It s beginning to dawn on people that this thing might not go away all that fast. As states debate lockdown policies, new information emerges about officials across the aisle engaging in corruption surrounding coronavirus 19, a new report from the World Health Organization warns that this virus may never go away, and as soon as we let out of lockdown, people are going to get it. Meanwhile, we still have debates over what exactly the death toll is from this virus, and how many people are dying from it. Ben Shapiro explains why this is a problem, and why we should be worried. The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Your data is your business. Protect your data, your business, and your data base protected at ExpressVpn.org/BenShapiroShow. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers. Use the promo code: CRIMINALS at checkout to receive 10% off your first purchase when you enter the discount code CRIMENTAL10 at checkout. We are a sponsor of the show. Our theme song is by Suneaters . Our ad music is by Skandalous. by . We make no claim of any sponsor other than VaynerMedia. Thank you for listening to the show and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe to our Podcharts. If you like the show, please consider leaving us a review and rating us a rating and review our podcast and review us on Apple Music by clicking the show by clicking here, rating us on iTunes or reviewing our podcast on Podcoin and leaving us your rating and reviewing our reviews on iTunes. Thanks! or rating us your reviews and reviewing us on review and reviewing your thoughts on the show rating us out there on your favorite podcasting platform. You can also become a friend on Podcharity or reviewing us in iTunes. Thanks for listening and sharing our podcasting app? Thanks for supporting the show! - Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro is a friend of Ben Shapiro on Ben Shapiro - The Coronavirus is a fellow? - Thank you Ben Shapiro & Covenez & so on Insta: Subscribe & Reviewing Ben Shapiro: Subscribe and Reviewing the show is a big thanks to Ben Shapiro and Coaching by .
00:00:00.000As states debate lockdown policies, new information emerges about officials across the aisle engaging in corruption surrounding COVID-19, Democrats freak out over new Michael Flynn investigation revelations, and the Biden campaign staggers forward.
00:00:14.000The Ben Shapiro Show is sponsored by ExpressVPN.
00:00:23.000Your data is your business protected at expressvpn.com slash Ben.
00:00:29.000Well, it is beginning to dawn on people that this thing might not go away all that fast.
00:00:34.000It's been amazing to watch as the calculations have shifted fairly dramatically about the hopes for what is going to happen next with this virus.
00:00:41.000So it started off with, okay, if we just slowed the spread for 15 days, we'll have this thing under control.
00:00:46.000And hopefully at that point, we can start to loosen things up.
00:00:48.000Then the media started to shift the strategy to, OK, we got to lock down until there's a vaccine.
00:00:52.000And then it became clear that a vaccine is really not in the offing anytime soon.
00:00:57.000And now you have the WHO, which we've been assured, by the way, by YouTube, that if you contradict the information coming forth from the WHO, they'll remove your videos.
00:01:06.000Doesn't matter that the WHO got this thing completely wrong, said there was no human-to-human transmission in the middle of January.
00:01:11.000Never mind that the WHO was recommending against masks at the beginning of March.
00:01:15.000Well, the WHO is now reporting that this thing may never go away.
00:01:18.000That COVID-19 may just become a permanent feature of life, just like the seasonal flu, which is honestly what was always sort of the worst case scenario suggestion here.
00:01:30.000And it's also the most likely scenario because the fact is it's very difficult to develop completely effective vaccines.
00:01:34.000Even vaccines that are somewhat effective are not completely effective.
00:01:39.000And the fact is that we don't have a great therapeutic for this at this point.
00:01:42.000There may be some therapeutics that come along that change the cases at the margin, but it's very difficult to target a disease that specifically targets the most vulnerable in the population.
00:01:52.000In some ways, it's easier to target a disease that targets the least vulnerable in the population because then you can bring all of the immune system at your disposal.
00:01:58.000But when you're 81 and you have a weak immune system and then this is killing you off, It's very difficult to figure out how to stop a disease that is killing off people mostly in old age homes.
00:02:06.000When I say mostly in old age homes, I'm saying that advisedly.
00:02:09.00040-60% of all deaths across Europe have been happening in old age homes.
00:02:12.000In the United States, something like 40-60% in all states outside of New York, and it's not clear in New York how many people have died in old age homes.
00:02:20.000The reason it's not clear in New York is because if you are elderly and you were in an old age home and then you go to a hospital and you die in the hospital, it is not clear whether New York is classifying your death as a nursing home death or whether they are classifying it as a hospital-based death.
00:02:34.000Well, now the WHO is saying this thing may never be wiped out entirely.
00:02:38.000According to Michael Ryan, the WHO's Emergencies Director, we have a new virus entering the human population for the first time.
00:02:43.000It's very hard to predict when we will prevail over it.
00:02:45.000The virus may just become another endemic virus in our communities.
00:03:12.000And two is, as soon as you let out of lockdown, people are going to get it.
00:03:15.000Well, sorry, but those two factors mean that we had best just adjust to the new reality, and that is that we are all going to be involved in some form of risk mitigation, depending on your level of vulnerability in society.
00:03:30.000And meanwhile, we still have open debates over what exactly the death count is from COVID-19.
00:03:35.000According to the Daily Beast, President Trump and members of the Coronavirus Task Force are pushing officials at the CDC to change how the agency works with states to count coronavirus-related deaths.
00:03:43.000This is not an unimportant factor, because the reality is that when we are assessing risk, we do have to determine how many people are actually dying from coronavirus and how many people are dying, quote-unquote, with coronavirus, meaning that you have pneumonia, you get coronavirus, and then you die of the pneumonia.
00:03:56.000You're 85 and you have several pre-existing conditions and then coronavirus hits you and then you die of one of the pre-existing conditions.
00:04:03.000Is that a COVID-19 death or is that not a COVID-19 death?
00:04:07.000They're pushing for revisions that could lead to far fewer deaths being counted than originally reported according to five administration officials working on the government's response to the pandemic.
00:04:16.000Though he has previously publicly attested to the accuracy of the COVID-19 death count, the president in recent weeks has privately raised suspicion about the number of fatalities in the United States, which recently eclipsed 80,000 recorded deaths.
00:04:26.000Now again, this is not mere semantics.
00:04:31.000They matter also in other areas of health, for example.
00:04:34.000So in the United States, there's always this talking point that the United States has a very high infant mortality rate.
00:04:39.000Well, that is because we count in the infant mortality rates babies that are born prematurely.
00:04:44.000There are a lot of other countries that don't.
00:04:45.000So if a baby is born at six months and then dies, we count that as an infant death.
00:04:49.000That may not be counted in parts of Europe the same way, and so that actually skews the statistics.
00:04:53.000You have to compare apples to apples, especially when you're looking at which countries are handling this better than other countries.
00:04:59.000The White House has pressed the CDC to work with states to change how they count coronavirus deaths.
00:05:03.000Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the administration's Coronavirus Task Force, has urged CDC officials to exclude from coronavirus death count reporting some of the individuals who either do not have confirmed lab results and are presumed positive or who have the virus and may not have died as a direct result of it, according to three senior administration officials.
00:05:18.000We've actually seen this play out in New York City, where a bunch of people were dying inside their homes.
00:05:22.000And so basically, New York said, what are our excess deaths over last year at this time?
00:05:26.000And then based on that, we will just assume that everybody who died, died from COVID-19.
00:05:31.000Officials inside the CDC are pushing back against the request.
00:05:33.000They're claiming it could falsely skew the mortality rate when state and local governments are already struggling to ensure that every person who dies as a result of coronavirus is counted.
00:05:41.000So on the one hand, you have people suggesting that there is over-reporting.
00:05:44.000On the other hand, you have people suggesting that there is under-reporting.
00:05:46.000But in the end, In the end, that really only matters because this thing has become political.
00:05:54.000Meaning, we know now that this thing is highly deadly to the elderly and to people with pre-existing conditions.
00:06:01.000We know that it is significantly more deadly to those people than it is to people who are young and healthy.
00:06:05.000We also know that the focus on testing is somewhat overstated.
00:06:09.000And when I say somewhat overstated, I mean rather massively overstated by the media.
00:06:12.000Because the reality is the United States has radically ramped up tests.
00:06:15.000As we have ramped up tests, the number of positives has actually gone down.
00:06:18.000And not only that, the media have basically lied to the American people about what testing and tracing are designed to do.
00:06:23.000They're not, in fact, designed to quash the virus itself.
00:06:25.000They're simply designed to prevent spikes, epidemic spikes, that overwhelm the healthcare system, because that's all we can do at this point.
00:06:31.000We can't actually stop people from getting this over time.
00:06:34.000We cannot stop people from obtaining this virus over time, and then some people dying of that virus over time.
00:06:39.000What we can do is protect the most vulnerable in our society, and we can ensure that there aren't massive spikes, that we sort of flatten it out such that we don't overwhelm the healthcare system.
00:06:48.000But we have been told by the media that testing is sort of the solution, which is why it comes as disturbing news that these rapid White House tests could actually miss half of positive COVID-19 cases, according to an NYU study.
00:06:59.000The Abbott test, which is a company used by the White House to track COVID-19, could have missed positive coronavirus cases, according to a study done by NYU.
00:07:06.000The study found that Abbott's IDNow test missed at least one-third of positive tests when compared to rival tests, and up to 48% in dry nasal swabs, the test currently recommended by the White House.
00:07:16.000So when people talk about the level of testing and how testing is going to save us all, they're missing the fact that there's an awful lot of uncertainty about the testing.
00:07:23.000In other words, there are no easy solutions here.
00:07:40.000First, let's talk about the fact that right now, you need to ensure that you are protected on the HR front if you run a business, and you need to save money if you run a business.
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00:08:57.000The media continue to push forward the notion that if we reopen in nearly any way, shape or form, that more people will die.
00:09:05.000And so we have to remain closed forever.
00:09:07.000And thus, the headlines that you're seeing from the media are all based on the presumption that America is in a full state of disaster.
00:09:14.000But the answer is that America is not actually in a full state of disaster.
00:09:16.000In fact, a lot of the states that are opening up are not seeing this massive spike in cases.
00:09:20.000People are generally being responsible.
00:09:22.000Meanwhile, the media are rewarding people who are speaking out as though disaster is coming.
00:09:26.000And this is what I talked about yesterday, a little bit on the show.
00:09:29.000There is a thing that happens in media and sort of in human psychology.
00:09:34.000We could call it the Nostradamus effect.
00:09:35.000So Nostradamus is very famous and everybody knows his name because every so often you can pick and choose a few sentences from Nostradamus and say, wow, isn't that amazing?
00:09:43.000Thousands of years ago, Nostradamus was predicting that X would happen.
00:09:47.000I see the same thing when people talk about the Bible codes, where they say, okay, well, if you look at the Bible, and it's lined up in a particular way, and you look at the Hebrew letters vertically, and then you look at them diagonally, and then you look at them horizontally, with a code that says that there's a volcano that's going to erupt any day.
00:10:41.000And so what the media are doing right now is they are bringing forth everyone who's predicting doom and gloom.
00:10:45.000Now, will they go back three weeks from now and point out when people were wrong?
00:10:49.000So, there are a bunch of people who three weeks ago, when Brian Kemp in Georgia was talking about opening up, they said, there's gonna be a massive spike in cases, the hospitals are gonna be overwhelmed.
00:11:00.000But, if there was somebody back in January who said, this is going to be a global pandemic, we're going to have to shut down all the businesses, that person, of course, is going to be rewarded.
00:11:07.000Now, maybe that person was living in the woods and was predicting this sort of stuff for 40 years, right?
00:11:12.000It's amazing how fast we shift from, look at those dumb preppers building their basements and stocking up on canned goods, to, man, those people sure had some foresight building their basements and stocking up on the canned goods.
00:11:22.000In the prediction business, nobody ever remembers that you made a black swan prediction that didn't come true.
00:11:27.000This is why it is of high irritation to me when the Black Swan predictions about what's going to happen next are really ramped up by the media.
00:11:36.000So today, the big story is that there's a guy named Dr. Rick Bright.
00:11:39.000So Rick Bright, we should remember, was pushed out.
00:11:43.000He was fired from his position over at BARDA.
00:11:47.000Which is one of the chief agencies that was supposed to investigate strategies on the pandemic.
00:11:53.000He filed a whistleblower complaint after being pushed out, suggesting the reason that he was pushed out is because he wasn't too high on hydroxychloroquine.
00:11:59.000And when the administration was pushing hydroxychloroquine as a possible solution, that he was in their warning, and therefore they just got rid of him.
00:12:06.000Well, in prepared testimony obtained by CNN, he warned, Okay, thank you for the vague prediction of doom.
00:12:36.000Here is Dr. Rick Bright, who is testifying today.
00:12:38.000This is getting all sorts of media attention.
00:12:39.000Now, again, this is all predicated on the notion that Rick Bright is a victim of the anti-science Trump administration, which has been taking the advice of Drs.
00:12:46.000Birx and Fauci, as well as many other doctors, into consideration.
00:12:51.000Bright, of course, again, claimed that he was ousted because of the hydroxychloroquine issue.
00:12:56.000But the truth is that, according to the HHS, this guy was in conflict with his higher-ups for literally years.
00:13:02.000Dr. Bright and Dr. Robert Kadlec, an assistant health secretary for preparedness and response, clashed repeatedly, according to officials, when Dr. Bright Carefully followed procedures, they said he was a polarizing figure within the Department of Health and Human Services, where concerns had circulated about a management style that was described as confrontational.
00:13:17.000Those officials said there had been discussions about removing Bright for many months.
00:13:20.000They came to a head after emails were leaked to Reuters last week detailing internal discussions about chloroquine.
00:13:25.000A senior administration official said Alex Azar told the Coronavirus Task Force members in their meeting on Wednesday about Bright's departure from BARDA, describing it as a promotion to the vice president.
00:13:34.000Officials left the meeting and learned of Bright's public statement.
00:13:37.000Also, by the way, according to Caitlin Oakley, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, it was Dr. Bright who requested an emergency use authorization from the FDA for donations of chloroquine that Bayer and Sandoz recently made to the Strategic National Stockpile.
00:13:52.000So the story the media want to tell is this whistleblower pushed out because he's secretly telling you the truth, which is everybody's going to die.
00:14:01.000And they're pushing him out because they don't want the bad news.
00:14:03.000Alternatively, this is a career health official who clashed with people inside his own department and was demoted for it, or was at least thrown off one job.
00:14:11.000He retains his job at the government, by the way.
00:14:13.000I think he still works inside the CDC.
00:14:16.000And now, he is getting all sorts of publicity, and so why not predict, vaguely, that doom will come upon us, unless you take unspecified action?
00:14:23.000There's no political risk to doing so.
00:14:26.000This is why, honestly, when it comes to expert analyses of the situation, experts should provide you information.
00:14:36.000And then, it is your job, as an individual human being, to calculate those risks, and to be responsible, and not pass those risks on to others.
00:14:43.000But the idea that people up high in government are going to make rules for you, they are all political actors just like you and I are.
00:14:49.000They are calculating their own self-interest the way you and I are.
00:14:51.000They're doing so in many cases unknowingly because they are human beings.
00:14:56.000This notion that godlike experts sit up on high and then craft the best rules for the people is not true when it comes to how your toilet flushes and it ain't true when it comes to pandemics.
00:15:06.000We'll get to Rick Bright's testimony in just one second.
00:15:09.000First, Let's talk about the fact that the future is unpredictable.
00:15:13.000Who could have predicted back in February when Bernie Sanders was the likely Democratic nominee and the stock market was at $30,000 and the unemployment rate was at 3.5% that we would all be stuck in our homes right now?
00:15:24.000Who could have predicted such a thing?
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00:16:44.000And why should we take your advice super seriously as opposed to the advice of Fauci, Birx, Dr. Martin McCary, who we've had on the program from Johns Hopkins, who has a good piece in the New York Times today.
00:16:53.000Here is Rick Bright, again, being given the hero's welcome because really, the reason he's being given the hero's welcome, he doesn't have anything super relevant to say.
00:17:00.000He's being given the hero's welcome because he doesn't like Trump.
00:17:39.000Oh, you mean like how there is one and how they're trying to roll it out and also how states are generally responsible for deciding how much testing they actually need in their states because the national government isn't good at things?
00:17:49.000And also he says we need a plan for equitable distribution of essential equipment and supplies.
00:17:52.000Oh, you mean how the federal government actually got like a hundred thousand ventilators and we now have way too many ventilators?
00:17:58.000Because it turns out the ventilators are actually not only ineffective but in some cases counterproductive for treatment?
00:18:03.000Dr. Bright, of course, is really getting all this attention, not because he has great advice to offer, but simply because he is claiming that he was silenced for his unwillingness to go along with the sanguine views of the administration.
00:18:14.000Which, again, the evidence for that is scanty at best.
00:18:18.000In another not-shock, Bright is going to air his complaints about the Trump administration pandemic in response to a House Oversight Committee Overseen by Representative Anna Eshoo, a Democrat who represents a Northern California district home to a company that received more than $110 million in awards from BARDA while Bright led the office.
00:18:37.000In other words, she is allied with Bright.
00:18:39.000Other companies with offices in Eshoo's district benefited from more than $100 million in awards from BARDA in the decade prior to Bright's leadership.
00:18:48.000Eshoo, who helped craft the 2006 legislation to create the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, that's what BARDA is, and has since worked to bolster it authorities, also has been a longtime booster of Bright.
00:18:58.000So basically he's testifying in front of his allies who also, not coincidentally, are going to boost his opinions of President Trump.
00:19:06.000So yes, this thing has become incredibly political and none of that is a giant surprise.
00:19:10.000And again, it doesn't have to be political.
00:19:12.000So we've had on our program before, Dr. Marty McCary.
00:19:15.000We've had on Dr. McCary repeatedly on the radio show.
00:19:17.000And Dr. McCary is a professor of health policy at Johns Hopkins.
00:19:20.000He served in both the Obama administration as well as an advisor to the Trump administration.
00:19:23.000He has a piece at the New York Times in which he explains what he thinks should be done.
00:19:31.000He says that what we need is as much masking as possible when you are in a place where you could infect somebody else.
00:19:35.000This does not mean like Los Angeles, by the way.
00:19:37.000In LA, Eric Garcetti, the guy's just in, he's, he's, A posturing dolt.
00:19:43.000He sends out a mass text to everyone in Los Angeles last night, telling everyone that it is now mandatory that you wear a mask when you go outside.
00:19:55.000Not when there's a possibility of not socially distancing when you go outside.
00:19:58.000So if you're in your car by yourself, presumably you have to mask.
00:20:00.000If I'm in my front yard playing with my kids, supposedly I'm supposed to mask.
00:20:04.000If I'm out at the beach and I'm 400 feet away from everybody, I'm supposed to mask.
00:20:08.000All of which matches Eric Garcetti's idiotic policies with regard to the beaches out here.
00:20:12.000He says you're allowed to swim, you're allowed to walk, you're allowed to run on the beach, you're not actually allowed to sit on the beach and picnic.
00:20:18.000Doesn't matter if you're 300 feet away from everybody.
00:20:21.000And you have to be wearing a mask the whole time, by the way.
00:20:23.000So my plan this weekend, I'm gonna take my kids down to the beach, I'm going to put a mask on them, Then, I'm going to... Well, they're in the car, because we have to make sure that in the car they don't affect people in other cars.
00:20:35.000I'm going to fire my children out of a cannon into the ocean.
00:20:38.000And along the way, like right before they get into the water, I'm going to ensure that they strip off the mask.
00:20:43.000Then, I'm going to dive into the water after them, put the mask back on them, take a trampoline, bounce them off the trampoline, back into the car, and we can go home.
00:20:50.000Like, none of... What the hell are we talking about here?
00:20:53.000By the way, you know what Marty McCary suggests?
00:20:55.000This is Dr. McCary from Johns Hopkins.
00:20:56.000He suggests that we spend more time outside.
00:20:59.000We were told that we shouldn't spend more time outside by the authorities who know.
00:21:02.000Also, we must prioritize safeguarding nursing homes.
00:21:04.000Why, who has been saying this for weeks on end?
00:21:07.000He says, through April, several studies using antibody testing found that asymptomatic infections are 10 to 20 times more common than previously observed, lowering the true case fatality rate.
00:21:16.000The data taught us that young, healthy Americans have a fatality rate similar to that of seasonal flu.
00:21:21.000Deaths among those young and healthy are rare.
00:21:24.000In fact, community immunity from seasonal viruses is often achieved through younger people developing antibodies.
00:21:29.000It sounds almost like what I have been talking about for a very long time, which is make sure the most vulnerable are protected and then let other people go out and interact with one another with enough protections that we don't spike over the healthcare system.
00:21:41.000The data show that those with preexisting medical conditions like diabetes, lung disease, or a weakened immune system are among the most vulnerable.
00:21:46.000Based on the degree of risk and prevalence of the virus in the region, we should advise these high-risk individuals, particularly the elderly, to avoid interactions with others until the risk of contagion is extremely low.
00:21:55.000So basically, McCary's plan is exactly the same as mine.
00:21:58.000And by the way, pretty much the same as the Trump administration's.
00:22:03.000And the people we need to listen to are people who are spouting doom and gloom without any specific proposals for how to move past the doom and the gloom.
00:22:11.000In just a second, we're going to get to controversies over what we should do with policy, and then we'll get to the fact that the experts that we are supposed to be listening to Very often, they are self-interested because people are people.
00:22:22.000There's this weird idea that in a pandemic, founding ideology goes out the window because it's an emergency, dammit!
00:22:31.000They're human beings, which means that we are stupid, and we are corrupt, and we are venal, and we are self-interested.
00:22:37.000And it also means that if you're stupid, corrupt, venal, and self-interested, probably you shouldn't be making policy for the entire country.
00:22:43.000And maybe I know my kids' names better than the policymakers who are saying they're going to protect my kids.
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00:24:13.000The political controversy continues to grow as it becomes clear that a lot of the policies that are being crafted are basically violating constitutional provisions in particular states.
00:24:24.000The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected the extension of the state's stay-at-home order, siding with Republican legislators in a high-profile challenge of the emergency authority of a statewide official during the coronavirus pandemic.
00:24:34.000This is according to the New York Times.
00:24:35.000I've been suggesting this for a while.
00:24:36.000There will come a point when, listen, all of our constitutional freedoms have been abridged.
00:24:39.000There's no question about that, right?
00:24:40.000You don't have any freedom to associate.
00:24:41.000You really don't have any freedom to leave your home.
00:24:46.000You don't have most of the basic freedoms that you were guaranteed as Americans.
00:24:49.000You're not able to effectuate in this current environment.
00:24:52.000And under public health systems, that is not wrong.
00:24:56.000But when you move beyond the data, where the data no longer support the stay-at-home orders, where the data no longer support the idea that you have any strategy, and where you're just telling people that you can abridge their constitutional rights so that you don't get the political blowback of not abridging their constitutional rights, this is when courts are going to start stepping in.
00:25:12.000Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, had extended the prohibition on most travel and operations of quote-unquote non-essential businesses until May 26th in a 4-3 ruling The court said that Wisconsin's top health official had not followed the proper process in setting the strict limits for residents.
00:25:25.000Although the opinion centered on the technical method by which the limits had been set, several conservative justices conveyed their dismay at the restrictions themselves.
00:25:32.000Justice Daniel Kelly wrote, This comprehensive claim to control virtually every aspect of a person's life is something we normally associate with a prison, not a free society governed by the rule of law.
00:25:40.000Within hours of the ruling, some taverns were making plans for reopening.
00:25:44.000Evers said, this turns the state to chaos.
00:26:03.000At a certain point, the rubber is going to hit the road when people decide that the orders that are being promulgated no longer serve the public interest.
00:26:09.000There are only a few reasons why you pay attention to a law.
00:26:19.000Or three, because they pay you to do so.
00:26:20.000There's some sort of benefit in doing so.
00:26:22.000So Democrats basically In these sort of heavy-handed orders, the ones that are not well calibrated, some of the stuff you're seeing in Michigan, for example, some of the stuff that you've seen in California, some of the stuff that you're seeing in upstate New York, those orders that are not calibrated to public health, that are not calibrated to actually slowing the spread, that are overbroad, and that make distinctions between quote-unquote non-essential businesses and essential businesses, as though governors know the difference, or as though there is a clear-cut difference.
00:26:48.000Those orders, as I say, if there are three reasons to obey a law, and one of those reasons is because the law is smart and good and wise, and that reason is not being fulfilled, that means that you're basically left with two available options.
00:27:01.000One is you threaten people, and the other is you cajole people.
00:27:16.000Things are gonna get really ugly when it turns out that somebody is socially distancing on a beach, and then the police show up and try to arrest that person, the person says they're not doing anything wrong, and then the police tase the guy and he gets caught on tape.
00:27:27.000In fact, this sort of happened in New York.
00:27:29.000There was a black person in, I believe it was the Brooklyn area, who was basically taken down by police for not socially distancing.
00:27:38.000And this led Mayor Bill de Blasio to then say, well, you know, it seems like we're disproportionately arresting black people for not socially distancing.
00:27:44.000This means we need to go up to Prospect Park and we need to tell all the white people that they're gonna be arrested.
00:27:48.000Okay, at a certain point, people are just gonna be like, no, you know what?
00:27:52.000The heavier the hand of government, the more people actually feel the effect of the law, which is why, as a general rule, what the founders suggested, which is that do not pass a law or regulation unless you are willing to enforce it with a gun, that is good advice.
00:28:04.000You can make the suggestion, and then you have to allow people to risk assess.
00:28:08.000You can see that this is going to get ugly.
00:28:10.000Governor Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan yesterday, she said, my orders are not suggestions.
00:28:13.000In other words, I'm going to use law enforcement to enforce this sort of stuff.
00:28:16.000Well, that's all fun and games until things get ugly.
00:28:19.000Okay, and that is not to suggest that people should not obey the orders, that they should break the law in ways that affect other people.
00:28:25.000But if somebody says to Governor Whitmer, listen, I'm opening my store, and we're doing 50% of our normal business, and we're socially distancing, and people are wearing masks, and then Whitmer says, I'm coming in there guns blazing, then Whitmer is wrong, and people have the right to disobey that order.
00:29:30.000We can continue to take out enormous amounts of debt because we are the world's best bet in terms of an economy.
00:29:34.000But that only lasts as long as you have not changed the underlying fundamentals of the economy.
00:29:38.000The reason that the world can bet that America will pay off her bonds is because the world believes that when all this snaps back, we will snap back to being a very strong economy that is not heavily regulated and run from the top down.
00:29:50.000If the world started to believe that the American economy had shifted so dramatically, that American business was going to be run top down by the government, and that there was going to be heavy incentive for people never to work again, then guess what?
00:29:59.000It would be very difficult to sell our debt.
00:30:01.000In other words, it's easy to float debt when people think that when your credit is good, people are willing to float you debt.
00:30:06.000The minute that it becomes clear that you're using that credit card to buy Lamborghinis instead of invest in your business, people are less willing to float you the debt.
00:30:14.000And this is what Democrats are proposing.
00:30:15.000This $3 trillion package that they're pushing right now is chock full of garbage.
00:30:21.000And now they're pushing this idea that they want to fill in every salary in America under $90,000 until January so that they can simultaneously ban people from going to work.
00:30:30.000So you're incentivizing states to continue to lock down at that point.
00:30:34.000You're incentivizing people not to go to work at that point.
00:30:37.000That's being pushed by Representative Jayapal and several other Democrats in the House of Representatives.
00:30:43.000Meanwhile, Democrats across the country are looking for the federal government to bail out their bad pension deals.
00:30:48.000Rick Scott, the former governor of Florida, now senator from Florida, he said yesterday, we can't bail out these states.
00:30:52.000What we're basically doing right now is we're using the pandemic as an excuse to pass bad policy that undermines the future stability and growth potential of the United States economy.
00:31:03.000I don't want to bail out liberal states that don't want to watch their budgets.
00:31:11.000People moved to my state to get away from the high taxes in New York, Illinois, and California, and now they don't want to tax their citizens, they want us to tax federal taxpayers.
00:31:22.000Okay, Rick Scott, of course, is exactly correct about this.
00:31:24.000As governor of Florida, he ran a population that's the size of the population of the state of New York, and he actually basically balanced the budget.
00:31:32.000Okay, meanwhile, Andrew Cuomo continued to blow out the debt, and now he's turning to the federal government and begging.
00:31:36.000It's amazing how begging the federal government for help if you're a Democrat actually makes you popular with the press.
00:33:03.000CNN will have a panel of experts on coronavirus that will include a former HHS secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who, her great public health experience before that was she was governor of Kansas.
00:33:12.000And they're having on the former CDC director under Barack Obama.
00:33:15.000So a couple of Barack Obama officials.
00:33:16.000And known coronavirus expert, Greta Thunberg, It's gonna be on CNN tonight to advise us all.
00:33:22.000You know, other people in the media have had on Dr. Birx, have had on Marty McCary, have had on Dr. Gottlieb.
00:33:37.000We should at least make an attempt to open the schools if this is not spreading widely.
00:33:41.000He says, I think this is a local decision.
00:33:43.000It's not a national level decision at this point.
00:33:45.000There's also an article in Wired talking about the fact that all over the world, people are reopening their schools because kids are not particularly vulnerable to this thing.
00:33:55.000According to an article published in the Journal of American Medical Association, JAMA, which is sort of industry standard, just 1% of patients were under 10 years old.
00:34:09.000In the United States, we have seen in the United States like maybe double digit deaths for people under the age of 20.
00:34:15.000So the idea that we're supposed to retain school closures in this environment, that if Trump says no, that this is because Trump is very bad, it's idiotic.
00:34:23.000So all three of these strategies are bound to fail.
00:34:24.000Okay, bribery is not going to work because it is just not sustainable.
00:34:28.000Threats are not going to work because eventually when you use a gun against somebody who's actually doing something reasonable, people are going to rebel.
00:34:33.000And third, your scare strategies are not going to work unless you can continue to put out misinformation.
00:34:38.000You know what scares me more, honestly, than coronavirus for people my age?
00:34:44.000The probability that complete and utter morons are going to actually be controlling our policy top-down in stupid fashion while being corrupt.
00:34:53.000We'll get to the corruption of our public officials in just one second.
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00:35:51.000Okay, we're going to get to the fact that the public officials who say that you should listen to them, a lot of them are actually not the people that you would trust to babysit your children.
00:36:08.000Okay, we're going to get to that in just one second.
00:36:10.000First, I want to take a moment to tell you about The Daily Wire's newest, most exclusive membership tier, All Access.
00:36:15.000The All Access membership tier is our premium level of membership.
00:36:17.000All Access members get to participate in All Access Live.
00:36:20.000That is our brand new interactive programming feature featuring one of us DailyWire hosts as we hang out with you each night, 8 p.m.
00:37:32.000As I've said before, the government's a giant lumbering idiot with a gun.
00:37:35.000Sometimes you need a giant lumbering idiot with a gun.
00:37:37.000And in the early days of the pandemic when we didn't know anything, the idea that the government was just going to step in and shut everything down, I didn't object to it.
00:37:45.000Time will tell whether this is necessary.
00:37:47.000Maybe we have to stop our health system from being overwhelmed and getting the excess deaths that rise above the line when the curve rises above the line.
00:38:04.000Okay, and the giant lumber, let us never forget that the public officials who run this country are just as venal and corrupt and self-interested as anybody else, and very often they're making just as many mistakes as anybody else.
00:38:16.000So-called experts, they're expert on, very often they're expert on the question of statistical analysis, and they are very inexpert on the question of what policy ought to be adopted.
00:38:37.000I think one of the problems here is as we've lost a sense of community that we feel like, okay, maybe my neighbor is going to be irresponsible and is going to sneeze all over me.
00:38:55.000The loss of community has been a serious problem because it turns out that the attempt to use government in order to create community is a failure because government is not capable of making the sort of pinpoint decisions that are necessary to balance competing interests.
00:39:09.000The government can just come in and smash you.
00:39:16.000And that means that you're gonna get your fair share of stupidity and corruption.
00:39:20.000The story that's being wildly underplayed by the media, I mean, this truly is an amazing story.
00:39:24.000There's a health official for overseeing nursing homes in Pennsylvania.
00:39:28.00070% of all state coronavirus-related deaths in Pennsylvania have occurred in nursing homes.
00:39:32.000The health secretary is a person named Dr. Rachel Levine.
00:39:35.000Okay, Dr. Rachel Levine is We had a policy.
00:39:40.000The policy was that during the COVID-19 outbreak, that facilities in the state continue to accept coronavirus patients who had been discharged from hospitals but were unable to return to their homes.
00:39:50.000So if you're 80 and you're diagnosed with COVID, you went right back into the nursing home where you promptly infected everyone and everybody died.
00:39:55.000This is Rachel Levine's stated policy.
00:39:58.000Now, Dr. Rachel Levine also had a mother.
00:40:07.000Dr. Rachel Levine promptly took mom out of the old age home and took her home.
00:40:12.000So the same state official who was saying, don't worry, we're keeping the nursing home safe by forcing COVID-19 patients back in, was also saying, oh yeah, by the way, I'm taking my mom out of the nursing home.
00:40:23.000How that has received so much less attention than, for example, Kelly Loeffler, the senator from Georgia who's been accused of sort of trading on insider information about coronavirus, is beyond me.
00:40:33.000Like, truly, one of those decisions led to the direct deaths of nearly 3,000 people, and one of those decisions led to the personal enrichment of a senator.
00:40:42.000It seems to me one is much more serious than the other.
00:40:44.000They can both be serious, but one seems much more serious.
00:40:46.000By the way, there's still questions as to what Kelly Loeffler knew and whether she was, in fact, trading on the insider information.
00:40:53.000Also, but that doesn't undermine the general point, which is that everybody is self-interested.
00:40:58.000Today, FBI agents seized the cell phone data of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, a ranking Republican from North Carolina, as part of an investigation into his stock sales.
00:41:06.000Burr and his wife sold between $600,000 and $1.7 million in stocks, over 30 transactions between late January and through mid-February.
00:41:14.000Before the stock market plunged and his warnings of the coronavirus pandemic became more severe.
00:41:18.000The bulk of stocks sales from Burr took place on February 13th, just before he made a speech predicting extreme measures would have to be taken to check the spread of the virus.
00:41:27.000So honestly, if he was saying that in the coming days it's going to get really bad and selling his stocks at the same time, there really is no scandal.
00:41:36.000If you're conveying to the public that things are getting really bad and also I'm selling my stocks, that's not a scandal.
00:41:42.000It's only a scandal if you're telling the public everything is fine while you're selling your stocks.
00:41:48.000A spokesperson told CBS News in March, Burr filed a financial disclosure form for personal transactions made several weeks before the U.S.
00:41:54.000and financial markets showed signs of volatility due to the growing coronavirus outbreak.
00:41:58.000It is illegal for members to trade stocks based on information the public doesn't have.
00:42:03.000Burr was among the three senators who voted against the legislation banning such trading in 2012, and he said that he relied solely on public news reports to guide his decision regarding the sale of stocks.
00:42:14.000Do you want those people making rules for you?
00:42:16.000How about, like, the New York City health head?
00:42:18.000Do you think that we should be making Oxiris Barbo?
00:42:21.000Do you think that we should have her making the public health rules?
00:42:24.000In early March, she was telling everybody everything was fine in New York City.
00:42:27.000Not only that, according to the New York Post, New York City's health commissioner blew off an urgent NYPD request for half a million surgical masks as the coronavirus crisis mounted, telling a high-ranking police official, quote, I don't give two rats asses about your cops.
00:43:14.000The conversation took place as increasing numbers of cops were calling out sick with symptoms of COVID-19, but before the department suffered its first casualties.
00:43:21.000The NYPD has recorded 5,490 cases of coronavirus among its 55,000 cops and civilian workers.
00:43:28.000Patrick Lynch, president of the Police Benevolence Association, called for Barbeau to be fired over her despicable and unforgivable comments.
00:44:21.000What you need is resources that are made available, and maybe you need a centralized clearinghouse for those resources made available, like the ventilator situation.
00:44:28.000So you need the resources made available.
00:45:07.000So, the notion that the federal government is the first stop here, or that federal policymakers are capable of doing this stuff, it's amazing.
00:45:13.000There are so many people these days who are saying that this demonstrates the need for expertise.
00:45:19.000What this demonstrates is that experts are not capable of making good, broad-based decisions for hundreds of millions of human beings.
00:45:27.000That what you actually need in the end is what the founders always talked about, which is localism first and foremost.
00:45:32.000That what you actually need are checks and balances on American government.
00:45:36.000Imagine if there had been a check and balance on the CDC when it came to... Imagine information free-flowing and checks and balances on the CDC in the early days of the pandemic.
00:45:46.000Imagine that the information had been flowing through much more freely from the CDC and the FDA to states and localities.
00:45:53.000Localities, for example, And we knew what was going on with coronavirus much earlier.
00:45:57.000And that information was really coming out much earlier.
00:46:00.000And the CDC had not been banning people from doing preliminary tests in Washington.
00:46:05.000The CDC literally told people, labs that were capable of doing early coronavirus testing not to do it.
00:46:30.000All right, so speaking of corruption, Mark Kelly is doing really well in this U.S.
00:46:39.000Senate race in Arizona, running against Martha McSally.
00:46:43.000Martha McSally, of course, lost a Senate race to Kristen Sinema, and then she was appointed to fill the open Senate seat that was provided when John McCain passed away.
00:46:52.000Well, Mark Kelly is running against her.
00:46:53.000He's raised oodles of money, and now he is caught up in a corruption scandal of his own, according to RealClearPolitics.
00:46:58.000And this thing is not receiving anything like the sort of attention it should be, because Mark Kelly's a Democrat.
00:47:03.000The former NASA astronaut who commanded the second-to-last space shuttle mission and spent 25 years in the Navy readily acknowledges the myriad threats China poses to the United States.
00:47:12.000But the reality is that he has some fairly corrupt ties with China.
00:47:17.000Kelly has been far more reticent about the investment by a Chinese company in a commercial space exploration venture he co-founded.
00:47:22.000The company, tech giant Tencent, is one of the world's largest internet enterprises and owns the Chinese social media platform WeChat.
00:47:28.000The tech's platform has more than a billion users and is suspected of monitoring the activity of many of them inside and outside China.
00:47:34.000In the fall of 2014, the CEO of Worldview Enterprises, which is the company Kelly co-founded, announced during a visit to Beijing that Tencent had invested an undisclosed sum of money in the Tucson-based space travel venture.
00:47:45.000In April 2016, as part of a $15 million investment round, Worldview announced it had received more funds from Tencent along with three other venture capital firms.
00:47:54.000Tencent was already under intense U.S.
00:47:56.000scrutiny before the COVID-19 world crisis.
00:47:59.000In addition to surveillance suspicions, Tencent sparked U.S.
00:48:01.000backlash for suspending its streaming of NBA games after Houston Rockets general manager praised Hong Kong democracy protests last fall.
00:48:09.000WeChat has been censoring keywords related to COVID-19 since at least January 1st.
00:48:13.000There's bipartisan approval of the idea that Tencent is dangerous and is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:48:20.000Well, Kelly served as a strategic advisor to Worldview until he launched his Senate campaign last year.
00:48:24.000He maintains a personal financial stake in the company between $100,000 and $250,000 worth of non-public stock, and between $15,000 and $50,000 worth of stock options.
00:48:33.000His eldest daughter works there as the company's business opportunity manager.
00:48:37.000Also, Kelly's campaign has accepted $5,000 from David Wallerstein, who serves as Tencent's chief exploration officer.
00:48:43.000So he's being funded in large part, or at least in significant part, by Tencent.
00:48:49.000And the increasing dependence on government contracts doesn't seem to have given Kelly Paws about 10 cents investment.
00:48:55.000If he has, he's not speaking up about it.
00:48:57.000The Kelly campaign has sidestepped questions from RealClearPolitics on whether he believes the Chinese company's investment is appropriate and whether the money should be returned.
00:49:05.000A Kelly campaign spokesperson told RCP, Mark's experience as a pilot and astronaut enabled him to help found WorldView in Tucson, which has worked with the Department of Defense and NASA while creating jobs and generating millions in economic impact.
00:49:16.000And he referred all questions about Tencent's investment to WorldView itself.
00:49:22.000So that seems like that is worth some investigation, does it not?
00:49:25.000The fact that a Senate candidate has a large stake in a company that is being funded by Tencent, which is basically a Chinese front group.
00:49:38.000But apparently that does not rise to the level of requiring massive media attention.
00:49:42.000What we should actually focus our attention on is only Richard Burr.
00:49:45.000We should never focus our attention on issues like this one, which obviously is a disturbing one.
00:49:51.000So they're going to have to answer some questions.
00:49:54.000Markell is going to have to answer some questions.
00:49:56.000And by the way, so is Joe Biden, who had said for months and months and months that a rising China was actually good for the world.
00:50:02.000Joe Biden has been pretty, during his tenure, he was pretty soft on China.
00:50:07.000And his softness on China is going to blow back against him at some point here.
00:50:12.000The Trump administration has been much harsher on China than the Obama administration ever was.
00:50:16.000And as we move forward toward the election, there are a lot of Americans, me among them, who are very, very angry at the Chinese government.
00:50:24.000And if Democrats decide to take the bizarre case that China is not responsible for this, or that Trump is being too mean to China, good luck with that political take.
00:50:50.000If there is a wiretap that happens of a foreign national, an American is caught up in that wiretap, that person's name is hidden because you are not allowed to surveil American citizens without an actual FISA warrant.
00:51:00.000You're not allowed to surveil American citizens without some sort of legal go-ahead.
00:51:03.000So that person's name is kept confidential, and it's kept private, unless there's an actual request for unmasking from inside the executive branch.
00:51:12.000They are not supposed to be done unless you actually have true suspicion of criminality.
00:51:16.000Well, as it turns out, Susan Rice, who is the National Security Advisor to President Obama, asked for Michael Flynn to be unmasked, so she could see his name.
00:51:24.000And then, that was basically leaked and circulated within the Obama administration, so everybody knew that Michael Flynn had been on the phone with Sergey Kislyak.
00:51:30.000Now again, there's nothing illegal about Michael Flynn being on the phone with Sergey Kislyak.
00:51:35.000He was the incoming national security advisor on the phone with the Russian ambassador.
00:51:38.000That is not illegal in any way, shape, or form.
00:51:41.000The Obama administration decided to circulate Flynn's name specifically to generate all sorts of concern that Flynn was in thrall to the Russians.
00:51:49.000Well, now it turns out that a bunch of people in the Obama administration were very, very concerned with Michael Flynn.
00:51:54.000According to the New York Post, former Vice President Joe Biden and former FBI Director James Comey were among the top officials who tried to unmask Michael Flynn's identity during the Russia probe, according to a report by the Acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell.
00:52:07.000The bombshell letter first reported by Fox News on Wednesday afternoon was sent to Republican senators by Grinnell as they seek to investigate the origins of the FBI's malign probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
00:52:18.000Intelligence Chiefs John Brennan and James Clapper were also included on a list of 23 Obama-era officials who allegedly tried to reveal the identity of Flynn during the presidential transition period.
00:52:28.000So is Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and former U.S.
00:52:46.000He said, I know nothing about these moves to investigate Michael Flynn.
00:52:49.000Well, weird, because not only were you in a meeting with Barack Obama and members of the DOJ and FBI, where members of the DOJ were shocked to learn that Obama actually knew about the Flynn call, And they were shocked that Obama himself was in the loop.
00:53:23.000Vice President Biden and more than a dozen Obama administration officials requested and received the power to unmask General Flynn during his phone call with the Russian ambassador.
00:53:35.000James Clapper, James Comey, John Brennan, Samantha Powers, and the President's Chief of Staff all individually asked to unmask General Flynn and to listen to his phone conversation.
00:53:49.000Intriguingly, a dozen more administration officials all chose to unmask General Flynn.
00:53:56.000Now, again, it's okay to unmask somebody for purposes of internal discussion.
00:54:08.000And when it turns out that everybody... You have to know that the natural consequence of every single person in the Obama administration in a five-mile radius unmasking a guy, it is very likely that's going to end up with the media.
00:54:21.000Quinn Hilliard has a piece over at the Washington Examiner pointing this out.
00:54:24.000They say that, he says, people are making too much of the unmasking itself, which could have been entirely justified, but what was almost certainly illegal was the leak to the Washington Post of the information about those unmasked calls.
00:54:35.000And again, should there be a presumption that somebody is going to be leaked if it turns out that everybody inside the Obama administration was requesting the unmasking?
00:54:46.000At a certain point, does it become a little bit predictable that this thing got leaked to the media?
00:55:32.000By the way, I think that the finest moment here came from a Biden spokesperson.
00:55:36.000So a Biden spokesperson slammed CBS's Catherine Herridge.
00:55:38.000Herridge is a reporter on this beat, and she reported about the unmasking.
00:55:42.000So a Biden spokesperson promptly tweeted out, his name is Andrew Bates, Catherine Herridge is a partisan right-wing hack who's a regular conduit for conservative media manipulation ploys because she agrees to publicize things before contacting the target to ask for comments.
00:55:54.000Nothing richer than a Biden person attacking members of the media.
00:55:58.000It's an assault on our free press, on our free press institutions.
00:56:04.000By the way, I will note that it is pretty astonishing that members of the Obama tribe and the Biden tribe, the political tribe here, that those people are very upset with the media.
00:56:14.000You don't get to be upset with the media, guys.
00:56:16.000You leaked this information to the media in the first place.
00:56:20.000Susan Rice, by the way, was asked for comments on all of the unmasking stories, and she declined.
00:56:24.000She basically ran away from the reporter.
00:56:26.000How do you respond to those who say you abused your power with unmasking in 2016?
00:56:54.000Okay, so that is the way that the Obama administration, you know, those professionals who definitely did not politicize intelligence, but were leaking everything that they could find about the Trump administration out into the public.
00:57:05.000The Wall Street Journal has a good editorial today about all of this.
00:57:08.000They say, when news stories appeared in early 2017 about Michael Flynn's conversation with Russia's ambassador to the U.S., these columns wondered how Flynn's call was so widely known.
00:57:22.000GOP Senators Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson on Wednesday released a declassified list of Obama administration officials, who in their waning days in power, unmasked the conversations of Mr. Flynn, who is set to become Trump's national security advisor.
00:57:33.000It seems everybody but the night janitor wanted to know who Flynn was talking to.
00:57:37.000A stunning 39 separate officials snooped on Flynn's conversations with foreign actors, lodging nearly 50 unmasking demands between November 30, 2016 and January 12, 2017.
00:57:47.000Our sources say the nearly dozen redacted names on the list are likely intelligence types who might have a legit interest.
00:57:52.000Most of the rest are partisan officials.
00:57:55.000Flynn was unmasked by at least four U.S.
00:57:56.000ambassadors, six Treasury officials, people connected to the Energy and Justice Departments, and NATO.
00:58:01.000Then-FBI Director James Comey, then-CIA Director John Brennan, and then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper also made the list.
00:58:09.000The Flynn unmasking is important, they say, because it occurred amid a media frenzy over supposed Trump campaign collusion with Russia.
00:58:15.000Documents released late last week show that former Deputy Attorney General Tally Yates first learned about the Flynn wiretapping from Barack Obama personally.
00:58:22.000In a January 5th, 2017 Oval Office meeting, at least one of the unmaskers must have told Obama.
00:58:28.000And the question there again is not the unmasking.
00:58:30.000The question is, why was all this being leaked out?
00:58:33.000And the answer is that our institutions, those same institutions that are now tasked with making decisions about you and your life and your level of freedom, Those institutions botched this one beyond botchery.
00:58:45.000The good news is that so long as they are targeting Trump, they always have the love of the media.
00:58:48.000So Adam Schiff, who spent three years lying that Trump-Russia collusion was going to reveal the seething, festering wound in the body of America's politics.
00:58:58.000Yesterday, he said it was Bill Barr who was politicizing the DOJ.
00:59:02.000It's all Bill Barr's fault for dropping the case against Flynn.
00:59:05.000The problem is that Bill Barr has so politicized the Justice Department, the justice system, that people can't have confidence that a decision like this to release Paul Manafort to do home imprisonment is based on the merits.
01:00:07.000You forget how good this movie is until you rewatch it.
01:00:09.000It's one of those movies that is so well-liked that you forget that it's actually an amazing piece of filmmaking, that it is entertaining from beginning to end.
01:01:43.000The unmasking of Mike Flynn in the last days of the Obama administration is the most egregious political scandal of our lifetimes, and we've just learned it goes all the way up to Joe Biden, maybe even higher.
01:01:54.000Meanwhile, the new masking order in L.A.
01:01:57.000caps off the most arbitrary political power grab of our lifetimes.
01:02:01.000Luckily, President Trump is starting to break with his expert doctor dictators.
01:02:05.000Then, another rough interview for Joe Biden, a big Republican win in California, and finally the mailbag.