February 8, 2021 • 19 mins
Last week was a tough one for Republicans as they battled for balance within their own party. A fight between more traditional members and the Trump faction. The big questions, what to do with Liz Cheney who voted to impeach Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene who has supported conspiracy theories in the past. This week, it will be all about Trump’s second impeachment trial as Democrats have accused him of inciting insurrection. Ginger Gibson, deputy Washington digital editor at NBC News, breaks down what to expect.
Next, the pandemic has disrupted our lives in many ways including our social lives and friendships, and has possibly erased an entire category of friends we once enjoyed. People that may not be in our inner circle, but acquaintances, friends you see while watching sports, even co-workers you don’t see as much anymore. Amanda Mull staff writer at The Atlantic, joins us for why these types of friendships are vital and the deeper appreciation we have for them after the pandemic.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday, February. I'm Oscar Emiras in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. Last week was a rough
one for Republicans as they battled for balance within their
own party, a fight between more traditional members and the
Trump faction. The big questions what to do with Liz Cheney,
(00:20):
who voted to impeach Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Green, who
has supported conspiracy theories in the past. This week there
would all be about Trump's second impeachment trial, as Democrats
have accused them of inciting insurrection. Gender Gibson, Deputy Washington
Digital editor at NBC News, breaks down what to expect next.
The pandemic has disrupted our lives in many ways, including
(00:41):
our social lives and friendships, and has possibly a race
and entire category of friends. We once enjoyed people that
may not be in our inner circle, but acquaintances, friends
you see will watching sports, even co worker if you
don't see as much anymore. Amanda Mall, staff writer at
The Atlantic, joins us for why these types of friendships
are vital and the deeper apreciation we have for them
after the pandemic. It sneeze without the noise let's dive in.
(01:07):
I remember when my detail came up to me and said, Mr. Hoyer,
we have to get out of here right away. And
they've just taken a speaker Pelosi out and as I
walked out into the speaker's lobby, he said, the capital
has been breached. Those words were stunning to me. Breached
by a foreign enemy, No, breached by people sent to
(01:27):
the Capitol by the President of the United States of America.
Is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital Editor at NBC News.
Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for having me. This
past week was quite the week for Republicans, you know,
both in the House and the Senate. They had to
deal with what to do with Liz Cheney, the third
highest ranking Republican in the House. You know, there was
(01:49):
a vote to remove her from her leadership position there
because she supported the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
And then also Marjorie Taylor Green, who is a time
freshman Republican in the House who has a lot of
stuff going against her, you know, with Q and on
theories talking about nine eleven school shootings. She was receiving
(02:11):
a lot of heat from that. But Republicans had to
decide what to do. You know, was the classical Republican
kind of fraction of the party going to take more
charge or is the Trump wing of the party going
to take more charge? So Ginger, tell us what was
going on. We had a great piece at NBC News
from two of my colleagues, Shilka Poor and John Allen,
(02:32):
looking at how this fight over MAJORI Taylor Green and
Liz Cheney really sort of exposed the root of the
crisis right now inside the Republican Party. I mean, this
is a party that's trying to figure out its future.
It was really appended by former President Donald Trump. He
sort of broke a lot of the systems and positions
(02:55):
that they had held for so long. And really his
critics in the parties day promoted people who embraced conspiracy theories,
who were willing to repeat unbounded lies about the election.
And the party can't decide what does it do now
and how does it treat the people who are part
of that action. And so we saw that fight last week.
(03:17):
We saw the House Republicans really trying to decide what
to do. And you talked about these two big things.
List Cheney, who the daughter of a former vice president
who really is considered a future leader in the party.
Many think she could be the first Republican woman Speaker
of the House if they take control of the Chamber again.
And she really surprised a lot of people when she
(03:39):
decided to vote to impeach Donald Trump, and that surprise
included a number of Republicans who thought that she should
no longer be in leadership. They voted. It was a
secret ballot that vote that they took, and of the Republicans,
hundred and forty one sided with Cheney, hundred forty compared
(04:01):
to sixty one who voted against her. And really a
lot of people are saying that secret ballot tally shows
just how tired some Republicans are of Donald Trump. They
wouldn't vote to impeach them. Only ten Republicans did, but
a hundred and forty five of them were okay that
one of their leaders did. And then, on the other hand,
was this Green fight. This is a woman who got
(04:22):
elected to Congress for the first time from Georgia, and
there's all these videos that are on the Internet of
her really repeating conspiracy theories, and she has said not
quite that she was sorry for them, but she now
realizes that some of them were wrong. She said that
on the House floor on Thursday. But then again a
deep division of Republicans here, many who would rather her
(04:44):
not be the face of their party, who want to
move on, who think that she's maybe doing some harm
to their party. A lot of them, however, who think
that Democrats shouldn't be stripping her of her committee seats,
that that's the wrong process to go about this. But
we saw h McConnell do a really unusual move for
him getting involved in in a house fight as the
(05:05):
Senate Republican leader, criticizing and not by name, but you know,
clearly criticizing Green. And this is really just examples of
where the party is trying to sort out what they
do now. And it's also clear that they don't really
have an answer. They're not really sure, and I think
we're going to see a power struggle not just in
the next year, but really over the next four years
(05:27):
until they nominate someone else to run for president in
two And Marjorie Taylor Green, to your point, is becoming
more of a household name. There was just a Political
Morning Console poll that shows that you know, more people
know her name no about her and have opinions about her.
One of the things kind of the way you're talking
about how really nobody has the answer yet. There was
(05:48):
a major Republican donor who was talking about all this
and says, you know, the base really isn't there yet
on tossing President Trump overboard. You know, in the Republican
Party's no longer run by elites in Washington. It's all
these grassroots people kind of like Marjorie Taylor Green, and
they're listening to those people. You know, the public is
listening to those people, not the old Republican Party. This
(06:10):
is what they have to fight with, you know. And
Kevin McCarthy, the leader in the House for the Republicans,
he says he wants a big tent, so obviously you
don't want to alienate. That's just a delicate balance that
they're going through now. But you know, really every party
kind of goes through that after they lose power. We
talked to a strategist who said, look, Kevin McCarthy's goal
is to win within his Republican caucus, right, Miss McConnell
(06:32):
wants to win the majority using fifty and a majority
of the fifty states to get enough senator so they
have slightly different goals. But I think you're right. There's
this division within the Republican Party and McCarthy is trying
to keep all of the pieces happy, and it's a
very difficult task, especially when you consider how far apart
some of them are. The big news this week is
(06:54):
the impeachment trial, the second impeachment trial for President Trump.
We've already seen a bunch of legal filings from both
outsides on how they want to play this. You know,
Democrats are saying that the president is singularly responsible for this.
He insided the insurrection that happened at the Capitol Building.
The Republicans, for their part, wanna say that this is
about the First Amendment and the president was just speaking
(07:15):
his opinion on this. It doesn't really seem like he
will be convicted. There was already forty five senators that
said they don't think that this trial should go forward.
Senators could consider censuring the president in hopes that maybe
he doesn't run again. So this is kind of what
we're playing with for this week. So the trial is
scheduled to kick off Monday afternoon. We're going to hear
(07:35):
Democrats try to lay their case out. I would be
expecting to see visuals, right. We understand that the Democrats
have brought in experts at making trial videos to try
to sort of piece together. None of this will be
much of a surprise. You know, the last impeachment trial,
we were dealing with a phone call that none of
us heard, that wasn't recorded, that there were descriptions of
(07:57):
but we couldn't listen to. Now we're talking about speaches
and a mob and a riot that most of us
watched on television or that in my case, I was
the building, right, so as were the senators who are
going to be experiencing this. So they're gonna be laying
out I think a timeline, and as you said, the
former president's attorneys trying to argue that's sort of on
the rules that this is not constitutional, that you can't
(08:20):
go after a formal president and then his speech should
be protected. GOP senators don't want any of the classic
the election was stolen stuff to be brought up in this,
you know, they want to kind of debate it on
the constitutionality of it. He's out of office already, there's
no need to go through this procedure. In Trump's legal briefings,
they've already said, you know, we deny that he did this,
(08:40):
he didn't incite the insurrection. That's kind of how it's
going there. And as I mentioned before, you know, other
senators are considering censuring the president. That's the big hope
that they, you know, maybe he doesn't run again, and
maybe for the Republican Party that might be a benefit
to if they can be done with that part of it.
But as we were just talking about, with the fight
that they were having within their party, who knows if
(09:01):
they're ready to even do that. Last week, Senator Tim
Kane of Virginia Democrat said that he didn't file his
resolution to censure Trump because he didn't think it had
enough support. So at this point, they're not even putting
a bill forward. They're not even filing one because they're
afraid they don't have enough support. But I do think
that there are Republicans again, like we saw in the House,
like if they could vote by secret ballot, we would
(09:23):
be seeing a bit of a different position here, but
they can't. They have to put their name on a
on a boat. And for that reason, one of my
colleagues like to describe it as the escape hatch. They're
going to take the constitutional escape hatch so that they
don't have to say how they think about what Trump
did and said that day. Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital
editor at NBC News, thank you very much for joining us.
(09:44):
Thanks for having me. I miss seeing the bartenders that
I saw every weekend. I miss seeing lots of people
who I know by first name, or who I know
by site that who's you know, social media information I
don't have, And it's just sort of snowballed from there,
(10:05):
and I realized that this was something that a lot
of other people were experiencing too. Joining us now is
Amanda mull, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thanks for joining us, Amanda,
Thank you for having me. We're gonna be going back
and looking at coronavirus, the pandemic, kind of the big
year that we all shut down for many years to come,
kind of how it affected everything. Really, you know, it's
(10:26):
been the big disruptor of our lives when it comes
to health, when it comes to the economy, and when
it comes to our social lives. And that's one of
the interesting parts of it, is how our social lives
have changed and friendships in particular, Amanda, you looked into
how maybe whole categories of friendships have been erased throughout
this These closures and shutdowns tell us a little bit
(10:47):
about that. Well, this is something that I had noticed
pretty early on in the pandemic, but I sort of
chopped it up to the fact that I am a
really extroverted social, chatty person. I love to chat with people,
people who work at the coffee shop I go to,
and the ups guy who always comes to my building
and things like that. I just like to talk. So
I noticed that I was missing all of these like
(11:09):
little incidental interactions pretty early, but I didn't know if
that was something that people who aren't as social as
I am. We're feeling, so it's time we're on. I
noticed more and more types of people I was missing
out on, and I'm just bummed out. I felt about
it all the time, and eventually I realized while watching
a Netflix show in which one of the first scenes
of the series is the main character meeting her boyfriend
(11:30):
at a bar while everybody's watching baseball, and I just
thought about watching football in a bar, the bar that
I go to every fall weekend normally, and realized that
I just really missed being around a bunch of like,
sort of familiar people all doing the same thing at
the same time. I missed seeing the bartenders that I
saw every weekend. I missed seeing lots of people who
I know by first name, or who I know by
(11:51):
site that who's you know, social media information I don't have,
and it's just sort of snowballed from there. And I
realized that this was something that a lot of other
more experiencing too. We have our inner circle, and we
know those people and we try to keep in contact
with them as much as possible. But this kind of
outer circle, these people that also enrich our lives in
a lot of different ways. They can be just as
(12:14):
important as our main relationships and sociology. I like the
way you you mentioned this doesn't really have a name
for this, but they are called weak ties. So this
is anything from acquaintances as you were mentioning people in
the bars, all these other people, and I'm with you
on that front. I miss those people. I think one
of the reasons that people have had such a difficult
(12:34):
time articulating this sense of loss that they have over
these people in their lives is that we don't really
have language in the US to talk about all of
these different types of connections. We have the word friend,
and we have the word acquaintance, but there's just not
like a rich language around all the people that matter
in your life. At first, I felt a little bit
selfish because I have been really lucky. I have a
lot of close friends within a couple of blocks of
(12:56):
my apartment. I have been seeing them throughout the situation
in safe way. We have access to resources to do that,
so and I felt a little bit like I was
being greedy by missing all of these other people. But
I started to look into the sociology of it, and
we need all of these different types of ties and
relationships and interactions in order to keep us mentally and
physically healthy. This has kind of far reaching effects. It's
(13:17):
not just people at the bar and all that. It
crawls into work life, working from home life. All these
different types of friends and casual encounters that we would
have would shape you kind of bring some little joy
to your life. But these are different. Talk about this
in the context of the workplace now, because that's another
big disruptor we've been dealing with. One of the first
ways that it occurred to me that this might harm
(13:38):
people in the long term in some way or at
least change their lives in some way in the long term.
Is at work offices are built environments meant to encourage
certain type of behaviors, and often those behaviors are coworkers
getting together and chatting for a few minutes in the
communal kitchen, people collaborating with each other on a project
in a conference room, things like that, and just being
able to look across the table in a meeting and
(14:01):
see someone else having the same reaction to something that
you're having. All those little interactions and then being able
to run into a cup of coffee with somebody spur
the moment because you run into ran into them in
the hallway. Those interactions make somebody part of a workplace,
make somebody part of an organization, Especially when you're young
or when you're new to a job, having those little
(14:21):
interactions help you integrate into the structure of the place
that you are. If you can't get integrated into that
type of structure, then you have a hard time making
a name for yourself, becoming a valued co worker. Things
like that, and it also hurts collaboration. I talked to
one researcher about some stuff he had found about conversational
reciprocity and what we need in the workplace, especially once
(14:45):
one person is instructing another person and how to do
something is unstructured. Time for the person who is doing
the task to put in their two cents to become
an equal part of the conversation with with their boss essentially,
and on zoom and things like that, you lose those
opportunities because so many of these digital interactions are very
structured and everybody knows going into them who is supposed
(15:06):
to talk and when and about what for how long.
On the workplace front, I've definitely noticed that myself firsthand.
Where a lot of people I work at a radio
station right so a lot of people are working from
home right now. We've had to hire on a few
new people as well, and I always find myself telling
them it's not normally like this. There's a lot more people,
there's a lot more interaction them starting out. They don't
(15:27):
know any of the other departments, people in other departments.
You know, it's very isolated in a sense where the
programming side of things, we're just kind of doing our
own thing, but it's just interesting how how it does
shape these workplace relationships as well. It's just so important.
You spoke to somebody, an expert that studies friendships, and
they said, many different kinds of relationships are important. Man
(15:49):
does not thrive on close friendships alone. And it's so
true these kind of all these other people really round
out our days. You mentioned something too about kind of
isolation in your our goal. When we don't have these
other types of friendships and interactions to it can push
you further into isolation and in our bubbles and things
that we see how these conspiracy theories start to flourish
(16:12):
because we're pushed into isolation and these tinier bubbles. One
of the things that really struck me as I was
doing the research on this top I get talking to
these experts is that the weak ties in our lives,
the people on the periphery of our social lives, are
a useful grounding resource. They keep us tied to our communities,
(16:32):
to the physical world, to the people around us, to
the cities we live in. And when you lose those people,
a lot of people lose, are really meaningful source of
a source of support, source of comfort, source of like
a shared understanding of the world around you. So people
go online looking for that. There are healthy ways to
find that online. You might find a forum that's all
(16:54):
about knitting, or a forum that's all about baseball or
whatever it is that your interest is. Or if you
end up on the wrong side of the algorithm, you
might end up in q and on, or you might
end up in an extremist Facebook group or something like that,
because what those groups offer and what they prey on
in people is people looking for a sense of certainty,
(17:15):
people looking for an order to the world and understanding
of the forces that are acting on them and what
they can do about it. When you lose all your
social ties because of a long term disaster like the
pandemic that we're in, those things become even more seductive
to people, which is I think a big reason that
we've seen an acceleration and those types of groups on
(17:35):
the Internet in the past year. According to some of
the experts you spoke to, though all is not lost.
These relationships, these weak ties, so to speak, can be
built up back again, and we're seeing vaccines roll out.
We're hoping, obviously things will get back to normal soon
and These are the kind of things that can pick
up pretty quickly. I did like the way, you know,
people who have been saying that there could be a
(17:56):
roaring twenties similar to what happened after nineteen eighteen and
the flu pandemic back then, and now we have this
better understanding how of how important these relationships are to us.
One of the big upsides that we have in front
of us is that weak ties are definitionally low pressure relationships,
so they're these are not generally people who are going
(18:17):
to be offended that you didn't text them to keep
up during the pandemic. These are not people who you're
turning down zoom invites from. These are people that once
you see them again and once you both confirm you're
still there and still happy to be there, things should
go in those relationships back to largely normal, and I
think that people will be really, really happy to see
(18:37):
everybody and perhaps bring with that an understanding of what
all of the people around us mean to our lives.
Not just necessarily are very close friends and people who
are like us in you know, socio economic ways that
we would spend intentional time with, but the people who
work at the grocery store, your verista at the coffee shop.
People who work and exist in ways in our lives
(18:58):
that our cultured doesn't always value. I think the understanding
all that we lost when we lost them as part
of our everyday lives could be a step towards revaluing
them in the future and understanding how much people who
performed labor like that and you play roles like that
really matter in a society into ourselves as individuals. Amanda Mole,
(19:19):
staff writer at The Atlantic. Thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you for having me. That's it for
to day. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
pod in both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating and tell us a scores that
(19:39):
jurns us in. Follow us and I Heard Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode of The
Daily Divers produced by Big Right and engineered by Tony Sorrentina.
I'm lost for Ramirez. This is your Daily Dive
It's Monday, February. I'm Oscar Emiras in Los Angeles and
this is the Daily Dive. Last week was a rough
one for Republicans as they battled for balance within their
own party, a fight between more traditional members and the
Trump faction. The big questions what to do with Liz Cheney,
(00:20):
who voted to impeach Trump, and Marjorie Taylor Green, who
has supported conspiracy theories in the past. This week there
would all be about Trump's second impeachment trial, as Democrats
have accused them of inciting insurrection. Gender Gibson, Deputy Washington
Digital editor at NBC News, breaks down what to expect next.
The pandemic has disrupted our lives in many ways, including
(00:41):
our social lives and friendships, and has possibly a race
and entire category of friends. We once enjoyed people that
may not be in our inner circle, but acquaintances, friends
you see will watching sports, even co worker if you
don't see as much anymore. Amanda Mall, staff writer at
The Atlantic, joins us for why these types of friendships
are vital and the deeper apreciation we have for them
after the pandemic. It sneeze without the noise let's dive in.
(01:07):
I remember when my detail came up to me and said, Mr. Hoyer,
we have to get out of here right away. And
they've just taken a speaker Pelosi out and as I
walked out into the speaker's lobby, he said, the capital
has been breached. Those words were stunning to me. Breached
by a foreign enemy, No, breached by people sent to
(01:27):
the Capitol by the President of the United States of America.
Is Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital Editor at NBC News.
Thanks for joining us, Ginger, thanks for having me. This
past week was quite the week for Republicans, you know,
both in the House and the Senate. They had to
deal with what to do with Liz Cheney, the third
highest ranking Republican in the House. You know, there was
(01:49):
a vote to remove her from her leadership position there
because she supported the impeachment of former President Donald Trump.
And then also Marjorie Taylor Green, who is a time
freshman Republican in the House who has a lot of
stuff going against her, you know, with Q and on
theories talking about nine eleven school shootings. She was receiving
(02:11):
a lot of heat from that. But Republicans had to
decide what to do. You know, was the classical Republican
kind of fraction of the party going to take more
charge or is the Trump wing of the party going
to take more charge? So Ginger, tell us what was
going on. We had a great piece at NBC News
from two of my colleagues, Shilka Poor and John Allen,
(02:32):
looking at how this fight over MAJORI Taylor Green and
Liz Cheney really sort of exposed the root of the
crisis right now inside the Republican Party. I mean, this
is a party that's trying to figure out its future.
It was really appended by former President Donald Trump. He
sort of broke a lot of the systems and positions
(02:55):
that they had held for so long. And really his
critics in the parties day promoted people who embraced conspiracy theories,
who were willing to repeat unbounded lies about the election.
And the party can't decide what does it do now
and how does it treat the people who are part
of that action. And so we saw that fight last week.
(03:17):
We saw the House Republicans really trying to decide what
to do. And you talked about these two big things.
List Cheney, who the daughter of a former vice president
who really is considered a future leader in the party.
Many think she could be the first Republican woman Speaker
of the House if they take control of the Chamber again.
And she really surprised a lot of people when she
(03:39):
decided to vote to impeach Donald Trump, and that surprise
included a number of Republicans who thought that she should
no longer be in leadership. They voted. It was a
secret ballot that vote that they took, and of the Republicans,
hundred and forty one sided with Cheney, hundred forty compared
(04:01):
to sixty one who voted against her. And really a
lot of people are saying that secret ballot tally shows
just how tired some Republicans are of Donald Trump. They
wouldn't vote to impeach them. Only ten Republicans did, but
a hundred and forty five of them were okay that
one of their leaders did. And then, on the other hand,
was this Green fight. This is a woman who got
(04:22):
elected to Congress for the first time from Georgia, and
there's all these videos that are on the Internet of
her really repeating conspiracy theories, and she has said not
quite that she was sorry for them, but she now
realizes that some of them were wrong. She said that
on the House floor on Thursday. But then again a
deep division of Republicans here, many who would rather her
(04:44):
not be the face of their party, who want to
move on, who think that she's maybe doing some harm
to their party. A lot of them, however, who think
that Democrats shouldn't be stripping her of her committee seats,
that that's the wrong process to go about this. But
we saw h McConnell do a really unusual move for
him getting involved in in a house fight as the
(05:05):
Senate Republican leader, criticizing and not by name, but you know,
clearly criticizing Green. And this is really just examples of
where the party is trying to sort out what they
do now. And it's also clear that they don't really
have an answer. They're not really sure, and I think
we're going to see a power struggle not just in
the next year, but really over the next four years
(05:27):
until they nominate someone else to run for president in
two And Marjorie Taylor Green, to your point, is becoming
more of a household name. There was just a Political
Morning Console poll that shows that you know, more people
know her name no about her and have opinions about her.
One of the things kind of the way you're talking
about how really nobody has the answer yet. There was
(05:48):
a major Republican donor who was talking about all this
and says, you know, the base really isn't there yet
on tossing President Trump overboard. You know, in the Republican
Party's no longer run by elites in Washington. It's all
these grassroots people kind of like Marjorie Taylor Green, and
they're listening to those people. You know, the public is
listening to those people, not the old Republican Party. This
(06:10):
is what they have to fight with, you know. And
Kevin McCarthy, the leader in the House for the Republicans,
he says he wants a big tent, so obviously you
don't want to alienate. That's just a delicate balance that
they're going through now. But you know, really every party
kind of goes through that after they lose power. We
talked to a strategist who said, look, Kevin McCarthy's goal
is to win within his Republican caucus, right, Miss McConnell
(06:32):
wants to win the majority using fifty and a majority
of the fifty states to get enough senator so they
have slightly different goals. But I think you're right. There's
this division within the Republican Party and McCarthy is trying
to keep all of the pieces happy, and it's a
very difficult task, especially when you consider how far apart
some of them are. The big news this week is
(06:54):
the impeachment trial, the second impeachment trial for President Trump.
We've already seen a bunch of legal filings from both
outsides on how they want to play this. You know,
Democrats are saying that the president is singularly responsible for this.
He insided the insurrection that happened at the Capitol Building.
The Republicans, for their part, wanna say that this is
about the First Amendment and the president was just speaking
(07:15):
his opinion on this. It doesn't really seem like he
will be convicted. There was already forty five senators that
said they don't think that this trial should go forward.
Senators could consider censuring the president in hopes that maybe
he doesn't run again. So this is kind of what
we're playing with for this week. So the trial is
scheduled to kick off Monday afternoon. We're going to hear
(07:35):
Democrats try to lay their case out. I would be
expecting to see visuals, right. We understand that the Democrats
have brought in experts at making trial videos to try
to sort of piece together. None of this will be
much of a surprise. You know, the last impeachment trial,
we were dealing with a phone call that none of
us heard, that wasn't recorded, that there were descriptions of
(07:57):
but we couldn't listen to. Now we're talking about speaches
and a mob and a riot that most of us
watched on television or that in my case, I was
the building, right, so as were the senators who are
going to be experiencing this. So they're gonna be laying
out I think a timeline, and as you said, the
former president's attorneys trying to argue that's sort of on
the rules that this is not constitutional, that you can't
(08:20):
go after a formal president and then his speech should
be protected. GOP senators don't want any of the classic
the election was stolen stuff to be brought up in this,
you know, they want to kind of debate it on
the constitutionality of it. He's out of office already, there's
no need to go through this procedure. In Trump's legal briefings,
they've already said, you know, we deny that he did this,
(08:40):
he didn't incite the insurrection. That's kind of how it's
going there. And as I mentioned before, you know, other
senators are considering censuring the president. That's the big hope
that they, you know, maybe he doesn't run again, and
maybe for the Republican Party that might be a benefit
to if they can be done with that part of it.
But as we were just talking about, with the fight
that they were having within their party, who knows if
(09:01):
they're ready to even do that. Last week, Senator Tim
Kane of Virginia Democrat said that he didn't file his
resolution to censure Trump because he didn't think it had
enough support. So at this point, they're not even putting
a bill forward. They're not even filing one because they're
afraid they don't have enough support. But I do think
that there are Republicans again, like we saw in the House,
like if they could vote by secret ballot, we would
(09:23):
be seeing a bit of a different position here, but
they can't. They have to put their name on a
on a boat. And for that reason, one of my
colleagues like to describe it as the escape hatch. They're
going to take the constitutional escape hatch so that they
don't have to say how they think about what Trump
did and said that day. Ginger Gibson, Deputy Washington Digital
editor at NBC News, thank you very much for joining us.
(09:44):
Thanks for having me. I miss seeing the bartenders that
I saw every weekend. I miss seeing lots of people
who I know by first name, or who I know
by site that who's you know, social media information I
don't have, And it's just sort of snowballed from there,
(10:05):
and I realized that this was something that a lot
of other people were experiencing too. Joining us now is
Amanda mull, staff writer at The Atlantic. Thanks for joining us, Amanda,
Thank you for having me. We're gonna be going back
and looking at coronavirus, the pandemic, kind of the big
year that we all shut down for many years to come,
kind of how it affected everything. Really, you know, it's
(10:26):
been the big disruptor of our lives when it comes
to health, when it comes to the economy, and when
it comes to our social lives. And that's one of
the interesting parts of it, is how our social lives
have changed and friendships in particular, Amanda, you looked into
how maybe whole categories of friendships have been erased throughout
this These closures and shutdowns tell us a little bit
(10:47):
about that. Well, this is something that I had noticed
pretty early on in the pandemic, but I sort of
chopped it up to the fact that I am a
really extroverted social, chatty person. I love to chat with people,
people who work at the coffee shop I go to,
and the ups guy who always comes to my building
and things like that. I just like to talk. So
I noticed that I was missing all of these like
(11:09):
little incidental interactions pretty early, but I didn't know if
that was something that people who aren't as social as
I am. We're feeling, so it's time we're on. I
noticed more and more types of people I was missing
out on, and I'm just bummed out. I felt about
it all the time, and eventually I realized while watching
a Netflix show in which one of the first scenes
of the series is the main character meeting her boyfriend
(11:30):
at a bar while everybody's watching baseball, and I just
thought about watching football in a bar, the bar that
I go to every fall weekend normally, and realized that
I just really missed being around a bunch of like,
sort of familiar people all doing the same thing at
the same time. I missed seeing the bartenders that I
saw every weekend. I missed seeing lots of people who
I know by first name, or who I know by
(11:51):
site that who's you know, social media information I don't have,
and it's just sort of snowballed from there. And I
realized that this was something that a lot of other
more experiencing too. We have our inner circle, and we
know those people and we try to keep in contact
with them as much as possible. But this kind of
outer circle, these people that also enrich our lives in
a lot of different ways. They can be just as
(12:14):
important as our main relationships and sociology. I like the
way you you mentioned this doesn't really have a name
for this, but they are called weak ties. So this
is anything from acquaintances as you were mentioning people in
the bars, all these other people, and I'm with you
on that front. I miss those people. I think one
of the reasons that people have had such a difficult
(12:34):
time articulating this sense of loss that they have over
these people in their lives is that we don't really
have language in the US to talk about all of
these different types of connections. We have the word friend,
and we have the word acquaintance, but there's just not
like a rich language around all the people that matter
in your life. At first, I felt a little bit
selfish because I have been really lucky. I have a
lot of close friends within a couple of blocks of
(12:56):
my apartment. I have been seeing them throughout the situation
in safe way. We have access to resources to do that,
so and I felt a little bit like I was
being greedy by missing all of these other people. But
I started to look into the sociology of it, and
we need all of these different types of ties and
relationships and interactions in order to keep us mentally and
physically healthy. This has kind of far reaching effects. It's
(13:17):
not just people at the bar and all that. It
crawls into work life, working from home life. All these
different types of friends and casual encounters that we would
have would shape you kind of bring some little joy
to your life. But these are different. Talk about this
in the context of the workplace now, because that's another
big disruptor we've been dealing with. One of the first
ways that it occurred to me that this might harm
(13:38):
people in the long term in some way or at
least change their lives in some way in the long term.
Is at work offices are built environments meant to encourage
certain type of behaviors, and often those behaviors are coworkers
getting together and chatting for a few minutes in the
communal kitchen, people collaborating with each other on a project
in a conference room, things like that, and just being
able to look across the table in a meeting and
(14:01):
see someone else having the same reaction to something that
you're having. All those little interactions and then being able
to run into a cup of coffee with somebody spur
the moment because you run into ran into them in
the hallway. Those interactions make somebody part of a workplace,
make somebody part of an organization, Especially when you're young
or when you're new to a job, having those little
(14:21):
interactions help you integrate into the structure of the place
that you are. If you can't get integrated into that
type of structure, then you have a hard time making
a name for yourself, becoming a valued co worker. Things
like that, and it also hurts collaboration. I talked to
one researcher about some stuff he had found about conversational
reciprocity and what we need in the workplace, especially once
(14:45):
one person is instructing another person and how to do
something is unstructured. Time for the person who is doing
the task to put in their two cents to become
an equal part of the conversation with with their boss essentially,
and on zoom and things like that, you lose those
opportunities because so many of these digital interactions are very
structured and everybody knows going into them who is supposed
(15:06):
to talk and when and about what for how long.
On the workplace front, I've definitely noticed that myself firsthand.
Where a lot of people I work at a radio
station right so a lot of people are working from
home right now. We've had to hire on a few
new people as well, and I always find myself telling
them it's not normally like this. There's a lot more people,
there's a lot more interaction them starting out. They don't
(15:27):
know any of the other departments, people in other departments.
You know, it's very isolated in a sense where the
programming side of things, we're just kind of doing our
own thing, but it's just interesting how how it does
shape these workplace relationships as well. It's just so important.
You spoke to somebody, an expert that studies friendships, and
they said, many different kinds of relationships are important. Man
(15:49):
does not thrive on close friendships alone. And it's so
true these kind of all these other people really round
out our days. You mentioned something too about kind of
isolation in your our goal. When we don't have these
other types of friendships and interactions to it can push
you further into isolation and in our bubbles and things
that we see how these conspiracy theories start to flourish
(16:12):
because we're pushed into isolation and these tinier bubbles. One
of the things that really struck me as I was
doing the research on this top I get talking to
these experts is that the weak ties in our lives,
the people on the periphery of our social lives, are
a useful grounding resource. They keep us tied to our communities,
(16:32):
to the physical world, to the people around us, to
the cities we live in. And when you lose those people,
a lot of people lose, are really meaningful source of
a source of support, source of comfort, source of like
a shared understanding of the world around you. So people
go online looking for that. There are healthy ways to
find that online. You might find a forum that's all
(16:54):
about knitting, or a forum that's all about baseball or
whatever it is that your interest is. Or if you
end up on the wrong side of the algorithm, you
might end up in q and on, or you might
end up in an extremist Facebook group or something like that,
because what those groups offer and what they prey on
in people is people looking for a sense of certainty,
(17:15):
people looking for an order to the world and understanding
of the forces that are acting on them and what
they can do about it. When you lose all your
social ties because of a long term disaster like the
pandemic that we're in, those things become even more seductive
to people, which is I think a big reason that
we've seen an acceleration and those types of groups on
(17:35):
the Internet in the past year. According to some of
the experts you spoke to, though all is not lost.
These relationships, these weak ties, so to speak, can be
built up back again, and we're seeing vaccines roll out.
We're hoping, obviously things will get back to normal soon
and These are the kind of things that can pick
up pretty quickly. I did like the way, you know,
people who have been saying that there could be a
(17:56):
roaring twenties similar to what happened after nineteen eighteen and
the flu pandemic back then, and now we have this
better understanding how of how important these relationships are to us.
One of the big upsides that we have in front
of us is that weak ties are definitionally low pressure relationships,
so they're these are not generally people who are going
(18:17):
to be offended that you didn't text them to keep
up during the pandemic. These are not people who you're
turning down zoom invites from. These are people that once
you see them again and once you both confirm you're
still there and still happy to be there, things should
go in those relationships back to largely normal, and I
think that people will be really, really happy to see
(18:37):
everybody and perhaps bring with that an understanding of what
all of the people around us mean to our lives.
Not just necessarily are very close friends and people who
are like us in you know, socio economic ways that
we would spend intentional time with, but the people who
work at the grocery store, your verista at the coffee shop.
People who work and exist in ways in our lives
(18:58):
that our cultured doesn't always value. I think the understanding
all that we lost when we lost them as part
of our everyday lives could be a step towards revaluing
them in the future and understanding how much people who
performed labor like that and you play roles like that
really matter in a society into ourselves as individuals. Amanda Mole,
(19:19):
staff writer at The Atlantic. Thank you very much for
joining us. Thank you for having me. That's it for
to day. Join us on social media at Daily Dive
pod in both Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating and tell us a scores that
(19:39):
jurns us in. Follow us and I Heard Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode of The
Daily Divers produced by Big Right and engineered by Tony Sorrentina.
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