17 Burst results for "Josh Barrow"
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Josh Barrow, columnist for Insider On the right is Tim Carney, senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner and senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. On the left is David Day and executive editor at the American Prospect. As the U. S withdrew from Afghanistan, We heard complaints from many directions, and one of those directions was from Europe as US leaves Afghanistan. Europe sours on Biden was a Washington Post headline from August 31. Some European leaders had pushed him to extend the withdrawal deadline, which he did not do. Of course. Biden like Donald Trump before him, had been clear about his intention to end this war, But people were maybe understandably used to America. Not really meaning it. Europeans have also chafed at the still in place travel restrictions that make it impossible for many Europeans to travel to the US even as Europe has opened its doors to American travelers. In fact, the EU recommended placing new travel restrictions on America is the Delta Wave has risen here in several countries in the European Union have followed through on that. Our relationship with Europe was supposed to be warmer with Trump gone. So what's happened and do European leaders have good reason for frustration with America and the Biden ministrations to talk about that? Emma Ashford joins us Now Emma's a senior fellow with the new American engagement Initiative at the Atlantic Council, Scowcroft, Center for strategy and Security. Hi, Emma. Hey there, Josh. So the U. S has been the primary military power in Afghanistan for 20 years or had been many European countries were partners with us, But this is fundamentally our war. What's what position is Europe in to complain here? I mean, if they wanted this work so much, why didn't they fight it? Well, Europeans did fight this war. To some extent, right. The NATO ISAF mission has been an active part of the war in Afghanistan for for over a decade, and European countries contributed to that varying extents of, But as you noted, the point is that it was the US that carried the majority of the burden provided the majority of the forces most logistical support during that time. And when European countries finally figured out that that the U. S was leaving There was even some talk about staying behind after us left, but they were basically unable to do it because they are so reliant on U. S military capabilities. David, What do you make of this? And more broadly, what are what are the merits of a better relationship with Europe? Is there something that Biden should be delivering somewhere here on trade on the travel restrictions that he is not I think when Biden came into office, he thought that just the fact that he was not Donald Trump was going to endear him to Europeans and into extent that that that has been the case. Uh, but I think the administration to me seems to have pulled off. What, uh, what the Obama administration wanted to do as well which was sort of pivot to Asia. Look at the challenges vis a vis China as the primary kind of diplomacy and foreign policy that one sticking duct and Europe. Uh, haven't hasn't really been offered a whole lot on on those terms. And I think that Europe is feeling some some level of, uh out of its resentment or or abandonment or something like that. As a as a result, Uh, I don't. I mean, I still think that these alliances are still fairly strong and probably stronger than they were. Under Trump. And, uh, some of this crumbling does seem to me to be misplaced. Considering the burdens that the U S carried in Afghanistan, for example, and, uh, I think we I think we tend to make a little bit more of this than it might end up actually actually being and in practice. I need to agree with David that I think I'll in when it comes to international relations, just like with Covid people saw and believed that Once you got rid of Trump, it would be easy, which is ironic because that was Trump's argument five years ago was once you get rid of these idiots and put in me, it's going to be easy. These are hard problems, but I guess I wanted to ask, uh, Emma, one of the very interesting trends you've seen, both with Trump and then with Biden's rhetoric out of after pulling out of Afghanistan was a loss of appetite for the sort of I interventionism that really characterized the whole end of the Cold War up to Trump's election. This idea that the U. S was going to go around build democracies is sort of humanitarian intervention. I saw Biden's remarks as reflecting that in the U. S. People really don't have this appetite, and I'm wondering whether Europeans have that where European leaders are going on that question. Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. I think again. There is this trend going back all the way into the Obama administration where presidents say they're going to respond to us public opinion dial down the water and tender get away from sort of us overseas interventionism. Um, and then they tend to end up doing it a little anyway. But But this is definitely reflective of public sentiment here in the U. S. Um, and to some extent in Europe, I think the real difference in Europe is that there is perhaps slightly more appetite for intervention in those crises. That might end up causing large flows of refugees. Into Europe. So if you go back a few years, you look at what happened with with Isis with the Syrian Civil War ish. You know, the impact definitely fell more heavily on Europe. So the European states, I think, in general fields slightly more urgency about some of these problems than the US itself does, But I would I would say that the sort of broader problems between the U. S and Europe right now are not so much this question of interventionism, and it's more the sort of hold over policies from the Trump Administration. The travel ban. Runs the tariffs, the fact that the Europeans are finding that just some practical issues. Biden administration is not as different as they might hoped. And so what do you What do you make of that? It does seem arbitrary to me that we have kept in these travel restrictions on Europe at a time when when other countries that have been hit worse with covid or are currently being hit worse, are able to people from there are able to travel to the U. S and not from Europe. Um and the Covid situation in the US is worse than in Europe right now, so I'll, you know Well, I think especially at the very beginning of the pandemic. There was a strong case for travel restrictions. I don't see what the substantive cases for applying particular restriction on travelers from Europe, the United States and when I look at this action by the EU, or this recommendation by the EU that has turned into action. By some of its member states. For example, even if you're vaccinated, If you want to go to the Netherlands, you have to isolate for several days. If you're coming from the United States is that is that policy is that driven by actual European fear of covid coming in from the United States, or is that an attempt to pressure the US to move away from that hold over policy from the Trump administration that I think Europeans are right to say. Does not have a lot of basis in the current situation in the pandemic. Probably a little of both. I mean, certainly rising case counts here in the US with the Delta Very. And I do mean that the US is not gonna worse position when it comes to Covid. Um, but I would say that the European Union, um when it decided just recently that it would recommend that the U. S removed safe list for travelers, this last countries in Europe reinforce, um some of their restrictions on travelers from the U. S, Um, I think this was eventually European page. Patients running out The EU has been pushing, um, for most of 2021 to have these restrictions, lifted to resume tourism and travel between the two countries to rely on testing vaccines. And, as you say, this is this is a pretty reasonable arguments. I think, particularly given the high levels of vaccination in Europe and the fact that case counselor are better over there at this point, anything comparable much of the year and instead, the bike administration really dragged their feet on this, And so I think what we're seeing now is a is a question of reciprocity. It's it's European state. It's saying if you're not going to open up to our travelers, um maybe we're just going to Focus on public health instead, because we're not getting a lot out of this. David, Do you have a sense of what's driving the bike Administration here? Why they haven't moved on our restrictions on Europe. It feels like inertia to me, uh and and and maybe a somewhat of a level of over cautiousness and and, you know, maybe it's justified in places for Europe. To be pushing the US in in in a better direction. Uh, as these things go. I also think there are places where the U s really needs to push Europe. You know, Four or five months ago, the the Biden administration announced that they supported a trips waiver. The vaccine waiver at the process that the World Trade Organization to allow, uh generic manufacturers to help produce. These vaccines even if they don't have the patents for them, and the major impediments of that has been Germany. Germany, of course, is home to Biontech, which is the partner to Pfizer, which, obviously as done, uh, one of the more successful vaccines and so Germany was really implacably opposed to this and you need a full consensus. At the W. T O in order to get it done, and we've heard almost nothing from about.
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"The conversation. Josh Barrow when I recorded last week, where we answered a lot of your questions, including how we started this show and how we got our signature swear jar sound effect. We have a question from or in. This is Orrin Buck calling from Newburgh, New York, a number of unqualified people were made into judges in the trump years. What are the ways that they can fail at their jobs and be impeached or otherwise ousted? Well, so let's let's start with the premise. Here are the judges that the trial judge is that the former president appointed? Are they performing especially poorly? I don't know. There's any indication that they are performing poorly in any way that's measurable. Uh Trump judges have made some rulings that have outraged Uh, liberals, just as Obama and Clinton judges made rulings that outraged conservatives. But that sort of thing is very hard to measure in terms of the allegation that they are very unqualified. I don't know that it's true, you know, as Botha A civil liberties litigator and a criminal defense attorney. I like a good liberal judge as much as anybody, but I don't know that it's accurate to say that Trump's judges are markedly less qualified by traditional Qualifications. Then prior presidents judges were in terms of how you can get rid of a bad judge. There's always impeachment in Congress, impeachment by the House and trial by the Senate, But that's quite rare and generally is reserved to really serious misconduct. Things like accepting bribes, Uh and you know violations of law and that type of thing. It's it's not generally because you don't like their rulings and probably should be. But here's the thing being a federal judge is hard. If you do it right. It's an enormous amount of work. It's hard to overstate what a large amount of work federal judges have to do, and many people who would be inclined to be lousy federal judges. Um, tend to decide they'd be happier out making $1500 an hour doing arbitrations, said one of the, uh, private arbitration firms or something like that, or being a new senior partner at a law firm making tons of money with the cachet of having been a federal judge, so the system the system tends to be somewhat self correcting when it comes to people who are truly incompetent to be a federal judge. They don't tend to enjoy it. The the power is not all that they hoped it would be. It's a hard job, and it's a very, very technical job. We also have some questions from listeners about the making of this show. Can we hear some of those? This is Mike from Dallas, Texas, Longtime listener first time caller Josh and Ken. And how did you first meet? And since assuming you're vaccinated now, have you met in person to share an adult beverage? Josh. Josh, I think we first met in person at breakfast when we were planning this show back in 2018 together with our wonderful producer, Sara Faye. Yeah, I think that's right in downtown L a near your, uh, near office the and then we've It's funny. The question about you know, since since now we're vaccinated This show. We've been doing this for over three years. We were doing the show in the before time. Um, and so I haven't seen can since the start of the pandemic, but we've we've met a number of times. We also had that early had a reception for KCRW, where we did a live conversation. And that was where I first asked you whether Michael Abernathy was a good lawyer. There had been some antics that he had engaged in May be related to, you know, go into the Iowa wingding or something like that, acting like he was gonna run for president. And at your time at the time, your answer was more or less that, yes, he was a good lawyer. But you've been right about other things. Uh, in my defense. I think I said he was good in court. Uh, but that being a good lawyer meant different things. Yes, and we have shared the adult beverages. I recall one of the times we were hired to do a gig at some sort of reception. We wandered into Iran reception, grab drinks and then eventually took them into the right reception. And then we have a question from Dave. Hi, Josh and Ken. It's Dave from Boston. I had a question about all the quarters that are tossed into the swear jar. Does that money get donated to charity? Or is there in it's not Rico Fund? We have another question. Hi. My name is Pam Phillips. I live in Watertown, Massachusetts. One of my favorite bits is the swear jar. What happens to all the money in it? And on a related note, I think it would be terrific if other shows used the sound of clashing coins instead of that boring, old bleep. But would that becomes some kind of intellectual property issue? Thanks. Uh, So Ken is the use of the swear jar. Protect herbal. Uh, you know, it might actually be if it's enough of our trademark. And I think we swear enough to make it, uh, distinctive and related in everyone's mind to us. Uh, thanks for the question. Uh, the coins that go into the swear jar are are retained and put in a trust account. For the humane and secure care of our producer Sara Faye, who is forced to run the show and believe us when we swear And then we have a question from Tammy in Scottsdale. Hey, this is Tammy in Scottsdale, Arizona. So, what is the probability that former President Trump will be arrested? At some point? I'm asking for a numerical probability between 0% and 100% list on hedge. Just guess. Thanks. Can you? You vex me? You vex me very much indeed. Uh, I think increasingly low, So you know the Manhattan investigation when it was up in the air what it would be about Uh, was more of a possibility. I think now it's pretty clear it's unlikely to lead to any charges against former President Trump Federal investigations. I think our, um, increasingly Unlikely to lead to charges against President Trump. So I would say no more than 10% chance that he is going to be arrested. Yeah, I mean, part of this is interesting, because you have to think about how you would drop a contract. If you had a prediction market about this. We can make a guess here but until the present until the former president dies. Uh then we will never know if we were wrong to say that he wouldn't be arrested cause it's always possible could be arrested in the future. And also, conceivably for any other matter, one that we haven't considered now that said, even though we're talking about, you know potentially well, more than a decade of, uh of of future outlook here. I think Ken is about right. I'm going to go under him. Actually, I'm gonna go with 7%. And it's important to point out because people will again get very agitated at us that this is not a normative statement about what should happen..
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Back again with left right and center. I'm Josh Barrow, columnist for Insider On the Right is Ross Douthat columnist at The New York Times and on The left is Elizabeth Breunig, staff writer at the Atlantic. So every week is infrastructure Week in this administration like in the last administration, except that every week they're actually working on an infrastructure package in the Congress in this administration, and that's why it's infrastructure Week and I was very amused this week. I mean first, the the White House has been having these bipartisan talks with Senator Shelley Moore, capital of West Virginia. And those talks didn't really seem to be going anywhere. And finally, the White House said. You know that that's enough talking. I don't think this is this is going to be productive. Um, but then we have a bipartisan group of 10 U. S senators who have come up with their own bipartisan package. And the funny thing about this package is that no one really knows what's in it. In fact, the the CNN story about this had to have the headline. Here's what we know about the bipartisan infrastructure deal. And what they say. We know as it would be $1.2 trillion over eight years. Most of that would be spent in the first five years. The plan would only spend about $600 billion in new money. It's basically on top of a regular highway bill that Congress would ordinarily do. Anyway. There won't be tax hikes and other details still need to be worked out. And so, Ross we talk about secret Congress Sometimes that, you know, Congresses. More productive than it lets on. It does things quietly. But this is the most secret of the secret Congress that I've seen where it's like. We have a deal. No, you We can't tell you what's in the deal. Right? And this is probably where secret Congress reaches its limits, right that you can do you can do secret Congress for, um you know the science science funding bill that just passed the Senate because it's not sort of It's not seen as you know, in any way, a kind of ideological football back and forth. Um, but for something that has been negotiated already between the White House and another Republicans and has been like a focus of obsessive media coverage is sort of the embodiment of whether bipartisanship happens in this administration. At some point you actually have to reveal what's what's in the bipartisan compromise, and then you will have some kind of media freak out. And you just you just won't be able to do it The way some other things have passed, um, sort of much more secretly, but for now, it's Yeah, it's fun to sort of Have this bipartisan agreement that, um, has absolutely no public profile whatsoever. Right, Liz? I look at this, and I realize this sounds like a silly question. But like, why are we doing in infrastructure package? I feel like this got the momentum where it was like. That's a thing that maybe we can get a bipartisan agreement on so we'll do it. But when the Biden administration announced the infrastructure package, it seemed to me like they had a few agenda items. One is they wanted to do some things they're not infrastructure. But use the infrastructure branding in the infrastructure vehicle in order to get them done. And so that included the money for home health care. Um there was supposed to be a bunch of money for for housing, which, though it is, you know, it's physical, durable assets. It's not that's not infrastructure by a by a traditional definition. Um, so that's not likely to end up in this secret package. I'm pretty sure those things are not secretly in their. Um, They also wanted to use it to to your point as a vehicle to do a tax increase to say we're going to do all this great infrastructure stuff and we need to pay for it. So here's how we're going to have a corporate tax increase. Um, and that's also that's definitely not in this secret deal because they say 11 of the things we do know that's not a secret as there are no tax increases in it. And so I guess what was the What's the reason that liberals want an infrastructure package? Do that? Are those goals still satisfied if those things aren't in there? Because if this really is just about building a bunch of highways and airport improvements, and that sort of thing In this period where we have all these good shortages and the labor market that seems to be showing quite a bit of competition. It's not clear to me that agenda item number one really is the infrastructure. If you're not getting those those things were supposed to be writing along with the infrastructure. Well, I think that you alluded to it when you mentioned Trump's focus on infrastructure, which is they think that it's electorally useful. Um, Democrats are obviously extremely nervous about midterms. Um, I think they have good reason to be. And I I I think you know if the worst were to happen, and they did get completely walloped. In the midterms. Uh, they would be in a really, really, really bad situation. Um, the country would be in a pretty bad situation. Um, and and so I think they're right to be Thinking about ways to avert disaster now in classic Democrat fashion, I think they're coming to all the wrong conclusions about how to avert disaster. Um, but it does seem to be on their mind. And I think infrastructure is one of those politically safe ways to a Get things through as you mentioned that, um, you know otherwise might be sort of tedious to get through. Um, and but then be it's just something that is sort of, you know. Well received across the board is a good example of Democrats governing and doing something that is, um you know, bipartisan And effective, which you can point to, with real tangible results in the world. Ross. Of course, this can't be entirely about helping Democrats win elections because there does seem to be some level of Republican willingness to participate in this and you noted in a column that this feels very different from the beginning of the Obama administration, where you had a really an effort to say to say We're not going to work with you on any of these significant initiatives and we're going to make whatever you do be a party line vote so that we can say it was not bipartisan. Republicans seem to have their far apart on numbers and all those things, But there is a there seems to be a general Republican openness to finding ways to spend some money on some things jointly with Joe Biden. Yeah, I mean, I think And this is a way where the combination of trumpism and you know those low interest rates that you like to talk about, has has shifted has shifted the Republican Party's ideological center of gravity. And so for for things that are perceived as in the interests of red states and Republican constituencies, which means I think, in particular Infrastructure and some kind of spending on the family. You have a you know, not huge, but substantial group of Republican legislators who want who want to make things happen. I think the big change that happened over the course of the Trump era is there's just like less like grassroots, anti spending energy right and again. That probably has something to do with the sense that, like money is free right now or cheap right now, and you don't have to. You know, it doesn't imply a tax increase to have more spending, but there's just no Sort of conservative grassroots, like you know, all this infrastructure bill is really where we need to draw the line. Conservatives are all focused on cultural issues instead. The other thing That's funny to me about this debate is that when we look back on this and say, did this lead to the passage of bipartisan infrastructure Bill or not? There's actually not going to be a clear yet..
Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"josh barrow" Discussed on Heartland Newsfeed Radio Network
"Affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law. This is josh barrow and welcome to left right and center. You're civilized yet. Provocative antidote the self contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debates. It is the first week of june and we got a jobs report that showed job growth improved in may compared to april but was still slower than expected. The us added five hundred fifty nine thousand jobs in may leaving a still seven point six million jobs short of where we were before the pandemic wage growth beat expectations again reflecting employers desire to hire workers. But that's not translating into the accelerated job creation. That a lot of economists had been looking for to talk about that. Let's bring in our left right and center panel as always. I'm your center on the right. I'm joined by tim. Carney senior political columnist. The washington examiner. Hey tim josh. And on the left elizabeth brunette staff writer at the atlantic. Hello liz liz. Are these numbers of problem. Is this recovery going as well as it ought to be. I don't think we have a good map for how this recovery should be going. Because they don't think we have in modern times at least intentionally turned the economy off and turned it back on again. This isn't a typical recession. This was something we did intentionally to try to stop the spread of a disease. And so i think to the degree that we're seeing slow returns. It's something that you know is obviously worrisome. Something that we probably don't need to worry too much about yet. I think to the degree that workers are feeling it possible to be a little bit picky about what jobs they tate coming back to the labor market. I'm not too worried about that. Actually think that might be a good thing And i hope that it drives wages up. And i'm pleased with the wage growth so we all kind of share a general premise. Here about the unemployment that has just referred to the special extra federal unemployment on top of the state unemployment that in extraordinary times. It's actually good to help people not rush back into a job especially a job that might not be a good fit if the jobs are coming back and hospitality but you work in manufacturing. There's some some cost to the economy of people just rushing back into the first job that open but the the minor premise of this argument is the question is are we still in those extraordinary times and the fact is basically everybody. Every adult who wants vaccine has a vaccine the economy's opening much faster today than we thought even or trying to open much faster today than we thought it was going to even a month ago. And you know. I i like to go to local bars. Both in downtown dc. And where. I live in silver spring and in both of them the manager comes up to me and says i would love to hire people but this extra federal three hundred dollars on top of the state unemployment makes it impossible for me to get people to work for me and so the question is. Are we ready to sort of say to the local pub. I'm sorry you're not allowed to be in business because you don't pay your people enough. Your margins aren't high enough. I think that we can avoid the fact that in many cases is extra three hundred dollars from the federal government is keeping people from going to work in a way that hurts the economy and hurts communities by closing down small businesses. You know it's been really interesting to me watching businesses open back up. I live in new york and restaurants were opened through the pandemic for takeout and we had a huge expansion and outdoor dining on. But as there's been this this scaling back up in the return to normal. It's clear to me that places are short staffs and they're not operating the way they used to but some of that really seems to be flowing through as changes to business models that i think are broadly positive. Ones which is to say you know menus are shorter so that services simpler so that you can serve the same number of people with fewer workers also reduces your food costs. We're seeing restaurants continuing to use those digital menus. I in some cases taking orders on the phone You pay on your phone and that means the waiter doesn't have to come to the table as many times and that means you can again. You can do more service with fewer workers and obviously we don't want that to mean get fewer total aggregate jobs in the economy. But what i'm seeing. There is those businesses adapting to the fact that it's hard to hire for a number of reasons and saying well. Let's let's get more productive. Let's find a way to do business with fewer workers than than we used to in among the benefits of that is that a business with higher productivity like that can afford to pay more. And so i think to some extent. We're seeing some structural changes in the in the economy from things that we learned through the pandemic. Or because as liz notes you know people came out of this and said you know. We'll do. I really want to do this thing at twelve dollars an hour that i used to do. And i think some of those adaptations could could actually be really positive in the long run. And i think part of that. If you're going to have those sorts of big changes it makes sense that it's going to take some time for all the jobs to come back. Because businesses need to find new ways to operate people need to find new things to do and so we still have hundreds of thousands of people re entering employment every month. But if it's if it's not just that we've had this huge disruption society but some things are changing forever. I look at this and i've been. I've been feeling more sanguine than a few months ago about this pace. Basically saying you know we're really changing a lot and i of think it's okay if that changes it takes a while because i think a lot of those changes are really going to improve the way works in the united states in the long run. I think there are positives People learning to actually work from home. I mean people got better at it over the last few years so office. Jobs that sort of thing. If more of those can work from home creates a flexibility. What i'm hoping to see see more of is more sort of work from home. That is very clearly part time that you can say you know mondays and fridays. I'm i'm checked out or you know what three o'clock i'm picking up my kids and i'm totally checked out at that point and so there will be any time. Something bad happens that we have to adjust from. Learn something from it but it to me again. It's unavoidable to say to say the paying people not to work. That's obviously keeping people off the sidelines. And it's an another argument for federalism. Right different states are making up their minds. Here in maryland governor larry hogan vs governor decided to end it. Come july first. We're not gonna have that extra three hundred dollars and you can look around maryland and see that you know. The businesses are open and or or to open and the job market is tight in another state might be a different story and a different governor can make a different decision. I think it's a great argument in favor of the way we do it now. We're the states. The states actually carry out and administer the unemployment benefits liz. I think it's interesting. We're having this conversation at a time that we've negotiations ongoing in washington for very large infrastructure package. Now i'd note that the package is supposed to be and they're still writing obviously but it's supposed to be spent over eight years so the idea is not the you put trillions of dollars out. Try to do all the construction right away. But it's still it's a it's a big increase in the amount of physical investment that we would be doing over the medium-term at a time when employers are finding it somewhat difficult to hire and they're also finding it somewhat difficult to acquire materials. We're seeing big increases in prices for lumber. Which has come down some but it's still very elevated for steal things like that. Does this adjust your view at all on whether this is really time for a big infrastructure package at a time when you have businesses both saying well it's already hard for me to higher and also saying you know. It's hard for me to buy lumber and to steal and so what. What are those prices going to do. If the government decides that this is exactly the right time to increase its construction of highways and bridges and those sorts of things. I think those are considerations you have to. You have to think about when you're doing any kind of massive infrastructure investment but at the same time the counterbalance to that is do we really need the infrastructure investment right now and i think a lot of signs point to yes. So if if the lack of infrastructure or the instability unevenness nationwide and infrastructure is leading to significant problems..
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Thistles, Josh Barrow and Welcome to left Right and center. You're civilized, yet provocative antidote to the self contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debate. It is the third week of May and as we tape on Friday morning, Hamas and the Israeli government have reached a cease fire after a week and a half of fighting that left hundreds of Palestinians and about a dozen Israelis dead. Fighting had begun in earnest on May 10th. After days of clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police that the election mosque Hamas fired rockets toward Jerusalem, drawing an Israeli military response and so forth. President Biden has intentionally set out to de emphasize the Israeli Palestinian conflict in U. S foreign relations. There are no grand plans for a peace process, an area where many administrations before have tried and failed. Hall to see wrote in politico about how the Biden team doesn't even like to use the word peace, talking more about how they want to bring calm to the area to deescalate tensions, essentially setting the modest goal of stopping acute conflicts like the one we have seen this month. And so this Wednesday, Biden, whose hands off approach it displeased increasingly vocal elements in the Democratic Party, there are tuned to the concerns of Palestinians communicated to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he expected a significant de escalation that day on a path toward a cease fire. And the ceasefire brokered by Egypt emerged on Thursday to talk about that. Let's bring in our left right and center panel has always on your center. I'm joined by Megan McArdle, columnist of The Washington Post on the Right. Hello, Megan. Hi. And on the left. Elizabeth Bronek, staff writer at the Atlantic Clueless Hi, Josh making what's the role here for the United States? Oh, I'm not even sure what the role for Israel the Palestinians is at this point. Look, I think that you know they're the administration is pulling back and with good reason, because if if you go to Israel You find out that they also have kind of given up. I mean, if you if you go back to Oslo and the nineties, but Clinton initiative, um you know that process ultimately collapsed. It did not produce a peace deal and that Basically decimated the Israeli left. Um, And now when you you know, I was there and 2018 and I remember asking multiple people like what is the endgame? How do you see this getting to a stable resolution And the answer? I basically got back is they don't see an end game is real is not thinking about how I get to a stable solution. Israel is thinking about how do I survive right now? How do I manage the threat? And that turns into the United States. You know, you could go in for big hopes for peace Still, but ultimately I think that the ground has shifted a lot in the last 20 years. And the bite administration is kind of recognizing what I think is a fact on the ground, which is the parties are not even really thinking about a deal. They're thinking very short term. On Dat means that the role of the United States is to try to minimize the damage both there and, of course to our interests here and abroad. Liz, I assume that's not how you would want to conceive the U s role here. But what I mean, what would there be that we could do? That would be different. That would be productive. Yeah. I mean, um, I think you know. There's very little we could do that. Would I think, make a meaningful difference at this point, especially a meaningful positive difference. Think the one running theme in U. S foreign policy since World War two has been intervention by the United States doesn't really seem to help anything and seems to make everything worse. Most of the time s O. I mean, I have fallen with with Sanders, for instance and AOC And we shouldn't be, uh, selling arms. We shouldn't be selling arms to Israel, especially giving them an expedited 15 Day, a review period instead of the typical 30 Day review period, we shouldn't be making special sweetheart deals to arm them, because again that just seems to be a form of intervention that's actually making everything worse, raising casualties. And so forth. Yeah, Megan. So I get to that point, the historic US support that we have had for for Israel in the long alliance that we've had that was built around for a long period of time when Israel had a very different internal politics that it has today and was was built around the idea. I think it was a true idea in the 19 nineties. There was a commitment from the Israeli government. There was an interest in a peace process. There was an interest in achieving a permanent resolution on guy think that in that context, it made a lot more sense to basically say, You know, we're here to support the Israeli government and to and to support them through this process so that they can be independent and free and peaceful. I don't think we have that partner on the Palestinian side, either. But if we don't have that partnership there, what is what is the reason that it makes sense for us to be selling arms to Israel, for example. Well, what is there isn't a sense for us to be selling arms to many of the countries. We sell arms D. Oh, look, I think that we have historically had a special relationship with Israel for a lot of reasons. Um, starting with the fact that you know this is this is a nation that was On Dad. Also kind of, you know, witnessed the horrors of it. Liberating the camps. Um, had you know was a supporter of Israel from the beginning and had long had And you know, the other thing is that that for all of Israel's problems that I have a lot of problems with the way that they had all the Palestinian Um and, frankly, the Arabs within their borders, Um they are still the most kind of peaceful, stable liberal government in the region. Um, you know, people within their borders have more short human rights and all the rest of it again without in any way, minimizing the abuses against the Palestinians. And the United States tends to pick governments that are friendly and that look like us rather than governments that are unfriendly and don't look like us. I mean, institutionally not. It's not like a racial reference or cultural reference. Um, and that that they have been that partner like should we revisited? A. I think that that's a tough question. You know who who was the alternative? You could sort of argue for a like we just pull back into our borders on don't really give money or arms or anything else to other people. But you also have to ask questions like if the United States was not supporting Israel, first of all with their policy improve, I doubt it. If any, if anything, making them more threatened, might make the policies worse..
Newsradio 970 WFLA
"josh barrow" Discussed on Newsradio 970 WFLA
"The Fed has been under shooting its target very often over the last decade on inflation, So if inflation ran at 3% or 4% for some modest period, I don't think that the problem in the long run we that you would get overheating if if if that was allowed to continue, But I think the Fed Is doing the right thing by watching and waiting and saying, You know, we don't know the extent to which this is a real overheating the economy versus the supply chain effects and that sort of thing on dwell wage growth. Has the numbers look good? I think we the upside of hot labor market eyes is the wage growth that you get out of that. But I don't think you want the Fed to start cutting that off by raising interest rates, which is the thing that would have to do if they were deciding ability to fight inflation right now, so I think it's I think it's something to watch. Um, but the overall the inflation number, I think is not going to be astoundingly high for this year. Just going to have a few categories of goods. They have weird things going on with him. There's a kind of home construction happening that's really pushed up lumber prices. Building a race that garden outside my house. I paid a fortune for lumber for that. But that's you know, Lumber is not a huge fraction of the economy, and most most things that people are paying for are going to have fairly normal prices in the coming year. You know this might sound like an obvious thing to stay. But I just think one of the problems we've been facing during the course of the past year is that we've never seen a challenge quite like this one before, and it's made it really tough to come up with right policy solutions. Yeah. I mean, it's such a weird economic crisis. I mean, in the normal recession, home prices go down on a normal recession, household balance sheets become impaired and look worse. And yet we managed to have this I mean, brief recession. I think it probably gonna turn out the recession was only two months long February at the April last year was a very steep recession. But we had this economic crisis in which household balance sheets improved. Andre in which home prices went up, and so if people are going to come out, there's a reason this recovery is so much faster than the recovery from the 2009 financial crisis. We don't have Challenge. We had last time where we had persistently slow job growth and weak wage growth for most of the decade. Those economic fundamentals are really strong. And so the questions you have to ask are you know what we're going to end up with too much inflation? What do we do about situation where companies can't find enough workers and businesses can't find enough materials in Thies air? Good problem to have You still need to address them, But they signal of fundamental strength that underlies in the economy. We have strong consumer demand. That means that there are good opportunities for business investment so long as you could lay your hands on the capital and the right physical goods, So hopefully the people address those properly over next year. Joining me now is columnist for Business Insider Josh Barrow, and we're talking about the state of the economy. So Josh, do you see any sectors within the economy that will likely see a more fundamental change in how they operate in two Business as a result of the pandemic changes that you think you're here to stay? Yeah. I mean, my general take on the extent to which the pandemic would change things forever was that a people overestimated the extent to which things would change forever. But mostly the changes that persists will be trends that we're already on. Going on. That just gets accelerated by I think the trend toward virtual work. I think that's real. I don't think that we're gonna have mass work from home with level that we've had it in the last year, But I think there could be for example of permanent decline of business travel. I think that a lot of company to figure it out. Ah, lot of these meetings we have people flying for really worked. Okay to do those on zoom. On day. So if you have that that obviously affect the hotel industry in the airline industry, and they have to figure out what to do with the except capacity they have. And so and one thing is we have these strong household balance sheets. Maybe we can have a renaissance with sort of a gold nature tourism. Um, but that means that airlines might do things like take out some of the business class seats on their long haul aircraft put in coach class seats. Is there persistently going to have more tourists and fewer business travelers on their planes s So I think that there are there are businesses that are impacted by that. I mean, I live in New York City. If you have persistently a lot of workers who are only gonna come into the office three days a week instead of five. And maybe Midtown can't support of many restaurants. So that did before the pandemic, so they're going to be micro shift like that. But overall, those those those adjustments are not going to be a huge fraction of the economy and the foot site is If we figured out how to do a bunch of things more productively than we know how to do before then that means that we can have faster overall growth and higher standard of living. And I think that the A picture of that productivity hasn't fully emerged because cos the way they've shifted their operations. The pandemic. They've done some things where they've changed. I figured out something that was that they actually cheaper or more efficient than they were doing before..
WNYC 93.9 FM
"josh barrow" Discussed on WNYC 93.9 FM
"But I don't think that it is e think in the 2016 Republican primary. It was very difficult for Chris Christie to be in the lane that he was in. Because Donald Trump was in that lane. Donald Trump could have pushed him out of that lane. Donald Trump with the brash East Coaster who would say the outrageous things or would get into a fight with someone on the debate stage, and Christie's roll kind of became Like the executioner on the debate stage with lesser candidates like Marco Rubio. I could see him very easily playing a role like that in the next Republican primary. I think it was Josh Barrow. My former colleague could Yeah, I visit insider who made some comments like I'm paraphrasing, but I can't wait to watch Chris Christie. Just Roy, Josh Holly in the Republican debates in 2024, I think I think he will probably have a president. I think you're right. He certainly seems to be running all indications interview that he would be running. But I also think that there there he benefited someone You know this better than anybody else, Probably from the fact that when Bridgegate finally when they returned the closure with Bridgegate, and it was it was resolving Legally. We were all consumed, and I think the mainstream press and mainstream political observers were consumed by the Trump Administration. And so I think a lot of that will resurface. As he waves back into the fray as a candidate. Going to be interesting because what happens with him might be an indication of where the Republican Party goes. If he's able to get some traction, that might mean that you know that more traditional Republican Party still exists, and if he doesn't maybe it means it's it's gone, and it's just in the mold of Trump. It'll be. It'll be fascinating. I wanna ask you one more thing before you go. Uh, what's next for you are you will obviously be covering the Biden administration. But are you worried? It just won't be nearly as interesting. What your thoughts about Your beat going forward. You know, people people were asking me that for the last couple of months, basically, l I am I stand to lose the greatest story in the world. And I'm I'm really not. I think in some ways I feel, um I'm talking to says journalist straight and I'm sure people with yellow journalist when they talked about things, this cynical really about how it is that the story versatile, it is is an experience of American. Um Right? The Trump story. I don't know how it felt for you when you also covered it, but to knead it like It's never ending. All right. You're never gonna get closure on any stories you know characters ever went away. It was six years of just the cast getting bigger and bigger and the plot getting longer and longer, And it is sort of weighing on you A so the you know every It's like, Oh, my God about Giuliani now, and I've got to explain. Series of Backstories Trump for two decades of back story, and you never, just like got a new twist to write about that didn't have baggage. Um so I feel a bit liberated. You know, on day I feel like I can hopefully Okay, It's on Aspects of political life and political culture that are not so obvious. And so in your face, I think Trump era in that sense kind of stunted creativity. Because for me of the writer because it was all you had to do I think you said when you first introduced me that I chronicle Reed usually audience Very colorfully, but all that you had to do to be colorful at someone documenting this era politics just described in plain language. What was happening, so I'm looking forward to being able to be creative again. It's okay. Something that maybe, uh Not everyone interprets that everything Giants. Well, we're looking forward to reading living. You see Washington correspondent for New York magazine. Who is newly liberated. Thank you, Olivia. Thanks so much for coming on. We'll talk soon. Thank you. Matt Katz, filling in for Brian Lehrer. Up next, we'll dig into the biological differences between the known covert variants circulating in the U. S on how they differ in terms of transmissibility that's coming up. W N. Y C and the New York Public Library have teamed up for a virtual book club experience. I'm Alison Stewart in this month are get lit book Club selection is Black Buck about a Brooklyn man scheme to help people.
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Debit card more at aspiration dot com. Thistles, Josh Barrow and Welcome to left Right and center. You're civilized, yet provocative antidote to the self contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debate. It was the last week of January, and this week we got news about two new covert vaccines. Vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and Novavax have some results from Phase three clinical trials showing the vaccines are effective. But the numbers are not as good as the numbers we previously saw for the Fizer and Madonna vaccines, which is a different technology. No vaccine. Johnson and Johnson also shows some signs of being less effective against some of the mutated variants of the virus that causes covert 19, though that data is also preliminary and mixed. The good news from these announcements is the vaccines look to be highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death, even if they don't stop all mild or moderate cases of covert 19. It's still the variants are complicating the picture for persistently beating this epidemic. Vaccine manufacturers are already working on modifications and booster shots that we might be getting some months after our initial vaccines. But the most important thing right now to get the virus to stop changing so fast is to reduce the number of cases because Maurin factions means more opportunities for the virus to mutate. And here in the U. S. The vaccination campaign is accelerating, with states getting somewhat increased weekly deliveries and the expectation that some of these new vaccines, especially Johnson, and Johnson, could be approved for emergency use within weeks. Discuss all of that. Let's bring in our left right and center panel. As always, I'm your center on the right. Lonnie Chen is the David and Diane Steffy fellow at the Hoover Institution. And he's the director of domestic policy studies at Stanford. Hello, Lonnie. Good to be with you, Josh. And on the left. David Dan is the executive editor of the American Prospect. Hi, David. Hi. How you doing? S Oh, David President Biden has taken a number of executive actions that are intended to speed up the pace of this vaccination campaign. Including invoking the Defense production act to speed the production of certain materials that are necessary for vaccination. Donald Trump also made some use of this act during his presidency. Do you have a sense of the extent to which Biden's approach the announcements that we've seen over the last week, plus Are these a big change in strategy? Or is this a continuation with some adjustments of the strategy under the last administration? Well, I think it's an acceleration of the strategy. I mean, I think the important thing is The use of the federal response in terms of distribution. So the big thing I think on that front that they announced this week is that not only would they increase the allocation to the states by 16%, but they committed to that over the next three weeks. And the biggest problem with the rollout has been that states had no idea what they were getting or when they were getting it. And so by setting a clear schedule states can actually come up with A a natural timeline where they can say to their residence. Yeah, we know we're gonna have this much and we can give you on appointment over the next three weeks because we know that that particular allocation is going to be there so that I think was one of the biggest things that they did this week as far as the Defense production act. I think that, you know. Yes. The Trump Administration did use some of this. They're going a bit further there even apparently exploring the retooling of factories to allow vaccines that are already approved to be manufactured by other drug manufacturers, that that I think would be quite important and should have been done frankly, months ago. But, you know, all of this is in service to ensuring that there's not a supply snack down the road. And, of course, the Johnson Johnson and Novavax announcements make that a little bit of oven. Easier lift because you're going to have more supply if those indeed get approved for emergency use. But I think that we're going to need more vaccine next year on down the road, and we're going to need it all across the world and everywhere in the world. Getting more vaccine helps the United States on both health and economic level, so we really should be using the D P A to compel manufacturing of these additional vaccines. You know, if if no of artists or Merck is out of the game of making a vaccine now they should be making the visor vaccine. They should be making the maternal vaccine. They should be making the Johnson and Johnson back seat. Not here. What do you make of that? We We have had this announcement in Europe that Sanofi, the French finest pharmaceutical company whose own vaccine development has not gone so great that they're going to make 100 million doses of the Fizer vaccine for the European market. Is that what what David's identifying there is that something the U. S government should be focusing on trying to get More companies making the vaccines that we know work and beyond that, What do you make of the first week and a half of the Biden administration taking these steps to speed the vaccine? Roll out and I think to something we discussed last week. We were saying the goals don't look ambitious enough. They've started changing their rhetoric somewhat, saying a million doses a day is a floor. We're already up to 1.7 million doses one day this week. S so it seems like they're they're shifting the rhetorical commitment at least a little bit to the idea that they need to go faster. Yeah, I think Josh it's a shift in tone. To be sure, the federal government is clearly taking a more sort of role. You know, During the last administration, the federal government saw itself Maura's a facilitator, and I think you are seeing that that change in mindset, which, clearly at some level makes a difference. I think some of this can be overblown. I mean, the defense production acts a good example of that most of the companies that would be targets of the DP A have already been in close contact with the Biden administration. And some of the things that the DP A would be used for. Are things like these low dead space syringes you've heard about which essentially are Syringes that allow 46 doses of the Fizer vaccine to be extracted per vial rather than five. Beckton, Dixon and Dickinson and Company is the company that manufactures the syringes and in the U. S. And you know that's something we really didn't realize we needed until the vaccine rollout was underway. And so some of this is is again the federal government engaged in conversations and discussions with these companies, rather than trying to beat them over the head with it at some point, Yeah, I do think it'll be a question of whether we try to get those pharmaceutical companies that are not producing a vaccine themselves to assist in production. You know, it's not as simple as taking a factory and just saying OK, we're gonna flip a switch. And tomorrow we're gonna make the Madonna vaccine. It is quite complex. Each of these formulations.
Newsradio 970 WFLA
"josh barrow" Discussed on Newsradio 970 WFLA
"W F L. A I would never see him Tampa Bay on this Friday. January 29th. I'm Brian Gorman with me this evening, Reggie on the board and joining me Now I have columnist for Business Insider Josh Barrow, who you can follow on Twitter at J. Barrow to talk about this week's stock market volatility involving stocks like Gamestop and AMC and Josh. Thanks for taking a few minutes to chat with us about this. Look, I'm certainly no expert on the stock market, and I think like a lot of Americans Their parts of the story that can get a little hard to comprehend if you don't live in that world, But I do like to think I have a little bit of common sense. And while I'm certainly not shedding a tear for hedge funds, or the super wealthy, losing money and look, some people can navigate a short squeeze and make some money, more power to you. But the issue I've had is something you laid out really well in a recent column, the reality of game stops value doesn't match the markets valuation of it right now. I don't think you have to be a CNBC analyst. Understand that's eventually going to be a problem. Yes. No, that's right. I mean, the value keeps fluctuating Last I looked, it's around 300. It's gotten over 400 per share. On. So that implies that game stop is worth somewhere in the ballpark of, you know, between 20 and almost $30 billion for comparison. That's the on the upper end of that range is what best buy is worth Best Buy has about three times as many employees about five times as many sales. Most importantly, best buy makes money and made about a billion and a half dollars in 2019, while Gamestop lost more than $400 million. Game stops. Business has been in structural decline because they sell their a physical retailer selling video games. The video game trade has been moving online increasingly not just through shipping of video games, but through downloads on so the company has been troubled, and there had been a dispute among investors. There were, as has been noted this week. There were a lot of investors that took short positions on game stop that is betting Its share price would fall. There were other investors who said, you know, actually, Gamestop can successfully pivot on go back to being profitable. They'll close some stores. They'll move back. They'll move toward doing more online retailing and they will succeed. And so there. That's the first thing to note that not everybody in finance. Not all the big guys were shorts in this. There are people who were long game stop all along. They have made a killing. Because of what all of these posters on reddit have done. The this dispute over Gamestop came to the attention of the Wall Street bets Subreddit on Do you started to see a lot of investors, many of them who are small investors, although I think we should note That people who are who are serious people who work in the industry who have a lot of money. They can also post on reddit message boards. We shouldn't assume that everybody involved in this movement is some little guy, right? This isn't just you know, a bunch of people who are barely getting by yet have not only had the time but also had the wherewithal to pull off. Short squeeze end just happened to have the money sitting around to do something like that, right? And even if you're a small player in this, you had some money that you were able to put in the stock market. And so there's been some narratives online about how like this is like the poor rising up and this is an extension of occupy Wall Street. If you're trading a brokerage account, you have some money. It doesn't mean that you're a big guy, but this is about This is about middle income investors. Basically, I have a lot of people who have more time on their hands more money on their hands cause they're not traveling. I'm not going to restaurants they may have gotten into trading back last spring, and the stock market has done great since last spring. Bitcoin has also done rate since last spring. So if you started dabbling in investing Orrin doing weirder and and more aggressive things in investing, it's quite plausible that you made money over that period. Not because you were smart, but just because the whole market went up, and so I think that has gotten people a little bit greedy. But so basically, there are two stories about what has driven Gamestop through the roof. The short, interesting game stop was really high. Now there's been a There's been a miss description of this where people say that There were so many shares sold short that it was more than everyone who was long game stop. It would be impossible for all the short sellers to get out. That's not quite right. That's based on a misunderstanding of this, but But the short, interesting game stop was very high, and what that meant was when people started buying and all these before posting about by game stop. That pushes the price up, and if you have sold the stock short, you have to borrow it in order to sell it on Daz. The price goes up that becomes more and more costly for you to do in the person you've borrowed it from. You have to put up more collateral so that you can stay there. And so that squeezes a lot of the short sellers. They they have to get out of their short position by buying stock. Because they can't afford to stay in the position with stock getting so expensive. And when all those short sellers go out and start buying stock instead of selling it that pushes the price up more, which uses more of the other short sellers, and it could be a self fulfilling prophecy. No, that's been happening here. But you also have people just posting like, you know, we're gonna rocket this to the moon, and it should be $1000 a share s O. Some of it is basically just a more ordinary stock bubble. Where you have irrational exuberance around the price, and that is also pushing the price up. And as you note Fundamentals of game Stop. Do not regardless of whether you by the short seller story.
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"In stay tuned to KCRW. Thistles, Josh Barrow and Welcome to left Right and center. You're civilized, yet provocative antidote to the self contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debates. It was the last week of January, and this week we got news about two new covert vaccines. Vaccines from Johnson and Johnson and Novavax have some results from Phase three clinical trials showing the vaccines are effective. But the numbers are not as good as the numbers we previously saw for the Fizer and Madonna vaccines, which is a different technology. No vaccine. Johnson and Johnson also shows some signs of being less effective against some of the mutated variants of the virus that causes covert 19, though that data is also preliminary and mixed. The good news from these announcements is the vaccines look to be highly effective at preventing hospitalization and death, even if they don't stop all mild or moderate cases of covert 19. But still, the variants are complicating the picture for persistently beating this epidemic. Vaccine manufacturers are already working on modifications and booster shots that we might be getting some months after our initial vaccines. But the most important thing right now to get the virus to stop changing so fast is to reduce the number of cases because more infections means more opportunities for the virus to mutate. And here in the U. S. The vaccination campaign is accelerating, with states getting somewhat increased weekly deliveries and the expectation that some of these new vaccines, especially Johnson, and Johnson, could be approved for emergency use within weeks. Discuss all of that. Let's bring in our left right and center panel is always I'm your center on the right. Lonnie Chen is the David and Diane Steffy fellow at the Hoover Institution. And he's the director of domestic policy studies at Stanford. Hello, Lonnie. Good to be with you, Josh. And on the left. David Dan is the executive editor of the American Prospect. Hi, David. Hi. How you doing? S Oh, David President Biden has taken a number of executive actions that are intended to speed up the pace of this vaccination campaign. Including invoking the Defense production act to speed the production of certain materials that are necessary for vaccination. Donald Trump also made some use of this act during his presidency. Do you have a sense of the extent to which Biden's approach the announcements that we've seen over the last week? Plus, are these a big change in strategy? Or is this a continuation with some adjustments of the strategy under the last administration? Well, I think it's an acceleration of the strategy. I mean, I think the important thing is The use of the federal response in terms of distribution. So the big thing I think on that front that they announced this week is that not only would they increase the allocation to the states by 16%, but they committed to that over the next three weeks. And the biggest problem with the rollout has been that states had no idea what they were getting or when they were getting it. And so by setting a clear schedule states can actually come up with A unnatural timeline where they can say to their residents. Yeah, we know we're gonna have this much and we can give you on appointment over the next three weeks because we know that that particular allocation is going to be there so that I think was one of the biggest things that they did this week as far as the Defense production act. I think that, you know. Yes. The Trump Administration did use some of this. They're going a bit further there even apparently exploring the retooling of factories to allow vaccines that are already approved to be manufactured by other drug manufacturers, that that I think would be quite important and should have been done frankly, months ago. But, you know, all of this is in service to ensuring that there's not a supply snack down the road. And, of course, the Johnson Johnson and Novavax announcements make that a little bit of oven. Easier lift because you're going to have more supply if those indeed get approved for emergency use. But I think that we're going to need more vaccine next year on down the road, and we're going to need it all across the world and everywhere in the world. Getting more vaccine helps the United States on both health and economic level, so we really should be using the D P A to compel manufacturing of these additional vaccines. You know, if if no of artists or Merck is out of the game of making a vaccine now they should be making the visor vaccine. They should be making the maternal vaccine. They should be making the Johnson and Johnson back seat. On here. What do you make of that? We We have had this announcement in Europe that Sanofi, the French farmers, that pharmaceutical company whose own vaccine development has not gone so great that they're going to make 100 million doses of the Fizer vaccine for the European market. Is that what what David's identifying there is that something the U. S government should be focusing on trying to get More companies making the vaccines that we know work and beyond that, What do you make of the first week and a half of the bite administration taking these steps to speed the vaccine? Roll out and I think to something we discussed last week. We were saying the goals don't look ambitious enough. They've started changing their rhetoric somewhat, saying a million doses a day is a floor. We're already up to 1.7 million doses one day this week. S so it seems like they are. They're shifting the rhetorical commitment at least a little bit to the idea that they need to go faster. Yeah, I think Josh it's a shift in tone. To be sure, the federal government is clearly taking a more sort of role. You know, During the last administration, the federal government saw itself Maura's a facilitator, and I think you are seeing that that change in mindset, which, clearly at some level makes a difference. I think some of this can be overblown. I mean, the defense production acts a good example of that most of the companies that would be targets of the DP A have already been in close contact with the Biden administration. And some of the things that the DP A would be used for. Are things like these low dead space syringes you've heard about which essentially are Syringes that allow for six doses of the Fizer vaccine to be extracted per vial rather than five Beckton Dixon it Dickinson and company is the company that manufactures the syringes and in the U. S. And you know that's something we really didn't realize we needed until the vaccine rollout was underway. And so some of this is again the federal government engaged in conversations and discussions with these companies, rather than trying to beat them over the head with it at some point, Yeah, I do think it will be a question of whether we try to get those pharmaceutical companies that are not producing a vaccine themselves to assist in production. You know, it's not as simple as taking a factory and just saying OK, we're gonna flip a switch. And tomorrow we're gonna make the Madonna vaccine. It is quite complex. Each of these formulations.
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Thistles Josh Barrow, and I'm back with Attorney Ken White on all the president's lawyers s. So let's talk about a problem facing Joe Biden. When Biden entered office, he issued this 100 Day moratorium on deportations, essentially to give him time to review the immigration policies that have been set by the Trump Administration figure out what he wanted to change and who he didn't didn't want to deport. On the state of Texas, sued on a federal court in Texas has agreed with the ST blocking the president's order Imposing this. This moratorium on deportations on there are basically two arguments here. One is that there's a law that says that once a A final order of removal has been entered for a non citizen that the federal government has 90 days to actually remove that person. And so it's breaking that law to say, Well, we're gonna wait 100 days and not deport anyone. On Then the other thing has to do with the Administrative Procedure Act, which basically sets out how the president is supposed to issue regulations and things he supposed to do in that process. This is the thing that tripped up President Trump a number of times, including the former president Trump's efforts to add a question about citizens trip to the U. S census. And so similarly, this judge said here that he thinks there's a significant likelihood That the Biden administration is not abided by the administrative procedure Act in the way that it that it issued this disorder on so they There's been this temporary restraining order issued in this court. It applies nationwide. Biden cannot implement this policy. It's remarkable how structurally similar this is to some of the problems that Donald Trump ran into with some of his own executive orders right, And it's the exact same arguments frequently. The things that Trump tried to do aggressively in immigration realm in another areas were thwarted by lawsuit, citing the Administrative Procedures Act, which is ah federal sort of governs how federal regulatory agencies can change procedures and do new things. And the theories were often exactly the same as the ones here that On agency can't create new rules that violate federal law passed by Congress and that agencies can't create new rules that are arbitrary and capricious compared to prior policy. So this is pretty much a mirror of some of the arguments have been made before. That's not to say the arguments are equally as good or valid is just that This is the same mechanism. And similarly, what the judge did here was to create a nationwide injunction not just an injunction in the northern District, Texas, where the case was pending, and that's been extremely controversial under Trump as well. Trump supporters were constantly complaining. Federal courts should do nationwide injunctions, but you're only do them in their own district. And you know, liberals attacking Trump policies were saying the office it and so now it's switched. And to me, the the the opinion. This case has a certain level of just under the surface. Good for the goose is good for the gander type rhetoric, but this is going to continue to happen. We're going to see the same Techniques and arguments used to stop Trump used to stop Biden here amusingly after this judicial opinion, Texas is attorney General Ken Paxton distinguished, among other things for being under state indictment and FBI investigation. Posted ovary gloating tweet saying that this was ah, seditious left wing insurrection and my team and I stopped it that referring to you know Biden administrative, his executive order, so this sort of thing is going to continue to be a war and fought through the means the courts and it's gonna be one of the ways to, uh For conservatives to resist by the administration policy is the same way people resisted Trump administration policies. I want to talk about some Fred's that were on going through the Trump administration. They're either getting resolutions to or that we're not now First of all the lawsuits over emoluments alleging that President Trump was illegally receiving payments from foreign entities in the form of payments to his hotels and other properties. All those cases have been dismissed. Now, the Supreme Court basically told lower courts. Go back and dismiss these cases his mood. He's not president anymore. We can't have a suit over emoluments. These cases started almost the beginning of the Trump administration, and they spent nearly four years kicking around the legal system, and now he's not president anymore in their moods. So is there Is there any way that we could ever have litigation That would tell us exactly what the emoluments clause means and what it prohibits. Litigation that would cause enforcement of whatever it is that the emoluments clause prohibits. If you can't get this done within a presidential term, how does that provision mean anything? Well, Josh, if you wanted the rule of law to apply to President Trump, you should have re elected him. Really? I mean, you additional four years might have given it time to get to the system. Now, this is one of the reflections of how successful Trump was in one of his core strategies, which was Delay delay delay in terms of the court system, it was remarkably effective on a whole lot of fronts, thwarting any eventual outcome. So it may be that you could frame um, monuments cases in a way to, uh, stop them from being moved. I mean, here. I would think that one of the arguments could be that he continued to retain the benefits of his violation of the emoluments clause in reaching him. And that enrichment should be disgorged and he should be forced to give back some of the money. But you know, as it happens that the plaintiffs in these cases apparently agree that they were now moot. Cases were not at least not successfully framed That way. If it ever comes up again, Maybe that'll happen. I think it's more likely they'll practically speaking that the remedy For this would be some sort of congressional action toe pass a law the mechanism for Congress to enforce Theo monuments Klaus Egion Carol, who accuses the president of having raped her in the 19 nineties. There's been this ongoing litigation. The president denied her allegation and extremely crude, insulting terms. She sued him for defamation, saying that he was falsely accusing her of lying. About the allegation. And then there was this effort where the Justice Department said, because the president is a federal employee. And because he issued this denial in his capacity as the president, that truly the defendant in this suit ought to be the U..
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"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"And center. America has a new president Joe Biden called for Unity in his inaugural address. But he enters office with the country facing huge challenges and with the slimmest of majorities in Congress, which would make it harder for him to move the agenda he wants. So what are his prospects for turning those unity calls into actual unity? Welcome to left, Right and center. You're civilized, yet provocative antidote to the self contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debate. I'm Josh Barrow on today's show. We'll talk about how the Senate filibuster will slow biting down and whether Democrats in Congress should do anything to change it. I'll discuss the outlook for another round of covert relief and for speeding up a vaccine rollout that Biden's team says Trump badly mismanaged. Biden's own stated goal of 100 million shots in 100 Days Sounds like a lot, but it's not actually fast enough to fulfill Anthony Fauci is vision of normalcy by fall. And we'll get Biden's approach to China, the World Health Organization and restoring America's international standing. That's all coming up. Next on left, right and center will be right back. Live from NPR news. I'm Jack Spear. There is growing evidence that a new variant of the Corona virus, first identified in Southeast England carries ah, higher risk of death than the original strain. Over. British health experts also note the evidence is not yet strong and say more research is needed in the U. S. The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, fold NPR's all things considered today we should be prepared for further virus mutations and be ready to modify vaccines have needed We need to be prepared, and by the way, we're already moving in that direction to be able to modify a bit the vaccines so that they would be much more Amenable to controlling these types of Newton's. Were they to arrive and evolve even more than they've evolved. Health experts believe the current vaccines are effective against the new variant found, she says upping vaccination rates is the best protection against further virus mutations. States trying to ramp up their vaccine effort summer turning to the private sector for help this weekend, mass vaccinations will take place in several states in partnership with companies like Starbucks will stone reports. Public health leaders Hope Cos. Kenbrell, their logistical know how to smooth out some of the kinks in their vaccine operations. Starbucks is helping Washington state run its clinics more efficiently, and Microsoft is offering tech support. Dr Marcus Pleasure with the Association of State and Territorial Health officials says companies can help make the process more customer friendly. It's been challenging to scale those kinds of things up and having an entity come in the you know, really knows how to do that well, could be a huge help in North Carolina, Honeywell and other businesses are working with the state to do a mass vaccination site at a race car track. For NPR News. I'm Will Stone Retired Army General Lloyd Austin arrived at the Pentagon today and was sworn in as the new defense secretary. He is the first African American to hold the job. Austin was approved by a near unanimous Senate vote. NPR's Tom Bowman has more Austin briefly greeted reporters as he hurried into the Pentagon. After an intelligence briefing, Austin was scheduled to chair a coronavirus discussion with senior leaders, many of them joining virtually from locations in the U. S and overseas. Also one Secretary Austin's agenda a call to NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, a clear sign the administration will move quickly to strengthen in Atlantic alliance that frayed under the Trump administration. That's followed by briefings on China in the Middle East. Austin spent nearly all his career focused on the Middle East, but China has become a greater focus for Pentagon leaders with the country's greater spending on military hardware and aggressive moves in the South China Sea. Tom Bowman. NPR NEWS The Pentagon MX closed wind down the week on Wall Street. The Dow was down 179 points. The NASDAQ closed up 12 points today. This is NPR. This is KCRW. I'm Larry Parole. Here's what's happening in state and local news at 704, California lawmakers are scrambling to renew tenant protections that expire at the end of the month. President Biden extended a national eviction moratorium through March, but advocates say It's not long enough. Sarah Kimberlin is a senior analyst with the California Budget and Policy Center. I don't think anyone really expects the economy to be up and running again by the end of March, given that we're at a historic level of job losses. She adds that the state's eviction moratorium provide stronger protections than the federal policy. A new report from the center finds the majority of black and Latino Californians spend more than 30% of their income on rent that puts them at a higher risk of eviction during a recession. Borderline Bar and grill is the was the site of a 2018, mass shooting in 1000 Oaks. It's now closing for good, although the dancehall in restaurant has been closed since a man shot and killed a dozen people there and informal send off for the venue was organized this week. Ventura County. Starr reports. The owner of the building plans to tear it down by a soon as next month. Long time patrons and friends of the business gathered in an adjacent parking lot last night to reflect on the venue and do a little line dancing. Several of the more than 200 people 240 people who survived the attack were there. Wait time to get a vaccine at Dodger Stadium has, in some cases been taking up to five hours. City officials are blaming distribution issues for the delays. Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was among those in the line at Dodger Stadium this week. He recycled online from his Terminator movies to encourage people to get vaccinated. All right, that just got my vaccine and I will recommend it to anyone and everyone. Come with me. If you want to live. Here you go. Jeff Heartache was also cute up, he told ABC seven. He was excited to get the shot after a long year, staying at home, so I will be happy to get out of them. I can't wait to get back in the air again. Is a whole bunch of pluses that I'm looking forward to. But mostly, I'm anxious to not be contagious to somebody else if I happen to have it. Now we're currently six vaccinations. Super sites open in L..
KCRW
"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Josh Barrow on the right is Lanhee Chen fellow at the Hoover Institution on the left of Savile Row. Mon, president of Demos and our special guest is enough to fetch she sociology professor at the University of North Carolina and contributing writer at the Atlantic. S so long. He a defining feature of the last four years has been Republican elected officials trembling in fear at the president's Twitter account. On. The president has been kicked off of Twitter and Facebook and Instagram because of the role that his public statements, including social media statements, had in fomenting the insurrection that we had at the Capitol building. On. So it's been. This is one of several reasons that it's been a quieter week than usual for the president. And I'm wondering about the effect of this on the Republican Party and what this might mean for several years to come. Now where there has been this. This both hope. For Republicans to to keep the base that the president activated and this fear of what the president will do to people who cross him in one way or another, such as by trying to accept the results of the election in terms of defeating people in primaries and that sort of thing. Are we seeing the president's influence? Greatly waning And is there is there how much of the extent of that is about his social media megaphone being taken away? I actually do think that it has had an appreciable impact on his ability to Just to communicate with those who support him, but his ability really to control the ecosystem and control the infrastructure around media coverage of him and media coverage of the presidency. Um it in a really meaningful way. So I actually do think there will be an impact, certainly in this period of time where his presence has been diminished significantly now. I also know this. He is somebody who has demonstrated an ability to reach an audience and he is going to have the tools and the ability and probably the financial where with whole to design a way a platform. Whether it's some kind of media network or some kind of a a direct to consumer marketing scheme, he's going to be able to figure out some way to communicate with people who want to hear from him. I think the diminishing of his voice during this period of time. It is kind of a temporary thing, And then he'll re establish some kind of presence. Now Will it be the same as the however many 70 million? I guess Twitter followers he had before. Probably not. The audience won't be nearly as big. But I'd argue the audience that cares to hear from him won't be nearly as big either, so he is going to have the ability to speak to the audience that he wants to speak to an audience that's receptive. He has a message. Now you can argue that that's actually much more challenging in some ways for the overall enterprise of democratic governance, because it enables him to essentially spread these messages in a relatively less detectable way, Right when he was on Twitter, he'd say it, everyone would see it and you would know what he was saying. In some ways. This has the potential to be even more pernicious because he can then have a message that's very much narrow cast. The only certain people will see. But I do think that that not having that broad influence not having the ability to drive the narrative in the same way. Some of that I do think is going to be relatively lasting and as we've seen, can be pretty impactful in terms of his ability to control whether it's other officeholders, other politicians Or others in the political environment who he has been able to really have a hold of for the last four years. Saying that the the actions by the social media platforms go beyond just the president. Personally, We've seen big purges of Cuban on promoting accounts off of off of Twitter on and actions taken on Facebook that are attempting to stop the spread of various conspiracy theories. Does that does that look effective to you is that is this are the steps that are being taken now by by the by the big tech companies. Are they appropriate? And are they likely to actually have an effect on our political discourse that is persistent. Obviously, this is a very, very complicated question, But of course they'll be effective. I mean, we know from a lot off past research. Platform Ng works and this particular de platform in whatever else you want to think about. It is a very deep wanted includes stack booting from the Internet. A lot of these companies. There's really this mistaken understanding that the Internet because it's kind of decentralized and how it communicates with packets that it roots around censorship. In fact, Internet as it works has a lot of really crucial choke points and Amazon refusing to host parlor. Is probably a bigger deal. Then just the president himself being not being on social media along with this kind of purge, and whatever else you want to say about the wisdom of fit. It's a very, very powerful tool. Now, um Is this wise? What else will it do? That's really difficult, like to go back to the coup metaphors here. The one thing like I come from Turkey, a country off many coups and the first thing Cool people do is they surround the radio or the TV station or whatever the media because, like, if you think about it as factions buying for the public that megaphone is exactly the crucial thing Like the first thanks go to the TV station and You know, it's the 21st century. And the first thing is not just a TV station. It's social media. Plus, you're seeing that he's not even going on TV right? The president's he could go on TV. He's not. It's not the same thing. So On the one hand, I think it's absolutely going to be effective. On the other hand, it's a really weird thing to have a couple of people you know Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey and a few other people who died and made them King. Do this, and I think it's a cop out to say they're just private companies because they're really big part of the public sphere right now. So even if it's not a First Amendment case in the very strict sense, I think it's definitely a question of free speech and what to do, even if one thinks that at the moment It might have been the right thing to do. So that's like I sound slightly noncommittal because I don't think there's like a quick yes or no to this..
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"josh barrow" Discussed on KCRW
"Y c. This is Josh Barrow and welcome to left, Right and center. You're civilized, yet provocative antidote to the self contained opinion bubbles that dominate political debate. It was the second week of January and this week President Trump was impeached again. The House voted to impeach the president, one week after his supporters ransacked the Capitol building in a riot that led to five deaths. That riot intending to interrupt the process of certifying Joe Biden as the winner of last November's election. The impeachment vote was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in American history, with 10 Republicans joining every Democrat in the House voting to impeach Trump for inciting an insurrection against the U. S government. Mitch McConnell has declined to call the Senate back into session early, so the trial won't likely happen until after Trump has left office next week. But most legal experts believe the Senate can hold an impeachment trial after an official is left office. Indeed, this has been done before for federal judges who were impeached. And that the Senate convert to bar President Trump from ever holding federal office again if it so chooses. So shortly. That question will be with the Senate, where a number of Republicans have expressed openness to the impeachment, and even Mitch McConnell is telling associates he's undecided on what verdict he would vote for. There was much less Republican support for the president's election objections in the Senate. Then there had been in the House, possibly making it fertile ground for Democrats to find bipartisan support. To talk about all of that. Let's bring in our left right and center panel is always on your center on the right. Monty Chen is the David and Diane Steffy fellow at the Hoover Institution, and he's the director of domestic policy studies at Stanford. Lani. It's good to be with you. Josh on the left is Savile Row. Mom, president of Deimos. Hi, Cybill. Hi, Josh. And our special guest today is enough to fiction. Zeynep is a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina and a contributing writer at the Atlantic. Hello, Zina. Hi, there. Sosa. Bill, What is the objective with this impeachment? So, Josh, I think it's such a extraordinary circumstance here. Impeachment to my mind is such an important marker of accountability, right? What happened last week remains an attack on the Capitol and attack on our democratic process. And I think to let it go by unnoticed on unnoted is a huge mistake for our long term democracy. This is not about Just about backward looking accountability, I think is really about sending a strong signal for the future right because we want to make sure that this isn't a precursor to further attempts to destabilize our democratic process in future years, So it's really, really important that there be a strong response from the government. Longing. I keep hearing many Republicans this week, saying that impeachment is divisive and it won't bring the country together at this moment, and basically that we should look forward, not backward. And I just find this amazing coming from a political party that has fomented all of these lies about the election that were extremely divisive that led to this mob. Sacking the Capitol building. They were told that a huge crime was being committed against American democracy in which Republicans were complicit with Democrats trying to steal this election from Donald Trump. And so You know that I can understand the the political dynamics that ended up with a lot of Republicans doing this. I just find it amazing to do that for months and months and months and then come around and say that an impeachment trial would be divisive. So why Why is that? The argument that Republicans have to hang their hat on here. They're not substantively defending the president's behavior. A lot of them are even stipulating to the fact that he committed impeachable offenses and just basically saying, Well, you know the country needs to move on from this. It doesn't feel like that's something that's likely to be acceptable to the rest of country. What we know is when there aren't great substantive arguments. One does tend to default to process arguments, and I think we we saw this also, I mean, by the way, that this is something that I think is Kind of native to our politics now, and we saw it also, you know Republicans during the first impeachment proceeding back in January, a number of them were throughout. For example, If you recall the controversy over whether John Bolton not to testify, you know a lot of those Substantive arguments in favor of that were or drowned out by process arguments. And so you know, I think process arguments are generally what one goes to when the substances in great and as you noted, the stipulation that many Republicans have made, and in fact it is the right stipulation is that President Trump played a not insignificant role in the proceedings that we saw at the Capitol building. So the challenge then becomes how do you Put together an argument for essentially opposing this process going forward, and I do think a lot of it does come to this. And look, you can say some of it is processed and I understand that, but there are some legitimate constitutional questions regarding you know whether, in fact this process Is appropriate for a former president, which is what it will be. Once this process does give does get going, if the purpose of the processes to effectuate a bar on President Trump from ever running for public office again or ever holding public office again, I should say, um, I think people should be clear about that. And they should say that that's in fact what the intention is rather than trying Tolo Kit in This conversation about that we're living in from office, which is going to be relatively academic. One Come January, 20th at 12 01. It is not. It is also not inaccurate to say that it is a divisive process. It is a divisive process, and in some ways that's the challenge with impeachment is impeachment is a political argument. It's not a legal one. And efforts to make it illegal. One really, in some ways, I think, take away from the reality of the fact that all of this is happening in a massively political environment. People will have their own opinions about whether it's right or wrong. But the reality is that it is a political argument. We're having not a legal one. Do you see this as a useful remedy in the situation, and I know you've written in the last few days at the most dangerous thing that happened at the Capitol on January, 6th was after the sacking of the capital..
Newsradio 970 WFLA
"josh barrow" Discussed on Newsradio 970 WFLA
"And then final question for you after taking some of those calls yesterday, there is a sense It's very split in this country. In terms of whether or not people are optimistic about the future, it's kind of reverse. Now you have Democrats, much more optimistic. Lot of Republicans specially Trump supporters, much more pessimistic. Yesterday was obviously a new infamous day. A horrible day. But generally speaking, do you think things will start to improve? In this country, and maybe they're convey be some unifying especially Maura in the middle. Obviously, not on the extremes. That's not gonna happen. But can the country come a bit more together here in 2021? I really do think so. These vaccines work on de any day now will learn whether the vaccine that Johnson and Johnson has developed works, which were getting data on that sometime this month, and that's only one dose to your manufacturer. If we get that The vaccine rollout will actually significantly speed up. I think life is going to be just way more normal by July, 1st than it is right now and then American households. Obviously there's been tremendous pain for for a lot of people because the work that they do has been severely disrupted by this, you know, people who work in our own restaurants or in the various other severely impacted industries. But then you also have the average household. Actually has had it. Z finances improve on paper through this crisis because people receive such significant relief payments, especially last spring and summer because employment came back faster than was expected as of the projections in the spring because interest rates are low, and because people have been spending less money, there's been a significant reduction in household consumption because people basically stopped spending any money on restaurants and travel. On DSA what That means and we also we entered this crisis in a pretty healthy position, both for for household finances. People were less indebted. It didn't look at all like 2007. Balance sheets looked pretty good. The upside of all of that is that basically you have a lot of people out there who have who have have money. Credit card debt is 10% lower in the aggregate that it wasn't the start of this crisis. Savings account balances. Airway of people have money or many people have money that they can spend once things that they would spend it on become available to do again. And so that's likely to fuel. I think quite fast. Jobs recovery. We saw several months of very fast job growth this spring and summer. As things started to normalize that slowed down is the virus conditions have gotten worse, But when virus conditions improve, I think we're going to see really rapid job growth is really rapid returns of consumers. Go spend that money that will fuel further job growth. So actually, I think it's gonna be a really good year economically and in terms of no longer being under these bizarre pandemic conditions, and I think that's likely to lead to good feelings and also toe fix some of the fiscal problems that exist in Washington. Make some of those those economic questions a little bit easier for Biden to handle. Josh Barrow, columnist for Business Insider and a Great Follow on Twitter at J. Barrow. Josh. Really a pleasure speaking to you. Thanks so much for taking the time to step through all of that with us. We appreciate it. Absolutely thank you Running, all right, Coming up Next here on PM Tampa Bay Retired U S Have political scientist Dr Susan McManus joins the show with her reaction to what's unfolded over the past 24 hours. Keep it here. My heart. Brady. We've lean on podcasts for laughs, Headlines, stories to get our adrenaline pumping and voices to comfort us outcasts. They're exploding in every genre. There's something for everybody.
Newsradio 970 WFLA
"josh barrow" Discussed on Newsradio 970 WFLA
"They were all put in the same. Uh, same danger was in the house chamber where you have that photo of the plainclothes Capitol police officers with their guns drawn and the doors people are trying to invade into the chamber s I'm a little. I'm a little surprised that there wasn't more backlash on the house side in the manner that we saw on the Senate side. I'm joined by Josh Barrow, columnist for Business Insider who you can follow on Twitter at J. Barrow. The issue moving forward is that and I took a lot of calls on this yesterday and and heard the reaction from a lot of Trump supporters. We have a lot of Americans who are not living in reality, and it doesn't seem like they're going to stop consuming the kind of information that they've been consuming that has put them into this fantasy land. Any time soon. In fact, some of them are are going further. They're moving away from, say, a fox news to a newsmax. At this point, they're just looking for their point of view to continually be confirmed and with social media, it seems like they continue to go deeper and deeper down. In the rabbit hole. The stories that I was hearing about, you know, well, the judges. They didn't even hear our side. They didn't even look at the evidence. And then all we want. Is this commission to look at things not really understanding. What actually happened in court. What the affidavits actually said, as I'm trying to explain this to all of them. How do we break out of that? Because it seems to me like if you can't bring people back into reality, these problems they're just going to keep persisting. Well, I think the Bible strategy is to significant extent to deprive this of oxygen. I mean, as you described their, uh, you would hear these complaints that you know they never heard us on the merits. They tossed all the cases for standing and you know, that's not true. Many of the cases were tossed because there was no standing, which is to say that you were not a real party to a dispute who could get relief from the court. But there are other cases where that didn't happen. The court got to the merits and said, Basically, there are no merits either. Thing that you're alleging here is like a wild lion didn't happen or the thing you're alleging here did happen and a handful of cases even getting with regard to some of the late arriving absentee ballots in Pennsylvania Republicans had a decent legal argument about their theory there, but only involved a few 1000 votes. Even if their argument was right. It would not have mattered for the outcome of the election. S o. The courts have have looked at this and lots of different ways. They haven't won anywhere because it is not true that the election was stolen from the president. And I think is you're getting at their evidence doesn't move that you know, people the claim about we just want a commission. This is just a way of stalling and just a way of always being able to say that we you know that we don't have certainty here and Some Republican senators had very sharp remarks about that. Mitt Romney, pointing out that the nobody who doesn't believe that the selection was was free and fair. Is going to believe that because some congressional commission looked at it for a few days and said so on, So I think that that obviously is a disingenuous thing. It's not actually going to work, but Yeah, I am very skeptical of the president's ability to retain the kind of attention and loyalty that he has What he's not president anymore. We've already seen his influence waning significantly, and to some extent, I think that has caused certain ways in which he's lashed out over the last few weeks. Ah, reason, I think, for example, that he did not immediately signed the coronavirus relief. Anonymous spending bill was because you know, we had all these news cycles where Joe Biden was the main character, and all the coverage was of what Joe Biden administration is going to be, and the president needed to do this thing and appear to have blown up this deal to be the center of attention again on do you know, And obviously he did that again this week with sticking his supporters on the Capitol building. But His power to do. A lot of these things will just be greatly reduced when he's not president anymore. He can't make threats about what legislation is going to sign or not sign. You can't fire government officials Hey, can certainly give speeches and tell his supporters to do things, but he can't do them, You know, on the South Lawn of the White House. And so I think that I think that he his ability to be the organizing force of the conservative movement in America. It's just going to be reduced. I think it's going to compounded by the fact that Even if Twitter ever lets him back on the platform, which I think is an open question. His tweets just won't get as much attention when he is neither the president nor presidential candidate anymore and I think that he has significant legal jeopardy. There's quite possibly been enhanced by his actions over the last few weeks, not just federal, but also state legal jeopardy that could be tying up a lot of his time and attention. So I think that he has a specific force is going to just naturally fade to a significant extent. I don't think that's wishful thinking on my part. I think that that's just structural associated with not being president anymore on then you can. You can look back it. How the Republican how the conservative movement work during the Obama administration. Obviously, there was a lot of Was a lot of energy float through in terms of of electoral outcomes, and there was a certain amount. Obviously a conspiracy theorizing, including the birther conspiracy theories that the president the current president, was a promoter of Um, I think that Joe Biden is less of a lightning rod for that sort of stuff than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton was, and I think that's for a number of complicated reasons that we could go into..
Newsradio 970 WFLA
"josh barrow" Discussed on Newsradio 970 WFLA
"7th. I'm Brian Gorman with me this evening, James Berland er on the board and coming up in just a bit. We'll talk to retired U S and political scientist Dr Susan MacManus and get her reaction to everything that took place yesterday for more reaction on the chaos at the Capitol and the subsequent fall out. I'm joined by columnist for Business Insider Josh Barrow. He can follow on Twitter at Josh Barrow. Josh, thanks so much for taking a few minutes to join the show and let's start with your big picture takeaway on everything that's transpired. Well, I mean, obviously it was outrageous. The president should have known and I think did know that this was a foreseeable outcome of what he encouraged his supporters to do, telling them to march on the Capitol, telling them the election have been stolen from him on that the vice president had some supposed power. Tonto reject the results of this election and was betraying him by not invoking it. On Then these thieves people they committed insurrection. They invaded the capital. Four people died. One of them was shot by Capitol police and the K Up in the chaos. There were three Medical emergency death, So I don't know about you know whether those were directly attributable to the chaos or not, but clearly there was a lot of lot of damage. There was death. There were injuries to Capitol police officers on it was an effort to interfere with Congress's constitutional duties to certify the results of the election that Donald Trump have lost. So he did this thing there was violent and dangerous for a reason. That was that was contrary to his oath of office. S O that merits his removal from office. Obviously, there's only has 13 days left as president, so it's pretty late to bring an impeachment. But who knows what he what he might do in those 13 days, and I think that he gravely angered a lot of Republicans, especially on the Senate side of the Hill. S O. Bringing an impeachment could be a lot more productive. Now, then it might be over some other matters that you would have the one thing I would know about this. Is that this? Well, this this was a dangerous outrage on but very bad thing that happened. It was not something that ever had any real risk of actually interfering with the constitutional processes and an adorable right which is to say Joe Biden will the president on January 20th. He was always going to be president on January 20th one seed won the election on so I mean, people are talking about Was this a coup attempt? I mean, you know, E think the people who rioted in the capital would like to have overthrown the government. But this was you know, the dangers that were associated with this were very real. But I don't think that one of those dangerous was the idea that this was ever actually going to change the outcome in terms of who was going to run the country. What was your reaction to the reaction among Republicans and even people like former Attorney General Bill Bar who came out today with the strong statement and others? Pushback really forcefully against the president. Unlike anything we've seen up to this point. Well, I think there's a few things going on here. One is that this This was a scary situation on Capitol Hill for people in both parties and a dangerous situation where we're fortunate that more people didn't die. And we're fortunate that the No members of Congress died or even as far as I know where were injured in this in this chaos, But I think that you know they had toe had to hide under their desks in their chairs and They had to put on their gas mask codes and find ways to evacuate. I think that people they were in real danger. They felt in real danger. The president was to put them in danger. And even if you're conservative and Republican, that's something that would be likely to make you very upset. On by think we saw that in a lot of the speeches that we saw from senators who were sharply critical of the president, sharply critical of their own colleagues in the Senate would adults this nonsense and and helped build this crisis? People like Josh Folly and Ted Cruz? You saw Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse and also Tom Cochran, who's very conservative. And ordinarily one of the trump your senators, really speaking quite harshly about Josh Holly and Ted Cruz and the lies that they've been telling people Spot up this this rebellion, So I think that I think there was a lot of sincere outrage there. I also think you had a lot of officials in the Trump administration who are looking for their offering. On their way to to show the world that they have broken with Trump. Now that Trump can no longer provide them anything useful. Ah, lot of them were effectively done with their jobs anyway, since this administration is just about the end, so I don't put a ton of stock. In administration officials using this opportunity to resign in protest. Their jobs were about to evaporate anyway. And then on the House of Representatives side of the hill. There were a few members, including Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who's a senior member of the House Republican caucus, who backed off on their objections to counting the votes, basically saying, you know, after after all of this, we don't really feel that that's productive anymore. But for the most part, House members who were going to participate in the subjection continued to And they had some nonsense to spin about how he basically they're just asking questions, and all they want is for people who don't trust the outcome of this election to have their voices heard. Of course they were heard when they voted that you didn't get your way doesn't mean you weren't listen to, um But they know it was sort of this just asking questions. Defense. You know, we don't You know, we don't really want to overturn the election Global blonde, which I find very disingenuous, But it was those remarkable to me the difference between the House side on the Senate side with senators. Seemed genuinely shaken by what happened here. More than half of senators would indicated that they intended to object to the election results ended up not actually doing so. But I have precisely half there were seven objections to one of the What? To the Pennsylvania slate of electors, and I believe they were supposed be 14 senators and checked into it. Originally, the House side you know, the house has always been Trump here, then the Senate on the Republican side, But both the House and the Senate were you know the their own state Capitol building..