CBS Sunday Morning,

Our CBS Sunday morning podcast is sponsored by Edward Jones. College tours with your oldest daughter. Updating the kitchen to the appropriate decade.

Retiring on the coast. Life is full of moments that matter, and Edward Jones helps you make the most of them. That's why every Edward Jones financial advisor works with you to build personalized strategies for now and down the road. So when your next moment arrives, big or small, you're ready for it. Life is for living. Let's partner for all of it. Learn more at edwardjones.com. Good morning.

I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning. From America's earliest days, we've thought of ourselves as a self-reliant people. If a wheel on the Pioneer's Conestoga wagon broke, they simply fixed it themselves and carried on westward. So how is it that these days when something breaks, we likely find ourselves in a fix? Unable either to repair it on our own or find anybody else who can. A conundrum David Poe will explore this morning. Our machines are getting more complex and more expensive from our phones to our tractors.

So why don't the manufacturers want you to fix them when they break? Coming up on Sunday morning. Tomorrow is Columbus Day, the traditional day of pride for Americans of Italian heritage. But given all we know now, should Christopher Columbus and some other historical figures still be standing tall?

A controversial topic that Mo Rocco will explore. It's been a rough 2020 for Christopher Columbus. He's been a tough one for a long time. 2020 for Christopher Columbus.

He's been protested, defaced, toppled, even beheaded. But the controversy over the Italian explorer is just part of what has become a monumental reckoning. This is a wrestle over who gets to tell the nation's history, who gets to be at the top of that history. Later on Sunday morning, America's statues, who stays, who goes. Tracy Smith is at home with the Cuomo's, the New York governor and his daughters.

Remi Inocencio has a Sunday Journal from China on that nation's success in fighting COVID. Nicholas Thompson looks into conspiracy theories on the internet and the campaign trail and more, all on this Sunday morning, the 11th of October, 2020. We'll be back in a moment. In the old days, when something broke, we fixed it. These days, it's more like we're in a fix. As David Pogue will explain, today's gadgets are either designed to be unfixable by the average person or by anyone at all. Last summer, fourth generation California farmer Dave Alford showed me around his 2004 John Deere tractor.

Oh man, it's like a 747 cockpit over here. Right. Not your grandfather's tractor. It is not your grandfather's tractor. But it was this tractor that caused him grief during last year's planting season. I got in the tractor and it throws an error code up, you know, in the readout. So I called my dealer.

Hey, I'm in a bind and they're busy and they can't come, you know, just like that. He lost two days of farming time waiting for a repair. He'd much rather have just fixed the thing himself. In agriculture, we're kind of born, raised, and bred that we like to fix all of our own stuff.

And that's about the only way, especially a small family farmer, can make a living. You don't think of a tractor as as high-tech as the, you know, everything else we have, but a tractor has a touch screen in it. It's got a computer.

Kyle Wiens is the founder and CEO of iFixit, a company that offers tools, parts, and repair manuals for thousands of gadgets. Ram upgrades, hard drive upgrades, you name it, we got it. There is a special screw on the iPhone that Apple put on there just to keep you out.

It's a special five-pointed screw that no one had seen before the iPhone. He says that the big electronics makers try to stop you from fixing your own stuff. The manufacturers are cutting off all the things we need in order to fix things, shortening lifespans, and forcing us to go to them to just buy a new one rather than fixing what we already have. And why are they doing this? To increase their service revenues. They want to make as much money fixing things as possible. Believe it or not, there was a time when manufacturers advertised how long their products lasted.

Side by side or stacked, every full-size Maytag washer is built to last longer. But if this 2019 Microsoft laptop is any indication, this is the most difficult to disassemble laptop we have ever seen. Those days are over. There's absolutely no way to get this thing open without destroying the laptop and replace the battery. This is a disposable product. You use it for two years, you throw it away, you go and buy a new laptop. I don't like that.

But Wiens doesn't just grumble. He's a leader of a national movement called Right to Repair. They want laws that would allow you to fix your own electronics, or at least take them to local independent repair shops, instead of forcing you to use the manufacturer's repair service. We're here today in strong opposition. But at this 2019 hearing for a Massachusetts Right to Repair bill, a parade of industry representatives explained their objections.

Allowing unfettered access to service information to untrained individuals will undermine the integrity of the equipment. This legislation has been filed in over 21 states and no state has passed this legislation and that's for a reason. And it's true that the state has yet passed a Right to Repair law.

But the movement hasn't been a total bust. John Deere says that starting next year, it will offer repair manuals and other diagnostic tools for its tractors. And remember that unrepairable Microsoft laptop? Well, this year's models are not only far more repairable, but Microsoft actually touts their repairability as a desirable feature.

Just like that, the talk can simply come off. Last year, Apple launched its independent repair provider program, which offers authentic parts, tools and training to independent repair shops. They were going to release this independent repair program, which I guess allowed for access to parts and manuals for independent repair shops.

It seemed like just what Theresa McDonough had been hoping for. She runs a repair shop in Middlebury, Vermont, a state where there are no Apple stores. And how long to pay?

We'll probably need about an hour and a half. Oh, really? Yeah. But in the end, she didn't sign up for Apple's program.

She found the requirements too invasive, too much data collection, parts prices too high. Sometimes I wonder if it's a PR set more than it is actually helpful. In the meantime, Kyle Wien says the fight will go on. So this is a groundswell of people across the country saying no, enough is enough. We're sick of throwing away things that are almost functional. Let's take the leap. Let's fix them.

And let's push back on this throwaway culture. Not everyone will be celebrating Christopher Columbus on the holiday tomorrow. In fact, critics question whether he or some other historical figures should be standing tall at all.

It's a list that Mo Rocca tells us seems to be growing. What do you think when you look at that statue? It's George Washington. It's the first president of the United States. It's the leader of the American Revolution.

But I also see a slaveholder. Rutgers history professor Erica Armstrong Dunbar has dedicated much of her career to telling the story of Ona Judge, one of the more than 300 black people enslaved by President George Washington and his wife, Martha. George Washington walked up and down this corridor, this area. Ona Judge managed to escape when the couple was living here in Philadelphia, the nation's capital during the 1790s. She was never captured, not that the Washingtons didn't try. The Washingtons were very adamant that they wanted Ona Judge to return. And what's so very interesting is to think about George and Martha Washington relentlessly pursuing Ona Judge. He was using slave catching agents to collect Martha Washington and his property. And we have to reckon that there was that side of Washington alongside of his contributions to the creation of the nation.

And for Dunbar, that reckoning may mean taking Washington down from his pedestal, literally. Should some monuments to George Washington be removed? I think it makes sense to have monuments of remembrance for George Washington in spaces where there's a direct connection to him. But do I need to see George Washington's face in every park or in places throughout cities? No, not necessarily because for some people, he's a reminder of the trauma of slavery. The long running battle over America's monuments came to a head in 2015 after a white supremacist murdered nine African Americans at Charleston, South Carolina's Mother Emanuel Church.

Since then, around 100 Confederate statues have been dishonorably discharged. But since the death of George Floyd, the range of figures targeted as racist or oppressive has expanded well beyond the Civil War South. Monuments are literally elevated above the people, right? This is a wrestle over power. This is a wrestle over who gets to tell the nation's history, who gets to be at the top of that history.

But the power politics behind memorials aren't always obvious. Christopher Columbus has long been controversial, a brilliant navigator and a brutal colonialist. That's telling me my people are less than human.

My people are brown skinned beasts. But many Columbus statues were erected in the early 20th century as symbols of pride for Italian Americans, a group that had faced fierce prejudice, even lynchings in the 1890s. For many Italian Americans, this was a way to demonstrate that they contributed to making America, a way to say that they were equal. As secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch may be the closest thing America has to a national curator. He believes monuments should reflect today's values. I think that what the Columbus statue tells us is that it's a challenge to take something that was done 70 years ago and help it evolve.

So my notion is that some of these statues can be pruned. We have to get rid of every racist monument in this country. It's history. It is part of history and it should stay here. In general, are you heartened by all these debates? Anytime people talk about history, I'm a happy guy. And I think there's something powerful about a country periodically debating who it is and who it wants to become.

But what many have found jarring is the lack of debate. Missionary Junipero Serra torched Augustus Saint-Gaudens tribute to an all-black union regiment graffitied. Thomas Jefferson toppled. Ulysses S. Grant fallen.

Even Gandhi has been bloodied. As a historian, do you start to wonder, I wonder if all these people know their history? Well, actually, no, I don't wonder. I know that they don't. I know that the vast majority of Americans don't know their history. Does that bother you? It horrifies me.

I also understand that there's anger, there's rage, and sometimes there's collateral damage. There is a big element of anti-Americanism in this, not only anti the bad things, but anti the good things, because there are no good things, right? The whole history is corrupt.

And I think that's wrong. Writer Richard Brookhiser thinks a little bit of humility is in order. If you're only going to have statues of perfect people, you're going to be left with Jesus Christ. You're not going to have a lot of other statues. People are complicated.

We have to realize that about ourselves and about the dead. Brookhiser is the biographer of several founding fathers, including Washington. Washington was a hero in the struggle for self-rule. And the struggle for self-rule is the big story of the last 250 years.

It includes all the other stories. It includes anti-colonialism. It includes the struggle against racism. The American Revolution was the greatest experiment in human political history.

And it's crazy to throw that in the garbage can. I do not think you erase Washington and Jefferson, and of course obviously now everybody loves Hamilton. Lottie Bunch sees in Washington and our other slaveholding founding fathers contradictions we should strive to understand. It's almost like saying, how do you understand your parents if you only know a little bit about them? The more you know about them, the more you better understand who they were and then who you are. And that's what I'd like us to see with some of the founding fathers, how people understand a little better who they once were and who they can be. It's a big moment in anyone's life when they realize their parents aren't perfect people.

You're right. And then as you get older, you realize they were more perfect than you thought initially. Perhaps the best way to bring peace to our memorial landscape is to add statues. In 2017, Philadelphia dedicated this statue of Octavius Caddo, a 19th century African-American civil rights activist who was murdered on his way to vote.

It's right outside City Hall, which is where we bumped into Philly resident Les Starkey and his daughter Summer. This gentleman finally got his due. Seeing this statue gives you a feeling of...

Pride. I lift my chest up a little bit more. I do, man. I mean, it's one of us. I can do something great like him. He was a great man, Summer. We're going to read more about him, OK? I promise. Passions may continue flaring in the short term. Are you angry? Yes. Are you angry? Yes. I'm mad.

We're mad. But as in all things historical, it's important to consider the long view. This isn't the first time in history that statues have been toppled. No, there was a statue toppled in New York City in 1776, a gilded statue of George III, which had been put up when we all thought he was a good guy. The British monarch. The British monarch. We were fighting a revolution against him. The statue was torn down.

And the story is, it was made of lead, and the lead was melted in two bullets. Are any of these things permanent? Nothing is permanent. You know, we're all going to die.

There'll come a time when the United States doesn't exist anymore. Some things last longer than others. Well, some things last longer than others, and let's hope the good things last longest.

We're in crazy time. The Paramount Plus original series, The Good Fight, returns for its final season. The point isn't the end.

The point is winning. There are bad people in the world. The best way to protect the good people is to convict the bad.

So here's to us. The Good Fight, the final season, now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative, a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out.

What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation, our military situation, is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts. The pandemic has forced lifestyle changes on families across the land, including the family of the man who for many months was the public face at the center of the COVID outbreak.

Tracey Smith is at home with the Cuomo's. OK, who wants to say grace? I can start.

Go ahead. In this house, like so many other homes across America, Sundays mean dinner with the family. I got banned from meatball making once by Grandma, so making them too breadcrummy. Grandma takes it quite seriously, still to this day. And in this family, like so many others, the adult kids have moved back home.

Michaela, Mariah, and Cara Kennedy Cuomo, all quarantining together with Governor Andrew Cuomo, their dad. I actually remember when Dad called me right at the beginning of this and said, this is going to be a big deal and you should be here for it. So you, Governor, you kind of engineered this, getting all of your girls back together under one roof?

Yeah, I don't know that you can say that I can engineer anything with my girls, but I was I was suggestive of the concept. I wanted them here. I wanted them with me.

I needed them in many ways. For 111 days straight, Governor Cuomo held briefings about COVID-19. He says he tried to present just the facts, but the facts were often grim.

The curve is actually increasing. On one day alone, April 8th, New York lost 799 lives to the virus. That is so shocking and painful and breathtaking.

I can't, I don't even have the words for it. Sometimes he would come home and you could see it on him and you would hear sort of this big, deep breath that he takes. And then you would know that he is stressed. Did he sleep?

He didn't sleep for 111 days. Just like their dad and his late dad, Governor Mario Cuomo, these young women have activism in their blood. Their mom and Cuomo's former wife, Carrie Kennedy, founded the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Project, named after their grandfather. So, of course, when the time has come for the COVID-19 pandemic, it's going to be a great time. When the time came, the Kennedy Cuomo daughters jumped right into COVID relief efforts. A state contest for ads encouraging mask use was Mariah's idea. I wear a mask to protect you.

You wear a mask to protect me. The governor marshaled public support and resources, and it worked. As New York COVID numbers fell, the daughters say people across the world started asking for advice, so they told their dad he had to do more. It sounds like you guys kind of pushed him. This request for how'd you do it, we need to come out with something? Right. From the first day, we were all saying, you have to write this down.

You have to communicate this somehow. The result is a new book, American Crisis, Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic. When is it over? Nobody knows.

But to some, a book about lessons seems, if not presumptuous, at least a bit premature. COVID cases are on the rise in a number of states, including New York. Do you see how some people say this is you taking a victory lap in the middle of a pandemic? Oh, there's no victory here. The game isn't over. This is halftime in the game. Let's learn the lesson from the first half of the game and play a better second half. But we have to play a whole second half of this game. And there's going to be another virus and another infection and another bacteria. And we can't make the mistakes we made this time. Still to date, the state leads the nation in coronavirus deaths, more than 30,000.

You know that there are people out there saying, wait a minute, why is he setting himself up as the guy who did everything right? New York still has the largest number of deaths of any state. Well, New York has the largest number of deaths because New York had the largest number of cases. We had a much worse infection rate than any other state. And we had it before anyone knew anything about COVID. What happened in New York was unique.

We were ambushed. Nobody knew the virus was here. That's not true. Five months later, everybody knows it's here. There is no reason that we still have this infection rate going up across the country.

There is just no reason. The governor knows his family has been lucky. For months, he could only talk with his 89-year-old mother, Matilda, via Zoom. But they finally had a face-to-face visit. It turned out fine at the end of the day.

But it was, I feel like I lost a lot of time with her that I just wish that I hadn't. When he talked about his family in the briefings, New Yorkers saw a softer side of Cuomo that may be only those closest to him knew before. Is he touchy-feely? No, but I think he is an amazingly vulnerable man. Do you like that?

I'll take that. Sensitive. I'm a sensitive soul. Are you a sensitive soul?

I'm a sensitive soul. The governor's girls have become his roommates and his co-workers and his fiercest defenders. As protective as you are of your dad, and as much as you want to protect him, I would imagine there will come a time when you guys are going to leave again, right? No, there will never come a time when they leave.

That is not going to happen. Why would they want to leave? They do have exciting lives of their own. They might want to go pursue those. No, they can do that with me, right? You can stay here with me and do whatever you want to do. Their dad is also a bachelor.

His long-term relationship with author and TV chef Sandra Lee ended last year. Okay, so while we're on this light note, you guys are the social media savvy ones. Have you helped your dad with his dating life, gotten online for him, set up a profile, anything like that? Nothing. No online profile. No online profile. He hasn't hit bumble quite yet, but... No offers. No encouragement?

No encouragement. He's busy right now. He can get to dating post-global pandemic.

Sorry. Of course, there's always the possibility that dad will be the one to move away from Albany, though he's repeatedly insisted he has no interest in going to Washington. So as much as he says, I'm governor of New York for as long as they'll have me, do you guys maybe have higher aspirations for him? I like dad being in New York.

He really likes it here. But as someone who wishes that I had someone I could vote for who would be more inspiring and someone who seems more competent. And so if that were dad, I'd be a really grateful and proud American.

And I guess a busier daughter. For now, the governor and other leaders have their hands full with the virus. President Trump, whom Cuomo blames for mishandling the country's response, has the disease himself.

And as Cuomo said, it's only halftime. I'm wondering when you heard that the president was diagnosed with COVID, whether it shocked you. It did shock me.

It shocked me because I was aware of the protections he had around him. I think this says to everyone, this is real. You can get it. Even the president of the United States can get. And I also hope it's a moment where this nation just puts aside the ugly politics that has become the way of this country. And let's remember that at the end of the day, we're all people trying to do our best and we can disagree.

But let's just be kinder to one another. Just how is it that China, the origin of the coronavirus, has been able to get its outbreak under control? Jamie Inocencio has a Sunday Journal from Shanghai. Something nearly unthinkable has happened in China, a return to normal.

From morning Tai Chi at Beijing's Temple of the Sun, to the lunch crush in the central business district, and the rush home at sunset across the Avenue of Eternal Peace. And Mao Zedong keeps watch over Tiananmen Square, and a country living in a post-COVID new normal. It's hard to believe cities across China, with millions of people, looked like ghost towns earlier this year. In January, CBS News was the first U.S. network in Wuhan, where the pandemic started. The government struck back hard and fast, forcing up to 50 million people into lockdown for two months. Building new hospitals in less than two weeks, welding some families inside their homes, testing and contact tracing descending on new outbreaks with speed, adopting a QR health code system on smartphones, banning nearly all foreigners from entering the country, and putting everyone who was allowed to return, including yours truly, into a 14-day quarantine at a government-designated hotel. All thanks to a mix of authoritarian rule and the memory of SARS in 2003. As COVID peaked in February, Shanghai and the city's historic Bund stood eerily quiet.

But not anymore. This is Shanghai now. The masses have returned, and most of the masks have not. The sheer normalcy of all this really is very strange, almost as if COVID never happened at all. In a country of 1.4 billion people, fewer than 5,000 were officially reported to have died, compared to more than 210,000 and counting in the United States. Critics of China say its death toll is too low to be true, a fair claim for a country where bad news is often covered up. Last week, President Trump eagerly reminded Americans where COVID began.

It was China's fault, and China's going to pay a big price, what they've done to this country. Roark Jones from Georgia is a sophomore at New York University's campus in Shanghai. With a mandatory mask, flash of a health code and temperature check, he attends his classes.

While most international students fled, Jones decided to stay. In February, I was basically in my dorm the entire time, and then by April, things were pretty open. Now people sometimes just don't even wear masks outside. Things basically non-existent here. Now mixed-mode classes, from statistics to modern dance, are another new normal.

Some students physically in the room, some virtually. No one raises a fuss. Everyone in China is very willing to abide by any policy set forth for containment of the disease. One thing that was kind of inspiring to me is that everyone did the quarantine. And the result, business is back and bustling, like a China's first Shake Shack.

Joyce Du is a proud general manager. When did this Shake Shack close for coronavirus? Close?

Yes. We're not close. You never close? Never. We're working every day and all times. What do you think is the most important prevention measure that you want to share with American restaurants?

Wear the mask. As life goes on, the show does, too, in Hangzhou, 100 miles west. This is Cirque du Soleil's only show in operation, out of 44 in the world. Half of the artists are Chinese, the other half international, from the U.S., Canada, Russia, Australia and France. Acrobats have been dancing, spinning and flying to masked audiences since June. Yvonne Yuan is the show's technical director. Has there ever been a coronavirus incident? Not with audience, not with our staff. So we've been very fortunate. I would say China really is one of the safest places right now in terms of the world, in terms of the COVID situation. NYU's Rourke Jones might agree. If I went back to the United States right now, to be frank, I'd be a little nervous. And he would have a tough time coming back. China is keeping its borders shut to most foreigners to keep coronavirus out, too.

In a country steeped in more than 3,000 years of history, China's leaders intend for it to be around for at least 3,000 more. President Trump hasn't been shy about offering advice on COVID-19, which prompted some thoughts from contributor Paul Mercurio. As we all know, President Trump has tested positive for COVID-19. And this past week, in what can only be described as a film directed by Fellini, produced by Orson Welles, and written by Flaubert, President Trump took to Twitter and the airwaves to bizarrely promote the deadly virus. In a tweet, he wrote, quote, don't be afraid of COVID, don't let it dominate your life. And in this video, he described the virus this way.

This was a blessing in disguise. Mr. President, I tested positive for COVID-19, and three months later, I'm still suffering significant symptoms. So I can tell you, it's not a person's choice if the coronavirus dominates one's life.

It just does. And furthermore, there's nothing disguised about it. Yeah, it's pretty much in your face 24-7. And it's anything but a blessing, unless you count as a blessing, shortness of breath, fatigue, vomiting, sore throat, headaches, dizziness, loss of taste and smell, and random severe pain throughout one's body. Now, I've heard public service announcements to eradicate deadly diseases like cancer or heart disease, but this is a first. I never, ever heard a PSA that touts a deadly disease, which has killed, by the way, more Americans than those who died in battle in World War I, the Vietnam War, the Korean conflict, U.S. operations in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the Persian Gulf War, and 9-11 combined. President Trump, this is a very dangerous game you're playing.

You're trying to normalize a deadly disease that is yet to be contained. You know, there's a saying, do as I say, not as I do. In this case of President Trump, only part of that phrase is accurate. Certainly don't do as he says.

And under any circumstances, don't do as he does, do the opposite. This strangest of presidential campaigns has just 23 days to go. Thoughts on where things stand from John Dickerson of 60 Minutes. A presidential election in the age of a pandemic is new, but may hinge on how voters interpret a very old phrase, Harry Truman's favorite, the buck stops here. The buck comes to us from poker.

In frontier days, a knife with a buckhorn handle was used to indicate whose turn it was to deal. A player who didn't want that job could decline, passing the buck. Truman had a plaque with the expression on it given to him by a friend who had seen it at an Oklahoma prison on the warden's door. For Truman, the phrase defined presidential decision-making. You know, it's easy enough for a Monday morning quarterback to say what the coach should have done after the game's over. But when the decision is up before you, and on my desk I have a motto which says the buck stops here, the decision has to be made. The phrase puts the backseat driver in his place and encourages a more sympathetic assessment of a president, one that acknowledges how hard the job is.

President Kennedy told a group of historians no one has a right to grade a president, not even poor James Buchanan, who has not sat in his chair. They are dying, that's true. And it is what it is, but that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can.

It's under control as much as you can control it. This is how Donald Trump would like people to judge his response to COVID-19. In the modern presidency, however, buck-stopping has been redefined in a way that is much less sympathetic. It has come to mean that a president is fully accountable for the outcome of events no matter how difficult they are. Advocates for this stricter standard of excellence say it's necessary because the specter of harsh judgment focuses the mind of the president and his staff.

Don't make excuses, just get results. It's a tough standard, but it's the only kind of standard for an office where no decision is ever easy. To make the right call and affix is why they get to sit in the big chair, as one general put it to me. So voters have a choice, a sympathetic or strict standard. Either re-election is a reward for excellence or merely a trophy for participation. When, where, and how to cast your ballot. Planning to vote by mail?

Go online for state-by-state instructions and download the CBS News app. I'm Jane Pauley. Please join us when our trumpet sounds again next Sunday morning. Hi podcast peeps. It's me, Drew Barrymore.

Oh my goodness. I want to tell you about our new show. It's the Drew's News Podcast. And in each episode, me and a weekly guest are going to cover all the quirky, fun, inspiring, and informative stories that exist out in the world because, well, I need it and maybe you do too. From the newest interior design trend, Barbie Corps, to the right and wrong way to wash your armpits. Also, we're going to get into things that you just kind of won't believe and we're not able to do in daytime television, so watch out. Listen to Drew's News wherever you get your podcasts. Here's your good news on the go.