This is a rush transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto," July 19, 2021. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
NEIL CAVUTO, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Billionaires in space.
Twenty-four hours from now, Jeff Bezos will be launching to the heavens, albeit briefly, but not before talking to us and responding to a zinger from no less than Elon Musk.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: You know, Elon Musk had retweeted a meme about your spaceflight, Jeff, making fun of you for only touching the edge of space. He also reminds folks that his rockets can orbit the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. Yours can't, not quite, whatever it is, 2, 300 miles per hour.
Is it just a little competitive jousting back and forth? What did you make of that?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: You're going to hear what Jeff Bezos had to say about that in just a minute.
Welcome, everybody. I'm Neil Cavuto. And this is "Your World."
And before he goes out of this world, actually, for just a few minutes, he might want the reprieve of getting away from a market sell-off, the likes of which we have not seen this here, and all because we have a serious case of pandemic blues and concerns that maybe some awful stuff and restrictions and all the stuff associated with it could be happening again.
The L.A. County indoor mask mandate, now a half-a-dozen Olympic athletes who've tested positive for COVID-19, and we have got days to go. And then two more Texas Democrats who are testing right now positive for COVID. In case you're counting, that's five now in total. The story about the vice president, Harris, who met with all of these guys, going to Walter Reed on a routine checkup just yesterday to see if, well, maybe there's any sort of issue with her.
Apparently not. She tested negative. And all of this at a time the world is gripped with fears it's spreading a lot more there than any of these actions here. The CDC just raising its warning for travelers to the United Kingdom to a level four. That's the highest level you can go, with the advice being, if you don't have to go, maybe don't.
All right, let's go to Christina Coleman on all of this, as, Christina, it was certainly whipsawing stocks. I can understand them being afraid, because it could call into question the whole economic recovery. But it goes further than that, doesn't it?
CHRISTINA COLEMAN, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, now there's a lot going on concerning COVID right now, .
The CDC is now urging people not to travel to the U.K. or to make sure they're fully vaccinated if they have to go, this as some cities and counties put additional COVID guidelines in place. L.A. County just reimposed an indoor mask mandate for people regardless of their vaccination status, citing a recent surge in cases, including the highly transmissible Delta variant.
The new mask mandate is getting a lot of pushback, since it does not align with the CDC guidance that states vaccinated people do not need to mask up. Controversy also swirling over the Texas lawmakers who fled the state to avoid voting on election reform.
Five vaccinated members of that delegation have now tested positive for COVID. V.P. Kamala Harris, who met with the delegation at this event on Tuesday, went to Walter Reed Military Hospital yesterday for what the White House is calling a routine doctor's appointment. No other information was released on her visit, though a V.P. spokesperson says Harris was not in close contact with the lawmakers who came down with the virus.
And as for sports, at least two members of the U.S. Olympic team have recently tested positive for COVID, including tennis star Coco Gauff and U.S. gymnastics alternate Kara Eaker. Both will sit out of this year's Games. They are two of at least 55 people now connected to the Olympics, including athletes and officials, who have tested positive for COVID since July 1 -- Neil.
CAVUTO: Christina, thank you very, very much.
So, how dangerous is this? Should we be concerned? Keep in mind that these cases in total numbers are still really, really small, particularly in this country. And they are really targeted at, well, the 99 percent in that number who have not been vaccinated.
It's a good reminder from Dr. Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.
Doctor, good to have you.
So, the clear message is the vulnerable population are those who haven't been vaccinated, right?
DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, DIRECTOR OF HEALTH METRICS, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON: Absolutely.
Those who haven't got one of the very effective vaccines are much more likely to get infected. But, of course, we are seeing some infections even in those who are vaccinated, because the Delta variant is just so transmissible.
CAVUTO: Now, the danger with the Delta variant, because it always seems to be morphing into something, is there any risk or fear, Doctor, that these existing vaccines will not be able to keep up with those changes and some of these other variants that are popping up?
MURRAY: Well, the great news about the mRNA technology is that both Moderna and Pfizer are -- feel like they can keep ahead of the variants as they emerge.
They can tweak the vaccine, people can get a booster, and keep their immunity levels up high. So I think that the -- there isn't really a huge risk of a lot of deaths and hospitalization in those who are vaccinated. But there can be a lot of transmission of the infection, but it'll be -- in the vaccinated, those will be mild cases.
CAVUTO: You know, you hear what's going on in L.A. County and some other counties and cities that are exploring again imposing restrictions, mandates, all of that stuff, but extending it to those have already been vaccinated as well, and L.A. County, as I'm sure you're aware, Doctor, requiring masks whether you have had the shot or not.
What do you think of that?
MURRAY: You know, I think it's a sensible strategy when things start to get out of control, like we're seeing in Arkansas or Missouri, where you're getting really big increases in cases.
Because the vaccinated can contribute to transmission, it makes sense to try and cut down transmission, so that the unvaccinated don't start to die. And so that seems a reasonable strategy. I think, as we go later in the year, people who also may have some comorbidities, even if they're vaccinated, they will want to probably choose to mask up, if there's a lot of transmission in their community.
CAVUTO: Now, there's also talk that this pushes into the fall, Doctor, that it will slow things down, one of the reasons why the market was tanking today, that even the recovery with it, which we're going to explore in just a second, will also slow down, possibly reverse.
Are we all getting ahead of ourselves?
MURRAY: You know, in our models, we see the summer surge from the Delta variant being pretty modest, but, as we head into the fall and winter, it could well get quite a bit worse.
And the reason is that most people aren't masked up, they're not being cautious anymore. So we should expect more transmission amongst the unvaccinated, and that to some extent the vaccinated than we had last time round. So we expect things to get worse in the winter, but nothing like we had last winter, because of the vaccines.
CAVUTO: All right, I hope you're right, Doctor. You have been pretty prescient on all this stuff.
Dr. Christopher Murray, much appreciated.
Let's go to Charles Payne on this. Of course, his "Making Money" show at 2:00 p.m. FOX Business is required watching, as is his upcoming special,"Proud American: From Military to Marketplace," to help those folks out. He's a great veteran himself.
I played with G.I. Joes as a kid, so I think that counts as well.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: Charles, it is weird, right? Looking at this market reaction. It really wasn't about any inflation concerns, was it? It was about maybe this great boom out of the pandemic could slow and, in big populated areas like Los Angeles County, reverse, right?
CHARLES PAYNE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: Yes, that was the big trigger today, no doubt about it.
By the way, the flamethrower was my favorite green Army man.
(LAUGHTER)
PAYNE: It's one of those things, Neil, where it's -- you see the headlines, starting about three weeks ago, a headline here, a headline there about the Delta variant.
Then you start to hear it more and more on the news. And, as investors, you start to sense, right, because the idea with investing in the market is always a sort of sense where the economy is going and that's what the market reflects. And it reflects just the anxiety over maybe a potential overreaction, L.A. County being a prime example, your interview prior to this.
They talked about areas where there were high incidence of the Delta variant, but I don't know that that's L.A. County. And so people are wondering, because these majors places, these major population centers, California, New York, Illinois, a lot of people believe that they were too ham-fisted, that too many small businesses went out of business, that too many people lost their jobs.
And everyone -- no one wants to go through that again, right. We want to be cautious, even if it's to a fault, but not to the point where we derailed the economy.
CAVUTO: Right.
PAYNE: And I think that was the message the market sent everyone today.
CAVUTO: Yes.
And we're very slow to accept those visiting from Europe still, a warning by the CDC, if we had our choice, we would cool it on going to the United Kingdom, because it's the highest category risk. That's the kind of thing people hear and they get anxious.
And I wonder, do they retrench, to the point that you jeopardize not the entire recovery, but certainly the strength that we have been seeing?
PAYNE: You can certainly stall it. I think the only thing that can derail it would be in government mandates.
CAVUTO: Right.
PAYNE: I think people are now used to going out. I think people are now used to going back to the mall, to a degree, and sort of this -- the isolation and the damage that it's caused.
So it would take governments -- even today, with the CDC and that travel, to the fourth highest advisory against going to the U.K., but even the U.K. itself is resistant and resisting as much as possible...
CAVUTO: Right.
PAYNE: ... to shut down their economy like they did last year. Nobody wants to see that.
And one thing that we haven't talked about is the hospitalizations and deaths. I think Wall Street's going to start to zero in on that and then keep our fingers crossed that those -- the needle doesn't move on that.
And I think, ultimately, if that doesn't happen, then you will see the markets say, OK, sort of a sigh of relief that, while highly transmissible and obviously we want to avoid it as much as possible, if it is not as deadly as last time around, maybe we won't get the same sort of restrictions and lockdowns.
CAVUTO: Yes, I hear you, my friend, because you think about it, we're both in the numbers business, right?
So when you hear these percentages, up 60, 70 percent, these are very low levels, coming off extremely low levels. And you mentioned hospitalizations and deaths. They're very low overall.
My -- I guess what I'm asking, as we go forward here, without getting wonky, the bond market was seeing yields drop a lot today. Normally, normally, that's a sign that all these inflationary pressures you hear so much talk about, that wasn't the worry, the worry, again, just today, that this could slow the economy down.
But you don't seem to think that that's going to happen?
PAYNE: I don't think it will happen. I hope it doesn't happen.
But to your point, the bond market for about, honestly, two months now has we're saying, we need to be focused on next year. Yes, we're going to have a big inflation issue this summer.
CAVUTO: Right.
PAYNE: But next year, when all the federal money runs out, that maybe we will be dealing with a much slower economy. And that's something that no one's paying attention to, the message of the bond market for next year.
Right now, yes, we're dealing with inflation. And, by the way, I think we'd rather have inflation in an open economy than stagflation in a closed economy. We will see.
CAVUTO: That's a very good point.
Charles, thank you very, very much, Charles Payne on all of that.
PAYNE: Thanks, Neil.
CAVUTO: Of course, stagflation, we, of course, remember that, right, back to the Carter years.
The economy is dealing with runaway price run-ups, so much so that things slow down, to the point you have inflation and you have a slow economy, stagflation.
All right, well, probably a good thing that in this environment of things getting worse and the fact that he lost $12 billion on paper today, it's a good thing that Jeff Bezos has left day-to-day running of Amazon. He's still by far the world's richest man.
But for a brief few minutes in space, he can forget about it all and realize his money is making all that possible.
Up next, close and personal, the man and the crew behind the billionaire's rush to the heavens.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: Michael, you had the unusual role of being in that command module as Neil and Buzz were walking on the moon. And it would have been your responsibility, if they could not have gotten off the moon, to go home without them.
How much did that weigh on you as you were circling?
MICHAEL COLLINS, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: It weighed on my mind a lot.
But it was an unheroic role. I don't think we ought to be called heroes. As a matter of fact, I object to being called a hero.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: The great thing about my job is, I get to talk to heroes like that.
But talking to the Apollo 11 astronauts back in 2004, well, that, that was one for the ages. And there is a reason why Jeff Bezos is blasting off from Texas tomorrow. It is the 52nd anniversary of man landing on the moon.
And doesn't Jeff Flock know it? Following that very closely for a big launch day tomorrow in Van Horn, Texas.
Hey, Jeff.
JEFF FLOCK, FOX BUSINESS NETWORK CORRESPONDENT: I did watch that one, Neil, as I suspect you did, when I was a little kid. And maybe you were little too.
And it's going to be a treat to see this tomorrow here on the 80,000 acres that Jeff Bezos owns behind me. Launch Site One is where this will take off. That little capsule, yes, that's where they're all be. And, yes, we call these people heroes. I don't know that the -- that is a term that really applies.
These are very fortunate people that are going to get up to look at -- back at Earth through these huge windows in this capsule. Going to be a real treat. They have tested this capsule and the rocket 15 times without people in it. It has performed flawlessly. And they hope that it'll do that again.
Jeff Bezos made it all happen. And he says, Neil, as he told you, I know, exclusively earlier today, that this is all about the future and about making enough money to advance the technology and get America and the world into space, maybe colonizing space.
We need big thinkers like that, don't we? And we're going to see tomorrow. Hope the weather holds, by the way. It's a stormy day today out in the desert. Tomorrow, forecast is for better times. And we will be here live -- Neil.
CAVUTO: That, my friend, is a cool assignment. You deserve that. You have covered so many big events.
All right, Jeff Flock on all of that.
FLOCK: Sure.
CAVUTO: You know, if you think about it, this crew and this mission, even though a lot of people say Bezos is late to the party, he was actually the earliest one at the party. And what he was doing, of course, with his rocket building company was trying to do it right.
As Jeff said, 15 unmanned tries to make sure that the first manned try tomorrow will go off without a hitch. But that does not mean, when I caught up with Jeff and his fellow astronauts -- they're all astronauts -- what the pressures were like.
Take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: Congratulations to all of you.
Jeff, I was thinking of you, that joining on this journey will be both the oldest and youngest human beings ever to go into space and your brother. That's a lot of pressure.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: Now, I know you have had 15 successful automatic fights.
This is the first one with human beings. Are you a tad anxious?
JEFF BEZOS, FOUNDER, AMAZON: Neil, I'm not.
I am excited, but not anxious. We will see how I feel when I'm strapped into my seat and -- but I'm very excited.
We're ready. The vehicle is ready. This team is amazing. I feel very good about it. And I think my fellow crewmates feel good about it too.
CAVUTO: You know, Elon Musk had retweeted a meme about your spaceflight, Jeff, making fun of you for only touching the edge of space. He also reminds folks that his rockets can orbit the Earth at 17,000 miles per hour. Yours can't, not quite, whatever it is, 2, 300 miles per hour.
Is it just a little competitive jousting back and forth? What did you make of that?
J. BEZOS: Well, it's correct.
What we're doing and what Blue Origin is doing with the new Shepard vehicles is what Alan Shepard did, the first American in space. It's called a suborbital spaceflight. You go up into space, but you don't go into orbit around the Earth. That's a different -- we're also building a vehicle to do that. It's called New Glenn, after the first American, John Glenn, to orbit the Earth.
CAVUTO: Right.
J. BEZOS: But this is a tourism mission. And it's very important, because it lets us practice and it will let more people get up into space.
And that practice is what will allow us to build the infrastructure to let the next generations of people really do amazing things in space. Maybe that will be for our young friend Oliver here, who's 18 years old, he will he may be that next generation. Maybe he will found a next generation space company that will take the infrastructure we have built and then rest on top of that.
CAVUTO: That is a good cue for me to go to Oliver.
And, congratulations, Oliver. You will be the youngest human being in space. And I'm just curious. Your dad was among the original bidders for a seat on this spacecraft. Was it always understood that he was saving it for you? Could you tell us what was going on there?
OLIVER DAEMEN, BLUE ORIGIN PASSENGER: I think he's afraid of heights.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: Touche.
DAEMEN: No, no, I have been super excited about space and everything.
And I asked him. And he was like, why not? Let's just try. And now here I am. So, it worked out really good for me.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: You know, Jeff, if you don't mind going back here, it's an 11- minute flight, right? So, for a paying customer, at about $28 million, that works out to about $2.8 million a minute, or about what I spend on Amazon in a typical year.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: So, I'm curious.
J. BEZOS: Bless you, Neil.
CAVUTO: I'm sure the prices come down.
All right, but that's a lot of money. Now, how soon do you think that paying customers will be paying a lot less than that?
J. BEZOS: Well, I mean, over the coming years, we hope to drive the price downrange.
The $28 million, of course, is a special price, because that was -- that money was is being donated to charity. And it's also -- was for the first seat. So it's a special price.
But, even so, the part -- the point of this is to -- over time with practice to drive down that cost. That's what happens with -- it's what happened with commercial air travel. You have to start somewhere and you have to work hard on getting it to be more efficient, more practical, and less expensive.
CAVUTO: All right, the guy who canceled out because of a scheduling conflict, who could have a scheduling conflict that would rival in importance going into space with you?
I mean, I -- did he have a dentist's appointment? Do you know what was going on?
J. BEZOS: Somebody who could afford to pay $28 million for a flight would have that kind of scheduling conflict, Neil.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: You're exactly right. You're exactly right. It's a stupid question.
Mary Wally Funk, if you don't mind, you have been waiting a long -- you have been waiting a long time for this day.
And everyone says that you're more up to this flight than any of those three folks around you. This has been a long time coming.
MARK BEZOS, BROTHER OF JEFF BEZOS: That is true.
CAVUTO: You were among the original 13...
J. BEZOS: We can confirm that. We can confirm that.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: And I'm just thinking, you were tested becoming among the first women in space, and that program was shelved.
Is the wait worth it?
WALLY FUNK, 82-YEAR-OLD AEROSPACE PIONEER: Well, yes.
No, I was disappointed in 40 years of it. But now I'm going to go up with the best team ever. And we're going to show the world what can be done in space and how we can act and think and how we want to bring things back to people.
J. BEZOS: Wally -- back in the early '60s, when Wally was in the Mercury 13, she went through all the tests. She outperformed all of the men.
And we can confirm our training here that she's still outperforming all the men.
(LAUGHTER)
J. BEZOS: And she can outrun all of us. She's incredible. And she's also a role model for resilience and grit. And she's incredible. And we all -- we're in love with her, yes.
CAVUTO: Congratulations to all of you.
Mark, you're the brother. Your brother came to you and said, I want to go up in space with you.
Did you ever think for even a nanosecond, have a couple of more flights before I consider that?
(LAUGHTER)
M. BEZOS: No, that didn't occur to me.
I think part of it was because he said he was going to. If he was just sending me, I might have been concerned.
(LAUGHTER)
M. BEZOS: I knew he was going.
I was incredibly excited. It's such an honor to be there to represent our mom and dad and our sister, Christina, and support Jeff in the realization of a lifelong dream. It's just a thrill.
We have had a lot of adventures together, and I just can't wait for the next one. It's going to be absolutely unbelievable.
J. BEZOS: Mark has been a part of the Blue Origin program from the very beginning. He's been a huge contributor. And he's been a contributor my whole life, if we're being real about it. And I couldn't have a better person to fly with me. I'm so excited.
M. BEZOS: Thank you, brother.
CAVUTO: That's beautiful.
Congratulations, guys. And best of luck tomorrow. Godspeed.
J. BEZOS: Thank you, Neil.
M. BEZOS: We appreciate it. Thank you very much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: All right, you heard reference again and again to New Shepard. That's what it's called, named after Alan Shepard. He was the first American in space. That was a suborbital flight back in early 1961.
It would pave the way for one more suborbital flight and then, of course, the John Glenn orbital flight that established our beachhead to try to catch up with the Russians, who were way ahead of us back then.
But it is something we forget. It began with one men in a very risky suborbital flight, and Alan Shepard cool as a cucumber through it all. Take a look back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NARRATOR: The liftoff is as near perfect as human skills can make it. And the Redstone rockets into space for 115 miles, with Commander Shepard keeping up a running commentary with the control center.
Now, from this historic flight, you're going to see pictures never before seen by mortal eyes, the first films of a human being in flight in space, that floating strap on Shepard's right shoulder proclaiming his state of weightlessness.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAVUTO: You know, I have watched that a number of times, but I always love the announcer on that. What a voice, right? He's just like, and here he was.
But that was history. That was unprecedented. We'd never done this. So we have had a little bit of practice in flight and how to deal with that, suborbital, orbital, going way, way forward, the International Space Station, where astronauts stay for months at a time.
Jose Hernandez knows exactly what I'm talking about, a genuine hero in his own right, though he doesn't believe that or say that former, NASA astronaut.
Jose, thanks for coming.
I wonder, from your perspective, as a space veteran, and you did the training and the physical training and the background, the education, all the stuff that comes with it. And going forward, it's going to be, if you have got the money, plunk it down, come on board.
What do you think of that?
JOSE HERNANDEZ, FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT: Well, Neil, I think any time you have got other entities other than NASA -- here, we have got three viable companies providing access to space.
I think it's a good thing. Any time we invest in space exploration, and make it available to the civilians, I think it's great.
Now, albeit, right now, it's very expensive. And it's going to continue to be so. But it's like early aviation. That was very expensive.
CAVUTO: Right. Right.
HERNANDEZ: And, as time went on, they found ways of making it cheaper.
So I think, ultimately, a middle-class, upper-middle-class person will be able to afford the luxury of experiencing weightlessness and getting that orbital perspective we all talk about.
CAVUTO: You know, Jose, I can't let go of this. You probably think I'm an idiot.
The dude who stopped and turned down this flight because he had a scheduling conflict, what the heck? What do you think of that?
HERNANDEZ: Oh, man, I don't know what could be more important than getting on the maiden flight.
CAVUTO: I got this molar. I got to have it taken care of.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: I don't know.
HERNANDEZ: Unless he was in pain, and he really couldn't go...
CAVUTO: That's it.
HERNANDEZ: ... and the altitude change is going to affect it, I would have said, hey, let's reschedule the meeting for tomorrow kind of thing, you know?
CAVUTO: I got you.
Jose, another thing I noticed, there's virtually no training for these missions. There wasn't with what we saw with Richard Branson's? It doesn't seem to be here, outside of maybe checking out the uniform, make sure it fits and all of that. They have no control over the flight itself in all of these cases.
Does that concern you at all?
HERNANDEZ: Neil, it's a new era of space travel.
CAVUTO: thank
HERNANDEZ: They had a total of 14 hours of training, which pales in comparison to us having -- we have to have two years of basic training and about 18 months for a specific space shuttle flight for training for that.
So it pales in comparison. But, then again, technology has improved so much. It's going to be completely autonomous. There's not going to be a pilot on board. It's going to be four passengers. And it's all going to be controlled by the computer.
And so it's amazing. And I think that's the right thing to do, because they have proven it through their 15 previous flights that it works. And now they're going to prove it with humans on board. And what better than having the former CEO or the owner of Blue Origin to be part of the mission?
CAVUTO: Yes.
Yes, I like, Jose, because you have to do zero physical training. So I could stumble on just like this, and have a flight and not have to do all the grueling things that you did, young man. But it's going to be something to behold.
Jose, thank you very much.
HERNANDEZ: Thank you very much, Neil. We will be looking forward to it tomorrow morning.
CAVUTO: Indeed. I will as well.
Just to put this in perspective, folks, a lot of people laugh at these billionaires, they have got the money, it's their toy thing and all that.
Want you to think of this, though. To a man, whether it's Jeff Bezos or Branson or Elon Musk, I can't tell you, much like in the early days of getting their companies off the ground, how they were dismissed and laughed at, told no and can't, this is ridiculous. They never gave up.
So they have their alternating personalities and their rivalries and maybe some jousting back and forth, but these guys have one thing in common. They don't understand the word can't. There's something great about that.
More after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAVUTO: Did the administration just take an about-Facebook?
Some changes in sentiment regarding Facebook and whether, well, it is killing people -- after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAVUTO: Did the president just pull an about-Facebook on the criticism of the social media giant regarding misinformation as it sees it generating from the social media giant about vaccines?
Peter Doocy now with more on all of that.
Peter, what's going on here?
PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Neil, the president told us on Friday he thinks Facebook is killing people by not patrolling misinformation on their platform.
But, today, that position softened up a little bit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Facebook isn't killing people. These 12 people who are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It's killing people. It's bad information.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOOCY: And a Facebook official says don't blame them for people not getting vaccinated. They went through all the data that they had about the platform and report back: "The data shows that 85 percent of Facebook users in the U.S. have been or want to be vaccinated against COVID-19. President Biden's goal was for 70 percent of Americans to be vaccinated by July 4. Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed."
And elected Republicans have some other ideas.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): The left is always thinking, if their goal doesn't get hit, it doesn't mean it's everybody else's fault.
News flash, stop being a pest. Stop pressuring everybody. Stop throwing it in people's faces. People typically have like a revolt when somebody tells them what to do. If you want people to get vaccinated at a higher rate, just provide the information, step back, and let adults manage their own lives.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DOOCY: The president warned today about the dangers of that Delta variant.
So I asked the press secretary, Jen Psaki, if he would ever consider calling former President Trump to come here and do a pro-vaccine PSA. And while she didn't outright say no, she did say she didn't think that kind of collaboration should require an embroidered invitation -- Neil.
CAVUTO: What if it's not embroidered? It's just like scratched out on a card?
DOOCY: It's like an e-vite, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: Right, exactly.
All right, Peter Doocy, great reporting, as always, my friend.
Whatever you think about this, misinformation is really in the eye of the beholder, or is it a good lawyer?
We have got a crackerjack one after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAVUTO: All right, so, as we told you a little earlier, the administration kind of dialing back the charges the president made against social media, particularly Facebook, that putting misinformation out there on the danger of vaccines is tantamount to killing people.
But the legal back-and-forth continues as to, what is misinformation and what is a social media company's responsibility like a Facebook?
Let's go to Andy McCarthy, the former assistant U.S. attorney.
Andy, this is an always evolving subject. I get that. But where is this leading, let's say, Facebook?
ANDY MCCARTHY, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I think things have turned on their head, Neil, because the government is not supposed to be calling out the media or the social media for misinformation. It's the other way around.
And the Biden administration really doesn't have clean hands here, because the Biden campaign, led by, for example, Kamala Harris, did everything that they could to talk down the vaccines as something that wasn't trustworthy under Trump or having been developed under Trump.
And since then, they haven't gotten the emergency authorization lifted. So people have to be advised, obviously, of what the risks are. And they have done -- they're pushing these vaccine mandates again in Democrat strongholds like Los Angeles and New York, New York City, which only tells people that, if you get vaccinated, you're going to be under all the same mandates anyhow.
So I think, before he goes after Facebook, he'd be well -- he would be well-advised to maybe looking at his own house and see what it is that they're doing in their messaging that has depressed what ought to be people's enthusiasm to get -- to take advantage of these vaccines.
CAVUTO: So, I think if he had his druthers, I mean, they would push for mandatory vaccinations. Obviously, that is a problem right there.
But their argument is these spikes in cases and everything else is directly in proportion to that stopping, in other words, people not getting vaccinated, a stubborn plurality, up to a third of Americans, who refuse to.
Now, you can't force the issue. But can you, can you if it spirals here, let's say, as it is in places like Asia and elsewhere and even in Britain, where they are not imposing restrictions, even as cases spike and even as the CDC is saying, because they're doing that, it is a fourth level risk, the highest risk can be for travelers to the United Kingdom?
What do you do?
MCCARTHY: Well, I think they're going to have a lot of latitude. Neil, as far as mandating vaccines are concerned.
And I would question whether that's the best approach. I think the best approach, especially in a free society, where we have a First Amendment and our theory that we proceed on is that, in the end, good information will always outweigh and chase out bad information, you're likely to get a lot more vaccine compliance and a lot more people submitting to it if they are convinced about what the merits of it are, rather than a heavy-handed approach.
I think that could be very counterproductive. But I just was -- before we started to speak, I was just looking at an opinion by a federal judge in Indiana, who refused to give the students at Indiana University the injunction they were looking for to get out of the vaccine mandate.
And it's a very thoughtful opinion by a Trump-appointed judge who says, basically, there's Supreme Court precedent that goes back more than a century which basically says that the government has the power to mandate vaccines in connection with a situation where you're trying to fight off a deadly pandemic.
So, based on that precedent, unless the Supreme Court changes it, there's good reason to think that the government at the state level and the federal level is going to have a lot of leeway here.
CAVUTO: Yes, it depends on its severity, right, if it's a polio situation like in the '20s and '30s vs. this.
MCCARTHY: Right.
CAVUTO: And it's a crapshoot, right?
All right. Andy McCarthy, thank you very, very much. Even I understood that. So, thank you for that, Andy.
MCCARTHY: Thanks, Neil.
CAVUTO: All right, we got a lot to -- you think this is going to be a big, hot political issue, you might be looking at the wrong one.
The one that really could hurt Democrats is far more expensive, a lot more expensive -- after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAVUTO: So, this could be the week we see something done on infrastructure?
I might be getting ahead of myself, Chad Pergram following it very closely.
Where do we stand on this, Chad?
CHAD PERGRAM, FOX NEWS CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Neil, Wednesday is a big day for infrastructure. Senators will take a test vote to crack a filibuster to launch debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
That needs 60 votes, but failing to clear the filibuster bar could derail the bipartisan bill. The White House is playing its cards close to the vest.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We're not quite there yet. There is a lot of good work that's happened. Two days is a lifetime in Washington.
So I don't think we're going to make predictions of the death of the infrastructure package.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PERGRAM: Republicans who signed on to the infrastructure plan balked because the bill is not yet complete.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BILL CASSIDY (R-LA): How can I vote for cloture when the bill isn't written? Unless you want programmed failure, unless Senator Schumer doesn't want this to happen, you need a little bit more time to get it right.
They want everything reasonable on their side, not helping us. Again, we can pass this. We just don't need programmed failure.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PERGRAM: GOP senators implored Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to postpone the vote, but Schumer says no.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D-NY): Look, there's no reason that the bipartisan group can't get finished -- can't come to an agreement by Wednesday, OK?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PERGRAM: The bipartisan bill needs the votes of all 50 Senate Democrats, plus 10 GOP senators, but, if it fails, Democrats may accuse the GOP of not working in a bipartisan fashion. Democrats could then use that to justify moving their own $3.5 trillion bill.
But the Democrats' bill isn't done yet either. And Democrats are seeking to load up that bill with everything ranging from DACA to health benefits -- Neil.
CAVUTO: All right, thank you, my friend.
Chad Pergram in Washington.
Well, someone's wrong on this, right? The Democrats say all that spending is going to goose the economy and help everyone. Republicans say it's going to lead to stagflation and Joe Biden is another Jimmy Carter. That's a chasm between the parties, isn't it?
After this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CAVUTO: All right, Democrats are saying the benefits of all this spending will dwarf whatever inflation we're seeing. Republicans are saying that the inflation we will be seeing will dwarf whatever gains we're getting.
Time to hash that out with Lee Carter, GOP pollster, Jess, Jessica Tarlov, FOX News contributor, Democratic strategist.
Jess, end it with you.
That's the argument, right? This is well worth it. Prices might go up, but it's more than compensated for the gains of this spending, right?
JESSICA TARLOV, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: That's always what the argument is, going back to what FDR did, who Joe Biden has said he's modeling his presidency after, because that's the kind of decisive action that we need after the last 18 months that we have had.
Now, I will say that I wish we were having this discussion on a different day than today, when obviously inflation has been so negatively affecting the markets. And I'm at a bit of a disadvantage here. But I think that, if you look at public opinion, you look at the kind of infrastructure, human and technical, that we will be getting out of this, that, net-net, the American people will be happy, and that the economy is incredibly durable and will certainly survive this.
CAVUTO: Well, the one thing I know covering this stuff, whether you're on the left or right, Lee, is inflation rarely is transitory. It sticks around a while, sort of like me when I visit someone's house and I'm ordering pay- per-view movies, raiding the refrigerator.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: I don't leave.
So I'm wondering, Lee, if that's what we're looking at here and that should be a big worry for Democrats. What do you think?
LEE CARTER, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: Yes, I think that, to me, is the bigger issue right now, because Biden and even Yellen today are trying to position it as temporary inflation. They're saying, it's just going to be a few months, we will get through it, we're going to get to the other side.
And if it isn't, and it likely isn't going to be a short period of inflation, rather, it's going to be more prolonged, I think that they're going to have a credibility problem. And because of that promise and the expectation on the other side, I think that people are going to expect to start feeling better, when right now people are already starting to feel the impacts of inflation.
You have got 70 percent of folks who are saying that they feel the impact of grocery prices going up; 68 percent of people are saying they feel the impact of gas prices going up. And so when you have that kind of an impact on your wallet, and that kind of feeling people, notice it on their day-to- day lives.
And if they're promising a short-term pain for a longer-term gain, they're going to have to deliver on that or they're going to have a problem, I think, in the next couple of years, when it comes to -- time to devote.
CAVUTO: Jess, I don't blame this inflation the president, per se.
We're coming off a very slow, almost stopped economy.
TARLOV: Right.
CAVUTO: Obviously, you pick up from that, you're going to see an increase in activity.
I do know this. You can put more salt in the wound here. In other words, you can start with this spending that will propel that and put it on steroids. And this country does have a history of doing that sort of thing, too. So I'm just wondering how the Democrats you talk to are playing that out?
TARLOV: Well, everyone's thinking about the midterm elections, which are right around the corner, because we live in a perpetual cycle of running for office and fund-raising and pitching everybody.
CAVUTO: We do.
(LAUGHTER)
TARLOV: And that's a concern for this, especially for Democrats and Republicans, because if the Republicans sign on to a bipartisan infrastructure bill, then they own this as well, whereas they can't just say, hey, this is the Democrats' fault.
And the Democrats will have the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which is hugely popular, and then we're both sitting there with this infrastructure pile in our lap, saying, like, no inflation, it's this guy's fault.
CAVUTO: Yes.
TARLOV: So that, I think, is really top of mind for people as we had towards November 2022. It's not that far away.
CAVUTO: All right, real quickly, Lee, Republicans are hardly ones to judge anyone on spending.
I mean, obviously, it's picked up the pace here, but it's a bipartisan binge.
I'm just wondering how it does sort out. And average Americans, if they keep seeing these high prices, they're going to fret, right?
CARTER: Yes, I think it's going to have -- I think it's going to have an impact.
But I think, even if it's a bipartisan plan, I think it's still the Democrats' plan, and they're going to have to own that when it comes time to the midterms.
CAVUTO: Ladies, thank you both very much.
TARLOV: Yes.
CAVUTO: If we give up on all this, we can just join Jeff Bezos and that rocket and say, the hell with it, and then realize it's only 11 minutes.
(LAUGHTER)
CAVUTO: We're back here in the middle of this.
That's all tomorrow.
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