I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Tuesday, February

2nd. Punks of Tony Phil and frankly just about everyone in the world saw their shadows this morning

and decided to go hibernate for

another six weeks. And in fact, you know, if we all agree to actually do that with only the most

essential of essential services continuing to bring everyone food and medicine for six weeks,

and that's it, we could probably beat back the pandemic like a few countries

actually did at the beginning a year ago. But that's not how we roll. So it's just the groundhog,

smarter than we think, choosing to chill until mid-March. Meanwhile, it's a very interesting

moment in national politics with Mitch McConnell denouncing

Marjorie Taylor Green, her Republican House colleagues, not so much, bipartisan negotiations,

but to what end on a COVID relief bill as Democrats are learning from Obama-era history

and don't want talks to drag on and bog down, the impeachment

trial a week from today. And then there is this. We should all stop for a few minutes,

if you can find the time today, and watch or listen to at least part of Congresswoman

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Instagram live presentation from last night,

in which she openly discussed the moment during the insurrection,

when someone broke into her office and she was afraid she was going to die, literally.

She heard a pounding on her door and someone shouting, where is she?

And then she describes where she was as that person broke through. Like I'm here and the bathroom door starts going like this,

like the bathroom door is behind me, or rather in front of me. And I'm like this and the door

hinges right here. And I I just hear where is she

where is she and um this was the moment where I thought everything was over um and the weird thing about moments like these is that you lose all sense of time.

...