How Politicians Ignored the TRUTH about COVID

Summary

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Next Up with Mark Halperin

Episode: How Politicians Ignored the TRUTH about COVID

Date: June 25, 2026
Host: Mark Halperin
Guests: Doug Sosnik, Drew Holden, Mitch Modell

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into three main topics:

• The dramatic shift within the Democratic Party after the recent New York primaries
• An economic and political “autopsy” from former Clinton advisor Doug Sosnik
• A trenchant critique of pandemic governance and media from Drew Holden
• A closing segment spotlighting New York sports-brand legacy in the aftermath of the Knicks’ championship

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1. The New York Primary Earthquake & the Democratic Party

[01:02–20:00]

Main Theme

Mark Halperin opens with analysis of the New York Democratic primaries, where socialist and progressive candidates ousted establishment incumbents in significant victories — a shockwave for party leadership and a possible harbinger for national shifts.

Key Discussion Points

• Bernie Sanders' Enduring Influence

  • Party leaders failed to study why Sanders nearly became the nominee in 2016 and 2020, dismissing his near-wins as anomalies rather than warning signs.
  • “I've always thought the Democrats made a big mistake in not working to understand how Bernie Sanders almost became the nominee of their party—a guy who was not a member of the Democratic Party.” – Doug Sosnik [04:39]

• Anti-Establishment Parallels with the GOP

  • The episode draws historical parallels, likening what’s now happening among Democrats to the populist undercurrent that led to Trump taking over the GOP, referencing prior ignored figures like Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul.
  • “The very forces that propelled [Sanders], they're still around. Not only have they not disappeared… they've become stronger, younger, more online, more organized, and even more ideological.” – Doug Sosnik [06:35]

• Current Progressive Victories: What They Stand For

  • New York’s progressive candidates ran against the party establishment as much as their specific opponents, with opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza a prominent litmus test.
  • Broader issues included affordability, housing, and generational frustration.

• Democratic Dilemma: Embrace or Distance from the Left?

  • Party leadership faces a stark choice: harness new energy or risk internal schism and electoral backlash.
  • “Now, you may agree or disagree with that, but that is a conversation that's happening within the Democratic Party.” – Mark Halperin [19:30]

Notable Quotes

• “Winning a primary is one thing, but now he is taking the same type of agenda, the same brand of socialist politics, and he's running America's largest city.” – Mark Halperin on Mayor Mandami [19:50]
• “These people...aren't trying to persuade the party, they're trying to hijack it, slap a rose emoji on the wreckage and call it a movement. It's fantasy math, a dangerous public safety agenda and too often stoking anti-Semitism wrapped in moral superiority.” – Unnamed Democratic strategist, relayed by Halperin [18:52]
• “Jury’s still out. Because he's relatively new in the job, can he govern? Can he broaden the coalition beyond the activist base that got him the job? Governing is different than campaigning.” – Doug Sosnik [20:00]

Key Segment Timestamps

• Bernie & Trump outsider parallels: [04:20–09:12]
• The establishment's blind spots: [11:30–13:00]
• Soundbites from Trump and GOP leadership: [13:12–15:00]
• Hakeem Jeffries' balancing act: [16:37–17:19]
• Progressive energy debate: [15:14–19:30]

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2. Deep Dive: Economic Inequality & the Democrats’ Midterm Outlook

[25:23–45:07]

Guest: Doug Sosnik (Former Clinton Advisor, Democratic Strategist)

Main Theme

A rigorous data-driven look at economic inequality, political disaffection, and what this means for upcoming US midterms — with cautionary lessons from past elections.

Key Discussion Points

• Economic Realities and Political Impact

  • The top 10% of Americans own 70% of the wealth and nearly half the income; this unsustainable gap is breeding a popular revolt against both party establishments.
  • “Not only is it not sustainable, but we are watching in real time the political system reacting to that.” – Doug Sosnik [26:41]

• Decreasing Upward Mobility

  • Sharp decline over decades in Americans believing their children will be better off, eroding faith in the American dream.
  • "Half the country doesn’t believe the next generation is going to have it better." – Doug Sosnik [31:12]

• Mismatch Between Economic Data and Public Sentiment

  • Despite strong macroeconomic numbers, many Americans feel left behind. Wall Street does not reflect Main Street’s pain.
  • “Wall street sentiment is...quite positive. But the sentiment in America, Main street, is much more negative.” – Doug Sosnik [33:01]

• Correcting the Conventional Wisdom on US Voters

  • Clinton-era insight: America’s political “sweet spot” is voters who are economically liberal (support government action on economics) but socially moderate or conservative – not the conventional wisdom of "fiscally conservative, socially liberal" often championed by elites.
  • “That’s the sweet spot in American politics.” – Doug Sosnik [36:40]

• Prognosis for the Midterms and Beyond

  • While structural issues should favor Democrats (given Trump’s low approval), the fundamental environment, GOP resilience, and lack of short-term fixes complicate robust Democratic gains.
  • “By historical standards…Democrats should be poised for a historic blue wave election… However, due to the structural changes in American politics, we’re not going to have the kinds of gains that we would have in the past.” – Doug Sosnik [39:06]

• Midterms Aren’t Destiny

  • Democrats must not mistake a good midterm showing as an indicator for the 2028 presidential outlook. Wave elections in Congress don't necessarily transfer to presidential success.

Notable Quotes

• “If you're on the wrong side of change, you're not going to get elected.” – Doug Sosnik [44:21]
• “Republican base now is more dependent on government aid than the Democratic base.” – Doug Sosnik [37:16]

Key Segment Timestamps

• Economic concentration + inequality: [25:23–30:32]
• Upward mobility/pessimism: [30:32–32:19]
• Social vs. economic ideology chart: [35:03–36:40]
• Election predictions/historical caveats: [39:06–44:31]

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3. COVID 'Autopsy': Policy Failures and Media Blindness

[47:42–64:35]

Guest: Drew Holden (Managing Editor, American Compass; Author, Holden Court Substack)

Main Theme

A no-holds-barred retrospective on America’s pandemic response: failures in science, politics, and especially media accountability.

Key Discussion Points

• Policy Failures — Especially On Schools

  • The biggest, most damaging error was prolonged school closures not justified by data post-2020, driven more by teachers’ unions than by legitimate risk to children.
  • “Kids were offered up as almost a sacrifice… what we were really talking about was teachers and teachers unions and their refusal to go back to their jobs.” – Drew Holden [50:03]

• Lockdown Lessons

  • If policymakers had truly known then what we know now about costs to mental/physical health, lockdowns would have been brief and focused.
  • “With the knowledge of hindsight…lockdowns would have been a week, two weeks, maybe… It wouldn’t have been this endless, boundless, forever lockdown that we saw in so many states.” – Drew Holden [52:57]

• Media Malpractice on COVID Origins

  • American media treated the lab leak theory as conspiracy, more intent on not sounding like Trump and deferring to “the science” without skepticism.
  • “There’s nothing worse than the lab leak theory… The media dropped immediately into, Donald Trump is pushing another conspiracy mode…Maybe one of the biggest failures of journalism that we've seen, certainly in my lifetime.” – Drew Holden [57:48]

• Dr. Fauci and Gain-of-Function Research

  • Holden asserts that Dr. Fauci misled Congress about his role in funding risky research in China and that (in his words) “it does seem impossible, truly impossible, to dispute that Dr. Fauci lied repeatedly to Congress about the most serious issue that we could possibly imagine for years.” [63:02]

Notable Quotes

• “It is impossible in like a cosmic sense that we could just let that go… if… the COVID pandemic was only made possible…because of errant and attempted to be covered up decisions by Dr. Anthony Fauci.” – Drew Holden [63:21]

• “Go read the whole thing…I didn’t—it’s spellbinding and infuriating all at once.” – Mark Halperin [64:40]

Key Segment Timestamps

• Kids’ COVID policy, school closures: [48:42–52:03]
• Lockdowns, what should’ve been done: [52:18–55:32]
• Lab leak/media’s failures: [56:37–59:01]
• Fauci/gain-of-function, congressional testimony: [59:55–63:56]

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4. Mitch Modell: Knicks Euphoria and a New York Legacy Reborn

[67:03–74:31]

Main Theme

A lighter but heartfelt segment — former Modell’s Sporting Goods CEO Mitch Modell describes returning to sports merchandise (with his sons) after the Knicks’ championship inspired a city-wide resurgence of pride.

Key Discussion Points

• Modell’s is launching new branded merchandise as a way to provide affordable gear and give back (portion of proceeds to prostate cancer screening).
• The Knicks’ win united New York in a way unmatched by previous championships.
• “We preprinted these T shirts when the Knicks went up 3-1. But we take risk and we give value. And that's what New Yorkers were crying for.” – Mitch Modell [70:21]

Notable Quotes

• “It's a way of accomplishing three things: Giving the working families an affordable price… we're giving back $5 to prostate cancer so that someone, if we could save one life, it was worth everything.” – Mitch Modell [71:53]

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Notable Moments and Quotes

• On Democratic Socialism’s Rise:
  “These Mandami-endorsed candidates made opposition to Israel and Israel's conduct in Gaza one of, maybe the defining issue.” — Mark Halperin [12:50]

• On COVID Media Coverage:
  “There’s nothing worse than the lab leak theory… Rather than do… good journalism… the media dropped immediately into, ‘Donald Trump is pushing another conspiracy mode.’” — Drew Holden [57:10]

• On Political System’s Reaction to Inequality:
  “We are watching in real time the political system reacting to that.” — Doug Sosnik [26:41]

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Summary Table of Contents by Topic & Timestamp

| Topic/Guest | Start | End | |----------------------------|----------|----------| | Democratic Primary Quake | 01:02 | 20:00 | | Economic Inequality (Sosnik) | 25:23 | 45:07 | | COVID Autopsy (Holden) | 47:42 | 64:35 | | Mitch Modell/NY Sports | 67:03 | 74:31 |

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Conclusion

This episode candidly confronts the internal battles for America’s major parties, offers rare data-driven political insight, and refuses to let COVID-era mistakes slide into the memory hole. The hosts and guests pull few punches, urging listeners to see through political and media narratives, learn from historical patterns, and understand the stakes shaping the next chapter of American life.

Memorable closing words:
“Go read the whole thing. I didn’t—it’s spellbinding and infuriating all at once.”
— Mark Halperin, on Drew Holden’s COVID reporting [64:40]

Transcript

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[Mark Calpern]

welcome in everybody. Close to the week Strong here on NextUp. I am Mark Calpern, editor in chief of Two Way, host of your program here, a guide for all nexters to everything that's next up. Glad you're here. Terrific show today. Three fantastic guests, two who are going to give you expert presentations that you won't hear anybody anywhere else. Former Clinton political advisor Doug Sosnick is going to join us. He worked with Bill Clinton in the White House. He's got a new op ed piece on the true Democratic autopsy after the 2024 presidential election and a great slide deck. We're going to share with you about how the economy is affecting our politics and could swing the midterms one way or the other. Then Drew Holden will be here. He's been with us before, author of the Holden Court substack, but also a great thinker, a collector of receipts. And he's done a six part series, another autopsy, this one on Covid, both about the pandemic, but also about how the pandemic was treated by government officials and by the media. Super compelling presentation. Again, you won't read about this in the media because Drew covers it the way the media for some reason will not. And then lastly, a great New York story. Mitch Modell back with us in the wake of the New York Knicks championship that has inspired Donald Trump and Barack Obama as well as many people around New York City and around the country will be here to talk about a big announcement about bringing his own iconic brand back to New York sports. So all of that coming up in just a moment. Stay with us for it. But first, my reported monologue on the state of the Democratic Party in the wake of those shocking results on Tuesday, the New York primaries in the House races, where three Socialists, two socialist candidates won, and three candidates backed by Mayor Mondavi won to beat Democratic incumbents, including the head of the Hispanic Caucus in the House. And they ran on very progressive platforms also in New York State legislative races, same thing. A lot of victories for not just outsiders, but in almost all these cases, Socialists. This fallout is big. It's being navigated across the Democratic Party by Republicans, by the media. It says a lot about the internal nature within the Democratic Party, but also about the future of the party in our politics. So that's my reported monologue. I've talked to a lot of Democrats since Tuesday night, some who are delighted by what happened and some who are freaking out. Let's talk about the political earthquake that hit New York City and the Democratic Party this week. It's going to be studied for a long time, maybe for years, depending on what ends up happening. Most of the coverage for now is going to focus on what it means for New York, what it means for Mayor Zoran Mandami, for the Democratic Party, for Israel, because Israel is at the center of, of a lot of these campaigns. It's become the litmus test in a lot of Democratic races. And then this issue of Democratic social socialism, which is on the rise, the public opinion polls show that and these election results show it all important stuff. But there may be a lesson here that ends up being more important about why the Democratic Party is so unprepared, the establishment part of the party is so unprepared to deal with this. For years, the Democrats have, I think, made a huge mistake. They've treated Senator Bernie Sanders, the Godfather, the leader of this movement, like historical

[Doug Sosnik]

footnote, like a fascinating detour when he ran for president, just something quirky and interesting that happened and then passed away because he ran in 2016, he ran in 2020, didn't get the nomination either time. And now, you know, he's on the periphery. He's in his 80s.

[Mark Calpern]

And people assume, not me, but most others, that he won't run for president.

[Doug Sosnik]

I've always thought the Democrats made a big mistake in not working to understand how Bernie Sanders almost became the nominee of their party guy who was not a member of the Democratic Party. And you hear this week, some Democrats, like Jamie Harrison, who's been our guest here, former chairman of the Democratic Party on Twitter said to the socialist candidates, don't run as Democrats. If you want to be a socialist, run as a socialist. They're not. They're running as Democrats.

[Mark Calpern]

And Bernie Sanders came into the Democratic Party in 2016 just as Donald Trump

[Doug Sosnik]

came in to run as a Republican. Even though he wasn't a Republican, Sanders came in to run as a Democrat. Now, I believe that Sanders would have been the nominee in 2016 or 2020 without the coordinated efforts of Democratic Party leaders to stop him. And I believe in 2016, they read the rules. In 2020, they just came together with Hardpile Politics to get Joe Biden the nomination in the nick of time. From their point of view, that's some dudes disagree, but that'll be argued about. But here's what's not debatable. You've had an independent socialist senator from Vermont proudly calls himself a Democratic socialist. And he came remarkably close twice to becoming the Democratic nominee for president. Not once as kind of a fluke, but twice. That experience should have triggered years of soul searching inside the Democratic Party that should be going on to this day. Instead, in the immediate aftermath of those two presidential runs, a lot of Democrats in the establishment, they just seem relieved. They survived, they won the battle, and so they moved on. They never asked themselves in a profound way, why did Bernie Sanders come so close to beating Hillary Clinton in 2016? Why did he come so close to beating Joe Biden and the rest of the field in 2020? They never really fully grappled with the forces that transforms Sanders from a little known kind of eccentric Vermonter, an outsider, into a genuine contender to lead the Democratic Party. The very forces that propelled him, they're still around. That's what, that's what led to the election of Mondami, the election, the nomination of these Democrats on Tuesday. These forces, not only have they not disappeared by most measures, they've become stronger, younger, more online, more organized and even more ideological, more willing to challenge the party establishment. And with the election of Mondami, with the nomination of these candidates in New York, they're more successful. Sanders lost. They've won. What's the parallel here? What's the, what's the thing that explains what's happened? It is Donald Trump took over the Republican Party. But before that happened, there were warning signs.

[Mark Calpern]

Just as Democrats missed the warning signs

[Doug Sosnik]

from Sanders, Republicans missed the warning signs before 2016. About what was going to propel Donald Trump. Pat Buchanan, love Pat. Pat was such a talented thinker and strategist and he ran twice for president too. And in, in 1992, he gave George W. H.W.

[Mark Calpern]

bush a scare.

[Doug Sosnik]

And then in 1996, he could have been the nominee. Bob Dole was. The establishment rallied around Bob Dole. Buchanan showed that there was a very strong populist current inside the Republican Party, anti New York, anti Washington, anti elite. And then Ron Paul ran for president, didn't have maybe as much success, but clearly showed that there was an enormous appetite for this anti establishment movement, something different, something separate from conventional establishment Republican politics of the Bushes and the Romneys. Most Republican leaders didn't take them seriously. They didn't take Pat seriously, they didn't

[Mark Calpern]

take Ron Paul seriously.

[Doug Sosnik]

And then all of a sudden, here comes Donald Trump down the golden escalator in Trump Tower in 2015. And suddenly here's a guy seemed to many people, well, this is new, this is different. No, it was rooted in Buchanan and, and, and Paul. The very same things and, and went from this kind of these little rebellions into a complete takeover of the party. Now, this metaphor is not perfect, this historical comparison. Democrats are not the same as Republicans. Mondame is not Trump. The coalitions involved here are different. The ideologies are very different. The personalities couldn't be more different. But there is a through line here, there is a similarity, and it's important to think about what that is.

[Mark Calpern]

The questions now that are facing Democratic leaders are the same ones that the Republican establishment has been grappling with because of Donald Trump for so long. Fundamentally, I believe that most Republicans are in this, in the establishment, are pretty much in the same place as the media, pretty much in the same place as the, as the Democrats. They don't understand what's happening and what has happened with inside the Republican Party. They can't really explain the rise of Donald Trump, even though it's pretty, pretty out there. To see what Tuesday's results suggest is that many Democratic voters in New York turnout wasn't huge, but the margins of victory in some of these cases was huge. A lot of Democrats, especially younger ones, they're looking beyond traditional politics. They're not interested in the status quo. Mondami and the allies he has, they weren't running against the individual candidates they beat so much as they were running against institutions, against the party establishment, against, by coincidence, the two New Yorkers who are the leaders of the Democrats in the Congress, Chuck Schumer in the Senate Congressman Jeffries in the House, they represent the political status quo. So when you think about the rhetoric that these candidates used, you think about Bernie Sanders. He, he wasn't running against Hillary Clinton so much as he was running against these same kinds of things, this institutions, ideology, campaign finance system of the status quo, against ice, against apac, the group, that bipartisan group that's been around for years, highly influential, that has helped fund politicians, establishment politicians of both parties who support Israel. These Mandami endorsed candidates made opposition to Israel and Israel's conduct in Gaza one of maybe the defining issue. Now Israel was a big issue. Was it the only issue? Was it the decisive issue? Probably not in every race, but it was a big one. But it's part of a much broader, much broader anti establishment revolt driven by real issues. Affordability, housing costs and then the generational frustration that's felt by a lot of these younger voters. A sense that the Democrats and the leadership of the Democrats, the folks who've been around for so long, that they don't represent younger voters or disenfranchised voters. We're going to untangle this for a long time. What exactly happened in these races? Truth is it probably wasn't one thing differed, maybe candidate by candidate, voter by voter. But the implications of this, even though New York is New York, goes far beyond Gotham City in Maine, Michigan, rather, on Maine. First, Graham Platner, a Republican running Democrat nominee against Republican Susan Collins. That's another one of these cases of a guy who's an outsider who believes in a lot of these positions about Israel and about the status quo. The big case will come in Michigan where there's a nominee, a three way primary to be the nominee for Senate. Big news today, an endorsement. A9 please. Senator from Maryland, Chris Van Hollen, who people say may want to run for president. Chris Van Hollen endorsed in that race today. He endorsed the socialist leaning candidate, the Sanders candidate, Dr. El said. And I don't know that, I don't know that the guy's going to win, but most people I talked to in Michigan say he probably will. Abdul El Said has now a mainstream endorsement in that Senate race. And you can see while some Democrats are speaking out, we'll talk about that, against what's happened in New York. A lot of them are really kind of being drawn in. Republicans of course, love this.

[Doug Sosnik]

They're going to spend the balance of

[Mark Calpern]

the midterms trying to nationalize what happened in New York to make these Democratic

[Doug Sosnik]

socialists and their controversial views the face

[Mark Calpern]

of the Democratic Party.

[Doug Sosnik]

The strategist in chief, President Trump, he's

[Mark Calpern]

already excited about it.

[Doug Sosnik]

Here is the president talking about the election results.

[Mark Calpern]

S11, please.

[Doug Sosnik]

They want a lot of communists to come in. I'm saying it a little bit differently, but the people that they're pushing are communists, and this country is not going to have Communists.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Thank you very much.

[Mark Calpern]

All right, the president says Communist. Here's the President's ally, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, who is licking his jobs over getting to run against House candidates like this. S10, please.

[Drew Holden]

The Democrat Party, the Socialists, the Marxists, have nominated some of the most radical candidates to ever run for office, and

[Doug Sosnik]

they're running for Congress.

[Drew Holden]

The insurgent left is on the rise.

[Mark Calpern]

This is a problem for Democrats. Republicans are going to argue that every one of these Democratic candidates, even the ones who aren't members of the Democratic Socialists of America, are aligned with them. They're going to talk about immigration and economics and foreign policy in Israel and a range of issues where they're going to make the case that this party is so left, it's left America now. We'll see how well that works. Democrats are going to try to distance themselves. They already are. Okay, what is Chuck Schumer going to do? What are Hakeem Jeffries going to do? They're going to say, this is just about New York. That's what they're going to say for public consumption. But the question is how much they realize what a problem this is. Do they recognize that this is a, there's a through line from Senator Sanders to this, and this could in fact define the party. Here's what Nir Tanden, she's a Democratic strategist who is worked for Hillary Clinton and others. Joe Biden. Here's her spin on it. She says to me, a party that is addressing the needs of its base is, is in non swing districts, but also putting up candidates who can win in swing districts and actually defeats Republicans is overall a healthy party. Nera says it's fine. This is a blue district. There are no danger of losing these seats because they've nominated folks.

[Doug Sosnik]

Now we'll see about Maine and Michigan.

[Mark Calpern]

But she's, she's saying grassroots support. Senator Schumer said something different. It's similar this week. He said, we're seeing tremendous energy from all different areas of our party. You're seeing centrist energy in Virginia, Iowa, New Jersey, progressive energy in New York City. We're going to harness it all in November because all Democrats united in the mission of taking back the Senate and defeating Trump. There's some truth to that. You want grassroots strength, you want grassroots energy. But not everybody is going to be enthused here. Some people are going to be worried that this will define the party. And the person who is at the center of reading the tea leaves here and the poker faces the Democrats is Hakeem Jeffries. He's from Brooklyn, New York. He's the leader in the House. If these candidates win, and they almost certainly will, they'll be part of his what he hopes will be a majority coalition. But he is unable to grapple with the hardest questions. So far at least he's avoided answering them, which is what do you think of the extreme views of some of these candidates? And here's leader Jeffries on Squawk Box on CNBC with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Joe Kernan who, who are putting to the speaker the question these folks are, are pretty radical in their views. What do you think? Here's a speaker. Our speaker in waiting, Hakeem Jeffries on squawk box. S12, please.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

This is Chevalier, who as you know, just won, was the leader of the anti Israel protest at Columbia university after the 2023 Hamas massacre. She was for Hamas, they write she would call for abolishing police, prisons and borders. She called Joe Biden, she called Joe Biden a rapist and a war criminal and said that the US Is occupied Native American land and called the country a f ing disgrace and also favors seizing private property. What do you make of her views?

[Mark Calpern]

Her views, her, her views are clearly

[Simplisafe Voice]

not my views and that should be

[Mark Calpern]

obvious to everyone in terms of what brings her views, Democrats together. He says that's that denunciation. You know, Andrew could have said, well, she, she likes tuna on, on, on rye. How do you feel like that? Well, no, I like tuna on white. Now to be fair, Republicans have avoided answering questions about some of Donald Trump's controversial views for a long time. Same thing those you, I wouldn't have said it that way myself or I, I didn't hear what he said. But Hakeem Jeffries is going to try to finesse this. You know, privately he, he endorsed Mandami at the very last minute. He, he, he knows how dangerous these views are to the brands of the Democratic Party. He's caught between not wanting to denounce them full throatedly because if he does, the base will be mad at him. But he also knows that these views are not popular and they could hurt his candidates in other races. And I can tell you that privately there's a real alarm amongst Democratic strategists amongst donors, amongst some other members of Congress who see in these candidates, including Platner, including El Said, if he's nominated in Michigan, including these new House nominees, they see real danger. They see real danger. Here's what one Democratic strategist said to me. He said, she's the person. A veteran Democratic strategist said Democrats have a DSA problem. Democratic Socialists of America prom and pretending otherwise is political malpractice. These people, strategists went on, aren't trying to persuade the party, they're trying to hijack it, slap a rose emoji on the wreckage and call it a movement. The DSA crowd has mastered the politics of performance art, promise everything, explain nothing, scream establishment when questioned, and hope nobody who pays and asks who pays the bills. It's fantasy math, a dangerous public safety

[Doug Sosnik]

agenda and too often stoking anti Semitism

[Mark Calpern]

wrapped in moral superiority.

[Doug Sosnik]

Finally, this person told me they're driving the party further away from the American people. And if they succeed, they could set the Democratic Party back decades. Other strategists and some members of Democrats in Congress have privately said the same thing to me. They don't think this movement is trying to become part of the Democratic Party.

[Mark Calpern]

They think the Socialists are trying to replace the Democratic Party. Now, you may agree or disagree with that, but that is a conversation that's happening within the Democratic Party. And not surprisingly, John Federman is one of the people saying it. He's been outspoken, but he's someone who speaks that sometimes when others don't.

[Doug Sosnik]

And then of course, there's Mondani himself.

[Mark Calpern]

Winning a primary is one thing, but now he is taking the same type of agenda, the same brand of socialist

[Doug Sosnik]

politics, and he's running America's largest city.

[Mark Calpern]

We'll see.

[Doug Sosnik]

Jury's still at. Because he's relatively new in the job, can he govern?

[Mark Calpern]

Can he broaden the coalition beyond the activist base that got him the job? Governing is different than campaigning. We'll see how he does. But he remains clearly very pleased to now having the prospect of allies in Congress from New York who share his brand of politics.

[Doug Sosnik]

And here is the mayor.

[Mark Calpern]

S5, please.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

I think we can see from each of these candidates that they have exactly what it takes to succeed. And we've heard from Republicans time and again that they're going to try and make these candidates the face of the Democratic Party. To them, I say that we are ready for that.

[Mark Calpern]

So he's happy to have these folks be the face of the party here. Here's who's not happy. AIPAC is an organization that's been around for years. They've been very powerful, very effective. They spent a ton of money, including this year, trying to influence Democratic primaries. Tuesday's results, although they had a win in a Maryland primary. But what happened in New York is going to make them have to answer some questions that they've put aside. Is their strategy really a good idea? Are in some places, are they actually strengthening the anti establishment, anti Israeli narratives that they're trying to defeat? That's going to be interesting to watch because AIPAC has a lot of money to spend. Then we've got the 2028 presidential contenders, all of whom are worried about getting on the wrong side of the anti Israeli part of the progressive movement. How are they going to deal with this in energized wing? Are they going to try to confront it? So far, even the ones with long histories of support for Israel like Rahm Emanuel, instead of confronting the anti Israeli and anti Jewish sentiment in the party, have largely tried to accommodate, to split the difference. It's going to be a fascinating, intense part of the 2028 presidential campaign. These questions aren't going away. And the fact that Grant Democrats haven't grappled with them, even though all of this, all of this was on vivid display in 2016 when Senator Sanders had the nomination stolen from him. History does not repeat itself exactly correctly, but as is often said, it does rhyme. Republicans ignored the insurgency within their own party that they should have seen when Pat Buchanan did so well in 1992 and 1996. The party got fundamentally transformed because another insurgent, Donald Trump, followed in Pat's footsteps and took over the party. Question for the Democrats now, are they belatedly, belatedly going to study the Sanders experience, study what happened in New York on Tuesday and learn the lessons, or are they about to repeat the process Republicans went through and they're going to become a party taken over by the young socialists? We shall see. I'll keep covering it. There you have it. I want to hear what you think. Let me know what you think the Democrats need to do to keep the Socialists from taking over the entire party in this climate of anti establishmentarianism. Send your thoughts to me by email nextupevilmaycaremedia.com again. Send me an email at nextupevilmadcaremedia.com and and let me know what you think. Grateful to you. All right, quick break. Now when we come back, former Bill Clinton adviser Doug Sosnik with some great analysis of the upcoming election and the political climate is next up. Think about the last 30 bucks that you spent. Maybe it was on a streaming service you don't watch or a lunch you've already forgotten. That's $30 and it's gone forever. Acre Gold lets you turn that lost money into something better, physical. 24 karat Swiss gold. You pick a plan, your balance builds up and once you hit the price of a bar, they ship it straight to your front door. Real gold right in your hand at your home. And over time, you're sitting on something that's been valuable since the dawn of civilization. For the collectors out there, something cool. They just dropped the limited edition Hot Wheels collection. These are officially licensed by Mattel. They're strictly captain. Once they're gone, their history. While you're checking those out, claim your free entry to the speed club sweepstakes. There they're giving away a 1 gram hot wheels gold bar. Plus there's a massive grand prize, the 10 gram 24 karat Gold Hot Wheels bar. Both of them come in official collector packaging and they're up for grabs right now. So start stacking for just $30 at getacregold.com mark again, go to getacregold.com mark and subscribe today. All right, next up and joining me now, Democratic strategist, former adviser to Bill Clinton and the White House, Doug Sosnik. Doug. Love having Doug on because he's very knowledgeable about politics and campaigns. He's very honest, doesn't always shill for his party. If he sees problems and he understands history and, and current data. And there are people good at history. People are good at current data. Doug's good at both. He's written an op ed in the Washington Post recently called here's the Real Democratic Autopsy that we'll talk about. But we're going to start Doug with the latest version of your slides. Doug, every so often will do a deck and again draws on both history and current data. And there's nothing quite like them. So, Doug, thank you for being here. We'd love to just go through the slides and have you explain their relevance to where we are politically. And we'll start with number one, C1 top 10% of Americans should share of the economy. What's the significance of this historically in the current political climate?

[Doug Sosnik]

Well, I think the single most important thing to understand about our politics today is the economy and who benefits from it. And we've unfortunately increasingly become a country in which the top 1%, top 10% have a disproportionate amount of the spoils of our economy. And the slide there, these four wheels, shows you in the, in the wheel itself, it shows you the current statistic on the, the share of income and wealth and spending by the top 10%. And then below on each of those, you can see what the numbers were in the early 1990s. And so the consistency across the board on income, spending, wealth is that increasingly the people at the top are increasingly getting a much higher percentage of the money in our country.

[Mark Calpern]

So the current numbers, for those of you listening to the show and not watching it, top 10% have 49% of the income, 50% of the spending, 70% of the wealth, and 87% ownership of equities. Is that sustainable as a political matter or is that something that the political system will inevitably react to?

[Doug Sosnik]

Well, not only is it not sustainable, but we are watching in real time the political system reacting to that. And on the one hand, people, I think, were quite surprised when Mayor Mandami visited the Oval Office with Trump after his victory in New York. They were surprised at how well they got along. Well, the fact is, the rise of Trump and the rise is what you're seeing happening right now in the Democratic Party and in cities around the country is that people are rising against the current system. They're rising against the people that are in charge of the current system and they're saying it's not working for them and they want to change.

[Mark Calpern]

Yeah, the, the numbers are just extraordinary. And Covid, of course, exacerbated this and AI has the potential to exacerbate it to allow the rich to get richer. All right, let's look at C2 and

[Doug Sosnik]

just by the way, on that, but the, the, the exasperation, the gap between the people at the top and, and the rest of the country began forming in the early 1970s, but the economic crisis of 2008 really accelerated even more that gap because the people who've been suffering the most economically since the 1970s as we transition away from a manufacturing economy are the ones who were the hardest hit during the economic crises. They were the people last to recover in the 2010s. And that gap, as you said, even widened deeper due to Covid.

[Mark Calpern]

And of course, the kind of bumper sticker Democratic solution for this would be higher taxes on the wealthy. Republicans don't really have a solution. Most of the solutions would involve long term changes. And the people, the Trump supporters who are upset by this reality and now people on the left were upset by it, typically don't. They're not interested in short term solutions, they're interested in immediate solutions. And again, with the exception of tax increases. Right. There's not, there's no public policy supported by either side that that's going to solve this or address this immediately.

[Doug Sosnik]

Right.

And no one's worried about the deficit of either party.

[Mark Calpern]

Yeah.

[Doug Sosnik]

Yep.

[Mark Calpern]

All right, let's go to the next slide. C2. This is a recent wage growth. Describe what this shows and why it's important for our politics.

[Doug Sosnik]

Well, it's just what I call the non virtuous cycle where increasingly people at the top are doing better than everyone else and the gap between the people on the top and everyone else is widening. And these charts showing wage growth show that.

[E]

Yeah.

[Mark Calpern]

So if you go back to 2023, the wage growth was highest amongst lower income and middle income. And you see that around a couple of years ago the lines crossed and now the highest income are seeing real wage growth grow fastest and, and going up at a higher rate. And, and, and the two middle and lower are back there. It's a, it's another illustration of the same thing which is the wealthy are doing better now and that's just not sustainable politically.

[Doug Sosnik]

And I don't know how many slides you want to go through today but, but there are 50 or 60 of them. But virtually every slide tells that same story.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Yeah.

[Mark Calpern]

Okay, here's another one. C3, the declining share of economic output. Employee compensation is a share of US GDP from 1947 to 2026. You can see it's, it's gone up and down, but it's way down from its high. And then corporate profits are again, it's gone up and down, but corporate profits are up. So corporations have gotten richer, which means stakeholders get richer and executives get richer, but employees are not doing as well. And that's another, as you said, another illustration of the same thing. Let's go to C4. Upward mobility in America. Tell us what this shows.

[Doug Sosnik]

Well, so Mark, Mark and I were growing up. There were two God given rights as an American. One was that if you worked hard you could get ahead no matter what economic background you came from. And the other was that everyone in America knew that the next generation was going to have it better than the last generation. So this chart shows going back to 1940, this chart shows the percentage of people that believe that the next generation is going to have it better than they had it. And you see in 1940 over 90% of people believe that. And you can see a almost complete linear downward trend since then. And now Half the country doesn't believe the next generation is going to have it better.

[Mark Calpern]

Yeah, it's, it's one of the polling questions I cite all the time because it speaks to people's loss and the belief in the American dream. If you don't think that your kids are going to do better than you, it undermines the compact that's supposed to exist in this country, which is that as the time marches forward, people in America will be uniformly better off than the previous generations. And it's just not there. C5, again, same thing. Americans believe that they can improve their standard of living. You see here, percent of individuals who agree or disagree that people like them can improve their standard of living. And you can see there that agrees. Well, go ahead and describe what we see here over time.

[Doug Sosnik]

So this just tracks from the early 1980s. On the left, you'll see that 3/4 of Americans back in the 1980s believe they could improve their standard of living. They had hope for the future. And you can see on the right that that's down now to only 25%. And again, that's a pretty pronounced negative trend going back to the mid to late 90s.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

Yeah.

[Mark Calpern]

And again, this is the environment in which Donald Trump rose. It's the environment in which Bernie Sanders rose, and it's the environment now in which Democratic socialists are winning elections. Gap between Main street and Wall Street. Let's Skip over to C7, please. We'll skip over one there. C7. And again, again, another version of the same story, but these illustrations are all important. You can see the green line of Wall street is rising high. And then the purple line of Main street used to be higher, but they crossed in 1920 and, or 2020, rather. And now, now this. Now, what about the argument that a lot of people have investments through their retirement funds in stocks? Does that play a role?

[Doug Sosnik]

Not much of one. And let me tell you why I think this chart is significant. So if, if in the past there was a relative correlation between how Main street felt and Wall street felt, and you can see that there's, there's been a breaking point where the, the Wall street sentiment is, is delinked from the Main street sentiment. And, and that's why it's a challenge that Biden had that he never quite understood, and it's a challenge Trump has that he doesn't understand, which is essentially the kind of broader traditional macroeconomic data is generally pretty positive. Wall street sentiment, as this chart shows you, is quite positive. But the sentiment in America, Main street, is much more Negative. And in a sense, this, this is as we talk about the K shaped economy, this is a K shaped chart. And the reason why is this delinking is because it's such a disproportionate amount of the benefits from our economic growth to the 10% in corporate America.

[Mark Calpern]

Doug, as Doug said, the full deck is longer. And we'll share, we'll share the full deck in my substack and on Twitter, so you can go read it there. We've chosen the ones that I think are most important. The next one is to me the most important slide. And it's something I learned in the Clinton campaign. But the media and a lot of rich people who control the public conversation get it exactly opposite. So put up C8. If you ask, if you ask somebody at a Manhattan dinner party, is the country on economics liberal or conservative? And is the country on social issues liberal or conservative? They'll tell you the country's conservative on fiscal issues, government spending, but liberal on social policy. And Doug, the reality is, as this complicated and beautiful chart shows, I learned during the Clinton campaign from, from Carville and Begala and you, it's the exact opposite.

[Doug Sosnik]

That's exactly right. So just I'll try to quickly describe this busy chart. So this is, each dot represents people's polling responses and there's several thousand people that responded. And so the thing we're measuring here is whether people consider themselves social conservatives, social liberals and economic conservatives, or economic liberals. So in the top right box, those are social conservatives and economic conservatives. And they're overwhelmingly, as you can see, Republicans. On the bottom left are people who are social liberals and economic liberals, and they're overwhelmingly Democrat. As you might expect, the bottom right box, which is virtually empty, is, is a box where a lot of educated people live. And that box are people who are socially liberal and economic conservative. And you can see that that's the least representative part of America. The top left box is where you win and lose elections. And these, that box are people who are socially conservative. And I'll come back to that. And economically liberal. Now an economically liberal, it's largely populous. And when I say social conservatives, I don't mean that they're crazy right wing social conservatives, but what I do mean is they are right of center on social issues and they definitely do not subscribe to the woke policies of the left. Anyway, so it's the top left. This is the sweet spot in American politics.

[Mark Calpern]

And, and the reason, or a reason, but I would argue maybe the reason the Democrats don't understand why Donald Trump has been successful, is that as largely how he's governed? Not entirely, not entirely, but it, but when he said I'll never touch Social Security and Medicare and when he said, and when he's opposed woke and he's opposed trans athletes in sports, no one's perfect on these scores. But he has governed largely in the minds of a lot of people, even the MAGA people who would say, oh, we want, we want fiscal conservatism, they actually don't. A lot of them want big government spending and entitlement programs.

[Doug Sosnik]

Doug, that, that's exactly right. And, and, and you know, what's happened has been a significant change since 2000s. The percent of people in America now that are most dependent on government support, whether it's Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, are now overwhelmingly Republican. And so the Republican base now is more dependent on government aid than the Democratic base.

Right.

[Mark Calpern]

All right, so that's the historical foundation and economic foundation. Let's talk about the midterms. The smartest and best informed people I know in both parties are more bullish on the Democratic chances than, than the, the popular perception. And so again, as regulars here know, I'm not a partisan. I'm just telling you what I know from reporting with people in both parties. If the election were now or if the conditions that pervade now pervade when people start to vote and as Doug will tell you, people's sentiments start to settle around now, Republicans are going to have a worse cycle than the Cook Political Report and these other places currently suggest because the President's in a big hole. Let's run through some, Some reasons why C9amajority of the country disapproves of President Trump. You see there the averages of a significant polls. 58% disapproved, 39 approved. What's the president like? C10 on on the big issues, the economy 33% approved. On Iran, 36% 34% approved. Israel 35% approved. Immigration used to be a great issue for them, only 40% approved. C11 do you prefer Democrats or Republicans control Congress Average opposite is Democrats 48 to 46 or 42. A six point gap historically has meant what?

[Doug Sosnik]

Well, it's meant a, you know, a good year for the out party. So I'll just say as a Democrat, two things to address your initial point. The first is by historical standards on the slides you just showed and there are a whole lot of other slides you haven't shown which reinforce it that Democrats should be poised for a historic blue wave election, Trump's Job approval is 8 points lower than Clinton's was in 94 when the Republicans won over 50 House seats, took back the House for the first time since the 1950s. It's same about when Obama and the Democrats we got wiped out in 2010, we lost over 60 house seats. So the two operating cross currents here, one is by historical standards, Democrats should have an historic election. However, due to the structural changes in American politics, where are we? I'm speaking as a Democrat, we're not going to have the kinds of gains that we would have in the past. And I do think we're favored to win the House, although, albeit more narrowly than history would suggest based on the data and in the Senate. And Mark, I think you were the first person a couple months ago to kind of lay this out that while the abstract, the macro numbers, the Democrats should win seven or eight Senate seats. You know, you pointed out when you start walking through these seats, race by race, it's going to be difficult. Despite how bad the Republicans are, it's going to be difficult for Democrats to take the Senate still.

[Mark Calpern]

Yeah, I agree. Assuming things improve, the war ends, the economy gets better, inflation continues to go down, gas prices go down. If all that happens, then it will be difficult. If the current conditions pervade, I think Democrats can do it, although it's not nearly as easy as some.

[Doug Sosnik]

I think it's very unlikely based on historical trends. I think it's very unlikely that the fundamental economic environment that when voters start deciding if they're going to vote and who they're going to vote for, which by the way, increasingly is earlier than it used to be. So literally in six weeks from now, people are going to start, or early September, people are going to start voting. I think it's very unlikely that the economic condition in America is going to be appreciably different than it is today.

[Mark Calpern]

I agree with you, although it's not impossible, but unlikely. Lastly, again, one of the wise things you've pointed out and Joe Biden should have realized this, Joe Biden took the 22 midterms as an indication, the 24 would be a great year for Democrats at the presidential level. Not true. You've pointed out that however well Democrats do in 2024, they shouldn't assume or 2026, they shouldn't assume that 2028 will be a harbinger or 2026 will be a harbinger for 2028. You wrote an op ed piece in the Washington Post looking at the last presidential what are the lessons you drew about that. That should pertain for Democrats as they think about the next presidential.

[Doug Sosnik]

Also just to be clear, these midterm elections really tell you nothing about the next presidential election. This is an election that's a referendum on the Republican Party and its leadership. The two biggest midterm elections in terms of a wave were as I mentioned earlier, 94 in 2010. And in both cases Republicans who won overwhelming victories in those elections lost the White House two years later. So these are completely different elections. You should not read anything into what happens in November as it relates to 2028. In regards to the lessons from 2024, the underlying lesson is, which I think you're seeing it every day now in voting, is you could, you cannot run for office defending the status quo. You have to be running for office for change, for changing the system. And, and, and if you're on the wrong side of change, you're not going to get elected. So in the case of Biden, he was, it's kind of a unique situation because he was basically elected largely to beat Trump and he said he was only going to run one term and then he went back on that. So I had three sort of key moments in the 2024 outcome and they had very little to do with the end. The first was Biden's decision to renege on his commitment to be a one term president. The second was how he governed in the first nine months which he that, that box in the squares that we showed earlier, Mark. He did not go on the upper left box in terms of governing. He was, he was governing much more left of America on social issues and did not deal with the economic issues and inflation. And then the third element was his, as you mentioned it about are Democrats misreading the 2022 results was that I don't believe either certainly Biden or Harris could, could, could have won in November if they're running on the status quo. So the only hope we had as a party was to, was to have someone else run, announce after the midterms and be a candidate of change.

Yep.

[Mark Calpern]

And neither of them was equipped obviously to do that. The full deck that Doug has as well as a link to his op ed will my sub stack also I,

[Doug Sosnik]

I'm sorry just interrupt you. I, I finally, to your admonition, I finally create, I don't use it much but I have a sub stack now so anyone can go to my sub stack and find these articles.

Oh all right.

[Mark Calpern]

What's the name of the sub stack?

[Doug Sosnik]

I didn't know I don't know. I have a name. I guess you just put my name in it. I never use it.

[Mark Calpern]

Doug Sosnik. All right, well find Doug Substack. We'll link to his substack. How about that in in my Twitter feed as well. So you can find the full deck and I recommend it to you. You won't find a high quality presentation explaining both the electoral environment as well as the data about the midterms. Doug, grateful to you always for making time.

[Doug Sosnik]

Nice to see you, Mark. Thank you.

[Mark Calpern]

All right, quick break.

[Doug Sosnik]

The next up, Drew Holden, author of

[Mark Calpern]

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[Mark Calpern]

all right, next up and joining me now, the man who always brings the receipts. Not the only thing we like about him, but we like it a lot. Drew Holden, managing editor of American Compass and the author of the Holden Court substack, where he's now published a six part series on a incredibly important topic. Some of you would like to put the COVID experience fully in the rearview mirror and never glance at it again. But there are such important lessons that we need to learn, not just for history and journalism, but to make sure that if we do have another pandemic, God willing, we won't. But history suggests we eventually will, that we handle it better. There's so many things that have occurred during the course of the pandemic in the aftermath that the mainstream media, legacy media, the dominant media, whatever you want to call them, has not scrutinized. And Drew and I talk about this all the time. It's just Drew shouldn't be the one who has to do it. But if no one else will do it, Drew will take it on. Drew, welcome back. Thank you for being here.

[Drew Holden]

Mark, the pleasure of mine. Thanks so much for having me back on. And I couldn't agree with you more if it would, that I didn't have to do it. But unfortunately it needs doing.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

Yeah.

[Mark Calpern]

Now six part series A so called autopsy of what happened. So much of what happened in real time is. It's like with the Biden mental acuity thing. There's the original cover up and then there's the failure to acknowledge what went wrong. And in the case of COVID there's mistakes that were made by the government and mistakes that were made by the media and you covered them both. I'm going to start, I'm going to start with an area of broad disagreement that I have with you. I'm more forgiving than you are about some of the mistakes that were made because this was an unprecedented situation, a complicated situation, a time when the country was already politically divided and federal government had to deal with the states and public health officials. So, for instance, one of the things you write about is kids and how we were. The public policy decisions that were made about how to treat kids in retrospect were just off. The science wasn't there. But nobody wants to take a chance with kids, right? So shouldn't we give some forbearance to government officials who erred on the side of caution rather than saying, well, it doesn't appear that kids are really as affected by this, so let's take off the masks and open all the schools right away?

[Drew Holden]

I think so, Mark. I'm open that I'm uncharitable perhaps a little bit in some of this framing, some of my thinking about it. And I do think you make a really good point about this is an unprecedented situation. It's the first time the federal government, the state government, have to interact in all these weird ways. I want to allow for some grace in terms of the way we look at things, but I actually think the area that is least deserving of grace is the way that kids were treated during COVID because throughout the conversation, the media, I think, in retrospect, of course, they did a really good job of highlighting this. So much of the conversation early, early, early on was, we're not sure about kids. We're not sure if they're safe. But then that shifted pretty early. Right. And particularly by late 2020, we were pretty confident, we could say with, I think, a high degree of confidence, kids are not impacted as negatively by Covid as adults are. They are considerably safer. And so the shift that you started to see in late 2020 and early 2021, around school closures, wasn't for the sake of children. It was for teachers and the risk that faced teachers. And I think what ended up happening as a result of that is. And whether or not we want to talk about workers of any kind, whether the teachers or otherwise being able to be safe, like, I think that's a reasonable conversation to have. What I think happened, particularly in the pages of the Legacy Press, is that kids were offered up as almost a sacrifice. What we were really talking about was teachers and teachers unions and their refusal to go back to their jobs even a year after the COVID had started. What we were framing it as instead was, well, this risk to kids that at that point we knew, again, not right off the bat, but at that point, we knew wasn't nearly as bad as it was for adults.

[Mark Calpern]

Yep. I agree with you 100%. And one of the undercovered stories is the role of the teachers unions and how outrageously they elevated their own concerns. And, and of course, no one wants teachers to be put at risk.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

Sure.

[Mark Calpern]

They're teachers. Their job is to train kids. And we, you continue to hear stories from parents whose kids were greatly affected, people who lost their senior years, for instance.

[Drew Holden]

Yep.

[Mark Calpern]

It was, it was driven by the teachers. Okay, that's one area. Let's, let's do it this way. Because again, this is such a rich series. I recommend everybody go on the substack and read the whole thing because there's just so many different facets to this. But let's talk about hindsight.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Yeah.

[Mark Calpern]

If we could go back to the beginnings of the pandemic and one thing you write about, which again is an undercovered story, is this was around far sooner than the government said at the time. And yes, and I had three people in my life who said, hey, I had Covid last year, you know, the year before. It's supposedly around. So the start date is, is not what people commonly think it is. If we go back with full knowledge of the science and of the public health implications. Full knowledge, not what they should have seen, but what they'll know. What would, how would it have been handled? Better handled overall?

[Drew Holden]

I mean, I think the biggest thing for me would have been lockdowns. Right. I think lockdowns would have been different. I think if we knew one, what the long term consequences would be on physical health, on mental health, on the social fabric, about what extended lockdowns can do. A lot of information, I will note, we had before all of this started. But if we had all of that in hindsight, if we knew what the learning loss was going to look like, I think lockdowns would have been a week, two weeks, maybe. It was really 15 days to slow the spread. I remember one time walking out of my apartment building where I lived in D.C. at the time, and it was probably, you know, 40 days into 15 days to slow the spread. And I looked over at the, you know, the, the woman I was dating who's now my wife, and I was like, wow, can you believe this is day 40 of 15 days to slow the spread? And in retrospect, it's like we had, you know, California had a year and a half of 15 days to slow the spread. And so I think with the knowledge of hindsight, which is always unfair, to look back at things. I understand that. I think we would have said, all right, we don't know what this Covid thing looks like. Maybe it makes sense to stop something, right? Maybe it makes sense for kids to not go to school for a week or two until we know more about what's happening, about transmission. Maybe it makes sense for businesses to close for a couple of days. Maybe it makes sense for people not go to work if they don't feel comfortable. But it wouldn't have been this endless, boundless, forever lockdown that we saw in so many states. We wouldn't have had all of these fights and these protests and these kind of debilitating, social, I hear you schisms.

[Mark Calpern]

What would the proper trigger, again, with full hindsight, what would the proper trigger have been for a given community or school or office to end the lockdowns? Like, at what point should they have said, okay, we don't need this anymore?

[Drew Holden]

I think it would come down to what, like, the immediate reaction of what did lockdowns prevent and what is still happening beyond that? Right. In New York at the time, they had these. These really, really stringent, serious lockdowns. You couldn't go outside, you couldn't. You couldn't do it. Anything in the sun. And they saw that Covid cases continued to tick up, and they continued to tick up despite the lockdowns, despite all of these measures. And I think as soon as we realize, hopefully a lot earlier, again, with the wisdom of hindsight, that lockdowns weren't working the way we thought they were and they were causing all these other issues and problems, right? Within a couple of weeks, we had, I think, really compelling data about increases in deaths of despair, of alcoholism, of. Of mental health, issues of mental health hospitalizations for adults and kids. I think we would have looked at that and said, whoa, maybe we're over our skis to say you can't leave your home, right?

[Mark Calpern]

All right, Again, I'm jumping around the parts I'm most interested in, but the thing is so wide ranging and monumental. The Chinese have denied that this was developed in a lab. They're not really been clear about how they think it developed. But it's pretty clear from the evidence now that the Chinese developed this and that they caused untold number of deaths and financial costs, and they won't acknowledge it. And the president, United States, then and now said, this is Chinese virus. The Chinese causes. And the American media continues to be, to this day, uninterested in truly one of the biggest stories of the last Hundred years that this was. This was not some fluke of nature. This was whether they. Whether they unleashed it on purpose or simply sure, made an error. Another country, one country, through their activities, caused a worldwide recession and killed. How many people died? I don't even know worldwide how many people died?

[Doug Sosnik]

Millions.

[Drew Holden]

Million, I think. Yeah.

[Mark Calpern]

Yeah. So. So, so what if. What is your view, based on your research of what happened and what's your theory about why the American media is not interested in that story?

[Drew Holden]

Yeah, so this. I've spent. You know, there's one part of the series that looks specifically at the lab leak theory, and I spent probably more time thinking and writing. And like, of all the things that frustrate me, Mark, there's nothing worse than the lab leak theory. So my personal view on it is that so much of the media's resistance to it is that it sounded like Donald Trump was being a racist.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

Right.

[Drew Holden]

He's talking about the China flu. It came out of this, you know, it came out of this lab. We weren't really sure what was happening, and it sounded somewhat implausible. And so rather than do what I think, and I think what you would agree would be good journalism to try and get the facts, to try and get at the information, the media dropped immediately into, Donald Trump is pushing another conspiracy mode. And they ran an enormous amount of coverage early on before we had any right to know any of the facts about this. That said definitively this is not true. There's an ABC piece headline that said, sorry, conspiracy theorists. The, The. The scientists proved that Covid came from nature or something along those lines.

[Doug Sosnik]

Right.

[Drew Holden]

And so I think they were just fixed in this mindset of it can't be real. It is not worth investing any time into. There's no gain of function research happening. Look at Dr. Fauci. He's an American hero. We can't be like, why would we spend this time questioning what he has to say about this? Which is the first and foremost job of a free and independent media, is to question what someone in the government is telling you about the facts of any case. Right. And so the fact that they could be so turned off to the idea that perhaps, again, not even being definitive, to say this is really what happened, that they could look at a situation where there was a level 4 bio lab a couple of miles away doing, in many cases, not scientifically sound research with very, very minimal safety precautions, miles from where these cases first started, and we can't possibly look at it. And to even think about looking at it was Racist. It is mind blowing. It is truly mind blowing. I think there is. I think there is a little bit. Again, I want to give them a little bit of grace of, like, early on to say, hey, we don't know what's happening, but to immediately say Donald Trump is wrong. This theory doesn't hold water, and we know it because science said, I think is maybe one of the biggest failures of journalism that we've seen, certainly in my lifetime.

[Mark Calpern]

It's bonkers. Given the stakes involved in the importance of the story.

[Drew Holden]

Yes.

[Mark Calpern]

And given. And given the absolute completeness with which the media just wouldn't entertain it. And to this day, they just won't entertain. What a tragedy. You mentioned Dr. Fauci. I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area where Dr. Fauci was. I wasn't a family friend, but he was a. He was omnipresent in the media and his role in combating aids. He's seen as this, like a saint, like a patron saint of, of public health. And President Trump chose to keep him on. Now, the red view of Fauci is he's. He's an incompetent crook and a liar. And the blue view, which of course is the dominant media view, is heroic. Dr. Fauci tried to help poor Donald Trump, evil Donald Trump.

[Interviewer/Mark Calpern]

And.

[Mark Calpern]

And if it's not for Dr. Fauci, many more people would have died. Now, Tulsi Gabbard, on her way out the door as DNI Director of National Intelligence, puts more meat on the bone of the accusation that Fauci played a role in. Again, he couldn't make this up in the. In the scientific research that led to the development of the virus. So what do we know now, separate from the media fog machine, what do we know now about the role Dr. Fauci played?

[Drew Holden]

Yeah. And Mark, what we know now, I like again, I don't want to toot my own horn here, but I've been talking about since 2021. We have long known this. So for the quick snippet is that Dr. Fauci had been financing what's called gain of function research, which in the medical sense takes a virus or some other pathogen and makes it more potent. Sounds preposterous. Makes it more potent as a way to evaluate how can we stop it in the future. Right. And so before COVID there was some research being done that was funded by American tax dollars. The Eco Health alliance was the name of the company that was operating in China where they were doing research specifically around coronaviruses and how they could make them more lethal and more dangerous. So that if we had something like the Spanish flu that came out again, we would know how to address it better.

[Mark Calpern]

When you say Dr. Fauci funded it, did he have unilateral power to, say, send this money to this place?

[Drew Holden]

Not, I don't think it was quite unilateral, but as the, you know, as. As the operator of the cdc.

[E]

Right.

[Drew Holden]

As the director of the cdc, he was able to charter grants for entities in the United States and externally. And there was a big fight before Fauci was revealed to have done this about whether or not we should be funding gain of function research at all. Right. And then whether or not we should be funding gain of function research internationally. And one would think of all the places we might be a little bit worried about enhanced pathogens potentially causing an issue. It would be a Chinese lab run by shady communists with no oversight. And with what we knew about some of these labs, There were level 4 bio labs operating with biosafety level 2 certifications. There's a huge mismatch. And so the danger that through no, like, through no malicious action, through stupidity or chance or whatever it is, something bad could happen. And Fauci just pressed the accelerator anyway. And he fought a lot back in 2020 and 2021 to say this isn't actually gain of function research. Sure, they're taking pathogens and then supercharging them a little bit, but it doesn't meet the strict definition that I coined as the head of the CDC for what constitutes gain of function research.

[Mark Calpern]

Is there any doubt in your mind that in the conversation, in the context of his being asked about this by Republicans in Congress, is there any doubt in your mind that he's lied about his role?

[Drew Holden]

No, not a microcosm of doubt. And this is Mark. You know, I'm pretty squishy on a lot of these things, right?

[Doug Sosnik]

I am not.

[Drew Holden]

I'm not a fire breather. I'm not a hard charger. The idea that, like, hey, we should get a scientist to actually testify on the record because he might have done something so awful that we would need to have some sort of legal consequences for it like that scares me to say out loud.

[Mathnasium Announcer]

Yeah.

[Drew Holden]

But it does seem impossible, truly impossible, to dispute that Dr. Fauci lied repeatedly to Congress about the most serious issue that we could possibly imagine for years.

[Mark Calpern]

And because he's gotten a pardon from Joe Biden, he'll never face criminal accountability. Could he face civil accountability for what he did?

[Drew Holden]

It's a great Question. You would have to think so. Right. Like to me, Mark, I'm not a legal expert, but the stakes of this just seem so, so impossibly high. Right. If what is alleged, if a fraction of what is alleged, is in fact true, and that the COVID pandemic was only made possible, was only experienced by the entire globe the way that it was because of like errant and attempted to be covered up decisions by Dr. Anthony Fauci, it is impossible in like a cosmic sense that we could just let that go. No matter whether or not he got this, you know, this blanket pardon by Biden or Biden's autopilot.

[Doug Sosnik]

Right.

[Mark Calpern]

Extraordinary. Drew Holden does such great work on, on everything he touches. Often will do media criticism, but here he's done not just media criticism, but criticism of government policy. And it's one of the biggest stories of all time. And it is. Go read the whole thing, ladies and gentlemen. You won't find this in the New York Times. You won't find it in the Washington Post. This is extraordinary work on, on a really important and interesting topic and something that needs to be excavated. Excavated before we face something like this again. There's a lot of answers in here and a lot of important question raised. Drew Holden writes the Holden Court substack, which is where you can find this series. Drew, grateful to you.

[Drew Holden]

The pleasure of mine, sir. Thank you so much for having me on. I happy I get to talk about this more.

[Doug Sosnik]

Great.

[Mark Calpern]

Go read the whole thing. I didn't. It's spellbinding and infuriating all at once. All right, take a quick break and when we come back, Mitch Modell will be here to big announcement about his attempt to get New York psyched even more about the Knicks championship. Mitch Modell is next up here at Everywhere. Everybody's talking about weight loss injections because the results are so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. So what if you're looking to lose weight but not interested in painful weekly injections? Especially when you hear and see some of the intense side effects. That's why doctors created a weight loss supplement. It's called Lean, and the results are remarkable. The studied ingredients in Lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite and cravings so you're not as hungry. But listen, lean is not for the casual dieter who only has a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created Lean for frustrated dieters who have 10 or more pounds to lose. So let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping so you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit takelean.com and enter NextUp for your discount. That's promo code [e-mail] Parents have you

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you in the U.S. there's a break in every 26 seconds, but when intruders step near Simplisafe, home security steps up.

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[Mark Calpern]

all right, next up and joining me now, Mitch Modell, former owner and CEO of Modell Sports Goods and managing director and partner, GSH Development. Mitch, every year somebody wins the NBA title, but New Yorkers are taking this like a big deal, including me. I'm not just the, the, you know, half century drought, but the nature of this team, the spirit of the team and the way the city has responded. I don't mean to diminish other cities, but this is something special and you've reacted to it as a lifetime New Yorker. Tell us how you've reacted on the business side to the Knicks championship.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Mark, in all my years in business, I have never, you know, we've been through the 1994 Rangers celebration. You know, the with the World Series, with the Subway Series, super bowl with The Giants in 2012. Linsanity Never have I ever seen a an event that has brought every New Yorker together in a way that it revived our brand. Even though I don't own models sporting goods IP and I do not we're not affiliated with models.com as a result of the Knicks hysteria, we set up a website, Mitchellmodels.com where we were selling a commemorative T shirt with a pigeon on it. What does the pigeon represent? Resilience, gritty, adaptable, loyal. Just like New York. New York is and just like New York Knick fans.

[Mark Calpern]

So you're coming back into the sporting good business, the apparel business in the wake of this dramatic victory, which is, as you say, just energized New York and brought New York together in an incredible way. So symbolically, models is synonymous with sporting goods. Sports apparel in New York was. For years you stepped away from the company and now you're coming back. What's the goal here is? Is it to make money? Is it? The goal is to finish. But is it? But is it to start a new business for the long term or to just be in the short term for the Knicks?

[Simplisafe Voice]

Nope, this is be a long term play. The goal is to give all working families a chance to be part of a celebration no matter what team it is. So we started with the Knicks. We'll be going on to baseball football in a fun way for the fans and more important in an affordable way. You know, with this T shirt that's on Mitchellmodels.com the championship T shirt $5. The T shirt costs $20. This $10 shipping and handling charge, which makes it 30. We're giving $5 to price prostate cancer and we're going to be setting up free PSA exams in our restaurant and our rooftop bar that we own with Arthur Bacall in July. Celebrating and giving people free PSA tests that can't afford it to stop prostate cancer. Because my father died of prostate cancer in 2008 and June is prostate cancer awareness month now.

[Mark Calpern]

How did you get this up and running so quickly? How is it that you went from a championship few days ago to a website and T shirts and this new plan to help folks with prostate screening.

[Simplisafe Voice]

My two sons are absolutely brilliant. Max and Matthew Modell. They set it up, they found a backend guy, they created the website. Tort Shapiro, who was our public relations company is incredible. Got the word out and the thing went viral. I mean people were crying. So don't forget, Mark, we have not had a championship in New York since 2012. 14 years. Forget about the Knicks. For 53 years, the city was starving for a team. People always came to Modell's because I always took the risk. I always pre printed early. We pre printed these T shirts when The Knicks went up 3:1. But we take risk and we give value. And that's what New Yorkers were crying for. And as a result, we Said, you know what, let's go back in business again. We are not affiliated with models.com or Model Sporting Goods. And we're coming up with a brand called Mitchie Moe's. I have it patented. I just set it up yesterday. You're the first to hear about it. I know you like juicy material. So it's going to be Mitchy moselmodels.com Mitchie Moe's.

[Mark Calpern]

And again, if you're not a New Yorker, you may not know this is a New York Knicks, a great New York brand, legacy brand. And Modell's a great legacy brand now. Mitchie Mose. And it's a, it's a great sports story. It's a great story about the city, but it's also a great business story because you, you hunger to be part of the sports experience in your beloved New York City. Right?

[Simplisafe Voice]

I was born and raised in New York. I have five kids that live in New York. My ex wife Robin, my best friend on the planet lives in New York. I mean, DNA in New York is in my blood. And so it's a way of accomplishing three things. Giving the working families an affordable price where they could afford T shirts. Again, it's not sanctioned by any of the leagues. It's not sanctioned by any of the teams. We did in a very creative way. So we use the team colors. But more important, we're giving back $5 to prostate cancer so that someone, if we could save one life, it was worth everything.

[Mark Calpern]

And is this just going to be online or are you going to get in brick and mortar retail?

[Simplisafe Voice]

We will be in brick and mortar down the road. Right now we're starting online with apparel, license apparel. And then you're going to start to see some other, other categories being added.

[Mark Calpern]

Now there's all sorts of apparel makers, sports apparel makers in New York. You can walk down Fifth Avenue and buy Nick stuff. You can buy it in Chinatown. You can buy it, of course, at Model. So what's, what's the, what's the vacuum you're filling here?

[Simplisafe Voice]

Price. We're all about value. That's what we were born and raised on. My grandfather, Henry Modell, may rest in peace. Never get rich on a customer. You make a buy, pass it on to the customer. And that's what we're doing.

[Mark Calpern]

Where can folks get their $20 Nick celebratory t shirt?

[Simplisafe Voice]

Mitchell models.com and if you start looking, starting on Monday, we'll look for World Cup T shirts.

[Mark Calpern]

Amazing. And you get a bet on the US Team.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Go usa. It's giving you fun T shirts and it'll be the Same online website, Mitchellmodels.com Be on the lookout. And that's the whole key. Keeping it fresh, keeping it fun and making it affordable for the customer.

[Mark Calpern]

Now, I can't buy a TV set at Crazy Eddies, but I can buy a Knicks T shirt from Mitch Model.

[Doug Sosnik]

Mitch.

[Mark Calpern]

The New York excitement over the Knicks is palpable. And again, it's not just New Yorkers saying that people around the country have been taking in President Obama, President Trump, Trump. Rare moment of confluence between the two of them celebrating this extraordinary Knicks team. And now an opportunity for New Yorkers and really people from around the country and around the world to participate in a second legendary New York brand. Thanks to you, Mitch. Mitch, great to see you. Congratulations. Check out the site mitchellmodels.com and then Mitchy Moe's coming soon. Thank you very much, sir.

[Doug Sosnik]

Great to see you.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Congratulations, Mark.

[Mark Calpern]

Have a great day.

[Simplisafe Voice]

Always a pleasure.

[Mark Calpern]

All right, that's it for today's show. We'll be back on Tuesday. Tuesday with a brand new episode. Subscribe to NextUp on YouTube wherever you get your podcast, so you always know what's coming. Next up.

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