April 2, 2019 • 20 mins
Get ready for congestion pricing. New York City is set to become the first big city in the country to charge vehicles a fee for driving on its most congested streets in a hope to ease gridlock and raise money for public transit. It’s a complicated issue in a high profile area and other cities will be watching as they mull over implementing similar systems. Paul Berger, reporter for the WSJ, joins us to discuss what we know about the NY Plan.
Next, we have a White House whistle-blower and she is calling out the process in which security clearances were being approved. Tricia Newbold, a White House security adviser for 18 years, has said the at least 25 officials were granted clearances after initially being denied. Some of disqualifying issues involved foreign influence, conflicts of interest, financial problems and more. Andrew Desiderio, reporter for Politico, joins us to talk about the latest whistle-blower allegations.
Finally, the Impossible is happening… at Burger King. 59 locations in the St. Louis area are testing out the Impossible Whopper, made with a vegan patty produced by start-up Impossible Foods. If all goes well, Burger King plans to roll out the plant-based burger to all of its 7,200 locations. Jon Porter, reporter at the Verge, joins us to discuss Burger King’s latest offering.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Tuesday, April two. I'm Oscar Ramiras in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. Get ready for congestion pricing.
New York City is set to become the first big
city in the country to charge vehicles a fee for
driving on its most congested streets in a hope to
(00:21):
ease bridlock and raise money for public transit. It's a
complicated issue in a high profile area, and other cities
will be watching as they mull over implementing similar systems.
Paul Berger, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, joins us
to discuss what we know about the New York plan. Next,
we have a White House whistleblower and she is calling
out the process in which security clearances were being approved.
(00:44):
Tricia Newbold, a White House security advisor for eighteen years,
I said that at least twenty five officials were granted
clearances after initially being denied. Some of the disqualifying issues
involved foreign influence, conflicts of interest, financial problems, and more.
Andrew Desideria, reporter for Politico, joins us to talk about
the latest whistleblower allegations. Finally, the impossible is happening at
(01:09):
Burger King fifty nine locations in the St. Louis area
are testing out the Impossible Whopper made with a vegan patty,
produced by startup Impossible Foods. John Porter, reporter at The Verge,
joins us to discuss Burger King's latest offering, Let Smooth
without the Noise. Let's dive in. You need a viable,
(01:31):
functioning mass transit system so people get out of their
cars and feel comfortable taking the mass transit system. Joining
us now is Paul Burger, reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
So New York City is set to become the first
big city in the country to put in place some
congestion pricing where they're going to charge vehicles entering some
of the most congested streets in a hope to reduce
(01:52):
some of the gridlock and raise money for public transportation systems.
What do we know about this New York test, Because
when a big city like this does something like that,
other cities take note for when they want to implement
some type of similar system in their own hometown. We
know the exact area that they're gonna put their fee on.
We don't know exactly how much it's going to be,
(02:12):
but we know that a previous panel that looks at
this suggested somewhere in the region of eleven dollars and
fifty cents for a car to went to the zone.
We don't know what the charge is going to end up.
Another panel is going to look at that, but the
aim is to raise a billion dollars in revenue a
year that can be used to basically borrow money that
can then be invested in the mainly in the subway system,
(02:34):
but also in the buses and commuter around. Even fifty
for cars, I think it was twenty five and thirty
cents for trucks. That seems like a big price hike, right,
But it's kind of that delicate balance. If you charge
the drivers too little, you'll make a little bit money,
but you'll still have traffic jams because everybody's still going
to be there. Charged too much, and then you risk
turning off too many drivers. I know that the congestion
(02:56):
notion of congestion pricing has been around for a while.
There's a lot of other cities in the world do
have this type of system right now in New York
at eleven and fifty that was kind of a set
see that they were talking about, but in the legislation
that they passed in New York at the weekend, what
they said was they wanted to have what's called variable pricing.
So we don't know exactly what it will look like.
You know, maybe it will be at certain times of
(03:17):
the day it will cost more to come in from Manhattan.
Other times of the day. Perhaps they will actually have
a way of the ideal scenarios, they would have a
way of actually measuring the amount of traffic going into
the city and how congested the area is, so that
they can charge more at specific congested times. But in
other cities in the world where they've tried this, like
in London, in the first year, they saw a massive
(03:37):
reduction in congestion. I think travel speeds increased by something
like thirty percent, and they saw something in the region
of an eleven shift in people from using their cars
to using mass trendsit walking or biking. They've done studies
on how fast cars are going in areas like this.
In New York City had the slowest downtown business district
speed at nine miles an hour. Anybody that has been
(03:59):
to the it knows how slow it is to get
through that main part of the city. Right there, like
in Midtown. What's going on in New York specifically with
the traffic. I mean, I know there's a lot of construction,
there's a lot of cars just park wherever they want
to deliveries. There's a ton of ride sharing cars between
Uber and Lyft. Now they're all contributing to the traffic there,
(04:20):
But what's the real problem, and specifically on the ride
sharing cars, are they going to be subject to this
charge as well? Nine miles an hour actually would be
a dream speed to move from Manhattan that these days.
That was like an average that was given out by
n RICS, this analytics them. But New York City itself
says that in some parts of Manhattan the speed is
actually somewhere closer to about five miles an hour some buses.
(04:43):
It's actually quicker to walk across the city than to
take the bus. So the speeds here are are pretty terrible.
And as you points out, you know, there are a
lot of different reasons for that, like construction. Even even
additional bike lanes basically takes away road space which make
cotton tend to make the roads more congested. But yeah,
the right hailing cars, Uber and Lift have just completely
(05:03):
swamped the city. So in the last five years we've
gone from none of those cars to about eighty thousand
of those cars, and they've been mainly concentrated in the
central business district, which is where the congestion zone is
going to be. One of the big criticisms of uber lift.
Although they have increased availability and accessibility of taxis, those
(05:24):
cars spend a huge portion of their time circling empty
waiting for rides, and those empty cars are obviously contributing
to congestion. As far as the fee goes, I don't
believe that they're going to be subject to the congestion
fee that we're currently talking about, but they are already
paying a fee that was passed in the state budget
last year. And so every uber and lift trip is
(05:47):
subject to a two dollar and seventy five cent charge,
and that's any trip that actually touches a congestion zone
that's even bigger than the one we're talking about. Yellow
taxis are also paying extra. They're paying two dollars and
fifty cents, And if you take a pool dride where
you share it with a with a stranger, that's seventy
five cents per trip. In New York. There is a
massive need to fix the subway. New Yorkers are extremely
(06:10):
proud of the subway. I think a lot of people
around the country kind of fascinated by the subway, and
in the last few years it's just become guyer. The delays,
the disruptions have been pretty constant and consistent, and people
have had enough. I think they look around the world
at Paris, London and other cities and they say, why
can't we have a modern system that's just way more reliable.
(06:33):
The MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authorities that runs the subway,
basically have said it's going to cost US forty billion
dollars to fix the subway. The governor and state legislators
have decided that the best way of funding that fix
is congestion pricing, which basically a funds mass transit that
be hopefully reduces congestion in the city. So you kind
(06:55):
of win on both ends. In other cities, they don't
have an enormous, century all old mass transit system that's
some guy a need of funds, but they do have us,
say in l a like a modern transit system that
perhaps needs expansion, and so congestion pricing is. I guess,
in many ways a good fix on all sides. You
get to hopefully reduce pollution, get to address climate change,
(07:18):
and you get to help people get where they're going faster.
And at the same time, for the other people who
depend on mass transit, they get more reliable, more frequent service.
Paul Berger, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you. We're not going
(07:40):
to comment on security clearances. That's the policy of the
White House and that continues to be the policy of
the White House. Joining us now is Andrew Desiderio, congressional
reporter for Politico. We're gonna be talking about the new
White House whistleblower that we have. It is Tricia knew Bold.
She is a White House security advisor for eighteen years,
and she told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that
(08:01):
there were twenty five denials for security clearance applications that
were overridden by the Trump administration. She goes into all
sorts of reasonings for why she came forward with this.
Among them, she said she wanted to restore the integrity
of the office there. What do we know about Trician
Nubold and what she's saying happened in the White House there.
So she's worked at the White House for almost two
decades now under Republican and Democratic administrations handling security clearances.
(08:24):
This is basically an adjudication of who can handle top
secret classified information in our government, and often times as
they go through these screenings, they find problematic aspects of
individual's path that might preclude them from viewing classified information,
or especially viewing classified information while you are in the
vicinity of the President of the United States. So her
job is super important and she's been doing it for
(08:45):
almost two decades. What she's specifically alleging is that there
were many instances in which intelligence officials had recommended that
certain individuals, including some top officials close to the president,
not get top secret security clearances because of those issues
in their perspective path. But what she found was that
her supervisor at the time, this guy named Carl Klein,
(09:06):
who was the director of the White House Personal Security Office,
was essentially overriding those recommendations and giving those individuals full
blown security clearances anyway. And she felt that despite all
her complaints about the matter internally at the White House,
nothing was really getting resolved or changing so she felt
like coming to Congress was her last avenue. According to
Missnewbule's there was a range of issues that were disqualifying
(09:30):
for some of these people for an influence, conflicts of
interest concerning personal conduct, financial problems. I think Davis said,
drug use in criminal conducts. So there's a ton of
different things, and over the course of twenty five people.
You know, these don't apply to everybody. There was a
case where she wrote her and some colleagues wrote a
fourteen page memo about why they were going to deny
the security clearance for somebody, a particular person, and that
(09:52):
still got overrated. Yeah, that's exactly right. There were numerous
other examples in there too along the same lines, but
the bottom line was that she thought that there was
undue influence within somewhere at the White House. We do
know that it's been reported in the past that the
President of the United States had directed his chief of
staff to grant Jared Kushner has done in law and
senior advisor a full security clearance, even though there were
(10:13):
issues in his background concerning foreign contacts and other matters
that were not initially disclosed. The President has not necessarily
confirmed or denied that story, but it's been reported pretty
widely and that part of what intensified the House Oversight
Committee's investigation into this issue. It's a super important one.
Like I said, it's very rare for someone who has
these types of issues in their path have their security
(10:36):
clearance overridden essentially. But the President of the United States
does have the power to do that unilaterally. But what
Trisian Newbold was saying was that there should be at
least be some checks and balances in place, and that's
what she felt like her role was, and she felt
that she wasn't able to live up to that given
the circumstances. The House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah
Cummings has gotten some blowback or at least met some
(10:57):
resistance from the White House in documents that they've been testing.
So it hasn't gone very smoothly for them on this
front yet. No, it hasn't. The White House has been
routinely refusing to turn over documents related to the security
clearances of specific individuals, citing, of course, privacy concerns and
other issues, but the Committee has maintained that it's within
Congress's right to essentially compel the White House to turn
(11:20):
over many of these documents. And as I mentioned, the
investigation has been intensifying lately. It's gotten pretty heated in
terms of the the partisanspiring between the White House and
Democrats your own Capitol Hill. But it's certainly something that
Democrats believe is a top priority for them as they
continue to investigate all aspects of the Trump administration. Yeah,
and they're even going to start authorizing subpoenas if they
(11:40):
have to. Now. I mean that just kind of shows
how serious they're getting there and how close they want
to get to this. They have a list of people
whose security clearances they do want to probe, Ivanka Jared Kushner,
John Bolton, Michael Flynn, Rob Porter, so a bunch of
people that they're looking into. This is going to be
the ongoing fight for that committee right now. Yeah, that's
that's right. And I will mention you since you mentioned subpoenas,
(12:02):
the committee is actually going to vote to subpoena for
Carl Klein, who I mentioned earlier used to serve as
the White House Personnel Security Director. He now or the Pentagon,
but the White House has refused to make him available
for a deposition. So that's why the Committee feels like
they need to issue the subpoena. It will be issued
in all likelihood it will be a party line vote, obviously,
but the committee wants to talk to Mr Klein because
(12:23):
of many of the allegation laid out by Trisian new
Bold and they and the Committee also said that they
were able to corroborate many of Trician new Bold's claims.
They didn't get specific about who else they talked to,
but they said that they talked to other officials within
the Trump administration in order to corroborate many of those
claims through witness interviews, documents, and the like. Andrew Deceidario,
congressional reporter for Politico, thank you very much for joining us.
(12:45):
Thank you. It's not beef, that's impossible. It tasted just
like a whopper ship taste. Why patty was zero milligrounds
of cholesterol, the seventeen grounds of protein one d whopper
in zero percent beef. We know it's impossible to believe
(13:08):
the impossible whopper only at Burger King in St. Louis
joining us now. John Porter, reporter for The Verge, Meet
alternatives in fast food places are starting to expand their choices.
The latest one that we heard about is Burger King
is going to be starting to sell a version of
the Impossible Burger. It's going to be their Impossible Whopper.
Not only Burger King, but Red Robin, which has a
(13:29):
bunch of chains on the West Coast. They're gonna also
be selling the Impossible Burger at their restaurants. But tell
us about Burger King and its decision to start selling
this Impossible Whopper for now, it sounds like they're kind
of trialing it. They so far, they've announced they're gonna
be selling it across fifty nine locations in the St. Louis,
Missouri area, but they've kind of indicated that if this
goes well, then they would be willing to consider rolling
(13:50):
out a cup of nationwide in the US, which would
be like over seven thousand locations. So it's really the
biggest chain so far that's kind of committed to like
experimenting with with kind of meat free burgers. Really, the
Impossible Burger already had a sort of a trial kind
of you want to call it, at Whitecastle. Whitecastle already
started selling slighter versions of the Impossible Burger, and they
(14:11):
said that they met sales quotas pretty early on and
there was a lot of enthusiasm for it there, So
I can't imagine it failing completely in St. Louis, which,
as you said, would lead to them being in over
seventy locations in Burger Kings. If everything goes well at
this point, it's definitely a novelty. I have definitely gone
to restaurants because I know that they serve a meat
free burger, and I'll go there and I'll like, on purpose,
(14:32):
order the meat free burger. But this coming to Burger King.
Burging is the kind of place They're just everywhere. It's
the kind of place you could accidentally find yourself out.
So it would be really interesting to see if the
kind of person that wants to go to Burger King
to get a burger, who hasn't specifically chosen a restaurant
to try out specific recipe, if they will go for
the meat free option. I think it's it will be
a really interesting test to see if it kind of
(14:53):
resonates with a wider audience. Really, the two main companies
that are kind of battling it out right now are
Impossible Foods, which was going to be featured at Burger
King and then Beyond Meat is another company. Karl's Jr.
Had their trial at this I think it started in
January where they put the Beyond Meat burger in their
famous start. Now that one I had, and it was
pretty delicious. I think I can still recognize meat if
(15:16):
I was given a meat burger. But it's funny some
of the executives from Burger King are saying, you know,
in our initial trials, some of our customers and even
employees can't tell the difference. And I don't know that
could be pr spin, but that's kind of where they're
going out right now. I can't believe it though personally,
I think a lot of it comes down to how
many condiments and stuff you have you have in the burger.
I agree. So I tried out the Impossible Burger at
(15:37):
a place called Fat Burger and Buffaloes Express last time
I was in l A. Honestly, I thought it was delicious,
but there was there was a lot of sauce in there.
There are a lot of like other flavorings, Gherkins, that
sort of stuff. So really impossible burger. They say that
when they test it, they taste They tested both naked
and then also like fully loaded in a burger to
kind of try and get a decent idea of how
(15:58):
it will taste in different situations. I couldn't tell the difference.
I don't know if that's just my specific palate, but yeah,
it's it's definitely interesting. One of the interesting things at
Burger King they said they're still going to top it
with me and is so vegans would not be able
to enjoy it just outright. They'd probably have to ask
for it without So what is the Impossible Foods burger
made out of? It's based out of heam, it comes
(16:19):
from some soybean roots or something. It's soy based. It's
making kind of like the roots of a soybean plant
and then apparently mass produced using geast. And this kind
of changed in January where they introduced the second version
of their Impossible Burger, and the emphasis there like this
version of the burger is apparently a lot healthier burger.
You can't said that it has fifteen percent less fat
than a standard whopper. It's got apparently ninety less cholesterol.
(16:42):
And then you'd also hope that there are kind of
flavor enhancements and stuff going on. In there as well,
and then in addition to soy, they've kind of they've
got other ingredients to kind of give more of the
texture of a burger, which I think is the more
important thing when you've got lots of condiments and stuff
going on. It's kind of like the tiding the taste
of the burger. Burger King obviously they've had like this
really close relationship with beef, and for a long time
(17:05):
all their Whopper rappers said on beef, no filler. So
now the new rapper is gonna say Whopper zero percent beef.
But this is kind of the trend. All a lot
of the fast foods are looking for other options to
provide for their customers. Yeah, it's like there are a
few advantages that going neet free has, you know, it's
it's healthier. That's the ethical argument that should we be
(17:27):
eating so many animals? I think for me though, the
biggest argument for it it is just the environmental one.
Like the share amount of greenhouse gasses that produce just
for me and animal agriculture, it's astonishing. It's it's apparently
between like fourteen and eighteen percent of greenhouse gasses apparently
a really significant part of that literally cow farts, which
apparently could almost like four percent to greenhouse gas emissions.
(17:51):
So it is an environmental problem, and we can have
lots of conversations about moving to electric cars and more
environmentally friendly forms of energy production, but there are other
things we can do as well, and the way we
eat does contribute to them. And so if you can
go into a mass market burger place and if you
can buy a meat free burger, I think that's a
great thing. Although what thing we haven't talked about so
(18:13):
far is price. I think Burking have said that the
Impossible Whopper it's going to cost about a dollar more
than the existing whopper. Maybe that that the novelty aspect
of it will encourage people to to pay more, But
that will be really interesting to see if it's if
it's not a like for like, if it's if you're
actually having to make that choice to pay a little
bit more, will that discourage people? I've got no idea right.
(18:33):
One interesting note that I thought in the whole testing
phase of this is that Impossible Foods did ship one
of Burger King's flame broiling machines overnight to its headquarters
so that they can ensure that the paddy wouldn't break
apart in mass production, and it really has that feel
and taste of the regular whoppers at burger Kings. So
obviously the Impossible Burgers. It's been around for a few
(18:55):
years now, it's being sold in various different restaurants. You
can imagine the kind of places that would go out
of their way to buy in a load of like
Impossible burger patties are probably going to be the kinds
of places where they're got to take a lot of
care over how they cook them. So another it will
be a big test for the Impossible Buggers whether they
can mass produce them in burger Kings and whether they'll
still hold up with the way those guys kind of
produce like mountains and mountains of food every single day,
(19:17):
produce it really quickly. It's a very difficult environment for
food to be and if if it's if it's low quality.
So yeah, big tests for Impossible. John Porter, reporter at
The Verge. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank
you that's it for today. Join us on social media
(19:37):
at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast
on Feast. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us and I heard Radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. The Daily Dive is produced by Mirandum Reno
and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Ramrors and this
(19:57):
was your Daily Dive five
It's Tuesday, April two. I'm Oscar Ramiras in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. Get ready for congestion pricing.
New York City is set to become the first big
city in the country to charge vehicles a fee for
driving on its most congested streets in a hope to
(00:21):
ease bridlock and raise money for public transit. It's a
complicated issue in a high profile area, and other cities
will be watching as they mull over implementing similar systems.
Paul Berger, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, joins us
to discuss what we know about the New York plan. Next,
we have a White House whistleblower and she is calling
out the process in which security clearances were being approved.
(00:44):
Tricia Newbold, a White House security advisor for eighteen years,
I said that at least twenty five officials were granted
clearances after initially being denied. Some of the disqualifying issues
involved foreign influence, conflicts of interest, financial problems, and more.
Andrew Desideria, reporter for Politico, joins us to talk about
the latest whistleblower allegations. Finally, the impossible is happening at
(01:09):
Burger King fifty nine locations in the St. Louis area
are testing out the Impossible Whopper made with a vegan patty,
produced by startup Impossible Foods. John Porter, reporter at The Verge,
joins us to discuss Burger King's latest offering, Let Smooth
without the Noise. Let's dive in. You need a viable,
(01:31):
functioning mass transit system so people get out of their
cars and feel comfortable taking the mass transit system. Joining
us now is Paul Burger, reporter for The Wall Street Journal.
So New York City is set to become the first
big city in the country to put in place some
congestion pricing where they're going to charge vehicles entering some
of the most congested streets in a hope to reduce
(01:52):
some of the gridlock and raise money for public transportation systems.
What do we know about this New York test, Because
when a big city like this does something like that,
other cities take note for when they want to implement
some type of similar system in their own hometown. We
know the exact area that they're gonna put their fee on.
We don't know exactly how much it's going to be,
(02:12):
but we know that a previous panel that looks at
this suggested somewhere in the region of eleven dollars and
fifty cents for a car to went to the zone.
We don't know what the charge is going to end up.
Another panel is going to look at that, but the
aim is to raise a billion dollars in revenue a
year that can be used to basically borrow money that
can then be invested in the mainly in the subway system,
(02:34):
but also in the buses and commuter around. Even fifty
for cars, I think it was twenty five and thirty
cents for trucks. That seems like a big price hike, right,
But it's kind of that delicate balance. If you charge
the drivers too little, you'll make a little bit money,
but you'll still have traffic jams because everybody's still going
to be there. Charged too much, and then you risk
turning off too many drivers. I know that the congestion
(02:56):
notion of congestion pricing has been around for a while.
There's a lot of other cities in the world do
have this type of system right now in New York
at eleven and fifty that was kind of a set
see that they were talking about, but in the legislation
that they passed in New York at the weekend, what
they said was they wanted to have what's called variable pricing.
So we don't know exactly what it will look like.
You know, maybe it will be at certain times of
(03:17):
the day it will cost more to come in from Manhattan.
Other times of the day. Perhaps they will actually have
a way of the ideal scenarios, they would have a
way of actually measuring the amount of traffic going into
the city and how congested the area is, so that
they can charge more at specific congested times. But in
other cities in the world where they've tried this, like
in London, in the first year, they saw a massive
(03:37):
reduction in congestion. I think travel speeds increased by something
like thirty percent, and they saw something in the region
of an eleven shift in people from using their cars
to using mass trendsit walking or biking. They've done studies
on how fast cars are going in areas like this.
In New York City had the slowest downtown business district
speed at nine miles an hour. Anybody that has been
(03:59):
to the it knows how slow it is to get
through that main part of the city. Right there, like
in Midtown. What's going on in New York specifically with
the traffic. I mean, I know there's a lot of construction,
there's a lot of cars just park wherever they want
to deliveries. There's a ton of ride sharing cars between
Uber and Lyft. Now they're all contributing to the traffic there,
(04:20):
But what's the real problem, and specifically on the ride
sharing cars, are they going to be subject to this
charge as well? Nine miles an hour actually would be
a dream speed to move from Manhattan that these days.
That was like an average that was given out by
n RICS, this analytics them. But New York City itself
says that in some parts of Manhattan the speed is
actually somewhere closer to about five miles an hour some buses.
(04:43):
It's actually quicker to walk across the city than to
take the bus. So the speeds here are are pretty terrible.
And as you points out, you know, there are a
lot of different reasons for that, like construction. Even even
additional bike lanes basically takes away road space which make
cotton tend to make the roads more congested. But yeah,
the right hailing cars, Uber and Lift have just completely
(05:03):
swamped the city. So in the last five years we've
gone from none of those cars to about eighty thousand
of those cars, and they've been mainly concentrated in the
central business district, which is where the congestion zone is
going to be. One of the big criticisms of uber lift.
Although they have increased availability and accessibility of taxis, those
(05:24):
cars spend a huge portion of their time circling empty
waiting for rides, and those empty cars are obviously contributing
to congestion. As far as the fee goes, I don't
believe that they're going to be subject to the congestion
fee that we're currently talking about, but they are already
paying a fee that was passed in the state budget
last year. And so every uber and lift trip is
(05:47):
subject to a two dollar and seventy five cent charge,
and that's any trip that actually touches a congestion zone
that's even bigger than the one we're talking about. Yellow
taxis are also paying extra. They're paying two dollars and
fifty cents, And if you take a pool dride where
you share it with a with a stranger, that's seventy
five cents per trip. In New York. There is a
massive need to fix the subway. New Yorkers are extremely
(06:10):
proud of the subway. I think a lot of people
around the country kind of fascinated by the subway, and
in the last few years it's just become guyer. The delays,
the disruptions have been pretty constant and consistent, and people
have had enough. I think they look around the world
at Paris, London and other cities and they say, why
can't we have a modern system that's just way more reliable.
(06:33):
The MTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Authorities that runs the subway,
basically have said it's going to cost US forty billion
dollars to fix the subway. The governor and state legislators
have decided that the best way of funding that fix
is congestion pricing, which basically a funds mass transit that
be hopefully reduces congestion in the city. So you kind
(06:55):
of win on both ends. In other cities, they don't
have an enormous, century all old mass transit system that's
some guy a need of funds, but they do have us,
say in l a like a modern transit system that
perhaps needs expansion, and so congestion pricing is. I guess,
in many ways a good fix on all sides. You
get to hopefully reduce pollution, get to address climate change,
(07:18):
and you get to help people get where they're going faster.
And at the same time, for the other people who
depend on mass transit, they get more reliable, more frequent service.
Paul Berger, reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you. We're not going
(07:40):
to comment on security clearances. That's the policy of the
White House and that continues to be the policy of
the White House. Joining us now is Andrew Desiderio, congressional
reporter for Politico. We're gonna be talking about the new
White House whistleblower that we have. It is Tricia knew Bold.
She is a White House security advisor for eighteen years,
and she told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that
(08:01):
there were twenty five denials for security clearance applications that
were overridden by the Trump administration. She goes into all
sorts of reasonings for why she came forward with this.
Among them, she said she wanted to restore the integrity
of the office there. What do we know about Trician
Nubold and what she's saying happened in the White House there.
So she's worked at the White House for almost two
decades now under Republican and Democratic administrations handling security clearances.
(08:24):
This is basically an adjudication of who can handle top
secret classified information in our government, and often times as
they go through these screenings, they find problematic aspects of
individual's path that might preclude them from viewing classified information,
or especially viewing classified information while you are in the
vicinity of the President of the United States. So her
job is super important and she's been doing it for
(08:45):
almost two decades. What she's specifically alleging is that there
were many instances in which intelligence officials had recommended that
certain individuals, including some top officials close to the president,
not get top secret security clearances because of those issues
in their perspective path. But what she found was that
her supervisor at the time, this guy named Carl Klein,
(09:06):
who was the director of the White House Personal Security Office,
was essentially overriding those recommendations and giving those individuals full
blown security clearances anyway. And she felt that despite all
her complaints about the matter internally at the White House,
nothing was really getting resolved or changing so she felt
like coming to Congress was her last avenue. According to
Missnewbule's there was a range of issues that were disqualifying
(09:30):
for some of these people for an influence, conflicts of
interest concerning personal conduct, financial problems. I think Davis said,
drug use in criminal conducts. So there's a ton of
different things, and over the course of twenty five people.
You know, these don't apply to everybody. There was a
case where she wrote her and some colleagues wrote a
fourteen page memo about why they were going to deny
the security clearance for somebody, a particular person, and that
(09:52):
still got overrated. Yeah, that's exactly right. There were numerous
other examples in there too along the same lines, but
the bottom line was that she thought that there was
undue influence within somewhere at the White House. We do
know that it's been reported in the past that the
President of the United States had directed his chief of
staff to grant Jared Kushner has done in law and
senior advisor a full security clearance, even though there were
(10:13):
issues in his background concerning foreign contacts and other matters
that were not initially disclosed. The President has not necessarily
confirmed or denied that story, but it's been reported pretty
widely and that part of what intensified the House Oversight
Committee's investigation into this issue. It's a super important one.
Like I said, it's very rare for someone who has
these types of issues in their path have their security
(10:36):
clearance overridden essentially. But the President of the United States
does have the power to do that unilaterally. But what
Trisian Newbold was saying was that there should be at
least be some checks and balances in place, and that's
what she felt like her role was, and she felt
that she wasn't able to live up to that given
the circumstances. The House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah
Cummings has gotten some blowback or at least met some
(10:57):
resistance from the White House in documents that they've been testing.
So it hasn't gone very smoothly for them on this
front yet. No, it hasn't. The White House has been
routinely refusing to turn over documents related to the security
clearances of specific individuals, citing, of course, privacy concerns and
other issues, but the Committee has maintained that it's within
Congress's right to essentially compel the White House to turn
(11:20):
over many of these documents. And as I mentioned, the
investigation has been intensifying lately. It's gotten pretty heated in
terms of the the partisanspiring between the White House and
Democrats your own Capitol Hill. But it's certainly something that
Democrats believe is a top priority for them as they
continue to investigate all aspects of the Trump administration. Yeah,
and they're even going to start authorizing subpoenas if they
(11:40):
have to. Now. I mean that just kind of shows
how serious they're getting there and how close they want
to get to this. They have a list of people
whose security clearances they do want to probe, Ivanka Jared Kushner,
John Bolton, Michael Flynn, Rob Porter, so a bunch of
people that they're looking into. This is going to be
the ongoing fight for that committee right now. Yeah, that's
that's right. And I will mention you since you mentioned subpoenas,
(12:02):
the committee is actually going to vote to subpoena for
Carl Klein, who I mentioned earlier used to serve as
the White House Personnel Security Director. He now or the Pentagon,
but the White House has refused to make him available
for a deposition. So that's why the Committee feels like
they need to issue the subpoena. It will be issued
in all likelihood it will be a party line vote, obviously,
but the committee wants to talk to Mr Klein because
(12:23):
of many of the allegation laid out by Trisian new
Bold and they and the Committee also said that they
were able to corroborate many of Trician new Bold's claims.
They didn't get specific about who else they talked to,
but they said that they talked to other officials within
the Trump administration in order to corroborate many of those
claims through witness interviews, documents, and the like. Andrew Deceidario,
congressional reporter for Politico, thank you very much for joining us.
(12:45):
Thank you. It's not beef, that's impossible. It tasted just
like a whopper ship taste. Why patty was zero milligrounds
of cholesterol, the seventeen grounds of protein one d whopper
in zero percent beef. We know it's impossible to believe
(13:08):
the impossible whopper only at Burger King in St. Louis
joining us now. John Porter, reporter for The Verge, Meet
alternatives in fast food places are starting to expand their choices.
The latest one that we heard about is Burger King
is going to be starting to sell a version of
the Impossible Burger. It's going to be their Impossible Whopper.
Not only Burger King, but Red Robin, which has a
(13:29):
bunch of chains on the West Coast. They're gonna also
be selling the Impossible Burger at their restaurants. But tell
us about Burger King and its decision to start selling
this Impossible Whopper for now, it sounds like they're kind
of trialing it. They so far, they've announced they're gonna
be selling it across fifty nine locations in the St. Louis,
Missouri area, but they've kind of indicated that if this
goes well, then they would be willing to consider rolling
(13:50):
out a cup of nationwide in the US, which would
be like over seven thousand locations. So it's really the
biggest chain so far that's kind of committed to like
experimenting with with kind of meat free burgers. Really, the
Impossible Burger already had a sort of a trial kind
of you want to call it, at Whitecastle. Whitecastle already
started selling slighter versions of the Impossible Burger, and they
(14:11):
said that they met sales quotas pretty early on and
there was a lot of enthusiasm for it there, So
I can't imagine it failing completely in St. Louis, which,
as you said, would lead to them being in over
seventy locations in Burger Kings. If everything goes well at
this point, it's definitely a novelty. I have definitely gone
to restaurants because I know that they serve a meat
free burger, and I'll go there and I'll like, on purpose,
(14:32):
order the meat free burger. But this coming to Burger King.
Burging is the kind of place They're just everywhere. It's
the kind of place you could accidentally find yourself out.
So it would be really interesting to see if the
kind of person that wants to go to Burger King
to get a burger, who hasn't specifically chosen a restaurant
to try out specific recipe, if they will go for
the meat free option. I think it's it will be
a really interesting test to see if it kind of
(14:53):
resonates with a wider audience. Really, the two main companies
that are kind of battling it out right now are
Impossible Foods, which was going to be featured at Burger
King and then Beyond Meat is another company. Karl's Jr.
Had their trial at this I think it started in
January where they put the Beyond Meat burger in their
famous start. Now that one I had, and it was
pretty delicious. I think I can still recognize meat if
(15:16):
I was given a meat burger. But it's funny some
of the executives from Burger King are saying, you know,
in our initial trials, some of our customers and even
employees can't tell the difference. And I don't know that
could be pr spin, but that's kind of where they're
going out right now. I can't believe it though personally,
I think a lot of it comes down to how
many condiments and stuff you have you have in the burger.
I agree. So I tried out the Impossible Burger at
(15:37):
a place called Fat Burger and Buffaloes Express last time
I was in l A. Honestly, I thought it was delicious,
but there was there was a lot of sauce in there.
There are a lot of like other flavorings, Gherkins, that
sort of stuff. So really impossible burger. They say that
when they test it, they taste They tested both naked
and then also like fully loaded in a burger to
kind of try and get a decent idea of how
(15:58):
it will taste in different situations. I couldn't tell the difference.
I don't know if that's just my specific palate, but yeah,
it's it's definitely interesting. One of the interesting things at
Burger King they said they're still going to top it
with me and is so vegans would not be able
to enjoy it just outright. They'd probably have to ask
for it without So what is the Impossible Foods burger
made out of? It's based out of heam, it comes
(16:19):
from some soybean roots or something. It's soy based. It's
making kind of like the roots of a soybean plant
and then apparently mass produced using geast. And this kind
of changed in January where they introduced the second version
of their Impossible Burger, and the emphasis there like this
version of the burger is apparently a lot healthier burger.
You can't said that it has fifteen percent less fat
than a standard whopper. It's got apparently ninety less cholesterol.
(16:42):
And then you'd also hope that there are kind of
flavor enhancements and stuff going on. In there as well,
and then in addition to soy, they've kind of they've
got other ingredients to kind of give more of the
texture of a burger, which I think is the more
important thing when you've got lots of condiments and stuff
going on. It's kind of like the tiding the taste
of the burger. Burger King obviously they've had like this
really close relationship with beef, and for a long time
(17:05):
all their Whopper rappers said on beef, no filler. So
now the new rapper is gonna say Whopper zero percent beef.
But this is kind of the trend. All a lot
of the fast foods are looking for other options to
provide for their customers. Yeah, it's like there are a
few advantages that going neet free has, you know, it's
it's healthier. That's the ethical argument that should we be
(17:27):
eating so many animals? I think for me though, the
biggest argument for it it is just the environmental one.
Like the share amount of greenhouse gasses that produce just
for me and animal agriculture, it's astonishing. It's it's apparently
between like fourteen and eighteen percent of greenhouse gasses apparently
a really significant part of that literally cow farts, which
apparently could almost like four percent to greenhouse gas emissions.
(17:51):
So it is an environmental problem, and we can have
lots of conversations about moving to electric cars and more
environmentally friendly forms of energy production, but there are other
things we can do as well, and the way we
eat does contribute to them. And so if you can
go into a mass market burger place and if you
can buy a meat free burger, I think that's a
great thing. Although what thing we haven't talked about so
(18:13):
far is price. I think Burking have said that the
Impossible Whopper it's going to cost about a dollar more
than the existing whopper. Maybe that that the novelty aspect
of it will encourage people to to pay more, But
that will be really interesting to see if it's if
it's not a like for like, if it's if you're
actually having to make that choice to pay a little
bit more, will that discourage people? I've got no idea right.
(18:33):
One interesting note that I thought in the whole testing
phase of this is that Impossible Foods did ship one
of Burger King's flame broiling machines overnight to its headquarters
so that they can ensure that the paddy wouldn't break
apart in mass production, and it really has that feel
and taste of the regular whoppers at burger Kings. So
obviously the Impossible Burgers. It's been around for a few
(18:55):
years now, it's being sold in various different restaurants. You
can imagine the kind of places that would go out
of their way to buy in a load of like
Impossible burger patties are probably going to be the kinds
of places where they're got to take a lot of
care over how they cook them. So another it will
be a big test for the Impossible Buggers whether they
can mass produce them in burger Kings and whether they'll
still hold up with the way those guys kind of
produce like mountains and mountains of food every single day,
(19:17):
produce it really quickly. It's a very difficult environment for
food to be and if if it's if it's low quality.
So yeah, big tests for Impossible. John Porter, reporter at
The Verge. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank
you that's it for today. Join us on social media
(19:37):
at Daily Dive Pod on Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast
on Feast. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us and I heard Radio or subscribe wherever you get
your podcast. The Daily Dive is produced by Mirandum Reno
and engineered by Tony Sarrantina. I'm Oscar Ramrors and this
(19:57):
was your Daily Dive five
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