the situation should be resolved in plenty of time for the expected memorial day surge. that's it for us. the news continues. i want to hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time". i appreciate you. i'm chris cuomo. welcome to "prime time." the biggest step toward normal since the pandemic started was taken today. the cdc freed the fully vaccinated from wearing maskmasks. masks have been recommended since april 3rd of 2020, but no more for almost anywhere a fully vaccinated person wants to go. alone or with others, whether the others are vaccinated or not. just imagine, the simple ability to share a smile, to walk down the street with a cigar in your mouth as i did today. to not rush to cover when you see someone outside, to just be normal. not that masks were like wearing a suit of armor, let's be clear.

people over hyped it for too long, made it too much of a burden. but it does show when we do the right thing we make progress. there are some caveats. there are rules depending on buses and planes, but the biggest caveat is that this change only applies to the vaccinated, the fully vaccinated. so tonight let's smile, mask free, at the headline and then dive into the unanswered questions. top of the list, what does no masks for the vaccinated mean for the unvaccinated? well, it means they have to wear masks still. who is going to know? what about those who have kids in their homes who haven't had the shot? what do they do? what do the kids do? what will it mean for schools, for businesses? how do businesses, to the original point of who is going to know, how do they police this if there's no passport system and the federal government says they are reluctant to have a data bank? but before we get into micro issues, and we will tonight with

someone who used to run the cdc, there's a macro issue. there is a curse that comes with this blessing because isn't how this happened another example of the political game being played that we have to expose and do better than? just last night i was chasing the cdc director about making this exact change. listen. >> you're playing it too safe, that is the criticism. >> we have the clinical trials. we need to make sure it is working outside the context of the clinical trials, and, importantly, we need to make sure they work against our variants. i'm really looking forward to updating our guidance very soon. >> let's do it right now on the show. what data do you have that suggests you need to go slow before you let people completely unmask and live their lives if they're gotten the vaccine? >> well, you know, we know the data are emerging, have been emerging with regard to the variants. we want to make sure those data are going to be out and demonstrate that our vaccines will work, and i'm looking forward to updating our guidance

very soon. >> the doctor was saying that. i was looking down because i had the list of the studies here, and i said i don't even know what she is waiting on. why didn't the cdc director sus s just say it last night. i don't care, don't come on my show at all, but say it to the american people. they don't know they were going to change it a few hours later? they burned the midnight oil last night or it is about politics? we know it is not about the science. the science was there for sometimes. you are going to hear it is too much at once this rule change, this recommendation. that's all it is. everybody has to figure out for themselves on the state, local and private levels, and that it is going to disincentivize people anyway, because they could unmask anyway. people could cheat. the cdc said it wasn't done to get people to get the vaccine. why not? you know, all of this just reeks of the game to me, and i want you to be aware of the game so

that you can ignore it and move to what matters. they've known for months that the vaccine works. too much too soon, the country is splitting at the seams. the cdc didn't mean it to incentivize. why not? i don't get bribing people to get the vaccine and this million dollar deal going on in ohio to get people to get vaccinated is odd to justify to all of the taxpayers. but if you choose to get the vaccine, why don't you get the preference that the science suggests? i have been saying this for months. so this is good because it is about the science. i still don't understand why they played so safe for so long, and this is not damned if you do, damned if you don't. it is damned because you didn't until now. did the hesitancy fuel vaccine hesitancy? the move may get more people to get the vaccine now, but did the delay jeopardize the reality of reaching herd immunity? however, on a night like this it is important to balance the plus

and the minus, and this is indeed a milestone. think about what a difference five months has made. that was when we did the first vaccine, remember, to the front line critical care nurse, sandra lindsey here in new york, five months ago tomorrow. remember all of the ifs and buts? now more than 118 million people in this country are among the fully vaccinated, 34% of the population, about half what we need to get to herd immunity. that's a little scary, right? half. look, we're doing better but that's why you still see the cases in the 40s of thousands. so there is still a way to go for this country. we still have a way to go for herd immunity. the question becomes, how do you see it? well, we have come a long way from the days when we were told by our last president this was all going to go away magically. the white house has now lifted its mask mandate for vaccinated staffers. president biden walked out maskless to announce the good

news. >> if you are fully vaccinated and can take your mask off, you have earned the right to do something that americans are known for all around the world, greeting others with a smile. with a smile. so it is a good day for the country. >> that is true. now, how good? what does this mean and what does it not mean? let's bring in a better mind, former cdc acting director dr. richard besser. good to see you, doc. >> good to see you, chris. >> help me understand. you know the politics and the policy. i'm chasing around with dr. wilensky last night about this and she is like, well, we have to make sure, we have to make sure. then it comes out this morning. that's just politics, isn't it? >> i don't think it is politics. i think it is, you know, when -- when was she allowed to release the information that she had. >> by who? >> i think you -- you have framed this in the right way.

>> wait. hold on a second. >> this is huge. >> hold on, because i'm going to get you on this one and then we'll get into what really matters. >> okay. >> she wasn't allowed to release it by who? by politicians. they were just making a play on this. i don't care she said it or not on the show, that's not the point. point is there's a legitimate criticism they've known things and not told people when they knew, almost like an over parenting of the american people. you knew about surfaces being as big a deal, you didn't tell us. you knew about aero sol being the way and you didn't communicate it. you knew outdoor was 10%, you didn't say it right away. can you justify the delays? >> here, chris, when you are releasing something like this, which is a dramatic shift, you frame that right. this marks a turning point in terms of the pandemic response in the united states. not globally, but in the united states. i was really glad to see that

she presented the data that informed that decision, because it needs to be driven by the data, and the data was strong. we are seeing steady declines in every state in the union. we are seeing hospitalizations declining, deaths declining. we are seeing more studies that show these vaccines work not just in the trials but in real life, that in countries that are using vaccines you are seeing declines. there's increasing data that people who are vaccinated are not very likely to spread it to other people. so i like that she laid out the reasoning behind such a big decision, and even with that big decision you are hearing a lot of people today, some are saying it was way too slow and some are saying, whoa, why are you moving so fast. i think this is the right time to make this call. >> well, remember, we are in a climate where the negativity is a proxy for incite. so she is going to get criticized because that's what they're going to do to the biden administration, and, frankly, they made themselves vulnerable to the right, questioning what

they do, for being exposed for having been slow about it. but my point is this. you say this now, great, but do you think not saying it sooner risked not getting us to herd immunity? >> well, you know, i don't talk about herd immunity. i don't think herd immunity is something achievable. what i like to talk about is that every single person who gets vaccinated gets us closer. they help reduce the transmission in community. they help protect themselves, their families, those around them. the idea that there's this magic number that we get to i think is the wrong way to think about it, because people tend to live around people they agree with or people who have similar beliefs. so even if you hit a magical number of 70%, you are going to have communities that are 50%. >> right. >> and with that you will be able to see places where it continues to transmit. i worry that saying, you know, at 70% or nothing can dissuade people from getting that shot, which actually can make a difference to those around them. >> i agree. what do you think about the

enforcement model here? you know, with masks it was, i'm not going to wear a mask, but you knew if somebody was wearing it or not because you have eyes. this is -- you know, you don't know. i don't have a mask on, i say to you that i'm fully vaccinated, the federal government doesn't want to do a bank. state by state they are kind of doing it. they have the excelsior pass in new york. how do you enforce something like this? >> well, you don't. the big takeaway here is that if you are fully vaccinated, your risk of having serious disease is really, really low. the data out of cleveland clinic, 99.3% of people admitted to the hospital since january -- >> but people say, but the yankees, but the yankees. is it just the j & j vaccine? go ahead. >> yeah, but when you look at the yankees, the critical piece about the yankees is they weren't sick. and when you look at the amount of virus that the players had who tested positive, it was really, really low. so what you're going to find is that, yes, some people will test positive, they'll get infected who have been vaccinated, but we're seeing they're not likely

to transmit to others. that's the critical piece there, not the fact that some people who get vaccinated will be infected. so it supports i think the idea that if you are fully vaccinated you are in really good shape. the enforcement piece though, it is not enforceable. >> right. >> what it says is if you decide not to get vaccinated, the risk is primarily on you. we can talk about kids because that's the one area where that breaks down, but the risk is primarily on those people who decide, hey, i'm not going to get vaccinated. >> so -- >> and -- yeah? >> first of all, for the audience, eight new york yankees tested positive for coronavirus after getting the j & j vaccine. but just so you know, 78% of the people who got the j & j vaccine within the yankees organization, players, et cetera, 78% did not test positive after the vaccine. the vaccine's efficacy is 72%. so they're still ahead of the curve. doc, as a pediatrician, would you advise your families to give the vaccine to their kids 18 and

under? >> yes. you know, i would recommend not 18 and under, 12 and up because that's -- >> right, 12 to 18. >> -- what it is authorized for. yes, i definitely would, because that's a group where the older children get the increased -- the risk increases in terms of severity, although very few children have died from this. it is in the hundreds. that's far too many. i worry about the long-term consequences. there have been thousands of kids who have had this unusual multi-inflammatory syndrome. as a parent, the idea that you could get your kids vaccinated and then not have to worry about them this summer i think is huge. the idea that kids could go to high school this fall and it could be a normal high school year is absolutely incredible. so i recommend it. i recommend it for my patients. it is children younger than that where the rules still apply. kids younger than 12 should be wearing masks. they should be social distancing

when they're around people, when they're indoors. those things still apply until there's vaccines for that age. it is another reason why adults should get vaccinated, to help protect those kids. >> dr. boeser, appreciate you. good to see you. thank you, especially on this, a big night. a milestone, indeed. >> togood to see you, chris. >> always. what does this mean in the context of history? how times are changing and what it means for not just the pandemic but our approach to other problems? a better mind, this is a brilliant mind, next.

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right to reflect political differences rather than what we, the reasonable, see it as, highlighting we are all the same, we all get sick and what one of us does affects the others. we are all in it together. trite, but true. so a milestone. let's get some perspective on what this means from thomas friedman, pulitzer prize winning columnist for "the new york times", author of "from beirut to jerusalem." good to see you, brother. >> good to be with you, chris. thanks. >> what does this mean to you? >> well, you know, chris, when i and my wife got vaccinated, i was personally relieved, but i didn't feel it was really the end of anything. i felt personally more secure. in hearing that announcement from the cdc this afternoon, i felt that we were finally at the beginning of the end of this. i felt that there's going to be a real return to normalcy for me, my family, my friends,

society. and, most of all, you know what i thought about, chris, and you alluded to it in your introduction, we've just been through a crazy two years. i mean crazy at so many levels because of the past president and the divisions in the society. i don't know what factor was politics and trump and what factor was the pandemic and the fact that we all had to go around with our faces covered. but i am hopeful that with people taking their masks off we can talk to each other in different ways, look each other in the eye, see each other smile, a wry grin, whatever, that that too will reduce the temperature in the country, the political temperature. so that's kind of my hope. but i do think this is the beginning of the end. it is not the end for all of the reasons that your previous guest said, but today is a really good day. you know what else it is a good day for, chris? it is a good day for science. what we have learned, it is so remarkable how good these vaccines really are. i think it is an amazing day for

science as well. >> we have a long way to go, but, you know, the mask was a little bit of a portent for us to see where one party was headed, right? the irrationality, the investing in a lie about the mask was really the precursor to where we are seeing the gop right now. you wrote in your latest op-ed, "if house republicans follow through on their plan to replace cheney," which, of course, they did by a voice vote, "it will not constitute the end of american democracy as we have known it, but there's a real possibility we will look back on may 12th, 2021, as the beginning of the end unless enough principled republicans can be persuaded to engineer an immediate radical course correction in their party." the problem against the premise is the reality that they are moving more in that direction as they continue down the path of attrition. they are going for white fright, and the momentum is in the direction they're headed, not in any other direction, tom.

>> yeah, there's no question, chris. you know, i was thinking in preparing for our conversation that the midterm elections this year, 2022 -- i mean next year, 2022, they are going to be hugely important for this reason. the republicans go into these mid-terms with so many advantages after the last census, through gerrymandering they will get more seats, and historically mid-terms tend to work against the incumbent party. they have a lot of advantages. what we're going the see in these mid-terms as this party that has now made it a prerequisite to be a leader in this party and to be a candidate endorsed by the leader of this party that you have to embrace the big lie. we're going to see if they actually suffer in the mid-terms for that. if they do come out of these mid-terms not holding the house, not winning the house back, not winning the senate back, i think that would be one of the most healthy things that can possibly happen to our country now,

because that then, chris, will force that party to confront their trump problem. >> maybe. >> i think the interesting -- political question, because they're going to want to survive, and if they lose the mid-terms, the idea they will go into 2024 backing him, well, that would be political suicide. so i think there's a really important election and i think it is going to be really interesting. we see these lists of principled republicans who have said they're not going to, you know, support trump. we have seen what liz cheney has done. if only 3% to 5% of republicans decide that they're not going to sign on to this, we could have a very different mid-term. we have a very different mid-term, i think there's a chance we will get some decent, stable governance. if the house republicans, given what they have come to embrace, win the house, the last two years of the biden administration, they're going to be crazy. these people when trump was in power, they at least had some incentive not to blow the whole government up. if trump is not in power, their

incentive is going to be to completely derail biden. if that happens, i mean we just have no time to lose. that would be a disaster for the country. >> well, look, i mean mitch mcconnell told you that's where they're headed right now. their position is opposition. here is my question for you. how do you get ahead of the determinative issue of the mid-terms, which we know right now, which is election security? they're going to say that any race that doesn't go their way is rigged. what should the media do? what should the system do to prepare for that in advance? because it is going to happen. >> well, the scary thing, chris -- and i wrote about this in that column you referred to -- is that people have been focused on the election security laws that some of the states have passed like georgia, where you can't give someone in line a glass of water. that's actually a red herring. the really dangerous thing that is going on right now is a mugging of democracy in broad

daylight, is the measures that georgia and other states have taken to actually change who gets to count votes and who gets to certify votes. and if you look, and studies have been done and i quoted one, at the measures they have put in, if these measures existed in 2020 it is very possible that trump would have stolen this election. so the answer to your question is we have to be enormously vigilant about these things. we have to oppose them. but at the same time my hope, chris, is that there's a lot of voters, particularly the kind of black and brown voters that the republicans are trying to disadvantage by these laws, who are basically going to say to them, you're talking to me, you're talking to me? you don't want me to vote? well, i'm going to get up at 6:00 a.m. and i'm going to wear, you know, a water pack on my back if i need to, but i am going to vote. i think they really better be careful because they are just sticking a finger in a lot of people's eye, and their reaction is, you don't want me to vote?

oh, you are now going to see me vote, my grandpa vote, my grandmother vote, i am going to drive anyone i can to the polls. i think you are going to see a lot of that reaction, you are not going to steal this election. >> uh-huh. in the interest of this being a positive night, give me that de niro impression of you're talking to me one more time. >> you talking to me? >> oh, that's good. tom, take care. developments on the matt gaetz front. remember, we told you his friend had to be cooperating with the feds. this was not about inside information or even great reporting, it is how the system works. joel greenberg, who is also under criminal indictment, is going to plead guilty in days because that's what you do if you want a plea deal. there are other things that had to happen for us to reach this moment and ask the question,

what does it mean for matt gaetz. we know them all. so answers ahead from a former fbi big shot next.

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all right. we have developments tonight in two big maga world criminal investigations. you have new court filings that tell us that congressman matt gaetz's so-called wingman, an indicted sex trafficker, joel greenberg, is going to plead guilty monday. no, not so much. you have to understand why the fact it is not a surprise makes it very important. i will explain why. the "wall street journal" has reporting on the feds turning up the pressure on long-time trump money man allen weisselberg. that is more of an ah-ha because

they thought they could pressure him, the chief financial officer not just for trump but his father, so he has such profound understanding of where money went and why that if they really believe they can get on him, that is a key man for any reckoning of anything they want against the former president. we have spoken with key players in both of these situations on this show. let's unpack where we stand. it is good to see you. let's start with gaetz. this is about gaetz's friends and the women. if the women speak and say, "i was under age," he is doomed. if they speak and say, "i was paid to go and do things" he's got trouble. this guy, greenberg, checks the friend box and knows the girls. him pleading guilty is what we have to see for him to get a plea deal, right?

>> yes. so if they're giving him a plea deal, he is likely giving cooperation and giving information, and here are the pros and cons, chris. greenberg has kind of the -- he's the story teller here. like if there are financial transactions that investigators have, for example a payment that's intended for tuition or salad, greenberg is the one who can say, "yeah, this is what we meant by that." >> he's one of the ones. >> he's one of the ones. >> with his venmo transactions he can say it, but there are other guys and other transactions. >> he can say, this is where we went, this is what we did. the problem with greenberg is that he is facing a 33-count indictment. >> right. >> one of the counts of which is for falsely accusing someone of engaging in pedophilia. so he's not the most credible witness, so they need other people. this is where, you know, getting either victims, people -- other

people who were present, matt gaetz's ex-girlfriends to corroborate that information is really important. i'll also point out here, chris, that there is another piece of evidence where greenberg had written a letter to roger stone, the ""daily beast"" reporting where he was trying to angle for a pardon. >> right. >> he kind of confesses to these activities before he is cooperating with federal prosecutors. this is kind of against his interest and kind of lends more credibility to this implication that matt gaetz was involved with this activity. >> right. and, look, greenberg is not credible but documents are. and if he can direct them to what other kinds of transactions other people had with gaetz and women, that's only as good as the proof that they can get but it is a hell of a direction. i want people to understand, he's pleading guilty not because he is changing his mind, it is because he had to to get the deal, and he would only get the deal if he had already been cooperating. and in the middle district where this is happening in florida,

cooperation going forward is mandatory. so he is definitely going to keep helping them. the only question is how. all right. the other one that is much more intriguing, if they get weisselberg, now, a judge won't grant a subpoena to get a witness to flip, right? so who does -- so why does who pays for school matter? >> so what prosecutors are looking at is whether the trump organization was paying the tuition for weisselberg's grandchildren and whether that would have been -- had to have been declared as income on taxes. and if it wasn't, then there might be some tax implications. >> it has to be income -- it has to be income for them or book as a gift by trump. >> right. >> somebody had to book it. >> yes. it has to be declared, it has to be, you know, characterized as something. but the key here is you have potential tax implications. what i would say, chris, is that

when you have state tax liability, there is also a likelihood that you may have federal tax liability. once you get the irs involved, then that also potentially increases the pressure. why this is important, because this can create leverage on weisselberg, and weisselberg knows where the bodies are buried so to speak. so, you know, as you said, he has been intimately involved with trump's finances, and the reason that this is really problematic for trump is that unlike things like obstruction of justice with the mueller solution for which he has, say, constitutional defenses, article two defenses, or the incitement issue which, you know, he has first amendment defenses, and these are all federal, these are potential state charges and these predate the presidency and they have a paper trail. so i think that this is where trump potentially has the most criminal liability, and the person who can spill all of the

beans is allen weisselberg. >> to be clear, it is not that they're going to get trump for paying for these, you know, tuitions or whatever. it is going to be those grandkids -- >> other things that he can talk about, yes. >> right. and the grandkids are weisselberg's grandkids which means this is his son's and his ex-daughter-in-law who was married to one of his sons told us on the show she thinks weisselberg is going to turn on trump. when i said, why, the sons have too much liability. maybe she was talking about exactly this and she would know, she was the mom. asha, thank you very much. appreciate you. all right. as you heard us talking earlier with dr. besser, eight new york yankees have tested positive for covid. oh! d the vaccine doesn't work! no, i don't think that's what it tells us. i don't think that's what it tells us. what do we learn from eight yankees being fully vaccinated? well, i'll tell you what we learn right after this.

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matters. we do know this. they can almost fill a starting line-up with the number of, you know, players that have had breakthrough cases, which means they were vaccinated and still got covid. you have shortstop torres, now the eighth member of the organization to test positive after being fully vaccinated. so what does this mean? well, only one person is showing symptoms, see, and that's the key to being vaccinated, is that you may still get it but you won't be that sick and you are certainly not going to get hospitalized the same way or, god forbid, die. the johnson & johnson vaccine, which is what they got, which is the one shot, and the j & j has gotten some dings i think are unfair but that's not about it. the overall efficacy of the j & j single shot is 72% in the united states. all right. with that as context, let's get after it with dr. jha. it is good to see you. i see the yankees as a red herring and a false flag to be scared. why? because 72% is the cumulative efficacy on this and 78% of the

people they gave it to within the squad have been fine. isn't that the end of the discussion? >> yeah. so, chris, first thanks for having me back. look, we are going to see things like this. i agree with you, it is a false flag in the sense that this is not some like game changer about how the vaccines work. we have given these vaccines to tens of millions of people. we are going to see little outbreaks like this. we are going to see breakthrough infections. nobody has gotten really sick. one person with mild symptoms, seven other people with no symptoms at all. imagine what would happen if those people weren't vaccinated. we would have seen a large outbreak, lots of people getting very sick. he se i se i see it as a success story as well. >> the case counts we are watching, i wonder if they're all off because the cdc isn't tracking breakthrough cases. the only way you would know is if you were tested and were symptomatic, and most of the breakthrough cases are

nonsymptomatic. so do we know what we're talking about out of the 9,245 cases out of 95 million? you know what i mean, is that worth anything? >> yeah, well, there are two parts to the question. first of all, we did in the clinical trials do a lot of testing of people who were vaccinated, and we know from the clinical trials that vaccinations reduce asymptomatic cases by 80% to 90%. so we know these vaccines prevent transmission pretty substantially. the second question is, do you even care about that other 10% to 20%? if somebody gets a little bit of a breakthrough infection, they have very low viral loads, that means they're not sick, they don't have any symptoms and they can't spread it to others. you sort of have to ask yourself, okay, we're going to have a few of those. i don't know how much i care if i miss some of them. >> what do you make of this argument that, well, now you did it, you told people they can take the masks off, now everybody is going to take them off and say they were vaccinated? >> yeah, look, the cdc is between a rock and a hard place. actually, i agree with the cdc's

decision today. they're staying with the science, and the science is if you are fully vaccinated you can be indoors. people are saying, whoa, how am i going to know who is fully vaccinated? you're not, which is why i think we should not lift the indoor mask mandate quite yet. i've been asking governors to hold off another month. that gives everyone who wants to be vaccinated a chance to get vaccinated. after that, look, people who are unvaccinated -- >> wait, why are you telling them to hold off for the month when the cdc said you can do it now? >> no, no, the cdc said fully vaccinated people don't have to be masked indoors. >> right. >> what i'm saying is there's still lots of unvaccinated -- >> oh, i gotcha. i gotcha. so just as a general rule. so if somebody walks in and says, no, but i'm vaccinated, you just want them to be patient? >> yeah. i want them to be patient because i want everybody who wants to get a vaccine, i want them to have had a chance to get that vaccine and be fully vaccinated. but the truth is you're absolutely right. we are going to end up having unvaccinated people indoors unmasked, and there's not much we can do to prevent all of

those people from harming themselves or harming other unvaccinated people. that's the unfortunate reality of where we are. >> i hope you also tell the governors, have your own state pass. you have the rolls of who got the vaccine. we have the excelsior pass here. it is not perfect, there's a little bit of a lag time to catch up with who got it. you have to wait 14 days until after, but it is a nice tool to have. it is a nice tool to have. thank you very much, doc. i appreciate you. >> thank you. president biden is trying to ease fears on another front. people are spooked about the gas and they're spooked because of the pipeline attack. you know what? they are right. he says panic buying is only going to slow the process of getting things back to normal. he's true, but guess what? we're weak and this is what we do. haven't you seen us in the pandemic? weak people make for hard times. so where has this hit the hardest? where do gas prices stand now? what do we see coming as a result? look who is here, the man with

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the colonial pipeline cyberattack. sources tell us the company has paid the ransomware group known as darkside. we know the criminal gang based out of russia demanded nearly $5 million in ransom. we don't know how much was paid or when. but after a six-day shutdown, we do know that the pipeline is back up. it's going to take time, though, before things get back to normal. stations all across the southeast are still facing outages. new data tells us that panic buying is not the only problem in the crisis. so what are the other factors? harry enten, the wizard of odds, is here. what are we seeing in terms of who got hit hardest? >> you put it correctly in your opening there. it's the southeast united states. what's so interesting, it's throughout the south in places that weren't necessarily seeing these fuel shortages, say, yesterday are now seeing them today. so washington, d.c., look at this. 73% of gas stations without fuel.

north carolina, 70%. south carolina, 53%. virginia, 50% without fuel. even down in florida, 29% without fuel. what we've seen throughout the last couple of days is sort of as the news has gotten out about these shortages, more people are panic buying and these numbers have been rising in a lot of these different places. >> you know, i was looking at gas, buddy. you can't cross-index for income, and i always wonder whether or not this type of distribution of pain is also indexed by socioeconomics. like if you go in the poor areas, i wonder if the stations there stay at the same percentages or even higher. despite officials trying to urge calm, as you just said, panic buying is going, and it's pushing prices. how much? >> it's pushing prices to the highest level since 2014. look at this. over $3 a gallon. that's up 17 cents from where we were a month ago. a year ago when we were right in the heart of the pandemic, right at the beginning, we were under $2. we're even above where we were

two years ago at $2.86. this is a regional sonotory in terms of where we're seeing the gas shortages, but it is a national story in that it is spiking the fuel prices in a lot of different places. we're seeing this indication here right now. over $3 a gallon, we haven't seen it since 2014. it's just part of that noiation tire. the regional story has become national. >> you and i talk about how important gas prices are in terms of household economics. i said in the office when you were scariffing down my dinner. you say it's not a scare. we're going to see this throughout the summer and not just because of prices. how so? >> to me this story is interesting. it intersects with a lot of different things. there was a supply shortage for jobs. this applies here too and it has to do with people who actually

drive to the different stations. what do we see? fuel tanker drivers that are parked because there are no drivers. we're expecting 20% to 25% of the fuel tankers to be parked because of no drivers. that is significantly higher than we were two years ago at this point at just 10%. this is a story that intercedes with a lot of things. even though the pipeline is going to get back up, it's very possible we could see elevated gas prices because we're not getting the folks in those trucks actually drive the fuel to the gas stations. >> there may be correlation but not causation with the pipeline thing. they may have a labor shortage. i think we have to go back to that story. every person i talk to -- remember, the reach is great. yes, i live in new york city but i have a radio show and two podcasts now. >> congratulations. we're all very proud. >> people coming at me. that's not what it's about. what i'm trying to say is i have a lot of people telling me what i don't know. the point is they say to an employer, i can't get them to work because they're making more

money at home. that is becoming the dominant narrative on why people are coming back. i read the work at cnn and other places. do you think that that is becoming the main reason that they can't find service industry labor? >> i'm sure it's part of it, right? it has to be at least part of it, but i don't think it tells the entire story, right? i think the pandemic has changed a lot of people's minds on what they necessarily want to do for a living. they've stayed at home. they've realized certain things. >> they can't stay at home if they can't live, and they're getting paid to live. that's why you see states trying to short them on the unemployment. what do you think of that movement and what is the reality about how many are just living fat and happy off the extra vig from the federal government? >> it's certainly the case it's some of it. look f you're driving a truck, it's one thing. you're pretty isolated. but if you're going back to a place in which you're

interacting with a lot of people and you don't know if they're vaccinated, and maybe you haven't gotten the vaccinated. there's a possibility you might get covid. that's one factor. another factor we pointed out last week is i think there are a lot of people who don't necessarily know the jobs available to them from time to time. and, you know, i just think there are a lot of different factors that are interceding here. yes, it is possible folks are staying at home because they're getting that unemployment insurance. but as we spoke about last week, it's just one of many factors i think are at play. and i think it's sort of this easy crutch for people to lay upon, just pointing out that when there are a lot of different factors going on. >> saying that living off the dole makes people not want to work is not a new trope in politics. it's often discriminatory and doesn't get the whole picture. >> one thing i'll point out also. get the kids back in school because there are a lot of parents that have to stay home because they have to take care of the kids. getting the kids back in school could really put at ease in terms of the stronger picture. >> strong point, harry enten,

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for the same medications as the vet, but for less with fast free shipping. visit petmeds.com today. all right. that is it for us tonight. we have the big show now, "cnn tonight" with the big star, d. lemon. oh, the unmasking. put it back on. >> by the way, that's scott beigel, one of my personal heroes from marjorie douglas stoneman high school. >> that's all right. you can wear a pin now. >> no, i wore a shirt today. i actually worked out in it. so i'm happy to be able to take the mask off outside safely. fully vaccinated of course. still following the correct protocols. >> the cdc says inside, outside, with vaccinated, with unvaccinated. >> yeah. >> some qualifications on buses and planes, but of course it's also going to matter what the place wher