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p.m. eastern. the president speaks at 9:00, followed by the republican response and we'll take your phone calls and social media reaction. the state of the union address, live tuesday march 1st at 8:00 p.m. eastern on c-span, c-span.org or the cspanapp. joining us now the policy council director here to talk about the pandemic and where we are with. joe groegen, let's just begin with the numbers that we're seeing, the world health organization says that covid cases fell 17% worldwide over the last week compared to the previous week, including a 50% drop in the united states while deaths globally declined 7%. from your experience, what is happening and what should be the response from the government? >> well, greta, thanks for having me and thank you for c-span. been a big fan for many years

and always a pleasure to be on c-span. i don't think people should be terribly surprised by the numbers coming down as quickly as they are. i've been a little bit more focused on the epidemic here in the united states, but they do mirror the way that the epidemic is behaving internationally with a big spike and now it's coming down pretty quickly. and i think it's one of the reasons why you see democratic governors and others leading on this issue, frankly, and saying it's time to envy emergency and drop the masks. >> what should happen, though, if we don't have masks and we're going about the way we were before the pandemic, how do you control this virus or do you just not? >> well, i think the first thing you've got to do and i think the administration made a big mistake here is you have to be humble and recognize that this virus is extremely tricky. and it could mutate and could

come back. but the administration needs to get its credibility back and they need to be open and transparent about what is going on and i think it needs to transition to a nonemergency posture and try to get americans back to normalcy. now, normalcy doesn't mean ignoring emerging threats, it doesn't mean not continuing to watch this and communicate. it doesn't mean that we may not need to put some restrictions on. it certainly doesn't mean that we don't need continued innovation for therapies and new vaccines that are more durable than the ones we have, which is a big problem with the current batch of vaccines. and better testing, frankly, to be perfectly honest fda is doing a pretty terrible job in approving antigen tests, those are the rapid tests right now. we don't have enough of them. i haven't gotten my free government test and the pharmacies around me are out of antigen tests. that's a supply issue.

the demand is there. and i have the, i'm lucky enough, i can go and buy them, but they're just not available and the administration needs to look at its approval standard for antigen tests and get more on the market. >> does the failure of testing and having it accessible and inexperience date back to former president trump? what was happening in the trump administration on this effort? >> well, we knew testing was, we had a big shortfall with testing. look, the united states was not prepared for this pandemic. no question about it. we have a big problem in this country in having adequate testing infrastructure the way we pay for tests in this country is antiquated. we don't put enough emphasis upon research and development for diagnostic tests and we underfund a lot of different areas of research for this area.

so, we were scrambling in the white house to get more supply. and we took a lot of criticism from the biden administration during the campaign. you don't and before that and from democrats for not being able to snap our fingers and suddenly create more testing. which is why it's so disturbing that the biden administration a year into their tenure has done so little to increase the testing supply and this sort of government purchasing, you know, that they patched together is really a failure and too little too late. they should have been focused on this from the beginning, as they promised they would be when they were campaigning. >> when you were serving as director of the domestic policy council, what were the challenges with getting testing in place? >> well, as i said, our infrastructure was not there. but even before that, the first problem is we didn't know exactly what we were dealing with with the virus. and we didn't have a reliable

test developed. i think it's been widely reported and i think the benefit of hindsight there's no question. one thing we should have been doing is having more conversations with the industry earlier on and fda should have opened the spigot to companies developing tests more quickly. the fda wouldn't let more tests on to the market and they waited too long and cdc, the centers for disease control, still has huge problems with the current pandemic and meeting new threats. cdc had a big problem in developing the tests. if i could go back in time to january, february, march, frankly, i would have advocated pretty strongly that nih get every single research institution and getting nih money to turn on their labs and look for this. we should have pulled the plug on all fda requirements and just had companies notify and we

should have had companies coming in in january and saying, we need you desperately to develop tests. beyond that, the reimbursement was a big problem and it still is today. cms, the centers for medicare and medicaid services which sets a lot of pricing for diagnostics wasn't paying enough and didn't incent vise people to do tests and it took a while to figure out what was going on there. i would say this is a real opportunity for bipartisan investigation and reform. diagnostics should be a big part of the public health response for future pandemic and it should be a daily feature for lives moving forward. i should be able to get my four kids tested for flu or cold or any emerging illness in my own home. and that covid has shown us that's possible, but we're going to need private industry to step up and we're going to need a

major government effort here, including fundament reform of fda and the way we reimburse for tests. >> let's stick with fda. why were those restrictions in place and why does there need to be an overhaul reform of the way they operate? >> well, if you go back to the obama administration. if you recall there was a big scare around a virus called zeka and produced birth defects for babies and pregnant women were very concerned about it. a number of companies developed tests and they were concerned that tests were not working well. fda stepped in and said you're not able to market those tests and node to come in to fda for preapproval even though those were laboratory developed tests that were previously not subject to fda regulation. fda said it's illegal to sell these whenever a public health emergency gets declared.

when hhs declared a public health emergency for covid, it basically said all tests need to come in to fda for preapproval. and fda was too slow to relinquish that power and understand that it was really restricting supply. so, we should have been having doctors and physicians and researchers developing tests all around the country and developing different methods for identifying the virus. subsequently, you know, the trump administration pulled fda's authority for regulating laboratory tests and the biden administration put it back in place. but it's not just for laboratory developed tests, frankly. the antigen tests are subject to approval standards that are nonscientifically valid and the new nih approval process that the administration unveiled to great fanfare is identifying problems with it because what they're doing is they're comparing it to what is called a pcr test, which is a more

sophisticated laboratory developed test which is great for identifying with more certainty that someone has had covid but frequently identifies people who are no longer infecktuous. watt we really need to do is get people who are infectious out of circulation and that's why those cheap, rapid antigen tests are what we need getting people to use them a couple times a week in certain circumstances would be ideal. my children are taking them, you know, at schools in order, at our school in order to be able to stay in school. but frankly i'm frequently out of them or scrambling around to try to find new ones and right now i only have two left and i'll probably be going out this afternoon to find more. >> what do you think about the pricing of tests? you have the antigen tests you're talking about that are costing, if you have to pay for them, around 17, 20 bucks and

then you've got, if you need a rapid test result in 24 hours and you need to go to a testing site, it can cost almost $200, $300. >> yeah, and it can cost more. there's no question. i think that it's basic supply and demand, i hate to say it. if we had more supply of the rapid antigen tests, prices would come down. in certain parts of the world, tests are a lot cheaper because other countries are focused on increasing the supply of high-quality antigen tests. the rapid pcr tests, the more sophisticated lab tests are not cheap to run. you need technical people to run them frequently. it is a problem. and frankly the insurance companies and a lot of these testing companies are at war with one another and the administration has done a very poor job of arbitrating, figuring out what an adequate reimbursement should be and helping to resolve this dispute.

and i'm worried that a lot of these companies that flooded into the market to provide testing are going to leave the market and if we get get hit again, they're not going to come back because they jumped in thinking, hey, the gump will reimburse us for our costs and make a little profit. some of them are doing very well. but some of them are actually getting killed because it is not easy or cheap to run the sophisticated lab tests. i'm a big believer in the inexpensive antigen tests and if the fda approved more of them, i think prices could come down rather dramatically. of course, for those who can't afford 10, 8, 6, $4 on a regular basis, there should be government assistance to help that and we should be able to provide money to schools, including religious schools and private schools to keep them open and provide more testing. >> joe groger for health policy and economics. the former director of the white

house policy council during the trump administration. he can answer your questions about the government response to this pandemic. dean in hawaii. good morning to you. >> caller: good morning. yeah, i'm calling to find out >> caller: good morning. i'm calling to find out how does the guest differentiate between what the residents in sodom and gomorrah did to spread disease in the name of freedom and that's kind of crazy, it's kind of like yelling fire in a crowded theater. we all know that masks work. and that's my question. thank you. >> well, i always appreciate a good question that references sodom and gomorrah, but i would point out it's the democratic governors who are leading the

administration and the charge throughout the country to loosen the mask mandates. it's not right wing crazy people. it's not truck drivers who are complaining about this. it's democratic governors who are saying, look, this has gone on too far. my understanding, and this has been reported in "the new york times," is that they went to the administration asking for some help here and they got nothing. so they have burst ahead of the administration on this critical issue. i would say one other thing about the vaccines. here in washington, dc, if i want to go get something to eat or get a beer at a local bar, i have to show a driver's license and proof that i was vaccinated. my vaccination card shows that i was vaccinated last spring. there isn't any physician on the planet who is going to tell you that that proof of vaccination last spring has any scientific validity at this point.

i was boosted in december but that isn't on my vaccination card because cvs just handed it to me without putting it on my card. i have to show my driver's license and a proof of something totally invalid in order to eat in washington, dc which of course is 96% democrat, it's where so many employees of nih including tony fauci work and so many residents, so many people that work in the biden administration and it is this bizarre kabuki theater that everybody in dc is engaged in where they're showing proof of nothing in order to have the privilege of eating and i was over on wisconsin everyone and i watched some poor older gentleman who probably hasn't driven in years get refused service because he didn't have a driver's license and it is insane. so of course people are going to react like you see these truck driving protests which i have no particular insight to but people are angry about being lied to and people are angry about

having to be subjected to these infringements on their liberties. >> russ in california says, covid is the new flu. everybody will get it, vaccinated or not. some of us will be asymptomatic and never know. that is right. we have a right to choose and assume the risks. joe grogan? >> these vaccines, the pfizer vaccine and the moderna vaccine, were not studied to reduce infection. that's a really important point that gets lost. the administration has sort of glossed over this in their messaging, and the public health professionals gloss over this and they allow the media to misrepresent the reality of the vaccines. they were never studied to reduce infections. they were studied to reduce hospitalization, serious illness, and death.

in that they are extremely effective, extremely effective. so particularly for the vulnerable and the immunocompromised, you should be getting vaccinated. but they don't reduce infections. as a matter of fact, the best data we've got, and unfortunately we don't have good data about this, is that they may reduce infections maybe 30%, okay? that is well below what tony fauci said before the vaccines were approved would be acceptable in approving a vaccine. he said it would need to be over 50% effective in order to be approved. it is well over 50% effective in reducing hospitalizations, serious illness, and death in those that would be vulnerable. but it is not particularly effective in reducing infections which is why when i got my double shots last spring and then boosted in december, i was subsequently infected with omicron in january. i think omicron.

i didn't genotype it, i assumed it was omicron. i felt bad for a couple of days. two of my children were also infected. but i don't think the administration is building a lot of credibility with people when they misrepresent that this is about reducing infections. it is not. and frankly, a lot of leading researchers know this, i'm on a group, the covid collaborative that i joined, a bipartisan group of people looking for common sense solutions, democrats, republicans, many people who served in the obama and clinton administrations and served in the bush administration. and one of the key focus areas that keeps on coming up is we need durable vaccines that reduce infections and prevent -- excuse me, prevent infection and transmissibility. everybody knows this. and yet the administration is allowing this misconception to go out there and they've lost credibility. and it's a shame. >> cj in falls church, virginia, democratic caller.

you're next. >> caller: yes, good morning. mr. grogan, you're a well-spoken guy, you make your arguments very well. all the anger that you say is justified to put all this stuff behind us, i couldn't agree more. just a couple of real quick questions. how angry were you when working for trump that he was willing to tell the truth to bob woodward, who my guess is you're not a big fan of, and then he kept that from the public for, you know, a really key couple of months, throughout that february, march, and into april period. trump didn't take this seriously probably until after he left office, really. and he kept complaining about, oh, the cupboards were bare, obama left the cupboards bare. that was like three years into

his administration. so could you at least be like a normal dude, man up, and take responsibility for the guy who you worked under. i'm not saying -- i guess your parents are proud of you, you're a bright dude. but man, the harm that administration did and still continues to do to this day. >> cj, we'll get a response. joe grogan. >> well, you know, i can hear the passion in the caller's voice and i understand that he's angry. i think, you know, there's plenty of opportunity for criticism in the response. i can tell you that, you know, we were overwhelmed by a pathogen that could not be identified at first. and it was very confusing.

we were not prepared at the centers for disease control, nih, and fda for this. and we have spent billions of dollars as a country after september 11th to get prepared for pandemics. the obama administration did a pandemic response plan. i would argue it was completely worthless. you know what word does not appear in that pandemic response plan? masks. and we didn't have enough masks in the strategic national stockpile. fda wasn't ready. we built warp speed from nothing, from scratch, to start up and get going. and here we are into the biden administration, they won the election, frankly, based upon covid. and they said they would get it under control. they said they would shut it down. not only have they not shut it down, not only have they not increased testing, but a year into this, we don't have any serious reform plan for the centers for disease control which is not set up to deal with infectious diseases or another pandemic. and i hate to say it, but five,

ten years from now, we may be looking back at covid and saying, man, that was nothing compared to what we're dealing with now. i mean, just take a moment and think about what happens if some kook or some malefactor from a foreign government decides to cook up a nasty bioweapon. it's all laid out how to do that now and we're not prepared for that, we're not prepared for a worse virus to hit us than covid. it's a tragedy. the administration does not have an nih director, does not have a confirmed director, they haven't nominated anyone for nih, their hhs secretary is basically living in california and nobody knows what he's doing, and their head of the office, science, and technology policy in the white house resigned this week for being abusive to staff and

women. this is not an administration set up to succeed in fighting covid or the next pandemic. >> why isn't the cdc prepared? >> look, they're not in the did disease control business. they're not in the business of fighting infectious diseases. they've larded up with all sorts of tasks. congress is responsible for this. they study chronic diseases which is important for america to fight, like obesity. but that is not cdc should be doing. give that responsibility to nih. in the obama administration they had a cdc director who was focused on sugary drinks and obesity for eight years, not on infectious disease fighting. they need to go back to what their core mission should be, why the place was founded in the first place, disease control. go and chisel the word "prevention" off its title and

give focus on what it really should be doing. it has a terrible data management system. nobody knows -- the public health data reporting out of cdc is atrocious and they don't have the personnel nor the focus to be watching for the next emerging disease threat and then clamping it down when it hits and it's a real -- it's a real tragedy. i was hoping that they would get some type of bipartisan look at it in the new administration. and the first thing they did was load it up with a bunch of money and tasks that are not core to covid. and i'm not optimistic about cdc's ability to confront the next problem that we've got. >> in connecticut, a republican, good morning to you. >> caller: good morning. i understand that this is a highly mutative virus and that its mutation rate is accelerating. how do we make sure that it stays on top of the president's agenda? you know, i think last year there was a bit of mission

accomplished and subsequently neglect. but i think there's a very good chance that we're going to have another three or four waves under his administration so that -- how do we keep this top? the vaccine is kind of a political -- it's not our fault, it's your fault because you didn't get vaccinated. >> yeah, the vaccine -- excuse me, the virus mutates. it mutates a lot. i don't know if it's mutating more than it was than in any other period but it mutates a lot. and you need to be careful that it's going to not mutate and develop into something more deadly than omicron. i think we need to be on guard for that but we can't be paranoid about it and we can't be living in our basements. i do think the administration will stay focused on it. i hope they will. i agree that they made a terrible miscalculation in basically saying last summer

that the end was in sight and then kamala harris admitted in a classic dc gaffe that they didn't anticipate delta and omicron's emergence, which was a terrible lack of imagination and focus on the leadership team if that's true. we have to be on guard. but what i'm worried about is there are a lot of other problems in health care that we're not focused on. we are too laser focused on covid with these shutdowns. we're causing massive mental health problems upon our young people, overdoses are shooting through the roof. we crossed 100,000 year over year, the 12-month period ending in june, and cdc is predicting another 20% increase in overdoses and they're up across the board, they're up for african americans are now outpacing whites on a per capita basis. i mean, 100,000 people now is a

catastrophic amount of human beings that are overdosing. and we are also -- that's like the tip of the iceberg because we have a tremendous addiction and dependency problem which you can witness in america's cities with the -- with, uh, the homeless problem, the homeness encampments where there's obvious drug use going on. you can see it in the labor force participation rate. and we've set a bunch of policies in place in fighting covid that could not be designed any better, any better, than to produce mental anxiety in our young people and create behavioral problems and create addiction problems and the data that continues to emerge about our -- the lingering mental health issues, the reduced economic productivity from people with substance abuse problems and the educational deficiencies our young people are taking, this is going to haunt the united states for

decades. this is going to be studied for a hundred years in what we just did to young people in shutting down schools and the policies we put in place that poured gasoline on the country's progress. >> bob on the democratic line. >> caller: i had covid in 2019 in november, i go on the it from a dentist that filled my tooth. and it wasn't even on the radar then, not until probably december, when those two people in oregon got covid before it was even out there. when did the trump administration find out about covid? what date or what month? because i didn't hear about nothing of it until january of 2020. and at that time, i had already had it for close to a year and didn't know it. and i had no way of knowing it. and one other thing. obama, you say he didn't do

anything. he went to africa or his administration went to africa and they pretty well cured ebola. and he never got much recognition for that. so, you know, you keep saying about this or that. i believe that trump was the worst person in the world for the covid thing. he probably caused 600,000 americans to die. what would be your question -- or answer on that? >> the administration did an excellent job in fighting ebola, there's no question about that. we do have a lot of tremendous technical experience in fighting infectious diseases overseas. a lot of that, uh, expertise was built in fighting hiv throughout -- you know, beginning in the 1980s and '90s and where i started my work in public health. you know, i don't know about

when -- about your particular story and when people in the united states were getting infected with what the earliest infection was, and if it was possible you were infected with covid in november. we started to see reports in december, january. but it's important to remember, you know, you see a lot of reports about mysterious illnesses when you're in the white house. we have a surveillance network. in the health and human services humphrey building, you can walk in, there's a situation room that has screens all up from all over the world with a heat map of various diseases and mysterious illnesses that people are afflicted with and identified viruses. ebola is frequently on there, as are other viruses that pop up every now and then. so you're watching a whole series of different viruses emerge at different times. covid wasn't the first one that i was focused on in the white house, frankly. we were having daily calls, long

before covid, on measles, recall, there was a big measles outbreak because people weren't getting their kids vaccinated for measles, tragically. there was another mysterious illness that was causing paralysis among young people, we were focused on that at one point. so the national security council is looking at these diseases, the health and human services is looking at these diseases, all the time and scanning. but it really became clear that covid was something to watch in january, i would say mid-january. it really became clear to me we had a problem here. and a big part of it, frankly, was the behavior of the countries around china. you saw north korea shutting down their border. you saw the vietnamese shutting down a lot transit. you saw the chinese also basically quarantining wuhan in that time period and restricting travel.

so people were starting to -- you know, the behavior of people in the area was irrational, frankly, compared to the official reports that it wasn't that bad and it was well under control. >> leonardo in anchorage, alaska, independent. >> caller: hello. good morning, joe. i just wanted to bring up, the topic about supply and demand, the reagents that are needed for a lot of these tests that you mention that we should have a whole bunch of, those reagents that are needed to activate the detection of the viruses, that's just not available. if we had more companies that compete for that rare elements

in these reagents are definitely not creating more opportunity to distribute these tests. it's creating more scarce resources. i just wanted to kind of point out some of that supply and demand. >> joe grogan, do you have any thoughts on that? >> it certainly did expose a lot of shortcomings in our supply chain in the united states. we are way too dependent upon foreign producers of essential medicines and the ingredients that go into essential medicines. to your point, the reagents that are necessary for a lot of this testing. so that's another thing that congress should be really focused on is onshoring more of this stuff permanently and not doing it with mandates, not doing it with the typical washington, dc response, but if we incentivized it with economic

tax credits, incentivized it with tax cuts, incentivized it for employment, educating scientists and employing scientists, we could bring a lot of this technology and capability back into the united states. but unfortunately we're going to be dependent upon foreign producers for far too long. >> ann, lake city, tennessee, republican. >> caller: yes, joe, i waver between whether fauci knew what it was and just tried to cover it up or was totally ignorant. i can't believe he was ignorant, knowing now how much he was involved in that lab. and also some of our universities like that one professor who was arrested coming back from china and had an assistant that was caught trying to leave america with an unknown substance in his socks so that we need to realize that china is our enemy and they're killing us with covid and with all these fentanyl they're

sending but president trump got to work, warp speed, and got those three vaccines. he had companies retool what they were making to make the ventilators that we need. and biden declared that people had to take a test or they couldn't go back to work. we didn't have any tests because in october he said, no, we're not going to order any more tests. so where does he go to get the tests made after he decides you have to have one or you can't work. to his good friend in china, gave him a contract for 1.3 billion. so they sent us the covid and then they make money off giving it to us to test us. so lopsided. so convoluted. so stupid that he said he was going to fix it and more have died since he's been in there and he has torn this whole country apart with paying people to stay home and not work and now you go in the grocery store and you can't find anything that you need. >> okay, ann, we'll have joe

grogan respond. >> before i became domestic policy adviser in the west wing, i was at the office of management and budget, which is on the white house complex. i was the associate director for health at omb, it's called the pad. it's probably the most powerful health care position that nobody knows about. and you compile the president's budget, you approve all the regulations that hhs puts out, and you tee up for discussion any type of spending on a health care issue that you think has policy concerns. the obama administration, to its tremendous credit, shut down gain of function research with u.s. taxpayer dollars pending a review, because there was a scare with gain of function research as the lady mentioned. and they were concerned about a

manipulated virus escaping and causing a pandemic. nih restarted it. and i was never notified about that at omb. as a matter of fact i never knew about nih funding gain of function research at a chinese lab until after i left the white house. and after the trump administration was over, i believe. i left in may 2020. that is exactly the type of question and decision that should have been teed up for discussion among policymakers. we have a lot of bashing of the so-called politicization of science and politicians getting too involved in science and political appointees getting too involved in science. there is no way that that research should have been restarted without a fulsome policy discussion in the white house. moreover, the particular grant that's still being investigated,

ecohealth, and what happened in that lab should have undergone continuous scrutiny. as to the scientific question about whether or not this particular pathogen, covid, escaped from the lab or not, i think it's a legitimate scientific question that needs to continue to be investigated and it's worth mentioning in the beginning of the epidemic, anybody who raised that question was insulted and shouted down and told to shut up. and there's an emerging evidence that many people were coerced. and there are scientists now coming out and saying i was concerned about it being a manipulated virus and escaping from the lab but i was told i couldn't discuss it. that is very chilling and we need to make sure that that never, ever happens again in this country. >> theresa in hayward, california, democratic caller. >> caller: good morning, greta, how are you?

>> good morning. >> caller: i'm calling because mr. grogan needs to tell everybody that he was a lobbyist for gilead medical before he was plucked out by the trump administration to come and do his job there. every time he says "i think," it's purveying a thought. he doesn't talk about schooling, anybody who's listening to this, don't ask him about no health stuff because he really don't know what he's talking about. at the same time, he's a glorified purveyer to get the -- >> let's give joe grogan a chance to respond to that. >> i've had a number of different positions in washington, dc. i've been here 20 years.

i've been a civil servant at health and human services. i've been a political appointee in the trump administration. and i was a political appointee in the george w. bush administration. i started my work in public health working on hiv policy. i spent time, two years at fda as a special assistant to the commissioner. and i was very privileged to work at two great biopharmaceutical companies, amgen, out of thousand oaks, california, and gilead sciences, where i was in their washington, dc office and worked there for five years. look, gilead transformed hiv treatment and aids in this country. there are a lot of people alive today due to the research and development of gilead. i make no apologies for any job that i've ever had or the way i conducted myself in any of those jobs. i'm very proud of the places that i worked and the way that i performed in them. >> lee is a republican in new

york. your turn. >> caller: hi. i was concerned because dr. fauci is being investigated and they're coming up with emails and i wanted to mention a very disturbing video that i saw several weeks ago and it was dr. fauci talking to the nih director. on the upper left hand corner was the date, 2017. and dr. fauci said, people have stopped taking their influenza flu vaccination and we have to make it more infectious so that by 2019 there will be an influenza flu epidemic. and around september of 2019, the chinese doctors were concerned about a virus and around march of 2020, they recognized it as covid-19.

now, when you make a variant or a vaccine infectious, i don't know what -- how they go about doing it. incidentally, i saw this video twice on one america news in the same day and it was removed and now they're taking one america news off of directv. they're revoking their license. so i would like your comment. >> i've got to confess i don't know, i haven't seen that video, nor do i know anything about it or any conversation between dr. fauci and francis collins about making influence more infectious. >> joe grogan, let's end with what you're watching for next from this administration on their pandemic response. >> i would like them to follow the science, be transparent, and figure out an off-ramp to get

americans back to a normal life. as i said before, i think that by laser focusing on covid and a number of the shutdown policies that were put in place, we have created a whole bunch of public health problems that were not anticipated but should have been. the addiction crisis is at crisis proportions at this point. we need to make it a national priority. the mental health crisis needs to be a national priority. our young people need to be in schools and they need to be learning and i'm very worried that the administration is not set up to pivot to those issues and frankly, we need more bipartisanship to focus on increased innovation, to address our addiction crisis and prevent it from occurring in the first instance and addressing our emerging mental health crisis for young people and frankly adults who have been affected

negatively by not being able to work, losing their jobs, economic incentives that were put in place not to work, having schools shut down, having places of worship shut down. just because those things start to open up again doesn't mean that the trauma goes away. we're going to be dealing with this for a long time and the administration, i would hope, should begin to focus on it and reach out to republicans for help and bipartisan solutions for us to move forward. >> joe grogan, thank you for the conversation this morning, appreciate it. >> thank you. it was a pleasure to be here. >> joining us this morning is james bovard, opinion columnist for "usa today" here to talk about the covid-19 response, the mandates, the testing, the politics. let's talk about those so-called freedom convoys along the u.s./canadian border. what do you think is behind the sentiment and the rationale for