Phil Kerpen goes into detail on the problems with listening to CDC guidance, the disastrous Fauci and Birx lockdowns, and the possibilities of indefinite masking in certain parts of the country.
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Ian Miller: (00:27)
Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the unasked podcast. We've got a special guest today, Phil Kerpen the president of American commitment principal at the committee to unleash prosperity frequent Fox news contributor, and, and also a CDC critic. So we'll we'll get into that. Welcome to the show, Phil. Thanks so much for doing this.
Phil Kerpen: (00:47)
Hey, Ian, my pleasure. Great to be with you.
Ian Miller: (00:49)
Yeah. so I wanted to start with kind of where we we've started a lot with these conversations, which is, you know, what were your initial thoughts about COVID where you immediately skeptical about, I mean, how severe it was any of the policies we were doing or were you concerned, you know, what was, what was your response?
Phil Kerpen: (01:08)
Well, you know, I thought the it's interesting. I thought the most striking feature of the early data out of China was the extreme age skew in all of the data. And, you know, I remember telling my kids in like January and February of 2020, this really doesn't affect kids. It's nothing you have to worry about. It's not gonna ha have any effect on you. And of course I was incorrect only because of the way it was mediated by bad government policies. But you know, it became pretty clear pretty early on that the policy response was going to be, you know, catastrophically off course poorly targeted, poorly designed that it was being politicized in an extremely destructive way. And so, you know, normally I work on kind of economic issues, taxes, spending, regulation, that kind of stuff, but it was kind of obvious that all the usual stuff they care about was about to become largely irrelevant because we didn't have government, you know, forcibly shutting down people's businesses and schools and kind of destroying their lives. And so I've been on kind of this two year detour trying to fight all of this stuff and unfortunately with a lot less success than I would've liked, especially when Trump administration was in. Cause I had a lot of pretty good ties there and for the most part, they, they didn't listen to much of what I have to say. Unfortunately,
Ian Miller: (02:33)
That is, it's funny. You mentioned that, cause that was my next question for you. So you know, obviously you have a lot of contact with politicians and, and especially in the Trump white house early on. So what do you think, what is your opinion or, or what was your sense of what was going on inside the Trump white house with regards to COVID policy? Did they kind of unquestionably accept the, the Fauci Burke's lockdowns or was there concern that these would have other impacts or, you know, what, what did you think their sense was early on of what the policies were gonna do?
Phil Kerpen: (03:03)
Well, you know, I think the first of all, they had a team that was very poorly designed for dealing with this virus. And, and this has continued to this, to this very day, but I mean, they had people whose experience and expertise really was from fighting HIV and just a completely different type of virus, you know, for, for a sexually transmitted infection, you can actually do contact tracing and it has some value even, even for that, it it's you know, limited, but it has some value for a highly infectious respiratory virus it's completely absurd. And yet they took kind of this whole mentality, this whole model. And I think that the Burkes hire was kind of the key bad hire of the Trump administration because they took this, this sort of paradigm that really didn't fit at all. And they tried to use that as the foundation of everything that came after.
Phil Kerpen: (03:55)
And I actually think that Trump had some reasonably good instincts fairly early on. You might own, remember when he said, you know, everything's gonna open again by Easter, it's gonna be the greatest Easter ever. And he certainly had some people in the white house for, from sort of the more economic policy side that I think kind of got how incredibly destructive lockdowns were particularly Larry Kudlow at the national economic council. But you know, the president you know, president Trump was very susceptible to public opinion, an expert opinion. And he had cable news on all the time. And I just think that the onslaught was enough that it kind of got to him. He said, you know, I'm gonna get killed if I go outta my own and sort of disregard my own so-called experts. And you know, I don't, it goes against my and instincts, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna go with them. And I think that's essentially what he did.
Ian Miller: (04:45)
Yeah. And it's interesting because, and it it's related to something I wanted to ask you about as well. Was there anything that they, that he could have done to avoid the kind of media criticism? I, it feels like it was a no win situation for him because if it, if they just kept everything open and it never lockdowns never fought listen to Fauci or Burkes, they would've been crucified in the media, but they did lock downs. And, and obviously there was mask recommendations pretty early on and they still got crucified by the media. So, you know, was there anything they could have done that wouldn't have been criticized?
Phil Kerpen: (05:17)
No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that the, you know, the, the, the truck Trump was on track to be reelected. I think when COVID came along and the, you know, the entire establishment to a certain extent of both parties really disliked president Trump. And, you know, I think that this was their opportunity to disrupt him, to defeat him and you know, the anything he did would have been wrong in catastrophic and he would've been attacked for it. And, and given that reality you know, he should have done what was actually substantively, correct. He should have been concerned about the reaction, which was gonna inevitably be negative. And, you know, I, the other problem is, you know, when nobody kind of thought that a job like CDC director mattered. Okay. And if he had thought the job had been important, I think he would've hired someone much more competent.
Phil Kerpen: (06:08)
And you, so it's been same thing for surgeon general. So you have these jobs that are sort of afterthought kind of backwater type jobs in the hundreds of appointment that a president has to make. You know, he probably gave it 10 seconds of thought. But then once you're in sort of a crisis mode, now, if you fire someone, then that's a big, it's a big story that you fired them, even though maybe you hadn't even given much thought to hiring them in the first place. And so I think he was sort of a little bit just felt, felt a little bit constrained. And the other thing is, you know, he put the vice president in charge of that task force. And you know, I think vice president Pence did a really bad job of, you know, criticizing any of the inputs that he was being given.
Phil Kerpen: (06:52)
And so, you know, there's a lot of blame to go around. Ultimately, I think that you know, look, we would've had something pretty similar if the president had come out and said, we're, we're not shutting anything down, it's not worth it. We've gotta keep society functioning. We've gotta avoid panic. The blue states and cities still would've shut down. Yeah. And the mid states and cities for the most part would not have. And so you, you know, you, would've kind of, I think you would've ended up where you were by, you know, April or may from the big beginning, essentially. But I don't think it would've been that much different in terms of the way it played out.
Ian Miller: (07:24)
Yeah. do you think that that the Trump white house that they realized pretty early on that Fauci was gonna be kind of, I, I don't know the lack of a better word, an enemy in terms of, of the response from them, because he was gonna be kind of this, he are gonna become the, the Saint that the, for the left or for the media that to look to and become the kind of counterpoint to Trump. Do you think they realize that
Phil Kerpen: (07:50)
I think they probably understood that by, you know, mid February or something like that. But you know, they, they, I think made a calculation that if you fire him well, you know, then, you know, you'd rather have him on the inside of the tent, I guess peeing out or, or, you know I don't know the right metaphor, but basically look, if they fired him, then he's even more powerful ubiquitous media figure. And he's expressly against them all the time. Whereas if you keep him on, he's gotta walk a little bit of a tightrope of supporting his administration and that kind thing. And they may have been actually correct in that assessment. I'm not sure that they actually had the ability to stop him from being what he was even if they had fired him.
Ian Miller: (08:32)
Hmm, interesting. Hypothetical to think about what do you think was behind the early flip flop on masking from the CDC and, and Fauci and others? I mean, obviously it's, it's a question we may never get a great answer to, but just from your own sense, if, if you had any conversations with people, what do you think was behind that, that initial recommendation change?
Phil Kerpen: (08:54)
Well, I think there were a few things going on. First of all, there was a very there was a major global effort going on to upend the science up to that point based on political activism and advocacy. And yet the guy Jeremy Howard, out of Australia with his masks for all, and the fake studies they were pushing. And so the, this wasn't a us specific phenomenon. This happened basically everywhere, except the Nordic countries, which for whatever reason, don't fall, right. Of this kind of political influence operation. But it happened almost everywhere in the world around that time. So it's hard to say that it was something specific to what was happening even in the us or in the Trump administration, cuz it happened kind of everywhere all at once. And I think that, you know, at, at least to me and I wasn't really against it when it was done, which is kind of my one huge regret.
Phil Kerpen: (09:40)
Not that it would've necessarily mattered what I had said at that point, but you know, I think that the logic of it at least to me, and I think to a lot of others who who otherwise might have fought it, but allowed it to kind of go and, and I think the thinking was we got all these irrationally scared people who are sort of sidelined from a functioning society. And if you don't somehow get them out of their houses and back to work and you know, back to sort of engaging in the world, then this is, there's just no bottom to how catastrophic this is gonna be. And so, you know, if these idiots think that a piece of fabric on their face is enough to sway their irrational fears, then you know, we'll do that for a little bit. It'll be kind of obvious to everyone that it's not really doing anything.
Phil Kerpen: (10:23)
So it won't last that long, but it'll, it'll get people away from being like hold up in their basements and afraid. And it'll kinda start returning things to normal, I think was the logic. At least the reason I was okay with it at that time. And of course that was catastrophically incorrect. You know, I, I dunno how, how, how much more wrong something could ever be. So, you know, people sometimes ask, what did you get wrong about COVID? And I said, you know, I thought the mess would help things get back to normal. And they wouldn't last very long would be kind of obviously ridiculous. Even for schools, I was kinda like, Hey, whatever, if you get the schools old open, it'll be obvious to everyone. They're not doing anything, kids aren't gonna wear them. It won't last long. And so I, I really got that wrong.
Phil Kerpen: (11:04)
But I think that the main motivation for the political decision makers, at least, I mean, I guess some of the science people actually believed that, you know, decades of science were wrong and a mask somehow does stop you know, respiratory virus. But I think the logic for kind of the political and executive level decision makers was kind of look, we gotta do something to end this lockdown and this fear cycle and get people back out and about. And it was, it was a little bit misguided. But I think that was the logic.
Ian Miller: (11:37)
Got it. Yeah. In theory it makes some sense. Obviously in practice, it's, it's one of those things where you, you know, you take an, give an inch and they take a mile where it's, it's just become an endless cycle of, of masking. But so you've, you've astutely repeatedly pointed out that CDC guidance is, is often completely absurd and, and just com out outdated, outdated entirely. But you know, like for example, they still haven't updated their Zika virus guidance. Yeah,
Phil Kerpen: (12:04)
This is very important. And, and any of your listeners, this is very, very important. Any of your listeners who think it's very important to follow hello, CDC guidance scrupulously should be aware that basically the entire United States is in the purple zone for Zika and therefore, therefore among other recommendations that are very important. If you and your wife have sex any time during pregnancy, you need to use a condom. Very important. See the CDC I I've been trying to I've been trying to ask when they might think it's safe to lift that, but I never did reply, but that is an effect
Ian Miller: (12:48)
It's, it's mind boggling. Isn't, it's, it's incredible hard to believe. So that was, I wanted to ask you, you, what, what's their problem? Why is there like this? Can it be fixed or is the organization just so broken that it's impossible to repair it?
Phil Kerpen: (13:01)
Well, look, I mean, I think the, if the CDC is some dumb government entity that people kind of mostly ignore and they put like dumb recommendations out okay, fine, whatever, let that exist. It's a waste of billions of dollars, but okay. If people actually take their recommendations, their guidance and transform them into binding mandates that disrupt people's lives indefinitely, then we have a big problem. And so I, I think that the problem is not necessarily that guidance exists because they've got lots of dumb guidance on law of things COVID being kind of the least of it. The problem is that somehow for COVID and only for COVID, we've got a lot of government entities, federal, state, and local that think if CDC recommends something, they ought to mandate that thing.
Ian Miller: (13:51)
Yeah. That's the big distinction that politicians are really incapable of making. And and, and so that is related to my next question for you, which was, you know, my concern is that this, this guidance and this new obsession with following CDC guidance is designed to kind of continue indefinite masking. You know, you, you recently just did this transcription basically of what Rachel Wilkis speech where she's basically implied I'd, didn't get a cold, so masks work and
Phil Kerpen: (14:18)
Right, right, right. Which is, you know, the head of our August scientific organization, the CDC is suggesting that maybe healthcare workers should be masked literally forever because haha I haven't had cold in two years, which by the way, she's mostly zooming into work. I mean my another reason she might not have had a cold. I mean, I, I, I don't, you know, you almost have to laugh to not cry and I am really worried. I, I think we're finally ending school masking most places, although certainly not here in DC anytime soon. Yeah. But the majority of the country but I see no short term end to the healthcare sector, which is a huge, huge problem. Healthcare workers being subject to, and by the way, I think a lot of the reason this is totally speculative, but I think a lot of the reasons so many healthcare workers are claiming that they're so overworked and all overwhelmed even though volumes are objectively lower than normal and have been throughout the pandemic is they're wearing masks all day and they don't wanna admit that that's a problem.
Phil Kerpen: (15:20)
But I think that is a problem for them. I think it's part of why they've been so grumpy and angry all the time about everything. So I'm worried about the healthcare. I'm worried about the healthcare workers that it becomes and institutionalized and permanent essentially. Not least to which, because the CDC director seemed to say that last week that that's something she wants because she hasn't had a cold in two years. Yeah. But you know, I also worry if we don't, if we don't force the masks to admit they were wrong, then this is gonna become an annual ritual in blue areas. You know, every winter, when we get into respiratory season, they're gonna bring it back and say, we know it works and that'll be the extent of their evidence presentation.
Ian Miller: (16:02)
Yeah. well, that's, I, my, my question is really, is this going to continue until there's a new president? Obviously you get directly a new CDC director, but at that point, does it even matter because the guidance has now been out there and it'll be seen as a, a political move that a new CDC director under a new president that maybe from a different party, for example, would make a different recommendation. You know, is it, is it too late now? The cat's out of the bag?
Phil Kerpen: (16:28)
Yeah. I mean, I don't think the CDC under, I think if you get Republican president and the CDC director says, oh, mass, you know, we put in Jay aria or somebody you know, smart to run the CDC and they say it was all a big mistake. It never worked. The evidence never supported it. I mean, I don't see DC or Los Angeles or San Francisco or New York caring. Do you? I mean, no,
Ian Miller: (16:53)
But
Phil Kerpen: (16:53)
They'll say, they'll say no, no, no. We believe in the real science, which is Rochelle Wilensky. And I don't, you know, not that they ever really had, you know, they'll say we believe in the fakers from the old CDC and there will be. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll get, maybe we'll get some, you know, I, I was one of the most disappointing things that we've seen is how corrupt a lot of the scientific researchers have been. Because if you know, there was that big, big study that was done in Bangladesh by this guy, Jason Avalo and a bunch of his collaborators. And if they had just presented the data with a conventional presentation, it clearly would've been a Noll outcome. And instead they published with this to twisted contorted econometric model where they, they hid the ball. They didn't even say anywhere in their paper that the total difference across 300 villages between mass and unasked was 20 cases.
Phil Kerpen: (17:46)
And two months they didn't even the number 20 doesn't appear anywhere in their paper. It had to be dug out of the dataset by a professor from Berkeley in Ben rec. And they, they just, they twisted and contorted and they got these headlines everywhere saying that it proved masking works. You know, the biggest study that's been done that clearly demonstrated that there was no impact and they twisted their own results to lie about it. And, you know, I, if researchers are so bent on producing a certain result, regardless of what their own data shows, then it's really hard for us to ever, you know, for us to ever get any of these people to admit they were wrong. I mean, there's a woman from brown university, a professor named Emily Oster who started collecting data last year on school masking. And she had a very good data set and it showed that there was no impact.
Phil Kerpen: (18:32)
In fact, there were slightly higher cases in the mass schools and the unask schools. And then governor DeSantis quoted her findings, quoted her data. And of course the media, you know, they all start calling Rob and she said, oh no, I love masks. Everyone should mask. He shouldn't have used my study. So yet people actually running away from their own data data from their own conclusions just to be part of, kind of the, this, this herd, this masks you know, this political masking movement, whatever you want to call it. And when people have that kind of level of commitment to something where, you know, their own, data's not gonna matter because the conclusion has to be what they want it to be for whatever their policy end of politics, ideology, whatever you want to call it. It's, you know, those people are never gonna change their tune.
Phil Kerpen: (19:17)
And so you can replace 'em in most places with people who are not gonna do something so destructive and stupid, the problem is in the bluest places where you're just never gonna replace them. There's no OB end to any of this. And so I, that, that's, that's the challenge. I think we're gonna have, we're gonna be in a state we're a couple of years from now. I think all of this is gonna be totally forgotten in most places, but in the most liberal places, they're gonna be bringing it back every year, still indefinitely. Just because it they've you know, they've set themselves on a path where they can't, don't really escape from that. Their own base wants it. And, you know, liberal cities are, are one party jurisdictions.
Ian Miller: (20:00)
Yeah. It's, it's terrifying to think about that. I think I, I think you're right. I hope you're not right, but I think you're right. I,
Phil Kerpen: (20:06)
I'm not right too
Ian Miller: (20:07)
Living in one of those areas myself, as I know you do, it is it is definitely infuriating even think about that possibility, but you brought up the Bangladesh study, which I think is a great example of, of one of the things I wanted to ask you about, which was how bad these, these studies are. The CDC studies, the, the researcher studies you know, there's, there was one that just came out that I know we've been talking about with the the county level data where they classified certain counties as not having a mandate when they did or pairing ridiculous counties all across the country. So, you know, why are they so bad at this? If it worked, it should be so easy to show it instead of doing these ridiculous pairings. Right.
Phil Kerpen: (20:47)
Well, that's the thing. Okay. So, you know, you, if you, if you just aggregate, you take the counties from that study and you, you just aggregate them and you compare the mask to the unasked you see, there's no, there's no difference at all, other than a timing effect, the ones that masked earlier peaked earlier, which just tells you that mask mandates were put in around the peak, because you know, the other ones, mostly all put in masks also around their peak and just later in the study period. And so, you know, if you sync these county, you know, if you pair them, however, your pairing method is, and you sync 'em so that the you know, the mask mandate ones are the ones that peaked earlier then you'll, you know, you'll have the decline of those paired with the you know, the rise of the other ones you can say, oh, it worked, you know, the, so it's a totally spurious result.
Phil Kerpen: (21:30)
It's the, the outcome is a residue of the design of the study. It doesn't tell you anything about what mask mandates actually did. And but somehow the, the main guy is like on Twitter, acting extremely earnest while people, clown him, which I find endlessly entertaining. But you know, the, the, your point is exactly right. If they had a substantial effect, which is what we keep being told in the media, and they say, you know, CDC says it's one of the most effective, but you would not have to have these tortured twisted methods to try to find some effect. If the effect size weren't tiny, it would be obvious. And, you know, a lot of people attack you for your charts and say, you're not adjusting for all the various confounders and so on and so forth. But, you know, if the effect were anything other than tiny, then you wouldn't need to do that.
Phil Kerpen: (22:20)
Then it would be obvious. It would be clear. You would see an inflection point when it's put in. And so, you know, we, it it's it to, to me, it's extremely clear that the effect of masking is somewhere between zero and very, very small. And so you can have this sort of academic debate, you know, is it zero or non zero, but if it's non zero, it's so small as to be essentially irrelevant, it's negligible, it's overwhelmed by a million other factors. And so the effect size is so time that talking about whether it's statistically significant, totally misses the point.
Ian Miller: (22:55)
Yeah. That's, it's a great point. And, and I, it's not, I brought that up myself many times where, you know, the, it, there's so many demonstrable harms to this, especially with schools that it has to be an overwhelming amount of, of difference to be worth the trade offs. And, and that's obvious if we, if that was possible, we would've seen it by now OB, and obviously we haven't, but,
Phil Kerpen: (23:16)
But not to mention Ian, almost everyone got COVID.
Ian Miller: (23:18)
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Phil Kerpen: (23:20)
So it's like, you know, it's pretty obvious this stuff didn't work. Cause almost everyone got COVID and you know, like, so really what was it all for? I mean, I guess pro-vaccine, you could say, well, yeah, everyone's gonna get it, but we're gonnas slow it down. They'll get it later when there's a vaccine. If they'll, I, I don't know what it is now.
Ian Miller: (23:36)
Yeah, exactly. And obviously, so I just mentioned school masking it's, it's been an incredibly important issue for you as it has been for, for so many people and rough. So teachers unions have just completely bought into this and, you know, we, we see our good friend, Randy bringing up how important the guide important the guidance will be going forward in assessing masks and when they should be implemented in schools can this be salvage at this point? Can you, can you pass legislation to band school masking? You know, what can we do?
Phil Kerpen: (24:03)
Yeah. Some states are doing that. Virginia notably did it, despite Democrats controlling the state Senate, which I thought was a big deal. Of course, Florida has done at Iowa. I think Utah so some states have done that. The interestingly, the governor of North Carolina veto to bill. So we'll see if there are enough vote to, to override as veto, but I think, you know, your only meaningful, long term protection against them bringing the mask back is to have legislation that enshrines a parental, right. To yeah. You know, opt out of any mask mandate. And you know, we've only got a handful of states that have done that so far. And I, I worry a little bit that a lot of places will say, oh, it's over. We don't need to worry about that anymore. It actually, when, when there's very, very little COVID and people are sort of in retreat is the time you wanna put sort of permanent protections in because it's gonna be much harder to put them in.
Phil Kerpen: (24:55)
If the panic ramps back up again, at some point you wanna have those legal protections in place so that you can rely on them when you need them. You know, the teachers you need. It's interesting. I assume the, that most of the decision makers are smart enough to know the masks don't do anything, especially, you know, cuz their teachers all saw, you know, people got COVID anyway. I mean they saw it didn't but I, I think they must perceive that there's a disciplinary or a social control benefit that it makes children more docile, something I don't, I, I would like to understand more what their true motivations are because I don't really get why they're so intent on keeping these things in as long as possible. I mean the Seattle teachers union, I don't know if you saw the letter, they just put out a couple days ago, the Seattle teachers union is totally against removing masks before May 1st at the earliest.
Phil Kerpen: (25:45)
And that's because masks are necessary for us sense of normalcy for the students according to, and they actually wrote this in a letter. I, I, I, you know, when, when people are making arguments that are so blatantly, contrary to reality, you have to wonder what their motivations actually are. And I don't have a good handle on what it is other than maybe they wanna bargain it back for more money or, you know, they think that somehow it controls. I, I don't know. I don't know what it's really about. I I'm sure some of them really believe it, but a lot of them have to know better by now and there must be some other motivation, but I, I have trouble figuring out what it might be.
Ian Miller: (26:21)
Yeah. I posted just a, a tweet the other day basically saying, you know, LA county teachers union is, is fighting mass New York be still masking toddlers, et cetera. Somebody replied to me and said, you know, LA county teachers unions, when, and when opening schools, their demands were to something like defund the police and yeah.
Phil Kerpen: (26:38)
Yeah. It's
Ian Miller: (26:39)
Just, it's, it's hard to believe how, how blatantly political these, these groups have become with no apparent pushback. But that, that is something I wanted to get your, your sense of is will people realize now how important local governance is? Will, will they get up there, speak out vote out the bills who have kind of perpetrated these policies or will people just kind of forget of further, we get away from March, 2020?
Phil Kerpen: (27:06)
You know, I think the the local level backlashes are enormous and, and it's not. And that we have even seen in blue airs. I mean, they fired three school board members in San Francisco. Of course, you know, the problem is the mayor gets their replacements. I don't know how much better the replacements are gonna be. But you know, I think that we saw just unbelievable revolt in New Jersey, in New Jersey. My favorite one was in New Jersey where a 19 year old kid got elected to school board on a platform of those guys ruined my senior year, which I, which I enjoyed. Yeah. You know, I, I think that
Phil Kerpen: (27:45)
There is a, there is a broad understanding among parents in particular and with, with some exceptions in the most insane liberal areas, but there's a broad understanding among parents in particular, that children were really badly harmed by the policy response for, for no reason that there was, they, they, they had nothing to show for, especially after this winter where so many kids got COVID anyway, and it was a minor, nothing thing. And they said, what did we do all that for two years to prevent this thing? It was a minor, nothing thing. And I think that there's gonna continue to be a massive backlash. I think that what we saw in the places that at school board elections last year we'll see a continuation of this year in a, in a pretty massive way. And that manifests itself differently in different areas, of course, because, you know, there's some places where you know, you're gonna have maybe slightly less crazy people in the democratic primary or something like that in areas that are one party areas, but you're gonna have a lot of places that don't usually elector Republicans that will and you're gonna have a lot of places that, you know, the incumbents always get real elected where they won't.
Phil Kerpen: (28:48)
And so I think you're gonna see a lot of turnover on school boards. And I think that's probably a good thing. The, it is gonna be a bit of a challenge. I need a lot of inexperienced people in and they're going to need help, I think to, to do a good job in those roles beyond kinda like, you know, we're not doing COVID so of anymore, you know, I'm hoping we can get some broader improvements in educational policy and curriculum and a lot of the other things and what I would really, what, what I really think has been kind of the silver lining in terms of the, the COVID schools disaster is we've also seen a huge increase in school choice laws passing all over the country. And to me, this is a better solution than trying to fix the public schools is just let people take their money and go especially in more liberal areas, if you could get, you know, statewide school choice legislation in where people can take their tax dollars and go somewhere that fits them better, they're gonna have a much better chance of finding a place that's, you know, more ideologically consistent with what they wanna see and more focused on education and less on left wing politics and so forth.
Phil Kerpen: (29:55)
And so to me, escape from the public schools is probably a better route in some these cities than trying to fix them. And so we especially, we've got blue cities in red states. I think that's possible blue cities and blue states. It's not for obvious reasons. You know, that's kind of the, the hardest challenge to deal with. But I, I do think that I do think there are a lot of people that never, would've gone to a school board meeting in their whole life that went to a whole bunch of them and yelled a whole lot and are gonna stay engaged. Now.
Ian Miller: (30:29)
I certainly hope so, obviously it's, it's made it clear how important these things are that, you said
Phil Kerpen: (30:36)
One of the point on that, you know, the other thing is when a lot of parents kind of had no sense of how crazy the curriculum one was until they started watching it on zoom at home. And so, you know, there's a, there are, there are concerns that go way beyond just, you know, the COVID protocols per se, to like, you know, why are they teed? Why are they telling my son he's a racist because he is white and that kind of stuff. And so there are all these sort of broader concerns that have been brought to the forefront now, because you know, parents were essentially in the classroom cause the classroom became their house.
Ian Miller: (31:04)
Hmm. Yeah. That's a good point. And it's something I, I wouldn't have considered, I don't have kids. So that, yeah, that's a good point. And, and it, it brings up that, that idea of what you were saying earlier about how the CDC appointments were jobs that nobody thought about for more than 10 seconds. It's like a lot of these things nobody thinks about cuz it was not in front in their house, as you say. So yeah. If there is one, one positive takeaway, I hope that is something that we can change going forward. But looking forward to the rest of this year, we have obviously with the midterms coming up there's a lot of expectation. That's gonna change Congress, the, the composition of Congress. Do you think that that would have a significant impact on policies going forward? Or is it just not gonna, because he, you know, Biden could veto new legislation or things like that?
Phil Kerpen: (31:47)
Well, you know, my I always prefer divided government in Washington because the vast majority of things, the vast majority of laws that are passed do more harm than good. And I think most Americans agree with that, which is why when we do give one party unified government, we usually have a corrective in the next election and we divide it again. And so I think it's gonna be a good thing. I mean, look, I mean, I think the the, the, just the catastrophic amount of spending just been shoveled out the door has really fueled inflation even before the energy problems and everything else that was going on. And just the trillions and trillions of dollars. I saw one report the, of the day that 400 billion of COVID checks was just lost to straight up fraud. And then maybe half of that went to China, which like funds their entire defense budget for a year.
Phil Kerpen: (32:35)
And we were just like anyone who said, oh, I can't work. COVID we were just sending 'em 600 bucks a week, like indefinitely. I mean, it was just the insane amount of money that was wasted. And you know, I think the, the nice thing about Republican Congress with the democratic president is they're not gonna pass more massive spending bills and, you know, more kind of giant, you know, do something government bills that are gonna mostly be wasteful and harmful. You know, that said, are they gonna be able to reverse things? Are they gonna be able to improve things sort of in a positive direction? That's much more difficult. And I don't know, I don't know the answer to that. I think it'll depend on the extent to which Biden feels a need to tack to the center. Of course, you know, the under are both Obama and Clinton, when we had the big backlash in the first midterm election, we then had a substantial moderation for the next two years.
Phil Kerpen: (33:27)
And we were actually able to do some things. We were able to do the budget control act under Obama. We were able to extend all the Bush tax cuts under Clinton. We were able to do welfare reform. And so, you know, if Biden follows that pattern and kind of moves to the center, then, you know, I think we will be able to do some things to kind of restore some, some sanity and, you know, I hope, you know, kind of pair back some emergency power, some of, some of this stuff doesn't recur and that kind of thing. If he decides he's gonna disregard it Congress and not worry so much about his reelection, but just go all out with abusing regulatory power and continue to push things, then, you know, may maybe we don't. I mean, it's hard, it's hard to say. Because you know, normally in a first term presidency, you get that moderation cuz they wanna be reelected, but given how old Biden is and that he may not be the preferred candidate, his party, anyway, this may be more like a second term where that doesn't happen. So I it's a big open question. I don't know, but it's worth it. I think to have a big sort of Republican takeover landslide year, I think is highly beneficial if only because it restores gridlock, which is generally a good thing in Washington.
Ian Miller: (34:41)
So it, it's obviously very early and as you just mentioned, this could be kind of an irrelevant concept going forward because we don't know what the situation is gonna be like with Biden. You know, obviously it's he was just mentioning the, how important the Iranian resistance to vitamin Putin is. And then he, you mentioned how vitamin Putin was gonna invade Russia. So, you know, we, we Don well, how he's gonna make it into 22, he's gonna make it to 20, 24, but it, it, what's your sense of the political field that would oppose him. And, and do you have an ideal ticket to kind of go up against a potential Biden reelection?
Phil Kerpen: (35:14)
Well, you know, I think that if president Trump runs, he, he can't be beaten in a Republican primary and he would not, not be my preferred candidate for a number of reasons, but, you know, I just thanked the the, the number of committed supporters he has is too large to be defeated in a primary. And he couldn't be defeated last time with a lot of, you know, with basically the whole field against them. And so I think if Trump wins, he'll be the nominee and we'll have, you know, either rematch against Biden or maybe against Hillary, which some people are floating or, you know, but, but very likely two very, very old guys who had bad COVID records essentially is what that rematch would be. I'm hoping that he doesn't run I'm hop. This is that he's floating it to stay relevant and important and influential, but he, he won't actually think it's worth the you know, the headaches and everything that goes with that very difficult job.
Phil Kerpen: (36:07)
And, you know, if he doesn't run then the field opens pretty wide and there are probably 10 people who want to run. And, you know, I think that the clear front runner, assuming he gets reelect it this year as governor would be governor DeSantis who has I think the best record on COVID of any big state governor. And you, you could argue maybe of any governor, but there there's some small state ones that never locked down and stuff like that, that you might, you might quibble, but I think he's so knowledgeable and articulate on all of the issues, but especially on everything that went wrong with COVID that I think that that would be ideal for us to have kind of, to force the national conversation and reckoning that we wanna have, because if he could make the campaign largely about that and be reelected, then I think it would sort of resolve the don't do it again, don't repeat it every year thing, you know, assuming that we're still in that cycle at that point.
Phil Kerpen: (36:59)
And so I, yeah, I think, you know, he would, he would be my preferred candidate because of, of, you know, the issues he'd bring to bear and what it would represent. But, you know, I think there are a lot of other good potential candidates. I thought, you know, I thought Kim Reynolds did a very good job in her state of the union response, for instance you know, I think that you know, a lot of people talk about Pompeo because of his foreign policy experience. And he actually was a pretty, pretty solid member of Congress as well. So there's a pretty long list, you know, as long as it's not one of the blue state Republican lockdown artists like Charlie baker or or you know, Larry Hogan or someone like that who wouldn't have much of a chance with Republican primary electorate. Anyway, I think we, we should have a pretty, pretty good candidate you know, to kind of carry, you know, some of the points that we wanna make.
Ian Miller: (37:50)
Yeah, I, I hope so. I just had a couple more questions for you and, and one just kind of a broad, broader societal question, which was just, have you been by how many people have been willing to tolerate these measures for two years? Has that surprised you at all? Or was this kind of expected that people would go along as soon as the fear kind of got rolled out early on?
Phil Kerpen: (38:12)
Well I didn't think people would tolerate, you know, I, I got this wrong. I thought that people would kind of say, yeah, okay, enough, we'll move on. And, and instead I, what happened is, you know, the, the COVID restrictions became part of the political identity of the left and, you know, therefore you had no logical endpoint in the more liberal areas. And, you know, if a mask is, you know, like a liberal equivalent of a mega hat, you know, why would you stop wearing it unless you've become a Republican? Right? So it, it, you know, the, the political identity issues make it very difficult to, to find an exit. And you know, maybe, and I'm hoping that the CDC kind of calling off the dogs will help in that regard, but, you know, they could always talk a lot back on. So that's not really you know, you don't know how permanent that is, but it's I look, I, I didn't think this would last two years and now I really do worry. Look, I, I, this could last 10 years or forever in healthcare context. I mean, how many places of lift masks in healthcare settings? Any, I, I don't know.
Ian Miller: (39:23)
I don't know either. I, I assume they must, it must be zero. I'm not sure. I don't know if, if Florida
Phil Kerpen: (39:29)
Healthcare worker's just gonna tell are they, I, I don't. And by the way, like, just as a normal person, I don't wanna go to a doc when they're requiring masks, because it's like, how do I take medical advice from somebody who thinks that a freaking piece of cotton stops sub microparticle? Like, I can't take your medical advice.
Ian Miller: (39:44)
Right. Well, well, that, that's one of the things that I think have, has been very surprising to me is how poorly doctors have done during all of this with, with how they've just, most of 'em have completely one in line. And, and it's like, again, if you guys were, you're the, you're the medical experts, where were you for a hundred years recommending masks for, to stop respiratory viruses? How many millions of people have died over the last a hundred years? Because we've had flu pandemics and, and flu seasons every year. And you, none of you have been recommending masks. And I don't, I don't never got an answer to that question. What, what's the end there?
Phil Kerpen: (40:17)
The, the science changed,
Ian Miller: (40:19)
The sci, the science changed, but it's just physics. That was, that was one I just saw recently where I think it was Joseph Allen, who was like, oh, it's just physics that masks were, if it was just physics, what, where again, where were you if I go back and search through your tweets
Phil Kerpen: (40:31)
From, yeah, he's one of the worst, Allen's one of the worst. I mean you know, the a and Oster and Gandhi you know, they drive me up a wall because they pretended to be on our side and sort of like defined the safe opposite, sort of the controlled opposition, if you will. But whenever it mattered, they failed us. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, with friends like those, I mean, I actually think they were more destructive than just the outright I villains in some regards, you know, it's but yeah, I mean, look, I mean, they it's, first of all, none of these medical doctors have any relevant expertise on the physics of aerosol particles. They don't know anything about fluid dynamics. I mean, there was a, there was a, there was like a British engineering PhD who had some, I think it was in the Telegraph last summer at this thing about you, like doctors have this cartoonized view of the world, they don't understand the way things are. It's not a biomedical issue. How particles move through the air, you know, when it gets in the body, then it's their expertise until then they should like leave it to people who actually understand this stuff.
Ian Miller: (41:32)
Exactly. makes a lot of sense. So to end on slightly more positive note if there is some semblance of, of hope it's that I think at least my personal view is that it's clearly, they've, they've kind of sidelined Fauci. He's he's not on the news every, every minute of the day now which appears to show
Phil Kerpen: (41:51)
You see the article, our friend Jordan shale wrote on this.
Ian Miller: (41:53)
Oh yeah, absolutely shared it.
Phil Kerpen: (41:55)
One of the funniest things I've ever seen he's they got pouchy on like the most obscure, random YouTubes and like the, the local, the local news here in DC.
Ian Miller: (42:05)
Yeah, exactly. There was some random, far left podcast. It was, it was crazy. So it, it kind of, to me, it shows that they are aware of how polarizing and, and negative his he is and, and, and by extension, the restrictions are, so am I being too optimistic that it shows some, maybe some, some modicum of awareness here of how unpopular these measures have become?
Phil Kerpen: (42:28)
I think that the marching orders from the democratic pollsters and you a kind of political brain trust is keep all of this stuff on ice through the election. And so we've got, you know, it's, it's March now we've got till November, the next eight months, it's basically gonna be held in check. But, you know, I, I really think that unless they're forced to admit that it was never justified and it was a mistake and it was wrong, then you, you get it back again in the fall and winter, they get through that election and they say, okay, great. You know, our base wants it. And, you know, we're safely reelected and, you know, masks on.
Ian Miller: (43:04)
Yeah. I, I certainly hope not, but I, I have fears that that could be exactly what happens. Anyway, thank you so much, Phil, for, for joining the show. Thanks for doing this. You all fill on Twitter at Kapin, which you should, because there's you share just so much great information and with a lot of humor, which I always appreciate. So thank you again for doing this, Phil.
Phil Kerpen: (43:26)
All right. Have a good one, Ian.
Episode 15: Phil Kerpen on School Masking, the CDC and Dr. Fauci