E16: Reflecting on the riots at the US Capitol, plus: Georgia runoff elections, vaccine distribution & more

Evidence shows Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz faced short‑term backlash after their January 6, 2021 objections, but their medium‑term and current political standing—especially with Republican voters and in their 2024 races—was not ultimately harmed and in some ways was reinforced.

1. Immediate backlash and elite costs (real but temporary)

   • Hawley’s high‑profile role in objecting to certification led to calls for resignation and a majority of Missouri voters saying shortly after Jan. 6 that he should resign; even about one in five Missouri Republicans agreed. His approval was underwater in that moment. (thedailybeast.com)
   • Simon & Schuster canceled Hawley’s book deal specifically over his role in challenging the election; the book was quickly picked up by Regnery, mitigating the damage. (townhall.com)
   • Numerous major corporations publicly paused or suspended PAC donations to lawmakers who voted against certification, explicitly including Hawley and Cruz (e.g., Amazon, Microsoft, AT&T, Walmart, Marriott, Nike, etc.). (cnbc.com)
   • However, watchdog reports later documented that many corporations or associated PACs resumed giving—directly or via party committees—to members of the so‑called “Sedition Caucus,” blunting the long‑term financial impact. (citizensforethics.org)

2. Support among Republican voters rebounded and is now very strong

   • While Morning Consult data showed immediate post‑riot approval drops among Republicans in Missouri and Texas, majorities of GOP voters in both states still approved of Hawley and Cruz even in January 2021. (newsweek.com)
   • By 2024–25, Hawley’s position with Missouri Republicans is extremely strong: SLU/YouGov polling finds about 86–88% of Missouri Republicans approving of his job performance, with roughly half “strongly approve.” (slu.edu)
   • Similarly, UT/Texas Politics Project polling shows Cruz with very high job‑approval and favorability among Texas Republicans (e.g., around the high‑70s to 80%+ approval in 2022–24, 73% favorable vs 12% unfavorable among Republicans in early 2024). (texaspolitics.utexas.edu)
   • Broader polling indicates that Republican voters overall tended to approve of efforts to object to the 2020 results; in Georgia, for example, Republicans approved of lawmakers voting to overturn the election by a net +44 points. (dataforprogress.org) This undercuts the specific claim that the objection would hurt Hawley and Cruz “including with Republican voters.”

3. Electoral outcomes: both were comfortably re‑elected in 2024

   • In November 2024, Hawley won re‑election in Missouri with 55.6% of the vote to Democrat Lucas Kunce’s 41.8%, a solid double‑digit margin in a statewide race. (en.wikipedia.org)
   • Ted Cruz won re‑election to a third Senate term in Texas with 53.1% to Colin Allred’s 44.6%, improving substantially on his close 2018 margin. (en.wikipedia.org) His performance exceeded late polling expectations, suggesting no decisive electoral penalty.
   • Pre‑election polling in both states consistently showed them ahead; Cook and other handicappers continued to rate Hawley’s seat as “Solid/Lean Republican,” and Texas polling showed Cruz holding clear leads and strong backing from GOP voters. (cnbc.com)

4. Fundraising and intra‑GOP standing often benefited

   • Reporting in early 2021 found the NRSC got some of its best small‑dollar digital fundraising returns using Hawley’s name—second only to its own chair—indicating his objection enhanced his value with grassroots Republican donors rather than hurting it. (cnbc.com)
   • Subsequent Missouri polling shows Hawley’s overall favorability and job approval improving by 2024–25 compared with the immediate post‑riot period, with analysts noting his combative style resonates with Republican voters. (missouriindependent.com)
   • Cruz remains one of the best‑known national GOP figures and is routinely listed among plausible 2028 presidential contenders; recent coverage of his feud with Tucker Carlson explicitly frames both as likely 2028 aspirants, not sidelined figures. (politico.com)

5. 2024 presidential ambitions and broader prospects

   • Sacks tied the objection to ambitions for 2024. In reality, both men chose not to run for president in 2024, mainly because Donald Trump dominated the field, not because GOP voters turned against them over Jan. 6.
   • Hawley repeatedly said in January 2021 that he was not running for president and would focus on his Senate work; he later publicly ruled out a 2024 run. (foxnews.com)
   • Cruz openly flirted with a 2024 presidential bid but ultimately prioritized his Senate re‑election, while keeping national ambitions alive for the post‑Trump era. (foxnews.com) His continued positioning for 2028 suggests his “future prospects” within the party remain intact.

Bottom line:

Their Jan. 6 objections clearly produced short‑term reputational and financial costs with national elites and general‑election audiences, but:

• They retain overwhelming support among Republican voters in their states.
• Both decisively won re‑election in 2024.
• Hawley remains a powerful figure in Missouri, and Cruz is still treated as a serious future presidential contender.

Given that their core political careers and standing with GOP voters have not been “ultimately” harmed—and in some respects were strengthened within the party—the prediction that this move would hurt rather than help their political prospects, especially among Republicans and regarding future ambitions, is best judged as wrong overall.

Friedberg’s claim was explicitly conditional: if the U.S. adopted a highly centralized, 24/7, mass-site, nurse‑ and National Guard–driven vaccination program, he argued it could vaccinate essentially the whole population in 90 days. The United States did not implement anything close to that specific model. The real program combined federal coordination (Operation Warp Speed and then the Biden administration) with mostly state- and county-run clinics, hospitals, and large pharmacy chains, not a single uniform, round‑the‑clock national campaign run through mass sites and the Guard. (en.wikipedia.org)

Empirically, the actual rollout was far slower than his 90‑day vision: the U.S. vaccination program began on December 14, 2020; by April 22, 2021 (about 130 days later), only about 27% of the total population was fully vaccinated and about 41% had received at least one dose. (archive.cdc.gov) By early September 2021, roughly nine months in, about 53% of the total population was fully vaccinated, and about 63% had at least one dose. (archive.cdc.gov) Even by mid‑July 2022, around 67% of the population was fully vaccinated and about 79% had received at least one dose—well short of “the entire country” despite far more than 90 days having elapsed. (archive.cdc.gov)

However, because his forecast was about what would have been possible under a different, never‑implemented system, and not a straightforward prediction of what did happen under the actual U.S. strategy, the real‑world data do not directly confirm or refute his counterfactual engineering claim. The observed rollout shows that the actual approach did not achieve national vaccination in 90 days, but it does not definitively tell us whether his proposed centralized 90‑day plan was feasible in practice. Therefore the prediction’s accuracy is best classified as ambiguous rather than clearly right or wrong.

Evidence shows the recall organizers did obtain enough signatures to trigger a recall election, matching Chamath’s core prediction.

• Actual deadline & signature requirement: The California Secretary of State’s FAQ notes that, after a COVID-related court extension, the deadline to file recall petitions against Governor Gavin Newsom was March 17, 2021, and that the organizers needed 1,495,709 valid signatures (12% of the votes cast in the 2018 gubernatorial election). (sos.ca.gov) Chamath’s “mid or late February” timing is slightly off, but he is clearly referring to the then-upcoming deadline for the recall drive.
• Signatures collected by mid–late February 2021: By February 17, 2021, recall organizers publicly claimed to have collected about 1.7 million total signatures, already exceeding the 1.5 million target in raw count (before official validation). (wsws.org) Around the same period, California officials reported about 1.1 million submitted signatures, with hundreds of thousands still to be processed, indicating the campaign was on track to meet or exceed the required number. (axios.com)
• Official validation and triggering of recall: The Secretary of State later reported that by the March 2021 deadline, 2,117,730 signatures had been submitted, with 1,719,943 ultimately deemed valid—well above the 1,495,709 requirement. (en.wikipedia.org) On April 26, 2021, the Secretary of State formally announced that the threshold of verified signatures had been met, thereby triggering the next phase of the recall process. (sos.ca.gov) This led to the certified 2021 California gubernatorial recall election against Newsom.

Because the organizers did indeed secure more than the required number of signatures in time to trigger a recall election, Chamath’s substantive prediction—that “they’re going to get the votes” and force a recall—was right, even though he was slightly imprecise about the exact calendar deadline.

The next episode after E16 is E17, “Big Tech bans Trump, ramifications for the First Amendment & the open Internet,” released on January 11, 2021, three days after E16 on January 8, 2021.(allinpodcastsummary.com)

Between those dates, at least one event clearly fits “highly unexpected and highly impactful”:

• On January 8, 2021, Twitter permanently suspended Donald Trump’s @realDonaldTrump account, an unprecedented move against a sitting (then-outgoing) U.S. president and a major shift in platform governance. Multiple outlets documented this as a permanent ban due to the risk of further incitement of violence.(theguardian.com)
• In the same window, Amazon Web Services cut off hosting for Parler, and the site went offline on January 11, 2021, after Apple and Google had already removed its app—another major, widely covered escalation in Big Tech’s moderation response to the Capitol riot.(techcrunch.com)

E17 itself is devoted to discussing these bans, which the hosts treat as a major, consequential development.(allinpodcastsummary.com) Given that at least one such event (Trump’s permanent Twitter ban, plus the coordinated deplatforming of Parler) occurred between E16 and the next recording/release, Friedberg’s prediction that “some highly unexpected and highly impactful thing will occur” before they next met was borne out.