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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had a great holiday weekend. Here on December 27th let me say, it has been a year. Maybe not as intense as 2020, but still one for the ages in terms of consequential events. In terms of relatively inconsequential event, I'll say you may be hearing me in telephone quality right now. We're having a little connectivity technical problem, so we'll try to get that straightened out. In the meantime, a year of consequential events.
It has been a year of Omicron variants paired with emergence from COVID lifestyles. The war in Ukraine, which may feel like a forever war already is less than a year old. The January 6th Committee gave us and gave every American in the future a clear narrative and mountains of evidence. The Supreme Court overturned Roe versus Wade, that was this year, and the voters remembered that in the midterm elections.
Those elections produce no red wave nationally, but yes, in New York largely because of crime. Key election deniers lost, and oh, by the way, mostly conceded. Inflation hit a 40-year high. The Inflation Reduction Act gave us not much inflation reduction, at least not short term, but it is the biggest climate action bill ever. Eric Adams this year became the mayor of New York. Elon Musk bought Twitter and went on a chaos spree. There's the influx of asylum seekers, labor flexed its muscles in the private sector from Amazon to The New York Times.
There were historic changes of government in Brazil to the left and Israel further to the right. There was the Liz Truss minute and a half in the UK. Iran has begun executing women's rights protesters. Afghanistan has now barred women from going to college or working in humanitarian relief organizations. Those things just happened in the last week. CARE and Save the Children just pulled out of there as a result.
China eased its zero COVID policy, a human rights disaster may be given way to a medical one. Oh, yes, Congressman-elect George Santos of Queens and Nassau County admitted this weekend that he didn't graduate from college, as he claimed, didn't work for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, as he claimed, didn't own a dozen properties like he claimed, he owns none, doesn't live in the district he was elected to represent and isn't really Jewish. Other than that, he's mostly who he says he is. Of course, there was so much more. It has been a year.
Let's talk about it. With us for a special year-in-review hangout are three very special guests, Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a column on life in Biden's Washington and co-anchors their podcast The Political Scene. She is co-author with Peter Baker of one of the important political books of this year The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021.
Christina Greer, Fordham University political science professor, co-host of the podcast FAQNYC, host of The Blackest Questions podcast on the Grio, and author of Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration and the Pursuit of the American Dream, and Azi Paybarah, national reporter for The Washington Post covering campaigns and breaking political news. Azi previously of The New York Times and oh, yes, the WNYC newsroom. That Azi Paybarah. Susan, Christina, Azi, thanks for giving up an hour of your lives to join us for a year in review, and welcome back to WNYC.
Christina Greer: Thanks, Brian.
Azi Paybarah: Thank you.
Susan Glasser: Thanks. Great to be with you.
Brian Lehrer: Listeners, you are invited to our end-of-the-year hangout as well. Name one thing you think 2022 will be remembered for or should be remembered for. Listeners, name one thing that you think 2022 will be remembered for or should be remembered for. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer.
Guests, let's go around the horn to start out on that same question we've invited the listeners for. I gave a list in the intro of some of the things that happened this year. Would you like to name one thing that you think 2022 will be remembered for or should be remembered for? It can be national, global, or about New York. Susan, would you like to get us started?
Susan Glasser: Oh, well, thank you so much, Brian. Look, some years are just years that have inarguable huge events. Domestically speaking the repeal of essentially a five-decade-long right for American women, Roe versus Wade, is undoubtedly a story of the year. Internationally, Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is the biggest land war in Europe since the end of World War II. It's hard not to think of those two events as a seminal event that people remember for a long time about 2022.
Brian Lehrer: I think we are back on regular audio quality for me. Sorry about that temporary glitch, folks. Azi Paybarah, the year 2022, what will it be remembered for or what should it be remembered for?
Azi Paybarah: I think internationally, the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran and the protests are hard to think about this year without thinking about that and all that it means. I think locally, in addition to everything that Susan said, the idea of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, sending planes and buses of migrants to other parts of the United States, I think when we look back in the history books, that'll be something that people circle back to and remember, and study, and analyze a lot.
Brian Lehrer: Christina Greer, same question.
Christina Greer: Well, I'd like to give years catchwords. This year is resilience and emergence. I think the big topic for me is climate change, not just in New York City, but across the country and across the world. We're seeing droughts, we're seeing floods, we're seeing hurricanes and tornadoes, and I'm really questioning if we've reached a point where we can't scale it back.
I hope that that's not the case, but when I think about places like Jackson, Mississippi, and infrastructure issues, and dirty water in small and large cities across the country, I think it's all linked to a larger climate change problem that we haven't fully addressed as a city, as a country and as a global set of citizens.
Brian Lehrer: Yes, and Jackson going through it again, with a boiled water alert, I think, just this weekend. Let's go around, again. I want to give you each the chance to name an underreported story. Maybe some of those that you just mentioned would fall into that category, that's up to you, but name an underreported story from this year that you would like to draw more attention to. Susan, do you have one?
Susan Glasser: Well, okay. Here's one. I'm not sure what to make of it, but it's definitely not my field of expertise. Remember the whole blasting the asteroid off its course breakthrough for humanity? I'm hoping this represents massive good news for the planet, but it certainly seems like looking back that might end up being a pretty, pretty monumental one.
Just on a more maybe closer to home note, I would say, what has been happening with women not only inside the United States but in Iran and Afghanistan at great personal risk standing up for themselves and their rights has been remarkable. I think it has been an underreported story, the first serious [unintelligible 00:08:44] protest of its kind really since the founding of the Islamic Republic in Iran. I would flag both of those things for you.
Brian Lehrer: Azi, you had mentioned the execution of Mahsa Amini in Iran as one of your top ones. What would you put on your underreported list?
Azi Paybarah: For the underreported list, and bear with me for half a moment on this one, but it was Fox Business host Neil Cavuto saying the vaccine saved his life after he got sick with a bout of COVID. It's remarkable because the fact that it had to be said and the fact that it's said on a network who many of its stars and leading figures expressed doubt about science and facts and things like that.
I think that one of his own colleagues said that this medicine saved his own life while there are some people in the political spectrum who are questioning and undermining and almost running campaigns entirely on questioning vaccines. I think his statement was underappreciated or underreported for where it came from and what it means.
Brian Lehrer: Christina Greer, your underreported story of 2022.
Christina Greer: I think it's the attacks on our power grids across the country. It started in North Carolina and then Oregon and now Washington. I think that the use of domestic terrorism for larger infrastructure issues in our small and large towns was somewhat underreported.
Brian Lehrer: What's going on in Washington? I saw that breaking over the weekend, Washington state something going on with the power grid there. Christina Greer, did you follow that enough to have any idea of whether they think it is some terrorist attack?
Christina Greer: It's vandalism of sorts, but we're still trying to figure out why it is that someone would attack power stations that would cause 14,000 people to lose power and energy during the winter and holiday months. I think when we're looking at what happened in North Carolina and the links to anti-LGBTQ+ issues, sort of anti-black, anti-immigrant, anti-Jewish sentiments by certain people who have released statements either supporting or endorsing these attacks. That's an underreported story making all of those links and connections moving forward.
Brian Lehrer: Let's take a few from our listeners and then we'll dive deeper on a few things. Listeners, if you're just joining us, it's our year-in-review hangout with Christina Greer from Fordham, Susan Glasser from The New Yorker, Azi Paybarah from the Washington Post. We're inviting you to call in and say what you think 2022 will be remembered for and what it should be remembered for. 212-433 WNYC. If you want to cite an underreported story of the year according to you, feel free as well.
212-433 WNYC, 212-433-9692. Let's see, Paula in Manhattan may be on the same wavelength as Susan to some degree. Paula, you're on WNYC, hello. Paula, do we have you? Paula, in Manhattan. Once, twice. All right. Let's see if it's the phone lines, or let's see if it's us. Lynn in Inwood in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi Lynn.
Lynn: Hi Brian. Thanks so much for taking my call. I think one of the important stories of this year is the increase in crime in New York City, and it's also in other cities. I have family in Philadelphia, and that's a very bad situation. What strikes me about it is not so much the increase in crime in the statistics, but the quality of the crimes.
There's a brazenness, there's an in-your-face doing this in a way, committing these crimes in a way like people think they can get away with it. It's everything from obscuring your license plate so you don't have to pay the tolls just so you can speed or it's a stolen car to shootings in daylight. I'm calling from Inwood and there was a shooting yesterday all over the news on Dyckman Street and Vermilyea in the morning.
A 64-year-old woman was shot in the head, innocent bystander, and now a husband doesn't have a wife. I think this is something that affects New Yorkers and many of people that live in our urban areas on a day-to-day basis. It's insidious. It's very disturbing and that I think really needs to be shown a spotlight on. I just wanted to share those thoughts with you and your guests.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Azi, for you who used to be a New York metro reporter now covering campaigns nationally for the Washington Post how do you say crime played in this election year and how do you see it in different cities, New York and others since you're a national reporter with Roots in New York?
Azi Paybarah: Yes. Thank you for that question. Crime proved at least politically to be incredibly potent in New York. The gubernatorial candidate Republican Lee Zeldin, who in many respects would seem to be an outlier for New York. He voted against certifying the 2020 election, had embraced Donald Trump in some of his more extremist positions. He was anti-abortion rights.
He campaigned almost exclusively on crime and came much closer to winning than many people would've expected. That showed what I think the caller was speaking to was this scent and this feeling that crime is getting out of control. You see that in Republicans when they seek to campaign in urban areas, focus on a crime control strong law and order presence.
When Democrats seek to match that topic by saying criminal justice reform, depopulating overcrowded prisons, you see how a lot of voters who identify as possibly progressive liberal left of center, become very different types of voters or express a lot of reservations when it's something happening in their own backyard and they think a sense of order is somehow being lost.
Brian Lehrer: Christi, you want to weigh in on that? Christina Greer?
Christina Greer: Yes, Brian, I'm of several minds when it comes to crime and we've talked about this. I do think that for certain communities they're definitely dealing with some serious issues that are quite frightening and concerning. I do think when we delve a little bit deeper into the data, I think some of the conversation is about perception of crime and some of it is about the reality.
I think Republicans, as we've seen, have been very great about exploiting the perception that things are getting worse as opposed to looking at the data, especially in particular parts of the city where it's actually not. That doesn't matter because how people feel about crime is actually what's going to move the needle, especially when people go to the ballot box and when they think about leadership not just locally but across the state.
Hopefully, we'll have a mayor and a governor who can work together to address these things. I actually feel much more confident with an Adams-Hochul relationship than I did with a de Blasio-Cuomo relationship thinking about these issues. Even though to be very clear mayor Adams as a former police officer definitely has some thoughts on crime that I fundamentally disagree with. As someone who wants more money and resources put into community programming, it can actually prevent some of these issues before they get to a larger criminal space.
Brian Lehrer: Robert, in Manhattan, what should New York or New York, what should 2022 be remembered for and what do you think it will be?
Robert: Yes, well, something that I have been blown away by, but you never hear one word about it, is the life insurance companies are reporting approximately a 40% increase in death unrelated to COVID between the ages of 18 and upper '40s.
All of a sudden, that's not the age bracket which people die in, but over the course of the year, there's been such a huge increase in that bracket that they're not going to know if they can pay out all the money that they have to pay out, because it usually happens with much older people and they don't know where that's coming from. They have to address it because it means enormous amounts of money to them, and to a great extent these deaths have to do with heart failure to that age bracket. That's not the age bracket that it normally happens and yet you don't hear one word about it in the news
Brian Lehrer: Robert, thank you very much. I'd have to look that up about heart failure. Susan, one stat that I did see over the weekend is that life expectancy in the United States overall declined in 2022 for the second year in a row. In the story, I saw that was attributed to a combination of COVID and fentanyl.
Susan Glasser: Yes, Brian, I saw the same thing. It really is one of those striking moments when it's a marker, of course, a society in crisis. I think back to when I was living in Russia a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and one of the major signs of that society being in crisis was it was a plunging in the average life expectancy, which took a very long time to recover. I think it's, likely to have profound knock-on effects, not just now.
I think that we've had this image and this idea of a society that just snaps back. I suspect that our recovery from this pandemic and the associated mental health crises, the effects that we all see in terms of what it means for our cities, what it means for our definitions of work and family life. This is going to take a long time to readjust itself to a new normal, I think.
The life expectancy is just one thing. We all, I'm sure have had our own encounters with the healthcare system. We know that it's in crisis. There are multiple doctors in my family, their stories from the front lines today are harrowing. It's not just COVID. It's caused a huge personnel crisis. It's caused a huge set of issues that are not resolving itself any time soon that have led to healthcare professionals feeling extremely challenged by where we are as a country.
Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more in this set of callers. Chad, on Long Island, wants to name, I think, something that he considers an under-reported global story. Chad, you're WNYC. Hi there.
Chad: Hey, good Morning, I was actually calling in regards to make note to the fact of the monarchy event as the monarch, Queen Elizabeth this year. I think it'll definitely be something that sticks out in everyone's minds. I know it's very much so dismissable as of us being Americans. We're not on the monarchy's rule, but on the grander scale, I think that we're definitely going to see ripple effects of the Queen not being in place as that figurehead, especially after 70 years.
We're already seeing it now that a lot of countries are, what some may consider third-world nations that had been, unfortunately, under the shadows of the monarchy for so many years such as Jamaica, now we're looking to just take themselves to the side and really emerge on the global marketplace. I think we're going to see the effects of that on the largest scale.
Brian Lehrer: Interesting, Chad, and obviously the death of Queen Elizabeth, not an under-reported story in and of itself, but Chad pointing to possible international ripple effects. Susan, I'm going to go right back to you on this because of your international reporting experience, you think he's on to something?
Susan Glasser: I do. I think changes like this happened gradually, then suddenly and something like that long expected but somehow still a surprise when it came passing of Queen Elizabeth, I think might be one of those hinge moments that we do look back on. The crisis the last few years have exacerbated the divisions in the world. There's no question that something like the British Commonwealth is hard to see how it lives on even in reinvented form over the next decade and centuries.
Then again, I think about the invasion by Russia of its neighbor Ukraine. In some ways that harkens back to an imperial past of empires, that notion of a state that has the right to conquer another. China to a certain extent has a certain, what you might call neo-colonialist reviews of some of its neighboring states. We'll see. The past is often prologue to things but it's not going to look the same. I think the caller has made a very astute point really.
Brian Lehrer: Some of the ones coming in on Twitter from listeners about what 2022 will be remembered for or should be remembered for. One person writes, "Future historians, if there are any, will just be shaking their damn heads that the world chose to pretend to weigh a pandemic." Another listener writes, "Opinion here, President Biden against all expectations as best president in modern history." Another listener writes, "Guns, guns, guns." Another one writes, "Who really is Congressman-Elect George Santos?"
We'll talk about that a little after the break. Another writes, "One of the most important stories of 2022 is the January 6th committee, which conducted its investigation with powerful media-rich public hearings laying out a strong case of criminality by the former president. It is one for the history books." I can't believe the listener fit all those words into 280 characters, but we will talk about that in more depth after the break as we continue our end-of-year hangout with Azi Paybarah, Susan Glasser, and Christina Greer and you stay with us.
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Nancy Pelosi: Now we owe to the American people our very best to deliver on their faith to forever reach for the more perfect union. The glorious horizon that our founders promised.
Liz Cheney: Among the most shameful of this committee's findings was that President Trump sat in the dining room off the Oval Office, watching the violent riot at the Capitol on television. For hours, he would not issue a public statement, instructing his supporters to disperse and leave the capitol, despite urgent pleas from his White House staff and dozens of others to do so.
Mayor Eric Adams: All too often, a persons enters the hospital in crisis and gets discharged prematurely because their current behavior is no longer as alarming as it was when they were admitted.
Brian Lehrer: A few of the sound bites of 2022. As our end-of-year hangout continues here on the Brian Lehrer Show this hour. We heard Nancy Pelosi, who of course left her post, is leaving her post in the new Congress as leader of the Democratic Conference in the house, Liz Cheney on the January 6th committee, and Mayor Eric Adams. Listeners, if you're just joining us, look who's here. Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a column on life in Biden's, Washington, and co-anchors their podcast, the Political Scene.
She is co-author with Peter Baker of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. Christina Greer, Fordham University, political science professor, co-host of the podcast, FAQNYC, host of the Blackest Questions podcast on the Grio, that's a black history trivia podcast, and the author of Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream and Azi Paybarah, a national reporter for the Washington Post covering campaigns and breaking political news, Azi previously of The New York Times and the WNYC newsroom.
Azi, here's a question as we approach the second anniversary of the January 6th insurrection, and we heard Liz Cheney there. Regardless of what happens to Donald Trump as an individual, did the events of 2022 make us safer from the coup he tried to stage? I'm thinking January 6th, committee presentations, and midterm election results as well, especially.
Azi Paybarah: Boy, I was really hoping you wouldn't ask this question. I think it's always hard to examine historical moments when they're happening in real-time. I think what developed was that we became more aware, but I think the voting suggests something that's as not as a direct line as we would like to think democracy works. People who ran against anti-democratic candidates, people who embraced January 6th rioters, people who embraced the big lie, yes, many of them lost their competitive races, but the margins were not as large as one would expect.
As we saw back in 2016, certain topics and certain kinds of rhetoric that I may have thought were disqualifying for public office, clearly or not to many other voters. Now it was notable that the people who espoused the big lie, that Donald Trump was somehow robbed of his victory in 2020, many of those election deniers conceded their own races, but the amount of votes that they racked up suggests something that is hard to wipe away. I am slightly more hopeful, but I think it just made us more aware of how fragile democracy can be.
Brian Lehrer: Christina Greer, same question.
Christina Greer: Yes, I agree with Azi, Brian. There were definitely some wins for Democrats against folks who definitely supported this domestic terrorist coup, insurrection, whatever you choose to call it. Those margins were not significant. These were in many ways squeakers across the country. I think the fact that we still have so many sitting Republicans who support the actions of insurrectionists on January 6th, we refuse to call them insurrectionists.
We just called them patriots or excited individuals who happen to defend our nation's capital, and they're not understanding or believing the reality of that day where they were calling to hang Mike Pence. We saw the Confederate flag, we saw flags with swastikas because this was a much greater insidious act literally in the halls of our government.
Actually, Brian, I am quite worried. The fact that the evidence has been meticulously laid out for the American public and we still have so many millions of Americans who do not want to believe it, who refuse to believe what they have just been explained makes me quite worried for the future of our democratic process.
Brian Lehrer: Susan Glasser, want to pick it up?
Susan Glasser: Yes. Look, Brian, I think this is important and really the enduring political question in the last few years, which is the embrace of radicalism by the Republican party, when it comes to explicitly challenging a pillar of our system. It's not a policy dispute to have one party that has endorsed essentially an attack on the peaceful, lawful transfer of power. Trump, he was an outlier in many respects as the president of the United States. The most salient way in which he was an outlier was his refusal to accept his defeat and his seeking to overturn elections. We've never had any president of any party in our entire history who's done that, and the Republican party has continued to embrace that as a pillar. They won the House of Representatives narrowly, more narrowly than expected. In some ways, Democrats have done such an excellent job of reframing the election results around they're better than expected performance, defying history.
The bottom line is that not only did Republicans win control of the House, but it's worth pointing out to people that two-thirds of the House Republican Conferenced back in 2021 voted not to certify the results of the election within hours of the attack on the Capitol, literally walking over the shattered glass of the Capitol in order to cast those votes.
I think that for me when you look at results in many of these key races this year something like Herschel Walker, the Republican Lieutenant Governor of Georgia, the Republican, said that Herschel Walker was perhaps the most unqualified Senate candidate in the history of the Republican Party. Yet he not only came close enough to force that race to a runoff but even when he was defeated, it was really by quite a narrow margin.
There was only one Senate race this year, in fact, that went against the results in the presidential election two years earlier which suggests a country that's so fundamentally divided by partisanship that Republican partisans are willing to overlook even attacks on a pillar of our constitutional system. I think we're in the middle of the crisis, still is the bottom line.
Brian Lehrer: Christina Greer on that partisanship, Joe Biden ran on being a post-Trump healer, remember that, who understands voters of both parties. Do you think he's reduced polarization in any meaningful way in 2022 or the two years of his presidency?
Christina Greer: I think he's tried Brian, but the Republican party that Joe Biden has been accustomed to working with and negotiating with no longer exists. I think that party is gone. We've definitely seen that Donald Trump has taken over what used to be a faction of the party and moved them so far to the right. I think Joe Biden is trying to have good-faith conversations with colleagues who used to come to the table with an open heart and an open mind and put American citizens at the forefront of their conversations.
We see so many Republicans are afraid to go against not just Donald Trump, but his supporters, especially in primaries. Even as the president tries to think about policy prescriptions for all the American people when he talks about inflation or gas prices or Covid, he's not talking about Democrats. He's talking about what's good for the nation.
As we've seen time and time again, the Republican party will literally drive this country into the ground and vote against their own interests just to stick it to the Democrats. We're seeing this with water infrastructure policy. We're seeing this with Covid policies. We're seeing this with job creation policies. We're seeing this with education. The list goes on and on, and I think that sadly, the Republican party of even 10 to 15 years ago no longer exists.
Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on that and how far you think this may go, Christina. One of the things about 2022 is that several books came out about civil wars and warning that the US has the conditions for the potential, at least for a Civil War. How concerned are you about that?
Christina Greer: I am concerned, Brian, but I think it will take a different form than what I think a lot of people are accustomed to now. Yes, I would say the January 6th was a shot across the bow. When you look at people who are relatively armed in attacking the Capitol, that to me is a warning shot or several warning shots. When you have media outlets that don't believe in facts or truth, I think that's sowing more seeds of dissension and civil war.
When you don't have two robust political parties who can come to the table with good faith policy prescriptions, I think that's those more seeds of a civil war, but doesn't necessarily mean that everyone takes up arms. Possibly, we've seen that Republicans are armed to the teeth in many ways not just with gun policies across the country even after we see children and babies slain in their own classrooms and Republican lawmakers refusing to move the needle forward with any gun legislation and gun protections for us.
On the one side, we have one political party that believes in arming themselves and taking up arms to get what they want. The other political party is trying to come to the table with ideas, albeit not perfect ideas, but ideas nonetheless. If we are moving towards a civil war, I don't necessarily think it takes the same form as we saw in the 1800s.
I do think that we are definitely dipping our toe in that well, in many ways that's quite concerning to me, especially we zoom out 30,000 feet and we look at the education system and the efforts of Republicans to erase history not just about immigration and US charter of slavery and native people who were on this land before we got here, but our history of Civil War in the past and how we have evolved as a nation and continue to do so in a racial and economic space. I think if you don't educate the future populace, how can you avoid making the same mistakes that you did in the past?
Brian Lehrer: Some more coming in on Twitter on what 2022 will be remembered for or should be remembered for, or underreported stories of the year. One listener writes, "New York Democrats locally should remember 2022 as the year we saw disastrous, no strategy, leadership, and terrible results." Another listener writes, "The most under-reported story of 2022 is the climate crisis for the simple reason that it's the overarching issue of our time for the foreseeable future."
Another listener writes, "It's still Covid, everyone knows people who caught it, for those who lost family, the fear is very real. The mass trauma is long." Another listener writes, "2022 known for white backlash after perceived gains by people of color and women." "Again, the third reconstruction," writes another listener. Let me just acknowledge that if there's one topic that's coming up the most frequently on Twitter from you as a story of the year folks, and on the phones, well, I will let Don in Hell's Kitchen. Shout it out. Don, you're on WNYC. Hello.
Don: Hey, Brian, and your great panel. With just all the chaos post-Trump and post-Covid, just that he unleashed all of this lack of a feeling of reality. What's real? What's this information and what's up, what's down, and at every station of life? People are losing their bearings and losing their sense of order. It allows someone like Santos to be just another problem or accepted.
That just seems across the board and this chaos is on the street, and I think the Republicans really exploited it for the election, but it's more than just perceived. I really want to push back a little bit on Christina Greer on that. It's a different feeling and people are emboldened into Sucker Punch a lady or these random crimes on the subway, really things that whatever someone's stationed in life. It seems that they've been emboldened and sadly the chaos caused by everything with Trump, but especially the deaths and everything with Covid, really has disoriented people.
Brian Lehrer: Don, thank you very much for your call. Don went much broader than I thought he was going to go, to be perfectly honest. What he had emphasized to our screener, at least as it got transmitted to me, was George Santos. Heads up Azi, I know your latest article for The Washington Post is about George Santos.
To refresh our listener's memory about what's happening here, Congressman-elect George Santos, a Republican from parts of Queens and Nassau County, admitted this weekend after The New York Times reveals a lot of this stuff that he didn't graduate from college as he had claimed. Said he went to Baruch, never went to Baruch, didn't work for Citigroup or Goldman Sachs, as he claimed. Didn't own a dozen different properties like he claimed, apparently owns no properties, but is looking to buy a house.
He told the New York Post doesn't live in the district he was elected to represent, lives with his sister in Huntington that's not in the district, and really isn't Jewish. Part of his identity for his campaign was that he's a Latino, Jewish, gay Republican. Other than that, he's mostly who he says he is. Azi, how'd he get away with this for two election cycles? he ran in 2020 against, Tom Suozzi in that district. The Democrats didn't figure it out, the media didn't figure it out. It happened again now and the time somehow figured it out after the election. How'd get away with it?
Azi Paybarah: I think the answer to that is also represented in the feedback we're getting from callers and people on Twitter about what's the main story of 2022. During a campaign, candidates, operatives, and even reporters and editors try to see not only what is true and accurate but what is the main story that people need to hear and understand.
You're right, due diligence was not done for two election cycles, which is not great if you are an oppo researcher, if you're an opponent, if you are someone who is dedicated to reporting on these elections.
I also think that the public, voters, earnest reporters, who were asking themselves, "What does the public really need to see and understand?" Oftentimes it's, "Who's going to help with the economy? Are my streets going to get safer? Is someone going to plow the streets?"
A voter's first question isn't always, "Is this person's resume exactly as they say it is?" That's not to excuse it, but it's just to say it's not always the first question in minds. Now, I think, getting into 2023, one of the first questions I may be asking people are, "Can you prove what you just said with receipts?"
Brian Lehrer: Yes, I guess, after that. Susan, can you name one important Democratic and one important Republican policy idea of this year? We've just been talking about how some of the biggest stories of the year are not policy, the big lie is not policy, as you referenced before. George Santos making up most of his biography is not policy.
Name one important Democratic and Republican policy idea of this year, locally or nationally, and excluding election denial, which is not policy. Which was one important Democratic and one important Republican policy idea of this year for you covering Washington for The New Yorker?
Susan Glasser: Thank you, Brian. I'm going to actually go with "and" rather than "or" because I think part of this moment we're living in is this extraordinary, polarized partisan moment. In some ways, the policy of the year that was the most describing and was one that was overwhelmingly bipartisan, and that is the extraordinary amounts of support that both Democrats and Republicans have offered to Ukraine in the war against Russia.
This, by the way, was a surprise in the sense that you do have a vocal, what you might even call, pro-Putin faction of the Republican Party led by Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and yet, again, you're looking at an enormous amount of-- something like more than $40 billion in one package alone earlier this year. It's a significant shift as well because it represents a level of not only military commitment but also economic commitment.
People may not realize this, but the United States is, through USAID and others, essentially, helping to fund the payroll for the Ukrainian government as Russia has attacked all of its normal economy, turning the electricity back on in that country, and transforming the security situation in the world.
If you had said a year ago that Sweden and Finland would abandon decades, and in some cases, centuries of neutrality in Europe to join NATO, that would not have been a credible statement. It's a remarkable transformation. It represents, by the way, something we haven't yet mentioned but I do think is extremely significant because 2022 was also the year that superpower nuclear anxiety returned to the world for the first time in a serious way that I can remember since I was a kid in the 1980s.
This is a huge shift, and we have all, in many ways, become victims of a form of nuclear blackmail that Putin has been using, essentially threatening the West not to become too involved in the conflict by saying that if it does, he will go nuclear.
That level of threatening of the use of nuclear weapons is something that, obviously, we haven't seen since the darkest days of the Cold War. I think it's a major shift in our politics for a long time to come. To your specific point, I just think that that is a bipartisan policy that you wouldn't have bet on a year ago.
Brian Lehrer: Azi, one important Democratic and one important Republican policy idea of the year?
Azi Paybarah: I'll point out to just one as opposed to two, but it's experiments with free public transit which I find really fascinating. I know the effort is getting underway here in Washington, D.C., and it's been happening in a handful of other cities. That really, I think, reduces, on some level, the pressure of enforcement that some politicians have said unfairly burden low-income residents.
It also, I think, stands in contrast to the conversation about decriminalizing marijuana and other substances because, when you make free public transit, you can just stand back and let people enter, whereas when you decriminalize a substance and then seek to tax and regulate it, there's a need to protect the regulated market for health and financial reasons, and that means actually being mindful of what may be circumventing that regulated market. It doesn't always reduce the kind of enforcement that people assume that language means.
Brian Lehrer: Really interesting. Christina, same question. One important Democratic, one important Republican policy idea from 2022? We're not completely post-policy, right?
Christina Greer: [laughs] I hope not, Brian, I really do. As always, I am impressed with Democrats' willingness to put money into infrastructure just because we know that, across the country, so much of our infrastructure is crumbling.
With Republicans, I really struggle, Brian, because, in many ways, I just see them as a party of obstinance and a party of "no". Some of my concerns about divided government that we'll see as this new congressional set of legislators are sworn in makes me a little bit worried about whether or not we can get anything done, especially with the use of the filibuster.
Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Azi Paybarah from The Washington Post, Christina Greer from Fordham, Susan Glasser from The New Yorker, and you on our year-in-review 2022 hangout. What should 2022 be remembered for? Tweet us, call us, stay with us.
[music]
Volodymyr Zelenskyy: Your money is not charity, it's an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.
Donald Trump: Yet, I've gone decades, decades without a war, the first president to do it for that long a period.
[applause]
President Joe Biden: The pandemic is over. We still have a problem with COVID, we're still doing a lot of work on it, but the pandemic is over.
Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A few of the soundbites of 2022 as our end-of-year hangout continues. We heard Zelenskyy in Congress just the other day, "It's an investment, it's not charity" when the US taxpayers help to support their war effort.
We heard Donald Trump. He actually said that, that he was the only president not to have a war for decades. Of course, he was in office for only four years. He said that as he announced his 2024 run just recently, and President Biden saying the pandemic is over. Yes, he actually said that in September, even admitting that we have more work to do.
Still with us are Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker, where she writes a column on life in Biden's Washington and co-anchors their podcast The Political Scene, and she is co-author with Peter Baker of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, which came out this year, Christina Greer, Fordham University political science professor, co-host of the podcast FAQ NYC, host of The Blackest Questions Podcast on TheGrio, and author of Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream, and Azi Paybarah, national reporter for The Washington Post, covering campaigns and breaking political news.
Azi, if you know that name but trying to place from where, previously of The New York Times, and oh, yes, the WNYC Newsroom. Azi, will next year in Washington be much different from this year? There was already mostly a stalemate because of Republican power over the filibuster. Will next year actually be much different?
Azi Paybarah: It'll be a little different in the sense that Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, will not be leading the Democratic conference, but she will be replaced by Hakeem Jeffries, a congressman from Brooklyn, who I'm sure listeners are very familiar with. I think it'll be different in another respect that with Republicans in charge of the House, there will be more investigations, and expect to hear the name Hunter Biden a lot.
Brian Lehrer: Christina, how do you see the pandemic era still most affecting our country? I'm sure all our eyes got wide when Joe Biden said on 60 Minutes in September, that sound bite that we played, the pandemic is over.
Christina Greer: Oh, Brian, I almost passed out because the pandemic absolutely is not over. As an educator, I know it's not over. As someone who uses public transport every day, I know it's not over. I think the conversations about what COVID looks like as we lived with COVID will become of the utmost importance. I think over the course of 2023, Brian, I think what we'll really see of conversation is about long-term COVID and what that means for so many families, not just in the health space, but also in an economic space as they struggle to pay for some of the effects of long-term COVID since we're absolutely not done with this pandemic.
Brian Lehrer: Susan, you want to take a shot at that one?
Susan Glasser: Brian, I am really struck by the fact that there is a power still in words, and the words of the President matter. It's very likely is one of the contributing reasons why there have been such a low adoption of people getting their booster shots even though you need a booster according to public health experts in order to be as covered as possible for the current variant of COVID.
Even people, millions and millions of people who received their first and second shots have not received their boosters, including very vulnerable members in the population. The percentage is extremely low, number one.
Number two, we're still dealing with something like an average of 300 deaths a day in the United States. It's remarkable that people including apparently President Biden have decided to accept that as simply a baked-in cost at this point of going on with our lives and it's really a fascinating example. I'm sure it's one that historians will study for many years to come about 2022, so I'm glad that we're spotlighting that this year.
Brian Lehrer: Steve in Nassau County has something 2022 should be remembered for, and I think it's COVID pandemic related. Steve, you're on WNYC. Hello.
Steve: Yes, Brian. How are you?
Brian Lehrer: Good. Come closer to your phone.
Steve: What's that? Hold, hold, hold on. Headset. Mine was the mental health issue in New York City, especially, and I'm sure nationwide that has been addressed, but where are we going with it? Something more needs to be done.
Brian Lehrer: Steve, thank you very much. Abuna in Mount Vernon on an under-reported story of the year. Hi, Abuna, you're on WNYC.
Abuna: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. The meeting of the 49 African President with Biden early this month which prompts me to remember that they were called the asshole countries by the last president and whether you're talking about immigration, climate change, refugees, Africa is the future. If you go see how many meetings, summits, they've had with-- I think is second summit, Obama met with them, and then Biden met with them.
If you look at how many times they met with Chinese president and how many Chinese projects in Africa, that's a big story. Whether it's thousands drowning in Mediterranean crossing into Europe or being shot crossing from Morocco to Spain, I think Africa is the most ignored story of the 2022. Brian, thank you.
Brian Lehrer: Abuna, thank you very much, and happy to say we did a dedicated segment on this show about Biden and the African Summit when that took place. Alan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alan.
Alan: Good morning [unintelligible 00:54:17]. I think that a lot of the talk about the Republicans and Democratics lately has touched on the evangelical role in the Republican Party, but I think we underestimate how deeply it goes to perception of basic reality. I think many of these people do not feel that they're doing anything wrong if they believe that anything that they can enable to occur must be, by definition, God's will, that nothing can happen unless God allows it to happen.
Therefore, if they can bypass all the procedural niceties of democracy and achieve a result, then they feel that they have done something that was godly and that's a very scary idea that people can have an oath to office without being faithful to the procedures the office and the laws imply.
Brian Lehrer: We see it among some people in this country, we see it among some people in Afghanistan and Iran, we see it among some people in Israel. Story recently about Netanyahu agreeing to continue blocking women from reading Torah at the Western Wall, Judaism's most holy sight. Goes on in many countries what Alan articulates there. One more in this caller set. Jim in Bayside, you're on WNYC. Your story of the year, Jim?
Jim: Well, I would say story of the year and I wouldn't say it's underreported, but I think the advent of ChatGPT as an educator who deals with information literacy has me fascinated and alarmed just in terms of how it works and that it actually learns and it seems to have some kind of its own intelligence. I'm wondering, can it learn conspiracy theories and spread them, things like that? That's why I just wonder where it's going, but I think that it'll-- it's the first version of this kind of thing and I think that will be something that remains to be seen where it goes.
Brian Lehrer: Thank you. ChatGPT is the next level of artificial intelligence. This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcong, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. We are a New York and New Jersey Public Radio and live streaming at wnyc.org.
A few more minutes with our end-of-year hangout superstar panel, Azi Paybarah from The Washington Post, Susan Glasser from The New Yorker, Christina Greer from Fordham. Christina, 2020 became a year of reckoning with persistent racial inequality more than most years after the murder of George Floyd. I think also in 2020, everyone seeing who the "essential workers were", who couldn't work from home when COVID started. Did we make progress toward equality in 2022?
Christina Greer: Oh, I think in some spheres with some people, yes. I think that a lot of Americans saw America through a different set of lenses which was very helpful. I'm not going to put a judgment call as to whether it was too late or very late, but at least many Americans started to see what was happening to not just their neighbors but people who they interact with on a daily basis.
I think, sadly, Brian, on the other hand, there are a lot of Americans who feel more emboldened in their racist tendencies because we have smartphones, and we can record these interactions that African Americans and Asian Americans, Latino Americans, and LGBTQ+ Americans have been saying for decades. This has been happening to me in particular spaces where people just feel the need to deputize themselves to tell me that I don't belong here.
That is very worrisome just because we have had a former president and now a political party that has said that this type of behavior is sanctioned and okay and in many ways encouraged. As these divisions, going back to your earlier question about Joe Biden trying to bring the country together, we do have a lot of Americans, especially and specifically white Americans who are better understanding the foundation of this country that has been rooted in white supremacy and anti-Blackness and patriarchy and capitalism in all the ways that subjugate particular members of this country.
We also have, and I'm not going to say 50%, but a large percentage of this nation that believes in the opposite, and they refuse to read a book, they refuse to recognize history, they refuse to see how so many people in this country have not been treated fairly or equitably historically and also in present-day and their behavior is showing their lack of respect for their fellow Americans.
Brian Lehrer: They continue to come in on Twitter. The stories of the year or the underreported stories of the year. A listener writes, "Out of control Supreme Court conservative majority, rampant anti-Democratic gerrymandering, and GOP attacks on voting rights. These must be addressed in 2023."
Someone else writes, still about George Santos. They keep coming in about George Santos. "Lying on your resume is grounds for termination in any position. It's a deal breaker, an instant disqualifier." Someone else will go to the back page here for this one. Writes, "The ridiculous amounts of money being paid sports figures and sports broadcasters, ridiculous."
As we head toward the end of the hour, this end-of-year hangout coming to a close, let's try a little lightning round to close it off. Azi, I'll start with you. We'll go round on each of these for short answers to these short questions. Did your optimism meter for the US, for New York, or for humanity overall go up this year, down this year, or did it stay about the same?
Azi Paybarah: It went up because I chose it to go up and not because of anything specific in the news.
Brian Lehrer: Ooh, free will. Christina?
Christina Greer: Mine always goes up because I teach young people, and I think we're in good hands, especially with Gen Zs.
Brian Lehrer: Great answer. Susan, your optimism meter?
Susan Glasser: I like Azi's answer. I'm going to take that one. I learned actually when I was editor of Foreign Policy the beginning of the year is always a time of great optimism in the news, even if it's not warranted at all. Let's just pretend that we've already jumped ahead to January.
Brian Lehrer: All right. Azi setting the tone there for that round with his zen answer piece is from within. Can you think of something in the news this year that much of the public gets wrong or misunderstands? Susan, anything pop right to mind?
Susan Glasser: Yes, look, I do think, Brian, that we're so eager to place narratives on things. That the reality of essentially a 50-50 country that is so deeply divided, we keep looking for proof that the pendulum has swung dramatically one way or the other. I think we're just wrong about that. There's a pretty fixed minority of the country. It is a minority of the country that has supported Trump and Trumpism for years now. It really hasn't changed.
The January 6th committee didn't change it. We're so eager to declare up or down results from the news cycle that we don't look at how fixed that 40% of the country is and how divided it is. It really hasn't changed very much at all.
Brian Lehrer: We're wrong to look for some kind of resolution. Azi, something in the news this year that much of the public gets wrong or misunderstands?
Azi Paybarah: Watching vote counts on television is not like watching a foot raise. When numbers go up and down, it's not necessarily because anyone is doing something. It's about you're watching a bureaucratic process. You're not watching the Olympics of democracy.
Brian Lehrer: That's a good one. The absentee ballots sometimes get counted days after that election night TV blitz. Christina, something much of the public gets wrong?
Christina Greer: I would say the historical roots of race and racism when it comes to almost every policy prescription that we've ever had in the United States as we see education, housing, infrastructure, climate change, all of the big issues of 2022. If we go back several decades, we can see concerted efforts that are rooted in race and racism in this nation.
Brian Lehrer: Azi, in this very serious year, what's something that made you laugh?
Azi Paybarah: I think someone on TikTok does Swiss cheese poetry where they throw a piece of cheese on a printed page and then read the words that are in the holes.
Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Susan, what's something in this very serious year that made you laugh?
Susan Glasser: That's a good question. It's certainly not going to be in politics. That's for sure. Politics is more about making you cry than making you laugh, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: Got one, Chrissy?
Christina Greer: Yes. I started following a guy named Ellie or Eli McCann on Twitter largely because of his analysis on Ukraine when I was trying to learn a bit more. He is a lawyer, I believe, in Utah but he's also a humorist. He talks about his husband and his dog, and I basically said, when he leaves Twitter, I'll leave Twitter, but following his account has been one of the biggest joys of my 2022.
Brian Lehrer: Huh. Now, do you each have one piece of produced work that came out this year that you would like to recommend from music, fiction or nonfiction books, or the arts of any kind, Christina?
Christina Greer: Yes. I saw a fantastic play at The Public right before lockdown called Ain't No Mo', and it made it to Broadway, and I saw it twice on Broadway, and sadly, there just weren't enough people who were able to support it. I believe it's already closed. They kept extending the date just a little bit. They thought they were going to close on the 20th, then they were going to close on the 23rd.
I think it's closed now or will soon be closing, but hopefully, they'll be able to get it to other cities across the country. It is brilliant. It is, essentially, a satirical play about all African Americans have to board a plane and go to "Africa" with Barack Obama as the pilot. It's hard to explain. There've been some great writeups about it. It's a young playwright who went to The New School. I can't say enough about this play.
Brian Lehrer: Azi, got something for the long New Year's weekend coming up that people can do?
Azi Paybarah: Yes. Listen to Stromae's latest album. Belgian musician of African descent years long-- He ends a years-long break with an album called Multitude, where he talks about, among other things, race and mental health, and he even records a music video shot while doing a television news interview.
Brian Lehrer: Say the name of the artist again for people who didn't get it.
Azi Paybarah: Sure. Stromae.
Brian Lehrer: Got one, Susan, produced work?
Susan Glasser: All right. Thank you, Brian. Two quick ones. As far as written work goes, I really loved Afterlives, which is the novel that came out this year by the Nobel Prize winner for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah. It's a fantastic story about East Africa, German East Africa, in the period of World War I up to World War II. Is something totally different and unexpected. It's very powerful, just stays with you.
I also would recommend strongly the documentary that came out this year, Navalny, which, although it was shot before the war in Ukraine, I think it explains in such a haunting and powerful way what Putin's Russia has become through the lens of his persecution of Alexei Navalny.
It's also an amazing work of investigative journalism as Navalny and the amazing people of Bellingcat basically figure out who, in FSB, was responsible for poisoning the Russian dissident. He actually calls one of the FSB agents up and confronts him personally. It's an amazing film. It's not a surprise it was shortlisted for the Oscars, and I think it tells you a lot about the world we're living in right now.
Brian Lehrer: Maybe even more powerful for the points it makes because it was filmed before the war in Ukraine, and people started to pay closer attention to what's going on over there. All right, last one. We'll go around one more time. Name one question you expect to be following closely in 2023. Azi?
Azi Paybarah: "Can you prove what you just said, congress member?" That should be my question.
Brian Lehrer: "Can you prove about having graduated from college?" Little things like that. Christina, one question you expect to be following closely in 2023?
Christina Greer: I hate to sound like a broken record, but what is our plan to protect our watershed in the United States?
Brian Lehrer: Susan, one question you'll be asking in 2023?
Susan Glasser: Look, we're getting very close to a decision from President Biden, one way or the other, about whether he's going to run for reelection either way. It's very consequential. Either he's going to be running as the oldest president ever in American history and seeking a second term, at the end of which he would be 86 years old, or he's going to be stepping aside and leaving what looks to be a very wide open Democratic field at a time when Trump is running again. I think it's going to be a really big few months and consequential few months in American politics.
Brian Lehrer: That, folks, is our year-in-review hangout with Susan Glasser from The New Yorker, Christina Greer from Fordham, and Azi Paybarah from The Washington Post, and many of you who called in and tweeted. Guests, thanks to all of you very much for your thoughts and opinions and collected wisdom, and your time on this December 27th. Azi, Susan, Christina, thank you all so much, and happy New Year.
Christina Greer: Thanks, Brian, happy New Year.
Susan Glasser: Thanks for having us.
Azi Paybarah: Thank you.


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