Like many Americans working from home during this pandemic, at times I found it hard to
adjust. Even Congress is now working from home. I deeply apologize for the mental image
you now have to live with of Mitch McConnell Winnie the Pooh-ing it. But if there’s one
member of Congress I know we can count on to nail legislating from her living room,
it’s California Representative Katie Porter. So I hopped on Zoom to find out how she and
her whiteboard are holding up at home. In these dark days of coronavirus, there’s
a glimmer of light coming out of Congress. And it’s reflecting off of a whiteboard.
You may remember Katie Porter from March—which, amazingly, was just a few days ago—when
she wielded her dry erase marker like a sword to confront Trump’s CDC official.
- No, not good enough. The deadline and the time for delay has passed.
You can operationalize the payment structure tomorrow.
- I think you’re an excellent questioner, so my answer is yes.
- Everybody in America, hear that. You are eligible to go get tested for coronavirus
and have that covered. That’s right. In real time, she forced this
dryland Squidward to commit to providing free COVID testing to uninsured Americans. I sat
with Representative Porter to find out if anything can stop her.
- Not everybody’s appreciative when they’re on the other side of that accountability.
Okay. Oh! Other than questionable wifi.
Hello? - Stand by.
Okay, okay, see you in a minute. Are you exhausted from appearing in every
Republican’s nightmares? - Um, no I think that’s a very comfortable
role for me. If you’re full of bullshit, I’m comin’ for ya. Like, I just don’t
have time. I’m a single mom. The dinner’s burning. I’m late to something. I have 4,000
emails. My hair is frizzy. I haven’t shaved my legs in a week. No bullshit.
Porter has a list of bullshit she wants to take care of, including the shameful lack
of coronavirus tests. Where are the tests?
- Here’s the reality: the tests are scattered unevenly throughout the nation. We’re being
told, “you don’t have a lot of cases, so you don’t get a lot of equipment.”
Well, we don’t have a lot of cases, in part, because we don’t have any testing.
That seems like a pretty basic math equation that only a Republican wouldn’t understand.
Despite their lack or arithmetic skills, Congress managed to pass three bills to help with testing
and economic stimulus for the U.S. But Porter says Congress’s inability to remote vote
still stands in the way of further assistance. Which is, you guessed it, total—
- Bullshit. Congress has not figured out how to remote vote. We have not figured out how
to have remote hearings. What Congress is doing right now is trying to learn how to
mute and unmute their telephones. Terrific.
- Because we’re having these 200-person conference calls, and that’s really a level
of hell that I had never experienced. Mhm.
- The number one thing that I hear every day from my colleagues is, “Joe, I think you
need to mute your phone!” We’re definitely struggling our way forward with the technology.
Everybody is struggling with the technology right now. I just learned when I bend over
like this, it appears that I’m wearing a blazer and no top.
And while most members of Congress try to figure out how to get Zoom on their flip phones,
this mother of three is trying to save the country from her living room.
- Definitely, Congress has a list of top priorities right now. There are things like working on
more personal protective equipment, working on expanding testing, trying to figure out
what the president is doing, if anything, with the Defense Production Act—
Wait, hold on. I have a stink bug on my computer. Get off! I have a stink bug on my computer,
and my child is doing piano lessons. So can you hear them in the background?
- I cannot. Okay. I can’t stop it.
- I have to say, do you like working at home? I like it and I don’t like it, almost in
equal measure. I feel like I’m just working all the time.
- Yeah. No, I feel more tired than ever. The other day I was doing live TV, and my daughter
comes in, wearing, like buck-naked, holding her robe. And she wants to come use my bathroom
to take her shower. And I was like, “You need to go.”
I have read that every day you give your kids a coronavirus briefing.
- True. On a scale of Cuomo to Trump, where do your
briefings land? - The information is accurate, so that would
put it really far from the Trump spectrum, but it’s kind of a little bit harsher than
Cuomo. Okay.
- Because they’re not so chit-chatty. I’m not as warm and “we’re all in this together,”
I’m more like “if you don’t behave, you’re gonna die.” Um, so I’m a little
more firm. That may seem harsh, but you know what they
say: “The sun will come out tomorrow!” Right?
- It’s not gonna be better tomorrow. I don’t think it’s gonna be better next week. I’m
not sure if it’s gonna be better next month. What should we all be doing now? Planning
to live off the grid, right? That’s what I’m planning for.
- This is gonna be a long haul. This is a good time to start planning. So if you don’t
have a routine to help your kids with distance learning, get one.
Right. - What, you know, Dr. Fauci said about the
virus is the timeline. That’s hard. I think we all wanna be agents of control here. We
all wanna know what we can do. But the single most important thing we can do is try to make
our homes safe. Try to make our homes happy. So if you’re feeling like you wanna kill
your kids. take a deep breath. You know, have a Diet Dr. Pepper or whatever it is you need
to calm down. Lock yourself in the bathroom. Not that I have personally done any of those
things recently, um… That’s a very specific list!
- No, I mean, it’s a definite strategy! Um, but I do think it’s important that we
try to stabilize our home lives as much as we can.
We should all be learning how to make preserves. - I will tell you the number of people who
have offered me sourdough starter in the last week is in the double digits. And to be clear,
I don’t have time for that shit. Like, I gotta put trying to bring Congress into the
21st century ahead the sourdough project. Stop sending Katie Porter sourdough! She needs
to focus! Focus on helping people and exposing the truth about this human sourdough. And,
hopefully soon, her whiteboard will be back in Congress letting everyone know she’s—
- I just am not there for the bull— Oh, dear. Uh oh.
I, too, would like to make it clear that I do not have time for sourdough starters. Finished
breads only, please. You can mail them directly to my mouth.