0:00

Home decorating, it's my new thing. I'm going

0:02

for mid-century meets rustic chic with a terracotta

0:04

gallery wall and, ooh, abstract rock. Ooh, abstract

0:06

rock. Looking

0:09

nice. Free one day delivery on home

0:11

decor and millions of other items. Whatever

0:13

you're into, it's on prime. So have

0:16

you watched The Sopranos? If

0:18

not, hit pause and just go watch all seasons

0:20

and then come back in a couple of weeks

0:22

and start this again. The

0:25

first season of The Sopranos is 13

0:27

episodes long. The

0:29

Sopranos obviously is one of the greatest

0:32

achievements ever in American drama, certainly in

0:34

contention for one of the greatest television

0:36

shows ever made in any country on

0:38

any subject. But

0:40

in season one of The Sopranos, you

0:43

have to get through like half the whole season.

0:45

I think you have to get to the seventh

0:47

episode or something before you get

0:49

anything that seems like it is a

0:51

backstory on your lead character. So,

0:54

I mean, here's a story about a man in therapy.

0:58

Yes, he's a gangster, but he's a man

1:00

in therapy. So you think right from the

1:03

very start of the very first episode, you're gonna

1:05

get, you know, therapy speak, tell

1:07

me about your childhood. But it's not

1:09

until seven episodes into it that we

1:11

finally get a glimpse of Tony Soprano

1:13

as a little kid. In

1:17

that scene, here's young Tony. His uncle

1:19

comes looking for Tony's dad, Tony's dad

1:21

hops in a car and takes off

1:23

with the uncle. Tony himself,

1:26

the kid, ends up missing the

1:28

school bus. And

1:30

while he is not at school, he ends up finding

1:32

his dad and his uncle and seeing what they were

1:34

up to. Basically sneaks up

1:37

on them. And what he sees

1:39

is his dad and his uncle

1:41

just beating the bejesus out of the sky on

1:43

a street corner. And

1:45

this happens in episode seven. Then

1:49

it's two more seasons. You're all

1:51

the way into season three of the whole series when

1:55

you get another flashback to Tony as a little kid

1:57

with his dad. And

2:00

this time, once again, young Tony is not

2:02

supposed to be there. He has snuck in.

2:04

His dad doesn't know he's there. But his

2:06

dad goes to collect from a local butcher.

2:09

And the dad not only beats the

2:11

living daylights out of the butcher, he takes

2:13

a meat cleaver to the guy. It is

2:16

absolutely horrible. It is impossible to

2:18

watch. And

2:20

young Tony, young Tony Soprano, the

2:22

kid, he sees it. And

2:26

yes, The Sopranos is a gangster TV show.

2:29

And so, of course, there's going to be violence.

2:32

But it's also a really, really, really

2:34

good gangster TV show. And so it's

2:36

never that simple. In

2:39

The Sopranos, we get these flashbacks to

2:41

give us backstory on our main

2:44

character, but also basically to understand

2:46

what's wrong with Tony Soprano. Because,

2:50

of course, he idolized his father. We learned soon

2:52

that he inherited his own position in the mafia

2:54

from his father and then built on that position

2:56

to become a boss himself. But

2:59

then as an adult, as a

3:01

big, tough James Gandolfini mob boss,

3:03

as our hero slash antihero of

3:05

the series, our lead character, Tony

3:07

also faints all the

3:09

time. He has panic attacks. And

3:14

he has done this most ungangsterly

3:16

thing and put himself in therapy.

3:19

What is the matter with mob boss

3:21

Tony Soprano? We

3:25

romanticize gangsters and

3:27

the way they live in American life. Tony

3:30

Soprano romanticizes his father basically

3:32

as an abstraction as a gangster. But

3:36

a small part of the genius of what David

3:38

Chase did in The Sopranos is that in these

3:41

flashbacks, which he makes you wait for and wait

3:43

for and wait for. Ultimately,

3:45

what you get, what young Tony Soprano sees as a

3:47

kid, what he sees his dad doing is disgusting. It's

3:51

gross. And

3:54

it hurts Tony Soprano to see it. It kind of breaks him.

3:58

What young Tony sees as a kid is an act of what happens

4:00

in these flashbacks is not romantic. It's

4:03

not cool. It's just

4:05

violence. It's menace. It is unprincipled,

4:08

unromantic, thuggery. It's not art or

4:10

sport or anything noble or anything

4:12

with any elegance to it. It's

4:14

just a mess. It's

4:17

gross. And as the

4:19

series unspools, you come to learn in a sort

4:21

of complex way that this is part of why

4:24

Tony Soprano is the sad, sick bastard that he

4:26

is. And it's also why he is doomed as

4:28

a character. Gangster-themed

4:33

TV and movie violence is something that we

4:35

are very good at in this country. And

4:37

we all know all the tropes, right? You

4:39

know, making business people pay protection

4:41

to the mob. And if they don't pay

4:44

their protection money, then the mob guys beat

4:46

them up and trash their business and maybe

4:48

even kill them. The

4:50

mob guys running the card games and the other

4:52

gambling rackets, where sure, the odds are against you

4:54

while you're playing, but the odds are you're going

4:56

to get yourself killed if you actually get in

4:58

debt to them. And

5:01

extortion and stealing and prostitution and drug

5:03

dealing and armed robbery, right? We've all

5:05

seen it in a million shows. And

5:07

you can create all sorts of romance

5:09

and drama around it. And we absolutely

5:11

do as a country. But when it

5:13

is done right, like

5:16

in The Sopranos, the irreducibly, thugish,

5:18

brute, boring violence of it never

5:20

goes away. And it messes people

5:22

up in an

5:24

unsexy, lasting, awful, unromantic

5:27

way. It makes big, tough, you

5:30

know, mob bosses built like James

5:32

Gandolfini straight up

5:34

faint, which

5:37

is not cool in so many ways.

5:42

We're living through an era in our country's political

5:44

life right now, which

5:47

is not politics. And

5:50

if you want to call it the most romantic possible thing, I think you

5:52

could call it revolutionary,

5:55

right? Just like gangsterism is a familiar trope for us

5:57

in our favorite American We

6:00

also romanticize revolution and revolutionaries as

6:02

much as any country on earth.

6:05

But what we are contending with in our

6:08

politics right now is

6:10

a movement that is not doing normal politics

6:12

and is not competing in normal political terms.

6:16

They're trying to end the American system

6:18

of government. They're trying to bring about

6:20

a revolution against the American system of

6:22

government and against the United States of

6:24

America. And in this story, we're the

6:26

Americans. So, yes, being

6:29

revolutionary sounds very cool in

6:31

the abstract. Just like

6:33

being gangster sounds very cool in the

6:35

abstract. But in the

6:38

specific, what they're actually offering is

6:41

boring because it's just gross

6:44

force. It's

6:47

the end of politics. Let's just

6:49

do it by force because

6:51

physically, we

6:53

mean it just the way we say we're saying it. We

6:56

mean it just the way you're hearing it. We're

6:59

coming for you. Mr.

7:03

FBI tough guy, why is

7:05

he wet himself on national

7:07

TV? He's damn scared because

7:09

he understands the end is

7:11

near. So, brother, you

7:13

and all the other people, the torturous,

7:15

these are torturous conversations we're having. Don't

7:17

torture yourself. Don't torture yourself.

7:20

Get your passport. Get the hell out of the country

7:23

because, hey, we're coming. And guess what, bro, you ain't

7:25

going to like it one bit. Your crimes and your

7:27

treason, Comey, all of you. Go

7:31

ahead. Go to the ends of

7:33

the earth. We will hunt you down

7:35

and bring you back. Drive the vermin

7:37

out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Biden,

7:41

you and your crime family are

7:43

nothing but trash. For Joe Biden

7:46

and Dr. Joe Biden and Hunter

7:49

Biden all in the

7:51

by their bunch of feral dogs, right? It's

7:54

a family of feral dogs. We're

7:56

going to have to fume it. We're going to fume gate

7:58

the lies of Joe Biden. the trees that Joe

8:01

Biden and how infeasible it is. After

8:03

that, it's not the tapes. We're coming after Lisa

8:06

Monaco, Merrick Garland, the senior

8:09

members of DOJ that have

8:11

prosecuted President Trump, Jack

8:14

Smith. That's where you come in. You're

8:16

the vanguard of this revolution. We're going to do

8:18

what the Romans did to Carthage. We're going to

8:20

solve the earth around it. So there'll never be

8:23

another building there again. We're going to rebuild something

8:25

else. There'll be something that comes up and is

8:27

rebuilt along the lines that's appropriate.

8:29

We've got to go back to the

8:31

beginning. We've got to

8:33

go back to Russiagate. We got

8:36

to go back to who did that. We

8:38

got to go back to Mola's commission. We

8:40

got to go back to Andrew Weissman and MSNBC

8:42

and the New York Times and all of it,

8:45

right? Every FBI agent, all the

8:47

CIA, DHS, Chris Ray, all of

8:50

them. It's going to be a

8:52

new day. And MAGA

8:54

will run things. They're going to know

8:57

that MAGA is not only a

8:59

descendant, MAGA is in charge. It's

9:01

very simple. Victory or

9:03

death. So

9:09

this isn't red meat for

9:12

the base. This isn't retribution,

9:14

right? This is retribution as

9:16

much as Tony Soprano's dad

9:18

was providing protection to the

9:20

local butcher. This is not a

9:22

response to anything. What

9:25

this is is just menace and

9:27

physical threat, right? It's not politics. It's

9:29

just power. It's just force. They're

9:32

just promising violence. That

9:34

is what they're offering in this

9:36

election, that this is how we should run the

9:38

country now. We will hunt you down and

9:41

you'll know that we're in power. And

9:43

we're going to get rid of law enforcement. We're going to

9:45

salt the earth. And we're

9:48

just going to hunt you down. I

9:50

mean, and this is not some random right-wing media guy. This

9:52

is the man who was the campaign manager for

9:55

Donald Trump and also the senior White House

9:57

adviser to the former president who was the president. now

10:00

their nominee again. And

10:03

it's not like he's the only one who's saying this thing. This

10:05

is what they are offering, the

10:07

American public. And they love

10:10

it. They're super excited to be getting

10:12

done with politics, getting right to the

10:14

force and violence part of it. The

10:19

next six months is gonna be intense. And

10:21

we need to strap on our, let's

10:25

see. What do we wanna strap

10:27

on? We're gonna strap on our

10:29

seatbelt. We're

10:32

gonna put on our helmet or

10:34

your carry late ball cap. We

10:36

are going to put on the armor

10:39

of God. Then

10:44

maybe strap on and lock on the side of

10:46

a decent case. We

10:50

will throw off the sick political

10:52

class that hates our country. We

10:54

will route the fake news media

10:56

and we will liberate America from

10:58

these villains once and

11:01

for all. Don't you think for a second

11:04

he's not gonna unleash hell on all of

11:06

his political enemies. This is where we are

11:09

and now we have to finish it. We have to

11:11

finish it once

11:14

and for all. They keep saying things

11:16

like that once and for all, finish

11:18

it, vanquish them, right? This is not

11:20

politics. In a political contest, you compete

11:22

against your fellow citizens with whom you

11:24

have political disagreements, the

11:26

rival political party. Whoever loses that

11:29

fair race literally concedes and then

11:31

they come back. They have the

11:33

opportunity to come back in the

11:35

next election cycle and compete against

11:38

you again. In

11:40

real politics, nothing's ever finished. You

11:42

never take power once and for

11:44

all. Your enemies are not vanquished.

11:48

But they are not trying to win a political

11:50

contest. They are trying to do away with

11:52

political contests in the United States of America,

11:55

which might be why they're not putting much

11:57

energy into the normal way of competing in

11:59

this year's political. contest. You may have seen

12:01

this weekend. The former president went to Detroit, which

12:03

of course seems like a normal thing for a

12:05

political candidate to do, big city and a big

12:08

swing state, and he went to a black church

12:10

trying to appeal to a demographic where he has

12:12

room to grow. But he goes

12:14

to this black church in Detroit and his

12:17

campaign does not take any steps to avoid

12:19

the pews being completely filled with white people,

12:21

with white Trump supporters. Then

12:23

on the day, the message of his supposed

12:25

campaign is that he's trying to appeal to

12:27

black voters, right? That's the whole point of

12:30

doing this photo op. He then goes straight

12:32

from that venue, stuffed with white people, to

12:35

a conference hosted by this guy who has been

12:37

in the news for the last few months for

12:41

saying, quote, we made a huge mistake when we passed

12:43

the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s, saying

12:46

that he thinks black people are not qualified

12:48

to be airline pilots, that he worries if

12:50

he's on a flight and sees that the

12:52

pilot is black, who has been

12:55

posting things like, quote, whiteness is great

12:57

on social media, who has been hosting

12:59

guests on his podcast to

13:01

talk about how black people are

13:04

inherently biologically inferior and incapable of

13:06

advanced intelligence. Someone

13:09

who said literally MLK, meaning

13:11

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

13:13

quote, MLK was awful, not

13:17

a good person. So

13:20

on the day, your campaign message is,

13:22

hey, black voters, look at me, aren't

13:25

I appealing? Going from the black church

13:27

that's inexplicably full of white people, right

13:31

from there to go be with, to go

13:33

do an appearance with the MLK was awful

13:35

and the Civil Rights Act was a mistake

13:38

guy. If that's how you're

13:40

running your campaign, you are not trying very hard in

13:43

normal campaign terms, but they

13:45

are not trying very hard in normal

13:47

campaign terms. They're trying, they're not trying

13:49

very hard to compete on

13:51

normal political appeals. What they are trying

13:53

to do instead is take

13:56

power by menacing and chasing out of

13:58

the country anyone who opposes at

26:00

all, because it cannot abide expertise

26:02

at all, because that competes with

26:06

the truths that are spouted from the head

26:09

of the leader. It

26:11

is a movement that cannot abide authority

26:14

and expertise from anyone

26:16

other than their leader, and

26:19

they answer any such competition

26:21

for him with menace. And

26:26

it's not romantic, and it may

26:28

be revolutionary, but there's

26:30

nothing sexy or dramatic or lovely

26:32

about it. It is boring, it is

26:35

violent, and it's about using force. And

26:38

it's a war against the U.S. system of government. Dr.

26:42

Anthony Fauci is an accomplished and

26:45

brave public servant. He

26:49

should not have to be as brave as he is. And

26:53

he joins us live here next. Today

26:58

and every day Planned Parenthood is committed

27:00

to ensuring that everyone has the information

27:02

and resources they need to make their

27:04

own decisions about their bodies, including abortion

27:06

care. Lawmakers who oppose

27:09

abortion are attacking Planned Parenthood, which means

27:11

affordable, high-quality basic health care for more

27:13

than two million people is at stake.

27:15

The right to control our bodies and

27:17

get the health care we need has

27:19

been stolen from us. And now politicians

27:21

in nearly every state have introduced bills

27:24

that would block people from getting the

27:26

sexual and reproductive care they need. Planned

27:28

Parenthood believes everyone deserves health care. It's

27:31

a human right. That's why

27:33

they fight every day to push for

27:35

common-sense policies that protect our right to

27:37

control our own bodies and against policies

27:39

that interfere with decisions between patients and

27:42

their doctor. Planned Parenthood

27:44

needs your support now more than ever.

27:46

With supporters like you, we

27:49

can reclaim our rights and

27:51

protect and expand access to

27:53

abortion care. Visit Planned parenthood.org/future.

27:56

That's Planned parenthood.org/future. Joining

28:00

us now for the interview is Dr. Anthony Fauci.

28:02

He was director of the National Institute of Allergy

28:04

and Infectious Disease for 38 years until

28:07

his retirement from government service just 18 months

28:09

ago. He has a new book out which is titled

28:12

On Call, A Doctor's Journey in Public Service. Dr.

28:14

Fauci joins us now for his first live interview

28:16

ahead of the book's publication tomorrow. Dr. Fauci, it's

28:19

an honor to have you here. Thank you so

28:21

much. Thank you for having me. I feel like

28:23

I've been counting on you a lot of my

28:25

life to explain things. And

28:27

I feel like one of the things that I'm sort of

28:29

counting on you for now is bearing a

28:32

lot of slings and arrows that you don't deserve. And

28:36

so I wanted to give you a chance. I

28:38

set up this interview with some strong words

28:40

about the way that you've been targeted. I

28:42

just wanted to give you a chance to

28:44

brush me back if you think

28:47

that was inappropriate or if any of that was wrong. No,

28:49

I think you're right. I mean, that's the thing

28:51

that I experienced most recently

28:54

at the congressional hearing where

28:57

the purpose of the hearing was to,

28:59

the stated purpose of the hearing was

29:02

to figure out how we can do

29:04

better, learn by our mistakes and be

29:06

better prepared for the inevitability of the

29:08

next pandemic. And it

29:10

was complete vitriol and out of hominum.

29:12

I mean, there was nothing

29:15

that even resembled that. And

29:17

to me, that's the thing that scares me

29:19

because I think when you go down that

29:22

road, I personally think, and I say

29:24

it in the book, that I

29:26

think that will undermine our social

29:28

order and undermine the fabric of

29:31

our democracy. Even though it's in

29:33

a health issue with me, it's

29:36

in other issues for other people. So that

29:38

worries me more than the attacks on me.

29:40

I have to say that quite honestly, that

29:43

my family and I, we worry more about

29:45

what's going to happen to the country than

29:47

the threat on me. In

29:49

terms of the kinds of criticism that you're

29:51

getting, and I know over your long career, you've had

29:53

a lot of different criticism from a lot of different

29:55

people. Full disclosure

29:57

was a member of ACT UP.