible team that was set up in the White House. I know almost every one of those members and they were recruited from all areas of expertise and had deep experience in government and science and and policy. And to see that dismantled one by one by one. And every now and then, you can find a bump into one of the experts in the hallway of the old executive office building. And then they were just gone to have that mindset from this administration thinking that we didn't need to prepare or have a staff on board in the event that something like this happen was just ridiculous, actually.

And then not even trying to reassemble anything like that when their real pandemic was upon us was ridiculous.

Yeah, that's kind of shocking that they were like, we'll just go to Jared Kushner. Feel like in the movie they go, well, OK, now we have to bring in the scientists we may not like. But that's not what happened at all in the real movie, in the exercises that we've done for a number of years, we would bring in the scientists around the table and solve the problems and get it done in this real world scenario. Jared Kushner brought in high school graduates and college students who hadn't yet graduated from college.

Instead, gather around the table with whatever the social media app is of the day and let's, you know, solve the supply chain problem. I'm running out of words. You can't describe how reckless and careless and actually translate it into deadly. That type of approach has been in this response.

I think in some ways, one of the most dangerous things that's happened is that we are seeing a slightly lower death rate from coronavirus. And somehow this has been interpreted mostly by the president and his allies as coronavirus is not as dangerous.

But what's really important to know is that death rate is a trailing indicator after you start to see more cases and more hospitalizations. So we've seen over the last several months or couple of months, we saw the case count lower a little bit. We saw the hospitalization lower a bit, and we saw the death count slower. And they start looking at the rate of deaths. And, you know, we know that we've learned a bit about the virus. We learned a bit about how to treat people who are infected with the virus.

And we've had spazzed in our hospitals to provide that type of excellent treatment.

What we're starting to see now is a significant rise, a surge in cases and that's being followed. You see the trend already by the surges in hospitalizations. So it's just a matter of time and maybe just a week or two. I'm already seeing reports of ambulances being turned away. I see your units being filled up. But once those hospitals get crammed again and those doctors and nurses who are working twenty four hours a day, literally, not figuratively, they're exhausted.

The suppliers are going to run short. We're going to relo on basic supplies such as fluids and sailing's and then all your PPE and basic medicines to treat this many people again. You're going to start seeing everything that we've learned and all the benefits we learned and even our basic treatment be overwhelmed once again. And we're not going to be able to provide that level quality of treatment to that many people all at once. So what you'll start seeing is that death rate start to increase once again.

You're going to see it exploding around the rural communities right now because that's where our surges are in the middle part of our country and upper north west, too. And those hospitals are not as equipped as the big hospitals and universities centres that we've seen already struggling with the previous outbreaks. We're in for a really, really bad few months, actually. We're in for that dark winter and we're going to have influenza cases on top of the covid cases. And we're going to just start seeing this compounding.

It's going to be in the wake of these super spreader events that President Trump has had on his campaign rallies that is going to translate into our senior citizens are being hospitalized. 80 percent of our deaths today are in people over sixty five. And so if you look at the explosion of cases or have, you're going to see a lot of our parents and grandparents and older relatives not be around for the holidays and not be around any longer. We're also going to see the minority populations that we have, the Latino populations and the black populations and those who already have trouble getting access to health care.

They're going to be hit hardest. So, again, this this winter, because of the super spreader events that we're continuing to have and somehow promote still by our administration right now, the consequence of those is nothing short of just pure deadly psychologically.

You are not a political person. You decided to testify. You are now whistleblower. What is that like?

I don't think anyone ever plans a career move in their life to be a whistleblower.

I think that's right.

I mean, it's a mixed message. I wouldn't recommend it as a way of life, but I certainly would recommend to anyone who sees anything wrong finding the courage to speak up. I've learned that there is there is a support group out there. There are some really good legal guidance and assistance out there. However, you know, it's not a club that you ever want to find yourself having to be in. I had to make that choice. I didn't make that choice readily.

But I was faced with what I believe to be a life and death situation where the Trump administration was moving forward recklessly at a breakneck speed to push dangerous drug onto the streets. This chloroquine, Hydroxycut and we were gathering information and. Data, scientific data about the potential dangers of this drug, especially in people who were infected with coronavirus, but at the time didn't seem like they even cared if you were infected with rotavirus, they wanted to push the drug out.

I tried everything possible to raise the flags internally and resist moving forward with the administration and their public health leaders who were gung ho to follow the president's guidance and directive. And once I saw that they were all on board to push it and make it available and flood the streets, literally, I had to decide at that moment to be complicit and be part of an organization and a government that would put people's lives at risk and potentially cause more people to die or to step out.

And I still get emotional about it because I still remember that day of stepping out and how impactful it was on me knowing that it was going to change my life because I was going to be retaliated. You just know they're going to come after you. You have to decide is it worth it? And to me, it was absolutely worth it. I'm not a partisan person. I'm a scientist. I'm a public health expert. And I have every day of my life woken up my professional life to say, how can I save someone's life?

How can I change or improve our health care system or improve access to it? And what they were asking me to do at that moment was against everything that was within me. So I had to step out and honestly, I would do it again in a heartbeat. I don't regret it for a moment. I believe it impacted the narrative and changed the discourse in many ways. It gave me an opportunity to testify in front of Congress about the truth that wasn't being shared with Americans, the lies that were being put forth about the real risk of this virus.

I had hoped that it would have had an impact in in maybe turning up the action and that the Congress and the government and others who could would have listened and taken steps back then to change the course of this outbreak. But I still see this administration has chosen to ignore the outbreak, lie about the outbreak. I mean, there were only eighty five thousand deaths and so there were eighty five thousand deaths when I testified. And now we have two hundred twenty five thousand deaths.

And that's going to double the next coming months. In the US, there is only one point four million cases, infections in the US when I testified and now there's eight point six million, we didn't do what we had to do. And this administration has not stepped forward with a plan with clear messaging and leading by example. And honestly, that's all they have to do to impact this outbreak, is to put forth a plan and message it clearly and consistently and lead by example.

We're not asking them to do anything too miraculous, but they still refuse to do that and they still refuse to tell Americans the truth. And that is why I continue to speak out in my is not the career path I chose. I love being on your podcast and other areas because it gives me a chance to try to tell Americans the truth.

But it's not what I wanted to do or ever thought I would do in life would be three of the things you would think that would be the sort of the first things a new president might do.

Actually, what we're missing most is a single coordinated plan, a real strategy to get our country through this pandemic and reopen our schools and get America back to work safely. Components of this national strategy that would be critical to roll out as quickly as possible would be clear messaging and guidance and leadership on appropriate wearing a face mask, also a national testing strategy. This isn't about just making more tests and how many tests you do every day is a coherent strategy that talks about the different types of tests and when the tests and who to test and how often the tests and what you do with that information and then coupling that testing with a strategy for tracing and contacts of people who are infected and then appropriate isolation and compensating people for that isolation, because it's really difficult for people who are breadwinners for their family to adhere to an isolation and quarantine strategy if it means taking food off their table.

So this comprehensive strategy for testing and tracing would also need to be resourced in a way that will incentivize people to follow with appropriate public health practices.

We need, in addition, the strategy for producing adequate supply, a top quality personal protective equipment for our health care workers.

So it's critical that we prioritize our health care workers who are exhausted and doing their best on the front line every day to put. And they're putting their own. Life at risk to try to save the lives of others, and they are fatigued and it is our responsibility and there would be the obligation of the president to ensure that we have done everything possible to ramp up and manufacture and make available facemask in ninety five face masks and gowns and gloves to protect our our front line health care workers, doctors and nurses.

We've lost over 17 hundred of our health care workers in this outbreak already just in the last several months. So the highest priorities would be to protect our health care workers in all of these public health measures, but support them, not just talk about them and certainly not ridicule them as we've seen our current administration do.

How worried are you about rolling out this vaccine and what are you seeing? What is hopeful? Give us something to not be too depressed with.

I'm excited that there are so many different efforts, so many different options and strategies in place to make an effective, safe, effective vaccine. We've never seen in the history of probably any outbreak the number of different companies and technologies and scientists at work around the clock, around the globe, trying to address this challenge of making an effective and safe vaccine. And they're making progress. So there's a lot of money behind it. There's a lot of effort behind it as well, and there's a lot of thought behind it.

And we're seeing on the front end progress and how the scientists are designing these vaccines and progress and how the companies are beginning to make more scale up production of the vaccines.

And we're starting to see some really encouraging information and data from the clinical trials.

I do think is important, however, to remember, we still have a lot of work in front of us. We can't cut the clinical trials off too soon. We can't be so eager for a vaccine that we truncate the data set and move too quickly into an emergency use authorization scenario where we can't fully appreciate how these vaccines work and how safe they are.

It seems to me like Pfizer and Maidana certainly agree with you. You know, it's interesting when you watch basically a number of different vaccine approaches, all striving towards that same goal as quickly as possible. You constantly see different leaders in front runners and then you see them meet a typical vaccine development challenge and you see them kind of paused or slowed down. And some other technologies sort of take the lead. And in this sort of this almost like a horse race going back and forth and until someone eventually crosses that finish line.

And so as I've watched the various technologies, we see some of the frontline technologies that can move faster, such as the messenger RNA or RNA candidates from Moderna and Pfizer. It's important to realize that neither one of those approaches have been ever licensed to make any type of testing, but they can move quickly and then we have some more established technology. Does that worry you?

It doesn't worry me so much as the realistic view is we don't know who the real front runner is yet. Each of these are meeting typical vaccine development challenges. Each of those new technologies, such as messenger RNA, are going to have some downstream challenges. Even if they get their first clinical data set. Those technologies have never been scaled the large volumes. So we're going to face those.

You know, I'm a participant in the Pfizer trial, so I know all about having defrosted and everything that they kept at minus 70 or super cold temperatures.

And so it creates challenges in our distribution chain, in our pharmacies and doctors offices. So while they might be the first to get a data set, we still have a long road in front of us and putting all those things in place to distribute and actually administer those vaccines.

I'm concerned. I mean, if we can even get the swabs for the testing, how we're going to distribute this vaccine that needs to be at these subzero temperatures. Can you just talk for two seconds about long haulers?

Well, when we think about long haulers in an interesting name, the interesting phrase that has been attached, but we're learning something new about this virus. Every day there's a new virus and the human population. And we're finding more and more frequently that people who are infected with this coronavirus have long term effects. And some of it are as seems as minor as occasional bouts of fatigue that just come and go. And some of it is much more dramatic, long term damage in your lungs.

And people who have chronic respiratory challenges today and other organ challenges as well as we find this virus disrupts your entire system, depending on how severe your infection is and how robust or strong your your body is in trying to recover quickly. And so we're learning now that even six months out. People are having symptoms and chronic symptoms and that they're showing that they're not fully recovering from an infection with coronavirus, and so that's very concerning as we learn more about the virus and how it impacts people.

Another thing that we're learning that is concerning and again, not to put fear in everyone, but we're seeing more and more cases of repeat infection. We're learning that even a natural infection from this virus may not elicit or induce a strong enough immune response or a long lasting immune response to three or four months out after an infection. We're finding people who are getting infected and we know it's a real infection because we have all these tools and genetic capabilities to to analyze the virus.

And we know it's a very different virus than the first virus that the person was infected with. That's really important to track now and to follow closely is we need to understand how long the immune response might be to the vaccines. And we might need to find ourselves in a situation where the vaccine itself has to do a better job than your body does following natural infection from the virus. And this is also really important because in many cases that have been documented, it seems that this secondary infection maybe isn't as bad as the first infection.

However, we're starting to see a couple of cases where the second infection is actually worse than the first infection. That could be for a number of reasons. But we have to really understand that because if our vaccines are not inducing a strong enough for a long enough immunity, we need to understand what implications that could have for a follow on second infection or first infection of the virus following the vaccination. And so there's still a lot that we're learning in the science and basic virology epidemiology and immunology about this virus.

This was so great. Thank you so much, Dr..

Going Italian this evening says almost Brennan Station, Scheidt Pizza toast on the menu, sushi. Oh, very continental. Oh, how well sushi. It's good to try something you amore. The recipe may be Italian that breg 100 percent Irish lovely fresh slices of Brennan's family back home for the chiselers. It's a snack that takes off chopping. Oh, Breton's today. Breg Adjaye. Across Ireland, over 18000 apprentices are delivering key skills and talent to help drive Irish businesses, and right now, employers can avail over 3000 euro payment for every new apprentice they recruit before the end of June 2021.

Discover her generation apprenticeship can support your business. Visit Apprenticeship Daudzai now an initiative of the government of Ireland. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for beast inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday.

But listen carefully. Only beast inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal DOT, The Daily Beast dot com to become a beast inside. No, now that's new abnormal dot the Daily Beast dot com. Then Sheehan is the founder of OMG, WITF, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, which Wisconsin, Texas, Florida, and is a political expert explainer who is going to talk to us about voting, gerrymandering and the Electoral College.

What's in the Constitution?

I saw the little book that people carry around. Is that the whole thing? Yeah, it's short, really. It's short. Tell me more. It's very short.

It started with just seven articles and then we've added twenty seven amendments. The whole thing is less than ten thousand words. And it's really meant to just be an outline in a kind of guide for our government. But it's also the outline of what the federal government can and can't do and what states can't do.

Do you think any Republicans have ever read the Constitution? I'll be honest with you. I feel like there is a subset of Republicans that are extremely familiar with the Constitution. And I started following hash tags on the Constitution on Instagram. And it's all it's almost all conservative accounts that post about the Constitution and hashtag constitution. Yeah.

Give me an example of one of these people, because I don't believe you. And also the I'm fascinated.

Well, I feel like there are constitutional experts and scholars like Eugene Volokh, UCLA. I think he is sort of more libertarian, but he's he's constitutionally brilliant. I mean, if you went up to Ted Cruz and asked him to recite passages, he rumor is that he has the whole thing memorized and can recite the entire thing.

Ted Cruz doesn't count because he's the worst person in the world.

But yes, but I do think that to be honest with you, I feel like the Constitution has been more disgust and sort of studied and pored over in conservative circles than liberal circles. And now having read it and and written this book, I'm sort of confused as to why, because I actually think that there's a lot of stuff in the Constitution and maybe it has to do with that. We we think of it as something that's so antiquated and not a match for our times and needs to be changed.

And there's obviously this originalist strand.

What stuff is in it? I mean, there's a lot what's the liberal stuff in there? Because we need to know.

Well, I'd say the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments are personally my favorite parts of the Constitution and basically made it apply to everybody.

OK, spell it. We need Cliff Notes here because no one knows what the 14th is. Smart people do, but I don't.

13TH Abolish slavery except as punishment for a crime. The 14th basically established birthright citizenship. So it made former slaves and African-American citizens for the first time also established equal protection of the laws. It even was the First Amendment to give African-Americans voting rights in a way because it punished states that didn't let men twenty one and over who are eligible to vote and citizens vote. But the punishment was just like a few less people in your state for a population basis for the house.

And so states kept violating that. And then two years later, they ratified the 15th Amendment, which was protecting voting rights based on race. So we drastically changed the Constitution and made it apply to a lot more people in that five year stretch than it ever had before, which is not everything. But it's certainly a progression. And now we we all get to elect US senators directly. We didn't used to do that. 18 year olds have voting rights protections, women and voting rights protections.

So the additions we've made to it have definitely made it a more Democratic document.

What's the bad stuff in there? There's a bunch, obviously, the beginning. The whole idea that enslaved people found it is Second Amendment, Second Amendment obviously enslaved people not counting as full people. And that being factored into the Electoral College is one of the first five presidents. Four of them were from Virginia because Virginia got three extra electoral votes just based on its enslaved population. Thomas Jefferson, his margin of victory over John Adams was because of the electoral votes he got from enslaved people in Virginia, many of whom he owed.

So our audience gets really scared about the electors not being bound to vote for the Electoral College. So you talked about this a good amount that, you know, some of them can do what they want. Are there any swing states that you're scared of that happening in?

Yeah, I mean, there's three that I have discussed a lot, which is Pennsylvania, Georgia and Texas. Those three states do not bind their electors at all. So it is theoretically possible that whatever the electors get a pointed out, of course, it's the political parties who are picking the slate of electors. But my worry is that if there is a claim of voter fraud, if there's a claim of something else like polluting, distorting, contaminating the voting results in the state, the legislature could move to and appoint a different slate of electors.

And because they're not bound to vote for the popular vote winner in the state, they could do whatever they want. Now, this would be the first time in well over a hundred years that that's happened. But I think that we're in a territory where a lot of things that we probably haven't had happen in one hundred years plus are starting to happen. And so I'm looking at those states in particular, especially because Georgia Tech. This hour, Republican trifectas, state House, state Senate governor, all Republican, and then the other ones I'm worried about are Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin.

Why even have this law in the first place? But they have a law saying that they have to bind the electors, but the electors, there's no penalty for breaking it. And the vote still counts if the electors don't vote for the popular vote winner. So what the point of that law is, I don't know if those are the six states that I'm looking at in terms of swing states, but with Pennsylvania, there's the safeguard of the Democratic governor.

Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So we don't have to worry about that one as much, but the rest of them. Now, is this a state by state thing or is this something we could reform in some way after the election if there's a Biden win?

No, it's state by state, because in the Constitution, it says the manner of appointing electors is up to the state legislature. So they really have full control over how the electors get appointed. And that's what the Supreme Court upheld earlier this year in July, saying that if states have laws preventing faithless electors, those are constitutional. If they don't have those laws, that's also constitutional. And that was the final ruling.

So the power is really with state legislatures on this, which is why Democrats need to flip more state legislatures.

I mean, that's my biggest takeaway from the Constitution, is that where we think the power lies in our government is not where it actually lies. It is truly in the legislatures. And state legislatures have so much power and we need to start thinking about them as like top ballot races and not down ballot races.

Let's talk about these sort of sexiest topic, gerrymandering. Talk to us about gerrymandering, because you've written a book about gerrymandering, too. I have.

And I also created a line of jewelry where every necklace and pin is shaped like one of the worst gerrymandered congressional districts in the United States.

I remember this. I never realized you were the one who did that. Yeah, I want that.

Go to gerrymandered jewelry dot com. You can watch our one free one. OK, I get that. You know, I can I can pay for it and then promote it because that's how I roll.

It's called gerrymandered what.

Gerrymandered jewelry dot com. And you can go there and watch our Jered Flash sales, 60 second jewelry.

That's a very serious jewelry ad and it's real or selling, but I am buying them right now because I don't need to be given them for free because I'm classy like that. And. All right, continue on, Cherrybrook.

Feel like this is our last opportunity to elect people who are going to draw the lines next year. And those are in most states, like two thirds of the states. It's our state legislators. So, again, the people who control how the electors are appointed, the people who control how the lines are drawn in those states, it's our state legislators and also governors, too. So it's so important to elect people who are going to draw their lines because these last four, ten years and this goes for both the US House and our state legislatures, that just totally fascinating.

Why do you think Democrats never got involved in gerrymandering before? I mean, I feel like it's like filling those quartzite a Democrat sort of had a problem with cheating. So then Republicans came in and cheated.

Is that your take away or now they do gerrymander in Maryland, which is I'm from Maryland in my home state of Maryland, is heavily gerrymandered to harm Republican voters, both gerrymandering that's happening at the congressional and state legislative level right now with the majority of it is being done by Republicans. But historically, it's also been done by Democrats. I mean, in the 80s, California was terribly gerrymandered and other states as well. So I think right now, because really it was this plan in 2010 Redmap like change.

I mean, it was the most aggressive gerrymandering plan plot ever. And what they did is they went to Republican donors, the Republican Party, and they said, hey, for a quarter of the price of donating to a congressional candidate to get them elected. If you give a quarter of that money and put it toward state legislatures, they can draw the lines so that that candidate can keep getting elected. And that's what they did. So for a quarter of the prices, these they would have had to pay if they flip the House.

They solidified these districts for ten years and it was a total nightmare. The Democrats didn't see it coming. And I do blame the Democratic Party for this because I think the focus was so national coming off with Obama's win. And that was where the attention was. And he was a rock star and there was so much money coming into the National Democratic Party and they just totally took their eye off the ball. And I think that it's really important going forward to understand how much power states have.

And I think the Democratic Party would be well served to shift their focus. It sounds like it.

I saw a great article you wrote about how voting is not protected by the Constitution and the plague of voter disenfranchisement. What are your hopes for reforming this and which are Wisner's be pushing their congresspeople to do in the future?

I really think that the only way to really combat this in a lasting way is with a constitutional amendment, which is super hard to do. Senator Dick Durbin introduced one earlier this year and you would need two thirds of the House and the Senate to propose that and then three quarters of the states to ratify. So getting thirty eight states to agree on anything, I was going to say, can we agree that that's probably not a viable way?

Is there any other option? Yeah.

I mean, if if the Democrats were to hold the House, take back the Senate and take the presidency, they could pass a new voting rights. And reinstate the parts that were removed by the Supreme Court in twenty thirteen and a bunch of other protective measures, and I think there is one that's being discussed and named after John Lewis, in fact. So that would be a huge thing that the federal government can do. And then really, if every state has the ability to decide who can and can't vote and pass their own voting laws, so again, goes back to state legislatures, what do we think is proper voting reform like?

One of the things I hear a lot of people talk about as a guarantee of one machine for people like what are we see as being really what will help with enfranchising the vote?

Well, I think you have to start with what's being used right now in a modern sense, disenfranchisement after all these administrative measures. So, you know, banning things like exact mash, you know, there's no other right in the Constitution where if we don't send a postcard back within a certain amount of time, we lose that. Right. That's what's happening in Ohio. Exact match is the one that's happening in Georgia where if your name doesn't exactly match what they have on file for you of a dash is off for a space, then your registration gets thrown out.

I would say banning that all of these like administrative things that sound menial but are really designed to have a disproportionate effect on people of color. So I think really a full overhaul of our voting process and procedures around registration.

How can Democrats get more power at the state level?

I think they need to invest in candidates for legislatures. I think they need to really put money toward organizations like the Dalkey. They need to do a lot of voter education about it because it's just been it's all about the federal government all the time. And again, reading the Constitution like the federal government is, is very limited and so much is left up to the states and we just don't think about it like that. So it's retraining our brains to understand where the power lies.

Why do these entities are so powerful that really investing in candidates? Because that's also like the future national leaders or people who become state leaders. I mean, look at Stacy Abramson, what she's doing for voting rights on a national level. She was in the Georgia state House. I mean, there are people who are future national stars that come from state legislatures. And I think we just need to invest in those those candidates and those people and also help educate people on why they're so powerful.

Any advice you have to our listeners about voting this week? Anything that you think they may not know? Absolutely.

I would say if you're able to vote early in person, I know that it's in the middle of a pandemic. But if you can do that, you're able to physically do that. You should do that. And I would also say that not just so that you can cast a vote around this race, but make sure you know who your state legislators are. The easiest way to do this is go to a site called Open States, Dawg, and you can just plug in your address and it tells you who your state legislators are.

I say follow them on Twitter, on Instagram, tweet things at them. They usually don't have a ton of followers, so you can get through to them as a constituent.

That's what it's like, the understatement of the year. Yeah, they're probably looking at their mentions like everybody else seeing what's going on. So tweet out your state legislators, tweet a video at them saying what you want them to do. In fact, this organization accountable, looked at all the ways that are the most impactful as a constituent to influence your elected leaders. And they said that tweeting a video at your elected representatives is the most powerful thing other than voting, because unlike email, unlike an email, unlike a phone call or a letter like those are private one to one communication, and that could be thrown out or ignored or deleted.

But Twitter is like this stays up forever. It's public one to one communication. So you can like retweeted later, put that person on blast and everyone else can see it, too. So it's a really powerful way to get your legislators attention. So go to open states, plug in your address. See, these people are vote for them. Make sure that if they're up this year, your values and views align with theirs. But also as the Electoral College process unfolds, make sure that they are not going to ignore your vote and find some other way to appoint the electors.

Yeah, that's great.

That's great. I tell people not to worry. Now, don't worry. It is a low chance of this happening. But I feel like there's a low chance of a lot of things over the last four years that have happened. So it's better to just prepare for the worst and be ready for it rather than be shocked by it with scrambling to find a recourse.

Hi there, Jesse Cañon here on the producer of the New Abnormal, and I have a little secret here for members of Beast inside the Daily Beast membership program on Election Day. Rick and Molly are going to be doing what they always do and talking about what's happening with the election. And you can listen if you join Beast inside today and gain access to an exclusive Zoome version of our podcast that will be airing on Election Day. Molly and Rick will help you stomach the last months or so, we hope, of the longest, weirdest, crappiest presidential campaign in modern history.

Toynbee's to decide today and join us on Election Day when we pull back the curtain new abnormal style to be able to hear this episode head to New Abnormal that the Daily Beast Dotcom today. That's new abnormal that the Daily Beast Dotcom. All right, so Rick Wilson, good afternoon, knowledge on Farse, who is your friend, that guy my fuck, that guy is you, Mr. Mark Kassovitz. Oh, yes. I know that your experience is primarily been to shake down and try to intimidate Trump's contractors, be they actual contractors building things or contractors in the stripper or porn star business.

And I know that your experience with them has been that you consider bullshit letter full of hollow threats and you think that they're going to blink and roll over right away. Welcome to my party, pal.

Because because this case and you know, it is going to lose you a ton of money. And by the way, as Trump's collapse continues, I know you're the one guy that still gets paid by him. Don't expect his ability to continue to cover your your invoices to be commensurate with the amount of damage that will happen in this case.

So by I feel like this lawsuit is one of the best things to ever happen to the Lincoln project. Am I wrong?

Well, look, it's not a lawsuit yet. It's just a threat of a lawsuit. But you're pretty psyched. You have seven of the top ten First Amendment lawyers in the country on board with us for this case. Here's the real thing, though. Test, which is part of Trump sort of thug ocracy where they're used to intimidating people and threatening people. It's just not us. You want to go? We'll go. We'll go all day long.

But the idea that this guy is going to actually prevail in a case on the First Amendment is absurd.

So they're going to be more billboards and we might have a billboard or two to come. Yeah, we're looking at one for Staten Island that says welcome home, Jordanna Vanke.

I await the day Roger Novak are living in that three to eight hundred square foot condo on Fresh Kills Terrace East.

You know what? I'm not going to even say anything. Yeah, you are now not my fault, that guy. I know you're curious to know who it is and is someone who I think you've actually met in real life. Is that true?

I don't know yet if you're going to surprise me with it. Michael Caputo. Oh, Michael Caputo.

Yes. Aren't we supposed to be kind to Michael Caputo now that he's on sick leave and has something or another?

I can only think about the fact that Michael Caputo wanted to vaccinate Santas to shop the vaccine, and he promised the elves and Mrs. Claus rally vaccine access in the hot holy name of fuck are you talking about? I wish I were kidding. It's a piece in the Wall Street Journal. I'm not kidding where it turns out that one of Michael Caputo's many stupid ideas was to have Santa advertising the vaccine. I swear to God, I'm not even kidding.

The even supply in the country is already very vastly diminished. But I am all out of even's with which to cart in this regard.

It's just unbelievable and be fucking believable. And so concludes another successful day of fuck that guy.

On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of The New Abnormal for The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond, from media, culture, politics and science to help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favourite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode if you'd like to follow us on Twitter. I'm Molly Chang Fast and he is the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode.

Across Ireland, over 18000 apprentices are delivering key skills and talent to help drive Irish businesses. And right now, employers can avail of a 3000 euro payment for every new apprentice they recruit before the end of June 2021. Discover how generation apprenticeship can support your business. Visit Apprenticeship Daudzai now an initiative of the government of Ireland.