Andy Slavitt, former senior advisor to the Biden administration’s COVID response team, joins John Heilemann, co-founder and executive editor of The Recount, on a special COVID-focused episode of the Hell & High Water podcast. In this segment, Slavitt discusses former president Donald Trump’s deliberate choice to deceive the country about the severity of the oncoming pandemic. He then explains how that created a chain reaction that ultimately led to a catastrophically mismanaged response by the Trump administration.
Click here to watch the full episode of the Hell & High Water podcast: John Heilemann and Slavitt discuss the past, present, and future of the pandemic; the Biden administration’s successes (in particular its aggressive distribution of vaccines) and missteps (on testing, messaging, dealing with vaccine resistance, and preparedness for new variants such as Omicron); and whether we are on the cusp of a new era, in which COVID morphs from pandemic to endemic, and a new normal.
