 I'm Jay Fidel. This is ThinkTech. This is Coronaville. What's next? And we're getting into the what's next part with Tim Appichella, Cynthia Sinclair, Winston Welch, and Stephanie Stolldahlton. So, you know, we got an interesting situation because it's like two tracks. It's one is the Michigas with Trump, you know, camping out in the White House and screwing up the transition, you know, acting like any reasonable three-year-old would act. And then we have coronavirus, which, you know, it keeps marching on and it breaks new records every day. And he's making so many mistakes, incredible mistakes, and he's losing his traction, losing his moxie, but he's not going to go down without a mess. So let's talk about both of those as intertwined, you know. The first thing is, you know, we have Pfizer. Pfizer comes out with a 90% effective vaccine, Tim. What's the story there? And why now? Well, before the show, I said CEOs are people too. And something tells me that this particular CEO of Pfizer isn't a Trump fan. We, he knew very well that this vaccine was ready to announce. And the fact that it was announced today after the election, I think it's pretty funny. You know, it's, and there's not a thing Donald Trump can do about it. Number one, Pfizer didn't accept one nickel from the fast track of the vaccine warped speed. He didn't take a nickel from it. This is their own research and development and now announcement. Yeah. When he was interviewed, the guy, the CEO of Pfizer, he seemed to be, you know, a genuine fellow until you find out that he sold 60% of his stock, you know, the day of the announcement. What is that? It sounds like insider trading. Does that help you appreciate his sincerity? Well, I'm never going to defend a CEO that makes billions of dollars after stock sale one day before the announcement. That's, you're not going to get that out of my mouth as far as his defense. Allegedly, this was, this was a pre-planned short of the stock per schedule. And it just coincidentally happened moments before the announcement. And I guess he got near high price within pennies of the, the high for that stock. So like every CEO, preordained destiny of stock sale. It reminds me of a song out of the LaGuardia Broadway show years ago. Mr. X, let me ask you a question. It's amazing. Is it not that somehow you achieved enough money to buy yourself a private yacht? I don't know if I remember that, but this is truly amazing, but he's very sincere on the two. Don't give up your day job. Thank you for that. I was going to say, you got a second career here. I need a, I need a, well, I need a bigger audience. I can see them on cats. So the other thing that came up on, on 60 minutes on Sunday, Tim, I know you looked at it because we talked about it is, is this army general who has been a logistical general who has been assigned to do the warp speed project and get everything together in the possibility and the anticipation that there will be a vaccine coming soon. Is that, is that realistic? And how about the timing on that? And that was also right after the results of the election were made known, not before. We never heard about this guy, at least not in the public media before. Now all of a sudden we hear about him. And I just wonder, I mean, are these guys saying something? Are they trying to do something that would have an effect or not have an effect on the election? What did you think of that segment on 60 minutes? Well, my first initial thought was all wars are won upon logistics and they don't get, they don't grab the headlines. Three star generals and the logistics, they just don't grab the headlines. They get the job done. And I was totally impressed with his demeanor, his attitude and his clarity of thought and speech on how this is going to get done and nothing's going to get in way of it. And I suspect not even Donald Trump is going to get in the way of this distribution of the vaccine. So I was totally impressed and that's what three star generals do. Yeah. Well, Cynthia, you know, let's talk about the military for a minute. Your friend, Donald Trump, I guess, what did they call it the weekend massacre or the Monday massacre? It was Monday this week. He's firing all these people, including Mark Esper, and replacing them with loyalists, with yes men from every source. He's making the military establishment, the intelligence establishment around him, an establishment of yes men overnight. And after he lost the election, and you know, there are many commentators who are saying that that's because he wants to be able to rely on them when the physical crunch comes, when he won't leave the White House and somebody has to remove him. What are your thoughts about that? Is the military going to stand with him? Well, I hope not. We know that he forced two DHS security officials to resign, just and one of them, this is kind of important. One of them was the cyber arm of the DHS that was forced to resign. So that's kind of interesting. You wonder, you know, we've got someone who's involved in this cybersecurity of our nation, and he's being forced to resign at a time when we're trying to find out more about cybersecurity, doesn't make any sense to the normal rational brain. But you know, something that is being left out everywhere on all of the media, everywhere, it's hard to find but this new vaccine that's coming out is actually developed in Germany. Pfizer didn't develop it. We didn't develop it because we had this, you know, operation warp speed thing going on. It was because a firm called BioNTech in Germany came up with a new thing called messenger RNA or mRNA, which is a thing that they inject and then it gives your cells a genetic sort of instruction on how to fight this virus. And so that's where all this has come from. This same German company is also partners with China because they're going to get it too. We're going to be actually buying a hundred million doses from this German company. Yet everywhere I see it's just being presented as Pfizer came up with this. It's all because of Trump and I think it has nothing to do with any of it. US didn't even really have anything to do with it. It was a German company. That's very interesting because six months ago, Trump was trying to buy a German company. I don't know if it's the same one. It was working on a vaccine and he tried to do it in a very slippery way. He was trying to get their scientists to come over and Angela Merkel and the scientists stood fast. They said, no, you can't buy the company and you can't get our scientists. It could be the same company except the deal is different now. The deal is different in the sense that this German company is going to get paid for its work and it's not going to be owned by Pfizer or the United States or any country. It's going to be a German operation and they're going to get paid for their work. They're going to do well. I'm not sure it's the same company, but it's an interesting notion to find that at one time he was trying to proselytize them and now that's not happening. This is a partnership instead or a purchase. I'm going to have to look that up because I'm certainly curious now to see if it was the same company or not. Winston, at all this we have these two tracks. We have Trump's Misha Goss and that means craziness where he's acting like a three-year-old and trying to draw all his Republican friends into it and there are many of them and 70 million people. At the same time we have a surge, a monstrous surge. Is he doing anything or is he busy stamping his feet these days? Is the United States government doing anything to actually deal with the virus or is that just poppycock? Well, Donald Trump has never done anything for the virus except deny its existence, blame it on Democrats, whatever. I mean anything that comes out of that needs to be dismissed. He's had a second SuperSpurter event inside his cabinet, I think today. Let's see who was announced that COVID. It was one of his former members. Meadows a couple of days ago. Is it a new one this morning as an advisor? So we can discount any of that. Again, for folks out there, take your own measures as best as you can. There are live maps where you can see the spread of this virus in real time now. What you can do is not go to people's houses, not take up your masks, not go for Thanksgiving, Christmas, whatever. Realize those are the micro spreader events that are really making the biggest impact here. It's horrendous, isn't it? I mean, you know, he's not taking any steps. In fact, all along he's been discouraging the use of masks. And that's one of the reasons why he's got these cases around him. And these SuperSpurter events, it's just like negative, negative effort. Well, you know, remember Fauci says that the overwhelming majority of contaminations or spreading is happening at small events of three, four, five, six, 10, you know, eight people in the office. They're being rigorous. And then at lunchtime, they're sitting around the same table, sort of laughing heart at a joke. And there you go, everyone's infected. So they say if you go to Thanksgiving and you're there with 10 people, one of them will have COVID. If you are there with 25 people, 100% of the people will end up with COVID at the end of the meal or just about because it's so easily spread. So again, this is back in our home court. And I was happy to see that the CDC updated its guidelines to say, not only does the mask protect others, it protects you. And so that if nothing else, some enlightened self-interest there may help more people wear masks who were previously denying them. And I think at this stage we're beyond a mask-caused cancer or whatever. The narrative is being brought up or that they're fake news or whatever. So I think we are moving ahead with rationality, with people becoming sane that Donald Trump has lost the election. All of this is hand in hand in that these narratives are being unwound or just exposed for the falsehoods that they are. We need to move on as a nation. We need to follow President-elect Biden. He's already got his task force being assembled. He's going to start, he's already started. And people are looking to him for leadership and advice as the President of the United States because let's face it, current one is abdicated. Anything except throwing a temper tantrum while he's trying to raise funds to cover for his losses. And he just needs to, as Sheldon Adelson said in Las Vegas Review Journal that voter fraud doesn't disservice. Saying that there's pervasive voter fraud doesn't disservice to as more rabid supporters because the idea is simply false. It's not the way that America, San Francisco Chronicle says it's not the way American presidents behave while we, as Donald Trump says, it's not an end game. It's Trump versus America and it's time to take sides. Employers saying there's no substance behind the lawsuits. So it's time that the people are turning. You got more Republicans jumping on every hour now saying time to accept these results, share intelligence with the Biden transition team and on and on. So yes, and things seem to be unraveling for Trump, knock wood. But Stephanie, what I find very interesting is that while he is doing nothing to help COVID, nothing to help the people, no secondary cares act or anything like that, zero, busy on the golf course, okay, his people are in the Supreme Court arguing against the Affordable Care Act. Care Act, they want to take it apart. They want to effectively repeal it traditionally. That's sort of remarkable, isn't it? Why is he doing that and what chances does he have to succeed? Well, I just think that ACA thing is the leftover spaghetti that he threw off. He just keeps throwing that up against the wall. So in the hopes that it'll stick, somebody's going to decide to do something with it and what it appears they might decide, and it's not coming for six months. But I think really importantly, what I see as keeping us in the muck here is and with under the Trump umbrella is that I understand that 50% from the newscast, 50% of Americans around the election time on exit interviews did not think that the virus was bad, that it was under control. Just try to accept that that's what they think. They still think he's right. Talk about that. They think he's right. They think he's their man still now and they believe him, whatever he tells them. And what Fox is not putting out. But I've been watching Fox. They've been a little bit better since it's raging everywhere. And in North Dakota, it's turning out that we're finally at the edge of the cliff. We're going over the cliff. Why? Not because of tests, not because of PPE, not because of what people are doing, not wearing masks. It's because the doctors and the nurses are getting sick and are not able to do the work. So what it is we face, which to me is the final that take over, we're in serious bad trouble if we don't have the medical people. And it has been totally confusing me since the New York crisis, where nobody's been talking about these are people that are taking care of the of the patients. And what about if there's no more of those? We're all going to have COVID and no doctors. It's worse though. I mean, it was one fellow reported this week, who after his COVID experience, which was like a 60 day in the hospital experience that spent a million dollars of somebody's money, a million dollars of somebody's money. Now, if you take the Affordable Care Act away and you take his insurance away, who's going to pay the million dollars? This could be a tragedy beyond even the tragedy that you described. So not even no money, no people. I mean, this is where you get down to the scourge of the black plague and smallpox. You're lying in the street, literally. I mean, outside the hospital, you might have gotten that far. And there's nobody to take you. I mean, right now, the beds are gone, but that's not the worst of it. We used to think, well, oh, that's pretty bad. No, that's not bad. That the bad is only just gets worse. So Tim, you know, these things, I mean, we've known that COVID is really the center of the of the argument here. At some level, at some level, it had to be the center of the campaign. It involved so many people. So so many people afraid for themselves and their families. How about right now? Is it still the center of Trump's unraveling? What's the connection between his unraveling and COVID? I'm having a visceral reaction to the conversation between you and Stephanie. And Stephanie reminds me of the travesty of a dictator, a president that is somehow brainwashed 70 some odd million people that COVID is a hoax. It was a democratic hoax. And that is not a real threat of a virus that's killing over most quarter of a million of our fellow Americans. I'm having a visceral reaction that the denial continues. And I'm almost at the point to suggest it's time to get the video cameras out, open up the mobile morgue trucks and let the public see what's inside the mobile morgue. Maybe that will convince them that this isn't a hoax. And so his unraveling is for 74 million people that don't think it's a hoax. It's it's a real deal. And maybe they've lost family members for the other poor 70 million people. I don't know what to say about them. Maybe they're okay with him shooting someone on Fifth Avenue as well. It's almost to that point. And at some point, how many more Americans do we have to lose before 70 million people think this is a real threat and they need to be part of the solution, not part of the ignorant problem. But it's just playing. Right now, we have this contention, this trouble about him staying in the White House and threatening not to leave, compromising his advisors and military advisors. We're at a crisis point. I mean, some people are calling it a coup because he is making all these efforts to stay. Now I know people are leaving him. Some people, some people, not everybody, not maybe a lot of the people in the 70 million and a lot of the people in the Senate are still loyal to him, believe it or not. But what role is this playing? Is it an appropriate role or all these people turning their backs on it? Could they be so irrational? What's the formula here? Why is it going down this way? And is it changing? Well, I think you're suggesting there's a there's a rational answer to a whole administration of irrational people that are self interested in their own personal agenda of either re-election or not being hunted down by Donald Trump's tweets. And so to answer your question, it's a state of paralysis. Your notes before the show is who's in charge? Well, on paper, it's Mike Pence, Vice President Pence. On paper, he's in charge. In reality, it's a shiftless, gearless car that's rolling down the hill without brakes. And that will continue until January 20th. And it's a travesty and it is the most embarrassing stain upon this nation for the rest of the world to observe. And I just can't say any more than how ridiculous this entire situation is. Too much coffee, but I'm fed up with it. It's the reality, though. You'll have to admit it's the reality and it's not resolved yet. And as and when he is removed from the White House, we should talk about exactly how that would happen. He's going to be out there with his megaphone talking again to his base. How do you think the increasing numbers of cases and deaths are going to affect his opportunities, his chances at reelection? Will he be able to escape past that? Jay, I believe that Donald will do like he does everything. He'll dismiss it. He'll dismiss it on a repetitive basis. And half the country will say, yeah, he's right. Whatever Donald says, I believe. And so he's not concerned about 300,000 or 400,000 more deaths, inclusive of the 250,000 we already have. He doesn't care. He doesn't care who dies. He cares only about his reelection in 2024, which on the surface of it is absurd. What candidate would be responsible for all these deaths and expect to be reelected? Well, maybe Donald Trump. Well, maybe some people would vote for him. We have three things going on, Cynthia. We have COVID. We have Trump's constitutional violations. And we have an economy that has fallen apart. It is still falling apart. All those things. Last night, I called my longtime friend in Western Canada. And I asked him a question I've asked him before. Can he adopt me? Because I like to come and live in Canada with him. I'll do the dishes. And the problem is that this is not an vacuum. These three destructive tracks we're on right now, they play, they interact, and they also demonstrate our standing. They affect our standing in the world. How do you think they are affecting our standing in the world now? Well, you can imagine what every veteran around the world thought when they heard that there were 4,254 veterans that have died from COVID. It's a pretty shocking number to have to deal with on Veterans Day, I thought, on Monday. I thought that was pretty shocking. I can imagine that they think, well, I can't actually, I can't imagine what they would think because they must just go, what are, what are they thinking about? Now, I went around the world in 2017, just after Donald Trump won, and right before he actually was inaugurated, and every single person 201, well, I take that back, two, out of the hundreds and hundreds of people that I spoke to, two, like Trump, and everybody else said, what are you blokes thinking about over there? I mean, like before, who said that? Everywhere I went in every country, they thought, is this a joke? There was two guys, one was an oil man, so it makes sense that he likes Trump, and the other one was just this, like, tobacco chewing, I don't know, taxi driver guy, who likes that he's a tough guy, right? And I think that's kind of like what people here kind of like too. They like that he's a tough guy. But you know, when you talk about the military, when I was looking up some of these numbers for today's show, I thought it was very interesting that there are 91,000 cases, actually almost 92,000 cases in the military, but there's no new cases. There's 111 deaths out of 91,000 cases, there's 101, and that's all. Okay, now for the veterans, 85,000 cases, 4,000 deaths. You know, for 91,000 cases, it seems like there should be more deaths. And the fact that there's no new cases, there's, you know, all of that just shows me, we're not really hearing what's happening in the military. So it's very possible that the military is pretty sick. And if that's the case, they're out there spreading it around the world. So the world must be going, wait a minute, we know they don't want any Americans around. They've already told us that they don't want Americans around. We're not even allowed to go into a lot of countries. So how does that, you know, equate to what's happening with the military? You know, your guess is... Well, it goes to national security too. It goes to, you know, being vulnerable at a critical time. It goes to China and Russia taking advantage of us when they see we're weak. They try to drive a truck through that. You know, so Winston, it's time for some predictions here. We have a bunch of tracks, if you will, as I mentioned, going on at the same time. And it seems like to me that all these things are converging. The economy is in terrible shape. There's no relief coming out of Congress. COVID is in terrible shape. There's no relief. You know, and the vaccine is really not here yet. I mean, the smart guys say it's going to still be another year, even though we had, you know, the uplifting remarks from that general, the logistical general. And we have Trump, you know, tearing the Constitution up. These things are all converging. That's why we come to you. That's why we come to you when we want to feel better. We want to feel your optimism. Can we feel a little optimism, what's your prediction, Winston? I am completely optimistic. The nation is finally coming to its senses. Although you can read some polls that say 70% of Republicans say they don't believe the results and it was fraudulent, you can read other ones that say 70% say, yes, he lost. We understand that there's always going to be some diehards that don't. But I think you're going to see mass defections. If he doesn't say, he's not going to say I concede, but he's going to say I have authorized the, or someone will say we've authorized the transition office to take over. It will be steps in that direction. The military is not going to back a coup for Donald Trump. We are, and you know, as far as our world standing goes, watch Angela Merkel's welcoming of Biden's election. That tells you where the world is. They are welcoming back America to its rightful, well, I won't say rightful, it's a little entitlement, but it's traditional leadership role that the world craves that it needs for stability. And they are welcoming us back to that. And I think that we will wake up in seven, eight short weeks with a brand new sunny day. And we will begin to undo the enormous damage that's been inflicted on us these last four years. And it's already started. That's the good news. We all got to do our part. In the meantime, folks, wear your mask, wash your hands, don't gather in groups, and we will come out of this. It's going to be a lot of pain, but we're going to come out of it. I feel better. Well, if you would see, I would feel better. Here's the problem. You know, hopefully within seven weeks, the constitutional crisis will be resolved. Hopefully, Biden will, you know, will come in with some kind of plan on the economy. At least we have, you know, some level of confidence that his government will be more rational. But, you know, the virus goes on. And when all of that settles down, we're still going to have this spike. So, Stephanie, what is your prediction on that? You can have a great, wonderful commission of all these guys, of the quality of Ron Klain, you know, good guys and girls. But the question is, can we really make a dent in this before it's too late? Or are we just going to be fighting up, you know, a Sisyphus kind of mountain where no matter what we do, we still have the virus? Well, whatever Sisyphus, you know, did, we're going to be doing because we already have many examples of getting it under control. And it's not what anybody in the voting for Trump is going to like. I mean, my nephew is a cleave at the Naval Academy. I mean, they took them in, you know, a couple months ago. They've got a few cases, but they've got all those rules. They're separated. They're in single rooms. They get together the same group. Anybody gets it. They get hauled over to the infirmary and left there until it gets over it. So there are things that we can do. And we're going to have to get like that. So whatever issues are that Cynthia mentioned about the military, they're not going to be reluctant to impose distancing and getting these habits under control and getting in mass. So I mean, we're going to have to move into that. Like it or not, I mean, it's been demonized. The very things that we have to do to knock this bug back to the back cave it came from. We got to do probably not for that long. Oh, I hope so. So Tim, can we shorten the horizon to like a week? This is the hardest question of all. You have the last word, Tim. I want to ask you this question. What is going to happen in the next week? Because we're all, all these issues are in high gear. They're all, they're all spinning out of control. What's going to happen between now and say next Thursday? Well, I know our producer is freaking out right now. So I'll keep this very brief. I'm going with Winston and the fact that Republicans will actually get on board with the thought that Donald Trump is done. He's his influence over this current cycle is done. And so you're going to see more senators jump off the Trump train. And we're going to see, I think a return to a concern about the deaths of COVID and the fact that it's still spreading. So more people start wearing masks and we'll start turning the corner not to use a Donald Trump phrase, but we will start turning the corner at least on the case number load and hopefully the death count. Okay. We got to watch it every day. I, you know, we're tired of watching it, but we still have to watch it even with greater attention. The other thing is, Tim, I hope you remember that this is all being recorded. And when we look at this again next week, we're going to remember your words and see what happens. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you, Winston. Thank you, Stephanie. This is Coronaville. And wow, I hope there's a time come soon when we can change the name of this show too. Aloha, you guys. Aloha.