 It's September the 22nd, 2021. It's Wednesday, 11 o'clock. That can mean only one thing. Time for What Now America? I'm Tim Appichelle, your host. And today's title of the show is Crisis Management Required for the Biden Administration. Right now in the last week and a half, President Biden and his administration has been delivered a whole host of what CNN reporter called them, headaches. Well, I take issue with that word, headaches, because they seem more like disasters and calamities. But be as it may, they have all ended up on Joe Biden's desk. And the question is, what is he going to do about it? What sort of things have landed on his desk? Well, number one, we have had 14,000 Haitians under a bridge called the Del Rio Bridge in Texas. And I understand we're down to about 10,000 Haitians under that bridge. Talk about a public relations nightmare. The visuals and photos we've seen of agents on horseback. And it's just not a visual. And that's what's been going on. We also have the GOP that seems to be losing sight of what's going on with our national debt and our debt ceiling. They have pledged that they are not going to renew the budget. And that comes to a head on Thursday. And if it's not resolved by mid-October, the United States will fail to pay its debts. And that means a whole host of issues, not to mention a stock market that'll crash like we've never seen in a long time. We also have an infrastructure bill that's falling apart. We have the progressive Democrats, about 95 of them, who do not want to pass the infrastructure, the bipartisan infrastructure bill. They want to have the entire package, both packages, to be passed. And it seems to be my way or the highway on that. We also have the problem with France and how they were pushed aside for the contract with Australia on submarines. They've retracted their two diplomats from the United States. We have 675,000 dead Americans due to the COVID pandemic. And our third of the country is still resistant for getting the vaccine. So that number continues to climb on Joe Biden's watch. We have the fact that the booster shot that Joe Biden promised for all Americans, the third booster shot, has been retracted. It's now been recommended by the FDA is that 65 years or older. So there's some egg on Joe Biden's face on that point. And not to mention the calamity to tragedy that took place in Afghanistan where Joe Biden said, we're going to extract revenge on ISIS. And lo and behold, we had a drone strike that killed 11 ISIS members. Turns out it was a family. And seven of them were children. So let me introduce my guests before we go any further. Jay Fidel and Winston Welch. Good morning. Morning, Jay. Jay, this is just a partial list of what has fallen upon Joe Biden's desk. And I guess the question to you is, which one needs to be resolved at first? Or do all of them need to be resolved right now? Let me connect the dots for a minute. This is the Trump legacy, either directly or indirectly. We had some problems, many problems, built into the country before Trump. But he exacerbated them. And he intentionally, this is all being rolled out now, he intentionally left landmines and booby traps and made a reasonable transition impossible for Biden. And although they're not all directly in that line, they're all directly or indirectly a result of the legacy that Trump left every one of them. And you could connect them up to Trump. And so what Trump is doing directly or through his minions in the Republican Party is he's trying to undermine Biden, make Biden look bad. And Biden may or may not have the, what do you want to call it, the negotiation skills, the management skills, the force of personality, the staff to deal with these things. So it seems to be accelerating. It's the notion that Biden is not capable of managing all these things. And these things are getting worse. You asked me which one is the one most important now? My God, that's a hard question, Tim. Did you mean that to be as hard a question? Yes, I did. It's a really hard question. Well, the first thing, okay, is this crazy thing about the debt ceiling. Why in the world is McConnell and the Republican Party saying they're not going to lift the debt ceiling? What do they get out of it, except a disaster? You want to go ahead. I got a quick answer on that is it will now look like the Republicans are the fiscally conservative and concerned about national debt. And it makes the Democrats look like wild spending maniacs that a holiday store shopping. Well, my recollection is the bill to lift the debt ceiling doesn't lift it for all the money that Biden wants to spend only, you know, the regular money, the regular debt. So if the public believes that McConnell is trying to head off to 3.5 trillion, that's not it. And he's taking action that already makes us look bad to win Biden's speech at the United Nations. We look really bad. We look out of control careening toward an economic disaster domestically and in terms of our foreign policy, foreign policy and our image around the world. Even if this gets saved at the last minute, Biden has already suffered in his reputation in the way people feel about him. And that's Trump's desire. That's McConnell's desire. That's the Republican desire. Make him look bad. Make him look bad on everything he already does. But I think that, you know, he's going to look really, really, really bad if the debt ceiling isn't lifted and if we default on our national debt and if the world takes a look at us and says, you know, this United States is not capable of managing its affairs. Maybe we ought to change the reserve currency. We're gonna find some of the currency in the world instead of the American dollar. We are falling from our position of leadership every day. So that's the one that I pick as the most. I think that's a good one to pick, Jay, because you know, the full faith and credit of the United States has been golden for many, many decades, if not centuries. And the bottom line is the reason people flock to our dollar and flock to our treasuries is because they know they'll get paid back without worrying about it. And if that were to default, can you imagine the flea and flight from our bonds and what that would do to interest rates? Not to mention the stock market and all the other. It's already suffering. It's already suffering just in the prospect of it. Despite the discussion. Not only the US bonds, but all the bonds, not only the bonds, but the stock. We're on a slide right now. Well, let's just take a look at some of the specifics if the United States were to default. We would no longer see money to federal employees. We would no longer see Medicare benefits. Can you imagine social security checks not being paid out? Can you imagine that the military not get their wages? Social security is supposed to be a separate fund. I'm not sure that would be included in a failure of the debt ceiling. Okay, that's very possible. Tatchery funds would cease and federal contractors would not be paid. That's just the beginning of the slide. So is this a game of chicken or is like, you know, we've been shut down before and the GOP has been directly responsible for those previous shutdowns, the last two at least. I'm already reports that Mitch McConnell means business. What do you think is going to happen? I'm here to tell you Mitch McConnell is just negotiating. He's going to try to extract promises from Biden. He's going to try to make Biden look foolish. It's going to be a midnight solution and Biden will have to capitulate on a number of issues. And only then will McConnell let the debt ceiling go, I mean, higher. So we're all watching the strategies here and I think we're going to be disappointed in the strength of Biden's negotiating skills. Okay, thank you, Jay. Winston of the many things that I mentioned on Biden's desk right now, in your opinion, which one is the most critical that needs to be addressed immediately? Boy, there's a smorgasbord, isn't there? It's hard to tell which way to look because anyway he looks and I agree with Jay, a lot of this was inherited, not all of it. I mean, having 10,000 Haitians showing up on the Texas border, the immigration issues been going on for a very long time. Anything where there's immediate human suffering, obviously is a need that needs to be addressed right away and how this is being handled or not handled. You know, that's one thing that's obviously- Okay, to that point, to that point, didn't President Biden appoint Vice President Harris to handle that? Handle the immigration and the border crisis? She seems to be MIA, your opinion. She does seem to be MIA and I think that she realizes that doesn't matter which way she turns or how she goes on this, it'll backfire on her and there's not a good solution right now and that's why we haven't had anything on immigration really for whatever so-called immigration reform we have. It's just booby-trapped all the way around so I don't envy anyone who's got that job, especially her and that's just sort of of all the things that she should be doing. I don't know that that's the one that she's gonna be the most successful at but there's other forces of play here, obviously. As Jay said, a lot of this mess has been inherited but the other thing like this new security pact with Australia and the UK, interesting, isn't it? And that the French are recalling their ambassador from America, when was the last time that happened? I never remember that happening. I think it was Louis the 16th. It was something like that, this is our original partner in Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité and so they're angry and it just gives more fuel to the Europeans need to figure out their own security solutions and then you got the people in Japan and Korea and Taiwan just wondering, okay, it's this sort of shaking up that we didn't need this right now and I realized the French are especially mad because they didn't get to sell their submarines and as Australia, you need nuclear submarines, apparently so, but it calls into question a lot of these basic trustworthiness elements of the United States. Well, the basic idea, let me jump in to say the basic idea was good. Let's get together with Australia, let's get together with the UK, we'll have a group of three and we'll be much more influential in Asia and with submarines and China and China will see that as a threat and as a moderating force and balance of power in Asia. All true, all good, smart. But Jay, wait, wait, wait, let me finish. But he forgot something. This is just like Afghanistan. It was right to leave Afghanistan, but he forgot something. He forgot a couple of hundred thousand refugees. So the same thing here, he forgot to pick up the phone and call Macron and that was a serious error. So while he might have, while Joe Biden might have succeeded in a coup in that tripartite agreement about Australia, instead he loses, instead he's got an egg on his face because he forgot something. Jay, do you really think he forgot do you think that his age or his advisors just forgot all about France and the implications and ramifications of kicking them out of the deal and bringing it in the United Kingdom? Well, you know, there is the possibility that he told them. There is the possibility that he had some, what do you wanna call it, argument type, argumentative calls with them to tell him he was moving on. There is the possibility of that and that it wasn't a complete surprise and they're reacting not only from what he did but the way he handled those telephone calls. I don't know, that's a wild guess. But bottom line now is, I think he could have done better on this. I think he could have shown a little more respect to France, which has been an alloy of ours from the beginning. And it's really tragic that what could have been a coup, I mean, a good, strategic coup turned out to be, you know, a mess. Okay, thank you, Jay. Winston, I'm not sure I got the answer I was looking for. Which one of these calamities do you think needs the immediate attention? What's the priority? Honestly, all of them, he has to answer them at the same time. But like Jay said, he's facing a hollowed out administrative structure with so many good people having left in the prior four years because they couldn't take it anymore. I mean, so many senior people in the State Department left. So whatever back channels are, and I don't know about our military ties, but when you had the former president saying, questioning the value of NATO, that's gotta put people on edge. I think probably would have been smarter if you were looking at a more comprehensive security system, was sell the French submarines to the Australians. The French have a history of, you know, in that area of the world as well, translate the manuals into English, but there was more to it than meets the eye that we will never be a party of our know about. But this, it's a strange sort of alliance. It goes beyond the former Five Eyes, you know, agreement that was traditionally would have included New Zealand and Canada. So we'll find out more about this. This has obviously been brewing for a long time. And I think that this probably would have happened under Donald Trump as much as Joe Biden, honestly. I don't see that that was, this is not just something they just came up with. I would just guess. What is more concerning is what we've heard from these books that are coming out increasingly that Dan Quayle was called by Mike Pence to see what he should do. This was a little bit more scary than we realized because he's really kind of looking at what could I get away with and what do I really need to do here? And Dan Quayle looks to be the hero of the day saying, you need to follow the law and don't skirt it. But when you really look at the law, it could have been that Dan, that Mike Pence said, this is how I'm interpreting this particular clauses. Is it the 14th amendment or that gives him these powers or whatever amendment that is where he could have set off a real crisis and he didn't. And thank goodness he got some solid advice from Dan Quayle. I can't remember where Dan Quayle was from. Wasn't he from Indiana or? Yeah. So he had been in the same shoes. He was actually at one point, I think the top fundraiser for the Republican party, as much as he couldn't spell potato, at least he got it right on this one. And you know, this was the one that where he really needed to get it right. And I'm glad that Mike Pence reached out for his, can I call it friend, when facing the Donald who now told him that they can't be friends anymore because he wouldn't overturn the election. So while he lost one friend, at least he had some backup from other traditional sources of sanity inside of the former Republican party. And that actually was quite concerning and we're gonna get more details on that. I couldn't agree with you more. I don't think Americans realize just how close it came to a constitutional crisis and a moment of potential insurrection that went way beyond the insurrection of the Capitol. But we didn't show, but what the good news was, we didn't have a huge showing up of people on September, what was it, the 18th, or yeah, you had five times more security personnel there than people who actually showed up. So while people may believe this election was stolen or fraudulent or whatever, they're realizing, okay, we're just gonna live with it for a few more years. And Joe Biden is stumbling hard on a lot of these things, you know, on COVID kind of pre-reannouncing that we were gonna make this vaccine available. That made it seem like this was a political thing like Donald Trump had done, rather than say we're gonna wait for the CDC and the FDA to come out with their rules because that caused a little bit of, you know, there's a kerfuffle there. And as it turns out, you know, it'll probably be something similar to what Joe Biden wants. And he wants to end this pandemic. So while he's come out with some strong statements saying, if you work for the government, if you are contracting with the government, if you have more than a hundred people, those sorts of things that are actually meaningful he stumbled on that in that other way. And, you know, he's just got to keep on plotting. He has such a mess to deal with. It's like a flood hit the house. And what do you want to save first? You know, how do you start the cleanup? It's all over the place. I want to ask you something, Winston, is, you know, there's one bullet point I didn't mention in my introduction. That is we now have this thing called the Havana syndrome that has hit all our diplomats when they were in Cuba. And now it's hit the, one of the top administrators for the CIA chief who in India was hit with this Havana syndrome, which is to say some sort of weapon be it radio frequency or sound or whatever, that is giving our personnel basically traumatic brain injuries. And so if the CIA chiefs of top assistant got hit with it and then of course Kamala Harris had to rearrange her trip because her age were hit with it in Vietnam, it basically is saying, we don't know who's hitting us. We don't know how they're hitting us. So there's another element of America being caught flat footed and not knowing what to do. Your thoughts about the Havana syndrome attacks. You know, obviously there's something to this. I don't think it's a kind of a mass hysteria, but there seems to be some physical or electrical culprit behind this and it would make sense. You know, there's, if you can disrupt somebody's intelligence operations or diplomatic capabilities, it's, you know, there's some obvious contestants there of who would want to see that happen. But hopefully they will, they'll figure it out sooner than later. You know, that it's not hitting, that's not the priority and all of the stuff that we've been given. I mean, when you've got 10,000 people under a bridge in Texas, that's a priority to me, even just from a visual optics point of view, if not the real humanitarian suffering, which is just the point. And also that our borders are, you know, the wall doesn't work. How do we, I would say helping these nations so that they don't wanna have to escape and leave their own nation to try and make their way to America? The stories are harrowing when you read about it. These other things that we've got out there, COVID, still. We're still under lockdown here in Hawaii, basically. We can have five or 10 people at a meeting, that's it. Our football games, we can't go to a football game, but we've reached a very high percentage of the people that can be vaccinated are vaccinated. So this is, it's changing here. We are seeing that it's becoming an epidemic of the unvaccinated. People are getting the message now that they have to be vaccinated here or maybe for their jobs due to federal or local requirements. We're seeing that change. And I'm feeling a change coming up here that people have decided, I need to get this because I wanna go to the store. I wanna go to the movies. And it's not gonna end with the 18th of October or whenever it was just extended to. This is just a way of life for us. And it just is saying you have a responsibility to your society as well. If you wanna be a full participant in the society. And I understand that people feel like it's gonna morph into some sort of a government ID where you have to flash it at every turn. But the reality is this is a real epidemic with real people. The mayor has stated that he's going back to hospital utilization rates as the primary indicator of how he's going to move. As far as nationally goes, we have states with incredibly varied vaccination rates and you had the governor of what was it? Mississippi or Alabama saying he wouldn't change a thing. So you've got that thrown in the mix too an incredible hubris of, and willful ignorance really, shameful that these folks are getting sick and infected and that they're not really doing much at all to try and stop that on that level. Joe Biden, I think is basically doing a good job on COVID. Again, no one predicted Delta. What's next? Maybe there's- Oh, but he's reversed his position over the booster. And that is a very serious mistake. Another mistake. He says one thing and the CDC says another thing and the public out there is all confused. Yes. And the Republicans are saying, he doesn't know which end is up, does he? Well, he was- Another mistake by Joe Biden. He was jumping the gun with that and he probably should have just waited. And that's why he was waiting. You remember that there was a pressure on him of saying, when are we gonna get this? I forgive him- On emergency use. I forgive him. You forgive him. Hey, Jay. I forgive him. But there's 70 million base people who don't forgive him. They're gonna capitalize on that. Hey, Jay. If this was the Trump administration and this happened to Donald Trump, would that be about a two hour headline? Cause we're onto the next fiasco that Donald Trump perpetrated in this country. Are we having double standards on how harshly we're treating Joe Biden versus all the crazy mistakes that Donald Trump made? And we focused in on it for days now on this booster, you know, this love up. That's what happens when you bring him, you know, I don't know, what's your phrase again? A soup ladle to a knife fight. Those guys are gonna try to undermine him in every single way they can. It's relentless. And if you ask me my takeaway, my takeaway is it's gonna get worse. He's gonna make mistakes. There are more booby traps and landmines in store for him. There are more geopolitical issues for him. Things are gonna happen. They're not gonna be good things. He's gonna be blamed for them. The GOP will blame him for everything with the specific and relentless intention of having him lose in 2022 and 2024 and getting back into majority in Congress and getting a Republican in the White House. And I think if you ask me my prediction, I think that's where we're going. It would be remarkable, wouldn't it guys? Wouldn't it be remarkable if he could change the direction of this, have some real wins, have a win with McConnell, a win with Congress, a win with all those half dozen major initiatives that are stuck in Congress, a win with his own party. He's not having those wins. Yeah, you know, you mentioned the GOP having plenty of ammunition to criticize Joe Biden and I agree. They've got more than enough Christmas presents under their doorstep to take on Joe Biden and his administration. But here's one that the Democrats may not forget. And this item came up as we were discussing things. The parliamentarian said that the Dreamers won't be able to entertain any kind of bailout in the bill, in the reconciliation bill that that's been excluded. And wasn't that a big part, Jay, of President Biden's campaign promise to address those Dreamers in our country, the many thousands of them? And now that seems to be out of the sequence for trying to address it in the legislature. The question for the parliamentarian was whether the elements of the bill affect the budget, the FISC, you know? And frankly, the Dreamers don't affect the FISC. You can't make a connection. It's not a money bill, it's not a money provision. So, okay, it's not a surprise that the parliamentarian said no to that. It can't go with that bill. On the other hand, let me ask you a rhetorical question. Don't you think that Joe Biden and his advisors could have figured that out in advance? They knew they were taking a risk here. Whether it's popular or not, it's not the test. The test is whether it's a money bill and it's not. So what you're saying is it's a self-inflicted injury against his credibility. Yeah, he was not being realistic. He was a dreamer in his own way. Good, great point. Excellent point. Winston, once again, we've run out of time. 28 minutes just isn't enough to tackle all the things that were on the topic for today. But your last thoughts on where Joe Biden is and what he might do and your last thoughts about where we go for next week. Okay, Joe Biden is a decent, honorable fellow. He has inherited a massive, massive mess, whether it didn't matter how you look at what he inherited. He's been on the job, barely been on the job. With half the people thinking that's not their legitimate president or whatever it is, the base. 78% Jay calls them the 70, 80 million. He's only been on the job eight months. This is a huge ship that has taken a lot of damage. No matter how you slice it or dice it of what angle you look at it from. And he is now, it didn't end, right? This is like, basically he inherited a post Pearl Harbor type of situation. The damage has been done. What do you do from here? We didn't win the war in a day. It took a long time because we had to prepare the damage. We had to refloat the boats. We had to start rebuilding things and infrastructure and calling up the troops in the whole nine yards. And that's what he's facing right now is we're just still, some of these are, yes, missteps, absolutely. But the rest of it, he had enough just as it was and he's still gonna have more of that to go. So we gotta cut the man a little bit of slack as much as we can as a nation and realize he's doing the best he can with what he's got. He's sane, he's rational, he's not a sociopath. He's not a psychopath. He is the president of the United States who's inherited a huge mess. And we have to put our faith in him that he will get us out of it because he's the best chance we got for it. And he's the only chance we got for it, actually at this point. And so, fair enough to call him out on the things that they need and they know this very well, but his task before him is incredible. It's monumental. It's heroic if he's able to pull off half of what he needs to pull off to write this ship and to get us into safer harbor. Okay, Winston. You know, Winston, I always feel a little bit better after your final closing comments after every show we do. And you haven't disappointed me in the least. So thank you so much for your words. I feel better. Jay, your turn. Are you gonna make me feel better? No, I'm not. I don't intend to make you feel better. I'm sorry, Tim. Okay. Tim, you and I and Winston, we would like to see Biden succeed. We recognize as Biden says, he's a decent man trying to do a good job. But there are problems. And he has made mistakes that have been catapulted into the stratosphere that have been capitalized and by the Republicans every day and by the way, by the media too. He's raw meat almost every day these days. And it's not only that he's got, you know, X tens of millions of people who are trying to attack him at every turn. He's got the media against him. And even though us three were not against him, we wanna see him prevail. The net effect of all of this is that he looks impotent and not quite competent, not strong enough, not strategic enough to keep on trucking. And there's a fair chance he's gonna lose in twenties when the Democrats are gonna lose in 2022 and 2024 and we're gonna be facing Republicans. That's why if you ask me whether I agree with Biden about not changing the filibuster, I don't, he's got a majority now. Let's see some action, boys. He's got his own attorney general. Let's see some action, boys. We don't have that. You made me feel better anyway. Thank you, Jay. We've run out of time. I'd like to thank my guest, Jay Fidel, Winston Welch. I'm Tim Appachell, your host for What Now America. Won't you please join us next week, Wednesday at 11 o'clock. Until then, hello all.